Steam vs. Fedora 18

(Yes, this is a boring technical post. :)

I recently installed Steam on Fedora 18, as the post title implies.

The instructions from sten's ask.fedora post work magnificently...until it tells me that I'm not online:

Fatal Error: Steam needs to be online to update. Please confirm your network connect.

There are a number of awkward fixes like changing a config file that doesn't exist and simply reloading a dozen times. None worked for me, though, so I kept digging until I found Aleksandar30's post that details a snafu in Steam's server configuration in the 1.0.0.39 package Steam was linking to when I wrote this.

I haven't tried removing the /etc/hosts line since the Steam client updated.

Research and Sequestration

On a political note, I thought I'd ask:

If we're so strapped for cash that we're cutting all sorts of research funding and sending IRS employees home and cutting military spending and clogging up airports, why isn't the NSA et. al feeling the burn? Complete capture intelligence is expensive.