I'm as gay as gay gets and gay married and I can't believe stupid websites like OK Cupid forced the issue enough to make him quit. He is a brilliant guy that helped bring a lot of the modern computer world to us. So what if he supported anti gay marriage. Its his right to do so. We can't all have the same opinion and I don't think his personal beliefs and small personal donation need to overshadow the 15 years of amazing computer science he gave us. Imagine if we were all professionally judged for one stupid personal thing we did 5 years ago.

I was actually glad when I read he was not quitting before he quit.


Here are his last two blog posts:
The resignation

Slides for the brief talk that I gave at a Harvard seminar on privacy and user data organized by John Taysom last week.

My talk was really more about the “network problem” than the “protocol problem”. Networks breed first- and second-mover winners and others path-dependent powers, until the next disruption. Users or rather their data get captured.

Privacy is only one concern among several, including how to realize economic value for many-yet-individually-weak users, not just for data-store/service owners or third parties. Can we do better with client-side and private-cloud tiers, zero-knowledge proofs and protocols, or other ideas?

In the end, I asked these four questions:

Can a browser/OS “unionize its users” to gain bargaining power vs. net super-powers?
To create a data commons with “API to me” and aggregated/clustered economics?
Open the walled gardens to put users first?
Still be usable and private-enough for most?

I think the answer is yes, but I’m not sure who will do this work. It is vitally important.

I may get to it, but not working at Mozilla. I’ve resigned as CEO and I’m leaving Mozilla to take a rest, take some trips with my family, look at problems from other angles, and see if the “network problem” has a solution that doesn’t require scaling up to hundreds of millions of users and winning their trust while somehow covering costs. That’s a rare, hard thing, which I’m proud to have done with Firefox at Mozilla.

I encourage all Mozillians to keep going. Firefox OS is even more daunting, and more important. Thanks indeed to all who have supported me, and to all my colleagues over the years, at Mozilla, in standards bodies, and at conferences around the world. I will be less visible online, but still around.

Pre Resignation:

I am deeply honored and humbled by the CEO role. I’m also grateful for the messages of support. At the same time, I know there are concerns about my commitment to fostering equality and welcome for LGBT individuals at Mozilla. I hope to lay those concerns to rest, first by making a set of commitments to you. More important, I want to lay them to rest by actions and results.

A number of Mozillians, including LGBT individuals and allies, have stepped forward to offer guidance and assistance in this. I cannot thank you enough, and I ask for your ongoing help to make Mozilla a place of equality and welcome for all. Here are my commitments, and here’s what you can expect:

Active commitment to equality in everything we do, from employment to events to community-building.
Working with LGBT communities and allies, to listen and learn what does and doesn’t make Mozilla supportive and welcoming.
My ongoing commitment to our Community Participation Guidelines, our inclusive health benefits, our anti-discrimination policies, and the spirit that underlies all of these.
My personal commitment to work on new initiatives to reach out to those who feel excluded or who have been marginalized in ways that makes their contributing to Mozilla and to open source difficult. More on this last item below.

I know some will be skeptical about this, and that words alone will not change anything. I can only ask for your support to have the time to “show, not tell”; and in the meantime express my sorrow at having caused pain.

Mozilla is a movement composed of different people around the world, working productively together on a common mission. This is important to our ability to work and grow around the world.

Many Mozillians and others know me as a colleague or a friend. They know that I take people as they come and work with anyone willing to contribute. At the same time, I don’t ask for trust free of context, or without a solid structure to support accountability. No leader or person who has a privileged position should. I want to be held accountable for what I do as CEO. I fully expect you all to do so.

I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion.

You will see exemplary behavior from me toward everyone in our community, no matter who they are; and the same toward all those whom we hope will join, and for those who use our products. Mozilla’s inclusive health benefits policies will not regress in any way. And I will not tolerate behavior among community members that violates our Community Participation Guidelines or (for employees) our inclusive and non-discriminatory employment policies.

You’ll also see more from Mozilla under my leadership in the way of efforts to include potential contributors, especially those who lack privilege. This entails several projects, starting with Project Ascend, which is being developed by Lukas Blakk. I intend to demonstrate with meaningful action my commitment to a Mozilla that lives up to its ideals, including that of being an open and inclusive community.

I think it is time to let go of elmwoodstrip.org. We switched to estrip.org so long ago and it remains simply a redirect that serves no purpose but costs me $12/year. Does anyone see a problem with that. I got until December to decide.

So I was excited to find cardpool yesterday when I was purchasing some shoes (e:paul,57112) from dsw.com

I purchased 2 $25 gift cards for $44 which I thought was a good deal. I purchased them around 5PM yesterday. The system said the cards were electronic and would be delivered in 24 hours.

Toward the end of the business day today I got a call from California to confirm my purchase info but wasn't near my phone. Strangely, the number they call from can't accept calls so I had to listen to the whole message to get the number to call from. When I called that one, the system said they had not enabled their voicemail.

Finally around 5 they call me back and say in 3-4 hours the gift card should be ready. I got two of them. One works, and the other one doesn't. It was so frustrating because I bought them under the assumption this would actually work out within 24 hours. I actually thought a full 24 hours was on the ridiculous end of the scale. By the time I received the gift cards and found out the one was bunk they were closed for the day.

At this point I just had to buy the shoes because they was a limited number remaining and I was afraid they would sell out.

In the end it turned out to be a pretty poor experience. I don't think I would ever use their service again. I guess it really depends how this gets resolved but mostly having such a large delay between purchasing an electronic item with electronic delivery and its actual fully functional arrival is not really an awesome experience. I wonder if they will refund me or fix the card.

The strangest situation last night. I was trying to book a hotel in downtown portland for tonight. I looked at the downtown map area. Then I accidentally clicked on another map call "downtown portand - south waterfront". Then I prompted me to login, session timeout when I forgot the pass, etc so I used the back button to go back to the downtown map when I checked out but ended up with a South Waterfront area hotel which is out of the city. It would be like staying in Lackawanna in you were going to Buffalo.

I immediately called expedia to resolve the issue. I was cut off twice during transfer. Then they realized the corp office was closed until "5am eastern time" so I waited up and called again. Another cut off during transfer. I called back and got to a supervisor. The supervisor told me she couldn't do anything without corporate and they open 5am central time. I explain it is already 5am central time and we have an argument about time zones. She is in the phillipines and clearly does no understand american time zones. Then she says to call back in the morning.

So I call back this morning 7am pacific time and Lakisha at corporate in Vegas reviews my session and insists it was south waterfront. I explained that I think the issue was caused by using the back button. We argue about it and she says there is nothing she can do, I am stuck with it because otherwise expedia would have to eat the full cost. Clearly, expedia would not have to eat the whole cost because they must be making some profit and I was willing to pay more to be in the area I wanted and believed I was selecting.

I then explained to her that if she did not resolve this I was never using their service again, so the $200 lost would be much less than the entire of my future business by a large magnitude.

She said there was nothing she could do. It seems so stupid to me that they would have such bad customer relationship management. I didn't even want to cancel, I just wanted a room within the area, I was under the impression I was choosing and I was willing to pay more.

Maybe they should redesign their software so that the map is explicitly shown on checkout instead of just the name. The terms "Downtown Portand" vs "Downtown Portland - South Waterfront" look too similar when you were looking at both and though you had backed up to the first one, especially with all of the forgotten password, session timeout bullshit.

I am also going to make it a point to tell everyone I know about this terrible customer service experience from being hung up on several times to the way I was treated by Lakisha. I guess I will checkout priceline in the future. Looking at it now there site seems a lot nicer. Expedias seems real 2003.

I knew (e:lukamagnotta) was up to no good. But wow. I am almost scared to write about it.

Porn star hunted over body parts(UKPA) – 36 minutes ago  A porn actor is being hunted over the gruesome case of a dismembered body whose parts were mailed to different places including the headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada.Luka Rocco Magnotta, 29, is wanted for homicide, Montreal police said at a news conference. According to an official close to the investigation Magnotta worked as a porn actor and there is video of the crime.Magnotta, believed to originally be from Toronto, was renting an apartment in a working-class Montreal neighbourhood, behind which police found a man's torso in a suitcase on Tuesday.The same day, a foot was found in a package mailed to the Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa, and a hand was found at postal warehouse in the Canadian capital. Early testing shows the three body parts come from the same man, police said. The packages with the foot and the hand had been mailed to Ottawa from Montreal.Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafreniere said detectives are investigating the possibility that other body parts might have been mailed. He said the suspect and the victim knew each other, and it was not linked to organised crime."We're talking about a very disturbed person. It's very graphic. We're still missing parts of the body," Mr Lafreniere said.Police said Magnotta is also known by the names Eric Clinton Newman and Vladimir Romanov. They described him as white, 5ft 8in with blue eyes and black hair.Police discovered the severed foot after Jenni Bryne, a political adviser to prime minister Stephen Harper, opened a bloodstained box at Conservative headquarters on Tuesday. When she opened the box, a foul smell overcame the office.Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said: "It was such a horrible odour. I'm sure many of us will not forget it." Police said the package was addressed to the Conservative Party of Canada and not to a specific person.Officers confirmed on Wednesday that they intercepted a second package containing a human hand at an Ottawa postal facility late Tuesday. Police would not say where the package was addressed. Ottawa police said they were consulting with counterparts in Montreal after a janitor there discovered a severed male torso in a suitcase in a heap of rubbish behind the apartment building.

I just deleted 22,000 emails from my gmail and spent almost 4 hours unsubscribing from everything I ever signed up for in the last 5 years. Its amazing how complicated it is to unsubscribe from so much stuff. I can finally set my phone to auto sync because I think the inbox is now under control. Before this it would beep way too often with new crap, that I had set it to manual sync.

This is insane, I would rather be dead.

I was reading this article called "Pot smoking may more than double crash risk" on USA Today's website this morning

It seems obvious that driving while high is dangerous. Anyhow, the part that struck me was this:

A large U.S. survey in 2009 estimated that more than 10 million people aged 12 and over had driven while under the influence of illicit drugs in the previous year.

Why are 12 year old driving, much less driving on drugs!?!

Studies like this are so stupid. I can't believe people waste money on this, if there was any government funding it is even more outrageous but my guess is the funding was done by insurance companies.

I love the really awesome discoveries.

And the response was dose-specific, the authors said. That is, the more marijuana smoked -- in terms of frequency and potency -- the greater the likelihood of a crash.

Wow, what a freakin surprise. You mean the more drugs you consume, the more they affect you? That seems so surprising. I wonder how much these people were paid for this stupid study.

(e:tinypliny) sent me a link to some blogger page about something and it gave me this when I tried to visit using the android browser on my gingerbread phone.