Sunday, December 21, 2008

Old news

Quite some time ago I was reading an article online that ticked me off. In an effort to express my agrivation, I wrote my own article reporting on it the way that I do.


Palo Alto Daily News
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Page 17

Niggers Trade Genitals for Crack, Scientists' Get Good Laugh

By Lauren Neergard

Associated Press

In a recent dual study on poverty on Africa, scientists offer impoverished natives $5 (a large amount of money in many areas) in return for their genitals. Many of the Jungle Bunnies claimed they had sick and or starving parents, mothers, children and other family members that they would do anything to relieve their suffering. One participant of the study claimed, “Sex isn’t even that great with all the dirt and disease plaguing the area. Without food, water, or medicine there isn’t much of a life. There are more important issues here than temporary physical pleasure that must be considered.” Many other participants had similar responses, among 3,000 from South Africa, 2,784 Kisumu, Kenya, and 4,996 from Rakai, Uganda.

Another doctor from the National Institute of Nap Prevention argued how simple the procedure was, “I doubt many had any idea what was going on… I don’t speak gibberish, but I think quite a few thought they were getting hair cuts or some kind of welfare.” The doctor snickers a bit before giving a hearty laugh before returning to a patient having a Kermit the Frog toy placed in his rectum as a practical joke.

Despite the many testimonies, a concurrent study immediately outside the clinic where scientists posed as drug dealers allowing participants to trade their $5 crack cocaine. “It was the funniest thing, these stupid niggers were essentially selling their genitals for crack” noted Dr. Anthony Fauci Director of the International Ku Klux Klan. On the other hand Dr. Kevin DeCock made the important point “It’s not a magic bullet, but a potentially important intervention against future generations of Coons that are ruining the economy in a time of growing global commerce.”

Studies like this are proving to not just be helpful to the local communities by preventing these animals from breeding, but after the niggers are busted for possession of crack cocaine by our own police department, we loose no money or crack, and have a large storage of large black cock that can be bleached and given to underprivileged white men in America for increasing profits. With growing success, similar studies plan to take place in China to help curb the Chink epidemic. While there were plans to bring this cure to Jerusalem, Jews claim they have been doing this for thousands of years to their poor people claiming Abraham, a popular cultural icon, started the trend to prevent jock itch from sand. "No Jock, No itch", so goes the saying.

In related news, study in America reveals molestation by priests not so bad, but builds character. Church attendance soars as government supports practice with these new findings, and Circumcised girls make better mothers, fewer sluts. Final statistics to be reported later this week.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

The Year of Linux

I find it hard to believe that you have spent more than a few months with Linux to not find many things radically different. A PART of Linux that tries to make itself compatible with people is give them ways to use their old knowledge to do the same old tasks on Linux that they did on windows. To say that Linux is only playing a catch up game tells me you should probably stick with Windows. IMO, I think Macs take the most common thing people want to do and put it into a one-click application. What you can do is REALLY awsome. Just check out youtube to see what people have done with iMovie. In business, the best thing you can do is take one thing and do it REALLY WELL. Try to expand too much, and you will just be beaten out by a large number of specialists. Linux doesn't NEED to attract or prove anything to anybody. It is awesome that people are starting companies and making big money off of Linux directly or indirectly, but that is not the core of what Linux has ever been about, at least for Linus Torvalds as I understand from a number of interviews I have read.

One thing to love and hate about design principles in Linux / FOSS is that it is based on creating the most productive software, not necessarily the most easy to understand or get started with software. Blender I think is the best example of this. There is a LOT to learn before you can do much of ANYTHING in blender. It is confusing and every button and modifier key does something different. The interface is ... well atrocious in many ways. Until you "get it". Once you painfully climb that seemingly never ending vertical learning curve, you are FREE. Forget the mouse and just imagine what you want to see and type it out in a few bizarre incantations on your keyboard. IF you can remember all the crazy commands, Blender is FAST. If you can't remember, or simple don't like working that way, then Blender is not for you. What will not happen is Blender changing its interface to attract a greater number of people. Take it or leave it.

There is also the issue that at the heart, Linux is Free. Many great Windows apps are developed under Linux, or for Linux, then easily ported to Windows. Write an app for Windows, and it works on Windows. Write an app for Linux, and it will work on anything with a microprocessor with the right simple planning or forethought.

My killer, can not live without, Linux application is BASH. I get strange problems in my head where I want to look something up in a way that a regular search engine simply won't do. or some stat problem I want to double check via brute force (cause why not, it is another way to confirm an answer), a method that can not always be done mentally. This is where I jump on the computer, and in a few strange incantations in a terminal, I have just what I wanted.

Yes, we can do that too will always be a catchup came cause who knows what Microsoft will convince people they need next. That can't ever change unless Microsoft stops being main stream. This will be a cultural change. Linux is about the bringing the power of the computer to the users fingertips. Windows is more about meeting the needs of "Ohh, Internet, I want to do that!". We are just in a time where there are still so many people in that latter category. Linux is just a kernel, but it is also just a tool. There will always be new things added to Linux that people need for themselves that others will join in and contribute to, but gearing itself towards "sacrifice anything and everything to get the maximum number of people to use it" will, I pray, NEVER be the heart of Linux.

Specialist circumstances need specialized software. Web Server, embedded systems, data centers. Linux provides the tweakability to do killer things REALLY well. You just can't do that in Windows, certainly not in the way that a trained Linux specialist can really make things work.

The Year of Linux was 1996.

Just read the Halloween Documents to confirm that BY MICROSOFT! At this point in time Microsoft identified Linux as an undefeatable adversary due to the NATURE of its distributed and community development in addition to the well made tools available for the system. It was an expert system for expert people that Microsoft would never be able to get rid of in any legal or moral way. Linux took over in the above named markets and have never fell.

The one thing that was argued was that Linux could never be a viable Desktop solution. Microsoft has powerful ground here, but OpenSuse introduced a great desktop system that showed that the FOSS community could reach out beyond people that could make contributions. That was in 2004.

So with those milestones long behind us, what do you want? What is this Year of Linux? Mass use? Well, the Internet is built on Linux / BSD, so everyone that uses the Internet is using Linux, strictly speaking. The LAST place for Linux to have a "take over" is on those nodes, the workstations, the home computer, something the complete novice can "do the Internet on". So at LEAST call that the Year of the Linux Desktop.

Microsoft has a plan to stay in business. It is called FUD. Microsoft is in large part successful for the same reason 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim. In this case, it doesn't matter. I have Linux, and Linux does everything I need. I discourage many people from using Linux because Linux will present their computer to them as a tool to extend their mind and express themselves in new, powerful ways that may have been previously unimaginable. Most people DON'T WANT THAT. I'd argue that it is because most people don't understand that it is a possibility. As I said before, they just want to do the Internet and the email. For them the computer does things (hopefully) that you tell it to do. It is not an extension of their mind, not in the way that an ">expert would harness their computer skills.

People won't change, but society will change as new generations of computer users are born into it. As this takes place, as it obviously has been, the software will be there, and it will be Linux.

By this measure, the Year of Linux will be when general education teachers in public schools assign FOSS development as a part of every regular class. When C (or whatever language of your choice it) will be considered as equally important to teach along side English.

This is realistic, but no less than 30 years away because most teachers over 30 these days hardly know how to turn their computer on. It will take the children born in the last 10 years that grew up in todays technologies to be the majority of teachers in schools and administers on the Board of Education.

So to see that end, all we need to do is keep doing what we are doing now. It will always be transitional. Microsoft will always make Linux out to be insignificant. The only difference in the future will be the number of people still listening.

What do you listen to?

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

If programming languages were religions

According to this, most of them are. I feel privileged to have some familiarity with all of them. I was presently amused that Scheme wasn't significant to even make it on the list.

And I'd argue, reading through the comments:

Assembly is Atheism... followers believe that whatever you do, there is only the reality on the chip. You shouldn't need intermediary or 'fake' rules to deal with the reality right in front of you, but they can be useful for guidance so long as you don't believe them. They believe if you can handle it, you are enlightened, but understand a human need for simplicity. Try to argue with them though, and you'll get an earful.

and responding to / completing an anonymous post:

"JavaScript is the Jedi religion. Those who master it can do anything." But sadly has a poor basis in reality, and it's application seems to create many problems that were never intended or hardly anticipated by its creator. It lives in a box, but for some reason its followers keep putting it in places it never should have gone. There is also create controversy that a sequel would kill the last bit of dignity that might remain.

however, reading further, I think I like this one for Javascript even better
JavaScript is Alcholism - the more you do it, the more it rots your brain as you realize that functions are objects, your prototypes are polluting namespaces, and you just can't seem to get any closure.
And this one for assembly was amusing, as long as I had my own. I'll had his others because they are reasonably clever:
BASIC = Agnosticism. Everyone starts out here, unless firmly indoctrinated in another religion from birth. It isn't very useful, except to say that you believe in something, but it certainly isn't going to claim miracles or such.

FORTRAN = Druidism. It's been around since ancient times, and it's arcane syntax and rituals are confusing to anyone. Few practice it today (except in secret), and only a few locations still hold meaning for those of the sect.

Assembler = Deism. The assembler was created, and has been running ever since. The machine is perfect. We don't know who wrote the machine, but it IS written, and whoever did write it is not paying attention anymore.....but that is okay since the machine is perfect, and can do anything within the constraints of this reality.
The bias in many of the comments is almost as funny as the article.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

FOSS business model for movies and games

tepples writes:

Movies are not FOSS, remembering that the last 'S' means software.

I mentioned movies because video games combine aspects of movies with aspects of non-game software. How does the purpose of free software as you describe it (to be productive) mesh with the purpose of video games?

Movies make more sense under a CC license if you want it to be that type of free, but that is something else entirely.

Can you think of any way that an organization could make money producing CC licensed movies?

This is actually a problem in a way for people that want FOSS to meet all their needs. The product needs to have intrinsic value to the person producing it. If 10 big companies need fancy expensive accounting software and are tired of poorly performing, slowly adapting, or whatever be wrong with some company that provides proprietary accounting software, there is motivation for those companies to work together to produce a FOSS solution. Also, if one company starts an FOSS project alone, there is hope that other people will join in to help improve the product, but it still never becomes the principle of the business. The threat is if the lost efficiency in producing the product in house (in theory big software companies could hire better programmers and are more in the business of hiring programmers) is greater than the total ownership cost of the proprietary solution + business lost from use of a product that does not meet your needs over time.

So this is the problem with Linux Gaming. There is little intrinsic value in producing a game. If, what you want is a great game to play with other people, again, where commercial games are not meeting your needs, then an FOSS product makes sense. Making accounting software to do good accounting makes sense. Making a video game to be able to play a video game doesn't have the same return on investment.

The most common example of an FOSS game as a business looking to make money is game engine and 3d video accelerator cards. Neither company is a "gaming" company, but they are trying to make a product profiting off of the gaming industry. Highly specialized cards having features that are not implemented in games. Look at the recent development in hardware accelerated physics. If you think you have a hardware feature or API that could make games a lot better, you need to demonstrate that to software developers and to customers to get them to produce for your card, and make the product of value to the consumer. So make an FOSS game. This is where proprietary would be VERY BAD. YOU know your product and what it can do, so YOU should be the one making sure that the real value of your card is demonstrated in the game. Are you really going to let some other company do that for you? I hope not! Further, you may only have time to demonstrate how great games made on your system COULD be without really making the game some all time best seller. But remember, that is not your business, your business is the card. Making the game open source gives other people the opportunity, if they like it, to build upon it and make it great. Any improvement, hack, fork, or just sharing of the product IS your objective and can only improve sales... assuming the card is actually worth buying and not vaporware. Your hardware is going to need to perform to be viable long term, but if you can build a community around your products, you will be golden.

Another example, World of Warcraft. They don't sell a piece of software, they sell an entire lifestyle and gaming solution :) Bit torrent drives their updates. Blizzard is invested in making bit torrent better. LUA is probably the best example, it drives the way people interact with the game. It lets you play the game you want to play it so long as it doesn't interfere with Blizzard's ends. Some work was necessary to ensure that the system could not be exploited, but it is perfectly reasonable to believe that one could have an entirely open source client (Like SecondLife, something with an open source client)... but Blizzard wants to protect certain parts of the experience. The server software is not given to the customer, so it is proprietary as much as any changes IBM makes to their own version of Red Hat, but I can assure you Blizzard doesn't host their games on Windows Servers :) However, if the source was leaked, or even given away or sold, Blizzard is successful because it provides an entire gaming experience. New content frequently comes out, the servers are very fast when you consider the number of players per server and such. It would be very expensive and difficult for someone to even grab a fraction of Blizzard's market share even if you had all the same equipment and their software, because there is so much more to WoW then selling a box. The best anyone can do is try to get copies of their content as fast as possible and hope people will want to play on your private server. The benefit is in managing a private server with your own rules and / or friends, but financial gain is unlikely unless you can provide something competitively different from Blizzard, and why should Blizzard care, they got their own thing that seems to work pretty well for them. By all right, the leak of the source code probably helped them cause it got people addicted, and then wanting more of a whole experience, better servers, more players and such.

As far as movies in games, again, is the game your product, or is the movie your product. CC the movies, and you will see people advertising your game everywhere for you as they add their personal touch. Fan art is one of the best things you can have that makes a community. Fans that don't share are not a community.

As for movies all by themselves, I am sure you can think of similar examples as above, but with movies you have boxed information. If we want to sell an experience or a service, what goes with movies that will make money with the distribution of the product without relying on a direct relationship between the number of times the movie is watched, and how much money you make? Well, with an CC-BY-NC-SA license ( I know technically NC isn't a Free Culture approved license, but bear with me ) Movies can be licensed to theaters. In the US, I think this would require much nicer theaters. I hear this is how things work in China. Either a producer pays to get the movie in the theater and gets a cut, or makes money licensing the movie to the theater. However, your movie has to be good enough that after it has been reviewed and watched by people all over the Internet that there is a motivation for people to come and watch it on the big screen, or whatever environment some venue provides. Of course that makes your business reliant in part on theaters providing a quality venue. The same is true for musicians. It is hard to make all your money off of concerts if there is no decent place to play.

Tell me what you think. These are the kinds of things I think of that would make piracy a joke and allow the benefits of information sharing to only empower the entire human race. I have been considering working on a business to provide consulting business on how they can be successful with open source models as part of their company considering if I am as critical as I have expressed of this article, I should really put my money where my mouth is. In such a model, I see free books, and very expensive on site consulting. No matter how good any book might possibly be, competitive edge is all about fine tuning your business to be ahead of the competition. The better the book and the better it works, the more I see such companies wanting to invest in some one on one help. And anyone wanting to steal this idea could only warm up the market place for such a service to be viable. :)

Did that more or less answer the question?

The Obvious Perspective

This is something I think we fail at. We can judge or rationalize peoples arguments, but really knowing someones perspective is tough. I was thinking about this with respect to meta-cognition, thinking about how to think about something. But what about thinking about how another person thinks about how they can think about how they would think about a problem? I think this the most coveted skill in teaching.

So thinking about that this morning, I came up with this problem that is puzzling, but amusing it its simple solution. With any such problem it is about perspective.
Which of these sequences is not like the other?

a) 1243
b) 2314
c) 2341
d) 3421
e) 4132

Hint #0: (The pattern between the four other numbers should be easily describable in one common word that would logically reveal the answer to a reasonably clever person.)

Hint #1: ( Each block is a sequence of digits, not a 4 digit number. )
If nobody comes up with a solution by the end of the day, I will post a hint.

The FOSS business Model

There are many objectives and purposes of FOSS, while boxware has only the purpose of selling units. That is tough to compete with because boxware, from an investor perspective (person investing in the company selling it, not the ones buying it) it is successful when they sell so many units, and fail if they sell too few. Very straight forward.

FOSS in every way is more complicated. Investors of Red Hat want to see subscriptions sold, but that also depends on who you would call an investor. Many people profit from Red Hat's work, and any FOSS progress is perpetual. Red Hat will always live on in a way because of its nature. People can always expand and support Linux no matter what happens, By contrast, whatever way it could happen, if Microsoft one day went belly up, EVERY investor, stock holders and users are totally burned.

So another contrast. The purpose of Windows is for the software to be sold. The purpose of Linux / FOSS is to be productive. FOSS doesn't need to be profitable by the box as much as it needs to be useful, and proprietary software doesn't need to be as useful or productive AS MUCH as it needs to sell box units.

When we are talking about a movie company, there are two routes to go. Movies are not FOSS, remembering that the last 'S' means software. Movies make more sense under a CC license if you want it to be that type of free, but that is something else entirely. FOSS v. proprietary for a movie studio is the argument of whether or not the company is going to use make all their own software (very impractical, they are not a software company), or pay someone to give them the software they need. On a larger scale, individual companies can make their own software (again, makes no sense cause not a software company) or movie studios as a whole can pay one big company to provide for all their needs. In a way this can make a lot of sense, but has certain limitations when it is proprietary.

The FOSS solution says use this open model, build upon it as you need, BUT if you share that code or want to sell it, you need to "share-alike". This means that movie studios can meet their own individual specialized needs, and have the benefits of a community that is 'invested' in having quality software. There is also the motivation and hope that if you choose to share parts / tools that are good for you, others will build upon it and improve upon it making it the best software possible.

So if 100 movie studios work together sharing their best in-house tools for making quality movies, then many things happens. You have great software everyone can use. The software is superior than what any one company could develop. The tools are more flexible than could have been possible by one company, and profitability will come down to the ability for companies to utilize that software to make a good movie. Software engineers got paid for their work, the software is very valuable, but 'worthless' as a stand alone package. So now the questionable investment is whether or not it is going to be worth your money to invest in someone looking to make money contributing to such a project that is not directly involved in the movie production itself. Red Hat is such a company (for another industry, of course), but when such business models 'fail', the ability to quantify the failure financially for that company is 'simple' (sort of) but not for the software as a whole, something MUCH more complicated.

But again, the only thing special here is that when proprietary boxware fails, it fails for EVERYBODY and entirely. FOSS just can't be judged the same way, even if it is something very difficult for people design a business model around.

And I'll just say it now before anyone needs to point it out, I do casually program and use Linux but I am not a software engineer, and certainly not involved in the industry beyond consumer and fan. This is just my observation and opinion as an outsider with a strong belief (even if a naive one) in FOSS.


Note: As usual this was an inspired post as linked above. The original article regarding the subject matter came from here.

Afterthought from reading this post:
What good does FOSS adoption mean if there's no money exchanging hands?
Cause sometimes software is made to be used. One way you could measure FOSS profitability (albeit unfairly) would be to add up the profits of all companies invested in FOSS, like IBM, Sun, Pixar, HP to name a few. These companies don't ONLY use FOSS, and they don't give away all their software secrets, but they ARE big investors in FOSS, and FOSS is a big part of what they use to be profitable while contributing to it.

So maybe FOSS profitability is a lot like the restaurant business; Never trust a skinny chef :)


And why not one more. This post kinda pissed me off.
One thing i think we will see FOSS project's movng away from is giving away the software. if you GPL something, it doesn't mean you have to give it away, it just means who ever you sell it to gets the source code along with the program.I could for example write some software, sell it to others and then give them access to the source where only paid customers could make commits and see the source. source is only required if you distribute something....
I have said this so many places, but I think it needs to be said again given your post. I don't think you GET free software. I know this is separate from the article, but you fail to see the primary goal of free software and why it works. Sharing code makes better software. THAT'S IT! It was never about making profit directly off the software. Profit is made from productive USE of the software. What people want to try to do is take this great, powerful, and successful thing Linux and make profit off of it directly, like business people have tried to do with everything forever! Free software is just really hard because its nature. And as many commented, and my interpretation of what you said, people are not going to turn free software into proprietary software. Hmm... I take that back, noone is going to turn GPL software into proprietary software. DAMNIT, technically, you are right, it is called Mac OSX. Personally, and let people flame me for saying this, exactly the fears you are expressing that will be the death of FOSS are exactly what has happened to BSD. This is why I think the BSD Free model is going out because people are recognizing that for free to stay free comes at the price of making sure it stays that way. That is what GPL is all about. Torvalds disdain for GPLv3 I think reveals some reveals a lot about how the classical belief in free software is dead as people are forced to take harder and harder lines on free v. proprietary, where before it was just about free, and not necessarily what happened to it.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

What makes a President "The Worst"

So as usual, this is a segment of a conversation I wanted to share. I do not frequently share my opinion on slavery because it is not a position I feel any need to push on people, and too often feel it can come across as mere flamebait. However, in the right context, it seems appropriate to share.

Note, the italics here are quotes from one of a number of posts about this issue in a discussion on slashdot linked above.

Boronx writes:

think Lincoln raped our constitution pretty hard with regard to interpretation the voluntary nature of statehood, state sovereignty, 9th & 10th amendments,

Besides the disaster your interpretation would have created, it's not born out in the Constitution, since Amendments 10 and 9 refer to powers not enumerated in the Constitution, but the power to dispose of US territory is given to Congress in Article 4.

I am not trying to justify slavery, just that had there been any other means to that end would have been preferable.

Of course the South should have pursued other options instead of open hostilities, as a democratic people should have, but a people whose economy rests on the back of slaves can't be democratic.

Also, very little of the civil war had to do with slavery, and much more to do with a federal power grab, to over-simplify the issue.

By federal power grab you mean the attempt to limit the growth of slave states, am I right?

My response:

I hope this isn't a complete butcher, but my understanding of the 9th and 10th amendments were to reiterate that the constitution was a contract that created a federal government whose only powers where those that were explicitly stated in the constitution, and nothing else. If it wasn't a right named as such in the constitution, then that means on whatever that issue was, the federal government had no such power. Further, if it was an issue not addressed by the states, the federal government still did not have the power to come in and have their way.
Of course the South should have pursued other options instead of open hostilities, as a democratic people should have, but a people whose economy rests on the back of slaves can't be democratic.
Not sure what you mean with by 'open hostilities', or at least not which in particular, but in this context I think the important issue was that the north invaded the South, not the other way around. I also don't see how this was a democratic thing at all. The north spent drastically more on the war than the south. The south not only had home field advantage, but while many people volunteered in the revolutionary war, the armies of the north were all conscripted. There were terrible morale issues, and Lincoln didn't care how much was lost for the north to win.

And to look at it a completely different way, I think it is difficult to put slavery into perspective these days. We think about slavery as these plantations with many hundreds of slaves that were abused. That was not the only kind of slavery. I will apologize in advance for not having any references, but to my knowledge, abuse of slaves only took place on plantations with 500 or more slaves. This isn't to say that slavery is right, but look at the times: It was work that guaranteed food and housing. Yes, slaves were less than citizens, but at a tool, property, equipment or farm animal, it would be in the best interest of any slave owner to ensure the best health and well being of slaves. People are expensive to take care of, and good slaves are were expensive. Animals that are intended for food are abused a lot more, but what good is a dog or a horse that you abuse all day? And how bad is a farmer burned if a horse or dog dies?

Let us compare that world, to what was going on in the north, and in the west. In the north, you had factories. There were no safety standards, child labor laws, minimum wage laws, overtime pay, 2 day weekends, medical leave, non-discrimination, or anything else. You lost a finger or hand, you were fired and easily replaced. If you died, there was no liability to the employer. A place to eat, sleep, or bathe came out of your pay if you could afford it, and employers could do whatever they want to get the work done. And there were a plenty of people desperate to work. When it is impossible to make a livable wage, there is no freedom. Meanwhile companies were making big money, but market entrance was prohibitively expensive.

In the mid-west to west, we got the rail roads. More out doors than factory work, but not only was there no room or board, but 6 month accounting cycle, and 6 month pay cycles. You had to work your first year before seeing a pay check. Not only were accidents frequent, but there are many stories of railroads across the country being built without ever having to pay a single person (mostly Chinese) because of planned accidents for workers nearing that first anniversary.

This tells me it was a bad time to be a poor immigrant in the US PERIOD. Didn't matter how you got here. Personally, I think the treatment of the Chinese was the worst of any group of people, but it is really on par with factory work. The reality I see? The slaves got the closest thing to a livable wage of any minority group.
By federal power grab you mean the attempt to limit the growth of slave states, am I right?
No.

I mean the right of the federal government to declare war against a state that no longer wants to be a member of a union that wants to force them to subsidize a struggling industrial revolution going on in another part of the country that produces a drastically more expensive and inferior product than what could be bought it Europe. A more appropriate word for Lincoln that could hold some respect, American Patriot. "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against the government". Maybe give him that. He just said "Fuck the law, this is what we are doing, and really sucks to be you if you disagree with me". If that is why you think you think he was a great president, then fine. If you think that whatever he took, or what else he may have done, if he is responsible for freeing the slaves, then all else is forgiven, then fine. I am just not going to completely agree. for the sake that too many presidents have followed in his footsteps and taken whatever means necessary to do whatever they felt like in their position of power.

Yay for these guys with all these "great ideas", but just as a political theory, it might be really interesting to see a president that worked as hard to be seen as that guy that brought great honor and respect to the Constitution.

I don't think it is a requirement to be a rebel to be a leader, but I wouldn't be surprised to be wrong.

A Revealing Perspective

LakeishaQueen writes:
Reply to your comment on: The Dr. Phil Show - Same Sex Marriage: Right or Wrong?
...
Reply to your comment on: The Dr. Phil Show - Same Sex Marriage: Right or Wrong?
Please DO NOT COMPARE BLACK PEOPLE TO HOMOSEXUALS! We do not have deviant sex. We dont molest teen boys. We dont mimic real sex by using an anus as a vagina. And we dont form bizarre "marriage" partnerships where we screw up childrens minds becuase they cant grow up with a mommy and a daddy! FUCK YOU!
SAME SEX MARRIAGE: RIGHT OR WRONG?
EXCLUSIVE: AFTER THE TAPING

Dr. Phil hosts a debate on same sex marriage.

After the show taped, the debate kept going and the cameras kept going. Watch as an audience member causes an outburst as she gets involved ...

Wow, a lot of emotion here, and also very insightful.
Please DO NOT COMPARE BLACK PEOPLE TO HOMOSEXUALS!
When I compare gay marriage to the civil rights movement, I am not talking about "black people". Also, when I talk about civil rights, I am not talking about any one person, protest, or legislation. When I say civil rights, I mean the enlightenment philosophy of the past 120+ years that has begun to acknowledge people as human beings. The failure of democracy is the lack of credit given to minor sensibility in favor of a "majority rule". Most people are ignorant about most things, simply because there are so many things in the world to learn about. I know I am a victim of this myself. I would be the last person to ask about car safety standards, how to put a man on the moon. I do have an opinion on a methodology for resolving such problems, but that is not the way democracy works. But an EXAMPLE of the oppression of PEOPLE in this country was the case resolved regarding Loving v. Virginia. The Racial Integrity Act said nothing about black people, just that whites could only marry other whites, and "others" could marry whoever they want, just not whites. So that isn't 'black people', it just includes 'black people'.
We do not have deviant sex. We dont molest teen boys.
*sigh* This makes me really sad. Haven't you noticed a pattern yet AT ALL? Haters don't discriminate. Haters just hate because that is what they do. And while I appreciate the compliment and confession that neither you nor I are child molesters, I get the feeling that was not the "we" you were talking about.

But if that is not what you meant, it actually is difficult to understand what you could have meant. Did you mean that there has never been a black person that has abused a child or engaged in deviant sexual practices, or do you mean that the African American community as a whole isn't an organization for the systematic sexual abuse of children? If you meant the first, that is absolutely wrong. It can not be said about ANY group of people, subject class or otherwise. Child molesters are gay, straight, single, married, black, white, brown, yellow, red, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, male, female, tall, short, old, young, smart, dumb, attractive, ugly, everything. The same is true for victims. We all want to protect our kids, and while it would be very convenient to look at someone and just know, but you can't! But if you want to look at the numbers, and if you talk with victims, child molesters are most always parents, then relatives / siblings, then neighbors. Child molesters outside of this group are really quite rare, but it still happens.

At the same time, systematic molestation has not only never been the habit of those groups. But most of them have been accused of systematic molestation through out history. Did you ever see the movie borat? There are still places in the world where it is taught that Jews systematically round up children, have bizarre sex with them, then kill and eat their victims, and make dradles out of their bones. Some people might think that is funny, but can you imagine a society of people that actually believe that? Part of the reason opium became illegal was because it was said that Chinese would use it to lure innocent white school girls into their dens where they would be gang banged until they committed themselves to a life of satanic worship. I am sure you have heard some of the stereotypes about black men / families. These horror stories all seem to have a very similar theme; the most gruesome possible tale devised to encourage hate against the group. I have actually met people that thought being 'black' was contagous, that if you touched a black person, or hung out with black people, it would make you black, literally changing your skin color. It had even been taught for a long time in the mormon church that people with black skin had been cursed that way by god because their souls has sided with Lucifer in the celestial war.

So what surprise is it that the same old bullshit stories that have been used against every minority in history are being used again against homosexuals. The stories are as true as they have always been. You act as if blacks are the only group of people to ever be discriminated against. The civil rights movement was about people that wanted to be seen by the law as people, and not their culture, skin color, gender, national origin, or veteran status. Why not take the opportunity to actually read the Civil Rights Act.
We don't mimic real sex by using an anus as a vagina.
So would you be ok with homosexuality if there was just laws against anal sex? Wait, I think the law already addressed this. Are you saying men and women don't have anal sex, or just that when man and women have anal sex it isn't deviant? Or when men and women have anal sex it isn't to mimic a vagina? Does a hand mimic a vagina? When women masturbate, do they think about their hand being a penis? Is oral sex gay?

Is exploring the many possibilities that two people can stimulate each other physically and emotionally deviant? Is any sexual gratification without the intent of conception right at that moment deviant? What if a man and a woman are having sex because they are trying to have a baby, but they enjoy it, is that deviant too?

Last I checked, many straight women love their ass hole played with, and many straight women do dot. Some like anal penetration or dual penetration, and others are terrified or disgusted by it. Same applies to lesbians. Some straight men want to fuck a woman in her ass. Others have tried it and don't like it, others have never tried because they are afraid to ask, or are not interested at all. Some straight men like their ass hole played with, some like it penetrated, during sex, during foreplay, whatever. Some men enjoyed being fucked with a strap on, but only by a woman. Every conceivable combination is liked and disliked to varying degrees by all PEOPLE.

I will agree that most guys like to experiment with putting their penis in things. Sometimes just to see what it is like, or what might happen. Woman do the same thing with their vaginas, rubbing things on it, or sticking things in there.

All this has nothing to do with being gay or straight, again, it is the practice of human beings, because we are curious animals that do all kinds of weird things. Deviant means to be different, and as we have discovered about sexuality, deviant today would be NOT to experiment with our bodies, alone, with other people, or just one other person we love and trust very much. Deviance would be shame, and isolating yourself from your own body.

So again, there is no difference between being gay or straight in those respects. It is true that men do not have a vagina, and women do not have a penises. The only thing that makes gay people different is that they want to share, love, experiment, or enjoy someone that is physically like themselves, and depending on how you choose to define it, are more attracted to that prospect or gender then they are to the other.
And we don't form bizarre "marriage" partnerships where we screw up children's minds because they cant grow up with a mommy and a daddy!
So here is that 'we' word again. Are you talking about you and me? Are you saying that if a man and a woman get married that it can't be bizarre because bizarre only means gay, or do you mean that only black people when it is a man and a woman it can not be bizarre? As for the rest of the statement, I am puzzled. "Can't grow up with a mommy and daddy" --causes--> "screw[ed] up children". So are you saying that if there may have been a chance that the kid might have had a mommy and daddy then the kid won't be screwed up? I don't even understand what you are even trying to say here, just by virtue of reality. Well technically, if a baby was conceived at all, then there is a mommy and daddy, and that kid MIGHT have stayed with that 'couple', so until medical science changes, I don't think that is going to change.

Or do you mean that kids that don't stay with those biological parents are going to be screwed up? In that case we should outlaw adoption. But you did say "a mommy and daddy", so does that mean we can still give children to parents that already have biological kids of their own? I guess that might be a possibility, and even legal, but what harm comes to kids that are adopted by adults that are sterile? Would you have a problem with letting gay adults that have biological children of their own, or only those that still live with the other parent? What if the spouse is a widow and remarried, should it be ok for someone with kids, but remarried to someone else, be allowed to adopt?

Should we make it illegal for non-married people or single people to adopt? If a good mother is widowed when her child is young, should we take the kid away unless she remarries, or should the kid be taken away no matter what?

It is wonderful when a child can grow up with many wonderful happy healthy people in their life. We all need heroes and role models to help us guide our way to what we want from life, and to build strong social structures that help sustain the human species. For some people that is very easy, and for some very hard. Some kids are planned, others are not. Plenty of planned kids have difficult lives, and many unplanned kids grow up to be wealthy and successful.

But, what situations do we understand are unhealthy and do harm children? If we must not allow kids to grow up without a mommy and daddy, I see that as very sweeping. I don't think it would be possible, but I also really don't see it as necessary.
FUCK YOU!
Well, you certainly seem to have some very strong feelings about the situation, and if this really is about doing the best we can to help children, and encourage people to have happy and healthy lives, respect the past, the present, and our culture, then not only are you likely doing the best you can as individual to meet that end, but the world is going to be a better place with people like you that will stand up and speak their mind.

Let's just be careful in setting government policy that we are clear as to our intents and purposes, rationalize policy with sound facts, and be careful what stories we share about other people, particularly sweeping generalizations about a person of a particular ethnic background, gender, hair color, sexuality, religion other than to promote communication and dissolve unnecessary, unproductive, or simply untrue stereotypes. As for the true ones, lets try to be practical and keep such generalizations in perspective.

Thank you for taking the time to write, you gave me a lot to think about, and I will rethink my perspective and over generalization that black, poor, and uneducated people voted yes on prop 8 because they are in part the same group. There is obviously more to the issue than that, and I look forward to sharing your perspective with others.

Take care,
Keith

Monday, December 01, 2008

What Free Culture means to me

I agree you don't need to pay to be a part of your own culture. There are many free alternatives, but as much as I enjoy embracing free culture, it does feel like a fight in some ways. Embracing free culture hasn't been easy. I do not know a lot of people personally that embrace free culture, so often times it feels like culture is a relationship I have by myself with the computer / Internet.

Something I have tried to do in the last few months is working away from non-free, or what I might call luxury, culture. I have not purchased a CD since the whole Napster thing, but this more recent transition I have been working towards only listening to CC licensed music. The result wasn't what I expected. I find there is a lot more variety, not to mention expression in the work. It started as an anti big media thing, but now I see it as a great way to introduce great new music to friends that have likely not heard it before. The best part is being able to easily contact artists, and when I leave reviews, I frequently get messages back. Those experiences have made it feel much more like a culture than just stuff.

I guess what I have enjoyed has only strengthened my idealism. And to clarify, I don't want everything to be 'free' in a monetary sense, just free in a way that the business model would allow me to do what I want with it as something I paid for. I would ideally like it if an artist would be flattered for me to make copies of their music and give them to my friends to enjoy. I want to listen to a wide variety of music the way it is free in a library or on the radio, but in a way that harnesses digital technology, and pay money to go to concerts where the band is making a good cut of the ticket price, the kind of thing where the supply isn't artificially deflated to ensure optimal revenue at the expense of calling fans pirates. I know this model would not work for all artists, but imho, the artists that would loose in this situation are the ones that completely lack talent. I also think such a model would make record companies obsolete (as if they are not already) or stores that box little units of information and put a sticker on them. It wasn't a bad way to do things, it just seems out dated. Record companies haven't been around for a long time, but music certainly has. I really believe exposure directly relates to opportunity. The issue is that it just isn't the same opportunity of the past.

Also, I think there is an under appreciation / mis representation of what is "other peoples work". All creativity builds on the past and on nature. Nobody today creates anything without the assistance of many other people. People that whittle figurines out of drift wood unlikely smelted the metal for the knife, and who ever did smelt it didn't do so from scratch. I think you know where that can go forever. ALL THINGS build upon and express other things around you. Who gets credit for what is a matter of advertising. People should certainly get paid for their labor and creative expressions of our world, but it is everyone else that as a whole that help provide that world worth expressing. Further, art that is not an expression of our culture, world, or life typically have no worth. Good art, stories, music are those that resonate with people because part of the art is already inside that person that sees it, hears it, or appreciates it in any way.

I just think that to SOME extent, that in the way creators and consumers are all part of the same culture that there bee some shared rights. I further believe Creative Commons, and the voluntary nature of it (maybe even especially its voluntary nature) it a step in the right direction.

People with money have spent money in Washington to help uphold the rights of artists through the digital age. By itself, I think most of it has been good. My issue, with regard to Washington, is that big media has gotten more of an opportunity to share their opinion and 'educated' people about their rights than, say. the historical purpose of public libraries, classical literature, free access to public domain in a fair way, and using the power of the Internet to extend the purpose of the public library in the way it was intended but was physically and technologically limited. I do not believe that public libraries and free radio are simply 'tolerated' because they could never have much influence, and because the control by the reader / public is 'limited' by nature.

I believe a full Library of Alexandria, Library of Congress, and everything else the Internet could strive to offer to the eyes and ears of every human being would make for a GREAT world, not one where "people would no longer be motivated to innovate" as the entertainment industry has lead many people, including law makers, to believe. We have the power; we need to make it a reality.

THAT is the free I fight for.

Afterthought:

An over simplification is that fair use is an affirmative defense, not a right. There is a big difference between embracing something and tolerating something. There is a certain irony to 'fair use' considering what natural rights existed before. To paraphrase Lessig, much of what is regulated use and 'fair use' today was not very long ago completely unregulated.>br>
That is how "fair use does not [nor ever intended to] address free culture".

Example of how I see fair use in culture today is similar to regulations at an airport if things got a lot worse. Do away with the list of things you can't do or bring on a plane, and replace it with a very specific list of hypothetically acceptable things. Now, if you actually want to bring something onto the plane that may match something on the list, you need to explain where you got it, why you need it with you, and sign a waiver exempting the item from being covered by insurance in case it gets lost (kudos to anyone that understands the insurance part).

Excuse me, but just how can you call that "Rights".

Oh, and just in case it needs to be said, I did not mean to say that Free Culture does not address Fair Use, just that it is mono-directional understanding.

Fallable brute force '8 Queens' puzzle in C

Yay, so got this to work today. Used bash to make it loop and show how fast it could find solutions. Once it took just under 1.5s. It usually takes longer :) For archival purposes and sharing, this is what I did.
queens.c (gcc queens.c -o queens)
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define SIZE 8

void clear_board( void );
void print_board( void );
int mark_square( int x, int y );

int board[SIZE][SIZE];

int main( void )
{
srand( time( NULL ) );
int i;
clear_board();

for(i=0; i <= SIZE; i++)
{
if ( mark_square(rand() % SIZE, rand() % SIZE) == 1 )
{
clear_board();
i=0;
}
}
print_board();
return 0;
}

void clear_board( void )
{
int row;
int col;

for ( row = 0; row <= SIZE; row++ )
for ( col = 0; col <= SIZE; col++ )
board[row][col] = 0;
}

int mark_square( int x, int y )
{
int i;

if ( board[x][y] == 0 )
{
for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
board[x][i] = 1;
for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
board[i][y] = 1;
for ( i = 0; i < SIZE; i++)
{
if (x-i >= 0)
{
if (y+i < SIZE)
board[x-i][y+i] = 1;
if (y-i >= 0)
board[x-i][y-i] = 1;
}
if (x+i < SIZE)
{
if (y+i < SIZE)
board[x+i][y+i] = 1;
if (y-i >= 0)
board[x+i][y-i] = 1;
}
}
board[x][y] = 2;
return 0;
}
else
return 1;
}

void print_board( void )
{
int row;
int col;

for ( row = 0; row < SIZE; row++ )
{
for ( col = 0; col < SIZE; col++ )
{
if ( board[row][col] == 0 ) printf( "." );
if ( board[row][col] == 1 ) printf( "x" );
if ( board[row][col] == 2 ) printf( "Q" );
}
printf( "\n" );
}
printf( "\n" );
}


Note:
Some context, this is my solution to problem 6.27(a) Eight Queens: Brute-Force Approaches, p. 264 of C How to Program, 5th edition, by: Deitel and Deitel. Figure if by chance someone is looking up this problem they would be more likely to stumble over this post :)

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Lessig "very moderate" on copyright law

very moderate? I have this picture of Richard Stallman piggyback riding Joseph Utsler through Disneyland with a flamethrower as a modest proposal.

I take some offense at the derogatory use of 'very moderate' to describe him. I will admit I am a bit of a fanatical fan, but I don't see how his 'moderation' could be interpreted as 'soft', as I feel you are implying.

Each side has declared war. Hollywood has gone so F***ing insane with copyright to buy and manipulate our culture and government that many people refuse to acknowledge any respect that copyright could hold. The Pirate Bay is a monument to the damage and hostility created by the content cartel. If there was any 'moderation', aka, embrace of current technology, and respect of the progress clause of the constitution, the Pirate Bay would not exist because there would be no need.

With opinions so violent on both sides, it is amazing Lessig has seen through all the BS, knowing what people want, was creators want, and the beauty of a read/write culture, he has given tools to artists like creative commons to artists that let them do what they always wanted to do. Lessig enables people around the bullshit, not someone going around trying to CONVINCE people things need to be a certain way. I feel he opens peoples hearts to what they already knew.

By contrast, we have FOSS guys like RMS. I respect him and use a lot of his software. I love what he has enabled. But His ideal is one that only respects freedom to consumers. I hate proprietary as much as any other Linux fanboy, but I don't think a developer that wants to keep some part of his project private is evil, so long as it doesn't become some kind of standard or requirement the way Windows is required for most computer purchases. I am reminded every once in awhile that my problem with proprietary is when it is not a choice, and I don't understand why.

and "utterly broken" is extreme. it is a binary opinion that generalizes it as a whole, to say that none of it works at all. That is extreme, and just not true. Lessig gets very technical about the parts that are broken. His focus in Free Culture, IMO, was scope, derivative / remixed works (fair use really wasn't about derivative works), orphaned works, and the hunting down and labeling of children as terrorists work wanting to be a part of their own culture.

One thing I think of in terms of a shorter copyright term is that it would apply to GPL works too. If copyright was, say, back to 14 years, how much of the Linux Kernel would become public domain where derivative works would no longer have the protection of "share-alike"?

I see him as an extremist who is well educated, and rational about about the feelings around copyright law. He is not a man without enemies for his opinions.

There are parts of copyright law that absolutely defy common sense, but there are parts that are technical and common sense does not bring about the right solution. For example, the constitution leaves the power of determining and changing the length of copyright term to best meet the needs of the people to promote science and the useful arts. And as far as common sense goes, Ashcroft WON on the 'common sense' argument of "why shouldn't Disney be able to retain complete control over what THEY made?'. I think what is lacking is some maybe difficult to understand science of what kind of copyright would "promote science and the useful arts", not common sense, because common sense may not be the understanding to most people what it is to you or I.

It is like free market: 'common sense' (of a certain uneducated type) says that the government should be able to come in and fix every little problem with just the right regulations and controls, but for those that have read the works Mesis or Smith would understand how 'economic planning' by a bureaucratic governmental entity doesn't work / can only work in certain ways.

I think common sense has taken over in government, replacing logic and rationality. My common sense says 'look at the damned Constitution', but what common person do you think even knows it is in there?

With all the people that know, love, and respect Lessig, I can bet that his voice will carry a lot of weight if he uses the position to the best of his ability. Power is not given, it is harnessed. Want to see the position have no power? Give it to RMS.

Lessig is by far the best man for this position, or the best person to advise Obama on who should get the position. After Lessig, I would pick William Patry, then pretty much anyone they would agree would be best. I can't imagine the position going to someone they would dislike.

I would be very curious to know who you think is more extreme then Lessig that has made a real contribution. Ok, maybe Fredrik Neij or Peter Sunde, but that's never going to happen.

Ignorance is bliss?

"You can't take the car out of the parking lot until you pay for it" == women are property.

Some people have relationship, people that make a commitment to have a life together. There are many ways to bond to see if a life commitment is going to work. Going on dates, having sex, living together, whatever. You have a life together to see if you want more. It is a test drive. Having anything but a real committed relationship before marriage means you are doing something else...

That something else is what is wrong, in my opinion. This man just bought pussy. She is now his property. This is exactly the definition of a slut; a woman that uses her cunt to get the things she wants, something to manipulate another person with.

If I was going to 'buy' something to put on my dick, it wouldn't be a woman. WAY too much maintenance to keep around all the time. Prostitutes are much better partners in a situation like this cause they are much less expensive, and they leave when you are done with them. Or a maid. They are much cheaper than a full time woman.

If he was looking for a baby factory with that 'new car smell', then each to their own.

The only way this works is if they can allow their delusions to continue into reality, denying what is going on, never try to be more intimate than necessary to make kids, never experiment, and certainly NEVER have a talk about what they want from life, cause that tends to break things quickly. After that a combination of stupidity, income, and early death will ensure a long marriage.

And if you ever thought there might have been more to life, just tell yourself over and over again "ignorance is bliss", "ignorance is bliss", "ignorance is bliss"... and more than likely any 'greener grass' will be just as disappointing as your marriage.

And if that doesn't work, remember that Jesus and all the other x-men are happy for you. :)

And don't worry, a life where you make an effort and learn from your mistakes really isn't very rewarding just like you think (just in case you need me to tell you that to make you feel better)

Have a nice life!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Another Prop 8 discussion

So it has been awhile, but people are still talking quite a bit about this issue. I know it is going through the courts, and those that have always been on the battlefield are still there fighting, but this is different. Regular people that don't discuss politics generally, and whose lives were not really affected by prop 8, haven't just gone back to their lives. They are still talking about this. Even those that voted yes are still asking questions about this issue.

I Hear: I don't understand, but I want to.

This is how I got involved. I was so angry over this, for the past many months. I really didn't get it. I listened, and I feel I have gotten a much better understanding of the issue. Not just the tricks, and the lies in the ads, but where people really feel conflicted, or just comfortable with voting yes, as if, in my mind, it wasn't going to hurt people in the same way it wasn't going to hurt them.

Anyway, I got a kind letter from someone I did n't know that enjoyed the satirical exchange between myself and YesJesusYes on YouTube. I Visited their page and read the following qustion / comment left on their page:

From standj21:
Yeah I see what you are saying, and I support your position , but you first need to explain to me how one has the "right" to be married, and Im not talking about gays Im talking about everyone. No one has a right to be married, if it were true we would not be having this conversation, what you need to understand is that it like many things is a privilege, and privileges can be taken from you, or in some cases never granted to you. It is my understanding that civil unions are allowed, and that can be between gay couples, and straight couples.

Like I said I may be wrong I never really spent much time researching it. If prop8 was designed to keep gay couples from the same benefits as straight couples then I would take issue with it, because the only purpose of a law should be to protect, never to impose ones believes, if by enacting a law that protects religious rights to not observe gay marriage, or to protect anyone from penalties from the government for not observing gay marriage (which by the way is one of the strongest arguments on the other side) I feel that its worthy of being passed.

Which begs the question, what are gay people looking for, what do you specifically want? Please dont say you want the right to marry, hell I want that to be my right too, but it just aint gonna happen, and Im straight even. Is it that you just want to have a ceremony? If that is the case then the government should not have a say in it anyways, and neither should anyone else.

Kind regards, and best wishes, Justin
I know where you are coming from. I'll never be able to put it as eloquently as Keith Olberman or Lawrence Lessig, but here was my response I left to some of the questions not necessarily covered the two people mentioned on my feelings.

@Justin: Is it a privilege, or is it something special that goes along with something religious? Separation if church and state PROTECTS religion, would you want one Christian sect telling all the others what to believe? Civil Union does not give the same rights as marriage, even if everyone agrees it should; that is a much more technical argument, however, Supreme Court has said separate is inherently unequal.

And great question, is it a right or a privilege? It is a right. What are the rules to get married? 18 or parental consent. There is also the argument it is a human right, legal recognition that two people want to be together across national lines, disaster, keeping a home and tax issues related to such things. The first of which is not granted in the US, domestic partners can not be foreign nationals.

Next, have you ever heard of a court ordered divorce where couples were doing so bad the court made them split up? Denied marriage to two straight people for an issue other than race? I could totally agree marriage could or should be regulated. Why not a 30 day waiting period? Why not mandatory background checks or full disclosure such as is required when you buy a house or a gun? I know why, cause we don't want the government that involved in our personal lives. We protect marriage as a human right.

Finally, critical in this fight, was labeling homosexuality a behavior, and NOT a person. Seems like semantics, right? no. The issue makes a big difference with regard to law. If there were not just homo-behavior and we actually had homo people, 'they' then get special rights as what is called a 'suspect class'. Religion and forms of worship and classes of people can be regulated, but only with a super-majority, >75%. This is why we can have pedophiles as people, not "a behavior", and they don't get legal protection... just as a matter of the law anyway.

Democracy fails when it is the majority ruling over a minority. This is why I do not recognize "The will of the people" as any legitimate argument, especially when it is 52%. Your words acknowledge gays as people, a class of society that are being put to one side versus another, not just a behavior to be discouraged. If we like this country, and want to give meaning to that term law, then we need to recognize these people, like em' or not, as a suspect class with rights, rights, such as marriage that can not be taken away without a super-majority. This is a class war, and that is why people are so angry, so bitter. 52% (down from 63%, both less than super-majority) is not getting regulated away any time soon. Which side do you feel proud to stand on?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Ant in response to this video I just saw with Dr. Phil:
I think someone needs to reread Uncle Tom. No ex-black people, huh? I think that was what Uncle Tom was all about, a color blind society. In a color blind society there are no black people, just people. Uncle Tom today says "be straight and no one will discriminate against you". You can have black skin, just don't 'be' black, and don't have 'black' thoughts. Well to those people, I say with all my heart FUCK YOU and your Uncle Tom idealism. That is NOT how we fight classism in this country.
Sometimes it is really hard to fully express yourself in 500 words, in case that seemed really broken up. Listening to it again...
"sexual preference"? Lessig has a great video on how and who we "choose" to love. Do you really "choose" the person you love? I choose who I let in my life, but I don't think we get much choice who we love. Battered women can not choose to not love their abuser, they can only choose to not have it be a part of their life. That is why leaving is so hard, cause you CAN NOT choose who you love, gay or straight.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Testimony of Rev. Jim Jones' Mistress

I did not know much about this incident until I heard the story of a woman that was both a survivor and an early advocate fighting her family not to follow Jim Jones to Jonestown. Sounds lie there were a lot of mixed stories about what had happened, and how and under what circumstances eventually led to the murder of nearly a thousand African Americans that had thought they were moving to start a new life.

People should know what happened, and the above link is to one of the more informative articles I have been able to find confirming some of the more conspiratorial theories of what happened November 19, 1978.

Let us remember what really happened.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Why my feelings towards Windows could be described as HATE

If you really want to understand where a lot of the HATE comes from, read the Halloween documents: It is a compilation of documents, albeit stolen, from Microsoft executives discussing the impact and threat of Linux dating back as far as 1997. It establishes that, in their eyes, FOSS is a vastly superior development model that Microsoft can not compete with, and that Linux is not only a superior operating system, but that there is no legitimate or LEGAL way to design or develop Windows in a way to out pace it, let alone make it better. There are other issues around that, and many of the stories of their illegal escapades, despite readily available on the web, have been through the telephone game so many times you don't even know what they are talking about. There are also idiots that love Linux, and then simply those that love it that can not articulate themselves well.

The Halloween documents continue to get updated as disgruntled employees and lawsuits force Microsoft to reveal internal documents about illegal activities, and contentions with other companies. In addition to my own frustrating experience with Windows, there were simply things I wanted to do that were more easily facilitated under Linux. That is why I use Linux. The business practices outlined in the Halloween documents, all of which have been verified as authentic my Microsoft, are the reason for the HATE towards Microsoft / Windows.

I don't care how fast it is, or what features it supports. There are serious moral implications that I refuse to ignore any longer.

On a lesser note, I believe FOSS is the best path for the human race, and the best thing for everybody. I think it would be embraced more readily if it were not for the lies spewed by Microsoft, because they deal in taking and distributing software as they see fit for a price. They do not develop, which puts them in a very bad position in a FOSS world.

I don't like the OS war, and I recommend Windows to anyone that just wants to do certain things with their computer and would never look at as a tool. The things on Linux that serve me I recognize as individualistic, not necessarily superior. I prefer struggling with the difficulties of getting things to work under Linux because I feel I am always learning something new about the system. Fixing problems under Windows never felt like that when erasing and reinstalling was most always your best and fastest solution to mysterious errors.

I'll even admit I have more problems with getting things to work the first time under Linux, but the trade off for me is greater flexibility and opportunity to do anything I want with my machine, versus just having an interface to using whatever I bought the way Microsoft or someone else intended.

So that is this fan boy. I appreciate the time you took to outline your concerns about the community, so I felt obligated to share in the same respect.

God is faith

I really hate this term, and has likely been the biggest turn off to organized religion that has ever crossed my path for consideration. Here is just another example of such errancy .

Hetman writes:
No one ever said [evolution and creationism] could not coexist. They just cannot coexist in science class. Just like alchemy and chemistry cannot coexist in science class. God is faith based. Evolution is based fact.
I respond:
I think it is a little more like comic books are not legitimate reading material for an English class.

Science takes faith too, the faith that we are seeing and understanding things in the same way. It is a philosophy, a method for all of us to look at the world in the same way. By your definition, science is just easier. Where the hell did you get that impression?

Religious faith is based on an exploitation of the human necessity for truth, and tries to give people an easy way out to look at the world. They give you little books with simple stories to memorize, and you are done! True philosophy is a commitment to constantly working towards better understanding.

In theory, organized religion could be a pathway towards understanding, but instead it the infomercial diet pill of the mind.

If you could understand this, you would get why evolution is not a FACT, it is a THEORY.
I think some people are just looking for different thins in the world. Some people see it as something small that if they could just understand it, then they can control it and live out the perfect life. I think some of these people also see things as "if it works, it must be right". The problem with this is is the limitations of our own self observation. So many questions have been asked for centuries about 'what is truth?' and 'how do we measure it?'. There have been models for truth through out history. We still look to classical Greek texts to see how in many ways we have not changed. Our children are not born knowing or understanding more about our universe than civilizations of long ago.

But as new theories, models of understanding, have been tested and evolved over this time, we have perfected to the best of our ability, a path to true understanding and communicating about our world.

Wikipedia, on the Scientific Method, opens with:
[This theory] refers to bodies of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.
I would argue that this has been the goal of philosophy throughout history. "Bodies of techniques" is what is specific about the scientific method, while the rest is philosophy. Religion falls into the realm of philosophy, and by this definition, I am sure any theist could argue that by this definition, religion plays this role for people's lives, while science only refers to "stuff" and "things" that their god put here. This keeps science outside the scope of being able to say anything new, different, or conflicting with reality, well, their reality.

What this quote plainly takes out of context is what those bodies of techniques that are integral to understanding the difference between "science" and just "any other philosophy". This is the foundation where we decide what we are going to accept as truth, and what we regard as ideas and speculation. This model illustrates it well, from the sciencebuddies.org web site:

The last step that is not included (because this is a guide for students doing science fair projects) is that the results must be independently verified. Further, and this is the real kicker, the independent results must match as exactly as possible. In general, any hole in a theory breaks it, when such conflict can be verified through an independent study, particularly when such studies come up with better models that more accurately relate a phenomenon. Then further there is the whole difference between causation and correlation. It takes more than seeing two things together to say that one thing causes another, but that is a bit more complicated.

So what does this mean really? I think it means that we either have to accept or reject it as a foundation for absolute truths. It doesn't mean that things that aren't proven by science are false, it just means that they aren't proven as true... by the same token, science can prove that things are NOT true, but it does not mean that things that can not be proven to be false are true.

So in every way I have ever been able to look at things, the bible is just a book. It Is like any other book, there are good books, and there are bad books. Good ones not worth reading, and bad ones worth reading too. Personally, I think there are a lot of other better books worth reading. Unless you just want to know what all the hype is about, go ahead, but i'll just say it is a pretty bad book not worth reading. I am far from saying this simply because it is old it is somehow out dated, it is out dated for many other reasons that would require a close analysis of the text, which is not what I am going to go into at this moment.

Well, to be honest, the old testement is entertaining as insight to what primitive humans undertsoof about the world. It is worth reading from that perspective. The sequel on the other hand has the taste of Uwe Bolle and Michael Moore.

Now I can reconize that I am not taking into account all the impact that "the new testement" has had on history, as many kids today can't appreciate the impact of Birth of a Nation or Citizen Kane had on film, I have lost interest as many kids today will have difficulty appreciating Star Wars in the face of so many fanatics getting in their face telling them how it is the greatest movie ever, and making it out to be so much more than it really is, the latter being more relevant in this case for me, but knowing that the former is a big issue for many people I know that have ever had to endure going to an orthodox church.

More I just don't get...

hufflepuff17 writes:
God and Evolution cannot "Co-exist" because saying God used evolution to create everything is belittling his sovereign power and it being a miracle. We will never be able to wrap our minds around God or how he does things because we cannot conceive perfection or infinite power. So don't try and put God into a box so we can think we understand how he does things because we never will. Evolution is just our way of trying to put the creation story into a box and not letting it be what it really is, which is a miracle.
My reply:
"Evolution is just our way of trying to put the creation story into a box and not letting it be what it really is, which is a miracle."

It is really interesting you would say that because I would not hesitate to say exactly the opposite, that the wonderful place that is our world with all of its things to study and observe, the bible tries to take all that greatness and put into a small box by taking out of context some ancient story of privative human understanding of the universe and trying to say that is exactly the way things must be because it has been accepted for thousands of years.

I WILL agree I put the bible into a box (more like a can to be exact) by limiting my perspective to seeing it as just another book. Why not actually look at the history of the text you revere so greatly. No Star Wars fan boy calls another any less of a "believer" just because they acknowledge that George Lucas's wife may have had a really big role in the original trilogy. The Bible is a collection of stories kept by ancient people and their understanding of the world. Good stuff, very interesting, but why are you taking it apart to be something it is not? What an insult to the PEOPLE that took the time to put and keep it together.
I just know there is something here with these people that I am NEVER going to understand. My only comfort is that this belief does something for them that makes their lives either happier, or more stable. But it still makes me sad.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Response to My Boyfriend won't quit World of Warcraft!

It is odd, I recently started playing wow again after having played on and off casually. I did play a LOT for a short time when I was depressed, but I set goals for myself, and when I met those goals, I was no longs interested in playing. Now this time, I am not playing every day, but it has made me quit smoking. I noticed that I smoked when I was bored, and that is all it was. Now when I am bored, I jump online, play an arena / pvp match, grind a few quests and then sign off.

Addiction is a difficult thing to break. Addictions are a place of security and consistency. They are something you can get a predictable response from in what he expresses is an unpredictable world in a way.

I have seen many people / girlfriends loose people to wow. I have argued, to be honest, that it can be that wow sets a high bar. It can actually be more stimulating than the average relationship. You do sound like you care, but I think in order to be successful you need to know what you want from this. Why do you care? Is it only that he is a human being? Was he supportive of you in college in a useful way? You need to identify what you want more than a chance to pity him.

It may seem far fetched, but he has told you what he wants, even if it seems "unrealistic". He is an abc that wants to visit his native country. There is nothing wrong with him disliking this country and wanting to go to china, even if it is a little out of immediate reach.

I would suggest getting engaged with his interest in wow. Don't psyco-analyze him, just ask him what he is doing, and what he hopes to accomplish. If you are worried about coming off as a noob that doesn't understand, get to know some of the lore; wow is very rich with intermingled stories that have been a long time in the making. warcraft as a story is 15+ years out there. Get to know some of the stories, and ask for his feelings on some of the conflicts, or how a particular conflict may get resolved.

If you can identify with the goals he is setting now, and he can recognize the accomplishments he is making, I think he would see that he is able to achieve goals hie sets for himself. The problem with an addiction or any habit is that you can't set a goal to NOT do something, cause that isn't anything at all. You need to set a goal to DO something, or better, accomplish something. wow sets little achievements that are attainable in an entertaining way that is rewarding and often requires team work. Going out with friends, or sex, or partying are fun and pleasurable in their own way, but they are not goals, they are things. They can be rewards between accomplishments to reward ourselves, but they are not accomplishments in and of themselves. This is where "real life" can be a depressing challenge next to the attraction of wow.

I believe that if he can more closely identify with his goals, he may stop making them so lightly, and take more pleasure in the completion of his goals, even in the mean time it is only in the game. I would bet that as he sets goals for himself that as he accomplishes them, he will feel more "finished" at the end of his gaming sessions.

I think you can see at this point where goals become their own limits and how steps can be taken towards his real goal of going to China. Also, China has some of the best Internet in the world, not to mention they they have the first real clinics for treating gaming addiction as its own thing that needs specialized attention.

It sounds like he wants to break the addiction, but that the game plays an important role. He also has aspirations. The connections need to be made that will give him choices to empower himself, and do what he wants to do in his life.

If you want to comment back about my suggestion (or anyone else) going to post this to my blog. nakedpenguins dot net. Hope you can add this to the many other suggestions you have received, and hope you found the perspective yo were looking for. Good luck.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Warning, Jesus got involved. Some adult content was inspired by and included in this email.

YesJesusYes writes:
Hello Homosexual.

Do you want to know why we so successful in passing Proposition 8? Because of YOU! (Thank you!!) How much money did you contribute to the "vote no on prop 8!" campaign? Probably zilch, based on the pitiful amount of money that was raised to counter our pro-family advertising. How many "vote No!" rallies did you go to? Based on the pathetic number of anti-8 rallies (and even more pathetic number of participants at them), you probably didn't go to a single one, did you? In fact, if just one fifth of all homosexuals in California would have given $50 to the "vote no!" campaign, you would have outspent our "yes!" campaign by millions. If just one tenth of homosexuals in California, who claim to be so against this proposition, had actually protested or rallied, there would have been hundreds of thousands protesting in the streets of California. Hahahahaha! I saw about 20 protesters. This leaves me with one simple conclusion: YOU DON'T CARE! You pretend to care, but you don't! Why else would the vast majority of you and all your homo California friends do absolutely NOTHING?! Oh, sure, there are a few random die-hard homosexuals who gather in little 50 to 100 person rallies to "stand up" for your homosexual agenda, but the rest of you, MILLIONS of you, don't give a rat's ASS about your "equal" rights!

I'll let you in on a little secret: My church has known for YEARS that the homosexual community is apathetic, unorganized, and unmotivated. (Except when it comes to your parties and disgusting gay parades) Why do you think my pastor gets away with preaching anti-homosexual, pro-family messages on regular basis? It's because he knows you people won't do anything and simply don't care! You're all too hung over to show up and protest at our church on Sunday mornings, because all you do is party and do drugs. Does that offend you? Well truth hurts.

Actually, I have to take that back. I can't give you ALL the credit for passing proposition 8. If I did that, I would be ignoring the tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of organized effort ME and my church put in to passing it. I do have to pat myself on the back a little. You see, I've given 10% of everything I make to my church EVERY month. Do you know how much money that is? (It's thousands and thousands of dollars a year.) Do you have any idea how many of me and my friends/family give thousands and thousands of dollars to our anti-homosexual churches each and every month? (millions and millions a year.) Our churches are organized and have every bit as much money as we need to defeat homosexuals each and every time a proposition or constitutional amendment comes up for vote. That's why gay people are losing their rights all over this country! Did you know 30 states have now passed (by VOTE!) constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage? Hmm….it sure sounds like we're winning to me!

Good luck changing this country with your youtube posts and angry emails. While you sit on your ass at your computer, I'll be rallying with my fellow anti-homosexual Christians, raising money to continue taking away you and your homosexual friends' rights. And every time I see one of your pathetic rally of 20 or 30 homosexuals huttled together on a street corner, first I'm going to laugh, then I'm going to think of you and wonder if you're a) partying, or b) sitting on your ass in front of your computer. Then I'll laugh again.

YesJesusYes
My reply:

1) I will totally agree we are having way more fun than you. Personally though, I don't do drugs.

2) I am married to a woman, and ban on gay marriage doesn't stop my wife or I from having as much sex as either one of us with either men or woman. It is really great to be attractive, just fyi.

3) If 10% of your income amounts to "thousands" of dollars a year, I am sorry. But thank you for yet another example of how it is easier to get money from poor people than rich people; it is why they are poor!

4) You only make ten * thousands of dollars a year, and rather than saving for a college fund, let alone move to a nice neighborhood, buying better food, keeping a nicer house, tutor for your kids to get better grades, you give that money to some fly by night group that calls themselves a religion? I love this "fuck the dead sea scrolls, we got words on gold" joke. It would only be funnier if I was the one getting the money, which leads to...

5) The church (members, pastors, whatever) loves gay bashing, and going to protests while good little mommy bakes cookies for their good little Mormon husbands. But he who works hard has to play hard. Do you have any idea how many blow jobs I have gotten from really nervous "homophobic" Mormon in their 20's? I have many gay friends and every one of them has a sugar daddy. And you know who helps make this happen? People like you! Guys that are attractive and out of the closet are self empowered, have no repressed homosexual feelings, and have nothing to hide. They are also choosey. That is no fun. On the other hand, you get one of these homophobic, church going, perfect husband types and start talking about how uptight woman can be sometimes, and it is amazing how quickly the conversation will turn to "why can't women be more like men?", to "have you ever tried?" to "I wonder what it is like?", to "Would it be ok i I sucked your cock, I'm not gay! But don't tell anyone / my wife. She would be all weird about it." These guys always think they are soo original. But it is too funny how virgins think so hard and are all confused and stuff to always come up with the same answer. I just smile, and tell them "I understand sure you can suck on my cock a bit, and don't worry, you can fondle my balls too".

6) It doesn't matter. Unless you believe your own propaganda, nothing is going to change. Teachers can teach about love all they want, male male, male female, female female, whatever. And I don't know if you have paid any attention to the national issue, but this whole prop 8 thing has got every kid in every school talking about gay marriage. I thought that was what you were trying to stop, and you call your little temporary restraining order a win? YOU and your church made homosexuality the biggest issue in this country after the election, and after that, you successfully changed the minds of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the Governator against prop 8 and pro gay marriage. The only "victory" you got was pandering to the poorerst and least educated and told them all kinds of horror stories... only to get 52% of the vote. HA HA HA!!! You do know WHY the supreme court has never heard the ban on gay marriage issue? Cause they have already said that it is a CLEAR violation of equal protection, and separation of church and state. With California finally taking the ranks to get a ban on gay marriage, this will mean the supreme court is going to actually address the issue directly. While you go to church and whine about all the fun the gays are having, and how they must be the reason why your marriage sucks, or whatever else poor people do, some of us actually pay attention to what is going on with regard to the law, and follow what the supreme court does, and how they think. Something my friends laugh about every once in awhile with regard to "apathy" is how few people actually know the supreme court addresses more than one or two case a year. So until the bill is signed into law, anyone planning to get married still can, and nobody married now will loose their marriage licenses at all. Its called contract law and de facto segregation. Do you have any idea how the this system of government works at all, or do you only know how to spread the lies and get people to sign petitions to "save the children"?

7) Well, despite this email obviously being targeted to a mass audience, and my name merely being on a list with (I am sure I could name a few) others, Any other implications I have already blogged about, and if you care to read / comment, I would love to have more to share and laugh about with my friends. http://nakedpenguins.org

And last but not least, thanks for giving me something to write about. I have been a bit busy partying and loving life recently, but not having too much to blog about, ant this was inspiring. Who would have thought I would be so influential as to get on your list. I feel so special.

And don't forget that the whole church is a lie, that they cheat you with a smile on their face, there is no god, and when you die you will have gone from a whole fake life of servitude to an imaginary superhero just to make someone else rich. There is no heaven. You had one life and you just wasted it on nothing. "And it would be funny if it just wasn't so sad".

And now we are both laughing. What a great world we live in that two people can make each other so happy, despite our differences.

Have a nice life, and keep on reaching for that rainbow, or planet, or whatever your adorable little fan club dies.

Keith

I love youtube!

Update on prop 8

So I was updated recently regarding Scenario #1 in my Californians Vote God Hates Fags.

Sadly, in a way, not a possibility. Governor does not sign such laws into place... but it is still up to legislature to interpret what the law actually does. It looks like it is going to go route #2 or #3, as I have been hearing there are already seven appeals in place, + 2 lawsuits against the Mormon church working on a case for voter fraud for she many lies in their campaign to manipulate the vote. I am betting that the churches lies will be seen as free speech unless there is some part I am missing.

It will be interesting to watch, particularly under the upcoming administration.

Some are making points that "no on prop 8" failed because the yes on 8 people tried a LOT harder to canvass the state with their message. My question is how much of that is true, because of (relative) apathy, and how much of that was half the fighters, not hoping so much that it would pass, as leaving it to the supreme court? If the latter, I strongly hope that apathy does not spill over into the support for making a good case in the supreme court.

And on another note, hurray to the (some 18,000?) protesters camping out in front of the Mormon church in LA. While that may have made more sense 2 weeks ago, I find it hilarious that as the church thought they were fighting the gays off, and keeping them away from their family / children, their church is now where they can see more gays than a pride parade in SF.

Hm....

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... *stop to inhale* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I might just cry a little that is so funny.