Month: November 2009

20 Years of Freedom

At the end of World War II, what remained of Germany was divided into four territories, each occupied by one of the major Allied powers – The US, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Berlin was set as the central control area for all four powers, an arrangement which doomed it into being split by political strain between the victors.

The Soviets refused to agree to the reconstruction plans put forth by the other three powers, which would have allowed a devastated Germany to again become self sufficient, and continued to pillage the city for goods and dismantling any industry it had left. As the tensions grew, Britain, France, and the US combined their controlled areas and extended the Marshall Plan even further, allowing the western part of Germany to being rebuilding and growing again.

Following these disagreements, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade in 1948, which many consider the first major crisis of the Cold War. This prevented food or supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The other allied countries responded by airlifting in a massive amount of food and supplies to West Berlin, causing a war of propaganda to erupt between the Soviet and Allied governments. Ultimately the blockade was lifted, but the damage was done. Only a few months after the shipments restarted, East Germany was formally absorbed into the USSR as the German Democratic Republic, and West Germany began to embrace western capitalism and democracy wholeheartedly. Throughout the 1950s, the West’s economy and standard of living grew rapidly, while the East saw only stagnation, resulting in a permeating feeling of envy and a desire to escape to the West. Continue reading 20 Years of Freedom

Geeky Sunday Ramblings

Figured I’d take today and ramble on a little bit about tech developments lately, and some of my geekier interests over the last few days. But let me start off by saying: Dear Cardinals, thanks for winning at Soldier Field today! Great game. Now please never let Matt Leinart on the field again. Love, Dan.

So! The big news this week has been the leaked provisions of the secret copyright treaty that the Obama administration has been working on under the cover of “national security.” Cory Doctorow wrote about it back on Tuesday, describing it as “bad. Very bad.” Even skimming over its provisions made it pretty clear he wasn’t exaggerating. I had hoped it would stir up some controversy and perhaps blow over, but I don’t think that will happen. Among other things, it pretty much obliterates the “safe harbor” status of service providers and forces them into policing all content for copyright infringement. This would probably kill Youtube, Flickr, Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, and any other large content host overnight, as it would be impossible for them to make that happen without charging exorbitant rates for use of the service to hire a fleet of lawyers.

It would also require ISPs to deny accused (not convicted!) infringers access to the internet. That means that if one person in the household gets accused of sharing even a single downloaded song, regardless of if there was proof or if that person actually did it, that person’s entire household would be summarily cut off from the web. This flies in the face of justice as we know it, both in the process of establishing guilt and the principle of reasonable punishment. This treaty also includes a DMCA-style takedown notice provision, which has been an unmitigated disaster in every country it’s been tried. But Obama and the other supporters of this treaty want to make this a global law.

It’s another example of people who have no clue about the ramifications of what they are doing making laws about things they do not understand – or at least I hope it is, because if it is not, then the Obama administration and any other supporters of the treaty are openly declaring that they have no respect for the American values of justice or law, much less the Constitution. Unfortunately, it’s becoming less and less of a stretch to believe the latter case is true.

On a happier note, Ubuntu 9.10 is out and seems to be doing mostly okay. It has gotten a slightly better overall reaction than 9.04 did, and I anticipate that when the first wave of bugfixes come out it will be a really solid distro. What is really important, however, is that this means Crunchbang 9.10 will be out soon. And that, my friends, is worth celebrating. Go ahead, have a drink. Pretend it’s on me. In the meantime, here’s my current #! desktop (click to biggify):

Lastly, I still want a Google Voice invite. Anyone able to hook me up?

Saturdazed

I really don’t have much to say today. I’ve been working on that new series I mentioned the other day, but its nowhere close to being ready to post. So I’m sitting here, racking my brain for something to write to maintain my goal of posting every day but nothing is coming.

I’ve been playing around with XBMC today, trying to see how practical it would be use that and some sort of stripped down Linux install for my parents’ media PC. They’ve been using Vista and the darn thing barely functions at this point with all the weight of the OS + all the default junkware from Dell that came preinstalled. I’m thinking Ubuntu 9.04 minimal install would work best (9.10 still doesn’t work well with XBMC and some of its components).

Looks like the healthcare bill just passed the house, even with 30+ Dems voting against it. I can’t help but wonder if that would have happened had the Stupak amendment been killed – while it’s a great idea to make sure that the government health care program doesn’t fund abortion clinics, I think I would have rather just slashed the program altogether. Now we’ll have a broken health care system, more restrictive laws, higher taxes, and a weaker economy, but clean political records with the NRLC. Hope it was worth it.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I am looking forward to church. Hopefully it will be followed by a Cardinals victory in Chicago and a chance to meet up with a couple of friends. Either way, in the meantime, I’m going to try and get some sleep.

Podcasting for Jesus

This week, and actually for the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to a lot of Mars Hill’s podcasts of Mark Driscoll’s sermons. I’m currently going through the Trial series, where he goes through 1 & 2 Peter. It’s awesome. I’ve really really enjoyed listening to these and learning – or at least having reinforced – all these great Biblical teachings. I’ve had a real hunger for good teaching lately, and these podcasts have been a great meal.

The one I just completed is an amazing message for men, in regards to how to relate to their wives and be a godly man, husband, and father. This is Driscoll preaching to men – he is harsh, blunt, and brutal. His passion for this topic really shines through, and I think really gives evidence that a complementary stance on gender roles does not mean that you have any less love or respect or value for women, as so many claim. It’s all about being complementary. Equal, but serving different functions in harmony. And the burden of responsibility for the family is on the man – which means that men need to step up that much more when seeking to enter such a relationship.

Honestly, I find it terrifying.

Not in the crippling, “oh woe is me” sense but just that this is such a massive responsibility that we need to go into it with eyes wide open and lives that are ready to support that responsibility. Too many people do not take this or anything else seriously in life, and it’s a travesty. God expects nothing less than our all, and to give anything less is absurd.

Anyway, considering starting a new “series” on here this coming week. We’ll see how it goes. Have a great weekend, all!