Sorry for the unresponsiveness this morning. Some assholes have been leeching some large files very aggressively, which ended up maxing out the number of active connections now that I’m limiting bandwidth.

OK, considering my bandwidth usage this month, I probably shouldn’t do this, but hey, check it out (slowly, bandwidth capped):

• Jon Stewart Presents America – Journalism – the part of the book where he goes off on journalists
• Daily_Show-Crossfire_Fallout.mov – boogah’s iFilm’s hosting the daily show followup

• DrupalEd and DrupalBlog Downloads and Demos – two preconfigured setups for the classroom and blogging, respectively
• Styling even more form controls – comprehensive followup on styling form elements. Illustrated.
• Drupal.org gets a make-over – very nice. And 4.5 is released
• So You’re… – (175,898 book results) I wonder what the origin of this phrase comes from?
• Oct 2004 State of the Blogosphere: Corporate Bloggers
• HitMaps – Locative implement for visitor visualization – ooh, cool.
• p2p-Politics – yet another Larry Lessig idea comes to life. Great design by J Christopher Garcia and Aaron Swartz

This seems to still be climbing up Popdex and Blogdex (up to number #2!). Even at a peak 36GB/hr, I should be ok until tomorrow. After which I’ll be clamping down w/ some mod_bandwidth and some dynamic redirects I think.

---

From Propaganda and the Public Mind, and worth contemplating:

You make yourself available for various groups all over the country. You made that choice early on. Why don’t other intellectuals, other privileged people in your position, get engaged politically?

Individuals have their own reasons. Presumably the reason most don’t is because they think they’re doing the right thing. That is, I’m sure that overwhelmingly people who are supportive of atrocious acts of power and privilege do believe and convince themselves that it was the right thing to do, which is extremely easy.

In fact, a standard technique of belief formation is to do something in your own interest and then to construct a framework in which that’s the right thing to do. We all know this from our own experience. Nobobdy’s saintly enough that they haven’t illegiitimately done that any number of times, from when you stole a toy from your younger brother when you were seven years old until the present.

We always manage to construct our own framework that says, Yes, that was the right thing to do and it’s going to be good. Sometimes the conclusions are accurate. It’s not always self-deception. But it’s very easy to fall into self-deception when it’s advantageous. It’s not surprising. (167-168)

---

Crossfire Downloads Exceed Broadcast Audience – glad to do my part. Will be interesting to try to total up the aggregate stats. (Does anyone have actual viewership numbers for that Crossfire show? Anyone from CNN reading?

Some observations:

• Bittorrent is still too hard. A lot of people still can’t get it to work
• Freecache (RIP) and Coral still suck too much for general purpose use. There are features that should be implemented that I’ve written out before, but this would be a fun project to do, so I won’t spoil it too much. At least not until I switch to something with a commenting system so a discussion can get going.
• Legitimate torrent/media aggregators have a lot of untapped potential. Hmm, should contact Media Matters or some of these guys…
• Doing Good™ doesn’t require all that much funding. Isn’t it time we reclaimed the Internet?

So I’ve been meaning to mention this before, but wow, Drupal’s default posting interface is stupendously bad. Here’s an example of how it looks. That’s right. Posting to the body starts 3 screens down. (You can sneak a peak at my code release taxonomy I’m building while you’re at it).

OK, now, if you’re done laughing, here’s a quick redesign on the plate.

• Disney Caught Pirating from Public Domain — and Children!
  

  When will Disney stop stealing
  from the public domain? I mean really, it’s just like taking a CD from
  a record store without paying for it… except that the record store
  owner is dead… and well, the store is really the compendium of human
  knowledge.. and the CD is part of our collective cultural history.
  Whatever. Theft is Theft, right?

• A Perfect Circle – Imagine (Cover) – a rather effective update

Sunday mornings can be dangerous. You know, when you’re just clicking around and decide to visit some label website which leads to another label and the next thing you know, in addition to the one album with the one song you’re looking for you end up also with another band’s entire catalog in your basket. (check out the mp3s, they’re great)

On the other hand, this haphazard clicky thing can also lead you to discover some amazing stuff you never would have. Like this band, The Heavenly States and the music video for My Friends, from their s/t, now re-released on Baria Records (available w/ bonus CD @ Amazon).

(In summary, while the best things in life may be free, gainful employment is a good thing.)

• The empires strike back – “Governments perceive the Internet as damage, and gang up on it.”
• THE HOLE HAWG OF OPERATING SYSTEMS – classic
• Worldkit Map of Part of Today’s Trip – jluster’s been doing neat things w/ geoblogging
• Without a Doubt – NYTimes writeup on Bush
  

  The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

• About UTS – a bunch of U of T undergrads are creating a neat little collaborative space
• Structured Procrastination – this seems to mirror my personal experience
  

  I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things.

• [drupal-devel] Successes with a large ‘single sign on’ implementation (and one small stumbling block) – University of Vienna SSO w/ Drupal
• Motime and Splinder launch v.2.0 – Drupal installation running w/ 180K+ users
• Drupal Contributor’s Guide

Real Time with Bill Maher talks about Mary Cheney

But my question about that whole flap, this this the Republicans are very angry. Dick Cheney said, “I’m an angry father.” If it’s not shameful to be gay, why are their panties in a bunch about this? I mean, they talk about her like she’s some retarded monster they have chained in the attic, you know.

…

And it is an issue. They made it an issue. It’s an issue in this election. Don’t talk about my daughter who we are trying to discriminate against in a constitutional amendment.