Thankfully, there is a nice and easy way to fix this. While in the directory for whatever theme you are working on type the following command:
flip -u *.php
You may also want to do this for the style sheet. The code for this would be as follows:
flip -u style.css
It is best to specify which files you want to fix, rather than do a wild card flip (such as flip -u *). Doing a wild card flip could alter the code in files that don’t require changing which could then screw up the code in those files causing you to have a very bad day.

The verdict is due on April 17th.

There were a couple of comments from the day’s proceedings that stuck out for me. They were both from John Kennedy who is the CEO for IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry). I thought that it was interesting that Mr. Kennedy has no idea how the Pirate Bay even works. And yet he knows for a certainty that the Pirate Bay is to blame.

Kennedy was asked if IFPI has taken any action against the actual sharers of the music made available via TPB, as detailed in this case. He said he couldn’t say and didn’t know who these individuals are. He then admitted to not knowing how The Pirate Bay works so the defense lawyers put it to him – if you don’t understand how TPB works, how can you say they are to blame? Again he was pressed why he took no action against the actual sharers but he said he didn’t know and admitted “It’s probably unlikely we took action.”

The other tid-bit I found interesting was the amount of money the IFPI spends on the “War Against Piracy” – £75 million. Which equals US$105 million at the current exchange rate.

This caused me to take a little look into these two industries to see how bad things really were…

I came across a web site called The Big Picture and it had some interesting numbers for music sales for 2008. While, it is true to say that the music industry is losing money, it is not fair to say that the Pirate Bay is the sole cause as Mr. Kennedy would have us believe.

When you look at the data for 2008 it shows that the number of physical units dropped. However, the number of downloaded albums and downloaded singles rose dramatically. Even sales for vinyl albums increased. It is my opinion that the loss in revenue the music industry is experiencing (and has been experiencing for the past several years) has more to do with the fact that their business model is outdated and no longer works than with the fact that music is being downloaded illegally from torrent trackers. People no longer require a physical medium for their music. We listen to music on our iPods, phones, and computers. No disc necessary.

The movie industry is also claiming that they are losing vast amounts of money to the Pirate Bay. This was a bit harder to research since there are so many aspects to movie sales; box office sales, DVD (VHS) purchases, rentals and television.

I did, however, find some articles stating how the movie industry finished up a record year in 2008 for box office sales: Ticket sales for year hit $9.63 billion

Just like the music industry, the movie studios are losing money. However, it is illogical to say that it is completely due to people downloading movies from the Pirate Bay. Once again, we have the problem of a failed business model. We have an industry that is so behind the technical advances of society that they aren’t offering movies in the medium that their customers are demanding. People want to be able to download or rent a movie the same day it comes out in the theaters. Also at issue is the fact that it costs around $100 million dollars to make a movie – MPAA research & statistics. That kind of overhead requires a lot of ticket sales. And with attendance dropping at movie theaters I would think that it would make sense for studios to offer movies in whatever format people want them in.

If the Pirate Bay is such an evil entity destroying both the music and movie industries then I have to ask, “What about the video game industry”? Why aren’t they being represented at this trial? After all, if you can download the as yet unreleased U2 album or the newest box office hit, you can surely get your hands on the latest video game, right? Right. However, the video game industry understands that its customers prefer to be able to download their games rather than crawl out of their parent’s basement and trek to the nearest store. Video game sales continue to increase. In fact, PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicts that the video games market will surpass the music industry by next year. (Video-game sales overtaking music)

There are so many claims being made on our attention these days; video games, Twitter, blogger, MySpace, facebook, reality TV, YouTube, and on and on that the movie and music industries are finding that they have to compete for our attention. After all, even with all of the new technology and gadgets for us to play with, we are still only left with 24 hours in a day.

Today we announced new opportunities for users to play a meaningful role in determining the policies governing our site. We released the first proposals subject to these procedures – The Facebook Principles, a set of values that will guide the development of the service, and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that governs Facebook’s operations. Users will have the opportunity to review, comment and vote on these documents over the coming weeks and, if they are approved, other future policy changes. We’ve posted the documents in separate groups and invite you to offer comments and suggestions. For more information and links to the two groups, check out the Facebook Blog.

I suppose they learned their lesson from the enormous amount of bad press they received from their last policy change.

Here is part of the original summons:

“The Pirate Bay consists of three sub-components: an index portal in the form of a website with search functionality, a database with related directory containing the torrent files, and a tracker feature. The tracker feature creates a ‘peer-to-peer’ network of users who want to share the same file. All components are necessary for the users of the service to share files between them.”

Prosecutor Roswall has removed the last statement; “All components are necessary for the users of the service to share files between them.” It is the opinion of some legal scholars that the removal of this statement may mean that the prosecution doesn’t believe that they can make all three of the above mentioned points stick.

Day 7 of the Pirate Bay trial was a short one. After only two hours of testimony the court decided to quit for the day. Most likely this was due to the incredibly inept testimony given by a couple of the witnesses for the prosecution. So far the only “evidence” being brought forth are copies of some screenshots of some downloaded .torrent files.

Magnus Mårtensson, who is a lawyer for the IFPI was first up to testify about his evidence gathering procedure. Here is a bit of the questioning by Gottfrid Svartholm for the defense:

Gottfrid: Before taking the screenshot, did you turn off DHT and Peer Exchange?

Mårtensson: DHT was obviously on. I wanted to be like an average user.

Gottfrid: So in other words, you can’t check if the tracker was used?

Mårtensson: The tracker address was visible on the screen. From that I assumed it was used in some way.

Gottfrid: But since you had DHT on, you have no possibility to state to the court as to whether The Pirate Bay’s tracker was actually used or not?

Mårtensson: No.

The prosecution called another witness who was then similarly shot down by the defense and then that was that. Please visit torrentfreak.com for more details.

Here is a short timeline, highligting some of the events that have occurred up to the trial:

• May of 2006 – Swedish police raid the Pirate Bay.org and confiscate its servers along with all of the other servers being hosted by the same ISP. Even though, many of the servers had no involvement with the Pirate Bay.
• December of 2007 – Police wrap up their investigation into the torrent tracker’s alleged copyright infringement. Over 4,000 pages of legal documents are filed.
• January of 2008 – Swedish prosecutor, Håkan Roswall, announces the names of the individuals being charged; Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundström. The plaintiffs in the case include Warner Bros., Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.
• February of 2008 – Swedish courts order the Tele2 ISP to block users’ access to the large bit torrent tracker, the Pirate Bay. This move backfires as Danish traffic to the Pirate Bay increases 12%.
• August of 2008 – The International Olympic Committee asks the Swedish government to stop the file-sharing website from spreading illegal copies of the Olympic ceremonies. The government responds that they cannot look into individual cases. The Pirate Bay changes its name to the Beijing Bay. Also in August, a judge in Italy orders the Italian ISP’s to block access to the Pirate Bay.
• November of 2008 – The Pirate Bay celebrates its 5th birthday. Despite a major lawsuit and looming trial, files continue to be shared on the tracker. Its popularity also increases reaching the 25 million peers mark.

The trial officially got underway on February 16, 2009 and is being held in Sweden where proceedings are quite different than here in the states. Rather than having a jury present, there are five judges. Four of these judges may be anyone and a legal background is not necessary. The fifth judge is an actual judge and can decide the case in the event of a tie. At least this is what I have been able to gather without doing any real research.

I have attempted to put together a summary for each day listing some of the more interesting events.

Day 1 (2.16.2009): This was a bit of a weird start. The Pirate Bay founders are not actually being charged with copyright infringement, but rather the charges are “assisting in and preparing to committing copyright infringement.” The defendants plead not guilty. The entertainment industry is seeking $13 million in damages. Among other oddities; Roswall was unable to start a PowerPoint presentation, got his megabytes and megabits confused, and seats in the courtroom were being scalped for $60.

Day 2 (2.17.2009): If day one was weird than day 2 can only be described as bizarre. The prosecution, unable to prove that illegal files were transferred through the site was forced to drop half of the charges against the Pirate Bay. This leaves the lesser charge of “assisting making available copyrighted content”. Anything having to do with reproducing content has been dropped.

Day 3 (2.18.2009): The prosecution outlined their formula for figuring out the amount of damages. Without going into gory detail, they basically claim that they should get more for the Beatles Let It Be because it was never released in a downloadable format. Likewise for any material made available before the official release. The best part of this day is what is being coined as the King Kong Defense:

“EU directive 2000/31/EG says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong,” Samuelsson told the court.

“According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia,” the lawyer added.

And on that note, the court decided to adjourn for the day.

Day 4 (2.19.2009): Much time was spent by the prosecuting attorneys in attempting to establish who was in charge of the Pirate Bay web site. Apparently, no one and everyone is. The only bit of excitement on this day was when Monique Wadsted, lawyer for the movie industry, decided to introduce brand new evidence. Apparently, this maneuver was not appreciated by the Swedish courts or the defense. A little side-note; Monique Wadsted has also represented the Church of Scientology in another copyright case.

Day 5 (2.20.2009): This day followed much of the theme of the previous day with the prosecution trying to understand the loose structure that is the Pirate Bay. Once again, the prosecution attempted to bring in new evidence and was, once again, slapped by the court.

So far, this trial has been nothing but one bungle after the other as the prosecution trips over their apparent lack of technological knowledge. The fact that none of them still has any clue as to what a tracker is or does is truly amazing.

The trial adjourned for the weekend, Monday was a scheduled day off and the fun resumes Tuesday.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

Power to the people.

Tid-Bit #1: You can’t delete your account. There is a deactivate account option, but all of your information is still there. Go ahead and try it – deactivate your account, then reactivate it. It’s like you never left. Spooky. In fact, Facebook has done some slight altering to their Terms of Service. How many of you actually took the time to read the TOS? You may find this interesting:

Tid-Bit #2: Even if you quit using the service Facebook retains the rights to everything you have ever uploaded:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Upon discovering that my account will live on for eternity, I decided to go through the Privacy Settings. There are actually quite a few of these and I would highly recommend that everyone spend a few minutes going through all of them.

Tid-Bit #3: Nick O’Neill has an excellent tutorial set up at AllFacebook: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. I found number 3 to be especially important – “Remove Yourself From Google”.

Tid-Bit #4: Another site with some good information is Facebook Privacy Watch.

Of course, the obvious method of protecting your privacy is to never sign up for the thing in the first place. But for the masses who have already done so, myself included, you should at least do whatever you can to make sure that only the people that you want to see your information, can. I have actually gone through the Privacy Settings a few times now. It’s actually the most time I have ever spent on the site. But each time I managed to find some new checkbox or drop-down menu.

Tid-Bit #5: Any pictures that you upload to Facebook can find their way to everyone on the Internet. Even if your photo albums are set to be viewed only by your friends, you have no control over what your friends do with these photos. All someone has to do is right-click on a photo, save it or copy the link and send it off to whomever they please.

I recently conducted a Google search to see if I could find myself in any type of relationship with Facebook. I am happy to say that I came up emtpy handed.

The WordPress Forums are full of questions with people having various problems with the new Image Uploader. They range from permissions, missing files and Flash 10 incompatibility. None of which solved my problem.

I was finally able to solve this issue by disabling all of the plug-ins. After disabling all of the plug-ins I uploaded an image and the radio buttons were working perfectly. I reactivated my plug-ins one by one rechecking that the Image Uploader was working after each plug-in was reactivated. By this process of elimination I was able to find my culprit; podPress 8.8 by Dan Kuykendall. Since I am not even using this particular plug-in, I just left it deactivated.

This issue was making me absolutely crazy, so I hope this helps anyone else out.