Windows servers blow large chunks of vomit
Essentially, buying a Windows server means you’re purchasing hours upon hours on support lines trying to get what should be very small things sorted out because, essentially, the marketing scheme behind Windows products appeals to sellers who focus on providing technical support rather than simple, reliable and user-controlled tools. By maintainting what should be easy maintenance tasks as complicated, multi-step projects, you’ll end up spending more time, more money and more energy dealing with “expert” to handle your “problems.” Current time spent working with UKfast support staff for what should be an almost automatic install of a simple php content management system: 3 days. I think they need a new slogan: “UKfast: Oooh the Irony!”
A freaking brilliant essay on the wingnut right’s attempts to smear anyone who dares criticize Israel
On Thursday, May 8, the Independent published one of the best looks at how the zionistas of the rabid right continue to villify anyone who dares look into the injustices Israel hoists on the Palestinian people. Well worth the read. I dedicate this post to it. I haven’t read much of Johann before, but thanks to the attention he’s received by these people, I’ll be looking for more of his writing in the future. He’s certainly pissing off the right people.
The loathsome smearing of Israel’s critics
Johann Hari
The Independent
Thursday, 8 May 2008
In the US and Britain, there is a campaign to smear anybody who tries to describe the plight of the Palestinian people. It is an attempt to intimidate and silence – and to a large degree, it works. There is nobody these self-appointed spokesmen for Israel will not attack as anti-Jewish: liberal Jews, rabbis, even Holocaust survivors.
My own case isn’t especially important, but it illustrates how the wider process of intimidation works. I have worked undercover at both the Finsbury Park mosque and among neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers to expose the Jew-hatred there; when I went on the Islam Channel to challenge the anti-Semitism of Islamists, I received a rash of death threats calling me “a Jew-lover”, “a Zionist-homo pig” and more.
Ah, but wait. I have also reported from Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, I wrote an article that described how untreated sewage was being pumped from illegal Israeli settlements on to Palestinian land, contaminating their reservoirs. This isn’t controversial. It has been documented by Friends of the Earth, and I have seen it with my own eyes. Read more…
Tags: Israel, PalestineSad teacher quotes
I’ve just posted the results of on workplace bullying over at the TSN website. It was conducted by Teacher Support Network and the Centre for Research on Workplace Behaviours at the University of Glamorgan. The statistics are depressing enough (80 percent of teachers participating said they have been bullied in the last two years), but these quotes from some participants were just downright sad. Truly indicitive of a larger sickness in our culture when people entrusted to educate, essentially the bedrock for any functioning society, are treated this poorly.
Comments given anonymously) from survey respondents:
- “The children are great, teaching is a fantastic career, but I’m afraid I am not cut out for the constant backbiting and hostility that seems to come from many in this profession.”
- “I am on the receiving end and struggling to get up each day and wishing my life away waiting to get to the weekends and holidays.”
- “Teachers are afraid to speak out regarding bullying at work as they know they will be forced to leave their jobs. EVERYONE knows it is getting worse but they are terrified for their jobs so it is kept quiet.”
- “Bullying is supported by SMT, they ALLOW this behaviour.”
- “Bullying resulted in me going off sick from work.”
- “I’ve just been diagnosed as being clinically depressed with anxiety. I am beginning to see how the problems that I have had at work relating to negative behaviour, bullying and harassment have been strongly contributive to my recent mental health difficulties.”
- “I’m single, got a mortgage and I’m in total despair.”
- “If Head teachers were more proactive in acting upon bullying among staff, many teachers would be far happier in their jobs. Children are not allowed to bully, why are teachers allowed.”
Got Welsh? Search Teacher Support Cymru
One of the great side effects of having a Wordpress blog, or, well any decent Web Standards complient cms, is always having a clipboard handy to work on code no matter where you are or what computer you’re on. I have tons of draft posts in my Wordpress blog just dedicated to working on snippets of code and testing out how they work before porting them into my actual site projects. Here’s one of them.
Archwilio y Teacher Support Cymru canolfan gwybodaeth am cefnogaeth ar faterion gwaith neu personol. Neu cysylltwch a ni ar y rhif cymorth 0800 085 5088.
Get your blog blocked by the Chinese government
Blog for human rights.
Amnesty International’s latest gimmick calls on bloggers to hold an Interweb flash mob on May 15 against government thuggies around the globe:
“On May 15 join tens of thousands of bloggers worldwide in writing about human rights and drawing attention to issues often overlooked by mainstream media.
Human Rights are universally agreed upon ideas – that all people are born with basic rights and freedoms that include life, liberty and justice.
“Bloggers Unite for Human Rights” challenges bloggers to draw attention to urgent human rights issues facing our world today and encourage their readers to take simple actions through Amnesty International’s online action center.”
- link
Tags: activism, human rights, InterWebI can profile a Dr. Who fan at 100 yards
10:45 a.m. Sunday, 27 April, 2008. Sainsbury’s on Old Kent Road. Shortly before opening hours. Walking across the empty parking lot from Curry’s electronics store hands unencumbered as his equally pale female companion hoists their shopping bags under her arms. Circular shades. Wearing black shirt buttoned to collar (sans necktie) tucked into ironed jeans with perfect crease and accessorised with a faux suede blazer with over-stuffed canvas book bag slung over shoulder. Topiary facial hair freshly razored and a long, stringy pony tale meant to approximate a Samurai Top-Knot. “Likely,” I think, “he fancies himself quite the Time Lord.” They arrive at the door still not unlocked. And then there it is: the blue and red Dr. Who badge pinned to that canvas bag. I can profile a Dr. Who fan at 100 yards.
Tags: Dr. Who, England, sci-fiOregon copyrights its state laws
During a typical daily trolling of the website BoingBoing, I came across the following interesting nugget about the state where I grew up and attended high school:
“The State of Oregon is sending out cease and desist letters to sites like Justia and Public.Resource.Org that have been posting copies of Oregon laws, known as the Oregon Revised Statutes.”
What you say? a government body copyrighting their laws and barring others from publishing them? Is this actually legal? Are Orgeon laws some sort of privately held intellectual property that turns some sort of profit?
Legal or not, it’s happened.
Being that copyright isn’t exactly part of the democratic system of government and that laws in Democracies such as U.S. states are generally thought to be, well, not “owned” by anyone exactly, but belonging to the people, I thought this was strange. However, as many strange things go, it turns out to be true. Both Justia and Public.Resource.Org have been served with cease and desist letters from the Oregon state government demanding that their laws be removed from public view on these websites.
Public.Resource.Org’s outlaw law compiler Carl Malamud wrote:
“Oregon is not unique in asserting copyright over state law, but they are definitely one of the more aggressive in this kind of FUD campaign. Justia and Public.Resource.Org have decided this is an important issue to resolve and we’re going to hold firm on this. Anybody else who is making a mirror of the Oregon law should drop me a line and let me know.”
It got me thinking about what the state can actually claim to own. Shouldn’t pretty much anything owned by the state be considered in the commons? If I take a picture of a state park in Oregon’s Columbia River gorge, am I violating the state’s rights by displaying the natural beauty of the state’s land without giving it compensation? If another state wants to enact one of Oregon’s more progressive laws, would they be barred from doing so? How does this effect other community-driven public information tools, like Wikidpedia?
I checked out the section of the Oregon State Legislature website where laws are, and as a web designer, I wasn’t too taken with it. Obviously, matters of personal taste are highly subjective. However, framed in one of the tasty pages here at drew3ooo, I think it’s a stunning work of art, and I prefer to be able to look up drinking ages and various age-of-consent prohibitions in the comfort of my own domain name. So, for all of you who don’t want to go slogging through the ugly, weirdly non-centered, image-heavy and non-web standards Oregon legislatures website to find out what it says about pumping your own gasoline or the the access people have to higher education awards while in internment camps, check out the Beaver state’s laws right here on d3.
My spanking new Oregon State Law page
Tags: copyright, law, OregonOne month old today: Jasper
The Large Hadron Collider Appreciation Society
I’ve upped my geek status another notch by becoming an admin of the Facebook Large Hadron Collider Appreciation Group, which I’m thinking needs more of a cult following. Parenthood and employment obligations bar me from running off to the Franco-Swiss border to attend the last open-house tour before they fire it up, so the chances of me getting the first mini black hole created there named after my son Jasper are growing increasingly remote, but at least I can visit the thing virtually; Peter McCready has snapped a series of VR panorama tech-porn shots (link via Neatorama) of the CERN beauty.
Tags: scienceUpgrade to Wordpress 2.5
So now Drew3ooo is fueled by Wordpress 2.5. The upgrading process was mostly harmless and well worth the time. For anyone who has actually used their blog for content purposes more than a year or so, the so-called “famous 5 minutes” isn’t really that, but it’s still a fairly quick procedure. Scads of props to the Wordpress folks plus the Happy Cog people who have helped out with this version. Vast improvements in load time, aesthetics and web standards. Interestingly, I think my current design theme actually loads quicker with 2.5.
Time was mostly spent on de-activating plugins that I started using with Wp2.3 because it was causing havoc with embedding video in posts. So here’s my pithy review based on an initial view of what remains my most favorite content management system to date:
Things that make me giddy
New wysiwyg: The old one kept wiping out html and throwing off video embedding. The wysiwyg editor is, of course, third party work, but it was good to see it included so I don’t have to upload a fancier one myself. I deactivated all the plugins that involve posting. The 2.5 default covers everything I do. Buttons are much better displayed as well.
Add media buttons: Quick, easy and convenient. Library options for photos, video, audio and I guess what could best be describe as “other” offers decent organization options that should have been bundled in long ago. I disabled my own library storage system to use this one. Read more…
Tags: WordPressHebron keffiyah looms shut down due to cheaper chinese imports
Oh for fuck sake. Dear ridiculous fashion victims trotting around town in fuchsia colored silk-screen keffiyahs wrapped around your necks as if they were bibs for some sort of trend-follower speghetti feed sponsored by Urban Outiffters: Take off your dumb Che shirts and fake Palestinian scarfs made by children in Chinese sweatshops and read something. Get the real thing. Know where it comes from. — Link
Here Comes Everybody
Today in the Why We Fail category: Required reading.
I’m constantly enthralled by the intersections between activism and technology. Mostly with the appropriate use of technology within activism. I’m also interested in the flip-side, the strange, sometimes horrifying decisions and their consequences made in the progressive movement. So I’m heading out right away to pick up a copy of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power or Organizing Without Organizations (which also has its companion blog).
Shirky works on open source collaborative applications that you may already be using. People opposed to reflecting on the futility of a lot of tactics going on in a number of social, environmental and political movements out there (hello you anti-war crowd who have yet to stop a single war) should consider the actions used to bring about actual change, such as Shirky’s oft used example, the Passenger Bill of Rights.
At the website for Harvard’s Berkman Center, Clay discusses the themes in his book, focusing on protest culture and the difference between institutional (what Code Pink does) Vs. ad hoc modes (what the WTO protests in Seattle did which shut that meeting down), and the lack of strategies combining singular acts of protest with ongoing movements.
The lack of ongoing strategy or a focus on tangible, achievable goals continues to wound progressive movements. Shirky’s analysis is well worth hearing out by anyone involved in organizing.
Tags: activism, books, protest
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