History upon a media floats.

Watching a documentary about underage British soldiers in WWI. They presented many cases of mail, not email but letters, from the soldier to parents and loved ones, and from parents to their children. And it struck me that much of the domestic history we view is wrapped up in letters. Paper letters, written most often longhand, and delivered by whatever postal method existed at the time.

One of the most important archeological artifacts of our time is called The Rosetta Stone. which is really only a set of decrees. Not some piece of literature in a library, but a plain bit of government ‘paperwork’ . It provided a vital key in cross translation that was missing in ancient Egyptian language.

Moving forward, to current times, I look at the way my wife and I treat our emails. I have always kept my in folders in my email system. My wife will always print any important email, then delete everything else in the inbox. She never keeps email electronically. Bill Gates mentioned that the Blu-Ray, HD DVD media will be the last physical media ever produced. And while I doubt this, it brings up an important issue. Who will document us as a people in the future, and with what? If all future media, literature, emails, communications will be stored in ephemeral media electronically or otherwise. What will tell of our stories in the future?

If the electronic history is anything, it is a story of change. Changing protocols formats, (ASCII, Unicode) different document formats, and storage media. If say, I had keep my resume on 8 inch Floppies, who in the future would be able to read my CV on a IBM-3740 format encoded in BCD and what “Rosetta Stone” would they be using?

When is the last time you watched a movie about a lost or misdirected email in a romantic setting. Letters, yes, email not a chance. What if Shakespeare, had written his works in WordStar version 1? Would anyone value a newly discovered e-manuscript? Or even be able to read it? Not a chance. Physical media, substance, printed materials, BOOKS, will survive. They are our future for history.

Massachusetts may have hit upon a weak link in this electronic history when it attempted to standardize on an open document for future government documents. These may prove to be the future Rosetta stone for the historians. A method to remember the meaning of all language translations, or not.
But for now, I think I’m going to stop saving my important documents in PDF. and start printing them on good low acid paper and black ink. (and who said computers would make a paperless office ;-))

ID and a weak God

I am constantly amazed at the so called Intelligent Design (ID) arguments and all the religious organizations trying to get ID introduced into Science classes as an alternative theory.

I don’t even think that they realize that doing so, shows how weak and human their god is. That ID represents god’s so called OmniPresent, OmniPotent powers in the same vein as a satellite orbit that has to be corrected from time to time.

ID isn’t an assault on Science, it an assault on religion. If you weaken God to the point that you can attribute human behavior to him/her/it then you can make such a god mean anything, represent anything, do anything without reason, or motivation. That kind of god can me corrupted in just the same way as any politician. And that is very easy. It justifies every corruption we see in politics today. God did it, or God told me to do it! It’s Gods way.

If you assume that there is such an OmniPotent God, then there is no reason to believe that everything that is observed in science, by the reasoning that God has granted us, is not as Darwin has predicted. Evolution is as close to fact as we weak humans can determine at this time. We have no other observable ‘facts’ available that can refine this more, yet! That is science, discover more, find more, refine more. Our satellites need constant correction, because is don’t know every thing yet. But we get better at it, every time we work at it. Every time we refine our theories of, well anything we theorize about. Science is probing, and seeking, without prejudice.

And ID is prejudice, and any religion that supports ID is expecting science to be prejudiced in just that same way. Always leaning in one direction, always needing course corrections. Always wrong.

Internet Censorship

It has come to me just now why the U.S. has tried to block the adoption of the ‘.xxx’ domain. It came to me when reading this article on the BBC Internet child porn block calls.

If there is the xxx domain, and the porn sites moved to this domain. Parental blocking of these sites would be easy.

And hence the real reason. Content could be blocked by domain address, rather than via filtering content. Utilizing filtering, any kind of censorship can me undertaken. You could block anything that is deemed ‘Obscene’. And that is a very soft definition. Any religious, or political subject could be considered obscene, and therefore block-able.

Child porn is only the trojan horse to begin this paradigm shift in thinking.

Now I’m sure this is not a surprise to some, but I just had to state this out-loud.

Interesting how the spellchecker brought up BlackBall along with Block-able. The new McCarthyism?

Skype’s Encryption

In this article on Boing Boing Skype’s security reviewed Cory Doctorow states:

It’s a truism in security that a security system that is kept secret is a not secure

I have never hear such a stupid thing in all my life. But he quotes another :

As Bruce Schneier says, “Anyone can design a security system so clever that he can’t think of a way of breaking it,”

Hence the independent review that Skype has performed. The only thing I’d have done differently would have been to have two independent reviews, by people that know crypto.

And this next statement is the icing on the cake:

A much better answer would be for Skype to disclose its code

What a stupid thing to do! This would be the last thing I would do with a secure code. Then you would have a bunch of hackers publishing exploits in days.

I am a supporter of Open Source, since before Cory was a twinkle in his father eye. (known as DECUS) But this one, is just plain dumb Cory.

The Missing Movie, Martial Law America.

Years ago I watched a movie on TV, in black and white, as that was the only kind my folks had at the time. But the movie made a lasting impression on me. It may have been written for today, but the setting was the 60’s, men dressed in black suits white shirts, very sinister.

The plot when like this:

  • There is Martial Law in the United States of America. As a result of some form of terrorism.
  • The period of Martial Law was coming to an end
  • The current President’s eight year term is about to expire
  • the Martial Law’s constraint on freedoms has managed to create an underground ‘Resistance’ movement.
  • the government has secretly arrested an army general who is suspected of being part of this movement
  • he is suspected of leaking, or attempting to leak information that the President will use Secret Service agents to blow up several power plants in the Southwest United States in an effort to maintain the continuation of Martial Law. And to halt the next election, and extend his ‘leadership’
  • The President plans to blame the ‘Terrorist’ for the bombing
  • the terrorist knows of the generals arrest, and while they know that he is not part of the movement, they free him, and discover the plot
  • the ‘Resistance’ groups defend the power plants from being destroyed

From that point I don’t remember more of the story.

The important point is this. I have never seen or heard about this movie EVER!

I vaguely remember that the general was played by Robert Duval, a very young Duval.

This movie is scary, placed into the context of today’s events, that if I put on my tin hat. It would make a great conspiracy to believe this movie is missing because it has become a Republican blueprint for the future. And hence it has disappeared from the film vaults of Hollywood.

On the other hand, it could have been just another ‘B’ movie actors would just a likely be ashamed to be associated with. But it’s absents is disturbing, considering all the trash that is still around. A story with this much political meat in it would likely find an audience.

If you know this film, post a comment, and let me know.

More meaning from the homeland.

The ongoing discussion of politics I’ve been having with my brother in Kansas has lead to a disturbing rebuke, I’ll quote:

I have only one real question for this guy……What personal freedoms does he not have today, that he had 20 years ago. Has his personal income been affected, or has his personal life been affected in anyway. He quite apparently is not a very good father, and husband, if he has this much time on his hands to spew stuff all over the internet. He ought to spend some time with his family, and enjoy the freedom that he has, because of the actions of the American Government, past and present.

How have you personally been affected by Bush,……did he shit in your coffee one day or something…..He has not affected you personally in any way. And in a few years he will be gone, and if a Republican is elected, then you will have someone else to blame for your problems.

Nothing has changed around her for me ….I am making more money, my wife is making more money than me, now. Gas has gone up, but that is probably for the good. Maybe everyone will be more aware of what they drive. The cost of housing is about the same. Stocks are a little unsettled, but that is the trend, just before they become bullish again.

The air is still clean, and the so called global warming hoax is over. Life is what you make of it……Unless your thing is being totally negative, and running around thinking that the sky is falling. And like many people, blaming other people for your problems, because after all, it couldn’t be my fault. WHO ME, I CAN’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY ACTIONS. That would intrude on my civil liberties. BULL SHIT.

This is disturbing on so many levels I can not count them all. It’s a complete head-in-sand (hate that phrase) attitude. And I only hope that the ‘global warming hoax’ jab, was only a joke. But it’s a frightful thing to see anyone shirk their civic duties, especially your own brother. But I guess this is what a lot of folks are doing, Foxhole Politics: Keep your head down, and hope that you don’t get your head blown off, wait for events to pass.

Very sad.

Of Zero’s and Ones, a journey

I have worked in the IT world for over 25 years, and while I’m not really trained as a ‘Computer Scientist’ I classify myself as one. So when I got the opportunity to tutor Java to a first year computer science class at UCC (in Cork) I more or less jumped at the chance. I am not a great Java programmer, in fact I am only just a beginner in Java, but my career has put many languages in my tool belt, COBOL, RPGII, FORTRAN IV, BASIC, Pascal, Ada and C. So Java just became another language I’d learn along the way. And I had no problem keeping a page ahead of the class. But what I learned, and I usually learn a lot along the way, was this issue with Turing. The in-computability issue actually. And it’s been under my skin for ages.

I actually think that Turing is laughing his ass off about this, as it’s really a logic issue. Or rather a Logical Fallacy of Bifurcation issue. It’s a known logic problem, and is best illustrated with a joke. “Answer Yes or No! Are you still kicking your dog?” See, any answer is wrong if you can only answer yes or now. This is a problem inherent with computer binary decision making. It’s either Zero (0) or One (1), true or false. So if you have a computer look at color, and ask “Is it blue or Red” and what is presented is ‘Green’ the compute can not resolve it.

So MY years in IT could therefor be summed up as trying to convince computers to stop listening to Turing, and to explore the world in between Zero and One. . Because the world is a gray area, hence I have, over time, more or less drifted into the database areas of IT. As from there comes the gray matter of IT, Information.

One other computer science aspect I encountered from the professor of the class, was his delight for recursion. And I have to admit that through the years I have never used recursion in any of my development. This professor produced the prettiest Java recursion solution for the old CompSc problem, The Towers of Hanoi. Now I was impressed, recursion was a neat way to solve that problem. But then I put on my IT hat and looked at how that problem appears in the real world. And guess what? It only works when the Tower’s a at the starting point. That seems to be the problem with recursion, it has to start and end in known, and knowable states. Almost the exact problem as the Turing one, it has to know where 0 is, to get to 1. Hence the reason I have never used it in the IT world, or have never seen anyone else use it in production computing systems.

In the IT world there is almost never a situation where you can know where the start and end of a program must operate. Business and engineering is operating in the Analog world, the world in between 0 and 1. Bringing to the fore, the problems concerning Turing and recursion. This is probably a factor almost every computer program operating in the world must solve, hacking around the analog world. A vast attempt to abstract the zeros and ones into the world in between. It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to understand why computers crash. A confrontation with the analog reality wall.

This is probably why I get obsessive about politics. It’s that same fallacy, your either a Nazi Republican pig, or a Commie Left wing Democrat!. Or to get elected, you have to be a Democrat, or a republican. And then have to adopt the ‘platform’ of the party, even if this is not who, or what you as a candidate truly wish to be, or represent.

It’s that old Analog world, full of grey issues, and gray solutions. And the current political situation in the U.S. cannot be solved with zeros and ones anymore than a computer can. It must process the gray in between world, it must solve the in between problems.

ID and the “Miracle Occurs” Funny

With regards to the current ID or Intelligent Design arguments, I have often remembered this funny graphic.

And it completely represents why ID should not be allowed to pass as Science, because it’s not. And politicians who promote this are only demonstrating their own ignorance, or they are counting on some bogus religious support for the next election. Think about it, becoming the leader of people of such ignorance. What a high goal politicians are striving for these days.

Another Cloudy day

Do you ever get a feeling of impending doom?

Maybe it’s just another gloomy day, and not Rita.

But there may be more at work than the weather. Change is in the wind. And I’m not speaking about the weather. Even if there is Global Warming. Or that the Politics are heating up. Or war, or maybe it’s just a combination of these things. Somethings not right with the world today.

More later….

Maybe I need another Coffee.

The Assault on Federalism

Katrina, may have been a natural disaster, but it was a predictable one. And I’m not talking about the death, destruction and economic. It is a disaster for the Republican agenda, and again I’m not talking about the current administration and the current crop of politicians either.

The Republican agenda has been the systematic destruction of the federalist, centralist government of the United States of America otherwise known as the U.S.A. The disaster has been exposing this agenda too early. Well before the planned execution of the victim, the Federal Government. This might sound a little too far into the arena of the tin hat brigade. But the fundamental has been to push control of the government back into the state house. States Rights!

A world where the Federal government only has the power to regulate interstate commerce, and provide for the common defense, and very little else. The civil war, which was fought over this goal (not over slavery) failed in this pursuit and is only now coming to fruition in the form of an internally crippled, bureaucratically corrupt, and functionally inept federalist structure.

The fundamental goal of the Republicans was to demonstrate to the world that a Federal government was flawed. The failure of FEMA while appearing to be a failure of the government was in fact a victory for the Republicans. A further proof that the Federalist system does not work.

The disaster for the Republicans has been that it has happened when they are in power. If the the plan was to work, it was necessary to be the responsibility of the Democrats. Or any other person or party other than the Republicans. Katrina came too early, caused too much destruction.

But part of the demonstration, was to show that Republican controlled states like Florida, could manage, while a Democratically dominated ones like Louisiana could not.

They are likely to succeed in any case, as the Republicans are still in control of the Mass Media. Controlled as they are by big business. There is little information being disseminated that provides the true ‘Big Picture’. And what there is, it deliberately spun into a muddle to be interpreted as needed and to generally confuse the general population.

Another tenet of the Federalist government was a free and independent reporting of the news, another target of the Republicans. A goal mostly accomplished, with perhaps the oversight of the internet. A goal still firmly in their sites. With goals of censorship of the Internet content being then next element on their agenda.

And with all this, do you think Science has been excluded, far from it. It falls into the same category as truth, as the truth from their perspective is something to be managed and subject to interpretation. Redefinition, refinement to provide a more productive result.

But back to the disaster, the trouble with all this talk about decentralizations, is this, it’s not the President’s Job to redefine the government from a Federalist to a State Republic. The President is elected to uphold the constitution, including the three branches of the government, all of which the Republicans do NOT currently control. And hence is an Impeachable offense under the constitution. And exposing this Republican Goal is not a Republican Goal.

Impeach Bush , and impeach the republican goal!

ID and Science, Religion and politics

In Ireland, as much as I can see, the Irish are viewing the ID (Intelligent design) arguments with aghast. And I personally am ashamed to have been born and raised in Kansas. Here the question isn’t that God exists, ask any Catholic here, it’s not even a question. Watch a funeral procession, everyone crosses themselves. Their devotion is not subject to questioning.

However, from their perspective, and mine, any argument about ID is not that there was one, but that what science reveals is how complex and how truly Omniscient and omnipresent God is. If someone pointed to a piece of the puzzle and said, I see God putting these two things together, and see, a mousetrap. Their response would be, why have you made God so small, and weak. Or better yet, why do you make yourself as great as God as to assume you can detect his/her/it’s hand.

All these so called christian ID folk are the hight of arrogance as to assume they know all the ways of God, and in the same breath, diminish him at the same time. They make God, human, and therefor subject to their own designs.

As an IT person, more or less a Computer scientist, I can appreciate complexity, but I don’t have to invoke Deus Ex Machina to explain the universe around me. I marvel at it, and I seek to understand it in all of it’s complexity.

This scares me that the President of the United States is of this ID belief. If he thinks that Deus Ex Machina will get him out of the mess in Iraq, he has another thing coming.

Unified Field Theory

Very interesting articleWhat to Do If You Have a Proposal for the Unified Field Theory? It has similarities to a journalistic style of writing, or inverse pyramid writing. Encapsulate the main idea in the first paragraph, then use followup paragraphs to illustrate the main paragraph.

So here’s mine;

If a super string can exist in multiple M Universes (Dimensions) then it is possible that the string can exist in the same universe, at a different location in that dimension and that communication of information can pass through the string and appear in different locations in any dimension. Where communication is termed ‘influence’ then the ‘connected’ feelings we have may be the effect of super thread communication. This connected feeling, and the apparent ability of an observer to influence the outcome of quantum events may also be attributed to this effect.

(Update: There is another reference to this artical at: Physics Post)