Ok, as someone who is waiting for his Green Card, the story of the treatment allegedly received by Hiu Lui Ng frightens me. [BoingBoing link here. NY Times here ]

My Green Card has been in process for more than three years. We are supposedly approaching the end of the long road. But how do I know I won’t be thrown in jail and deported because of some silly clerical error?

We are all enemy aliens until proven otherwise. No wonder US corporations are finding it harder and harder to sell the idea of emigration to the US to potential employees from outside their boundaries.

“Yes, it is possible that you will be thrown in jail and mistreated because of some silly clerical error. It’s more likely that we will just keep you in fear and treat you like second-class indentured servants for 3-4 years until we’re done with you. Now, about our medical plan…”

Tags: BoingBoing, detention, DHS, Green Card, Hiu Lui Ng, Immigration, NY Times

As many readers know, I am going through the process — if you call filing a bunch of paperwork and not hearing anything for 2 years a process — of obtaining Permanent Residency in the United States, often referred to as the Green Card.

This morning, on NPR, there was a story about a foul-up in the processing of Green Cards that is suspicious, to say the least.

I have started referring to this process as the Dream Card because it leaves one thinking that the application they completed was done in a dream, a long time ago. An like most dreams, it is a fable of the subconscious mind and as likely to come true as those blue, flying penguins in my dream last night.

The degree of complexity that accompanies the application process has made bureaucrats from the Byzantine Empire write letters of complaint to their members of Congress, saying that the USCIS is giving them a bad name. Kafka has been seen rising from the dead at night, and penning a new tale based on this experience.

Other people covering this story.

NY Times
The Guardian
Times Of India
Miami Herald
San Jose Mercury News
Sacramento Bee Editorial

A few media outlets have grabbed this story as an example of just how broken the US system is when it comes to immigration, especially given the irony of the recent debate over the immigration bill that was tossed out of Congress. How could the immigration system have hoped to deal with the new regulations, if thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of valid visas go unused every year, due to government inefficiency.

Why would an illegal immigrant bother to go through a legal process that punishes the very people who are taking the time to follow the rules?

I would raise my voice in protest; but it would do no good. Drawing a pool of highly skilled, well compensated indentured servants from around the world to these shores to keep the wheels of innovation and development rolling appears to have become the American way.

And like indentured servants everywhere, we are a disposable commodity, to be teased by the promise that some day, we could, we might, just maybe be able to live here (and still not be able to vote) as Permanent Residents.

Tags: Green Card, fiasco, scandal, State Department, USCIS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, indentured, servants, work visa, visa

Tags: app, application, ARIN, dreams, EAD, government, Green Card, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, Immigration, India, IP, ISP, it, leave, live, media, NY Times, Om, One, opinion, permanent resident, PHP, pr, Technorati, United States

If anyone wants to know why I am proud of GrabPERF, this graph should give you a clue.

Every hour, an aggregated value is produced for every test url. Counting up the Geometric Mean aggregations on a daily basis, the growth line is pretty amazing.

Doing a rough calculation, the system has grown from testing 40 urls to testing 104 urls.

But the true scope of this growth can only be seen by looking at the number of data insertions into the raw data table on a daily basis.

Currently, with the four measurement agents (I turned down one of the Technorati agents today to relieve the strain on the database server), the system is handling nearly 300,000 data insertions a day. Not even in the same timezone with most of the major sites I measure, but when I think that this is a system that I designed, I am stunned. For an unfunded, not-for-profit, one-person effort, I am constant astounded by what this system can handle.

Other areas of note over the last year:

• The Technorati-donated servers can now easily hold 60 days of detail data on a robust enterprise grade system, in a real datacenter
• The basement datacenter is now closed
• The new interface was created specifically to allow the system to grow and easily accommodate new features
• People are now approaching me on a daily basis to have sites added, or to have data explained
• GrabPERF went from one measurement agent to five agents in four locations, including a location in Europe (Portugal)
• GrabPERF has been used in various places to serve as an indicator or motivator for performance improvement, including: Bloglines, Ping-O-Matic, Technorati, PubSub (1 and 2), Blogwise, and others.
• A number of corporate and individual sponsors have stepped forward to support our efforts in many different ways: money, servers, measurement locations, commentary and critiques

I know that I have said it many times in person, or online, but thank you all. Those of you who use and support GrabPERF are the ones who continue to motivate me to make this system better on a daily basis.

Keep those cards and letter coming.

Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, growth, Web Performance, analytics

Tags: analytics, app, ARIN, blog, corporate, current, data, database, design, Europe, geometric mean, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, improvement, it, measurement, NY Times, Om, One, online, performance, performance improvement, Portugal, pr, search, server, Technorati, testing, web, Web Performance, wordpress

Business 2.0 is asking how much you would pay to read the NY Times online. [here]

My response: why? I don’t read newspapers anymore. I would pay nothing to read this online, when I can get news free from Reuters, BBC and Yahoo!, and commentary from blogs.

MSM just does not understand. Their model is broken. It is 300 years old, and it is finally succumbing to it’s own dead weight.

The forests of the world are breathing a sigh of relief.

BusinessWeek, trying to support its brethern through it’s lame attempt to “blog”. [here]

Tags: bbc, blog, business, EAD, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, it, NY Times, Om, online, RSS, Yahoo!

The A380 got off the ground. [here and here and here]

If you have ever been underneath a 747 on landing, as I have been many times (San Mateo, CA is under the flight path of SFO), and wondered how the hell these things stay in the air…imagine seeing an A380 for the first time.

I’m with tipper…Samantha keeps saying “820 people…trying to get out in a hurry…”.

Tim Bray agrees with me on this one….

But Tony Goodson still demonstrates unabated enthusiasm for the technology behind it…but he’s a brit!

Tags: HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, it, LAN, NY Times, Om, One

C|Net News has a great breakdown of this issue. [here]

C|Net’s Microsoft Blog has more. [here]

Here is the original story in The Stranger.

More in the NY Times.

Now that the bill has been defeated in the Washington State Senate (by a single vote), I no longer have any respect for Microsoft.

Shame on you Microsoft. You are now a complete pariah in my eye. An opportunistic parasite focused on sucking us dry, and not caring about making the world a better place. Your entire bank of social capital has been wiped out by this stupid, and misguided move.

Shame…Shame…Shame.

Tags: API, ARIN, bank, blog, cro, HTML, HTTP, IM, IP, it, LAN, Microsoft, NY Times, Om, RSS, tn

Scott Berkun’s monthly essay is on the topic of why and how Smart People defend Bad Ideas. [here]

I have been in and seen people in these situations many times in my life. One of the great faculties we as human beings have is that which allows us to make decisions and then defend them.

But because you have arrived at an idea, doesn’t mean that it is the right idea. New evidence, further discussion and growing experience will affect the answer you give to the same question at ages 20, 40 and 60.

However, where I see this happening most right now is at Apple. To say it is a new phenomenon would be ignoring history. Steve Jobs Computers and Electronic Gadgets, Inc. has had a history of saying “we’re right and the customer is stupid.”.

Eventually, this attitude will catch up with them, and they will get to spend 4-5 years clinging to life, until they are able to generate a new whizbang gadget to pull them back from the edge. I am starting to see the rumblings of discontent from the Apple Fanatic community: Apple is their friend until they wander “off-message”. Then they are loose cannons that must be silenced.

Smart people defending stupid ideas. I know that some folks from Apple Inc have stopped by to read my postings. The question is whether they are brushed off as the ramblings of a lunatic who doesn’t use an Apple computer (YET!), or if it has sparked some internal conversation.

If Apple has not noticed the rumblings of discontent, then they are far more insular than I have heard them described.

Apple, let the other people out in the world who use and love your products talk about them freely. Let someone else invent the idea for a change. Steve Jobs will not live forever; and based on Apple’s success without Jobs, I believe that you need to apply an old ad slogan to yourselves now:

Tags: app, Apple, community, content, conversation, EAD, HTTP, IE, IM, it, live, NY Times, Om, One, posting, pr, the other

How many times have you encountered this?

Too often? Well, I have encountered it too often. I rarely shop in person anymore, just because of this. If retailers don’t start to get it…well, you know.

Tags: blog, customer service, HTML, HTTP, IM, it, NY Times, Om

Dan Gillmor mulls over the thought of whether the NY Times will charge for its online service.

My answer is: NO.

I am increasingly angered by newspapers that make their sites more and more irrelevant to me by hiding behind subscriptions and registrations. Do they need my marketing information?

If they will only make their online content available to subscribers, why have a dead-tree edition? Or vice-versa?

Online news is how the majority of my generation and younger get their information. Lead, follow, or get offline.

Tags: content, EAD, HTML, HTTP, IM, information, IP, it, marketing, NY Times, Om, online

I held the NY Times in my hand and was awed by the two-page spread. The people of the Spread Firefox team have outdone themselves.

A PDF of the ad can be downloaded (here and here).

Congratulations everyone.

Tags: community, EAD, Firefox, HTTP, IE, IM, it, NY Times, Om, One, pr