Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Very Inconvenient Yahoo Mail Outage

I hear Yahoo! and other major websites were hit with a DDoS attack over the weekend, resulting in several outages across their web services. It's been 48 hours now since I was last able to access web mail from Yahoo!. Being a premium member, that means I can't get my business mail through POP3/SMTP either. But thank God for alternative [free] mail services - I pity anyone that depended solely on Yahoo! for their mail needs.
Unfortunately, an event like this is all it takes to pull the plug on my accounts there. I know their IT team is frivolously working to resolve the problem, but 2 days is too long for some of us to handle. Worst still, there's no public statement about the problem, sometimes causing users to question their connections or wonder if they are being blocked somewhere. Luckily, IM still works.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Lyrics for "Amen" by Luciano

This is a Christian reggae song, based on an old Pentecostal chorus. This rendition is done by Luciano on his Great Controversy (2001) CD - a very good listen indeed. Between me and a friend, he's what we think are the words to this song - because of the artists' accents and rhythm of the song, some areas are still unclear. If you are Facebook, I have this file in my files that you can listen to ... perhaps you can correct us:

[1-4] hallelujah! (echo) jah is nigh .. [ad lib]

amen (let me hear you say)
amen (let me hear you now)
amen, amen, amen! (let me hear you now)
selah (let me hear you say)
selah (let me hear u say)
selah, selah, selah!

he who has eyes then let him see
in this time of prophesy
the hearts of the bad poise a threat to the victory
and i know it's not to be

he who has ears then let him hear
comin' of jah kingdom is very near
what a man sow when he sow shall he reap
so i'll give jah my soul to keep

let me sing again ...
amen (everybody sing)
amen (let me hear u say)
amen, amen, amen! (let me hear you now)
selah (everybody sing)
selah (let me hear u say)
selah, selah, selah!

woe be onto mankind
who deny the mastermind
peace on earth only few men find
in this revelation time

people you've been living wrong
far from the foundation
seek ye now the only one
and you'll find true salvation ... yea

amen (let me hear u say)
amen (let me hear u say)
amen, amen, amen! (let me hear you now)
selah (let me hear u sing)
selah (let me hear u say)
selah, selah, selah!

[instrumental] - 8 measures

he who has eyes then let them see
fullfilment of prophesy
hearts of the bad threaten sweep of the victory
and i know it's not to be

he who has ears then let him hear
risin' up the kingdom is very near
what a man sow when he sow shall he reap
that's why i give jah my soul to keep it ... yea

[chorus x2 + fade]

The song feels like 85bpm (though I didn't really test it). It is reggae style, perhaps more contemporary than most (especially on the bass). The artists (we think there's two because of the seemingly different accents and tones of voice) flow perfectly. Theologically, the message is biblically correct (based on excerpts from the books of Revelation and Matthew).
The word Selah is an old Hebrew word whose meaning is well explained on this website.