The link in the /. story to debloat-testing should go here: git://git.infradead.org/debloat-testing.git.

git:gitinfradeadorgdebloat-testinggit is not a valid URL.

Absolutely! All too often we're guilty of saying "open the data because that's what I believe you should do", not "open the data because this is how it will make your life easier" or "open the data because this is how it will help you do your job", etc. It's come from a technologist-centric pull, but it won't succeed until it becomes a bureaucrat-originated push.

Could you post a link to your thesis? It sounds interesting. Thanks!

Hi, zuzulo. A versioning system would definitely be part of the solution, but there's more than git behind a successful open source project. In my post, I tried to sketch some of the tools that the data world is missing. Even if everyone just slapped the data into git, that implies it's stored in a format that makes it look like source code and so is amenable to diff and patch. What if we add a new column to the database? That affects every row, but should it be stored as a completely new version of the data? There are lots of interesting questions.

FYI the whole world is not in GMT.

Do you really not know where Mozilla HQ is?

See http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ - a great javascript/css/widget lib with far better support, cross-browser compatibility, and breadth than things like prototype.js will ever get.

I have an extremely important piece of advice with regards to this:

When you deal with the INS, you always deal with the office/branch at the location you first immigrated to. In my fiancee's case, this means the California INS. Even though she lives in Portland and hasn't lived in California for 5 years.

This absolutely sucks. The California INS is swamped with millions of Hispanic/Latino immigrants. I am not trying to make a negative comment about those folks, but the system is overloaded by the sheer mass of people and it will take YEARS longer to get through it than it would if you were going to a different office.

Not necessarily so, or at least it wasn't so when my wife and I went through The Process. My wife's from out of town. When we were first married, our immigration stuff was handled by the DC office (which had handled her previous immigration history, as we met in the US. Long story, but her visa lapsed and she had to go back home before we got married). We then moved to New Jersey and had her case transferred to the Newark office (after much wrangling). Much better. At one point we heard that the backlog in DC was on the order of 12 - 24 months whereas Newark was taking 60 days.

It does pay to figure out what immigration office you'll have to deal with. Check the BCS website, they'll tell you (by state) which immigration office covers your part of the country. In our case, Newark had a relatively light load compared to DC (tons of diplomatic issues) and NYC (tons of... people). Depending on how you want to live your life, you might consider living on one side or another of a state line or river for the better BCS service.

One other piece of advice about dealing with immigration: follow up with them a lot. Ultimately, we made the decision to go to INS (as it was then known) every three months or so, just to remind them that we existed and that we'd like our papers processed. Yes, we both had to spend vacation time on it. Yes, waiting on line for an hour in January is freezing. But, if it shaves six months to a year off your wait time, or helps them to untangle their own mess, I believe it is worth it. We got to the point where the door guards recognized us. Not that they were any nicer....

Also, a little nitpick, I don't think it's only the Latino immigrants who are overwhelming INS in California. California is host to millions of immigrants from other places as well (Southeast Asia, for instance). Not to mention that I have a feeling that any given BCS office would be overwhelmed by more than five cases in a given month.

Thanks! In a testament to the power of caffeine and good friends, that chapter came together in the space of about four nights. I'd work regular business hours doing editing, then at 9 or 10pm I'd write the XML chapter. I got great feedback and clarifications from Matt Sergeant, Dan Brian, Michel Rodriguez, Adam Turoff, Robin Berjon, and other such Perl XML luminaries.

As you would have guessed if you heard me speak in 2000, I'm not the biggest XML user. I've mellowed since then, but I still don't do a lot of XML hacking. (One of the spare-time hacking things I've while here at O'Reilly, though, is to get our internal database of "what books are at what stage" into XML for easy grepping and reuse).

Of all my work in the 2nd edition of the Cookbook, the XML chapter is the one I'm proudest of. I'm really glad you like it. Thanks!

--Nat

The body cannot survive without the brain.