Next Tuesday, I will vote in California for the first time since moving here from Michigan in the summer of 2005. I have been pretty clueless on all the ballot initiatives (there are tons; isn't this supposed to be a representative government?), so tonight I printed out the state voters guide and started wading my way through them with my wife.
Disclaimer: these decisions are tentative and are based on less than an hour of review. Don't hold it against me too much if it turns out years from now I was incredibly wrong! Also, the voting decisions posted are my own; my wife didn't necessarily agree with me on any of these :)
The first one we looked at was proposition 90, proposing restricting the powers of eminent domain. At first glance, it seems like who wouldn't like it? Who wants the government taking away their house by force and giving what they deem to be a fair price? But I also wondered, how often is this used, and for what purpose? Does the government low ball people? Don't most state governments have this power? For more insight on the matter I turned to Kevin Drum, a professional blogger who I've read on and off since he was just an amateur. Through a site restricted search , I found this post that provided some more context. It pointed out that, beyond preventing the government from seizing property, it allows property owners to claim compensation for any action the government takes that could decrease the value of their land. This puts it over the edge. Decision: no on prop 90.
Next, we checked out prop 87, which proposes four billion dollars in taxes on oil companies that extract oil in California to promote clean energy usage. Anything that would add more funding for clean energy usage sounds good. However, I don't agree with how it is funded. How ever rich oil companies may be, does it make sense to basically gang up on them and make them pay for something we all value? If we think it is so important, why can't we pay for clean energy promotion out of the general fund? Plus, what really is bad for the environment is energy consumption. I'd prefer a gas or carbon tax. Making Hummer drivers pay $100 to fill their tanks will make them think a little harder than seeing than some commercial where Leonardo DiCaprio claims his Prius rules. It may be true that a gas tax will never get passed, and this is the best option for a long while to get more funding for enviro stuff, but I gotta stick to my principles on this one. Decision: no on prop 87.
The last proposition we looked at was 86, proposing more cigarette taxes, funding health care. Currently, cigarettes cost about $4 a pack, about $0.87 of that going to the state. If 86 passes, an additional $2.60 would be taxed, adding up to a whopping $6.60 per pack. I know I just said I liked consumption based taxes in the case of energy, but come on! It certainly would stop some people from smoking, but I feel like the people worst off would be the poor. Someone who smokes a pack a day and can't quit would end up paying another 30 bucks a week, $1500 a year, on cigarettes, an amount that could seriously screw over someone making 20 grand a year. I would be for it if it were a more moderate increase. Decision: no on prop 86.
That's all I could stand to sift through in one sitting, stay tuned for updates on other decisions if I get around to blogging about it. It is still a week until the polls open; I'm open to hearing more on any of these props and maybe even changing my mind.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Shared vs Starred, Tags and Folders in Google Reader
A couple weeks ago, google reader came out with a new interface that is quite a bit better. The main thing it changed was moving away from a single river-o-news model to an "inbox for the web". This works much better when you subscribe to a lot of feeds. Others have written plenty about it.
After using it a bunch for two weeks, a couple more subtle yet crucial improvements have become apparent: a new notion of 'shared', and a distinction between tags and folders.
Shared vs Starred
I'll start with the shared vs. starred idea. Ever since the first version of reader, you could star individual items. This seemed relatively useful, let's say I like a story and want to remember it somehow: I'll star it. However, there was a major flaw: when I clicked to view all of my starred items, the list was empty. I had to click on "view unread items" to see the items I had starred and (obviously) read. Then, when clicking back to the original stream of my feeds, there would be a bunch of crap I had already read and I'd have to uncheck the 'show read' button.
Later on, still in the older version, they introduced sharing. You could share your starred items and send a feed to your friends. My brother could subscribe to my starred items in his reader and automatically see what I had found interesting. Now, for the first time, stars were useful. However, they still sucked for remembering stories I wanted to maybe go back and read later.
In the latest version of reader, this problem is solved: starred has gone back to the meaning it has in gmail: flag this to make not of it to myself somehow. I can still share my starred items if I want to, but there is another feature for that purpose: my 'shared items'. Now, as I'm going though my stories, I'll hit the 'share' button on all the stories I think are interesting and want others to see, and star much more occasionally if I want to go back and read a particular story later on. I can click on a button to see my starred stories and it will show them (even though they are read); no need to 'show unread'. Yay!
Another nice feature about 'shared' items is reader automatically constructs a page for you to easily share with others, (see mine linked to as 'link blog' in the sidebar).
Tags vs Folders
Another thing that stunk about the old reader was that there was no difference between folders and tags; and they were both called 'labels'. You could label a feed, and label individual posts. But a labeled feed means all stories within that feed are labeled the same, so if any label used for feeds would overwhelm the individual stories labeled the same. I label slashdot as 'science', then, it's pointless to label any individual story 'science' because slashdot will always be spitting dozens of stories a day into that label.
With the new reader, 'label' is killed (with what seems to be some lingering references that are likely bugs in the UI). Google finally threw in the towel and started using the word 'tag' like everyone else (for reader at least), and distinguishes between categorizing your feeds (into folders), and further annotating individual stories (with tags). The folders help me quickly check out a bunch of related feeds within reader, and the tags help me occasionally further describe an individual story.
After using it a bunch for two weeks, a couple more subtle yet crucial improvements have become apparent: a new notion of 'shared', and a distinction between tags and folders.
Shared vs Starred
I'll start with the shared vs. starred idea. Ever since the first version of reader, you could star individual items. This seemed relatively useful, let's say I like a story and want to remember it somehow: I'll star it. However, there was a major flaw: when I clicked to view all of my starred items, the list was empty. I had to click on "view unread items" to see the items I had starred and (obviously) read. Then, when clicking back to the original stream of my feeds, there would be a bunch of crap I had already read and I'd have to uncheck the 'show read' button.
Later on, still in the older version, they introduced sharing. You could share your starred items and send a feed to your friends. My brother could subscribe to my starred items in his reader and automatically see what I had found interesting. Now, for the first time, stars were useful. However, they still sucked for remembering stories I wanted to maybe go back and read later.
In the latest version of reader, this problem is solved: starred has gone back to the meaning it has in gmail: flag this to make not of it to myself somehow. I can still share my starred items if I want to, but there is another feature for that purpose: my 'shared items'. Now, as I'm going though my stories, I'll hit the 'share' button on all the stories I think are interesting and want others to see, and star much more occasionally if I want to go back and read a particular story later on. I can click on a button to see my starred stories and it will show them (even though they are read); no need to 'show unread'. Yay!
Another nice feature about 'shared' items is reader automatically constructs a page for you to easily share with others, (see mine linked to as 'link blog' in the sidebar).
Tags vs Folders
Another thing that stunk about the old reader was that there was no difference between folders and tags; and they were both called 'labels'. You could label a feed, and label individual posts. But a labeled feed means all stories within that feed are labeled the same, so if any label used for feeds would overwhelm the individual stories labeled the same. I label slashdot as 'science', then, it's pointless to label any individual story 'science' because slashdot will always be spitting dozens of stories a day into that label.
With the new reader, 'label' is killed (with what seems to be some lingering references that are likely bugs in the UI). Google finally threw in the towel and started using the word 'tag' like everyone else (for reader at least), and distinguishes between categorizing your feeds (into folders), and further annotating individual stories (with tags). The folders help me quickly check out a bunch of related feeds within reader, and the tags help me occasionally further describe an individual story.
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