This is utterly brilliant.  Maybe I’ve been missing it, but it looks like the tech community is getting better and better at insinuating itself into the political realm.  Not talking about companies here.  Microsoft and Sun each have lobbying operations that work the traditional way.  But copyfighters, political activists, and (as George Carlin would say) just plain Guys From Montana are making their voices heard in Washington without having to stage a huge rally on the Capitol steps.

Your Senator needs an iPod! – Cory Doctorow: Ren sez, "Remember how Ted Stevens, the 82 year-old Senator from Alaska, morphed into an advocate for the public’s fair use rights after his daughter bought him an iPod? We think that’s awesome, and we want to spread the love. That’s why IPac launched the Congressional iPod Education Fund, where we’re collecting money for iPods, stuffing them with public domain and Creative Commons-licensed content, engraving them with ‘Listen to the People,’ and shipping them to the campaigns of Senators who work on tech and copyright policy. Check it out!" Link (Thanks, Ren!)

(Via Boing Boing)

P.S.

"Guys From Montana" is now on my list of great band names that haven’;t been used yet. 

 I don’t understand this fascination with Law and Order SVU but it rears its head again.

Law and Order Valentines – Cory Doctorow: Brandon Bird has created an hilarious set of 10 Law and Order themed Valentines, and he’ll sell ‘em to you. Link (Thanks, Andy!)

(Via Boing Boing)

 Rumors of the Google OS persist.  I started using Ubuntu at home a few months ago and love it.  Its my first foray into using Linux full time and with a few small (to me) exceptions, its been great.  Haven’t fired up my Windows PC for three weeks.

I am interested to see what a Google OS would look like.  Would they give it away?  Would they put it in low end machines that were basically thin clients for Google?  My breath is baited. 

Google Working on Desktop Linux – paulmac84 writes "The Register reports that Google is working on a version of Ubuntu, known internally as Goobuntu. Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for. Is Google about to release this as an alternative to Windows?"

(Via Slashdot)

 Well, not really.  But the folks at Wikipedia are clearly a tad miffed at the behaviour originating from some congresisonal IP addresses.  Its a bit disheartening to see that congressional staffers feel its a productive use of their time to edit their candidate’s entries.  Seems that the time could be better spent.

Having said that, I’m going to keep an eye on this to see how Wikipedia eventually resolves this.  I think the source and nature of the abuse has sent a shockwave through the place.  Utopian hardliners will argue for the letter of the law, but I’m siding a bit more with those who think they should just can the finks out of hand and impose a permanent ban on those IP ranges. 

Heh. – editors from the range of IP addresses belonging to the United States Congress have been banned from wikipedia.

(Via Metafilter)

 Is anyone here  suprised?  Me neither.  Its not about political ideologies anymore.  The current administration is built by and for coporate CEOs who are more than happy to engage in sleazy business to earn a little extra dough.

Massive fraud, theft, corruption in Iraq rebuilding – Massive fraud, theft, corruption in Iraq rebuilding …Iraqi money gambled away in the Philippines…spent on a swimming pool that was never used…US$700,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker…millions to companies that never submitted required competitive bids or that were paid for unfinished work…paid US$14,000 on four separate occasions for the same job…US$1.3 million wasted on overpriced or duplicate construction or equipment not delivered…"needlessly disbursed more than US$1.8 million" of the estimated US$2.3 million spent for renovating the library…from new auditor reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

(Via Metafilter)

 A little late on this one since I don’t regularly check Lisa Reiin’s blog, but she has compiled a 6 hour long "Best Of" collection from the Daily Show.

Best of Daily Show vol 2 Torrent Available – Updated 11/29/05 – see new link below This just in from one of my wonderful readers: Want to watch clips from past year in one file? Then download this torrent: use this url now http://ts.searching.com/torrent/489042/The_Best_of_The_Daily_Show_Vol_2xvid This project is the culmination of MANY hours of labor. It is a reprise of a Daily show best of I made last year. I decided to do it again and this time make a LOW quality xvid for those who don’t want to download the DVD format. These are mostly clips of Jon, but there are pieces from each correspondent as well. They are…

(Via Lisa Rein)

 All hail Google Video. This film can best be described in the the same manner as This Game Sucks.  You will see your friends in this film, but you will never see yourself.

Fear of Girls – Fear of Girls … a film about elite tabletop role-players, by Ryan Wood.

(Via Metafilter)

Circumstances have conspired to deprive our very own hess42 of all computational ability this weekend.  With any luck he will have the homebuilt beast that is his PC up and running by Sunday.  But if not, let us all pause a moment in reflection and sorrow for our fallen bretheren.  May his router always have packets to route.

 Now THAT’S what I’m talkin about!  If you’re going to be a geek.  Go all the way.  Do it right.  Fly your flag.  Let everyone know that you remember Tribbles and that real Klingons don’t have brow ridges.

Home theater that looks like Starship Enterprise’s bridge – Cory Doctorow:
A geeky home-theater enthusiast has built and lavishly documented a home theater setup that resembles the bridge of the Starship Enterprise: Link (Thanks, Chris!)

(Via Boing Boing)

Interesting review of the "average" website as figured by a review of 1 billion pages in Ggoogle’s database.  Fun info for geeks.  Totally worthless for everyone else.

A Statistical Review of 1 Billion Web Pages – chrisd writes "As part of a recent examination of the most popular html authoring techniques, my colleague Ian Hickson parsed through a billion web pages from the Google repository to find out what are the most popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata. We decided that to publish this would be of significant utility to developers. It’s also a fascinating look into how people create web pages. For instance one thing that surprised me was that the is more popular than
. The graphs in the report require a browser with SVG and CSS support (like Firefox 1.5!). Enjoy!"

(Via Slashdot)