Happy Birthday, Kurt

You'll never look a day over 25...and that makes me very sad.

Thoughts on This Year's Super Bowl

Basically I could care less. What a waste of a great football year.

A Brief History of Pirates, Piracy, and Freedom

Many years ago, when Europeans discovered a new world, a golden age of commerce sprang up like never before seen. The Spaniards hit the gold mine, literally, the French found luxurious furs, and the British found their next cash crop, tobacco. With wealth growing at a fever pitch, a scourge began to grow within the seas. Pirates.

Pirates were a criminal element that used brains, muscle, and speed to find any weak link within the inter-sea commerce trade. They accomplished this by ripping off ships, ravaging port towns, and creating overall fear and havoc. With the passage of time, better technologies, and stiffer penalties, piracy as it was known in the 16th century slowly died out. It exists even to this day, but that is another topic for a different time.

My mention of these pirates in this context has to do with modern "piracy" or the theft of music, movies, and other media and then distributed freely over the internet. Over the years we have seen many vehicles for this piracy. We all remember Napster. Napster came along in a day when personal computers became more commonplace along with internet connections, hard drives for storage, and CD burning software. People would literally download songs and albums one song at a time, sometime taking hours per download.

With the inception of broadband, like DSL and cable internet, other peer to peer networks began to spring up including Kazaa, Limewire, WinMX, and more. Content providers then began a scorched earth policy, recruiting someone like Lars Ulrich of Metallica to decry the theft of their media. They also began to attempt to find these uploaders and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. The DMCA was passed in the 90s to make any copy of encrypted media illegal, even if for personal use. Their efforts to this day have not stopped pirates, but have only proven to inconvenience regular paying customers.

With further innovations such as fiber optic cable, DVD and  Blu Ray decryption, Bit Torrents began to take off, allowing people to download large files. Content providers continued to seek court action against any torrenter an ISP would give up. The cycle continues even to this day. Direct HTTP, Bit Torrent, and Usenets still see instances of piracy among legitimate file sharing.

Today, with the help of willing Congress men and women, content providers have brought about new legislation that would give broader powers to the movie and music industry to block entire domains with little cause or recourse. This legislation has brought ripples through the internet community as they wake up to find out that with passage of this legislation, it will create one of the most dangerous side effects in the history of modern US legislation.

A Chinese style firewall. One that can and will be used by people of power that will not have our best interests at heart.

The movie and music industry will and should face stiff resistance from the internet community over this, but they will continue to persist to have SOPA/PIPA passed through Congress and signed by the President. I keep my political rants to a minimum, but I wanted to take time and this space to encourage everyone to locate their Congressmen and Senators and continue to put pressure on them to not kill free speech on the web. I have seen liberals and conservatives alike working together to stop this from passing.

The kicker is that pirates will continue to illegally pass around protected content even after this legislation passes. They would even continue to thrive and expand overseas. It is only us law abiding citizens of the web that will suffer. What's left of free speech as we know it now, could begin to die out. Do consider stepping up and helping fight the good fight. This is a big one, friends.

2011: A Year

Part of me looks at the last day of the year as just another day of the year. I haven't been known to celebrate a new year by attending a party, or hanging out with friends, I just reflect and make sure I hold on to what I learned as best I can. This was a year of learning, not just for me, but for the world.

In January, while I was installing a new computer system and database at work, tides of revolution began to sweep through Africa and the Middle East. While I tried to find the thief of our garbage bin, the world rocked with heavy earthquakes. While trying to decide who would play me in the future untitled movie about me, we all  got to know the bravery of Rep. Giffords after being shot by a deranged gunman in Arizona.

In February, while I was celebrating a Super Bowl win from my beloved Packers and relished at the Lombardi trophy returning to Green Bay, Sudan splits raising a democratic southern state from the ashes and years of strife.  While I was travelling the state, and celebrating family birthdays, Borders Bookstores announce their closing, beginning a closing chapter on brick and mortar retail stores. While I enjoyed a massive phone upgrade, we denounce the leadership of Moammar Gadhafi and begin to help revolutionaries unseat him from power.

In March, while I celebrated a 37th year on earth, Shuttle Discovery takes its last flight. While bringing in the spring and cleaning the yard for summer, Japan is wrecked by a massive earthquake. As I begin to write for a new blog, revolution boils on the eastern hemisphere. March Madness over here puts two Richmond schools in position to win the NCAA Men's basketball championship.

In April we watch as VCU falls just short of that championship, reaching the Final Four. While we begin to bail out Greece and Portugal, beginning a long year for European countries, we struggle over here with over 14 trillion dollars in debt, While enjoying a quiet month and warmer weather, we're also treated to a Presidential birth certificate. Thank goodness that mess is over.

In May, while celebrating the release of Portal 2, we find and kill the head of the snake responsible for the events on September 11, 2001. While fixing my lawnmower, churches in Egypt burn, highlighting the real fear I had with this 'Arab Spring', a rise of intolerant, extreme religious aggression. While getting to see Picasso's work at the art museum, May 21st comes and goes, proving Harold Camping, a so called man of God predicting the end of the world, to be wrong. Again.

In June, while I celebrate the Miami Heat not winning an NBA championship, we all unfortunately get to see too much Weiner. Anthony Weiner that is. While I'm in New Orleans with Janine, touring probably one of the most fascinating places in the US if not the world, the world comes together to stave Greece from bankruptcy, potentially saving the Euro. All the while wondering if they will come to our aid when our now 15 trillion dollar debt becomes too cumbersome.

In July, Janine and I concluded a decade long journey, watching the last Harry Potter movie. While I was playing with turntable.fm, we got to see the final launch of the Space Shuttle program. While watching the US Women's Soccer team lose to an inspired Japan team, we lose an inspirational lady, Betty Ford. I'm reminded that most all of us deal with addiction, with ourselves and with our families.

In August, we were hit with a 5.5 magnitude earthquake. Virginia and its residents were not accustomed or prepared for such a thing. For days we all were mindful of the ground beneath us as we were hit by days of aftershocks. The Midwest was rocked by strong tornadoes, we survived Hurricane Irene losing only one branch, and the longest week ever began. A week where our house was without power. One does not realize the comforts given to us by electricity. Once that luxury is gone, life suddenly became too simple and too frustrating. August will be remembered as one of the craziest months ever.

In September, while thankful to make it through summer, we head to South Carolina again for our annual vacation. Young people in the United States began to 'Occupy Wall Street'. I did well to avoid opinion on either side during these protests. I've always worked for what I've obtained in life and rely on self determination and wise choices to make me a better person in a better society. While welcoming the beginning of Autumn, I defend Netflix in their decision to spin off their DVD service. I still feel that they may have been early with their move, eventually physical media will lose out. I also learned some valuable lessons after my first car accident. I never talked about it in the blog, but I learned to be prepared for anything and that sure enough, more and more people are not paying attention to their driving.

In October we see more earthquakes, more revolutions, democracy blooming, more concerns for the Euro. We in the tech community lose a great leader, Steve Jobs. He had stepped down a couple months prior  because of his poor health and fighting pancreatic cancer. We reflected on his drive to innovate and we all hope that his star will shine forever. In October, 2011, Gadhafi is no more.

In November, while Janine and I celebrate yet another phone upgrade and her birthday, we remember Andy Rooney and reflect on a style of old media that many of us may never see again. Sure, as we get older, curmudgeonly commentary will continue, but an era is passed in our society, one of true journalism. We have become accustomed to our 24 hour up to the second news cycle, but I hope we can return to a day of thorough, unbiased reporting.

Lastly, this December as winter approaches, we celebrate Christmas with our families. Our troops leave Iraq per their insistence with hopefully enough work done to make our struggle their the past six years worthwhile. North Korean dictator, Kim Jung Il, dies, and we all wonder how we could top this crazy, wonderful act in 2012.

I don't even have too many thoughts on the past year. I hold out confidence that all of us will see better days ahead. I also illustrated the simplicity and ease of my own life while contrasting it to the difficulties experience around the world. After all of this, I only have one prediction for the new year - the Mayans were terribly wrong about next year being the end of world. Embarrassingly and terribly wrong.

Merry Christmas!

 Enjoy the Season.

Back With Rants

I looked at my poor blog and realized that I haven't posted anything in a month. This year has gone entirely too fast. How about some rants?

My latest distraction from regular posts at my blog has been regular posts at my other blog, Android Activist and Google Plus. I have formed and found such a great community of people, photographers, engaging and interesting people, and a variety of view points and world views. I have really enjoyed keeping up with people there and have completely neglected my site here, Twitter, and all the other internet stuff that now just seems so unimportant. I'm ready to consolidate my digital life to one place and devote more and more of my waking time with waking real people.

I, like most have been doing a steady eye roll since the Christmas shopping season starts around Halloween now. Part of me understands the desperation of retail and car companies to move inventory in these challenging times, but the holiday burn out is only going to get worse and worse and without enthusiasm, there really isn't any joyous spending to do. Just lots of endless complaining, ie this post.

Pro Football has been enjoyable for me this year. I don't want to say a lot and throw out the traditional jinx, but my team is still undefeated. What's great is that there is little talk about this in the sports press. This time 4 years ago when the Patriots were undefeated, there was constant talk about that team being the best ever in the NFL. No such talk this year. I also haven't watched near as much sports media, because, let's face it, it's pretty terrible and I could occupy my mind with better things.

Speaking of occupying. No, I won't say much about the Occupy Wall Street movement. I get their cause, but when we all wake up tomorrow morning or tomorrow morning 10 years from now, greedy people will still be greedy and some will never think the rich are paying enough. So in my humble opinion, this movement solves nothing unless we were looking for solutions to creating mountains of human feces. Job well done, kids. Politics has me so entirely jaded lately, I just tune out.

I'm all about lifestyles and lifestyle changes. Many are done for our bodies, some are done for our souls, I have no problem with lifestyle changes. I have grown pretty tired of some that blast with loud musical instruments and fanfare their changes. Especially when it comes to diet changes. Good for you all who make better food decisions, but it can be just as annoying as a loud, in your face street preacher. I don't smoke anymore. I do not go into great dissertation that I'm living on a smoke free diet. I think there's a fine line and I guess I'm too sensitive to widen that fine line. Why do I have to be a vegetarian or pescatarian? Why can't I decide what days I want to eat meats and what days I don't? Why do I need to confine myself? Why do I then feel the urge to push these decisions on others? That is not the meaning of life, people!

I could throw in a traffic rant, but, really, why? It does seem the volume is getting much worse around Richmond, but I think last summer/autumn road construction projects are the problem cure.

Janine and I got our phone upgrades. She's using the Epic Touch 4G, which is Sprint's take on the Samsung Galaxy S II and I got tired of waiting for the Galaxy Nexus and purchased the Nexus S 4G. I like the pure Google experience and I wanted to give Janine a big screen so she can enjoy games, Netflix, etc. I wanted to upgrade her to the latest Blackberry, but I've heard there have been serious hardware issues, so onward and upward we went.

Rants done. Thank you for reading. I'll post more, I promise.