Open Source

Open source is the inevitable future for coding and software. It is one of the most important characteristics of the changes that society will undergo as a result of the Internet, which itself was borne of “public-domaining” of its technology.

In fact, Open Source is the sharp point of the advance of deeper changes. The angel said in Daniel 12 of the Bible that “knowledge shall be increased”. The printing press made it possible to publish scathing criticism of kings, who promptly clamped down on this new danger to society (sic) by requiring a “copyright”, or right to copy, a book.

With the computer age came electronic copying, and with the Internet came electronic sharing. With computers also came “hacking” by those with the aptitude. The copy-left movement sparked when MIT hackers saw their code escape hidden from them into the clutches of copyright by people who had nothing to do with creating it.

Companies are getting tired of budgets bloated by the arbitrary residuals and the captivity of proprietary fences. Even creators of web sites by the most well-known original Microsoft dot-net experts are abandoning all the insane licensing. Microsoft itself has acknowledged the inevitable.

Oracle has the tightest of proprietary technology it seems and the worst of fees and peripheral charges. Not for nothing Larry Ellison offered to “donate” their software for a national database of all Americans for free. (They make $150 per hour for hiring out their consultants.)

Open source has spilled over into other contexts too. There is now the “Creative Commons” licensing. The rebellion against fiat monopoly grants by a central committee is spreading without a shot being fired.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf

The effects will cascade further still, and is already. IBM has shared its Power-8 technology for the core hardware of its bread-and-butter systems with a group of giants. Google is building out a huge data center based on it, in combination with other open technologies.

Big corporations might even be able at this point to get a general ledger item total of the cost of patents, copyrights, and licensing. It distracts from other revenue streams. One can even argue that patents are just copyrights as well, since they must be legally described in explicit language.

The line between “fair use” of copyrighted material is so artificial, so arbitrary, that the laws and rules could NEVER be so clear as to avoid a future of never-ending litigation. The situation is so bad that there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of patent applications, every year, whose sole purpose is to take something rather evident, or even obvious, to protect its applicants from lawsuits.

The thing will come crashing down. Even the great Isaac Newton said he only “built upon the shoulders of giants” who came before him.

Just as when social pressures obligated kings to give up the censorship over works of literature that copyright laws were meant to enforce, and “pseudo-democratize” it by granting monopolies to creators, and just as the printing press itself created a new environment for sharing ideas new and old, stories new and old, the ease of electronic sharing will eventually overcome the resistance of today’s versions of mercantilism and feudalism.

In any case, we can now unmask the truth that the riches that flow from “intellectual property” royalties usually do not go to the actual creators, but to their employers. Only a few of those who become the most famous eventually get out from under their binding contracts, or have the talent to make hay from them. The Microsoft company structure does nothing but pay the coders, same as for Oracle, HP, and all the licensing producers of proprietary software. Given a good chance to make a living without having to give away their smarts to the boss, most of the good coders, writers, artists, musicians would stampede toward freedom.

Maybe they already are. The natural state of man is not to become a mindless controlled drone. We are individuals, all of us humans, and each of us, the way our Creator made us.

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Generals Disobey Warmongering President? – LewRockwell.html

Obama is a snake.
Pentagon generals warned against toppling Assad –the “moderate opposition” does not exist, cannot exist in Syria without ties to the worst of the worst, and so said the Pentagon:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/no_author/generals-disobey-warmongering-president/

Israel, Christian Zionism, History, “By their fruits”

The American church has more than an Israel problem. Too many of the “leadership” of Christian churches has made their pulpits a platform for bellicose militancy, masking the liberating salvation message of Jesus Christ with a promotion of war. They are promoting a warrior culture, treating the warriors as if they were defending the faith, and trying to Judea-ize the gospel, as if the circumcision of the flesh were worth anything at all anymore. We even find in the words of the prophet Ezekiel that the circumcision of the flesh is meaningless! What matters is the circumcision of the heart!

Forgotten are the words of Jesus Christ that the kingdom of God would be taken from the Jews of the day and “given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof”.

Forgotten in the pulpits are the fruits of the fulfillment of the prophet’s words, that “he came unto his own, and his own received him not”.

Jesus told the parable of the lord of the manor that went on a trip whose servants killed the lord’s own son, thinking they could keep the land for themselves. The Pharisees knew it was about them, for their forebears had killed the prophets, and they were plotting to kill the Son of God.

God still loves the “natural branch”, but what counts after Christ just like before Christ is the faith of Abraham, not the flesh of Abraham, and not a geneaology.

By their fruits ye shall know them. Deir Yassin’s fruits, part of the ethnic cleansing plans of the Zionists, was not just the direct goal of the Irgun attack, which was the panicked exodus of tens of thousands of Arabs from Palestinian areas, but it is the Zionist legacy that still haunts them.

It was not even a Biblical occupation of the Promised Land. It was a massacre. The numbers are lost in a confusion of misinformation by the cover up and the refusal of Israel’s government to release its own records to avoid inflaming the world (even more?) against Israel.

But one might speculate that the cover-up of that information is itself a cover-up, meaning they plan on never releasing the real thing.

Today’s secular Israeli government, denied “Jewishness” even by the Orthodox rabbis that are granted special privilege, never even pretended to be a “Biblical” regime.

Why do Christians lift up the military protection of this state founded on principles of denying Christ, as if it were a godly duty?

The promises to Abraham were unconditional, and fulfilled, stamped “Done”, in his seed when Jesus Christ, son of David, cried out “It is finished”, and rose triumphant from the grave on the third day.

I am not “against Israel” any more than I am “against Monaco”. The salvation message of Jesus Christ is the most important thing. The Great Commission is a Christian duty. Going to war for foreign or domestic lusts is not. Read James again.

Does your diversity initiative include Christians?

One Shirley Davis wrote about Rosalind Brewer’s comments about diversity and the backlash that followed.

Your bias toward this amorphous and undefined “diversity” goal blinded you to the what actually set off the firestorm backlash. She said she didn’t like sitting across the table from a bunch of “Caucasian males”. You’re demolishing the credibility of the rest of your comments that way. –This is probably why the Facebook comments did not have the same reaction.

But that’s the problem too. You want diversity at the CEO level? How about measuring the genetic racial content. Rosalind Brewer and the author of this article both have skin tones that suggest they have very significant Caucasian ancestry. At least we can know that both have a YY chromosome pair, versus XY. (At least most likely).

As Piercarla noted, small businesses cannot adhere to such an arbitrary mandate. When you have a workforce of 50 or 100, you MUST know and trust EACH colleague MUCH more than the CEO of Sam’s Club must trust each of 11,200 employees.

For THAT reason, I cannot fault a small BLACK-owned business or HISPANIC-owned business for having mostly black or Hispanic employees or colleagues.

I know that’s maybe heresy in today’s politicized top-down Doublethink Policy Manual, but it’s facts.

I’ve had no problem working with female bosses or colleagues. Better sometimes than with the guys.

And can we stop the nonsense about diversity producing better results or more profit, as a direct effect of the “diversity”? Competence and skill in the position do that, and it depends on the company’s end products or market niche and all that. Rosalind Brewer may or may not have had an extra push up for making her employer “more diverse”, but she has to have some talent even so.

And how diverse are you? Are you “diversity advocates” making sure you include the proper quota of Bible-believing Christians in your goals? Or do you think they should be drummed out of a job like the recent brief CEO at Mozilla?

Ah, see, it depends on what kind of diversity you like. “Man looketh on the outward appearance but God looketh upon the heart”. What is the content of your character? I stand with Martin Luther King’s take on color vs. character.

No red herrings please. “Red yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight”. The actions of people who do not act according to the love of Jesus Christ say nothing about the true followers of Christ. Like St. Patrick, who dedicated his entire life to sharing that love in the land of his former slavers.

Science and Faith: Testimonies from scientists

Statement of faith by an MIT “affective computing” pioneer, scientist and engineer:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~picard/personal/faith-test.php

Video clip of Professor Rosalind Picard’s story:
http://www.testoffaith.com/resources/resource.aspx?id=368

Compilation of testimonies from academics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgpHCmz83TQ

Other deep discussions about faith and science from scientists: http://www.testoffaith.com

The birth and life of Jesus Christ therefore leaves us very much reason to celebrate.

The perspective that some groups and their individuals here and there toward Christmas has changed a lot over the centuries, and their attitudes toward Jesus Christ and the good news of the Gospel for that matter.

But “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever”, does not change.

He did change once to become theophany (God-man), was born human, grew in stature and reputation, lived and taught love and truth, then died as expiatory sacrifice to free us from sin, death, and hell, and proved his power to so and vanquish death and oppression by raising on the third day. Resurrection Day is more significant for those reasons.

After Christ, his followers (not the fake usurpers –“By their fruits ye shall know them”–)

ended gladiator spectacles in Rome,

saved thousands of babies from abandonment and raised them throughout the Empire,

ended slavery in the European continent (thanks to St. Patrick’s Irish followers and their legacy),

saved most of the Greek and Roman classics in Ireland (thanks again to St. Patrick),

established universities (thanks to Charlemagne inviting Irish and British monks to teach their knowledge),

established the very first society of modern times (speaking of which) for the study of science, known as the Royal Academy (of which Isaac Newton was one chair),

created the major branches of modern science –the list is endless of their contributions to its advancement, with the Scientific Method, calculus, gravity, electromagnetism as the same force, ad infinitum),

created centers for healing with the monastic ministries that evolved into clinics,

opposed wars including the Crusades (ask Muslims about St. Francis),

opposed slavery’s resurgence in the European colonies (William Wilberforce, David Livingston, the abolitionists),

and today rush to disaster areas to heal the sick, feed the hungry, help the homeless. The names of organizations that practice “love thy neighbor” reflect the Golden Rule: Red Cross, Salvation Army, Baptist Hospital, Samaritan’s Purse, Sisters of Charity (“Mother Theresa”).

The birth and life of Jesus Christ therefore leaves us very much reason to celebrate.

Christian Armenia invited Russian protection from Turkey

Walid Shoebat, former “Islamic terrorist” (his words) now Christian and anti-Islamist web site owner. He shares the story that Christian Armenia has invited the 7,000 Russian troops lined up on their border with Turkey for protection. And they accused Azerbairjan of shelling them for the first time in 20 years:
http://shoebat.com/2015/12/22/russia-is-right-now-sending-seven-thousand-russian-troops-to-the-turkish-border/

Let Assad be. Politically speaking he’s the best ally against ISIS with the most to lose, the best ally against terrorists in the region, and Russia is helping him beat back the bad guys. I’ve been highly skeptical of Russia in general and Putin specifically but this situation has put things in a new light.

Who remembers Lowell Thomas?

How about Lawrence of Arabia?

Order from Controlled Chaos, plan of the Dark Side Bad Guys

The cashier at the bank in Nashville when I was there was a Coptic Egyptian woman. I told her I would pray for her and her family. Her brother in law was a martyr at the hand of Islamists. (Muslim Brotherhood was the ruling party at the time). After a couple of months, they told me at the bank she had had to return to Egypt on an emergency family matter.

There was an “Arab Spring” and we know how that turned out. Ordo Ab Chao, like the bad guy said in the movie Source Code.

The ill-illumined ones are all for (controlled) chaos so they can bring about their own order. For decades they had Communism and Capitalism to throw the tension into the mix, and now it’s Islamists vs. Russians vs. the West vs. the East and they’re all vs. Christianity.

They kind of pretend to be anarchists, Adam Weishaupt purportedly was, but their idea of the future is more like serfdom. They think they are the Lords of the Global Manor and the rest of us are like cattle to be miled or human sacrifices for their survival.

Why hasn’t the drug trade been shut down? Serpico said he could clean up New York in a day with honest cops as partners. He now advocates jury nullification.

Lefties HATE jury nullification because it is a firewall against their tyranny.

Copyright rules and “Fair Use” Guidelines (Do politicians care about “fair”?)

So many “rules” for “copyright”..

They had to do some “fair use” guidelines to keep copyright from exposing itself as so ridiculously arbitrary:

How can you measure “transformative” exactly?
How can you measure “nature of work” exactly?
How can you measure “the amount used” for everything and anything that falls under copyright jurisdiction?
How can you measure “market affected” especially after the fact? Would’a could’a?

For patents, how much of an algorithm or idea or set of ideas should get a patent monopoly? Should the 3-D software for making a gun get either a patent or a copyright, or both? What about the case where the 3-D printed model is the same as the factory model? Either one consists really of the steps to make a gun.

The Bible shows how silly it can get with translations. There are over 100 “translations” of the Bible in English. Each one of them MUST differ from every one of the others by an arbitrary legal percentage in order to get its own “copyright” enforcement grant. A couple of words less, or more.. And is this enforced in detail?

The best selling book of all time is a big market. Lots of filthy lucre. So government monopoly grants over copying of books creates an arbitrary royalty and litigation industry that would not exist otherwise, and really lobotomizes the free market and promotion of great ideas for mankind.

The result is that maybe half of what people pay for sophisticated new technology items is for these politician-created industry. And supports lobbyists who work really hard to keep it that way.