Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Sun and Software Uncertainty

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Most of us computer folks have, at some point, been burned by a technology merger or buyout. Maybe you really, really loved Netscape Navigator and watched America OnLine (AOL) destroy it. Maybe you were a BeOS user left in the cold when Be Inc. was bought-out by Palm and the operating system was discontinued. Maybe you really liked Adobe GoLive (though I can’t imagine why) and, after the Macromedia merger, were forced to switch to DreamWeaver or a competing product. This happens all the time—companies go out of business, or are purchased, or merge with other companies, and every so often a piece of software you really love gets the axe.

This isn’t usually the end of the world, since there are always competing products that you can live with or even learn to love. It becomes a bit more tricky though when you have tons of files in a particular format and the original product disappears. If you wrote hundreds of documents in WordStar for DOS, those documents might open in Word or OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect . . . or they might not. Your access to your own data relies on whether other companies thought it was worth the effort to reverse engineer the formats you used at all, let alone whether they devoted enough resources to do it well.

Having been burned by this in the past—both because of mergers and bankruptcies and, at times, by my own decisions to switch to competing products—I now make an effort to store all of my documents in ‘open’ formats. The OpenDocument format, for example, is the format in which all my office documents are saved. These files can be opened with virtually no data loss in OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office (with plugins), IBM Lotus Symphony, Sun StarOffice, Corel WordPerfect Office, Google Docs, and other products. They can be opened on Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux PCs—and probably other, more obscure platforms too.

Read more . . .

‘Still on the Cross’?

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CrucifixOne of the canards some Protestants repeat about Catholicism is that the Catholic Church ‘keeps Jesus Christ on the cross’ by using Crucifixes instead of bare crosses (our family Crucifix is pictured as an example to the right). Most/all Protestant Christian communities use a cross without the Corpus (body) still present.

First and foremost, the cross—with or without Christ on it—is a perfectly valid Christian symbol. While Melissa and I have become Catholic, we are not getting rid of the crosses we had before. Maybe they take a less prominent role now, but they are certainly not invalid. Both forms of the cross remind us of the brutal Roman method of execution that was used to put Jesus to death about 2,000 years ago.

Many Protestants would say that their crosses, with Jesus no longer present, remind them that the Lord is risen . . . and indeed, he is risen. But Catholics would point out that it is the moment of Christ’s death that Jesus brought about atonement for the sins of the world. It is his death on the cross that ultimately brings us life. It is his death on the cross that brought about the New Covenant with man and made possible the entire Christian movement.

For me, personally, the Crucifix presents a constant reminder that Jesus Christ—the human incarnation of God—paid the ultimate sacrifice for me. He accepted pain and suffering unlike anything I can imagine, and he did so for my sake. In doing so, Jesus conquered death and sin. An empty cross, as valid as it is as a Christian symbol, does not serve so powerful a reminder of what God has done for us.

After all, St. Paul did not preach Christ resurrected . . . he preached Christ crucified.

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”—1 Corinthians 1:22-24 (NAB), emphasis added.

Speaking of National Sovereignty . . .

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As I promised when Barack Obama (D) was elected President of the United States, I will oppose him when he is wrong and support him when he is right. Today, Obama did something 100 percent right: he announced that the United States will not participate in the United Nations’ Durban II conference. Formally known as the ‘Durban Review Conference’ or ‘2009 U.N. World Conference Against Racism (WCAR)’, this meeting is not as innocuous or positive as its names might lead you to believe.

The governments of Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden have joined Obama in this boycott, citing fundamental flaws in the preparatory process. The conference, ostensibly intended to produce a document and policies to be applied world-wide to oppose racism, has instead turned into a thinly-veiled anti-Semitic attack on Jews and Israel and, if that wasn’t enough, it proposes worldwide legislation to outlaw criticism of Islam (of course, criticism of Christianity and Judaism is still just fine). Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, perhaps the world’s leading anti-Semite, has been selected to be the conference’s keynote speaker. Ludicrous.

I applaud President Obama and the leaders of the other countries boycotting this farce, and condemn the United Nations—an organization supposedly intended to foster peace and liberty in the world—for allowing one of its own component organizations to tacitly support racism (so long as it’s against Jews) and undermine the fundamental human rights to free speech and religion. After all, free speech means freedom to offend. As a Christian I can take criticism of my faith and will ‘defend to the death’ the right of anti-Christians to express their opinions, however much I disagree with them, so long as I have equal right to speak in opposition. I expect Muslims to behave in an equally civil manner toward criticism of their faith.

Acts of War

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We, the people of the United States, have been victims of ‘acts of war’ a number of times. There are the painfully obvious examples—the British impressment of American seamen in the early 1800s, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1941, or the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. There are probably hundreds, maybe thousands, of smaller examples throughout American history. In the last several years it seems to me that acts of war against the United States have been on a significant uptick, but the U.S. government has done little to firmly assert our national sovereignty. Taken individually, these are minor, isolated incidents. Taken collectively, they point to a disturbing trend.

Don’t believe me? Here are just a few prominent examples:

  • In April 2001, a U.S. aircraft operating in international waters was antagonized by Chinese fighter aircraft, one of which collided with the U.S. craft. The damaged U.S. aircraft made an emergency landing on the Chinese mainland, and the U.S. airmen were detained in violation of international law until the U.S. government issued a letter of ‘apology’. The Chinese government then refused to allow U.S. authorities to repair and fly the aircraft out, so we had to disassemble and ship the aircraft out of China. (Hainan Island Incident)
  • In January 2008, a U.S. Navy ship operating in international waters in the Persian Gulf were harassed and antagonized by Iranian forces. (Persian Gulf Incident)
  • In August 2008, members of the Mexican military entered the United States and held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint, ultimately claiming they didn’t know what country they were in. This is a regular occurrence on our southern border. (Mexican Border Incursion)
  • Earlier this month, Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama—a U.S.-flagged cargo ship—holding its crew as hostages. Most of the crew were released or escaped, but the captain was held hostage until being rescued by the U.S. Navy. (Maersk Alabama Hijacking)
  • Just today, the Iranian government has sentenced a U.S. journalist to eight years in prison for ‘espionage’, likely because her reports were at-times critical of the Iranian government. Iran had every right to deport Roxana Saberi, but holding an American citizen as a political prisoner is an act of war. (Roxana Saberi Conviction)

There are probably hundreds more where they come from over the last few years, and it’s time that our government begin acting decisively to protect Americans from foreign acts of violence and oppression. We cannot permit acts of piracy, abduction, and confinement by foreign powers against our citizens without cause.

Goodbye Bland Affluence

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The ever-enlightening Peggy Noonan writes in today’s Wall St. Journal opinion page with some predictions for the future—predictions that we are on the precipice of a major restructuring of American society. Many prognosticators, quietly or publicly, predict unrest or even a complete disintegration of this once-great nation driven by insane and short-sighted economic policies implemented the previous and current Presidential administrations. Noonan, however, sees something much less dramatic on the horizon.

This economic downturn may serve as a sort of reset, leading people to evaluate their lives and—perhaps—abandon their hectic, light-speed, over-stimulated lives for a more simple, old-fashioned existence. It’s an interesting thought, and while I doubt it’ll actually happen any time soon it’s still a somewhat pleasant thought. We so often bury ourselves in technology and convenience and yet feel so unfulfilled. We work longer and longer hours to pay for all of it, sacrificing family and human connection. Maybe a reset and refocusing on simple, old-fashioned values would do us some good.

I certainly don’t wish a repeat of the Great Depression on our country, although the continual increase in federal spending is getting more and more likely to land us there by the week, but it is certainly possible that some good will come out of this difficult time.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.