The new agoras: ‘Wikis’ as a form of collective intelligence

I had to take note of these excellent sounding new modules:

Shoutbox | drupal.org

Flag | drupal.org

Calendar | drupal.org

Deadwood | drupal.org

Embed widgets | drupal.org <-- lets you embed Drupal into totally different sites?!!

CAPTCHA | drupal.org

Admintools | drupal.org

File Framework | drupal.org

Yahoo Search BOSS | drupal.org

ImageField | drupal.org

Also Home | Development Seed

A little bit of Hongpong spam got away from me after a Spam module upgrade. Spam module is annoying so I am going to try Mollom, which checks all your comments through their system. It runs on Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla and has development stuff for Ruby, Java, PHP5 and .Net.

Also finally Drupal 6.3 and 5.8 got released, the 5.8 is a security update and 6.3 fixes many problems with the 6 platform. Delightful - now 6.x development can finally speed ahead!

For more stuff see New Drupal Book: Drupal Multimedia!

These are my personal notes - not too useful for the casual reader, though interesting developments anyway: Reverse node reference | drupal.org

Image Assist | drupal.org

Information-Sharing using FeedAPI and Buddylist | groups.drupal.org

FeedAPI | drupal.org

Feed Element Mapper | drupal.org

Argument: Node reference (not an option in the views fields) | drupal.org

Documentation for 6.x-.x2 | drupal.org

Eh, I am on a Drupal kick, and might as well bookmark some nerd things. (I have been adding quite a bit to my del.icio.us bookmarks too, lately, be sure to look @ the top of the page for those).

More tech items: I was impressed to find BetaNews | Inside Information; Unreleased Products

BetaNews | Google continues to mete out privacy features
BetaNews | Google adds fuel to Canada's BitTorrent throttling fracas
BetaNews | Angry YouTube users boycott, Viacom seems to respond
BetaNews | Google releases its data encoding format to compete with XML
Google Open Source Blog: Protocol Buffers: Google's Data Interchange Format

how it works! Developer Guide - Protocol Buffers - Google Code

The Associated Press: `Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
As Web Traffic Grows, Crashes Take Bigger Toll - NYTimes.com

Slashdot: Google Open Sources Its Data Interchange Format

Slashdot: Massive, Coordinated Patch To the DNS Released

Hmmm... MediaShift Idea Lab . Still Seeking Coders Interested in Journalism | PBS

more here, there was hax0rs in t3h DNS lulz: Dan Kaminsky Discovers Fundamental Issue In DNS: Massive Multivendor Patch Released | securosis.com!

Fixes Released for Massive Internet Security Issue

On July 8th, technology vendors from across the industry will simultaneously release patches for their products to close a major vulnerability in the underpinnings of the Internet. While most home users will be automatically updated, it’s important for all businesses to immediately update their networks. This is the largest synchronized security update in the history of the Internet, and is the result of hard work and dedication across dozens of organizations.

Earlier this year, professional security research Dan Kaminsky discovered a major issue in how Internet addresses are managed (Domain Name System, or DNS). This issue was in the design of DNS and not limited to any single product. DNS is used by every computer on the Internet to know where to find other computers. Using this issue, an attacker could easily take over portions of the Internet and redirect users to arbitrary, and malicious, locations. For example, an attacker could target an Internet Service Provider (ISP), replacing the entire web — all search engines, social networks, banks, and other sites — with their own malicious content. Against corporate environments, an attacker could disrupt or monitor operations by rerouting network traffic traffic, capturing emails and other sensitive business data.

Mr. Kaminsky immediately reported the issue to major authorities, including the United States Computer Emergency Response Team (part of the Department of Homeland Security), and began working on a coordinated fix. Engineers from major technology vendors around the world converged on the Microsoft campus in March to coordinate their response. All of the vendors began repairing their products and agreed that a synchronized release, on a single day, would minimize the risk that malicious individuals could figure out the vulnerability before all vendors were able to offer secure versions of their products. The vulnerability is a complex issue, and there is no evidence to suggest that anyone with malicious intent knows how it works.

Slashdot: Your Mashup Is Probably Legal

and Handling Flash Crowds From Your Garage which interestingly has a large section on "how to deal w your DNS when its fux0red, fulltext: Handling Flash Crowds from your Garage

Drupal time now! Summer of Code 2008 Mid-term Results wherein the Big G puts up some money to get the kiddos makin totally badass modules. Mostly these won't make a lot of sense to the outsiders among you, but they look good!

We are seeing a lot of these clever youngsters realizing that the 5.x modules were too specific, and it would be much better to write plugin module frameworks so that the redundant stuff can be minimized. So now fancy feature areas like Geographic bookmarking/plotting and WYSIWYG editors, two messy areas, would be streamlined as these projects mature.

Other cool modules: Google Client Geocoder and gProximity and Geo and location (API, module). CCK Node Menu, Smartqueue Per User, Gears, Wysiwyg.

Look at this! CCK GMap Address. Would look delicious! Wysiwyg looks like a needed fork of TinyMCE, and an abstraction.

More to be seen about this fun area here: Location and Mapping | groups.drupal.

Discussion of cool things:

sun's vision for handling embedded/inline content and Wysiwyg in Drupal

Better input format support in Drupal 7

Coder is pretty sweet for developing and here's a bit on Porting Drupal Modules from 5 into 6.

When does a new version of Drupal get released?

When needed, this is nice: Drupal Modules - Search, Rate, and Review Drupal Modules.

******

Sometimes we wonder how to assemble an F35 stealth fighter. But then we find out! Via here and here and Cryptome!

On a related note, they have the official shit list of the government! US Foreign Enemies List is impressive - all the individuals in the PLO, Kahanists, the very bad al-Tikriti family in Iraq...

I think I am getting into a tangent here...

I have to deal a lot with Drupal, which is the content management system that runs this site, my day job and some side projects. I am trying to get a new site set up for a friend of mine on Drupal 6, but there have been quite a few bugs along the way.

The thing about Drupal development is that many of the key parts are based in add-on modules, rather than the core program. Drupal 6 is a really strong improvement over Drupal 5 in most areas, but the modules have taken darn near forever to get solidified.

(And of course everyone ought to chip in - the more everyone helps, the less time it takes. The community as a whole is very amiable, and it seems to me this pokiness is certainly not due to lack of effort or infighting - just the complexity of the task at hand.)

Fortunately the real key elements are finally beyond beta, now at Release Candidate (RC) level. These combined modules, Organic Groups, CCK and Views, are basically teh building blocks from which many other developments can spawn. It'll be easier now to write more modules and themes that extend these big foundations... Nice.

Unfortunately they also rely on some big fixes that are due to be included in Drupal 6.3, which has not quite been released. Better be this week!!! Yarghs.

In many ways, this post below introduces the whole shebang:

Views 2, CCK 2, and Organic Groups Release Candidates now available for Drupal 6!

Thanks to all these developers - it's a huge task. I have been at least checking into the twin cities drupal group from time to time, and they are also very cool and helpful. However, they are quite reluctant to tangle with Drupal 6 because it has taken quite a few months to get to this point!

Finally, the Views team has a desperate call out for documentation help - which i agree is much needed!

Yeh I have been up around with the sniffles all week. Finally today the ol' sinus passages cleared out and I feel good once more. This was an interesting week, as on Monday I met the one and only Dries Buytaert, the guy who invented Drupal back in college. (The Drupal team is at the U of M to do badass User Interface research). That was the same day as the Veto Override of the Transportation bill, which included a ban on privatizing the road systems of Minnesota.

I suspect that the ban may have been related to the work I did exposing the NAFTA Superhighway plan for MN back in December, which apparently got picked up by the DFL Capitol staff. have to follow up on that.

So yeah, today is the first in quite a few days where I don't feel totally gunked or garbled. Not bad for a Friday!!!

Reuters: Impact of 9/11 terror attacks evident in dreams Feb 19, 2008 10:31am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A comparative analysis of dream images suggests how deeply the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks impacted Americans' emotions, researchers report.

Everyone experienced some sort of trauma, or at least emotional arousal by these events, Dr. Ernest Hartmann told Reuters Health. "We found, surprisingly, even dreams could pick this up," said Hartmann, of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.

Hartmann and colleagues assessed the dreams of 11 men and 33 women living outside of Manhattan when the attacks occurred. The participants, who ranged in age from 22 to 70 years, had been recording their dreams for years, and none had relatives or friends who died in the attacks, the investigators note in the journal Sleep.

According to the results, post-9/11 dreams showed more intense images, which is "very consistent with findings in people who have experienced trauma of various kinds," Hartmann said in a statement. "The idea is that that we all experienced at least some trauma on 9/11."

The dreams after 9/11, however, did not contain more images of airplanes or tall buildings. Actually, none of the recorded dreams involved airplanes flying into towers or anything remotely close to that, even though all subjects had seen these images on TV. Hartmann suggests this is because a dream is a creation, not a replay. Dreams make new connections that integrate new material into existing memory, he said. [more on it]

I am cooped up with a cold. I have very little productive to do right now, it's Saturday and I am fidgety. Therefore it is time to listen to some techno and post links like a good little February recluse.

How the spooks took over the news: In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale, Monday, 11 February 2008

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war.

The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."......

...There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake – and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I've spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

.......Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

I have definitely been on top of the Zarqawi PSYOPS case. K thx.

Here's a spooky tale. There are other aspects to this. In fact, Lockheed Martin is developing a kind of RFID control regime for I-35 as we speak.

An Iraq vet told me that this map reminded him of the Iraq supply line...

This story kind of appears to hinge on Peter Dale Scott, who is an old-school decoder of evil establishment conspiracies: Peter Dale Scott: Poetry and Political Writings and also Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps by PD Scott, Feb 2006

Rule by fear or rule by law? Lewis Seiler,Dan Hamburg Monday, February 4, 2008

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law......

Don't say yaz wasn't warned!! Of course Alex Jones on it: Former Congressman Warns Of Martial Law Camps In America.

Windows Vista is a terrible prospect: flag.blackened.net/ati/zine/10thingsIHateAboutVista.txt

This week in peak oil | mnblue not bad!

Economic Crash: teh Latest Lols: Gold is up around $925/ounce now. hah. Business Spectator - Twelve steps to meltdown.

The Alternative Information Center - Economy of the Occupation 10: Cheap Wars - Very important!!

Housing vs. voting.

German Banks crashing!!! Worst Financial Crisis since 1931? German State-Owned Banks on Verge of Collapse - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Buffett Sees Poetic Justice in Banks Woes - New York Times

Cloud EV for all your electric car needs!

For your daily secrets: Cryptome.org of course! Brits shaft their own spies. What's up with undersea internet cables? Spies' Battleground Turns Virtual:

The intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons that could be used against terrorists or enemies, intelligence officials said.

Because the Terrorists will get depressed when they get booted, etc. AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops. Old news. (AIPAC on Sourcewatch)

OpenMute looks cool. And so does Mute. Cool stuff about Russian urban design conflict.

The Jericho TV series - season 2: It's trucking along, I hope the show makes it. In next week's episode, a virus epidemic crosses the Mississippi into the western martial-law fragment of the United States, and threatens to kill Jericho unless they can get the vaccine from some evil corporation. Meanwhile the Ravenwood Mercenaries have arrived to abuse the townsfolk yet again.... Watch it online, now the writers are getting paid!

Verizon tells the man to screw off and they won't sniff their customers.

Black Hat : Black Hat Briefings and Training for your hacker needs! LayerOne 2007 - Adam Laurie - RFIDiots explains RFID hacking!

Time for dirty laundry! Obama on Rezko deal: It was a mistake :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

There is some kind of thing getting floated about the Obama/Rashid Khalidi connection. This is goofy stuff, but there is some rightwing stuff along these lines, @ NRO , Commentary (the arch-retreat of grouches). More from Larry Johnson, whom I disagreed with (see comments)

Creepy Princess Di thing: Butler "Did Deal" With Queen To Hide Diana Murder Facts, secret video is located here!

Willie Nelson: I'd Rather Have an Electric Chair Named After Me Than a Toll Road. Willie Nelson Joins the 9/11 Conspiracy!! In a good way. He thought it all looked like bullshit especially WTC7. Tehlols. Willie Nelson Questions 9/11 Official Story On National TV. Willie Nelson questions Sept. 11 on local talk radio show - KVUE. FOXNews.com - Willie Nelson: I Question Official Sept. 11 Story. No More Partying For Willie Nelson : GAC. Nelson: Impeach Bush, "Throw The Bastards Out"

I got linked off this blog i thinks: looks cool: Fierce Planet

More from the life of trolls: We're in your docks, kidnapping your flightmaster - WOW Insider related to this great story: The Great Goon Squad Flightmaster Caper - wired

Welcome to free Kosovo and its American Military Masters! I got linked off a blog in Portugal run by one Antonia Maria Cerveira Pinto O António Maria. Pretty awesome. He was noting how Kosovo is dominated by the U.S., and here is teh gigantic and very geopolitically key Camp Bondsteel.

Breakaway Role Model: Separatist Movements Seek Inspiration in Kosovo - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE. Naturally the Romanian/Hungarian separatists have torches.

Techie Drupal bits: Drupal newsletter for February - recommended for the curious! Drupal Dojo is sweet. Not bad, guys. Integrate w/ Google Apps.

The dumbing of America.

Well that's about it guys. Have a great weekend!

The official press release: Drupal 6.0 Released - Bringing Greater Simplicity, Performance And Style To This Open Source Social Publishing Platform and in all languages: Drupal 6.0 released | drupal.org

5 Reasons you should choose Drupal for our Website | Translation Designs

What is the future of Drupal? very important!! see here: From infinite extensibility to infinite interoperability by Dries Buytaert who is the leader of the almightay drupal project:

I want the Drupal community to stay ahead of the competition. I want to start implementing today what proprietary CMS vendors will implement in 2013. From a content management system's point of view, I believe, that means (and I really hate to use the term 'Web 3.0'):

Web 3.0 = Web 2.0 + infinite interoperability

which roughly translates to:

Web 3.0 = Web 2.0 + data portability + web service APIs

While the short-term business opportunity might be to go after the social publishing market, I strongly believe that the long-term business opportunity lies in the infinite interoperability and that spans well beyond the social software market.

Thanks to Open Source software and companies like Google, the cost of building Web 2.0 applications will approach zero. Contrary to what one might think, this actually creates a lot of business opportunities. Opportunities that are best monetized through web services. But for that to happen, ubiquitous and seamless interoperability is key.

And here's How Drupal Will Save The World! Start here if you're confused.

Installing Drupal 6 | drupal.org - a great video introduction from Lullabot!

Drupal 6 Released and Ready to Manage your Content | Raincity Studios these guys have a pretty good summary of what is really going on with D6 and the various stuff going on around Drupal. Nice site design too. In Drupal we Trust | Raincity Studios

Another weekend with Drupal 6 | CMS Report sez it's good!

Modules: HOW ARE THE MODULES DOING for 6.0?? Contributed modules status - version 6.x | groups.drupal.org. It's gonna take a while (mid-March prolly) for key things.

Coming soon: Drupal Modules | Review, Rate, And Search Every Drupal Module

OPENID: This is actually of pivotal importance, for it changes how we think of Internet Identity! Make life easier for users with OpenID for Drupal | greenhughes.com

Tell search engines about new content on your Drupal site | greenhughes.com

Various posts trumpeting the Intro of Drupal 6:

• Drupal 6 released. Drupalistas celebrate! | TrevorTwining.com
• Drupal 6, now more than ever | GarfieldTech
• Drupal 6 Release | Idiotprogrammer
• Shiny Drupal 6 | OpenSpring
• Drupal 6 released! | Wim Leers has a good dev overview
• Drupal 6.0 Released | urlgreyhot is one of the more famed webdev blogs

How to rock theme development: if you haven't seen this, you haven't seen teh Futur of Teh Theme Developments! Theme developer module for Drupal 6 - Screencast

Zen theme 5.x-1.0 released for Drupal 5 and also is functional but Beta in D6, available here. Zen! Zen is a 'blank theme' good for developing on top of. Here's the docs for Zen.

For specific uses: Overriding contact.module, no core hacking required! | TrevorTwining.com

How to Remove Drupal System.css And Other Default CSS Files | Blamcast

Drupal Performance Agency | Tag1 Consulting, Inc. has some very helpful PDFs.

API = All new coolness: Saving Drupal code from database nonsense, Schema API is crucial for Module development and also the Batch API which handles... batching!

The nitty gritty: Drupal Hosting | Theme Garden Theme Garden is interesting but may not be cool with D6?

There will be a good Drupal 6 webcomic system which will let you make individual character pages, storylines and other badass elements. not bad! Webcomic 6.x Battle Plan | groups.drupal.org and it has its own group: Webcomics | groups.drupal.org

Lullabot is pretty sweet. They make good podcasts. For example how CCK works at the database level.

Social networking nibbles: SWiK's got stuff about Drupal. Drupal on Del.icio.us. Drupal for NonProfits is teh interesting!

DrupalDojo is teh r0x0rz.

Removing The Default CSS In Drupal 5 this has been an issue for me at various times, so it's quite a helpful nugget of code! This guy is also putting together something VERY cool and VERY needed: Drupal Modules | Review, Rate, And Search Every Drupal Module

Random site: this D6 supporter is getting more columns via Zen theme: brianpuccio.net | from my point of view

DrupalSites.net is cool but not working right at the moment.

For bored developers looking for useful projects: DROP Drupal Really Open Participation, is a project designed for organizing short-term tasks. which was a spinoff of google-highly-open-participation-drupal - Google Code project.

the google project created the very interesting Safe filter gizmo, lets you users make their own input filters : Flexifilter for D6. comes with a 'wiki' filter as example.

Looks like the News.infoshop.org is rocking Drupal. See their bits on Net War and cyber war.

CSS imagemaps: insane! A List Apart: Articles: CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death

Speed up your Drupal site: YSlow | Dries Buytaert. In the grand roster of 'really key things to read about Drupal' this particular article has achieved extreme fame! Apparently! Improving Drupal's page loading performance | Wim Leers

Tips on speeding up your Drupal sites | 2bits.com, Inc. - Drupal Development, Customization and Consulting

Yahoo shares their own more general tips: Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

I thought that yelvington.com had some interesting bits, from a guy who appears to be an old school journalist & drupal 6 supporter.

beta testing

Hey all, if you're interested, check out deep6.hongpong.com for a new Drupal 6.0 test server, with lots of themes and some modules to doodle around with. Not bad!

I haven't set up good levels of permissions yet, but please send me an email and I will grant most anyone I know admin access on Deep6 for testing purposes.

However I have just filed my first official D6 bug report: Fatal error memory exhausted on Modules admin screen | drupal.org. No idea where that one is coming from.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

It did not occur to me that outer space could have a smell, but the Don Pettit of the International Space Station sez its "a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation". sweet. (via /.)

"It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space."

The original SimCity got open-sourced as 'Micropolis'! It's cool how old games get open-sourced (see the Marathon Infinity Aleph One project). And better yet, it got donated to the One Laptop Per Child Project. More @ /. As a true SimCity zealot, I have to say that handing it over to all those kids in the developing world is really quite cool!

UK News: you better shut off your fuckin wireless Internet router because if someone grabs a Sony BMG album, you're on the Big Shit List: Internet users could be banned over illegal downloads - Times Online

Drupal 6.0 released: its a big deal. One guru I know dropped what he was doing at his job and installed that right away on his test server. That's devotion, people. That's one hell of a platform.

The McCain version of the schmaltzy black-and-white Obama rock-n-roll celeb video. john.he.is. [satire, people]

Comcast is really getting tangled up by playing content police and jamming competing video services, the Washington Post noticed:

Marvin Ammori, the general counsel for Free Press, said Comcast's behavior is the second major example of an service provider overstepping its authority in an attempt to quash competition. In March 2005, the FCC fined Madison River Communications for blocking calls by competitor Vonage, which provided free calls over the Internet.

Ammori said that by interfering with video transfers, Comcast is trying to protect its television and On Demand video services.

Among the leading pranks of the corporate behemoth: Using pervasive data mining to jam BitTorrent yet claiming that they are somehow not responsible for the vast levels of piracy on their network. But also, that it's legit to jam legal BitTorrents even though the system is a 'killer app' that will eventually destroy their business model (arbitraging the distribution of content, getting a cut from the generators of the content for the privilege of vending it to the ever-fattening American Consumer). The FCC is getting up in their shit. Etc.

The uber-tech savvy audience at Slashdot points out that if Comcast wants to play traffic cop and stop the Torrents, they should not be legally shielded for creating the crime of transmitting the illegal Torrents in the first place. Thansal sez:

The argument here is this:

ISPs are currently not liable for what illegal things their customers do with the service provided.

One of the reasonings behind this is that they should not be mining traffic enough to know wth is going on. (IANAL, this is a bad explanation)

Comcast says that they SHOULD be mining traffic to shape it and see wth is going on.

Comcast should then be held liable for any illegal activities that they 'know' about because of this monitoring.

[IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer, tho really that twisted tribe is the most anal.] A ton of smart arguments in here about it.

Also they have been bumping the rate for Internet-only connection to a whopping $65 a month, up from about $50. However, if you yell at them enough when they call to tell you about the bump, it is apparently possible to avoid getting charged. This is what I was told. Comcast is such a disaster.

See FreePress.net for more on the battles of Net Neutrality and Corporate Nonsense. And download Miro, an open source RSS-friendly video player which can also slurp the FLV files out of YouTube, and indeed lets you subscribe to HD-quality BitTorrent powered content 'channels'. This program, Miro, is indeed the Comcast Killer. Shit!

That's all........

Fantastic news for the Internets and everyone!!! The free opensource content management system Drupal 6.0 has finally been released today! It is much-improved upon the Drupal 5.x series. See that link for major features.

I am filching a couple grafs of the announcement to point out the many major websites running Drupal these days:

After one year of development we are ready to release Drupal 6.0 to the world. Thanks to the tireless work of the Drupal community, over 1,600 issues have been resolved during the Drupal 6.0 release cycle. These changes are evident in Drupal 6's major usability improvements, security and maintainability advancements, friendlier installer, and expanded development framework. Further, from bug fix to feature request, these issues follow-through on the Drupal project's continued commitment to deliver flexibility and power to themers and developers.

Today, Drupal powers sites including the homepages of Warner Brothers Records, The New York Observer, Fast Company, and Amnesty International and project sites by SonyBMG, Forbes, Harvard University, and more. Drupal can be used to create personal weblogs (Tim Berners-Lee), deliver podcasts (TWIT.tv), connect online communities (SpreadFireFox.com), form artist collectives (Terminus 1525) or inform the masses (The Onion).........

• http://research.yahoo.com
• http://www.ubuntu.com
• http://popsugar.com
• http://teamsugar.com
• http://usmagazine.com
• http://www.mtv.co.uk
• http://www.psu.com
• http://www.spreadfirefox.com
• http://labs.divx.com
• http://dev.aol.com/
• http://officepranks.forbes.com
• http://www.ozzy.com
• http://www.greenpeace.org.uk
• http://opensource.org
• http://www.playboy.de
• http://flock.com
• http://musicbox.sonybmg.com
• http://discoveryclub.de
• http://community.menshealth.de
• http://theworld.org
• http://appel.nasa.gov
• http://www.observer.com
• http://www.pepsi.ru

And indeed HONGPONG.com!!!