Friday, January 04, 2013
"hackers", anonymous and fascism
Anyone who has read my blogs knows I can't stand the fascist censorship groups like Anonymous engage in when they attack people whose views they disagree with. It is just plain wrong.
I'm not perfect though, I do stupid crap too and I really have to applaud these guys for releasing the video of the dork bragging at a party about raping a girl. Viscerally I don't give a rats ass if these rapists get a fair trial or not.
Hackers prove accused guilty and rapists won't get a fair trail?
I've been attacked by scum bags calling themselves hackers, had my identity stolen, my website trashed, been lied about, etc, all because I present viewpoints that these scumbag "hacker" fascists want to censor. I have very little use for fascist censors spending their miserable lives hating other people.
However, this time it isn't censorship. This time it isn't attacking someone whose political, social or economic viewpoints they don't agree with.
This time it is just posting a video one scum bag took of another scum bag bragging about raping a girl.
These guys are guilty, the video proved it.
It is an invasion of privacy. The evidence can't be used in a court of law. I am not saying that I believe what this group of fascists did was right. In fact I think that what these fascist "hackers" did was wrong.
Being human, like being Christian, is not about being perfect. People do "wrong" things and from an intellectual perspective I know that what these fascist "hackers" did is wrong.
I really don't give a rats ass if they have to take these scum bags to Outer Mongolia and have a trial in a yurt or the darkest Amazonian jungle where the natives don't have their own written language much less access to the Internet.
I'm still glad anonymous released the video and this time I have to applaud their fascist invasion of privacy.
One of the basic premises of a free society is that everyone has the right to privacy and no one has the right to break into someone's "home" and then search and seize whatever they want. The fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides for an open and lawful process for the issuance of warrants for search and seizure. Jack booted thugs kicking in doors, searching and seizing is not only illegal it is a fundamental violation of human rights that I find repugnant.
Even so, as much as I hate fascism, I'm glad these jack booted "hacker" thugs committed this particular violation of fundamental civil and human rights.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Fiction, Fact and Anthropology
I like Hard Science Fiction and Mystery. Both are puzzle solving genres of writing so they keep my mind working on how the main character solves the basic conflict in the story.
Anthropology is the study of how people solve the problems related to their general story.
Archeology studies relics of the past and makes guesses about how those relics were used, another application of problem solving skills.
The problem with all problem solving that concerns how people will react is that in stories people react logically and in real life people don't.
People, in general, like to believe that their ideology and their reactions are logical and reasonable. They aren't. But writing fiction as if people are reasonable makes sense.
Take the current hoopla about gun control in the United States. Obviously alcohol control, drug control and prostitution control have not worked out. All have resulted in violent black markets. Why would people think gun control will differently? Do the same thing and get the same results. Doing something and expecting different results is crazy.
People don't behave rationally though.
Biologists have know for a long time that the odds are against homosexuality being genetic. If homosexuality were genetic the species would have bread it out. Darwin suggested that homosexuality was a generic response to a genetic flaw. Homosexuality prevented the genetic flaw from being bred into the species. That didn't quite work for biologists either. Genetic flaws, or mutations, are what evolution is based on. How would a member of a species instinctively know if a genetic mutation were "bad"?
As time goes on biologists have discovered that quite a lot of human behavior is caused by chemical changes within a persons biology and have created psychotropic drugs to address some of those behaviors. Are those chemical imbalances genetic? If so, why didn't the species breed them out? If not why do they appear to be hereditary?
This kind of kicked me for a loop, but, hereditary does not necessarily mean genetic.
What does all that have to do with fiction and anthropology and problem solving?
People solve problems as a group, The bigger the group the worse the solution. For example people decided that alcohol in the United States was a problem. People made alcohol illegal and that created a violent black market that was worse than the problems alcohol caused. Then they did the same thing with gambling, recreational drugs, prostitution, etc, all creating violent black markets.
You would think that if stupidity is genetic we would have bred it out of the gene pool by now, but, obviously we haven't. People still make dumb decisions, trying to get different results by doing the same thing. Gun control will obviously result in the same kind of black market as alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. Yet people still want to do the same thing expecting different results.
The hereditary of some things, intelligence, predisposition for behaviors like addictive, sexual, violent, etc, are probably environmental. Personally I think some hereditary issues are related to exposure to environmental waste accumulation as population increases.
If I am correct, then as population increases people become wackier and less reasonable and we should be able to track the intelligence of a culture or population using popular fiction.
Huh?
Are the fictional problems in books easier or harder for the reader to solve? Are the imaginative problems created by popular writers like Edgar Allen Poe, H. Rider Haggard or Edgar Rice Burroughs more imaginative or more difficult to solve than the problems Stephen King, Dean Koontz or James Patterson have developed?
If a clinical psychologist skilled in intelligence evaluation were to review fiction published over the last few hundred years what would the result be?
Now that is interesting,
Anthropology is the study of how people solve the problems related to their general story.
Archeology studies relics of the past and makes guesses about how those relics were used, another application of problem solving skills.
The problem with all problem solving that concerns how people will react is that in stories people react logically and in real life people don't.
People, in general, like to believe that their ideology and their reactions are logical and reasonable. They aren't. But writing fiction as if people are reasonable makes sense.
Take the current hoopla about gun control in the United States. Obviously alcohol control, drug control and prostitution control have not worked out. All have resulted in violent black markets. Why would people think gun control will differently? Do the same thing and get the same results. Doing something and expecting different results is crazy.
People don't behave rationally though.
Biologists have know for a long time that the odds are against homosexuality being genetic. If homosexuality were genetic the species would have bread it out. Darwin suggested that homosexuality was a generic response to a genetic flaw. Homosexuality prevented the genetic flaw from being bred into the species. That didn't quite work for biologists either. Genetic flaws, or mutations, are what evolution is based on. How would a member of a species instinctively know if a genetic mutation were "bad"?
As time goes on biologists have discovered that quite a lot of human behavior is caused by chemical changes within a persons biology and have created psychotropic drugs to address some of those behaviors. Are those chemical imbalances genetic? If so, why didn't the species breed them out? If not why do they appear to be hereditary?
This kind of kicked me for a loop, but, hereditary does not necessarily mean genetic.
What does all that have to do with fiction and anthropology and problem solving?
People solve problems as a group, The bigger the group the worse the solution. For example people decided that alcohol in the United States was a problem. People made alcohol illegal and that created a violent black market that was worse than the problems alcohol caused. Then they did the same thing with gambling, recreational drugs, prostitution, etc, all creating violent black markets.
You would think that if stupidity is genetic we would have bred it out of the gene pool by now, but, obviously we haven't. People still make dumb decisions, trying to get different results by doing the same thing. Gun control will obviously result in the same kind of black market as alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, etc. Yet people still want to do the same thing expecting different results.
The hereditary of some things, intelligence, predisposition for behaviors like addictive, sexual, violent, etc, are probably environmental. Personally I think some hereditary issues are related to exposure to environmental waste accumulation as population increases.
If I am correct, then as population increases people become wackier and less reasonable and we should be able to track the intelligence of a culture or population using popular fiction.
Huh?
Are the fictional problems in books easier or harder for the reader to solve? Are the imaginative problems created by popular writers like Edgar Allen Poe, H. Rider Haggard or Edgar Rice Burroughs more imaginative or more difficult to solve than the problems Stephen King, Dean Koontz or James Patterson have developed?
If a clinical psychologist skilled in intelligence evaluation were to review fiction published over the last few hundred years what would the result be?
Now that is interesting,
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Incredibly ignorant fireams
More calls for making laws on firearms more restrictive. People never learn. History repeats itself.
Restricting alcohol didn't work and it created a violent black market. Restricting recreational drugs didn't work and it created a violent black market. Restricting prostitution didn't work and it created a violent black market.
Of course guns are different, they are too difficult for the multi-billion dollar cartels to manufacture and sell. You know, the cartels that build laboratories in the jungle to refine cocaine and build submarines to smuggle cocaine.
Ignorant people doing what they think is right, trying to jam their ideology down other peoples throats, because they are not educated enough to know any better.
Restricting alcohol didn't work and it created a violent black market. Restricting recreational drugs didn't work and it created a violent black market. Restricting prostitution didn't work and it created a violent black market.
Of course guns are different, they are too difficult for the multi-billion dollar cartels to manufacture and sell. You know, the cartels that build laboratories in the jungle to refine cocaine and build submarines to smuggle cocaine.
Ignorant people doing what they think is right, trying to jam their ideology down other peoples throats, because they are not educated enough to know any better.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The Past, Present and the Future
Back in 2000 I was working on automating engineering website development. I was working with Solidworks, a 3D computer aided design (CAD) software, which has a wonderful API, Application Programming Interface. I wrote programs that took an assembly built with the CAD software and created an HTML hierarchy of web pages where all of the components were listed by name, part number and any other selected attribute.
This allows the manufacturing person on the shop floor direct access to the design so they can determine dimensions or tolerances required. This is a method of stream lining the manufacturing process and it requires a loot of training.
It solves a problem, design communication, but, it requires significant training and responsibility on the part of the manufacturing personnel.
This idea never really took off. Today we still use blue prints, or 2D drawings of objects for the most part. Yes, manufacturing people still have access to the models, but, prints create a paper trail for litigation.
Someone could change a model and my HTML hierarchy would change. Someone up stream from manufacturing could make a mistake and the person in manufacturing could be blamed for it.
The person doing the design could be in India and the person doing the manufacturing in Germany. The whole thing was portable to the Internet or Intranet.
It sucks, but, in the end most commercial manufacturing that is outsourced will have prints that can be signed and approved. The end product will be checked against approved prints and that determines if the manufacturing contracts have been met.
This paper drawing legal issue has been about the same for hundreds of years all over the world.
It sucks because this limits the ability of manufacturing to move into the 21st century.
Until....
Direct manufacturing.
Manufacturing people set up machines which build parts and even assemblies directly from 3D models.
Typically these systems use powders or "wire" or a kind of hot melt glue gun as precursors to the completed part. There are a lot of benefits to these process and as a result the processes are being developed and costs are being reduced all the time.
There are some very inexpensive 3D printing systems out there and Makerbot is one of the most popular. Recently Makerbot made the news because they removed some 3D models of gun parts from their website. Not a big deal, these models are widely available on other websites, and the Makerbot is a big 3D glue gun. Censorship has always existed and always will exist. People will always want to destroy knowledge they are afraid will endanger people. I used firearms in this example, but, there is no end to censorship.
So in looking at the future of manufacturing we have the same issues we have always had, litigation and censorship.
There is also the problem of skilled employees. As direct manufacturing becomes more and more capable the need for skilled manufacturing labor becomes lower and lower. There will always be room for craftsmen. You can still buy a hand made buggy whip.
We can't limit the future by limiting the implementation of new technology.
As skilled trades die away the middle class dies away and we become an economy of servants, just as it has been in the past.
And what happens when there is a two class system? Revolution. Always. It may be a peaceful revolution or it may be a violent, bloody revolution.
What I expect is that people in the States will submit to authority and become a 2 class system and they will have some terrorism and some peaceful demonstrations that will be about as successful as those actions were in Rome 2000 years ago.
What then? Population grows and Asia needs land to feed their people. North America has a land surplus and so Asia will invade North America. By then, just as in Rome, the military will be a high tech heavy "cavalry" that will be over run the same way Roman cavalry was. The people won't care who is in charge anymore than the Roman plebeians did.
So when does this happen?
In 30 years the world population will be over 10 billion. There are 4.4 billion hectares of land available for growing crops. It takes about 0.25 hectares to produce enough food for one person for a year (that number depends on a lot of non-renewable resources). So we have enough land for 17.6 billion people, right? No, there are droughts and pestilence so we need a safety factor of about 2:1 or about 0.5 hectares per person. That's arguable from a production standpoint, but, in real application we already have people starving to death world wide so...practical application we can support maybe 8.8 billion people.
20 years from now, right around the time computers take a dump because of the date issue.
That isn't so far away, and it can become closer depending on what happens in the world. A disaster here, famine there.
The world isn't going to end, it will go through a political upheaval the same way Rome did.
It sucks, but, history repeats because people don't learn.
This allows the manufacturing person on the shop floor direct access to the design so they can determine dimensions or tolerances required. This is a method of stream lining the manufacturing process and it requires a loot of training.
It solves a problem, design communication, but, it requires significant training and responsibility on the part of the manufacturing personnel.
This idea never really took off. Today we still use blue prints, or 2D drawings of objects for the most part. Yes, manufacturing people still have access to the models, but, prints create a paper trail for litigation.
Someone could change a model and my HTML hierarchy would change. Someone up stream from manufacturing could make a mistake and the person in manufacturing could be blamed for it.
The person doing the design could be in India and the person doing the manufacturing in Germany. The whole thing was portable to the Internet or Intranet.
It sucks, but, in the end most commercial manufacturing that is outsourced will have prints that can be signed and approved. The end product will be checked against approved prints and that determines if the manufacturing contracts have been met.
This paper drawing legal issue has been about the same for hundreds of years all over the world.
It sucks because this limits the ability of manufacturing to move into the 21st century.
Until....
Direct manufacturing.
Manufacturing people set up machines which build parts and even assemblies directly from 3D models.
Typically these systems use powders or "wire" or a kind of hot melt glue gun as precursors to the completed part. There are a lot of benefits to these process and as a result the processes are being developed and costs are being reduced all the time.
There are some very inexpensive 3D printing systems out there and Makerbot is one of the most popular. Recently Makerbot made the news because they removed some 3D models of gun parts from their website. Not a big deal, these models are widely available on other websites, and the Makerbot is a big 3D glue gun. Censorship has always existed and always will exist. People will always want to destroy knowledge they are afraid will endanger people. I used firearms in this example, but, there is no end to censorship.
So in looking at the future of manufacturing we have the same issues we have always had, litigation and censorship.
There is also the problem of skilled employees. As direct manufacturing becomes more and more capable the need for skilled manufacturing labor becomes lower and lower. There will always be room for craftsmen. You can still buy a hand made buggy whip.
We can't limit the future by limiting the implementation of new technology.
As skilled trades die away the middle class dies away and we become an economy of servants, just as it has been in the past.
And what happens when there is a two class system? Revolution. Always. It may be a peaceful revolution or it may be a violent, bloody revolution.
What I expect is that people in the States will submit to authority and become a 2 class system and they will have some terrorism and some peaceful demonstrations that will be about as successful as those actions were in Rome 2000 years ago.
What then? Population grows and Asia needs land to feed their people. North America has a land surplus and so Asia will invade North America. By then, just as in Rome, the military will be a high tech heavy "cavalry" that will be over run the same way Roman cavalry was. The people won't care who is in charge anymore than the Roman plebeians did.
So when does this happen?
In 30 years the world population will be over 10 billion. There are 4.4 billion hectares of land available for growing crops. It takes about 0.25 hectares to produce enough food for one person for a year (that number depends on a lot of non-renewable resources). So we have enough land for 17.6 billion people, right? No, there are droughts and pestilence so we need a safety factor of about 2:1 or about 0.5 hectares per person. That's arguable from a production standpoint, but, in real application we already have people starving to death world wide so...practical application we can support maybe 8.8 billion people.
20 years from now, right around the time computers take a dump because of the date issue.
That isn't so far away, and it can become closer depending on what happens in the world. A disaster here, famine there.
The world isn't going to end, it will go through a political upheaval the same way Rome did.
It sucks, but, history repeats because people don't learn.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Obama proves theory of evolution is wrong!
Okay, so you can't prove a negative, but, you can show that the probability of a theory being correct is very low. Low enough that the probability of it being correct is minuscule.
So how does Obama reduce the probability of the theory of evolution being accurate?
By advocating for laws restricting firearms.
Every time a government passes restrictive laws an unregulated, untaxed black market is created. The more divisive the laws the more violent the black market. Alcohol, violent. Drugs, really violent.
Making recreational drugs legal would help stabilize governments and reduce violence in the United States and many third world countries. Making recreational drugs legal would reduce enforcement costs and save the lives of law enforcement officers. Making recreational drugs legal and taxing them would pay the deficit off in 1-2 years. Making recreational drugs legal and releasing non-violent drug offenders would save billions in prison costs.
So, we keep drugs illegal because we enjoy destabilizing governments, subjecting third world countries to violence and having a public debt so large that it could literally bankrupt the world.
Does this sound like the decision of a fit mind? Of course not, this is the decision of an unfit mind. The fact that the United States has been the world super power during the ridiculously stupid war on drugs should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that survival of the unfit is the rule.
It becomes better.
Now Obama wants to expand the black market in firearms by making more restrictive laws!
During the assault weapon ban in the United States manufacturing of assault weapons by individuals and small, unlicensed companies exploded.
Insane, right? If you disagree you actually prove my point.
When we increased restrictions on alcohol we created a violent black market. When we increased restrictions on recreational drugs illegal we created a violent black market.
Now Obama wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, increased restrictions on firearms and believe that the world will become a better place the same way it did when we restricted alcohol and recreational drugs.
Repeating the same mistakes over and over is not something a fit species does. Obama's actions in calling for restrictive firearm laws prove that our species is not the fittest.
So how does Obama reduce the probability of the theory of evolution being accurate?
By advocating for laws restricting firearms.
Every time a government passes restrictive laws an unregulated, untaxed black market is created. The more divisive the laws the more violent the black market. Alcohol, violent. Drugs, really violent.
Making recreational drugs legal would help stabilize governments and reduce violence in the United States and many third world countries. Making recreational drugs legal would reduce enforcement costs and save the lives of law enforcement officers. Making recreational drugs legal and taxing them would pay the deficit off in 1-2 years. Making recreational drugs legal and releasing non-violent drug offenders would save billions in prison costs.
So, we keep drugs illegal because we enjoy destabilizing governments, subjecting third world countries to violence and having a public debt so large that it could literally bankrupt the world.
Does this sound like the decision of a fit mind? Of course not, this is the decision of an unfit mind. The fact that the United States has been the world super power during the ridiculously stupid war on drugs should prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that survival of the unfit is the rule.
It becomes better.
Now Obama wants to expand the black market in firearms by making more restrictive laws!
During the assault weapon ban in the United States manufacturing of assault weapons by individuals and small, unlicensed companies exploded.
Insane, right? If you disagree you actually prove my point.
When we increased restrictions on alcohol we created a violent black market. When we increased restrictions on recreational drugs illegal we created a violent black market.
Now Obama wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, increased restrictions on firearms and believe that the world will become a better place the same way it did when we restricted alcohol and recreational drugs.
Repeating the same mistakes over and over is not something a fit species does. Obama's actions in calling for restrictive firearm laws prove that our species is not the fittest.
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