Diogenes's blog

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Kill Bill 398 - A Red Riding Hood Story

There is a private members bill -- Bill C-398 An Act to Amend the Patent Act -- that is making it's way through parliament. It has broad support from members of all parties, the media and many well meaning organizations.

And why not? They say this bill is about noble things: helping Africa; fighting AIDS; it's about humanity itself. And it won't cost Canadians a dime.

But Grandma, what big teeth you have!

C-398 is really a cynical ploy by Canada's Big Pharma to rig the laws of Canada (again) so they can profit handsomely from an emerging world market for cheap, high quality, copycat drugs.  Made in Canada and made legally, right?

BILL C-398 is a FRAUD, lawyers and lobbyists dressed up in Grandma's clothing. KILL BILL 398.

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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This blog is about the Drupal code reviews. There are 3 kinds of reviews, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Although many complain that the process is slow, it can proceed quite quickly. I have have my module reviewed 7 times time now. The shortest wait was 42 minutes; the longest wait was 66 days.

After more than a year now, I have given up hope it will ever be approved , partly because now I am writing blogs like this. Drupalistas do not take kindly to criticism.

To quote and paraphrase Grouch Marx -- "I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member" or maybe "I never forget a face Open Source Project, but in your case I'll make an exception."

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Just a Few Good Men

For over two years now, the Drupal.org website has had a policy in place regarding contributions by new members.

Members who have contributed before are exempt from this process.

The typical wait for a code review has climbed from 5 days to 5 weeks, to 3 months.

The attrition rate for this process is about 55%, based on a sample last month.

Although projects from new members are being approved at the rate of 1 per day, this represents only a small slice of the new Full Project modules that appear every month.

Current members with FP status can publish new modules at will without any scrutiny or community review, breaking all kinds of rules that new members must observe.

Apply the same standards to everyone. Make everyone climb the same wall or knock down the wall altogether.


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This Process is Broken

This blog is about the Drupal community, new members who would like to contribute a module or theme, and the process now in place to regulate that.

Eating their young

Just recently I came across an old blog: Module Approval Process will KILL Drupal. It's almost 1½ years old now.  It provoked a lot of discussion back then. I agree with much that was said. Unfortunately, almost nothing has changed.

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World Statesman of the Year - Top 10 Reasons

Stephen Harper was in New York to accept the World Statesman of the Year award from some obscure organization called the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, founded by an equally obscure New York City rabbi.

He had been invited to address the United Nations General Assembly, but for some reason he is passing on that opportunity. It did not go so well the first time around. As Homer Simpson once said "If you don't succeed the first time, just give up".


Here my top 10 reasons why Stephen Harper has been awarded World Statesman of the Year.

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One Day In The Life of Sarah Schmidt

Up until recently, Canada exported industrial asbestos, a known carcinogen, to developing countries. It's use is banned in Canada and many other places because of the risk of cancer.

But in Québec, the land of political pandering. Christian Paradis is the federal member of parliament for the area, a cabinet minister and one of the very few Conservative MP's in Québec.

It's time for a discussion on hypocrisy by our politicians and, more importantly, by some of Canada's mainstream media enablers.

The blog title is little oblique. There was this Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago. He won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1970.

I decided to add this great YouTube video as an update. Can't wait till Stephen Harper uses his prodigious musical abilities to preform a cover of a Freddie Mercury song at the next CPC convention.

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The Drupal Members Page module

Drupal sites are subject to web-bot registrations that target Drupal's /user/register url.

The Members Page module was crafted to fight this nuisance by creating a dedicated members page and registration page. The latter is available even if /user/register access is blocked. For added security, both page locations (url's) can be changed. Web-bots simply don't know where to look.

It does not depend on any other modules. Enabling the module does not alter your site configuration in any way although some configuration changes are necessary for practical use.

 

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Cultural Learnings of TRT for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Russia

This will be the last entry in the The Reluctant Traveler Diaries for St. Petersburg and Russia. 

If you are starting with this blog, you may have missed some important background information of why TRT ended up in Russia. Then again, you probably did not miss anything at all.

Part I - To Russia With Love

Part II - The Palaces of St. Petersburg

Part III - Just Another Palace

We have used up all the good pictures now and spent most of the time talking about tourist things.  It's now time for a little cultural trash talk.

Oh those Russians!

Update: Someone has removed one of the best YouTube music videos ever. I enjoyed it every time I viewed it. Substituted another link here, which has shadows of the original video. Real music begins (and vignettes of the original video) at 3:15 into this link.

 

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Just Another Palace

There are 17 palaces listed on the St. Petersburg website and most of them open to the public. Some are museums. We only visited the insides of three palaces, which was enough.

And then we saw Peterhof. We didn't go inside, just walked around in the gardens. WOW!

 

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The Palaces of St. Petersburg

This is a photo album blog about St. Petersburg, Russia, the second in the TRT Russia chronicles.

It uses Lightbox, a brilliant piece of javascript by Lokesh Dhakar.

What this means is that you can click on any image (one click, not two) on this page to view a large photo of the image.  Click to the right to go to the next photo, click on the left to go to the previous photo in the album. Click on the background to return to the blog.

There are 27 photos in all -- enjoy!

 

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