title: pip issue installing almost any library
body: <p>I have a difficult time using pip to install almost anything. I'm new to coding, so I thought maybe this is something I've been doing wrong and have opted out to easy_install to get most of what I needed done, which has generally worked. However, now I'm trying to download the nltk library, and neither is getting the job done.</p>
  
  <p>I tried entering</p>
  
  <pre><code>sudo pip install nltk
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but got the following response:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/pip run on Sat May  4 00:15:38 2013
  Downloading/unpacking nltk
  
    Getting page https://pypi.python.org/simple/nltk/
    Could not fetch URL [need more reputation to post link]: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: &lt;urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm&gt;
  
    Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link]/simple/nltk/ when looking for download links for nltk
  
    Getting page [need more reputation to post link]/simple/
    Could not fetch URL https://pypi.python. org/simple/: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: &lt;urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm&gt;
  
    Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link] when looking for download links for nltk
  
    Cannot fetch index base URL [need more reputation to post link]
  
    URLs to search for versions for nltk:
    * [need more reputation to post link]
    Getting page [need more reputation to post link]
    Could not fetch URL [need more reputation to post link]: There was a problem confirming the ssl certificate: &lt;urlopen error [Errno 1] _ssl.c:504: error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:ASN1_verify:unknown message digest algorithm&gt;
  
    Will skip URL [need more reputation to post link] when looking for download links for nltk
  
    Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement nltk
  
  No distributions at all found for nltk
  
  Exception information:
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/basecommand.py", line 139, in main
      status = self.run(options, args)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/commands/install.py", line 266, in run
      requirement_set.prepare_files(finder, force_root_egg_info=self.bundle, bundle=self.bundle)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/req.py", line 1026, in prepare_files
      url = finder.find_requirement(req_to_install, upgrade=self.upgrade)
    File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.3.1-py2.7.egg/pip/index.py", line 171, in find_requirement
      raise DistributionNotFound('No distributions at all found for %s' % req)
  DistributionNotFound: No distributions at all found for nltk
  
  --easy_install installed fragments of the library and the code ran into trouble very quickly upon trying to run it.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any thoughts on this issue? I'd really appreciate some feedback on how I can either get pip working or something to get around the issue in the meantime.</p>