Online Debate

So from time to time I log onto Google+ to see what's going on. Today I see this post by the Dalai Lama.

We are all, by nature, clearly oriented toward the basic human values of love and compassion. We all prefer the love of others to their hatred. We all prefer others’ generosity to meanness. And who is there among us who does not prefer tolerance, respect and forgiveness of our failings to bigotry, disrespect, and resentment?

I read through the comments, and saw what I expected to see, people agreeing, people disagreeing and people plugging their own religion. A few in the conversation had put more than two lines of thought into their message, and thankfully nobody trolled the hell out of the thread, but seeing the division of faiths disturbs me. So I replied to them and though I should post this here.

I have to say, I cannot claim great wisdom in my 27 years on this earth, but I can say this. One of the hardest lessons I have ever had to accept is that people are inherently good. While I have seen in us a grand capacity for hatred and destruction our natural reflex on the whole seems to be a more beneficial one.

I would also like to share a revelation for everyone here who has pressed their own path in this conversation. I deeply respect your religion. The ones that have been commented on the most I feel are all-together brothers in spirit, as we all worship the God of Issac, Abraham and Jacob. Another revelation I have had is though we feel we are following the truth, (and I do feel I am following the one TRUE truth in my journey) this does not exclude from others being right, or from having understood aspects of the truth that we have yet to understand. It does not seem miraculous to me that many of those we would call "holy", Gandhi, Mother Theresa or even the Dalai Lama, sound so similar in their teachings. Judeo-Christian teachings tell us that the path to righteousness is through love. Though a theme in Jesus' teaching was in letting go of the preoccupation with future concerns in favor of gratitude for the here and now, instead relying that God would take care of tomorrow. This is a theme also seen heavily throughout Buddhism. I feel both are true, though they come from different sources. The truth is not ever limited to our personal savior, and I feel I am better for being able to recognize this.

As always, I welcome comments.

My Grandma

Recently, my grandmother died. This came with it all of the emotions of a tight nit family healing together. Each of us in my family had our own way of expressing our grief. I found myself obsessed with writing a poem.

Enough people wanted to get hold of it, so I'll post it here.

My Grandma

Come family, come friends.

We gather here today

to mourn a regrettable end

and to send her on her way.

We've all lost something great,

the Matriarch Anita Dell.

I've realized well to late

how big a loss that we've been dealt.

Anita was my Grandmother,

She was mortar to our clan,

From family news that she would cover

to the dinners that she ran.

At gathers it was known

she would want to play her part.

She would open up her home

so that we could open up our hearts

Come family, Come friends.

We gather to share tears,

to mourn regrettable ends

and to celebrate her years

I look around at the faces

of her glorious legacy.

Her greatest of God's graces,

her loving Christian family

And one can only think

about the way she'd feel

when the family would sing

God's graces at a meal.

If that's what was important,

we'd let love into our lives,

then she would would be content

with her family by her side.

So, Come family, come friends.

We gather in this place

we stand and we commend

the family that she raised.

Every child that was brought

into her family line

was treasured and was taught

that family's the best thing you can find.

On holidays we converge

and would fill a house with song,

the young one's she'd encourage

to join and sing along.

If ones accomplishments

were to be our only grade,

her full life was an event

due to the family she made.

Come family, come friends.

We're here to say goodbye,

Our feelings to help mend,

and to have a little cry.

Share a joy, it doubles.

Sorrows shared divide.

In my time of troubles

the burden's light I find.

Our family's a great one,

The best I've ever seen.

It's the greatest thing she built,

a solid family tree.

Come family, come all.

We've gathered at God's grace.

Grandma's memory will never lull

with this family still in place.

Hiatus

I thought it best to post this, though at this point I know very few will care. Over the summer I started up a Network Engineer course. While this doesn't stop me from writing, it does stop me from having any hope of writing reliably. To this end, I'm going to take a break from even hoping of having a semblance of a regular update cycle and just start up a buffer. Chances are, I won't start up again till spring, but I may come back for the new year.

Sorry if you found my earlier posts and wanted to read more.

Mawiage!

I've found myself thinking about the debate about same sex marriage, and I've been struck by how unethical it is to support bans on marriage in the first place. I understand that religious factors and history have had a huge hand in the current situation, but I just can't see how we are currently able to defend laws against gay and lesbian unions. Of course, reading the bloody name of this blog illustrates the number one suspect, that society has swallowed another stupid pill. It's probably expected that I would back up the homosexual community on this one, but for the record, I've gotten to this place through a different path than most might expect. I'm not a huge fan of the lifestyle that seems to have been built around the concept of homosexuality. It seems overly concentrated on the superficial aspects of society. Frankly speaking, gay isn't something I should be able to hear is a person's voice or see in your clothes. The moment that the concept of a gay/lesbian lifestyle appeared in out world, that lifestyle started to separate itself from the actual attraction to the same sex that defines the minority. The way that this has been idolized and encouraged in our culture has me worried.

To me, sexual preference is a personal thing, and should be treated as such. I understand that for many years homosexuality was repressed in modern society and only now can a gay man love freely, but I would counter that sex itself and anything to do with sex was pretty repressed in modern society, and only now the concept of dealing with sex as opposed to ignoring it is openly accepted. I might be overstating my discomfort here, and would like to make it clear that what I am bothered by is the culture, not the act. It's just something I find an annoyance at best.

This is why the absolute hatred of homosexuals portrayed by conservative media bothers me so much. Looking at the Bible, and knowing the religious teachings, one can only conclude that religion in this case is an excuse, not a divine calling. I can't see how anyone could really want to hold one sin so high above the others when it comes to the source material. My personal guess is that it's a form of social inertia coupled with a bunch of people who think they can use religion as a socially acceptable way to openly hate someone. Despite what we say in public, all emotions feel good. Anger feels good. Endorphins, adrenalin, dopamine, it's all there making us feel good. I think that of all of the people holding signs and raving against gay marriage, perhaps only 1/10 of them really meanit with any sense of religious conviction.

Of those people that actually are worried about the issue, there are only two arguments I've heard of that holds any weight in my mind. The first is the concept of homosexuality as a sin. Despite the rarity of mentions in the Bible compared to other sins, there are some who feel that we shouldn't be allowing people to "live in sin" or allow it to be encouraged. Well, I did have a friend who came up with the only appropriate response; "Who doesn't sin?". It is also the cornerstone of the Christian faith, that all of us are tainted by sin and living a virtuous life isn't the path to heaven. Also, with that in mind, if our concern is that they will go to hell, then maybe some Christians should rethink their methods of saving people, because ostracizing and abusing these people is not likely to get them to change their views.

The other argument I hear has a little more merit and a little more meat for discussion. It involves concern about rewriting the definition to the word "marriage". Some of my family hold this view and have stated a good point, and I feel I should paraphrase one of them to do the argument justice. "I love my wife, I love her more deeply then anything in this world. I entered into a divine contract of marriage with her, and people are now wanting to lower the bar. I'm not going to deny homosexual people the right to love each other, but by redefining marriage you are fundamentally cheapening the title I have with my wife." I can see where this argument might have merit. After all, according to Christian doctrine, homosexuality is considered a sin, (though I consider it a very forgivable one) and the the argument stands as long as you personally aren't being hypocritical in its application (make certain you aren't wearing any cotton/polyester blends).

The main counter to this however is one of language. We seem to have had the unfortunate lack of foresight to adopt the same words for "union under God" and "union under Government", and we seem to be letting our wires be crossed. I for one (and a few others) think that we should follow through with the separate church and state thing that we hold so dear. As a Christian I actually am on the fence when it comes to gay marriage in the church, but I do think that there should be nothing that stops two people of the same sex getting the tax benefits that come with marriage via government. I'd say limit the government to performing "civil unions" and let marriage be a religion thing. That seems a reasonable way to clear up the confusion. If a homosexual couple want to be married under God, then they should talk to their religious leader.
Now that I've made what I feel on the matter clear, I'd like to raise a point of ethics. Whether or not I feel it is wrong, how can any of us abide by any law that limits activities based on sexual preference? As I said, sex has always been one of those touchy subjects that no one is comfortable with, but after cruising the internet for a while, one knows that guy on guy action isn't the weirdest thing out there. If we are talking about base perversion, then we should be looking at banning leather stores and equestrian shops just to be safe. Actually there isn't a single damn thing out there that hasn't been sexualized in one way or the other, so why this one fetish. Then again, it seems to me that this is mostly a generational thing. I'm not seeing too many actual gay haters out there who are under the age of 30. I really feel that if this were an alternate world and there were a movement trying to ban gay marriage as opposed to upholding the ban, we would hate them for it. Todays controversy it isn't the fact that the majority of people are against same sex marriage, it's that there is legal inertia, and a lot of people are indifferent.
At the end of the day, everyone's got a fetish. Some of them are freakier than others, but one of the core lessons when dealing with each other (in the bedroom and out) is the acceptance that everyone is different, and what works for me won't necessarily work for you. What turns me on might disgust others, and that which turns Fred from my carpool on will most likely turn me off. This is okay, It doesn't mean he's right or wrong, just different. If a person is morally offended by homosexuals, I would ask them to re-examine this, cause from the looks of things, same sex marriage opponents seem to be mostly Christian. Most of these Christians seem to be protesting out of spite, and I think letting yourself treat anyone else differently due to spite is more deadly to the soul than a legion of rainbow wearing flaming homosexuals any day of the week. That's the bottom line here, folks. I don't support the homosexual community out of anything other than apathy. I don't care what they do in the bedroom, and I don't think the Government should either.

Free Music?

So I mentioned before that a lot of the internet issues that exist today are basically caused by our fear of organizations violating net neutrality for unethical advantages in other fields of society. This is very thinly trying to not say that the RIAA are jerks. I refuse to be unbiased on this one. For over a decade, I have watched this battle on music copyrights escalate, and it has just gotten worse and worse. The escalation has been rather one sided, in my opinion. Though technical advances have occurred, the only real escalation from the downloaders has been what we can download in addition to music. The RIAA and MPAA on the other hand have become more and more draconian in their attempts to stem piracy. After reading a list of things that these companies have said and done, I have come to the conclusion that these organizations are actively causing suffering of their consumers for the sake of making profit. This to me speaks of certain lack of ethics and morals with the decision makers of these organizations.

This opens quite an interesting thought, and I feel it traces back to the old story of Robin Hood. It may not be legal, but fighting this evil is right. I think a lot of people out there justify downloading in that light. I've seen so many people take the title of pirate, and wear it proudly. I've also seen this rash of "coping isn't stealing" videos going around, and I think it's complete BS. The person you copy the song from isn't the person you're stealing from. Let's see you try that defense with counterfeiting and see how well you fare. I for one cannot see why there is a debate on this. Long story short, there is no magical defense that will make downloading content that has been produced for purchase a moral act. Movies that you don't want to buy, can be rented. If you only want one good song from a CD that is full of crap, you can get the song from iTunes or one of their competitors. If you don't want to give money to an organization that you feel is corrupt and evil, then the proper way of doing things is to do without. People who justify downloading are akin to a Robin Hood who steals from the rich and just keeps the money for himself, or a Robin Hood who feel good about what he does because he gives 10% of his loot to the poor. The idea doesn't fully fly.

The response from these companies isn't totally insane either, it's just outside of intelligence and good taste. A friend of mine addressed this on his site, and it makes sense. I don't really rag on the RIAA for trying to make people think twice about downloading copyrighted material, I rag on them for trying to manipulating statistics, using the debate as a platform to make money, attacking people via their ISPs, and so forth and so on. As I said, I don't mind the idea of making a particular action so costly that no one would do it, but I do mind using the idea as a way to make a quick buck. Their attempts to clarify law on the matter are also thinly veiled attempts to cement themselves into the world and maintain a monopoly on an outdated business model. It's comical in a way that only an over sized bureaucratic entity is able to provide. However, all this does is complicated the issue. Two wrongs never make a right, it just makes both people have reason to blame the other and not blame themselves.

Now I'm not a saint when it comes to this issue, nor am I going to be an absolute hard-ass. If you want to listen to a song once in a while, or just want to listen to it once or twice, then by all means, load up a video that uses the song. If you are trying to find a new band that you will like, feel free to download their album. All I'm saying is that until you pay money for listening to the music, then you are receiving a product you did not pay for. All that's really needed to understand where I am coming from is a basic understanding of exactly how commerce works. Remember how I said that I wouldn't paint everyone in the industry with a single brush? That's because musical production requires a lot of trained personnel. Even the most low tech studio I've ever seen, needed a trained person to mix and balance the artist's recordings. Then there are people involved in convincing stores to carry the product. I do believe in marketing, and its benefits to the world. Don't forget factory workers who do the mass production. Hell, all of these people deserve all the money they get. I'm not saying it balances out, but I do think that if you like the work an artist did, then all the people involved in the creation of it should be paid.

What is all boils down to is personal responsibility. While the corporation running the industry is fairly evil, that never gives us right to do evil back. If you receive a song that was meant to be purchased, and you like it, purchase it. If you don't like it, delete it. If you want to listen to it, but don't like it enough to buy it, make a decision and stop waffling. To all those people like me, who download music to discover new artists, make certain that you follow through and actually buy the music. I am guilty here, but it doesn't change the fact that I know what I should be doing to be in the right. If you dislike the RIAA, and their practices, then protest, start an activist group or buy CC. At the end of the day, I don't think of a pirate as an evil person stealing from hard working musicians, I think of them as Average Joes who are just too lazy to follow through on doing the right thing, and if we stop giving the RIAA reasons to do stupid shit, then maybe the law would back us up once in a while.

Father's Day

Once again, I'll start things off with a warning. I've stated before that despite my beliefs and upbringing, I try to make this blog relevant and applicable to all, and this day it is not. Today this post will be very personal in nature, and will touch on religious overtones. Read on, though, you might like what I have to say. I refuse to apologize for this, cause the man I dedicate this post to is worth it. I love you, Dad.

Most things in my current life can be summed up in this paragraph. Six months ago, in January, I was laid off. Unlike others I have heard of, I did not panic, mainly because in the weeks previous my father and I had been discussing my future and came to the conclusion that getting laid off would be the best thing possible to happen to me. My father's foresight equipped me with a plan to land on my feet and prosper from this circumstance. Money was going to be tight, but my dad offered to let me move in for a few months so I could save (or in this case reduce spending to break even). While living with them, my dad provided moral support and motivation as I studied to upgrade my computer certifications and he always challenged me to think of new ways I could better myself, and though every suggestion sounded insane, he was never wrong. Now, despite being a computer geek living in my parent's basement, I have 3 different paths to success and a plan to move out within a month.

So it should come as no surprise that when I woke up this Sunday morning, I did what the day is dedicated to, thinking about all the things my father has provided for me, and how grateful I really should be. I like to have a certain egotistical attitude most of the time, but don't get me wrong, I know how pathetic I am. Everyone has that little voice in them telling them where they can improve and how they have screwed up. I know that growing up, I was not the model child, my parent had more then their fair share of parent-teacher meetings. I know I was the subject of more then one heated conversation between my parents. I know that I have often fallen very short of my potential and that my father has stood there in the background upset that I wouldn't live up to what I could be. I know that right now I fit most of the stereotypes of dead end man-child.

I also know what my dad will think when he reads the previous. It will be along the lines of, "Jordan, I am proud of you, you don't have to be perfect or successful, I will love you anyway." It always amazes me, too, just how willing he is to show his love. My father opened his house to me when I was going through a rough spot, it wasn't needed, but his generosity has allowed me to devote more attention to my future and not worry about struggling to survive. When I need to go anywhere in the city for anything of importance my father offers a ride at the drop of a hat, saying he's retired and he has time. When the possibility came up of me moving to a different city to get a job, he started talking about buying a house in the other city and becoming my landlord, provided I was point-of-contact for the other renter. Whenever I have had an issue and gave me distress, he has always had the right advice. Even those few times the advice didn't work, I could see that the underlying principles that were guiding him were always sound.

So when I was thinking all of these things I think it understandable that I felt a little undeserving. I am thankfully wise enough to know that I am not alone in this feeling, and that there are many out there who feel the same, but it's difficult to come up with a way to thank someone who has done so much for you for so little. His place in my life could only be described as one thing; a blessing.

This is when it hits me, and I understand why we call God the "Heavenly Father". What I feel for my dad today is exactly what Christians are called to feel towards God. All of the rhetoric of Christian worthlessness makes sense in this light. It's so hard to reconcile the love that we receive in light of how short we fall of our own potential and expectation. We know that no matter how much we fail, we would still receive this love, and we almost feel obligated to attempt to make ourselves worthy of this gift. As we strive forward to better ourselves, we try to explain ourselves, and it always comes out as 'we feel guilty and unworthy'. The response to this tends to be along the lines of 'accomplishment is not a requirement, I'm proud of you and love you anyway.' The thing that follows sums it all up, I feel it's the core of the call to perfection is simply this; 'Despite the fact the your love for me is unconditional, despite the fact that I get your blessings anyway, I want to better myself as a testimony to you and how wonderful you are. It isn't guilt that drives me, but my love for you that makes me want to become worthy. I love you.'

I love you Dad.
Thanks.

Net Neutrality pt 2

I give up. For 2 weeks I've tried to come up with various problems that exist on the internet that network neutrality violations could fix, but I've failed. I've gone so far as to look at the parliamentary submissions from various ISPs. There is only one justifiable debate on violating network neutrality, traffic shaping to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) vs Peer to Peer (P2P) usage. I thought I had some form of argument on that score, until I read BitTorrent's late submission to the commission. After reading all of this, I've determined that the ISPs are whooped, they don't have a leg to stand on.

Even before reading BitTorrents reply, they didn't have a leg to stand on. The main argument is that P2P usage causes congestion on the internet and that requires a management via "traffic shaping". "Traffic Shaping", for the curious, is the practice of forcibly slowing down, or "throttling", the internet usage of certain applications to allow room for other applications to work. They seem to make it clear that they blame P2P traffic for congesting the network and they have to manage this themselves for the sake of time sensitive traffic, like IPTV, VoIP, and live streaming. They all admit that they use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) for this. This means that they track what a user is doing and act accordingly. I have a three simple problems with this.

The first problem I have is that throttling, ethically, should be controlled by the user. I've seen too many technical issues where a person has flooded their line with Torrent traffic and thus had nothing left for browsing. Setting up a speed cap for the program in question solved the issue, albeit the internet was slow for the user. If they had a problem with that, the advanced settings allowed the user to schedule the programs network usage, so the program would only download when they weren't home. While not perfect, it did the job. ISPs doing this for you is a different deal. They are claiming your downloading is affecting other people's lines, and state that as reason for interference. The only reason congestion would ever really be a problem would be because the ISPs have treated the internet like the banks treated money. Banks loan out more money then they have on deposit. (Here's a video on the subject). ISPs promise more bandwidth than they have available thinking that they can juggle their customers as long as everyone doesn't demand usage at once, collectively everyone will stagger their usage. This doesn't work out so perfectly, leading to "peak usage" times, where everyone does use their internet at once. So, ISPs took a shortcut, and they want to make the user pay the price. This inherently seems wrong to me. Hell, we accept the shortcut because we all benefit, but discriminating to lesson the shortcut's impact sets a bed precedent.

My second issue is one of trust. I mentioned in my previous post that a lot of the concerns Network Neutrality proponents raise deal more with the concept of fear that the ISPs will misuse this power. What I didn't mention is that they are right. Corporations, in my experience have not earned our trust and never will. The fundamental problem here is that corporations tell us that the customer is number one, but they rarely are. Shareholders are number one, this means profit is number one and customers don't like hearing that truth. Over and over again we see proof that the corporate structure is not one that leads to our best interests. They will sell us out if they think they have a chance of doing so and us still giving them our money. Also, just because they are large organizations that deals with something outside of the average person's comprehension doesn't automatically mean that they make the right choice, it just means that they have a better chance of not getting caught. DPI and other methods of traffic shaping involve a level of privacy invasion that these companies have not earned the right to use.

Lastly, one thing had struck me through reading all of these official governmental papers. One line keeps cropping up; Market Forces. It's true that corporations built the internet without legal promoting to fulfill the consumer's needs. However, the government is stepping in because ISPs aren't using market forces to fix the issue, they are using rationing. I might be in the minority here, but I had no problem with high usage fees. My provider caps my data traffic at something like 100 Gigs per month, then afterwards they charge me something like $2 per Gig. I rarely break this cap. I think I did it once when I downloaded the entire archive of OCRemix after a computer crash. I have a friend who downloads a lot of audio books though, and he regularly breaks the cap. We both feel it's fair that we pay a little extra for heavy usage, (he feel the markup cost of $2 a gig is a little extreme though.) In both cases, we change our habits to limit our network usage in response to this. I pay for a higher speed, I'm fine with paying for using it a lot, but I'm not fine with paying for something and only being able to use it some of the time for some things for reasons that are artificial. It bothers me that they defend themselves citing the wonders of market forces when their reliance of traffic shaping indicated a failure of those same forces.

All of this ignores BitTorrent's reply to these ISPs' comments, which mentions that most P2P clients use Torrent protocols that ultimately reduce network. Better yet, they are about to release this uTP technology, that will self-throttle making all of this a moot point, as file sharing will no longer cause congestion.

Well fuck, I just wasted a lot of time.



Note: This is a lot more technical than I like, sorry about that. So many wiki links...


Reference Links
ISP Submissions
* http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/partvii/2008/8646/c12_200815400/1029651.pdf
* http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/partvii/2008/8646/c12_200815400/1241688.DOC
* http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/partvii/2008/8646/c12_200815400/1242429.DOC
* http://www.crtc.gc.ca/public/partvii/2008/8646/c12_200815400/1029682.pdf