Internet Censorship and SOPA

Filed Under (Cause and Effect) by Alvin Mites on 21-11-2011

New legislation is currently being passed around the hill with the intent of preventing online piracy of copyrighted material.

Like many pieces of legislation it has surely been crafted with the greatest of ideals and goals. Currently there are 2 versions.

  1. Expand the jurisdiction for domain seizure – meaning a web-site could be taken down for hosting or linking to copyrighted material.
  2. Implement Deep Bit Monitoring – meaning EVERYTHING you access on the web will be monitored and scanned for potential copyright material.
1. The intent is clear, prevent sites like thepiratebay. The trick is in the wording and checks and balance method of the US government, where congress creates the laws and the courts decide how they are enforced. So with the potential law being written to stop any site that HOSTS or LINKS to copyrighted material, this could be applied to any web-site based on automation and/or community ie: Google / Facebook / Wikipedia / Twitter / etc… By the letter of the current House of Representatives version of the bill any of those sites could be taken down permanently if enough links to copyrighted material were found posted by users or picked up by Googlebot.
2. The Senate version has one provision that would allow “Deep Packet Inspection” which opens up a warehouse of privacy concerns, and if passed would force ISPs across the country to rebuild their architecture. On the Privacy end everything you do/view/write online would be monitored closely, with logs so that IF you view copyrighted material then your access would be blocked by your ISP, or modifying the sites you view;
“Cutting off funding or access to only the illegal part of the site while leaving the rest of the site intact promotes legitimate expression.”
On the privacy side, this is similar to the approach used by the Great Firewall of China. Let alone creating logs of everything you (your connection) do (does) online. We live in a time when Thomas Jefferson is being left out of text books, and legislation may be put into place to force your ISP to filter what you are able to view online. The word choice of force is not an accident, the compliance for this issue would require that your ISP monitor your actions in detail, creating a wide range of technical hurdles for the internet to remain in compliance. Under current law, any web-site can rely on copyright holders to bring offending material to its attention. China reportedly requires an internet police force of 30,000 for its censorship efforts, which meet with only partial success.
The long story short is that this legislation which is surely being drafted with the best of intent contains within it a technical pandora’s box that will prevent innovation as any new or existing community based web-site will be forced to actively monitor all activity to prevent copyrighted material from appearing on site. Neglecting to do so with the most advanced (and likely most expensive) technology available could put them at risk of being held for non-compliance.
Further details are available via soon to be banned Wikipedia
I’m curious what your thoughts are?

The imagination of God As a Pattern

Filed Under (Mind Walk) by Alvin Mites on 18-08-2011

Below is an inspired post that has been waiting for a while to take form. It is a reference to my perspective of the world in an unedited freeform nature.

I am publishing this rambling as is with hope for criticism of the idea itself.

Similar to the way that everyone is a little different, their DNA is a little different
DNA is the self replicating pattern sequence that forms a creature
the soul is similar to DNA, it survives from body to body, changing slightly each time
perhaps growing and taking on attributes that help, perhaps stagnant, allowing the pattern to grow stale…

your cells are made up of pieces of your environment, filtered through instructional patterns
you are both your environment, and the instructions that filter the environment

by interacting with anyone and/or anything you exchange energy, this can be measured
your instructions are updating and being updated

this is getting to be a bit too abstract for evenme to follow

the idea being that a model for god is that of a person, everyone seems to like the idea of God looking similar to themselves so we’ll go with that
now take a look at your hand, really look at it
what are the building blocks of your hand?
skin, blood, muscle, bone, nerves
molecules of iron, calcium, and others that make up cells
what are you from the perspective of your skin cell?

I can already hear the nag “cells can’t see” or some other such dismissive comment, though it misses the idea
your body is made up of billions of cells, what does that make your body to an individual cell?

what is your cell to one of trillions of individual molecules of calcium within the bone of your index finger?
What is that molecule of calcium to the electron that makes up a part of it?

What are you to the planet that you live on?
What is the planet to the galaxy?
What is the galaxy to the universe?

Does the universe make up a part of a greater pattern?
Zoom in or zoom out and you end up with a similar pattern that repeats itself indeffinetely to the limit of your imagination.
Rpeat that same process over the course of every imagination that exists.
I currently think that the limit of the collective imagination is the beginning of god.

Turn Your Dreamline Construction Into a Project Definition

Filed Under (Personal Inventory) by Alvin Mites on 29-07-2011

Tagged Under : , , ,

What do you do when you have a flash of insight, something that seems brilliant and possibly game changing for yourself or portions of the world at large.

Below is a quick outline of my process for taking an idea and turning it into a project. The following process is designed to be completed in chunks, based on how much time you have available. While I’ve found that insights for writing an article or a similar creative function work best when I jump on them right away, often the time from insight to deployment can be weeks or months if the idea grows large enough. Also the ideas below are not rigid rules of any type, and aren’t going to help you beyond setting up organizational scaffolding.

  • Start out dreaming up the biggest idea you can, any extra function, feature, aspect, piece, anything and everything related. Jot it down, andif your mind mapping all the better since you can see how it fits together.
  • Find the core, what does everything else come out from? This might have changed from your initial flash of insight as you expanded the idea.
  • Review each idea that branches from the core and ask how does this add? Would something be missing if it wasn’t there?
  • Prioritize, how important is the idea in full. How important is each branch. Measure importance however is easiest for you, 1-X for each branch, and how many other ideas at large you have under active development.
  • Turn each piece into action steps which you could perform to transform your idea into reality. Call XYZ about … write email to…, research how to X…
  • Observe how your internal state has shifted towards greater or lesser clarity, and repeat and modify as desired.
Much of this exercise is based upon Getting Things Done, a methodology to project management in the broadest sense of the term. If defining your work is an exercise you will find value within it’s principles.

It’s all your fault

Filed Under (Cause and Effect, Personal Inventory) by Alvin Mites on 15-07-2011

It’s your fault.
If you want to change something.
No matter what happened, no matter how, why anything, accept that it is your fault.

Until you are responsible how can you change it?

Nagging and screaming may work for children some of the time, but who wants to be at the mercy of someone else to be responsible your own life?

Once you have accepted reponsibility, then you can begin to figure out how things ended up the way they did and change circumstances accordingly. Whether it is a change in attitude, tonality, word choice, physical action, diet, or one of thousands of other factors, you have the ability to change your own circumstances.

But not until you accept.

It’s your fault!

What is Your Pattern?

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Alvin Mites on 07-07-2011

If you think about your life, past, current and projected future. What would the underlying rhythoms be? Is there a passion of yours that you’ve found and grown? What do you think will become of that expression of your intent?

Are you wondering why XYZ… keeps happening? “Same old same old”, as you decided to settle down and grow up? Have you decided that what you have now is as good as it will get and the need to pursue any further growth is simply too much work?

What is the pattern that has shaped your life? What is the pattern that your life has shaped? How much of that pattern mathes the ideal that you want to live? What do you want to change within it? How about a simple exercise: pull out a pad of paper and/or keyboard and start writing a descriptive paragraph about yourself, the things that are current true and will continue to be so? Doesn’t have to be incredibly long, just a start to your life story, the simplest ideas that have resonance within you.

Did you learn anything? What do you have that you are grateful for? Anything there that will present you an chance to learn? Something that you don’t wish to have influence upon you, how are you going to change that aspect of your life?

If this post seems like a random collection of questions, keep in mind that your brain is excellent and coming up with answers to questions. So if these questions don’t align with where you are then please create your own exercise, and perhaps describe it as a comment below.
What question do you want to ask yourself? Your brain will come up with answers on it’s own when provided with (big) questions.

My Juice Fast Recipe for Day 2

Filed Under (Nutrition, Personal Inventory) by Alvin Mites on 31-01-2011

Tagged Under : , , ,

Yesterday I started to feel myself coming down with a cold so I decided to kick it out quick with a fast. At the end of the day I decided why not keep it going for a few days and turn this into a deep cleanse.

My juice fast recipe for the day:

  • Carrot
  • Apple
  • Celery

I tend to use this juice fast recipe as a base since when combined properly it forms a complete protein and allows for extending fasting. The proper mix is 2 parts carrot : 2 parts celery : 1 part apple. If you are not an experience juicer then I don’t recommend jumping right into that mix as the saltiness of the celery is a bit much to handle. That said if you add some celery to your fresh pressed carrot and apple juice then you will be gaining some complete proteins and allow your body to maintain it self while your cleanse.

My method is fairly simple, I ran 3 pounds of carrots, 2 pounds of apples and 2 pounds of celery through a Champion Juicer to make roughly 3 quarts of juice. I will drink this throughout the day along with water and store bought not-from-concentrate Orange Juice anytime that I feel hungry.

Having my juice pre-pressed this way makes it much easier to avoid the temptation to indulge and break my fasting since all I have to do is pour a glass rather than go through the process of making juice each time I feel hungry. Aiding
The orange juice being is also there to aid in my will power in case I seek something sweeter, being pasteurized it contains significantly less nutrients than my what I pressed this morning though it does make for a nice change.

Ask yourself how you got where you want to be

Filed Under (Cause and Effect, Habits, Personal Inventory) by Alvin Mites on 21-12-2010

Find a quiet space, and imagine a room where there are 2 chairs and invite yourself 5 years from now to join you and have a conversation, ask any questions that you are unsure of and observe the differences between yourself now and the projection
then dismiss your future self, switch chairs and chat with yourself 5 years ago

inspired a great number of internal shifts without any other effort, been encouraging to realize that I have all the knowhow to accomplish most anything I want, just a matter of applying myself – largely through (re)building habits

How about you? What habits would make a difference between where you are now and where you see yourself in 5 years?
While logically working on the biggest change the great fulcrum that will change everything is tempting it can easily become a distraction to prevent you from getting started on making changes. If you don’t have a clear answer then pick 1 thing and get started, after a few days (5 seems to be the critical number) momentum will start to carry you forward.

– Thank you Steve Pavlina for the inspiration of the technique

PS. Yes this is grammatically terrible, this is a 1st draft which is a habit I will continue for several posts at least as I develop the habit of writing to this blog more often.

1 piece of advice for diabetes

Filed Under (Nutrition) by Alvin Mites on 12-12-2010

Diabetes: not fun, used to have hypoglycemic crashes somewhat regularly before learning to manage

watch your fat vs carb intake, higher blood fat levels cause sugar/carbs to stay in your blood stream creating the conditions for a crash – biggest thing I’ve learned is scheduling, when eating a fatty meal try to stay light for a few hours sticking with water and low glycemic index foods (apples are a particular favorite)

can share more if interested, learned how to cure diabetes when I went raw and haven’t had an issue since

Order of events – idea to distraction and back

Filed Under (Personal Inventory) by Alvin Mites on 03-11-2010

walked in with intent of writing about
sat down to computer and saw djano admin – computer wholesale
switched to idea about building the solar school a private network with all their computers with help from kids as work exchange for partial enrollment
the order of events that lead from me sitting down and writing about an idea, to losing it and running on a quick tangent that is productive though not on center
it would seem that my mind is due for a thorough sweeping of ideas that I feel obligation to
for that nagging feeling that I need to do something besides what I am currently doing
state switch, the distraction is set and I feel good about what I just did today but what the heck was it that I did?
I set out to get this done, it was part of the plan then I missed it,
this is part of the learning process, yet what are the options?
sweep the floor, clear the air, now I am off to do so
I stop to drink water, I notice that my desk is full so I play tetris for a moment,
and descide that it is ok that I lost that thought, the intent was to write and so I have
it seems that this place will serve well to capture many small ideas and random memes that I run across,
once the habit is better set I would imagine there will be content of much greater value

walked in with intent of writing aboutsat down to computer and saw djano admin – computer wholesaleswitched to idea about building the solar school a private network with all their computers with help from kids as work exchange for partial enrollment
the order of events that lead from me sitting down and writing about an idea, to losing it and running on a quick tangent that is productive though not on centerit would seem that my mind is due for a thorough sweeping of ideas that I feel obligation tofor that nagging feeling that I need to do something besides what I am currently doingstate switch, the distraction is set and I feel good about what I just did today but what the heck was it that I did?I set out to get this done, it was part of the plan then I missed it,
this is part of the learning process, yet what are the options?sweep the floor, clear the air, now I am off to do so
I stop to drink water, I notice that my desk is full so I play tetris for a moment,and descide that it is ok that I lost that thought, the intent was to write and so I have
it seems that this place will serve well to capture many small ideas and random memes that I run across,once the habit is better set I would imagine there will be content of much greater value

What do you want to build?

Filed Under (Personal Inventory, Poetry?) by Alvin Mites on 21-09-2010

What are you trying to build?

Where are you’re time and ther resouces going?
Are you building a team? career? brand? portal? dream? nightmare?
For who?

What are you building?
What are you creating right now?
Does this differ from what you want to be building?

What do you want to build?
Is it the very essence of what you are building now?
Why not?
What is stopping you?
Only myself.

Is this what you want to be building?
Are you proud of what you have created?
What will you do with it now?
What are you trying to build?