Oliver Willis: “I endorse John Kerry for President because he represents a return to the mainstream values that have been the hallmark of American democracy. If elected, I believe Kerry will be a vigilant defender of our security, our rights, and of our economic wellbeing. I believe that a vote for John Kerry will be a rejection of radicalism, fear mongering, hate, and divisiveness. John Kerry needs to become our next president in order to save democracy both here and abroad.”

George Soros:

An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends.

Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong.

President Bush has shown that he is incapable of recognizing his mistakes. He insists on making reality conform to his beliefs even at the cost of deceiving himself and deliberately deceiving the public. There is something appealing in the strength of his faith, especially in our troubled time. But the cost is too high. By putting our faith in a President who cannot admit his mistakes we commit ourselves to the wrong policies. We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

Open Societies suffer from an innate weakness: uncertainty. Leaders who claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth offer an escape from uncertainty. But that is a snare, because those leaders are bound to be wrong.

Under the influence of globalization we have been exposed to more than a normal dose of uncertainty. That is why the kind of faith that guides President Bush is so appealing. The traumatic events of 9/11 have reinforced that appeal. President Bush rose to the occasion and he carried the nation behind him. But he has led us in the wrong direction. He used the war on terror as an excuse for invading Iraq. If we reelect President Bush we are endorsing his policies and we shall have to live with the consequences. We are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. If we reject him at the polls we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and break the vicious circle. Our future depends on it.

For 18 months after 9/11 President Bush suppressed all dissent by calling it unpatriotic. That is how he could lead the nation so far in the wrong direction.

The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where Osama bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified.

The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not of necessity, as President Bush claims. It goes without saying that Saddam was a tyrant, and it is good to be rid of him. But in invading Iraq as we did, without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our disregard for international law has endangered our security, particularly the security of our troops.

The arms inspections and sanctions were working. In response to American pressure, the United Nations had finally agreed on a strong stand. As long as the inspectors were on the ground, Saddam Hussein could not possibly pose a threat to our security. We could have persisted with the inspections but President Bush insisted on going to war.

By now we know that we went to war on false pretenses. The weapons of mass destruction could not be found, and the connection with al Qaeda could not be established. What has not yet sunk in is that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice knew that Saddam had no nuclear capacity long before we invaded Iraq. The intelligence experts of the Energy Department told them in 2002 that the famous aluminum tubes, which were presented as the most concrete evidence that Saddam had a nuclear program, could not possibly be used for enriching uranium. Yet they used them as evidence. They deliberately deceived the public, the Congress and the United Nations.

The comment spammer that hit me Thursday is back. Since then I added a patch which rejects comments containing certain strings before it even gets held for moderation. I just added a few patterns from his latest spam, so he’ll be gone soon. As soon as I get any spam, I add any unique strings from it to my filter and they’re gone for good.

Update: I converted my patch to a plugin. In the short time it took me to remove the hack and install the plugin, he managed to get in another spam. In addition to the plugin, I added some code to my .htaccess to deny all requests from the particular software he’s using.

Update #2: This spammer is mentioned in the WordPress forums. It looks like a lot of WP blogs are getting hit.

I just got hit with 4 5 6 comment spams from the same asshole, advertising the same 3 products in each one. All comments here must be approved by me before they appear, so the spammers are just wasting their time since none of their spam will get past me without being deleted. I also block their IP address in my .htaccess.

Update: that spammer won’t be bothering me any more. I added a few lines of code to reject his comments before they even get to the approval queue. Tomorrow I’ll expand it to handle other kinds of spam.

Last week I installed a 120G drive, which I got for $85 from CPU Solutions, in my G4 minitower, replacing the old 40G secondary drive (it also has an 80G drive). Since I have lots of disk space, I partitioned it for Linux as well as Mac OS X. I also have Jaguar installed on the smaller drive so I can test software with it.

Today I installed Ubuntu Linux on it. The installation was very fast & painless. I first partitioned the drive with Disk Utility, leaving a large unallocated space as well as the OS X partition. When I booted from the Ubuntu CD, it created the Linux partitions and did the rest. Less than an hour later, I was running Linux. Ubuntu is based on Debian, so I was able to easily add packages and update everything to the latest version using Synaptic.

(via Oliver Willis)

Over the past week I’ve received several flyers from the Republican Party endorsing Bush as a friend of Jewish people and Israel, even though I’m a registered Democrat. They must be sending it to everyone with a Jewish name. Well, I have news for them – I don’t care about Israel and I consider myself atheist or agnostic, not Jewish. I don’t vote as a Jew; I vote as a gay man.

Via Oliver Willis: Don’t miss Eminem’s new video. For once, I actually like something he’s done.

I just discovered a great new audio blog, Benn loxo du taccu about West African music. Although the title is in Wolof, which I don’t understand, the content is in English.

I now have an orchid growing on a tree in front of my condo

One of my neighbors started this trend a few weeks ago

We wrap the roots in cloth and tie it to the tree. After a few months, the roots will grow into the tree and we can remove the cloth.

I just got hit with 4 comment spams at once. Note that all comments are held for approval before they appear, so all spam will be deleted before it gets posted. Furthermore, I add a DENY for every spammer’s IP address to my .htaccess.

I just wrote a Drupal lyrics module for WorldBeatPlanet to replace my old hack of using a page with the taxonomy term ‘lyrics’. It’s a very simple node module which adds an artist field and has a nicer overview page listing only titles & artist.

A few days ago I got a very nice email from Jimi Mbaye praising WorldBeatPlanet. He has a new album, which isn’t available in the US, and he now has his own studio and has been producing albums for other artists.

I’ve rearranged the topics at WorldBeatPlanet and eliminated the regional topics, since so much music crosses regional boundaries.

I’ve also been experimenting with a professional Drupal layout for an artist-oriented site. Instead of a news page with user-submitted stories like I now have at WorldBeatPlanet & MacMegasite, it will have artist-related pages. Only registered artists can create pages and each artist can have his own forum.

Via Brian’s Blog:

A first sign of trouble on Nov. 2 (via the Sun-Sentinel):

Problems were being reported at nine of 14 early voting sites in Broward County on Monday morning.

Gisela Salas, of the Broward Elections Office, said workers were having problems with a live database connection that is used to verify that a voter is properly registered.

The sites, Salas said, that were unaffected were at satellite offices in Deerfield Beach, Hollywood, Lauderhill, Pembroke Pines and Plantation.

All the branch offices were reported having problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had voters lined up to cast their ballots.

Voters at several sites said poll workers told them the problems started 20 minutes to 30 minutes after the early polling stations opened at 8:30 a.m. The stations close at 6 p.m.

At the Tamarac branch public library, where voting stopped after the computer glitch, Sally Zwanger, a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign, claimed the problems reflected on the inability of Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration to fix voting problems left over from the 2000 election.

“The worst thing to hear was, ‘I support Kerry, but I can’t wait in this line,’” she said. “We are having a repeat of 2000, and it’s only in Florida that this could happen. This administration would do anything to ensure that he [Bush] stays in office.”

Zwanger said at one point there were 63 people in line, most of whom had gone home without voting by 11 a.m.

She also said waiting voters were told at 8:30 a.m. that every voting location in Broward County was was closed. But she found out after calling the Broward County Elections Office headquarters that the Plantation location and four others were still open.

Susan Emert waited for two hours – starting at 8:20 a.m. before she finally had to leave for work.

“They had all the time from when they said the voting machines will be used, all the time to perfect them, and here we are, up the creek,” she said, throwing her arms wildly up in the air. “This is really another black eye for the county. I’m so fed up.”

Before leaving, however, Emert was able to get a number from an elections official. It will allow her to receive priority placement in the line when she returns.

Most of the voters waiting in the line were seniors, and many shared Emert’s frustration. They repeatedly uttered phrases such as, “This is ridiculous,” and “This is so frustrating.”

In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the recount four years ago, a Democratic state legislator said she wasn’t given a complete absentee ballot when she asked to opt for paper instead of the electronic touch-screen machines. And in Orange County, the touch-screen system briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs.

A steady flow had turned out Monday morning at more than a dozen sites in Palm Beach County. Patrick Flanagan, who went to the county’s election headquarters to cast his ballot, said he voted early because he wanted to avoid the long lines expected on Election Day. He said he’s voted on the touch-screen machines once before, and both times have gone “very smoothly.”

“I’m a computer-phobe, and it seemed easy enough to me,” said Flanagan, who added that he had no concerns about his vote being counted.

Also coming out of the polls on Monday, Steve Perez, 44, said he came early to cast a “protest vote” for Ralph Nader.

“What’s important is that you vote. I didn’t want to get in all the hoopla with all the turnout in Election Day,” said Perez, a substitute teacher.

State Rep. Shelley Vana was not so happy. She said the paper absentee ballot she was given at a Palm Beach County site was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight.

“There was absolutely no concern on the part of the folks at the Supervisor of Elections Office that this page was missing. This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can’t imagine I would be the only one getting it,” she said.

County elections supervisor Theresa LePore did not immediately return a call for comment.

Early voting also gets under way Monday in Texas, Colorado and Arkansas. Other key states this year have already begun in-person voting, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. Balloting by mail is under way in Oregon, the only state in the nation that has done away with polling booths altogether.

Early voting and touch-screen equipment were introduced in Florida after the 2000 election, in which this crucial state decided the result by only 537 votes and introduced topics such as butterfly ballots and hanging chads to the national debate. The early voting continues at a limited number of sites in each county until Election Day, when regular polling places will be open.

In Miami-Dade County, about 150 people gathered Monday morning for a rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Some people were carrying homemade signs that said “Early Voting Counts” and “Every Vote Matters.”

Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry arranged campaign swings through the Sunshine State over the weekend.

“There are probably a lot of people in Florida who are ready to cast their ballot,” said Mindy Tucker Fletcher, senior adviser for the Bush campaign in Florida.

Some groups are urging voters to ask for paper absentee ballots, as Vana did, because of concerns over the state’s new touch-screen voting machines and any potential recounts. Voters Monday morning could choose either method.

Even as voters turned out, lawyers were going to court in Fort Lauderdale to argue a lawsuit over the lack of paper backup on the electronic machines.

Other groups are touting early voting as a chance for busy voters to avoid waiting in line Nov. 2. Some have criticized the concept, saying it increases opportunities for fraud without significantly boosting participation. Still, most states offer the option.

“It’s going to be changing the way candidates campaign because they have to get their message out to people two to three weeks earlier than in the past,” LePore said earlier.

via /dev/blog:

Which OS are You?

They’re right!

When I upgraded MacMegasite to Drupal 4.5 I got rid of the old filestore module I was using for downloads. Instead, I’m now taking advantage of the new capability to attach files directly to a story. I created a download page which lists the 20 most recent attached files. I found that the best way to add a new feature to the site is by putting the PHP code in a file and then creating a PHP page which simply includes it and add a URL alias to that page. That’s how I created the store & feedback pages. It’s a lot easier than writing a Drupal module.

I’ve upgraded both MacMegasite and WorldBeatPlanet to Drupal 4.5. The updates went very smoothly. To ensure that users won’t access the site during the updates, I changed my .htaccess to deny all except my own IP address and changed it back to allow all users after I finished the update.

I believe Barack Obama will be the first black president of the US, but let’s not forget the original black president: Fela Kuti. Today would have been his 66th birthday, an event marked by Fela Kuti Day celebrations in NY & LA.