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“Because They Suck!” 2005 November 18

I was talking about the Sony Rootkit debacle with Gregory Haase last night. I never been a huge fan of Sony’s electronic products so I haven’t bought much equipment from them in the past, but there is no chance I will by any hardware from them anymore. And I definitely won’t buy any CDs from them.

This whole Sony Rootkit debacle would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. Luckily, since I don’t use Windows to play CDs (or even personally own a computer that runs Windows) I didn’t have a chance to be infected. The fact that Sony violated copyright in order to enforce copyright leaves them with absolutely no leg to stand on when it comes to complaining about people violating their copyrights.

Apparently, according to a story related to me by Gregory last night, Sony is known in Japan for mistreating and taking advantage of consumers, so this came to no big surprise to him that Sony would so something this outrageous. Gregory’s wife is originally from Japan and has refused to buy Sony products for years because of their business practices. Gregory told me he asked his wife once why, and her answer was “Because they suck.” I can’t say it any better. They suck and they won’t be getting any of my money.

J.J. Yeley signs to drive the #18 in Nextel Cup 2005 November 16

Although the purpose I created this blog was to talk about racing, and in particular, reports on my trips to the races, I haven’t posted much about racing lately. This is mostly due to the fact I haven’t been to a race recently. However, for those who didn’t catch it J.J. Yeley has signed to take over the #18 Interstate Batteries car from Bobby LaBonte next year. I guess I won’t be able to get close to him any more, but I’m really happy for him. I’ve known and talked to J.J. for years and he is one big time driver who actually recognizes me when I stop to talk to him (not that we’re best friends or anything), but this is cool to have someone you know, even on a small level, and have followed through the ranks get a shot like this. Besides how many people have had a Nextel Cup driver offer to pay for their haircut?

Jeff Waugh’s B3T at LUG/IP

I’ve been planning on making a post about Jeff Waugh’s Badger Badger Badger tour appearance at LUG/IP since it happened on last Wednesday, but I’ve been really busy working on a number of conference proposals and other scholarly activity. Anyway, it was an excellent talk. Half of it was mostly about Ubuntu and the other part about Gnome. Jeff did an excellent job going over the process, and other behind the scenes aspects, of working on Gnome and Ubuntu and what some of the philosophical background of each are. Jeff also talked about “the new hotness offered in Gnome. His presentation style was excellent, very enjoyable, and was mixed with the right amount of humor and content. As president of LUG/IP, I got to spend some time with Jeff outside of the meeting. He is a good guy, extremely knowledgeable, and had some wonderful insight into why, and how, the freedoms offered by free software apply to everyone and not just the people who develop it. I think this aspect of the free software movement is something that developers and, especially, advocates need to keep in mind. Talking about how it is great to be able to modify software to a non-geek is usually not going to get you too far. However, talking about privacy and other social concerns, such as Sony’s rootkit CDs may win some non-techies over. For a more in depth review of Jeff’s appearance, see Dave Harding’s blog. If you ever have a chance to see Jeff speak, make sure you go!

Say no to the UN Internet

The more I read about the United Nations’ “World Summit on the Information Society” that opens today in Tunis, Tunisia, the more concerned I am. The idea of the UN controlling the Internet is pretty scary. Many major players in the UN, including those heavily involved with this summit, have taking many steps to censor the Internet. For one example, the Chinese government has taking steps to censor the word “democracy” from Internet traffic. There are also a number of countries that often go after bloggers and others who post information that government doesn’t agree with. FWIW: The US government has also taking steps to go after certain “off-shore” Internet sites, online gambling, for example, and has also reportedly stepped in to squash the .xxx domain. I am not saying the current ruling body (ICANN – a non-profit group originally formed by the U.S. government) is perfect, and yes it may have a US bias, however it has been successfully working as “a bottom up, consensus based, participatory global organization” [1]. With the ICANN structure, and record, there is less of a potential for limiting freedom on the Internet then an organization controlled by the UN (or a similar organization). Past history has shown that ICANN has done a fairly good job of allowing free expression on the Internet, even when many countries involved with the summit have not. I can’t see how allowing governments through the UN, each with their own self interests can do anything to insure free expression. It seems quite the opposite is true. (more…)

Election Day 2005 November 8

Today is election day in New Jersey (and most other places in the US). The highest office in NJ being decided today is the governorship. I voted this morning and it appeared that the turn out was slightly above average. If you live in NJ, are registered to vote, and haven’t decided who to vote for yet, you can always write in “Edward M. Corrado.”

Adventures with sa-exim, exim, exiscan, & spamassassin on FC2 2005 November 6

I decided to install some spam filtering software while redoing my LVS. Since I have been using exim on my LVS, I decided to look into exim-sa. I found a few different RPMs for my version of Fedora Core. One set was from the Fedora Legacy project and another from at-rpms. The only problem is that neither of these [apparently] have a exim rpm that patched exim with the dynamically loadable local scan patch. This lead me to two possible options, compile exim with the patch or find a different solution. (more…)

ecorrado.us lives! 2005 November 5

After two days of working on it, I have completely reinstalled my LVS and, among other things, upgraded to the newest version of wordpress. So far everything seems to be working fine. I only had a few little glitches with mysql while trying to get wordpress running, but they were mostly caused by editing the wrong file .

Up Stream Red Team. Red Team Up Stream. Rah, Rah, Rutgers Rah. 2005 November 1

On Saturday, October 29 I went to the Rutgers University homecoming football game against Navy. Rutgers ended up winning 31 to 21. It was a pretty good and enjoyable game in front of a sell-out crowd but what made it special was it clinched the first winning football season for the Scarlet Knights since 1992. It also made the team bowl eligible. While friends that went to schools that win a lot of football games may not find this so impressive, it is a very big deal for the Scarlet faithful. It was amazing to see the students storm the field and tear down the goal posts. Made me feel really good to be a Rutgers alum. While Rutgers is now bowl eligible they are not locked into a bowl but one more win should clinch there first bowl game since the 1978 Garden State Bowl which they lost to Arizona State. This bowl is really of dubious distinction though as it was really created to get Rutgers into a bowl game after they were snubbed from a bowl game despite going undefeated in 1976. Ironically, there seems to be a good chance that Rutgers may end up playing Arizona State in the Insight Bowl this year. Other possibilities are the Gator Bowl or the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Although the Gator Bowl is probably a little more prestigious, I think a match-up against a PAC-10 team in Arizona at the Insight Bowl would be a little more exciting.

PS. For those that don’t know the title of this post comes from the Rutgers fight song, “The Bells Must Ring“