On Iraq Veterans

Everytime, I see a soldier in full combat fatigues, I assume they're on leave from duty in Iraq. This assumption is probably true about 95% of the time. Its diffcult for me to put into words how I respond to them. On the one hand, I feel the war itself is a total quagmire that never should have been. On the otherhand, I know that these soldiers have endured things I will never understand... and perhaps most importantly, did their duty, regardless of whether they agreed or not with what they were doing. In battle, I'm sure that none of this rhetoric mattered, and they were merely fighting for their lives, and the lives of their friends, day by day. 

The Key to Jquery Form Plugin + Drupal Formapi

Today I bring you an incomplete, yet stunningly easy solution to a problem that's been making want to set buildings on fire.

ON Networks Redesigns

Today, we, the people of ON Networks launched version 1.0* of our website. Its built off of Drupal 5.2, and more than ready for 6.0 (please god, grant me the API improvements in 6.0 right now).

Since this is the first time I’ve introduced my company on my blog, I ask you forgive me for giving you “the pitch.”

We’re into online video.

We’re not idiots: we are not a “youtube 2.0… with tagging, ajax, and a bunch of fake content that is supposed to look like it came from real people”. (this seems to be the majority of online video startups)

Rather, we’ve decided that old media may actually have a few good ideas: say… professionally produced content, high production values, and video quality unmatchable on the internet (not counting subscription, and pay-per-view sites) . Oh, and letting you watch our videos on your ipod, iphone, tv, or screen, be it via rss, email , or appletv subscriptions.

Here is Backpack Picnic (sketch comedy), and Play Value (an exploration of the history of video games): two shows that really illustrate what we are after.

Our business model comes from an analysis of the structural weakness of old media. One way you could put it is, “We’re what NBC, BBC, and Fox would be if they could start their entire business over again.”

Our traffic and content is growing exponentially, and the daily bandwidth required to pump out our videos is measured in terabytes (tigs, as we call them in the office).

Anyhow, enough about us:

Thank you drupal. Expect a donation very soon.

*Nobody at the company is actually using version numbers, so I’m calling it 1.0

Regarding Wikia, the "Open Source" Search Engine

From the man who brought us Wikipedia, comes Wikia: an open source search engine, backed by a reported $14 million dollars of venture funding.

Wikia, more or less, is attempting to wrangle the same forces that chiseled Wikiapedia into future world history books, and apply them to a for-profit search engine. A really unsexy way to describe Wikia's idea in reality is this:

Wikia will use a traditional search algorithms to produce a (primitive) "first draft" of any given search result. This first draft's rankings will be open to the public for re-ranking (and moderation). At first, the results will suck, but after the project reaches a critical mass, and has an active user base comparable to Wikipedia's -- guarding and improving the quality of results -- the search engine will blast off into the galaxy, leaving Google orbiting the moon.  

Live Journal/ Craigslist/ Technorati Offline; Valleywag Blames "drunk employee"; Rest of World Blames "Power Outage"

Update: Valleywag corrects the record. The write can be seen wearing the dunce hat.

Valleywag is the freshest, and most entertaining technology blog out there. They are nothing less than the tech industries' premier tabloid (albeit much funnier than a typical tabloid).

Today, however, they crossed my line[1]; thus, today, my finger wags violently in Vallegwag's general direction.

***

R.I.P. PHP 4.x (2000-2008)

The PHP development team has sentenced PHP 4.x to death. On December 31st, 2007, there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. On August, 8th, 2008, they will discontinue even critical security updates.

I wonder if the drupal community had anything to do with instigating this? I'm tempted to think so...

Praise Allah! PHP lives!

Quote of the Day

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer

"Mair'wage"*

Tonight, I ran into a post by Feministe, entitled "I'm Never Getting Married". I agree with a great deal of it. Whenever I hear politicians argue that traditional marriage is "sacred institution", I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I'm not watching a satire.

Certain political blocks seem to think the idea of an old men trading their virgin daughters to strengthen business relationships is a "sacred institution". And then there is the other motive of kinky 19th century traditional marriage: making sure that a son gets some missionary-style child-bearing action, so the long, grand lineage of stupid, rich, white men can flourish and repeat the process!

Given these apparent breeding habits of rich conservatives (and their confused shills), its no surprise they consider traditional marriage to be "foundation of our civilization". We now have an answer for an age old question:

Re: Google Bowling

Back in april of 2005, my assertion that SEO could be used to censor "unwanted feedback" was greeted with a great deal of skepticism. Jimmy Wales even told me to put on a tin foil hat, so I could hide from the black helicopters (turns out that black helicopters exist too, but they are usually related to US special forces training... no luck on the foil hats, however...). Jeff Jarvis told me to shut up. (which I did)*

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