ɔimoɈɒ

(This was a response to Denis on FaceBook attributing the need to have some respect for religion because science cannot know everything. I think it would be a grave mistake to assume religion knows anything that science has yet to find an answer for.)

Religion used to be the explanation for everything but as our science has developed, religion has retreated into the recesses where science has no business and little interest.

• The universe: Genesis or Big Bang?
• Person having fits: possession by devils or epilepsy
• Sickness: the presence of sin or germ theory

Piece by piece religion is unravelling and even the devout pick and choose what they want to follow based in their own prejudices.

Galileo had his conflict because he was one of the first to pick at the threads and he did so under possibility of death because religion has always responded with violence to those who would question its ultimate authority.

Religions like Christianity know their cards are marked in developed societies which is why they spend so much effort recruiting and indoctrinating in developing countries – where the people have not experienced the enlightenment, where they still suspect devils and call the lightning by a name. For the same reason religion insists on having access to our children – to chide them into their twisted belief systems.

Religion has murdered it’s way to dominance and you suggest we should treat it with humility? I do not think so.

A compound Spanish neologism meaning “child-buyers,” which was coined by Victor Hugo in his novel The Man Who Laughs.

Adopted as a pejorative term used for individuals and entities who manipulate the minds and attitudes of children in a way that will permanently distort their beliefs or worldview.

And we have a new word for those who are opponents of integrated education in Northern Ireland. People who wilfully distort the minds and attitudes of children, installing bitterness and fear where there is innocence and acceptance.

Clearly we’re seeing some of the supply-and-demand statistics play out and we’re seeing low fuel prices, we may see that for a certain amount of time but our medium and long term view is that they will go up.
Ford CEO Mark Fields (link)

Of course they’re going to go up. That’s what they do. They’re only down at the moment to strengthen the Saudi grip on the oil markets because they’re the only oil producers with the reserves to weather out a price war. That major oil producers are playing a game of chicken – oil is currently plentiful (as US oil production has reached a new high not experienced since 1983).

Enjoy the reduced prices for a while because they’re going up again soon.

David Cameron just asked:

in our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which we cannot read?

By “we”, he means the security professionals around the world. In effect, he would be demanding keys to banking transactions, online shopping carts, email, WhatsApp, iMessage, movie DRM, WiFi passwords and every other secured transaction on the market. It’s already illegal to refuse to give your password to the security forces but the response from the vendors of these products would not necessarily to be to hand over the keys; it’s more likely to cause them to withdraw their products and services from the islands. Just to use one example, iMessage would simply not be able to operate on these shores and it would therefore be illegal to use it. It would be illegal to use your own VPN, without having some sort of governmental back door in there.

We’ve seen how effective banning guns has been. Yes, we have very few guns deaths but criminals still have them and I think Camerons special advisors are underestimating the ease of criminals in creating their own bespoke networks on the Internet and via wireless.

The fact that criminals are on the public Internet is a boon to law enforcement. It actually gives the government a chance to intercept. The alternatives are worse: criminal networks will run their own messaging networks on the Internet with non-backdoored communication channels or they’ll create their own closed darknets.

The problem with being to see every conversation is that they’ll look at every conversation. Surveillance will become an inexhaustible drain on technology resource; an ever-rising cost as they trawl through data a mile wide but only an inch deep.

While they’re inspecting your To-Do lists for secret words and deciphering your pattern of movements and check-ins on Swarm, they’re going to miss the deliberate attempts.

It’s not whether we want to be able to ready everything, David. It’s whether it’s appropriate, whether it’s necessary and whether it would be effective. It would cripple our digital industries and for all of these reasons, it’s important to see it for what it is. An undeliverable. It’s designed to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of voters.

I’ve always tried my best. When I was setting up QCON, I ignored the advice of naysayers. Similarly when I was writing RPGs for Crucible Design; some said it couldn’t be done. It was the same when I brought the Star Trek Megagame to QCON; it’s not possible. But it was.

I sacrificed a lot to achieve things – lost things along the way. It was the same when I set up MACSys – I remember being advised by a (now) director of InvestNI not to start because his company was going to crush us. They didn’t. Not by a long shot.

There are things that didn’t work. A sustainable accelerator/incubator for instance; mostly because I was unwilling to mortgage the startups of NI for pennies to a peppery developer who didn’t value startups at all. But I guess it was also my fault; maybe I just wasn’t the right guy to run it. Too grumpy, too suspicious, too pessimistic and definitely not naive enough.

But what about tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.