Future of personal computing

   The old phase of "What is old is now new again!"  is a phrase that repeats itself if you stay around long enough to witness it.  

    When I first started out at college PC's were just starting to come on the market.  Mostly used by
geeks who liked to tinker with soldering irons and ohm-meters they made their way into regular homes through the IBM-PC, Apple-II or Commodore-64 (my personal first computer).    Before this only people with degrees in computer-science could touch one and they were "time-shared" either through handing in a deck of punch-cards or through "dumb terminals".   No one really liked the time-share process.   You were at the mercy of the computer operator and you had better make good friends with him if you wanted your work to go through in a timely manner.

     But with the advent of the PC came the issues of you being your own computer operator.  You were now responsible for

• Software updates
• OS updates
• Disk backups
• Anti-hacking software
• Hardware upgrades
• Network management
• Password protection
• Disk defragmenting and performance issue fixing
• and more...

    The more PC's you added to your home the more time and money you seemed to spend on these
issues (when my kids were still in the house I felt like a 24/7 IT professional).   If the issues were beyond your pay-grade you were at the mercy of either a friend or family member who did understand the problem or you spent 100's of dollars at places like Geek Squad to do the work for you.   You may have also been forced to spend 100's of dollars on a yearly basis for other "automated" Internet support through companies like PC-matic or Carbonite to take care of laborious activities like disk management and performance management.   But these solutions are only piece-meal and are by far from automatic.

     Maybe this whole PC revolution needs to take another look at the idea of time-sharing again as its solution to these problems.   But unlike the days of "dumb terminals" which did only text based data (no graphics or sound), these would utilize "smart-terminals" similar to Netbooks which have very little computer/storage power but can connect in with larger servers running Virtual PC's which are nothing more than simulated PC run by higher speed processors.   The PC can now be whatever you want it to be.   A company hosting these Virtual-PC's would sell you time on your computer and charge you for the amount of time and space your system consumes

   Need more disk space?                                             No problem.   Request it.
   Need more processing speed?                                  No problem.   Request it.
   Need a different OS version?                                   No problem.   Request it.
   Need a new version (or old version) of software?   No problem.   Request it.

    The hosting company (most likely a cable-company provider) would manage your disk space (encrypted).  Provide you with more disk space simply by carving up a bigger partition for you.  They could also do auto-backups and even do auto-compression of files not accessed very often.   They could provide auto-scans of files to insure you are virus free.   They could also line you up with certified software suppliers who are proven to be the real McCoy and not some look-a-like company from Russia so your software is protected.  They could also allow you to try out new software or even new operating systems for a period of time to see if you like it or not.   You don't like it?  It simply disappears or you go back to the old version.

   Another benefit is they could give you a choice when you log in if you want a brand-new-out-of-the-box system or one of your last 10 log-in-exits so you can pick up where you left off at.   More complex users (businesses) could keep their projects separated by this method as well so there is no possibility of one project dirtying another project.   These capabilities would allow users to keep their sensitive data from being tampered with.  Take for example you just want to log in and do some on-line shopping.   You would choose the brand-new session that has no access to the project data at all (because it doesn't exist in that Virtual-PC) and therefore no nefarious hacker could possibly delete it or download it while you are shopping at "RussianLowCostShoppers.com".  

   Such a system would allow you to access your system wherever a high-speed internet connection can be found.   Your smart-TV could now become your smart-Virtual-PC with the addition of a wireless keyboard and mouse.  Your phone or 4 year-old laptop could also be your smart-terminal as well if you don't want to purchase a low cost netbook computer.

   This brings another nice feature of this system.  Hardware familiarity.   If you look at most people looking to buy a new computer they spend a good amount of time trying out one thing: the keyboard.  Why?  Because no one likes to learn a new keyboard layout.  It's frustrating to re-learn where the delete key is or the backspace key.  It's also frustrating learning the feel of the new keys and how hard or light you can press them.   Many people choose their new laptop solely based on how it feels.   With the Virtual-PC your keyboard can stay the same (as well as the monitor etc) and all the changes are the insides where you don't see them.

   Lastly this system also saves on power and weight.   With most of the "real components" being simulated on the high-end server, your physical system can be made as light and low power as necessary.   With no need to have a physical hard-drive or a high-speed processor requiring a heat-sink your system can be extremely light and with a very long battery life to boot. 

   For most computer users today this system is a dream come true as it would have:

1. An almost infinite disk space  
2. An almost infinite memory space
3. A Simple way to migrate to new OS's
4. An Automatic backup and data encryption
5. A Protection from hackers and viruses
6. A Secure software installation
7. A Low power and Low weight
8. Ability to access to system anytime and anywhere

 Who won't like this system?  

  Laptop and PC manufactures

Pro-Life's "Frederick Douglass Moment"

     In 1845, Frederick Douglass wrote his best-selling autobiography titled, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave".  His book lifted the vale off of the public's eyes as to what black slaves had to endure under the hardships of slavery.  He detailed how he had limited contact with his mother and how he watched other slaves being whipped to keep them under control.   He showed how slaves were in constant fear from their "masters" and prevented from learning how to read and write in order to keep them ignorant of their true condition.   As humans we often cover our eyes to the truth of how brutal we can be as humans.   In the 1800's the public had adopted a humanitarian view of slavery in which slaves were well taken care of, fed well and given opportunities that they would not have had if they had been left back in the African jungle.  Like the Germans of the Holocaust who had pretended that the Jews were simply being moved to other locations in the railroad boxcars and not to their certain death and destruction in the cremation ovens so we too kidded ourselves as to how horrible slaves were treated on a daily basis and how families were torn apart and treated like cattle for breeding purposes.  Douglass's biography blew the lid of that lie and made the American public come to grips with the reality it was willing to live with so it can have cotton to make their clothes, curtains, bed sheets, towels and other necessities of modern life.

    Now today, a series of videos of Planned Parenthood doctors has emerged showing them to be heartless bargainers of human tissue and organs for their own profit.   We are horrified to see these woman doctors talk about the details of their work as they enjoy salads and glasses of wine.  As they crunch on their salads they discuss how they can use "less crunchy methods" in order to harvest larger amounts of tissue for the buyers to purchase as if the product they are providing was apples or tomatoes and not human beings at all.

   The vale has been pulled and many wish it was put back in place.   Many wish they didn't know what they do now know.    It was easier to pretend that the service rendered was that of removing a cancerous growth and not something with "hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers" which can be utilized for human medical research.   Those who want us to feel "good" about these harvests would have us pretend that its for OUR good.   They tell us, "Think of all the good these woman are doing!  Think of all the countless lives they might save by offering these organs for medical research!".

    Does that sound familiar?   Did America not use that same argument for why slavery should be kept in place?   Were our ancestors not given the same bull-shit lines of the economic necessity of slavery and how we were doing these uneducated brutes a better life here in America?  Were they not told to "Turn away. Nothing to see here"  as we are?

    But thankfully our ancestors did not turn away.  They faced their atrocities and went to war to end it all.  They sought to correct their error in judgment and repair their humanity that had been lost.  For you see,  both the slave and the slave-owner were damaged by slavery.   The slaves damage was to his body and his mind, but the slave-owner was damaged in his soul.   Through the atrocities he inflicted he chipped away at his own soul and humanity until there was nothing left.   By his mistreatment of another human being, he himself became less of a human being himself.

    Likewise, in the abortion industry, there are 3 people being harmed at the same time: the mother, the child and the doctor.    Do you think that Dr. Gosnell (the now infamous late-term abortion doctor who treated his female patients with such lack of medical care that he is now behind bars) went in to the medical profession to abuse woman the way he did?   I don't think any person who goes into the field of medicine does so with the intentions of becoming a medical monster.   But somewhere in the story of Dr. Gosnell, he went from a doctor wanting to help others to a doctors who cared for no one but himself.   When and where  that transformation occurred, only Dr. Gosnell knows, but now we see that abortion takes a toll on the human soul as well.  Like the pounding waves of the ocean wearing away at the coast and turning the largest of rocks into pebbles and sand, so also aborting human life and disposing of arms, legs, feet with tiny toes, hands with tiny fingers, heads with eyes and ears developed chips away at your humanity until nothing is left.

    I do not hate these woman on these videos who see nothing wrong with what they are doing.   I feel sorry and lament for them as much as the little children they seek to sell to the highest bidder.   I pray that they regain their humanity and see what they are doing as wrong.   But now the question remains for the rest of us.   Will we seek to regain our humanity and our soul or will we turn away and try to pretend that it never happened.   Will we go on pretending that what is being extracted is just a gob of tissue that only turns into a live human being seconds upon entering the birth canal and exiting outside the mothers body or will we admit to ourselves that that miracle happens seconds after the joining of sperm and egg?    

Does God have a split personality?

    This has always been a concern of mine since I was just a kid.  It often dumbfounded me as to why in the OT (Old Testament) God lays down harsh laws and punishments and then in the NT (New Testament) God is all about grace and forgiveness.    Does God have a multiple personality disorder?  Why does he in the OT put restrictions on eating, dressing and circumcision and then in the NT says none of that matters anymore?

    It occurred to me later in life after having children that God does not have a split personality.  Instead, he is merely a Father on a mission to save the world.    We fathers are often like that.   We can be reading our kids the riot-act and threatening them with all kinds of punishments one minute and the next minute jovial and kidding around with them.   The difference is the context.   If you have ever been in Disneyland or Disney World you will have undoubtedly witnessed one of the transformations.   All it takes is a father who realizes that they have 5 minutes to make it across the park in order to make their Fast-Pass scheduled time for a ride they have been waiting for all day and suddenly the jovial, happy-go-lucky parent turns into a strict, do-as-I-tell-you-or-else parent who threatens their kids with all kinds of punishments if their actions prevent them from arriving at their destination as scheduled.

     God is no different in the OT.   We forget that God is a man on a mission.  He has already decided to come to earth through the Israelites at the time of the Roman Empire.  He needs to get his people from where they are at in Egypt (around 2000BC) to where they need to be to enter our history and set all things straight.   Like the children in Disneyland, they have a lot of distractions along the way that could cut that trip short.   They will have to wade through cultures that run counter to God's directions.   Those cultures will suck them in and try to dilute them and turn them into one of the many other cultures that don't exist anymore such as the Hitites, the Amonites, the Caananites and many more.   Can you point to anyone today and say they descended from the Amonnites?   Of course not!   They are all gone and assimilated into the other cultures around them.  The same could have happened to the Jewish people as well.  Likewise,  the worship of other gods like Baal and Moloch could cause the Israelites to forget God's mission and his promises to them.   Too often we fail to see that their culture was nothing like what we have today.   We often make the mistake in our minds of thinking that all that is different for the people in the OT is the year and that they don't have our modern conveniences.   But nothing could be further from the truth.   They were dealing with cultures very much far removed from what we deal with today.

     Take for example the god Baal.  Baal was a fertility god who was worshiped by paying money to a
priest and then having sex with a temple prostitute.   How does God compete with that?  The line of men outside of the temple must have gone on for miles.  Now imagine being surrounded by thousands of Baals followers who keep telling you that you are missing out on some really good worship at the temple.  Is it really any wonder at all that in the OT the Israelites are constantly being pulled back in the Baal worship?   Also ask yourself where did the Baal priests get the girls to be the Baal prostitutes?   Most likely they came as offerings from families looking for additional blessings from Baal and so offered their own daughters to the temple for service since girls were held in such low esteem by these other cultures (an ancient letter from a Egyptian nobleman to his wife suggested drowning the baby if it turns out to be a girl).  What should God do about this?  Nothing?  Do you think that these people will end their worship of Baal with just a harsh talking to by their Jewish neighbors? 

     And let's not forget about the god Moloch.  God warns them in multiple places to not sacrifice
their children in the fire to Moloch.  Let that sink in for a while.   These people were offering up their very own children as a burnt offering to an idol to help insure their crops come in at harvest time.    For some time, people thought that this was pure hyperbole on the part of the Jewish people.  But in recent years , altars built in honor of Moloch have been uncovered and the burnt bones of children 2 years old and less were found  (my guess is that most of these children were girls as well).   God's need to remove these people from the land the Israelites were going to inhabit was necessary not only to prevent them from getting involved in this religion, but also as a way to bring the worship of Moloch to an end as well.

    Given all of these problems that could prevent God's people from reaching their goal, God uses a system of "blessings and curses" to help guide his people and keep them on course.   He's not doing this just to be a "mean God" but to bring salvation to the world through these people.    

      But what about all those silly rules about not eating shell fish, pork, etc ?   Why do those go away in the NT as well but not the other commandments like "Do not commit adultery" ?   To answer this you must understand that there are 2 sets of laws in the Jewish culture.   The first is the legal or social laws.  These consist of the 10 commandments and the laws that God gives under these to help them clarify what they mean.    The other laws are religious or dietary laws.  Unlike the former laws, these do not have blessings and curses attached to them.   They are merely told that God detests them.   For a Jew these can be practiced or not practiced, but if you are a "good Jew" you will.    But why did God have them do these things?   So many of them seem so silly to us today.

      To answer, let's go back to our Disneyland example.
You often see families do strange things
when they visit large theme parks like Disneyland.   They will often dress their kids in bright (some would say gaudy) clothes and even put name tags and even have them wear silly looking hats in some cases.  Why?  So they stick out in a crowd and therefore can be more easily identified by the others in case they get lost.    The same goes for the Jews and their religious laws.   It's meant to distinguish them from all the other tribes in the area and remind them on a daily basis about who they are and what they stand for.   Imagine every time a Jewish man goes to the bathroom and they look down and see that their wee-wee is different from every other wee-wee.  Instantly they are reminded, "Oh yeah! I am a Jew".   Then imagine every time they go to the market and they see shell fish for sale or pork.   Again they are remind, "Oh yeah! I am a Jew!".   Other laws as well not only remind them of their heritage but also as a prophecy of what God will do in the future.   Take for example their laws requiring that all debts be forgiven every 50 years or that every year they were to take a spotless sheep and sacrifice it to God for the atonement of all their sins.

    Similarly,  just like the family takes off their "Disney attire" when they leave the park because its not needed anymore so also after Jesus has accomplished all that the Father has destined him to do we no longer need the religious laws such as not eating pork, shell-fish or circumcision.   In fact, the early Jewish-Christians dropping of these laws illustrates to the rest of the world just how real Jesus life-death-and-resurrection are to them as they are willing to go against their Jewish tradition and upbringing for the sake of the Gospel.

     In conclusion, when you take a step back and look at what God's mission is and the various mind-fields he has to walk these people through you begin to understand the purpose of these "silly laws" and you begin to see God for who he is.   Loving, caring and concerned for our well-being and not having a split-personality.

We must remember history's villains as well as its heroes

    Some day people will no longer remember General Robert E. Lee.   As politicians jump on the "Erase the Civil War History bandwagon" names of the Confederacy leaders are being erased faster than you can say "Forrest Gump".    Statues are being removed, flags pulled down, parks schools and hospitals are being given new names all in the name of helping us feel good about ourselves. 

    But erasing the villains does not change history or what was done.   These symbolic gestures do not change who we are or what happened but only seek to cover it up.   Like a crime scene being wiped down with a a clean rag to erase all the evidence and fingerprints we lose important information for future generations to comb through and learn from.   What happened to the villains is as important as what happened to the heroes in any story.   Who they were and what they believed give us a point of reference to compare and contrast.   Like using an object in a photograph in the fore-ground helps give dimension to the objects in the background that you want to highlight.   So also, these men and battles provide us with a sense of immenseness to what the northern union had to overcome in order to win freedom for the slaves. 

    Also, we have become very one dimensional in our thinking and view of the world.  Hollywood in its movies quite often presents us with simplistic villains that have no redeeming qualities.   They are bad asses and that is all.   No more.. no less.  But the real world isn't so one dimensional.   Yes people can have some bad ideas on race and slavery.   But that doesn't mean they did not have any good qualities to admire.   General E. Lee for example was the lead of the Confederate Army for the entire war and nearly defeated the Union early on despite the Union's unmatched factories and population to draw from.   Compared to the Union, Lincoln had to replace his top general on several occasions before giving the job to Gen. Grant.   Lee was able to inspire his men in many victories against the north and his knowledge of military fighting was clearly and advantage for the south.   Do we erase all of that because he espoused slavery?    Would we erase the history of Lincoln because as a lawyer he represented a slave owner and argued for the slave to be returned to his home state?  I hope you would say "Of course not!".   But that is what you are requesting when you erase the history of people like Lee.   And what happened to Lee after the war?   Was he imprisoned by Lincoln and hung for crimes against humanity?   No.  He retired quietly and never again tried to rally troops to break from the Union again.   He showed honor and grace in losing and brought peace to the South during the restoration.   Are there lessons we can learn from him today?   Can our future politicians learn how to handle defeat and how to put their country and their people ahead of their own egos?

I think we can.