shivan.org

Back when someone contributed an ad comparing Bush and Hitler to a political ad contest being run by liberal site MoveOn.org it was a big ordeal. From a FOX News article covering reaction to the event:

Republican groups and Jewish organizations expressed outrage over the ad, which has been removed from the MoveOn.org Web site. The Republican National Committee (search) called on all nine Democratic candidates to condemn the ads.

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie called the ad, “the worst and most vile form of political hate speech.”

…

“We agree that the two ads in question were in poor taste and deeply regret that they slipped through our screening process,” the statement [from MoveOn.org] said. “In the future, if we publish or broadcast raw material, we will create a more effective filtering system.”

It is with much confusion that I noticed the new ad being featured on The Official Re-election Site for President George W. Bush. The ad recycles bits from the above mentioned MoveOn.org ad and shows Kerry, Gore, Moore giving passionate speeches with views that polls show over 50% of the country (and over 50% of “likely voters”) agree side by side with Hitler shouting hateful speech. They show Hitler and have his voice in the ad. Are they comparing Democrats to Nazis and telling voters if they are “anti-war” they are fascists? If you don’t believe the Republican party line you are crazy and potentially a Hitler lover? What exactly is their attempted angle with this ad?

One random person contributing a hateful ad to a contest is a big ordeal but an official presidential campaign representing the current President of the country taking the hateful trash and making it worse and reusing it as their own ad is even better?

Have they lost their fucking minds? Excuse me while I make a local copy of it as I can’t imagine it will be around for long… What focus group did they run it by where the ad actually helped their cause? I’m praying that they show this ad on TV just to make it more noticable to the average person as something labeled with “I’m George Bush and I approved this message.” I wonder what dear old Ed Gillespie has to say.

Bahahaha… CNN.com - Cheney curses senator over Halliburton criticism.

Specifics can be found on Wonkette:

CNN is reporting that on the floor of the Senate yesterday, Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy, “Go fuck yourself.” [...]

Wonkette operatives tell us that the fighting words sprang from an exchange in which Cheney told Leahy he didn’t like what Leahy had been saying about Halliburton, to which Leahy replied that he didn’t like Cheney calling him a bad Catholic. So you’d see how “Go fuck yourself” is the only appropriate response.

Comedy Gold.

The press is finally starting to wonder if they smell the faint odor of bullshit… MSNBC - Who Was Really In Charge?

These questions should have been asked months ago. I’m of the opinion that articles like this are only just now being written because people didn’t want to think about it a few months back. Reporters and TV personalities soaking in the “patriotic” spin and offering reasons to be members of “The War Against Terrorism” fan club was a valuable tool in the ratings wars and helped sell newspapers. Asking the hard questions didn’t sell… up until now. Now with the torture scandal, deaths and violence in Iraq, the 9/11 commission report and various books all coming out America is finally starting to tune in. Asking the hard questions is starting to sell!

Excuse me while I go buy a ticket to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and make sure I get my $5 ICEE with a free pop music mini-cd!

After upgrading a system from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2 I noticed that FreeRadius was unable to bind to any LDAP tree. Whenever FreeRadius’s rlm_ldap would attempt to bind to the tree it would segfault deep inside OpenLDAP whenever it called certain sasl functions.

FreeRadius 0.9.3 and other versions are needlessly linked against libsasl (provided by cyrus-sasl) in their rlm_ldap module. rlm_ldap does not need to be linked against libsasl as it makes no calls to the library and OpenLDAP, which does use libsasl, is already linked against it. This needless linking creates a problem because in many modern distributions (such as Fedora Core 2) the openldap libraries link against a different version of libsasl then the “default” newer libsasl. The two versions of libsasl are not drop in replacements for each other and have differing APIs. This leads to guaranteed segfaults when code in openldap calls the incorrect version of libsasl which was happening on a recently upgraded Radius server at work.

The problem and solution is discussed in FreeRadius Bug #73 (symptoms of the problem appear in Red Hat’s bugzilla as bug #124688).

To fix the problem you must modify the configure.in file in the rlm_ldap build directory and remove the unneeded libsasl dependency. The following commands (run from the base of the freeradius-0.9.3 source directory) should fix the issue and be fairly version independent:

cd src/modules/rlm_ldap
mv configure.in configure.in.old
sed "s/AC_SMART_CHECK_LIB(sasl, sasl_encode)//" configure.in.old > configure.in
autoconf-2.13 -l ../../..

After running this you should be able to run the configure script for the entire source tree and compile FreeRadius. The resulting executables and rlm_ldap shared object file should not be linked against libsasl.

Those wishing to generate custom RPMS with the above fix for Fedora Core 2 will want to grab a copy of freeradius-0.9.3-4.src.rpm from your local Fedora Core 2 mirror. “Install” the source RPM by using the “rpm -Uvh freeradius-0.9.3-4.src.rpm” command. You should have a /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/freeradius.spec file. Edit this file and add the above lines below the last %patch directive in the %pre section. You should add autoconf213 to the BuildRequires space delimited list. You may also wish to add an “Epoch: 1” line towards the top of the file to bump up the epoch so future automated updates don’t overwrite your custom file. At this point a “rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/freeradius.spec” and some time are all that is needed to build the required RPMs. (Watch the output towards the end for the filenames of the newly created RPMs.)

Awake and chatty with no one to talk to: I’d just like to note that I’m up at 3:45am and enjoying Adiemus
more then I should.

Intel and Wireless: I’d also like to note that Intel rocks when it comes to Linux support these days… Not only are they working on Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 Drivers for Linux (the 802.11b Centrino chipset) but they have just started work on the Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG (the 802.11g Centrino chipset).

The ipw2100 driver is already more stable then the OOPS happy madwifi CVS crap that is unstable as hell under Linux 2.6.x and has a CVS tree that has not compiled under Linux 2.6.x without patching for months now. The ipw2100 uses the Host AP driver and serves as a good example of code sharing between wireless drivers that has to take place more often to make wireless stop sucking totally on Linux.

Wireless in Linux: Speaking of wireless totally sucking under Linux this article triggered one of those “It is about fucking time! Thank God!” moments. If only some one with the appropriate skill set had started this long ago. Jeff Garzik, the person leading this project, also maintains the Linux Serial ATA tree which looks like it will be the last major change included in the Linux 2.4.x branch. Mr. Garzik is definitely part of my “people who rock” list.

Besides the usual batch of politically incorrect and just plain wrong t-shirts TshirtHell.com also sells gift wrap!

My favorite gift wrap is the one that proclaims “Happy Fucking Whatever!“. Perfect for us people who just don’t care… of course that would imply we actually wrap gifts.

From the Craigslist Personals (Staunch Democrat Seeks Sexy Republican - m4w):

“I’ve never done it with a Republican before, and I have to say I’m curious. Are conservatives better in bed? Is there something I’m missing? I’ll tell you in advance that I’m married, that I’m a hottie, that I’m completely D/D free, and that I know how to satisfy. That’s all you need to know at this point.”

Bahahaha!

The liberal sponsored media watch dog group called Media Matters tracks the overwhelming conservative bias of the major news outlets these days.

An example of what they monitor can be found in coverage of the recent indirect attacks on John Kerry by attacking one of his supporters named George Soros. After all, if you can’t make anything against the candidate stick attack his friends! One of the more interesting shows was on FOX News where a guest called Soros “a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust” and other loaded and insensitive comments with positive reaction from the hosts.

Joshua Marshall points out on Talking Points Memo yet another example of language from Republican leaders that non-white voters are not “real” voters.

It is really disturbing when you think about it.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is an excellent movie. People are saying it wasn’t as good as the first two movies but it is still very enjoyable and I like it as much as the first two.

In other news the trailer for Michael Moore’s new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 came out a couple days ago. The trailer is decent and I’m looking forward to the movie’s release at the end of the month.