After countless hours of troubleshooting my conclusion was that CPanel on CentOS is what has been causing my Wordpress blog crashes.

I bit the bullet and created an Ubuntu virtual server using the LAMP stack at my hosting provider VPS.net. After two weeks of trial and error learning, I’ve migrated my entire blog from a CPanel managed environment to one where I am controlling everything using FTP (Filezilla) and SSH (putty).

I’ve had numerous problems with Apache mod_rewrite, setting up an FTP server from a command line and so on. For others who might be trying to setup and install their own Wordpress instance or migrate an existing Wordpress blog at the most basic levels, here are some links I think you may find useful.

Useful links for setting up or migrating Wordpress to an Ubuntu server

HOWTO : Create a FTP server with user access (proftpd) – Ubuntu Forums

How to set up a mail server on a GNU / Linux system

Migrate Wordpress to a new server or directory | Richard Castera

Moving WordPress « WordPress Codex

Editing wp-config.php « WordPress Codex

WordPress SuperCache-Plus plugin | The Murmatrons

ApacheMySQLPHP – Community Ubuntu Documentation

phpMyAdmin

Changing File Permissions « WordPress CodexSimilar Posts:

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After five hours in front of the Chattanooga City Council, fired Chattanooga police officer Kenneth Freeman will stay that way. Fired.
First, a little history of Freeman’s story. Last summer, Freeman was relieved of his duties amid domestic assault allegations.  Authorities told us then that they responded to a apartment complex on Mountain Creek Road.  That’s where Rose Blanks told police that she and Freeman were arguing.  That’s when she says Freeman threatened her.
He was fired in August after an Internal Affairs investigation into several different incidents.  Police spokesperson Sgt. Jerry Weary said one of those incidents, “..alcohol was involved and he was found to have been carrying a firearm at the time which he consumed alcohol.”  She said investigators at Internal Affairs were actually looking into two cases involving three violations of department policy and procedures. “One was for turning in overtime sheets for time he had not worked,” Sgt. Weary explained.  Weary added that amounted to fraud, among other things. “And then the third was for conduct unbecoming,” Sgt. Weary said.

Peace officers should never be allowed to hide behind a badge, a department or a flag. An armed peace officer who shoves an old Wal-Mart greeter is not a professional, he is a criminal.

In one case, Officer Freeman was investigated for consuming alcohol while armed, carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm and conformance to law. In the second case, he was investigated for insubordination and two complaints of conduct unbecoming an officer, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary said in a news release.

Three complaints were sustained — consuming alcohol while armed, conduct unbecoming an officer relating to fraud by turning in hours not worked and carrying an unauthorized off-duty firearm, she said. His termination is effective immediately but he can appeal the decision to the Chattanooga City Council, Sgt. Weary said.

Officer Freeman served a 28-day suspension earlier this year after an internal affairs investigation that he exhibited conduct unbecoming an officer, improper procedure and excessive use of force in connection with an assault of a Wal-Mart greeter.

If I did all the things listed in bold, I would be going to jail. Kenneth Freeman got fired. That’s getting off easy. While I think it’s great that Mr. Freeman no longer has the ability to hide behind a uniform, gun and badge I believe he should be held to the same criminal penalties that I would be times two. If an armed police officers abuses his or her authority the penalty should be doubled. Frankly, I’d like to give Kenneth Freeman a good shove. He violated the trust placed in him by the citizens of Chattanooga acting through their proxies. He abused his authority. Kenneth Freeman should pay a heavier price for his criminal behavior.Similar Posts:

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Demand for contractor services is heavy, while oversight of their work isn’t. That means problems often aren’t discovered until long after the payments have been made.

A major trouble spot is the business systems and procedures that companies use to bill the government. The numbers are eye-popping. Defense auditors have found at least $6 billion in questionable charges generated by sloppy accounting or, worse, contractors trying to bilk the military.

Yet, the Pentagon has done a poor job of recovering the money and forcing companies to improve, according to the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. The panel cites dysfunction among auditors and contract managers, a shortage of personnel and a failure to be more confrontational with contractors who don’t measure up.

To be fair, I never saw a guard sleeping when I was in Iraq from 2005-2006. I did, however, see lots and lots of examples of money being wasted on ridiculous projects. Retrofitting conference rooms that were perfectly serviceable at a cost of millions per room is one example that immediately springs to mind. I sat in several meetings where we discussed spending money just to keep budgets at their current levels or to justify increasing them in the coming fiscal year. This is how government thinks.

In late 2007, the military belatedly began paying attention. Numerous contract violations were found, several of them serious, leading to a flood of what contracting officials call corrective action requests. Last fall, the Army Criminal Investigation Command opened an inquiry to determine if Combat Support Associates overbilled the government. The case is ongoing.

While the army says it is breaking up many of the abused private contracts into smaller more manageable pieces maybe the key is to minimize the use of private contractors to fight America’s wars. It might also be helpful if the government considered reducing the size of the war fighting machines it has created in the first place. I’m pretty sure Obama has been a great disappointment thus far to those who hoped for any change in foreign policy regarding how we win wars. After all, you are still paying for contractors to collect money and build nothing in return while empty job sites are guarded by imported private contractors being paid six figures to sleep in uncomfortable chairs. Open your pocketbook and smile at the man with one hand out and the other hand resting lightly on his gun.Similar Posts:

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Sergeant Jermaine Nelson is pending court martial at Camp Pendleton for murder.  He could receive life imprisonment.

This is all over speculation, innuendo and testimony from events that happened in Fallujah more than four years ago.  Let me ask you this. Why would anyone sign up for the Marines and volunteer for combat missions if they have a high chance of being charged with murder after the battle? I sure as hell wouldn’t. If someone has been shooting at me all day and killing those around me it is highly unlikely that they are going to survive close contact with me.

Yes, there are rules of engagements. Yes, prisoners should be treated humanely. But this is war. War cannot be won without warriors. If you treat your warrior class like your peasant class your chance of winning conflicts declines on a rapidly sliding scale. This should make every American in uniform ask him or herself who is going to get their back when they have bullets coming downrange at them? What sort of welcome are they going to receive when they get home? How many years later will it be when the same people who started the war they fought in come to arrest them for fighting in it?

Bureaucrats make the rules that soldiers live and die by. Bureaucrats judge how the rules were followed. I’d like to all hand to hand missions in America’s next war fought by bureaucrats. They’ve earned the honor.Similar Posts:

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Here is the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I may be wrong but as far as I know the federal government of the United States has no legal authority to regulate much of anything that happens inside the borders of a sovereign state. That is, unless that state asks for help in regulating this, that or the other matter. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, in which case, please explain how I’m wrong. It might help me decide to live somewhere else in the near future.

You see, I much prefer the idea of diffused power to the idea of a strong central authority that micromanages the lives of its subjects. I don’t want to be thought of as a subject. I want to have choices. A country with 50 distinct political flavors and 50 different approaches to solving problems is inestimably more palatable to a man like me than one where people I have no access to can reach out and jail me on a whim at any given moment for violation of some dictate or another.

Let’s talk for a moment about federal arrogance. If I am right, and all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the people of the states themselves then how a letter from a federal employee to gun distributors in Tennessee, a sovereign state, is acceptable? The federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate weapons inside the borders of a state. Yet we have a career bureaucrat lecturing weapons dealers in the state on how the federal government and not the local population will decide what is and is not acceptable when it comes to citizens and firearms. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Assistant Director Carson W. Carroll warns Tennessee gun dealers in a letter written in his glass and concrete tower that:

The act purports to exempt personal firearms, firearms accessories and ammunition manufactured in the state and which remain in the state from most federal firearms laws and regulations,” Carroll wrote. “However, because the act conflicts with federal firearms laws and regulations, federal law supercedes the act and all provisions of the (federal) Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act and their corresponding regulations continue to apply.

This is the kind of thinking and action that almost guarantees another American civil war in the 21st century. The federal government’s many arms already routinely ignore the documents that are supposed to bind them. The federal government is supposed to have control over interstate commerce, not regulation of alcohol, tobacco and firearms. There is no constitutional mandate for stepping into state business. Where does the federal government derive its authority to legislate anything that goes in inside a state’s borders in the first place?

The federal government gets around this by pretending that interstate commerce is somehow tied to how many rounds a pistol magazine should hold or what the maximum percentage of alcohol should be in beer. In order to ensure compliance with the vast array of illegal rules that the feds have created a choking mechanism is needed. In the case of tax compliance the government chokes employers. In the case of weapons compliance the government chokes dealers. Dealers must obtain a Federal Firearms License to operate a successful arms dealership in the U.S. This unconstitutional requirement forces you to sign documents giving up your right to due process and at the same time levies taxes on every weapon you buy or sell. The ATF can search and seize any property you own at any time for any reason and it does so all the time. In fact, the ATF has a reputation for harassing, bullying and intimidating gun dealers.

Over time the arrogance of men and women you’ve never met deciding exactly how much self-defense is acceptable for you, the law abiding citizen, makes a lot of people consider being a little less law abiding. The real point though, is that America would be a better place to live if the feds stopped blundering around stepping on everyone else’s toes all the time. The constant arrogance generate letters like this one:

I am not an FFL holder. I never wanted to put myself at the mercy of your unconstitutional, bully-boy agency whose malfeasances, misfeasances, perjuries and deadly misadventures are legendary. I have observed first hand your agency’s ability to cow FFL holders into not fighting you in court when you violate your own rules. Your agents often push the line of what constitutes statutory compliance with the threat that they will come back with a raid party if the FFL holder doesn’t knuckle under. Having my business, my livelihood, my family’s safety and my life at the whim of brutal thuggery such as exemplified by “Waco Jim” Cavanaugh at the time of the Trader’s Gun Shop raid here in Birmingham, or Jody Keeku’s railroading of David Olofson, never interested me.

Go Google David Olofson. It’s worth your time.Similar Posts:

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But I am writing. I’ve decided to share this response to a weekly discussion question in one of my two current classes: CIS520-T302 Survey of System Development.

Many Internet sources – including the extremely popular Wikipedia – are considered unacceptable for academic work. Discuss your opinions on this matter:

1. Why is Wikipedia considered an inferior source of information?
2. If Wikipedia provided information, are you obligated to give credit to it as a source of information?
3. What other sites fall into the category of “inferior Internet source”?

Wikipedia is considered an inferior source of information because it is non-authoritative. The people submitting the articles may well be professionals but the vetting process at Wikipedia does very little (compared to contemporary encyclopedia publishers) to ensure that information sources are factual. There are numerous well publicized incidents of false information being published to Wikipedia. An interesting article about Wikipedia’s internal politics can be found at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/27/wikipedia.scandal. The converse is that some people would likely call the Guardian a non-authoritative source. In my opinion the quality of fact-checking has decreased across the board in our information society. We live in a sea of junk information. A useful life skill these days is a well developed internal spam/scam filter and a healthy distrust of all information.

If Wikipedia provides information then yes, it is important to give it credit unless Wikipedia itself cites a more authoritative source (and that is generally the case).

Many types of sites fall into the category of inferior Internet source. Most blogs probably fall into this category, in my opinion. Many purported news sites fall into this category as they are run on a shoestring budget. Poor copy editing is most likely a testament to equally poor fact checking. In addition, there are any number of corporate mouthpiece sites, government propaganda sites and shell company special interest sites that I believe fall into the “inferior Internet source” category. All of these are debatable and humanity spends a lot of time arguing about some pretty silly “issues.” Just Google chemtrails if you doubt.

As information sources go, Wikipedia in in the top 25 percent when it comes to reliability. While I accept that there is an institutional bias against it within higher education I still use it on a personal level and often use it to cite more authoritative sources when researching for my college work. There are millions of links from Wikipedia to quality sources of factual information.

If I had time to expand further on this idea I would focus on the premise that one of the most important skills an individual can develop in the early 21st century is a set of good information filters that must be constantly updated with an extreme investment of time and reading.Similar Posts:

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In Portsmouth, New Hampshire recently, a man carried a handgun a few blocks away from the site where President Obama was scheduled to hold a town hall a couple of hours later. Was it a danger or not? The man carrying the gun, William Kostric, even had permission to have the gun on private church property while he was protesting Obama’s appearance. Everybody from the New York Times to USA Today to CBS News expressed their outrage, interpreting it as a hot head threatening the president and linking it to militias and conservative talk radio. A prominent liberal radio talk show host came out saying that conservatives “want Obama to get shot.” New legislation related to this incident is even being proposed in Congress.

Obviously no one wants to see a president even remotely threatened and people need to be sensitive to such things. But worrying over a law-abiding citizen legally carrying a gun several blocks and a couple of hours away from an indoor event that the president will attend is overdoing it.

Before the president’s town hall meeting, an MSNBC host noted: “Apparently there is fairly significant, almost disturbing news, let us know what is happening there in New Hampshire.” A reporter, Ron Allen, breathlessly responded: “There is a man in the crowd who has a gun, a handgun strapped on his lower leg. . . . And I suspect that he won’t be here when the president gets here in a couple of hours time.”

The root issue is that private citizens are not taken seriously. Individuals are viewed as cogs in a machine. The machine is designed to protect the political class even though the political class likes to pretend the machine operates for the benefit of the citizens. I call bullshit. As John Lott points out, the media doesn’t know a damn thing about guns, as a general rule of thumb. The media also like to spread fear memes because those memes are their bread and butter.

What kind of people carry guns? Serious people. What kind of people openly carry guns at a political rally? Thoughtful serious people. What kind of people try to convince everyone else that the people carrying the guns at political rallies represent danger to everyone else? Fearmongers. Alarmists. Non-serious shallow people who prey on the weak minded.

Name a presidential assassination that began with a citizen who was openly carrying for the purpose of both self-defense and political statement while holding a slogan. There are no such incidents and there never will be. The armed individuals we have seen protesting at rallies recently, both pro and anti, represent the bedrock of American liberty. They are the glue that holds society together. They are the balance that we so desperately need in troubled times. I have seen no evidence of an armed individual openly carrying in the last few weeks that demonstrated any irrational behavior on the horizon. I heard no direct threats issue from the mouths of these individuals as the rabble we call the modern press clamored to ask them incendiary leading and insulting questions about their intent and their mental status. In fact, everything I heard sounded well considered and made me wish that the interviewer and the protester would magically switch places for a while.

Self-defense is for everyone, not just people in uniforms. People serious about their own defense carry guns. This basic right – the right to defend one’s own existence from aggressors – is assured in the founding documents of the United States. Serious people do not rent out their own defense or give up their right to exercise it on their own behalf. A million individuals with guns who are not trying to force you into a system you disagree with represent much less of a threat than a few thousand wearing uniforms and acting in concert who don’t care whether or or not you want to participate in the systems they want to impose on your life. We should laud citizens who exercise and reaffirm basic rights.Similar Posts:

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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, recently wrote a thoughtful editorial against the “right” to health care. I personally agree with 90 percent of what he has to say in that article.

Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care-to universal and equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals.  While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer? Health care is a service which we all need at some point in our lives, but just like food, clothing, and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually-beneficial market exchanges rather than through government mandates.  A careful reading of both The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter, because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America.

Even in countries such as Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care.  Rather, citizens in these countries are told by governmental bureaucrats what health care treatments and medicines they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them.  All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce and expensive treatments.  Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million citizens.  At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund on their behalf.  Our Canadian and British team members express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health care more than additional paid time off, larger donations to their retirement plans, or greater food discounts; they want health care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments.  Why would they want such additional health care benefit dollars to spend if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”?  The answer is clear-no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.-or in any other country.

Rather than increase governmental spending and control, what we need to do is address the root causes of disease and poor health.  This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for their own health.  Unfortunately many of our health care problems are self-inflicted with over 2/3 of Americans now overweight and 1/3 obese.  Most of the diseases which are both killing us and making health care so expensive-heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, which account for about 70% of all health care spending, are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal or no alcohol consumption, and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Mackey is correct in thinking that the root causes of disease are what most need to be addressed. He is correct in claiming that there is no intrinsic right to a service provided by other people. Health care will continue to become more expensive until root causes are addressed. I cannot think of a single government managed project that becomes cheaper or more efficient after it has been taken over by government. Is airport security cheaper and more effective now that the federal government runs it? It is a more pleasant experience for travelers? Why will health care be any different? Someone explain that to me.

The irony of the national “dicussion” we are having on this issue is that is isn’t really a discussion. It’s a room full of morons shouting at one another while all the thoughtful voices are drowned out. Mackey’s reward for his thoughtful opinion is that some people are boycotting his company’s stores – that’s freedom in action. Once we have a national health care plan in place being run at the federal level freedom of choice won’t be an option for Americans who don’t want to participate in that plan. That’s my understanding anyway – there is no opt out for Social Security, why would there be one for AmeriHealth or whatever they decide to call this great project. Government will pick the care options instead of Cigna. Government will tell you when the plan limits are reached. Congress will not apply the standards used on voters to themselves. Business as usual except more government offices will sprout in major cities to administer the fine new system.

Basic human rights are a great conceptual vision. When applied by bureaucrats and politicians their luster tends to wear off pretty quickly. Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free is a pipe dream. At least that has been my experience with such matters.

Disclaimer: I get my health care through the Tricare (military government program) because my civilian employer’s program costs three times as much. However, that doesn’t change my viewpoint that government inevitably makes thing operate less efficiently and cost more. The paperwork reduction act, for instance, caused more paperwork. I don’t know how that is possible but it’s true.

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“For a couple hundred years, the Army has been writing doctrine in a particular way, and for a couple months, we have been doing it online in this wiki,” said Col. Charles J. Burnett, the director of the Army’s Battle Command Knowledge System. “The only ones who could write doctrine were the select few. Now, imagine the challenge in accepting that anybody can go on the wiki and make a change — that is a big challenge, culturally.”

In recent years, collaborative projects like the Firefox Internet browser or Wikipedia pages have flourished with the growth of the Internet, showing the power of thousands of contributors pulling together.

Not surprisingly, top-down, centralized institutions have resisted such tools, fearing the loss of control that comes with empowering anyone along the chain of command to contribute.

Yet the Army seems willing to accept some loss of control. Under the three-month pilot program, the current version of each guide can be edited by anyone around the world who has been issued the ID card that allows access to the Army Internet system. About 200 other highly practical field manuals that will be renamed Army Tactics, Techniques and Procedures, or A.T.T.P., will be candidates for wikification.

As is true with Wikipedia, those changes will appear immediately on the site, though there is a team assigned to each manual to review new edits. Unlike Wikipedia, however, there will be no anonymous contributors.

Many in the Army have been suspicious about the idea, questioning if each soldier — specialist or not — should have an equal right to create doctrine, Colonel Burnett said.

“We’ve gotten the whole gamut of responses from black to white,” he said, “ ‘The best thing since sliced bread’ to ‘the craziest idea I have ever heard.’ ”

The colonel said that he was hopeful that by reaching out to the 140,000 members of the Army’s online forums, he would be tapping the kind of people who would be comfortable collaborating on the Web.

“Our motto is, ‘If you ever thought what would I do if the Army let me write doctrine, now is your chance,’ ” he said.

Technology inevitably changes everything. Hopefully, in the Army, that will mean we think on our feet more effectively and value our soldiers more for their minds than we have in the past. Warfighting has never been more of a mental game than it currently is and that trend will only continue.Similar Posts:

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