The Sun Chronicle would love for you to read their web site. You can also pick up it’s paper in and around Attleboro, Massachusetts – but if you aren’t a local and you want to read their content, you’ll have to go to their web site.

While reading a newspaper is somewhat of an isolated experience, reading an online newspaper can be incredibly interactive allowing you to comment on local politics, national issues, and all sorts of fun stuff.

The Sun Chronicle would love for you to comment on its offerings, too. And if you’d like to, that will cost you 99 cents, please – oh, and those cute little pseudonyms that you hide behind?

Yeah, forget about that.

On July 4th, the Sun Chronicle posted its new policy for the ability to comment on its site, participate in discussions and discourse, and spout one’s opinions in general. You can read the full policy located here, but you can see a bit of what they’re going for in the following snippet:

…all posters will be required to register their name, address, phone number and a legitimate credit card number.

The credit card will be charged a one-time fee of 99 cents to activate the account.

The poster’s name as it appears on the credit card will automatically be attached to the poster’s comments, as will the name of the community in which they live. Registrants will also be required to acknowledge they understand that under existing state and federal laws they are legally responsible for any comments they post. Registration under the new policy will begin at noon Wednesday.

It’s no secret that commenting and forums on the Internet still operate a bit like the wild west with Moderators racing around like Wyatt Earp to maintain some semblance of control, with a plethora of anonymous folks who seem to develop the inability to put a break on their expounding when a keyboard and a cutesy name is hides who they really are.

Lest you think that this approach of stripping anonymity from Commentators is the province of a small local paper, the company Blizzard Entertainment (who runs this little game you may have heard of, World of Warcraft) caused a firestorm of attacks and criticism the same week when it announced its intention to identify all forum posters with their real identities and not anonymous pseudonyms or character names.

“Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before,” the post continued.

As Facebook gets everyone used to being “open” about everything they write (though, as Failbook proves, identification with your “real self” doesn’t necessarily translate into less stupidity), is this the next wave of internet communities?

Would you pay to post or comment on a blog, or would you pass it by? Would you comment on blogs or forums if they required you to take ownership of your words?

How about your own sites – would you charge your visitors or require them to identify themselves in the hopes that comments and discussions would be calmer, and spammers would be stopped at the gate?

And if you forget who’s lurking out there, visit this slideshow entitled “It Takes a Village Idiot: The Jerks of Online Forums” from PCWorld. It’s at least good for a chuckle.

Visual Economics is this really cool web site that takes complex data and turns it into nifty pictures so that the rest of us can comprehend all the numbers that the eggheads spew out.

They have some really neat ones like:

• Cost & Effects of The BP Oil Spill
• Censorship: China Versus the World

and this week, they made one about how the world spends their time online.

Someone asked us why we do articles occasionally on social media like Twitter and Facebook when we’re a web hosting company and social media is seemingly unrelated  to or, at worst, a competitor to traditional web sites that present information to an audience.

That premise ignores the fact that social media is not a replacement for current media, and web sites are still not only relevant but necessarily. You can have a web site without social media, but you are definitely at a disadvantage if you have a website without a corresponding social media presence as well.

If you’re still wondering why we’re so adamant that you get on the social media bandwagon if you have a brand, take a look at what the world is doing with their time and decide if your “brand” can afford to disconnect with people for the portion of their Internet hours listed below.

On Monday evening, the Texas Stars lost their bid for the Calder Cup and hockey in North America is now officially over, as Texas and Hershey were literally the last two teams playing the awesome winter sport. In June. In Texas, no less.

The Texas Stars may have lost, but to cheer me up, I have prizes to give out because win or lose, ya’ll get some stuff.

For each game the Texas Stars win in the Calder Cup Playoffs against Hershey, we’re going to give away a $33 Kiva gift certificate that you can lend to an entrepreneur in a developing country (or you can be greedy and cash it out).

For each point the Texas Stars score, cumulative across all games (whether that’s 4, 5, 6, or 7) we will draw one name for each single goal scored, and credit that client’s account for $33.

For every goal that Matt Climie (or any other Texas Stars goaltender) stops during the Calder Cup Playoffs, we will draw one grand prize winner’s name and for every puck turned back, you’ll get a $1 credit. And we’ll send you a Texas Stars puck, too.

So, here’s how it all wrapped up:

They won 2 games, and the winners of those certificates are: Scott Cover and Donna Sullivan

11 Total Points Were Scored, and the recipients of the $33 Credits are: Imagine Green Bloomington, Chris Ramstedt, Temple of the Nine Wells, Grady Smithey, Irena Hesterman, Chosun Academy, LAD Engineering, River Valley Security, Alternative Building Services, Ross Rooke, and NLG Military Law Task Force.

The $172 Grand Prize Credit (and the puck) go to: Margaret A Denny.

Congrats to everyone!

Well, it started out well. So, here’s where we are so far.

If you’ll recall in this post, we decided to run the following contest-ish type giveaways:

For each game the Texas Stars win in the Calder Cup Playoffs against Hershey, we’re going to give away a $33 Kiva gift certificate that you can lend to an entrepreneur in a developing country (or you can be greedy and cash it out).

For each point the Texas Stars score, cumulative across all games (whether that’s 4, 5, 6, or 7) we will draw one name for each single goal scored, and credit that client’s account for $33.

For every goal that Matt Climie (or any other Texas Stars goaltender) stops during the Calder Cup Playoffs, we will draw one grand prize winner’s name and for every puck turned back, you’ll get a $1 credit. (Hint – Matt Climie stopped 41 shots in Game 7, and 51 shots in Game 6 alone, so you can do the math.) And we’ll send you a Texas Stars puck, too.

So, here’s how it’s looking:

Which leaves us currently with:

1. 2 $33.00 Kiva Certificates
2. 10 $33 Credits
3. 1 $99.00 Credit

as it stands now. The Calder Cup goes to the first team to win 4 games, so there will be at least two more games, possibly 3 more, giving these prizes a few more days to rack up.

For Mother’s Day, my husband and son presented me with the gift that you see to the right.

Yep, it’s a hockey stick.

Those of you that have hosted here for years and who have noticed that Jen always works on Superbowl Sundays may wonder why on earth my darling husband and son would choose to present the decidedly non-sportsfan DrakNet owner (moi) with a hockey stick as a Mothers Day present.

How Hockey Took Over My Life

As some folks are aware, and some folks aren’t, my child was born with a Congenital Heart Defect. Admittedly, he got some cool things out of it like when Make a Wish sent him to meet Stephen Colbert, and he’s gotten some not so cool things out of it, like two open heart surgeries.

Open Heart Surgeries, in case you’re wondering? Just as expensive as you would assume. They’re twice as expensive for two small business owners who can’t get very good insurance because private insurance companies don’t really rush to sign up someone that could have open heart surgeries. Eventually, we realized one of us would have to enter corporate servitude in trade for employee health coverage. He lost the coin toss. (Actually, I make more money than he did teaching martial arts – all those broken boards cost a lot, you know.)

So, he went into private security – because being able to disable a man with your pinky is a really handy skill to have in security.

Eventually, he wound up working for the Cedar Park Center, home of the Texas Stars, the AHL affiliate of the Dallas Stars. Now, when he first got the job, I told everyone he worked at the Cedar Park Center because that’s basically all I knew. I knew I voted on some bond package at some point and from that passing we got an arena to have concerts and oh, right, some sports team was going to be there, too. I kept this misconception through the Company Christmas Party for families when I suddenly realized this hockey thing? This was, like, a big deal.

That’s second picture is me and my kid at the Cedar Park Center flanked by some Texas Stars at the ice skating Christmas Party. Before I ever saw a game of hockey, ever knew much about hockey (that’s the sport with the ice and the puck, right?), I skated with the Texas Stars.

Ok, that’s also me clinging desperately to the wall, so “skated” might be pushing it. That day, I met two players that stuck out in my mind – Landon Wilson, and Matt Climie.

Matt, aside from being positively adorable, skated up with the others and offered to pose for the picture to the right, at first gesturing me to move about 3 feet over so everyone could pose then, after gazing at my white knuckled hand clutching the wall, smiled and said “You know what? How about you stay there and we’ll move there?” The gesture utterly charmed me because, let’s face it, I was the most pathetic thing ever to hit that arena ice and somewhere inside, he had to be snickering.

Landon is Team Captain, and he utterly charmed me by being totally open, friendly, and talking to my kid for quite a while. I can’t say enough about Landon Wilson, who I learned afterwards is one of the most selfless, consistently giving role models I’ve ever had the honor to meet. My husband often says Landon is “a man among men”, and he really is.

After I left, I talked about how adorable the players kids were, how nice they were, what a great company it seemed he worked for, and how surprised I was that the Arena really was all about the hockey – though we have lots of other cool stuff coming through, too.

And so I, who have had an aversion to professional sports and certainly never thought I would be a sports fan, began reading about “our guys”. It began as a personal thing – this guy had such a cute new baby, this guy’s wife was so nice. Then it was curiosity – ok, let’s go see the guys play a game. I’m curious.

By the First Period, I was out of there

The first game, I hated it. It was loud, people were yelling, that damn scoring horn seemed like it would split my head open, and a drunk woman crossed in front of me and spilled a full drink right in my lap. I left the Arena, family in tow, swearing I would never, ever, ever set foot in that place when there was a hockey game going on. I didn’t want to know from hockey. What a crazy place to be, go pay money to yell and scream. Pfeh. Not for me.

In a sports town, when your husband works for a sports team, people think you’re kinda cool

But living here, it got to me – people were impressed that my husband worked for the Texas Stars. They asked me questions and I would tell the story of taking a full hour to skate around the arena and Matt’s joke about my staying where I was, and people were impressed. Modest though I try to be, I am still a CEO. We do have a certain amount of ego, generally. A little. And I was impressed that people were astounded and impressed that I “skated” with AHL hockey players. Their excitement made me feel I might have missed something.

So, I gave it another try. I took pre-emptive Excedrin, guarded my seat from drunken women bearing beers, and I started going to games and reading about hockey. And somewhere along the line, I started to understand what the crease was, why that guy being in our crease was bad and why that really nice guy I met at the Christmas Party with the adorable toddler was compelled by some unwritten rules to smash the opposing team’s crease-crosser dude in the face for his impertinence. (This crease thing is all kinds of serious.)

I started out with a personal investment (it’s my husband’s company, I met these guys) and turned that personal interest into a hockey obsession after having almost given it up because at first, I just couldn’t find what I could understand and did like about it all. I only concentrated on the things I didn’t like and was ready to chuck the whole thing.

And so that’s how I wound up with the hockey stick. It’s not just any hockey stick – it’s Matt Climie’s used hockey stick. Signed. How cool is that?

So, what does this have to do with web hosting, exactly?

Actually, not a thing. I just wanted to show off my signed hockey stick. Ok, ok, I’m kidding.

Some of the things I hear over and over again when talking to clients both totally new and veterans who have been here for many years are variations of the following themes:

1. I can’t do it.
2. I’m just too old to understand all this new-fangled technology.
3. I installed the software and I looked at it and it was just way too hard for me.

And I am continually amazed at how people just give up understanding their web hosting account because they assume that it’s so complex, so involved, and would take such an amazing amount of time to learn and it all seems so overwhelming that they just quit. They give up their side business or they nuke their blog or they pay someone astronomical amounts of money to have someone FTP files up.

Never assume that this technology is too complicated, or that you will never figure it out, or that you can’t do it, or that you’re too old and you never did it before so you certainly can’t do it now. I have 90 year old customers that learned WordPress. So can you.

Take one small thing and learn it. Don’t set out to “Learn CSS” in one day. Learn one thing about CSS. Then another thing the following day. Take one small part of what you are looking to become familiar with it, and learn why it works the way it does, how it works the way it does, and then build up from that one single thing you learned. In a bit of time, you’ll be surprised to learn you know a lot. Giving up on something your very first time, the very first moment you feel frustrated and overwhelmed is the absolute only way you will guarantee that you will never get it, and will never understand it.

And?

And I wanted to show off my signed hockey stick.

The Linux operating system has come a long way in a short period of time, working its way up from a mere curiosity to a real player on the world stage. As more and more businesses embrace the power of Linux and explore what this open source operating system can do, it’s interesting to look back and see where its been, and the struggle it (along with many other open source software) has in front of it.

The History of Linux

The history of the Linux operating system dates all the way back to 1991, a short time span on the world stage but an eternity in the world of technology. It is often difficult to remember just how primitive computer technology was just a few decades ago, but consider this – at the beginning of the 90’s, DOS was still the preeminent operating system, and the GUI interface we know today was still pretty much a rarity. Users who wanted a friendly interface could turn to Apple, but the high prices of those machines generally put them out of reach of business owners and all but the wealthiest individual users.

While Bill Gates was busy working with the version of DOS he had purchased for the princely sum of $50,000, other computer enthusiasts were plugging away at an alternative computing platform. The enthusiasts of Unixworld were working on their own computer systems, but Unix itself was quite a pricey option, and not a viable one for the business community. Unix was instead the playground of computer science majors, and the source code behind the operating system was (at the time) a closely guarded secret.

One of the first forays into the world of the open source operating system was MINIX, an operating system that was written from the ground up by Professor Andrew Tanenbaum as a way to teach his students the inner workings of a computer operating system. While MINIX was not an exceptional operating system, it was unique in that its source code was freely available, allowing students and computer enthusiasts to explore how the system worked. This open source approach also allows students to tinker with the program and instantly see the results of their changes.

One of the students who enjoyed tinkering with the open source MINIX operating system was Linus Torvalds, who would later become the father of the Linux operating system. At the time Torvalds was a 21 year old student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. But even at that young age, Torvalds loved to explore the inner workings of computer systems, pushing them to their limits to see what would happen.

Another project that played a big role in the development of open source software in general, and Linux in particular, was the GNU project. Proponents of the GNU system argued that software should be freely available, and they were working to make their vision a reality. Those in the GNU camp felt that by making the source code freely available, computer enthusiasts could constantly tweak that software to make it better and more user friendly.

As the work went on more and more people jumped onto the open source bandwagon. Powered by the many newly developed programs from the GNU system, the Linux operating system Torvalds had created became more robust and much more powerful for business users.

What had begun as a mere side project had become a viable operating system alternative, making even major players like Microsoft sit up and take notice.

And Modern Confusion

Today the Linux operating system is a real threat the dominance of proprietary systems as many companies discover how stable, reliable, and easy to work with Linux systems really are. So much so that it seems the big boys are getting a little nervous.

In February, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella group for organizations including the MPAA and RIAA, requested the Office of the United States Trade Representative  consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its “Special 301 watchlist” just because they use open source software.

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 created the Special 301 mechanism. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issues an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” in many countries around the world. If countries make it on the Watch List, it means that they appear to not be respecting copyright rights, and the IIPA appears to feel that using open source software and recommending people use open source software is enough for a country to get itself designated as a bastion of piracy.

While this is clearly a political move designed to keep the coffers of expensive software companies full of gold, it shows the attempts at the top to create confusion and fear around open source software – which can trickle down to the masses.

In 2008, Linux Austinite folks watched in something akin to horror as an Austin Independent School District Teacher made the national Linux blogosphere news for confiscating Linux CD’s from her student in an unnamed middle school in Austin, Texas and firing off a letter to the founder of a non-profit attacking him for “falsehoods” because “no software is free” and she believed spreading that “misconception” is “harmful” to the kids.

Austin’s nickname is “The Silicon Hills” due to our being the home of many development, manufacturing, and office centers for many technology corporations, including 3M, Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard, Google, AMD, Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, Cisco Systems, eBay/PayPal, Hoover’s, Intel Corporation, National Instruments, Samsung Group, Silicon Laboratories, Sun Microsystems and United Devices. Our Governor, Rick Perry, has offered 1.4 Million in incentives if Facebook will come here and set up shop. (We’ve been kinda depressed after Google broke up with us after only four months.)

Needless to say, Austinites tech view of themselves did not account for an exchange like this taking place in one of our schools, nor did we ever think we would read an Austin teacher write the following words to HeliOS‘s project founder, Ken Starks:

…observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.
This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them…”
Karen xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxx Middle School
AISD

The “attempts at getting computers into the hands of disadvantaged children” would be a reference to the HeliOS Initiative, an Austin non-profit that refurbishes old computers and gives them to kids that can’t afford it (which Mr. Stark co-founded). You can read Ken’s (seriously annoyed) response to the teacher on his blog here:

http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html

It is a case in point for the type of misinformation there is out there about Linux. Many of our own clients seem to not know that the operating system the server runs on (CentOS) is open source and “free”. The web server the sites run on, Apache, is open source and “free”. The Courier Mail Server, Pure-FTP server and on and on.

The WordPress Software you use on your sites is open source. So’s Joomla. So’s Drupal. Apache, the open source web server, still runs more web sites than any other software (Netcraft Web Server Survey, Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains August 1995 – February 2010).

So, if you think the history of Linux and the open source movement, and the attacks on it, are something that doesn’t concern you, we hope this article will help you think again.

Everyone at DrakNet loves animals.

Between all the staff, we could probably open up a zoo and have at least 6-8 species represented – of course, the animals would consider that “work” and none of them would agree to do it because all of our pets universally seem to think that work is something we do on their behalf while they whine directions.

We should introduce them to this octopus so they know how good they have it.

This industrious little guy has widely made the rounds and you probably have seen him already, but in case you haven’t, we wanted to show him off. He’s so impressive we felt he deserved his very own Friday Funny post.

The octopus below goes through a variety of levels of constructing his home from coconut shells, including a vastly amusing hike across the ocean floor while carrying one coconut shell to his other coconut shell. At the end, he gets a bit camera shy (or thinks he could incorporate a video camera into the living room, we’re not completely sure), but the full video is something that we guarantee will make you smile.

While the video is adorable, it also represented the first case of tool use – sophisticated behavior generally limited to mammals and birds – in an invertebrate, and the series of actions are among the most complex ever recorded in an octopus.

For more information about the video and the discovery, see the following articles:

• Tool Use in Veined Octopus
• Coconut-Carrying Octopus: First Evidence Of Tool Use In Invertebrate, Researcher ‘Gobsmacked’
• Tool Use Found in Octopuses

We had a heck of a busy week this week-we upgraded, we downgraded, we studiously tried to avoid downtown Austin and the SXSW Traffic Jams… it was definitely a stressful week. Just a little.

In between to decompress, we laugh at the Interwebs. Here’s some of our favorite funny sites.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/ (Safe for Work) – since Jen is owned by 8 cats, LOLCats are still one of her top funnies. Thomas and Janice would like to point out that they also have cats – just not nearly as many as Jen.

http://www.wowbash.com/ (Safe for Work) is one of Janice’s favorites. This may only be amusing to WoW players because when Jen was getting suggestions for this article and Janice provided this link, Jen asked “What the **** is WoWbash?”

http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com (Safe for Work) – “Clients From Hell” is a worthy read for anyone who has been a designer or developer for someone else. A collection of funny or *headdesk* anecdotes from designers and developers as they take on the most technology-challenged clients.

http://www.fark.com/ (Safe for Work) – Janice says “just reading the snarky headlines at fark.com…hi-larious”.

http://skippyslist.com/ (Safe for Work) – from “The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army” to a full blown blog, Skippy’s List continues to make us giggle. (Disclaimer: “Skippy” is actually married to DrakNet’s Janice, so we kinda have to put him here or he’ll send Zombies after us.)

http://itmademyday.com/ (Safe for Work) – Little Moments of win. If you don’t like to be cheered up as people tell you about something that made their day, there is conversely http://www.fmylife.com/, your every day life unfortunate moments and other fail funny stories.

http://failblog.org/ (Safe for Work; NSFW warnings) – Thomas loves the every day life unfortunate moments and other funny fails of Failblog. Kind of like FmyLife, only these are caught on camera and the people caught probably didn’t want the video or picture on the Internet on a blog called “Fail”.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/ (NSFW with Audio) – the original is still the funniest.

What are your favorite sites on the Net that make you laugh? Let us know in the comments! (Really – we think Thomas needs more funny in his life because he could hardly come up with any!)

The Infrastructure Manager at Liquid Web Inc. Chris Strandt is a pretty cool guy. As a client that leases servers, we really don’t have any reason to talk to the Infrastructure Manager at our data center much, but our data center is no ordinary data center and when we had some questions, we got a meeting with him and got to hear all about the innards of the DC. We even followed a good half of what the Brainiac from Smartron was telling us.

But this isn’t about the infrastructure at Liquid Web, and its supposed to be about the funny. So, let’s get to the funny.

One of the reasons we actually like our DC is that we actually genuinely like the people there. Despite having just communicated via the Net in both official and unofficial capacities, we actually formed pretty cool net relationships with a number of them and they really make us laugh our rears off.

Since most hosts actually don’t have data centers and lease boxes or space with hosts that do have their own data centers but generally hide this fact or at least play it down an awful lot, lots of folks can’t understand why we “play it up”, so to speak.

If we didn’t, we couldn’t bring you this:

Chris Strandt was going on vacation, and before he went, he played a prank on the Maintenance Department at Liquid Web. He tinfoiled their office, and videotaped his handiwork.

Chris then happily went off on vacation, no doubt snickering at his creativity. He forgot the first rule of office pranks – never play one on the guys that know construction.

The Maintenance Team retaliated – by making his office disappear.

I’m giving this one to the Maintenance Team – Chris’s was good, but theirs was epic.

For more Work Fails and Job LOLs, check out http://mthruf.com/ – no doubt Liquid Web staff will be appearing there soon.

Thanks for keeping up with our blog – we decided to add a new feature here at the DrakNet Blog, so we can take a break from teaching, technologizing (yes, I made up that word, too), and periodically lecturing.

Each Friday, we’ll give you a round up of what we read or discovered or watched or came across or laughed at or used over the course of the week that was interesting, funny, worth mentioning or just plain weird – with our commentary.

Maybe sometimes without commentary. Who knows.

We’ll see how it goes!

The Round Up

Greenpeace’s Hosting: Not ‘Truly Green’ (datacenterknowledge.com)

After Greenpeace bashed Facebook for not being green enough, it was discovered Greenpeace’s hosting isn’t really green enough either, and definitely touched off a debate on what is “green enough” to be considered green. As a host that hosts in a “non-green” data center, but who buys copious amounts of solar energy to offset our grid, this is definitely a subject we tend to watch pretty closely. (MOST “green hosts” green via offsets – there are very, very few truly renewable energy powered data centers at this point, though the fact that this is getting press is hopefully an indication that will eventually change.)

U.S. Declassifies Part of Secret Cybersecurity Plan (Wired)

The fact that the declassification announcement was made by Howard A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft security executive, admittedly made us snicker, but the article and the report were an interesting read.

48 Hours Mystery: West Memphis Three (CBS)

We watched the 48 Hours episode of The West Memphis Three case, a case that we’ve been following for… oh, gosh, it seems like years now. Years longer than we thought we’d be following it. You can watch the full episode online.

Books Should Be Free (booksshouldbefree.com)

We discovered a place to get completely free audiobooks. Rock! All audio books on BooksShouldBeFree.com are in the public domain. This means that no one holds a copy right on these books and therefore anyone including BooksShouldBeFree.com is free to distribute them.

Viacom Ticks Everyone Off by Yanking Comedy Central Shows from Hulu (NoFactZone)

We joined the pre-eminent Stephen Colbert fan site (that we host and read) in being massively pissed about losing The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Hulu

Same-Sex Marriage Becomes Legal in D.C. (Time)

We watched as yet another location made marriage equal for everyone. Congrats to all the new legal couples in D.C.!

Free Online Image Converter (coolutils.com)

We’re totally in the dark ages when it comes to graphic programs – we’re still using, no kidding, Paint Shop Pro 5 from back when they were still Jasc and Corel hadn’t even bought ‘em yet. It’s so old, the thing can’t even open most modern PNG files, and it sure can’t make ‘em. Luckily, we found a cool awesome image converter online that can take a 4 Meg GIF and make it into a 7kb PNG.  

So, what did you find on the Internet this week that was cool, funny, or just plain weird?