Celebrate Epoch Day 15000 | Epoch Day 15000

Celebrate Epoch Day 15000 | Epoch Day 15000:

"Its time once again to celebrate the turning of the Unix system time. Usually we just celebrate the turning of some aesthetically pleasing number of seconds (like 1234567890), but far less often are we privileged to celebrate the number of epoch days turning a significant number. Epoch days being the number of days since January 1st, 1970. This clock will turn 15000 days on January 26th, 2011 at midnight GMT or January 25th at 7pm EST. ..."

This is definitely a geeky thing to blog about, but it is interesting to me.

Unix Time or the Unix Epoch is defined by a 32 bit number that counts the number of seconds since midnight January 1, 1970 (GMT), incrementing by 60ths of a second.

On January 19, 2038, this system will fail due to a 32-bit overflow.

This blog entry posts at the dawn of the 15,000th day since the Unix Epoch began.

Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church - New York Times

Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except in a Popular Video Game at Church - New York Times:

"First the percussive sounds of sniper fire and the thrill of the kill. Then the gospel of peace.

Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo.

The latest iteration of the immensely popular space epic, Halo 3, was released nearly two weeks ago by Microsoft and has already passed $300 million in sales.

Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game consoles so dozens of teenagers can flock around big-screen televisions and shoot it out.

The alliance of popular culture and evangelism is challenging churches much as bingo games did in the 1960s. And the question fits into a rich debate about how far churches should go to reach young people."

Am I an old curmudgeon or is something wrong with this picture?

From the discussions I have had with my son, and overheard in passing, much of the "buzz" for this game is happening with boys who are significantly younger than 17.

I believe that much of the hand-wringing and such that goes on about violent games and our youth is overstated. But having said that, it is crystal-clear to me that much of our entertainment promotes values that are at odds with the Christian faith.

Churches should be a beacon of light, and not conform to the world's standards. We should be agents of transformation and hope in a world that has, in many ways, lost its way.

Linux felon forced to install Windows | CNET News.com

Linux felon forced to install Windows | CNET News.com:

"A Linux user who was jailed for uploading a film onto a peer-to-peer service has been told he will have to switch to Windows if he wants to use a computer again."

Talk about cruel and unusual punishment....

Apparently the monitoring software his probation officer wants to install on his PC runs only on Windows.

Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff? - washingtonpost.com

Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff? - washingtonpost.com:

"Earlier this year, one animated character in Second Life, a popular online fantasy world, allegedly raped another character.

Some Internet bloggers dismissed the simulated attack as nothing more than digital fiction. But police in Belgium, according to newspapers there, opened an investigation into whether a crime had been committed. No one has yet been charged.

Then last month, authorities in Germany announced that they were looking into a separate incident involving virtual abuse in Second Life after receiving pictures of an animated child character engaging in simulated sex with an animated adult figure. Though both characters were created by adults, the activity could run afoul of German laws against child pornography, prosecutors said."

The very existence of such online games suggests a view of reality that is somewhat skewed to begin with. But while many virtual activities cross well into the area of poor taste, it seems that people are taking things just a bit too seriously here.

In a shrewd (?) move, the nation of Sweden has opened an embassy in Second Life. While this virtual "embassy" does not provide services that real embassies do, they point to information in the real world:

"STOCKHOLM - Sweden became the first country on Wednesday to open an embassy in the virtual world Second Life.

Created to promote the nordic state’s image and culture, the embassy does not offer any real or virtual consular services but provides information on its real world counterparts."

Personally, I have enough of a challenge living in the real world. Virtual worlds just don't attract me, but they obviously attract a large number of people.

Next thing you know, governments will find ways of taxing virtual assets.

Wired News: Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

Wired News: Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries:

"A suite of photo-authentication tools under development by Adobe Systems could make it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images, Wired News has learned.

Adobe plans to start rolling out the technology in a number of photo-authentication plug-ins for its Photoshop product beginning as early as 2008. The company is working with a leading digital forgery specialist at Dartmouth College, who met with the Associated Press last month. ..."

This should have a clear effect on the use of images, which are powerful adjuncts to news stories (and propaganda). Photoshop has been a highly useful tool in dealing with digital photos, but it can be turned to dishonest ends just as easily.

This work is based on the research of Dr Hany Farid who has written a short (5 page) explanation of how forgeries can be detected, using as examples several recent manipulated images, including one particularly blatant one from Lebanon that was reported first on a blog, and then by the Washington Post.

WiFi Turns Internet Into Hideout for Criminals - washingtonpost.com

WiFi Turns Internet Into Hideout for Criminals - washingtonpost.com:

"Detectives arrived last summer at a high-rise apartment building in Arlington County, warrant in hand, to nab a suspected pedophile who had traded child pornography online. It was to be a routine, mostly effortless arrest.

But when they pounded on the door, detectives found an elderly woman who, they quickly concluded, had nothing to do with the crime. The real problem was her computer's wireless router, a device sending a signal through her 10-story building and allowing savvy neighbors a free path to the Internet from the privacy of their homes. ..."

This is a cautionary tale for all who use wireless technology in their homes. There are several things you can do to cut down on illicit use of your home network.

First is to filter based on hardware address of your network interface. By allowing only certain addresses to attach to your network you reduce greatly the chances that someone parked out front or living next door can tap into your service.

Second is to not advertise your network name (and make it obscure). When you scan for available wireless networks only those wireless access points that advertise their name are visible. Note that there are default names provided by the manufacturers and these are well-known to the signal thieves.

Third (and in my opinion the least effective) is to use WEP key. These are strings that serve to perform weak encryption on your wireless packets. The major problem is that at some point during the wireless connection negotiation that key is broadcast in the clear, and someone with a wireless packet sniffer can get all the information needed to attach to your network.

And a fourth suggestion is to change the default password on your web interface (which are also well-known). Make the password a good one.

Read the manual that came with your wireless access point/router and take the time to protect yourself.

Presbyterian Outlook: Presbyterian mission in a flat world, part 2

Presbyterian Outlook: Presbyterian mission in a flat world, part 2
by Scott Sunquist

"Last issue we started to look at how Thomas Friendman’s “flat world” might have implications for our new patterns of missional involvement. Let me describe four of the ten “flatteners” that have changed our world and should change our missiology.

1. 11/9/89: “The New Age of Creativity: When the walls came down and the windows went up.” The Berlin wall fell on 11/9. Friedman says, “I realized that the ordinary men and women of East Germany peacefully and persistently had taken matters into their own hands. This was ‘their revolution’”
...
The second part of this flattener was “Windows” from Microsoft. The 3.0 series was a major breakthrough which bridged people and machines as never before. ..."

Whatever opinions one has about Microsoft and its methods, this is true. The events leading to Tiananmen Square involved a lot of faxing of information back and forth (email was not a major player yet). And repressive regimes are starting to employ firewalls at their borders to restrict the content that their citizens can access.

"... 2. 8/9/95: “The New Age of connectivity: When the Web went around and Netscape went public.” Brit “Tim Berners-Lee posted the first Web site on Aug. 6, 1991 to foster a computer network that would enable scientists to share their research more easily.” (p. 59) As Friedman notes, “He designed it and he fought to keep it open, nonproprietary and free.” What made this even more valuable and freely accessible was the development of Netscape (went public Aug. 9, 1995); a way to search and find information across the various Web sites. This innovation opened up the portal to information to all people in the world as never before. The openness of this new world of information (remember: knowledge is power) gave power to common people like you and like me, as never before. “Open, nonproprietary and free:” this was truly revolutionary in the history of knowledge. ..."

An excellent point here. I've been involved with web sites since I first put one up in Fall of 1993. There was a point in the mid-1990s when the daily traffic using the http protocol exceeded all other internet protocols -- including email, telnet, and ftp. And the web usage has continued to dominate the internet. I heard Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly and Associates book publishers) speak at one of the Open Source Conferences in the latter 1990s on "killer apps" -- those applications that make people want to embrace a new technology. For the personal computer it was a spreadsheet called Lotus 123. What was the killer app for the World Wide Web? Amazon.com. People who had no interest in spreadsheets, word processors, or even solitaire had a web site they could not live without. Since that time there have been other "killer apps" like Ebay, cnn.com, and now any one of a number of blogs that are revolutionizing how we acquire and pass on information.

"... 3. Work flow software. Animation today is produced through a global supply chain, not by a bunch of techno-artists in a Disney studio. Work flow software made it possible for people all over the world (in Starbucks, my home, a factory or an internet café in Timbuktu) to add on ideas, concepts or to make critical decisions.
...
Consider how this applies to our missionary activity. When it comes to Presbyterian missional work, we have many standards in place, but we need to have a “work flow software” mentality that would allow us all to work together and to listen together. The General Assembly Council’s mission division can be and should be the “clearing house” for the standards, values and strategies of Presbyterian-Ecumenical mission. But their job, like eBay, is to free up “the People” to be more effective; to have more power and control of their work. ..."

Here is where software has shined. The 217th General Assembly used a business tracking website named "Les" which had its growing pains, but gave not only the commissioners on the floor access to information, but interested Presbyterians anywhere in the world could track the progress of bills and overtures and watch the plenary sessions live using streaming video. Les could be improved, but is a major step forward, at least from the perspective of one who observed the goings on in Birmingham from my dining room table in Columbia, Missouri.

"... 4. Uploading: Harnessing the power of communities. Friedman notes that the “great shift from audience to participants” occurred with the new freedom people had to add or contribute directly (p. 95). It is remarkable to note that the underlying web server for e-commerce software is a global community-built software (share-ware) known as “Apache.” ..."

For better or for worse we have seen a year when You Tube has acted a a clearing house for home-made videos covering a wide variety of subjects, including politicians and their unguarded moments. Blogs have broken news stories which main-stream media have ignored -- and then belatedly covered once the bloggers have placed it before the public. If people are frustrated that stories are not being told, or that the media have decided what is important for us to know or not know, they can get that information out. The downside is that the reader or viewer must exercise some discretion in evaluating the sources. There are good blogs and there are not-so-good blogs, but the alternative is to go back to the way things were. Nobody wants that (except, perhaps, some news organizations).

It is refreshing to see people in the Mission field recognize the power of information technology. Scott Sundquist has demonstrated clearly how technology has empowered people in ways they could not imagine 20 years ago. How are we going to use this power?

I await part three of Sundquist's series with anticipation.

A Cool Firefox Extension

When Blogger started up its beta version, one of the things that it broke was the ability to use "XBlog This!", which allowed you to highlight a paragraph or two from an article and post a blog entry on it. Considering the other features of the new version of Blogger (which this week officially emerged from beta status) I thought that was an acceptable price to pay.

When coupled with Firefox 2.0 (with its on-the-fly spell checker), I thought I had a pretty good combination. One of the features of Firefox is its ability to use plugins and extensions. One such extension is the Performancing for Firefox utility with provides a WYSIWIG editor (quite similar to the blogger editor) in a split screen that allows you to cut and paste from a web page to the editor. I have been using this for a few days now, and I like most of what I see.

One thing that they could do better is not to insert so many line feeds between paragraphs. In this sense, it is not fully WYSIWIG, as I tend to edit it again with the blogger editor to format it the way I want to see it. It would also help if it supported Blogger's labeling facility. Again, if I want labels I go back into the blogger editor and add them.

Whether this will prove to be as convenient and efficient as the "XBlog This!" button I grew to depend on remains to be seen, but so far the features of Performancing for Firefox outweigh its shortcomings.

powered by performancing firefox

Blogger Beta and Firefox 2.0 -- First Impressions

Firefox 2.0 was released today (actually last night for those who knew how to navigate to Mozilla's ftp servers), and I decided to go ahead and jump in. It is a worthwhile upgrade, and its appearance is visually pleasing. The hype is that its pop up blocker is more sophisticated, and this should catch even more of those tricky little gremlins. We'll see. Its ability to handle RSS feeds is enhanced. All in all, I'm not sure it warranted going from 1.5 to 2.0, but that's OK.

Blogger Beta is turning out to be a real gem. I am a computer professional, and I tend to like the bleeding edge for fun and games, but am very conservative when it comes to production software. I watched the progress of the beta and tried it out on a test site.

A couple observations:

• Make a copy of your old template. You will want to extract code from it for your sidebar.
• The WYSIWIG editor is a lot cleaner in appearance and automatically flags words that it thinks may be misspelled.
• Labels are now available for those of you who have gazed wistfully at Typepad blogs.
• Publishing is MUCH faster.
• Editing your layout is quite simple and versatile. You can add elements to your sidebar and move them up or down to place them in your preferred order. This is where you want to add such things as your Technorati, LibraryThing, Site Meter, or webring code.
• You can change background, text, and link colors as you wish. The new generation of templates are set up to handle the new features, and you can upgrade your old template. (you will lose most of your sidebar code, but that is why you made a copy of your old template).
• Open standards are GREAT. All my javascript code from the previous version works as is in the new version.
• You may, if you wish, edit the template directly as you could with the old version, but that is no longer necessary unless you really want to get down and dirty with the css code. Been there, done that, now I'm going to save a little time and aggravation with the new layout editor.
  
• Your gmail address is now your single login to all Google services.

Blogger is not migrating everyone at once; a certain number of users every day may notice that a new option appears on the Dashboard which will allow one to start the conversion process.

All-in-all it has been a good day for software, and I would estimate that the total time spent in migrating stuff from blogger to blogger beta was a little over an hour. They did a good job on this and the Google and Blogger partnership seems to have been a good move.

Moving to the New Blogger

I am in the process of migrating to the new version of blogger, and things may be a little strange for a while. Hopefully all the posts will remain intact, but sidebar elements may disappear for a while and then reappear.

I think the new changes will be useful. I am especially looking forward to labeling my posts to make it easier to search for related postings.