All I Want for Christmas

Dear Santa,

Please find enclosed a short list of gifts I’d like to find under the tree. I’ve been very good this year, meeting (almost) all my deadlines and trying to be a little less free with the em-dashes than I have been in the past. I understand that you probably can’t give me everything I want, so I’ve rank ordered the list.

1. Please get Diebold out of the electronic voting business and into municipal wifi. Imagine if every Diebold ATM came equipped with a public wireless access point! Given the fact that ATMs are so thick in this country that you could practically walk from sea to shining sea without ever being more than ten feet from a cash station, we’d have nationwide wifi within a couple years. If Diebold isn’t interested, maybe you can wifi-enable all those lottery terminals to put them to some extra use.

2. A revamp of the Patent Office would be nice. Maybe you could just redirect a bit more budget money its way so the Powers That Be can hire a few more employees to help out with a backlog that has it issuing and upholding completely ridiculous patents, often for companies that have never invented anything but new ways to make money for lawyers.

3. Help the folks working on GPL 3.0 do it right. What they come up with could have a major impact on how–and whether–many business use open source software. They have a big job ahead of them and could use any assistance you can provide.

4. I’d love a truly converged device that would let me get rid of my laptop, my PDA, and please-for-the-love-of-God my phone–at least for day-to-day use.

5. If you could get one of my stories Slashdotted–though preferably not because I did anything stupid–that would be great. My boss would love to see the extra traffic.

Best wishes,

Chris

PS: Got a wish you’d like to share? Add it to the comments.