Facebook

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook is an interesting article

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I have a facebook account and I think it has a coolness factor but its all about business and ads and capitalism. I know much is but the Internet shouldn’t be.

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Is there no social networking site out there that isn’t all about the almighty dollar. Perhaps Craigslist should start a social networking site.

 

I am from the old school days when BBS’s existed as a hobby. Yes some charged but not excessively for what they offered. The charge was to cover the cost of the equipment and phone lines which were so damn expensive that I never was able to be a sysop.

 

BBS was a subculture about connecting people. Not about MONEY. The internet was about freely exchanging info. Maybe I will start a Facebook clone but instead of it being on the web, I will make it text only and on GOPHER. I have the hardware and bandwidth. I would just have to convince people they should use it so that they can stick it to than man by not using Facebook.

 

Btw I rarely have time to Facebook but I will stay on from time to time to keep in touch

 

 

The Deadly Doctrine of Predestination and Biblical Innerancy

I haven’t touched on this for a while. I am sure our buddy HaKohen will have a lot to say if he is still around. I have let the whole Calvin/Arminian thing kind of take a back burner for a while. That is until today. My wife is attending a Baptist College and her Professor is a Calvinist. She was going to use the Bible to “prove him wrong” and we are having a hard time coming up with proof texts to disprove the idea that God controls our every move and predestined some of us for hell. We cannot seem to find any good proof texts and therefore her faith is shaken.

 

I believe that that concept goes against everything the Bible teaches and everything I know from my personal walk with God. I don’t think a God that draws names out of a hat and says this one goes to heaven and this one goes to hell is any God I would want to serve and is certainly NOT the God I see when I read the words of Christ.

 

I am not all that outraged. I am at peace with my own faith but I cannot give any good advice to combat this. My take is either the obscure verses about predestination are misunderstood, mistranslated or simply WRONG. I have come to the conclusion that I can live a Christian life and know Jesus Christ without believing that every word in the Bible is literally correct. (major HERESY here). If anything that has opened the door to greater faith. I remember once when I was 14 (a year after I became a Christian). I was in tears because the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John have quite different accounts of Jesus arrest. I had to reconcile each word or not have any faith. Well they are accounts written 2000 years ago by different people and I am surprised they are as similar as they are now.

 

Being able to believe you we cant proof text it or be affirmed by others. That is true faith. Believing the literal words of the Bible and doing what people tell you to. That’s not faith. That’s blind allegiance.

 

I am sure many good sincere Christians would read this and pray that I “come back to the Lord”. I got news for them. I don’t need to. I never left. I am closer to my God than ever before.

 

Some would say if you doubt the Bible you are on a slippery slope. Well now that I don’t have to jump through hoops to justify things that make no sense, I am on solid ground.

I believe the Bible was written by people. Its there perception of God. Much of it is true but it is tainted by the culture of its day and by thousands of years of tampering.

 

How do I know what I believe? I don’t need a book to tell me. I just know what I know that I know.

 

Now I am getting out there. Anybody know wtf I am talking about.

 

 

EVIL creditor calls

OK so I have too many credit cards and I am slightly behind on a couple of them. In particular one to Wells Fargo. I understand they want to get paid but they call at least 3 times an hour most hours from about 8AM-9PM 7 days a week. They have even started calling my cell phone. I don’t know how they got it. I created an address book entry on my Blackberry called Asshole 1,2, and 3 and set the ringtone to none so it doesn’t ring when they call.

 

What gets me is:

 

Its only about 2 weeks late. Until its 30 days it wont affect credit rating

I have already made payment arrangements with them.

 

This relentless calling is an act of psychological warfare designed to break me into paying them. Well I will pay them but not any sooner because of this. I have emailed them the date and times they call my cell phone and ordered them to cease calling any number they have on file for me in the 503 area code. My home number is in the 541 area code. Nothing helps.

 

I changed my home phone number and went unlisted. I am sick of it. Over 20 calls a day. Wtf

 

I am not condoning not paying bills but we all have rough times. I am not a deadbeat trying to default just someone who is slightly late. I would understand this torture if I was like a month or so late. They started this crap when it was only ONE DAY LATE. Not to mention the $160 is BS fees they have tacked on.

 

They should be happy. They are socking me with so many fees and more interest that they will make big bucks off me. I cant wait to pay them off and cut up that card. Who needs Wells Fargo anyway. I had planned on keeping their card. I think I will keep Capitol One instead.

 

WELLS FARGO SUCKS ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Companies considering using hidden RFID chips in merchandise

These companies are attending a conference which will try to sell them on the idea. They have expressed interest in this technology. Beware.

• Academy Sports & Outdoors • Albertsons • The ALDO Group • Anheuser-Busch • Best Buy • Blockbuster • Blommer Chocolate • Brass Eagle • CDW Corp. • Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream • Electrolux • Energizer Battery • Fuji Photo Film USA • The Gap • General Mills • Gillette Company

• Hampton Products • Hasbro • Hershey Foods • Hewlett Packard (HP) • Hunter Fan • Hy-Vee, Inc. • Jockey International • Johnson & Johnson • Johnsonville Sausage • Kellogg Co. • Kimberly-Clark • Limited Brands • L'Oreal USA • Loblaws • Louisville Bedding • Lowe's Companies

• Luxottica Retail • Maidenform Worldwide • Mars • Marubeni America • Masterfoods USA • McIlhenny Co. • Meyer Corp. • Nestle USA • Newell Rubbermaid • OfficeMax • Pacific Cycle • Payless Shoe Source • Pharmavite • Procter & Gamble • S. C. Johnson • SAKS Inc.

• Sara Lee Foods • Schick • Scott Paper Limited • Sears • Sears Canada • Sherwin-Williams • Storekraft • Stride Rite Corp. • Tanimura & Antle • Target Corp. • The Valvoline Co. • Unilever • Wal-Mart • Walgreens • Wm Wrigley Jr Co • Wegmans

 

Chips

OK so I am on the paranoid side now. For a while (my whole life) I have been hearing about the mark of the beast. I used to get worked up now I sort of let it slide by, However I was listening to Coast to Coast with George Noory last night and they interviewed Katherine Albrecht. She is a bit of a fundamentalist Christian but she had many good points. The use of RFID is way out of control. Over 300 people in the US have chosen to implant RFID chips in themselves for “convenience”  

 

There is also talk about chips that implant themselves in your spleen so that if you try to remove them it will kill you.

 

Real ID is something that all freedom lovers should be outraged about. In theory the RFID chip in a REAL ID license could give people the way to track you. A

 

Also Walmart has a contract with a large company to buy RFID chips for their items. Supposedly for automated inventory. Another good reason to boycott good ole Mall Wart.

 

It starts with pets. Next it will be prisoners, military and immigrants. Also frequent flyers.

 

Do you really trust the government and corporations with this kind of power.  I don’t. No chip for me.

 

http://www.spychips.com/  is an interesting though consipiracy theorist site.

 

Another really disturbing thing is the link between chipped pets and cancer. My dog has a chip. I didn’t put it there. The humane society we got  him from did and they didn’t even give us a choice. I hope he doesn’t get cancer or end up being the homing device for federal agents to find me.

 

1984 is becoming reality. We should band together to fight this abuse of corporate power

 

 

One more semi geeky post

I been thinking since that last post that its pretty disturbing that the US owns the root servers for the Internet. That means if we decided to be a big bully, we could pull the plug on the whole Internet. Well at least render it useless to non-nerds. Maybe that would be a good thing. Just kidding about that.

 

The US refused to give up control of the root servers.

 

ICANN is the company for a better word that assigns domain names. Though it is somewhat international guess where its headquartered. Marina Del Rey, CA

 

Just one more thing that can be used against any country that would dare to piss off the Bush Administration.

 

The other piece of the Youtube things is how it was worked around. The workaround was to block Pakistan from the Internet. Now nobody should have that kind of power. But if the root servers and the organization who decides which domain names can be used are American, well I guess we can cut off the net to anyone we damn well please. Also its impossible to register a domain on planet earth without supporting a US corporation.

 

He who controls the spice, controls the universe.

More Proof that Pakistan couldnt have broken Youtube on their own

The article at Smash the Man explains that the Internet root servers are completely controlled by the US. The root servers are the ones that provide DNS data. When you punch in www.google.com in your browser, your computer goes to this server and says who is this and is directed to the IP address for Google. If the US controls the root servers then the US controls who is authoritative. Given that it should have been impossible for Pakistan to break Youtube unless someone in the US didn’t do their job.

 

But its fun to blame Muslims. They make such good enemies. The average moron in the US will say, I hate Pakistan they killed Youtube. Lets go to war and kick their raghead asses. (I meant that as pure sarcasm not as an insult to Pakistani’s, Muslims, or Hindu’s) I bet the Walmart and Nascar crowd is all over this as they drink their miller and spit their Skoal. They are enemies of free-dum.

 

I admit that they did try to kill it in their country but that’s all. That is wrong. But somehow I fear that this is going to be labeled an act of terrorism or something.

 

You really think the US doesn’t block web sites or spy on us?

 

Smash the Man has a lot of cool stuff out there. I found it on a link from a link on Nina’s blog.

 

http://www.smashtheman.com/smash/Articles/Article.aspx?ID=44

 

 

I will keep on posting until the guys with suits come and drag me off in a black helicopter to “retrain” me