TechCrunch broke the news that Google is buying Feedburner. I guess I need to subscribe to my own feed now and be on the lookout for the inclusion of ads. (I HATE ads.) After all, Google has to recoup that $100 million somehow....

Or a least a handful of them. What is going on in this picture and why?

Turns out there's a perfectly logical explanation at Rich's blog. Did you guess correctly?

A ChangeLog is the great equalizer: It elevates the most trivial bug squashed and the simplest enhancement request fulfilled to the same status as those critical bugs and much-needed enhancements whose solutions took hours to implement.

A ChangeLog is not a time sheet: Its chronology fails to include the effort invested in working with developers of other products helping them identify and triage the bugs which impact the accessibility of their product and/or convincing them that these bugs are indeed important.

The problem with ChangeLogs is that -- as their name suggests -- they only tell you what has changed. Perhaps more accurately, the problem with users reading the ChangeLogs without the benefit of the above perspective is that their view of the team's priorities and time allocation is distorted thus leading them to conclude that

The team sometimes tends to serve the pie before they have served the beef; I prefere (sic) the other way.

never realizing that serving the "beef" occupies 95% of the team's time. To extend this user's metaphor a bit further: After looking long and hard and at long last finding the cow, haggling with the farmer over the price, finally convincing the farmer to sell it to us, getting the cow home, bringing about its untimely demise, turning the carcass into a decent meal (for those prone to carnivorism) which we then hand deliver to the user's home, the response we get is that we shouldn't have wasted our time stopping along the way to purchase that store-bought pie.

... It's transparent. And if you act now, you can have it for the low, low introductory price of just $1459.95! (Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery).

No, really, you can. It's at Hammacher Schlemmer.

Extremely cool or extremely disconcerting? Hard to say without a "test drive." Way too invisible-jet-like? Absolutely!

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz on FOSS and Microsoft's RIAAesque patent infringement nonsense:

... no amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities - or the Fortune 500 - that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet - creating opportunity wherever the network can reach.

That's not a genie any litigator I know can put back in a bottle.

You've got that right! Read the full entry.

You, the search-engine-delivered visitors to Grain of Salt, have cast your votes. At long last I am pleased to announce the following winners:

Most loathsome* food: hot dogs

Most loathsome* company: Comcast for

• incorrect bill
• fees
• incorrect routing number
• rejected payments
• rejecting email
• general suckage

Most unlikely job: telecommuter registered nurse

Most sought-after person: Cal Worthington (sans dog Spot)

Best rumor to advance the cause of vegetarianism: soy and penile enlargement

Most novel tax write-off: charities that are sponsoring tigers

Most detailed query: aw c'mon microsoft why you always gotta ruin our fun we were perfectly content to push around vague rumors of a windows vista followup in late 2009 and whatever features it may or may not have dangling all our hopes and dreams off of a thin and poten

* As judged by the prevalence of "sucks," "I hate," "gross," and "why to avoid" in the query.

One of the many nice things about developing a free, open source screen reader like Orca is that you're not tied to a "bottom line" which dictates your priorities and design decisions. So if your number one goal in life is NOT getting your users to part company with the contents of their wallet, what on earth do you focus on??? Hmmm..... I dunno.... maybe.... the users and what they want and need? (Now there's a novel idea, eh?)

In this regard, the Orca team has been actively working with the community from the get-go, communicating primarily through the Orca mailing list. But our little community has grown and become quite lively over recent months, so Mike Pedersen (UI lead) had a brilliant idea: Start having live, user-developer "round tables" where we can share ideas in real time. The first such meeting will be tomorrow at 5PM EDT (21:00 UTC) in #orca at irc.gnome.org. The plan is to rotate the times. After all, given that we have users all over the world, whatever time we pick is going to be 4 AM for somebody. Because Luke Yelavich (aka TheMuso) archives all of the #orca channel logs, there will be a transcript available for anyone who cannot attend.

Thanks to Rich Burridge, I am now a devoted fan of the library book sale. Holy cow, I can't believe I haven't done this sooner! At today's sale run by the Friends of Hills Memorial Library in Hudson, I picked up 22 books -- 15 of which are hardcover, all of which are in good condition -- for $17.50!

Arthur C. Clarke:

• Cradle

Orson Scott Card:

• The Abyss

Robin Cook:
(An author with whose work I'm unfamiliar. The ladies at the sale noticed my selections and said I simply had to give Robin Cook a try. At $1/hardcover book, why not? Looking at the titles, I suspect that the very little faith I have left in the medical profession will be obliterated.)

• Brain
• Fatal Cure
• God Player
• Mortal Fear
• Mutation
• Toxin
• Vector

Stephen King:

• Dolores Claiborne
• Four Past Midnight
• Needful Things

Dean Koontz:

• The Eyes of Darkness
• The Face of Fear
• From the Corner of His Eye
• The House of Thunder
• Intensity
• The Key to Midnight
• The Voice of the Night

Shelly Reuben:

• The Skirt Man

Carl Sagan:

• Contact

Peter Straub:

• In the Night Room

You can find local library sales through www.book-sales-in-america.com. Thanks Rich!