Stormweyr

Religion is a curious concept, and one that I have thought about for a while, not as long as a lot of other people, granted, but I do feel that I understand it better.

Any religion will encompass at least two groups of people;
Those who accept the teaching without question ( to varying degrees of course ), and on the flip side of this coin are the people who reject it.

This of course also means that people can indeed be dedicated to more than one religion, due to either acceptance of their teachings, or rejecting of the same.

So what does this mean?
Scientology and Islam has captured public interest in the last few weeks, first the re-publications of silly images depicting a man from long long ago, and the "Anonymous" from the internet launching a global effort ( quite amazing actually ) to enlighten people of the wrong-doings of the Scientology people.

For the cartoons, this shows, as the Islamic followers call it "disrespect" and "blasphemy" to their holy man.

Being against a religion is a different belief than being for a religion, but it is belief none the less, and most of the books say something akin to "burn the heathens" which must indicate that they do not enjoy the particular flavor of disbelief.

I myself, whether I like it or not, have fallen into the Scientology group, and the Creationist group, both sound so very wrong to me, and I will happily spark a discussion to voice my own displeasure with both, I will never accept any of them as true.

You could probably say that on a scale between -100% and 100% where 0 is equivalent to "wouldn’t give a rats arse", and 100% being total fanaticism and zeal, I probably go -25% on Scientology, -20% on Creationism, and -10% on Islam, as for the other religions, they are all well below +/- 5%

I cannot be bothered to go out and protest them, and I would be very likely to laugh them in the face and insult them should they be preaching their message to me.

Enough about me.

It is an interesting concept, when you think about it, your participation either for or against a religion is a driver for ensuring that the potential non-initiated learn about a religion.

Of course, every religion will demonize its opposing half, because people opposing does not bring money to the church coffers. Even though the church benefits from having them around because the opposing faction will spread knowledge of the religion for free.

Even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all, I believe the saying goes.

So, whether you oppose a religion or not, you are still a member, for better or worse.

You cannot destroy a belief ( since belief is both negative and positive, for and against ), merely let it run its course, eventually people as a whole gain interest in something else that fits their current society and culture.

Feburary already, time flies, I would rather it did’nt, I have lots of things left to do before I leave this world.

Like ensure that we grow and prosper, rather than tumble back among those unfortunate enough to suffer instinctual survival.

Also, the quality of most things these days is on the decline, so there is rarely anything worth watching. -.-

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it on the 24′th

And thus, the conclusion of this, my twenty sixth year of life.

Next year (and the rest of this one) will be my twenty seventh.

Lets reflect:

I worked at this software development place.
I went to Japan with my sister.
I worked some more. ( Incidently, Firefox consisted of a large part of a learning process for me, and how to create a plugin for the damn thing without documentation. )
I felt a bit on edge in my company, given that it does not turn a great profit. ( Work security issues )
I went to Denmark (since thats where I’m from, in case you still don’t know.)

Interspersed between all this the facts that I spoke on IRC #WyvrnCity some times. ( http://irc.stormweyr.dk )

Other than that, a pretty uneventful year.

Again with the perverted version of the annual winter solstice festival.

Perhaps it is time to expand a bit on the layout of this site, it is getting a bit stale I think.

It is two/three years old after all, amazingly.

Time certainly flies quickly.

.. . Birthday on Monday (17′th) . ..

Going to Denmark for a week.
Starting tomorrow.

Have fun, and try not to break anything while I’m gone now.

Grr.. My Internet provider, O2′s bitch in the UK also known as "BE" is throwing the second downtime notice at me in less than a month.

So once again, 03:00am GMT to 05:00am – thats two hours.

Last time they did this of course, the connection remained down for 15 hours straight!

Unacceptable, and if they do it this time, I’m going to make them pay.

Yea, I think I’ll turn this into my personal soap box, at least its better than ranting endlessly in some forum, or chat, people have better things to do after all ( like idling for example )

Lets see, I am wondering why Internet service providers are not sued and shut down by the media companies, it seems that they are the source of all this piracy that is such an incredibly hot topic these days.

Sure, internet based file sharing service providers are sort of immaterial and usually run by a single person, who provides the service, ( which is not all that unlike to internet providers, or phone connection providers ) out of good will, a non-profit service, or hell, even a service that puts him in the red.

It would make sense to stop the file sharing nonsense, at its roots, the internet providers, considering that they provide the users that set up these secondary services to allow other users, possibly even their own clients, to download and share material.

So why is it the little man, who suffers under such massive oppressive behavior?

Why has this become common place, for it to be acceptable to do this kind of thing.

Terrorists are using the phone lines every day to communicate their plans to agents far away, why are the phone companies not shut down and held responsible for this act?

Bombs can be sent through the mail, why do the post offices allow such dangerous materials to reach the intended recipient?

I am afraid the answer is, this is the way it works, and it is abused in this fashion because nothing can be done to stop it.

You can try, but you will fail, and instead of getting an accurate picture of the extend of these "crimes" (well, yea, I would not be happy to receive a bomb in my mail, but still), instead of getting statistics on how often it happens, you just force the offenders into a level of hiding, deeper than they were before, using other means, other methods, you can pervert a lot of systems to perform in ways they were never intended, and people will find them as they are pushed.

Eventually, you will have lost them, you will think you have won, but in truth, you have lost reputation, you have lost the people, and you have lost the offenders, since their methods became too hard for you to track accurately.

I would say the pressure is a good thing, from an evolutionary standpoint though, we learn new things, we probe into the depths of existing protocols, and construct new ones to work upon them, find new and ever more ingenious ways of beating the system.