However, within the same country that promotes freedom, the same country that condemns oppression, a great evil poisons it. There are large corporations who profit from the control of intellectual property from news media to music, motion pictures and television. These industries have been able to convince our elected officials that they are losing money, threatening layoffs and closures because of it, and have asked through lobbyists to be granted the power to control the Internet in ways that we, as a country, continually condemn in foreign lands such as China, North Korea, and Iran.

Two bills being deliberated in Congress essentially gives corporations the ability to censor the Internet as they see fit, all in the name of policing piracy and copyright infringement. While the cause is a noble one, the fact remains that corporations have never been trustworthy with peoples rights. The news media has been known to hack cellphones. The recording industry has been known to drag innocent people through expensive trials for piracy, even implicating dead grandmothers, and to assert rights over copyrighted or copyleft material in which it has no right to do so. And the list goes on. Remember when the banking industry needed to be bailed out? How many people had their homes foreclosed while executives were getting big dollar bonuses? The last thing we need is to give corporations the right to make anything disappear from the Internet in which they may or not agree with.

Every elected member of the US Congress recites the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

So I put it to task every member of Congress, including my own representatives, Rep. Marcia Fudge [D-OH11] in the House, and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Sen. Robert Portman [R-OH] in the Senate . Do your job and kill the proposals of SOPA and PIPA as well as any future proposals that would do the same. The rights of the people are to be protected by those we as a people elect to defend them.

While we feel that copyright owners have a right to combat the online piracy of their intellectual property, the provisions outlined in these two bills would do more harm to the Internet by violating the US First Amendment and free speech, preventing whistle-blowing actions against corruption, and bring about an unprecedented crippling of the Internet.

Please take a moment to visit Fight For The Future for more information and to help speak out against these dangerous propositions.

Join the fight: Fight For The Future

Least I Could Do made me laugh. It reminded me about how much of a cult-following Steve Jobs has been able to create through Apple and its line of gotta-have-devices. People will be clamoring for the iPad when it officially releases on April 3, much like the past iPhones.

I was then reminded about how we’re all fanboys (or fangirls if applicable) of our respective interests. As an emphatic Ubuntu user, I take strides to go above and beyond most others. I manage RebelZero.com, ultimately to promote Linux as a whole but mostly for Ubuntu. I remove the Windows case badges on my laptops and replace them with “Powered by Ubuntu” badges. I don’t shy away from talking about Ubuntu or my decisions for choosing it as my operating system. I try to take part in testing new distributions by installing pre-release versions in order to hunt down problems.

So when I take all of that into account, I guess I can’t laugh at the Apple fans for herding to the stores on release day. But I can still laugh when others poke fun at the stereotype.

adam@obsidian:~$ nslookup
> quit
Server: 208.67.220.220
Address: 208.67.220.220#53

Non-authoritative answer:
quit.neo.rr.com canonical name = use-exit-moron.neo.rr.com.
Name: use-exit-moron.neo.rr.com
Address: 208.67.217.132
>

My apologies to openDNS. I’ll try to remember to use “exit” from now on.

Just moments ago, 2.5.7 was officially released for everyone to download and enjoy.

Version 2.5.7 (06/20/2009)

• Yahoo Protocol 16 support, including new HTTPS login method; this should fix a number of login problems that have recently cropped up. (Sulabh Mahajan, Mike “Maiku” Ruprecht)
• Only display the AIM “Unable to Retrieve Buddy List” message once per connection. (Rob Taft)
• Blocking MSN users not on your buddy list no longer disconnects you.
• When performing operations on MSN, assume users are on the MSN/Passport network if we don’t get network ID’s for them.

Users can choose to either upgrade their clients or continue using the workaround that was posted by myself and a few others this weekend. Ubuntu users wanting to upgrade will either have to add Pidgin’s PPA repository or hope that Ubuntu backports the new version.

The Pidgin PPA has not been updated with 2.5.7, yet, as it’s only just been released from the time I’m writing this (<45 mins).

I had been wondering why Pidgin was having problems connecting to Yahoo’s Messenger service for the last two days or so. I eventually had to go to Pidgin’s IRC chat room to find a link to some relevant information.

Essentially Yahoo is upgrading the software on their servers which includes a new authentication method that Pidgin, and other non-Messenger clients, aren’t compatible with, yet.

The only workaround that seems functional is simply pointing the client to a pager server that hasn’t been upgraded yet. You can do that by clicking on Accounts > Manage Accounts > highlight Yahoo account > Modify > Advanced tab. You’ll see a entry for the pager server.

It should be set to scs.msg.yahoo.com which actually points to a number of different server addresses. I changed mine to cs101.msg.mud.yahoo.com which is currently working with Pidgin. Save the change and Pidgin should/might connect to Yahoo.

More information with additional server addresses can be found at Celtic Wolf.

UPDATE: Pidgin 2.5.7 was just released to fix a few issues including Yahoo’s Messenger service.

“I’m also going to move to Drupal. WordPress just violated trust with this upgrade, and I had 15 minutes of downtime, which is unacceptable, given how they advertise an easy upgrade process.”

“I feel that Drupal is the 2nd choice after WordPress. I love WordPress, but after this violation of trust, I can’t bank my blog on it.”

“You guys made a very shitty upgrade and should tell people to upgrade before testing it properly. I can’t do anything about it and I can’t continue working on my blog since nothing works properly. Thanks for ruining my blog! you’re the best! Have a great day!”

“Who’s responsible for this crap ? Did anybody do any honest and real testing on it?”

Of course, this is only from a few people so it’s hardly a representation of how well WordPress is actually built. I imagine that most WordPress users had no issue upgrading regardless of how they chose to initiate it. WordPress can always be upgraded manually but that can prove difficult for a novice user or one who doesn’t have direct access to the installation. WordPress has since developed an automated update which makes upgrading as easy as a few mouse clicks. Unfortunately, the easy way is hardly always the best way, so some breakage is expected.

While we can all agree that a site you’ve studiously worked on suddenly stop working is frustrating to see, attacking the developers really won’t solve any problems. Given that the developers have worked countless hours coding a simple, yet versatile, blog just to be given away to the masses for free, it hardly seems right to bark at them when things go wrong, especially when they’re more than willing to help solve the issues.

It’s hopeful, albeit unlikely, that all those who have had problems with the upgrade learn some valuable lessons from their problems:

1. Always expect the unexpected.
2. Even when they seem unwarranted, take a moment to create a backup.
3. Directions are written to be read.
4. Nicely ask and someone will nicely answer.

Now for the meat and potatoes. RebelZero.com has been successfully upgraded to WordPress 2.8. Have a nice day. Any if you have the means, check out Fedora 11 Leonidas.

You can initiate three fights a day. There’s also a tournament you can enter every other day. Every fight, even the ones during the tournament, are re-playable. As your Brute gains experience, it will attain weapons, skills, and buffs along with increases in speed, agility, and strength. Every Brute also gets its own unique URL which you can use to recruit pupils of your own, helping your Brute gain experience faster.

It’s all free and requires very little skill to play. An entertaining way to fill a few minutes out of the day.

Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman posted a great article on his blog to explain why Ubuntu is based off of Debian’s unstable branch.

Dustin Kirkland, a Core Developer working on the Ubuntu Server, posts on his blog about increasing the security of the new encrypted home directory by using a 2-factor authentication, and commenting on the use of biometrics and fingerprint readers. It’s a follow-up to an earlier post describing how to mount an encrypted home directory when using a Jaunty LiveCD.

Efraín Valles, fellow Ubuntu enthusiast, wrote on his blog about the GNU/LINUX CDs application at Facebook to help spread the use of Linux to the “not-so-linux crowds” (IE: your Windows-only friends).