We interupt campaign coverage to bring you this garbage...

The house of representatives just passed a ridiculously ignorant bill, HR 3791, that would fine free wifi internet providers up to $300,000.00 if a customer on their system browses porn or other illegal material. This is nothing more than a push by the telcos to basically "outlaw" free wifi because it is a threat to their ISP business. This could put anyone from a coffee shop to a hotel who offer free wifi to their customers at risk of this fine based on their customers activities, and probably just make it to cost prohibitive and risky to provide the wifi service.

The only way for free wifi operators to control or monitor what content their customers are accessing would be to implement content filtering software which is in general either costly or difficult to manage, and at best it is not very reliable anyway, especially the systems that a small business could afford to implement. Many of these free wifi operators are simply coffee shop owners and people who operate hotels or offer it in their businesses, heck it could even apply to a wifi router in a church. They generally don't have the technical expertise to do any more than set up the wifi router and offer the service to their customers, and with this bill the action of setting up wifi for their customers now opens them to the risk of a $300, 000.00 fine based on activity of a person on thier network that they have limited technical or economic way of monitoring, this is ludicrous!

The bill also gives the government sweeping powers to force ISPs and other businesses to hand over personal information of their customers. This is very big brother-ish and scary!

This bill is equivalent to prosecuting the owner of some property for a crime committed by another person on that property. How would you like to be fined $300,000.00 because some criminal mugged someone on the sidewalk outside your house or business?

You're not going to believe this but the bill passed the US house of representatives with only 2 votes against it! This shows how ignorant our representatives are about technology and how beholden they are to the Telco lobbyist. This kind of legislation can put the future of the freedom of the entire internet at risk as they continue to try to regulate and legislate the free transfer of ideas and connectivity over the internet.

I'm not advocating for pornography here, but we can't go after business owners and regular people who just want to use the affordable wireless technology that is available to offer wifi internet to their clients and customers. This is not the domain of the government, get them out of it and let them know.

Here is a news article about the bill:

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9829759-38.html?tag=nefd.top

It is HR 3791
Contact you senator:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

and reprimand your Representative:

http://www.house.gov/house/MemStateSearch.shtml

This is a big deal, it is a direct attack at the freedom of the internet, not just for wifi but this will reach further into what information we are allowed access to.

Do something about it!, or at least forward it to a friend who will!

BTW, hats off to congressman Ron Paul, who was one of the only 2 congressmen to vote against this legislation. I'm not a Ron Paul supporter, but I do respect many of his ideas (I can't get over his views on the war however).

Do you believe the Bible?

Watch the difference in how Gulianni, Romney, and Huckabee handle this question. It's amazing.



Who do you believe answered that question honestly. Obviously Huckabee knocked it out of the park, but I believe Gulianni answered it honestly, and Romney, well he really didn't know what to say.

Why I'm so hung up on Huckabee.

So many of you are tired of my emails and talking about Huckabee all the time. You ask yourself, "man why is he so caught up in all this political stuff? All those politicians are crooks anyway, whoever gets elected, they're just crooks."

Well I can understand how you feel, years of this kind of experience have led you to think this way about the whole American political process. In fact I feel the same way as you. So why am I so excited by Huckabee?

Well there is of course the issues, I agree with him on almost every issue he puts out there, he even puts out the issues that I think are important (Faith, Fair Tax, Securing the border, Homeschooling, Sanctity of Marriage and Life, etc). Huckabee also seems to "get it" as to the importance and uniqueness of America, read my Get out the vote..or REPENT!!! blog post, Huckabee understands that this is a government of the people and by the people, and that our freedoms were given to us by God, and we relinquish those freedoms to our Government in order to have a civil society. This is a huge idea, unheard of in human history, however we have become so accustomed to it that we almost don't realize it's significance.

You might say, well sure, he SAYS he believes all that stuff, but really he just wants power like any other politician. My answer is this, I don't know the man personally, maybe your right. However, he is out there spreading a different message than all the other candidates, he's not afraid to tell you about his faith, he's not afraid to attack the IRS and support the Fair Tax, he's not afraid to say that the 2nd amendment isn't about hunting it's about killing tyrants etc...yeah maybe this is just a twisted strategy to get all of us Christian conservative types up off our seats and to the polling booth, but think about this for a second...

This message is motivating people, Huckabee has shot up in the polls based almost solely on how his message is resounding with his grass roots supporters. He has spent very little money on TV ads, mostly internet and word of mouth has spread his MESSAGE, and that MESSAGE has woken some people up.

My point is that it doesn't really matter if he is insincere (which, by the way, I think he is completely sincere), what matters is that Washington sees and understands the message that we the people will respond to. We are their boss, we own them, and through the message of Huckabee we are telling them how we want them to govern. If they choose not to govern according to the message they got elected by, then we the people must fire them. Huckabee has the message that makes me not only want to vote but to give, and fight and debate and get excited about the entire American political process. And if he wins you better bet I'm going to hold him accountable to the standard he set in his message.

So yes, I am asking you to get out there and support Huckabee with your time, and your money and most importantly your ever precious vote. But even more I am asking you to get out there and support the message that Huckabee is sending. We can change our government, we the people, really, we can. Support the message by supporting the candidate brave and bold enough to speak the message that you care about.

Here's the deal, you can't gripe about our government if you aren't involved in changing it. If you want to gripe about a government, move to a dictatorship where you don't get to choose who governs you, but wait, most of those take away your right to gripe as well...dang...I guess your best bet is just to get off your butt and get involved in getting behind the right message and setting the tone in Washington for what we the people expect of them.

Our candidates WON'T win unless they have our support. We have to understand the system, and participate in it. That means your time, your money, and your vote. If you leave any of these out your are crippling the chances that your message will be heard.

My time, my money and my vote are for Huckabee's message, join me.

Get out the Vote...or REPENT!!!

One thing that I was thinking about the other day is how as Christians we are to be good stewards of what God has given us. Usually we prescribe this to how we handle our money and really "good" Christians apply that to their time other resources as well, and even to their whole life. I think it is good to look at what we have stewardship of and decide how we best can manage it for God's glory.

As this election year begins, I think if we will understand or remember how our government was founded we will find another area of our lives that we will be held to account for and of which we must be good stewards. The area of our life that I am referring to would be our God given freedom.

First some theory. As a whole, people can be governed in one of a couple of ways. People can be governed voluntarily, where they choose to obey the laws of their government and follow the biblical command to obey those in positions of authority and in doing so create a peaceful and orderly society in which to live and spread the Gospel. As Christians we are to love one another and do what we can to build a peaceful society in which we can work and support our families.

1 Thessalonians 4:9-11:
9 Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

The problem is that many times those in authority choose to persecute Christians or other groups and take their rights or otherwise force them to follow rules or to live in a way contrary to their beliefs. You could even extrapolate this to the example of a socialist welfare state that prevents people from living a life where they are "dependent on no one". This creates people stripped of their freedom and stripped of their dignity and makes them dependent upon the government for everything. Or worse, the government becomes hostile to certain groups and the people are forced to retaliate. So you have instances of people like Detrich Bonhoeffer who was a Christian pacifist involved in a plot to kill Hitler, the leader of his country, who the Bible commanded Bonhoeffer to obey (a command that Bonhoeffer in no way took lightly as he struggled through his plan).

If people won't be governed voluntarily, the other way to govern people is by force or manipulation. In this case a dictator or group has control of the military, police, or economic means and by force and manipulation they subdue the people to the point that they obey will of the ruling power or suffer prison, death, or economic hardship as a result of disobedience. Those who subscribe to Voice of the Martyrs can read about this kind of stuff in every issue, this is the kind of government prescribed by fascist and Islamic Extremists.

Most every form of government operates under the premise that power flows from the top town, and that personal liberty is a gift of grace from those who happen to be in power. In America our country was founded on a very unique premise. That all people are inherently free, and this freedom is a gift from none other than God alone. Our government was set up in such a way that, as citizens, we voluntarily choose to give up some of those freedoms in order to facilitate a orderly and peaceful society. The main conduit for that freedom to flow from the individual to the Government in America is through the individual votes for the political candidates that the people choose to govern them.

When we vote we are voluntarily "spending" our God given freedom. Because the outcome of the vote determines the people the Bible says that we are to obey. Our vote determines who will govern us, and sets up the situation where we will either be able to live peaceful and productive lives, or where we will have to choose to live lives of rebellion.

Therefore, as stewards of what God has given us it is of utmost importance that we not only vote, but we do so in an educated and prayerful manner, because we are spending something more precious than money, we are spending the freedom God has given us, and we must do so as "slaves" to Christ and His righteousness.

As Christians, our vote and our involvement in the political process is right and it is necessary. Not all of our forefathers were "super" Christians, and many were not even Christians, and many were, never-the-less they did know what they were doing when it came to creating a government that could rule primarily through the voluntary submission of it's people's freedom. This type of government suits Christians perfectly so long as we are active and thoughtful about how we cast our vote, and so long as we continue to evangelize and preach the good news of Christ and make disciples so that more people will also be good stewards of their freedom. If we loose this idea, or if we choose not to participate in this process, we are committing a terrible sin of poor stewardship of a God given gift.

We can already see the erosion of our freedom that happens when Christians don't lovingly and effectively participate in the American political process. This erosion of freedoms is symptomatic of the erosion of the values of the country as a whole and is caused by the failure of the church to properly disciple its people. It is caused by Christians living lives of low integrity, where we start to believe that our politics and our faith are two separate things. And if these freedoms continue to erode, we will see a day when we must choose between obeying our authorities and rebelling against them much like Bonhoeffer had to do, or worse, we will simply accept the stripping of our freedom and dignity and slip into mindless submission to a manipulating and controlling government. On the day of Judgement we will be held to account for allowing that situation to transpire, and for wasting the freedom God gave us, and trading it in for the risk-less life provided by a manipulative power hungry government that we substituted for God to meet our needs..

Some may argue that the Church thrives under persecution, and while that may be so, God does not call us to create that persecution by apathy, laziness, or rebellion, rather it calls us to love our pagan neighbors and live peacefully among them so that they will be able to see that God is real. And it calls us to be good stewards of what God has freely given to us.

My choice for president is Mike Huckabee. He is an unashamed Christian (like he's not afraid to say "Jesus is the only way") and he understands the how unique and incredible the American constitution is and how it relates to living a life of faith.



For those of you who don't like the name "Huckabee", check this out:



Educate yourself. Know what the candiates believe. Get a feeling for who they are and how they will rule. You are giving them your freedom, that was a gift from GOD to you! That's a big deal.

Now go vote.

1 Peter 2:12:

Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Romans 13:1-7:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

John Piper on Atlas Shrugged

Here is an excellent article by John Piper reviewing Atlas Shrugged on it's 50 year anniversary.

If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged you should, I had a very similar reaction to is as Piper describes in his article.

In his perfect Piper style he very eloquently explains the truths and the major flaw in Ayn Rands philosophy, mainly that it rejected that God was real.

I can perfectly relate to Piper's reaction to the book:

I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cried. I was blown away with powerful statements of what I believed, and angered that she shut herself up in what Jonathan Edwards called the infinite provincialism of atheism. Her brand of hedonism was so close to my Christian Hedonism and yet so far—like a satellite that comes close to the gravitational pull of truth and then flings off into the darkness of outer space.

Rand particularly impressed upon me the reality of Justice in the universe, yet she rejected God. Ultimately her definition of Justice was subjectively based, although she didn't see it that way because her premise for reality was wrong. Ayn Rand said in Atlas Shrugged:

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

I wish she would have taken her own advise and checked her premises on her description of reality and realized that without a sovereign God to set the standard for Justice and righteousness then pure capitalism is as idealistic as pure communism. The ultimate stumbling stone in coming to this conclusion is that the only way for the justice of a sovereign God to be satisfied would be through the execution of an infinite punishment for sin. Since it would be impossible for us to bear this punishment and live, most simply reject the idea of a just God, or the idea of humans being fallen beings, instead of embracing the truth of the work of Christ on the Cross.

Radiohead, record companies, and ramblings...

As you may know the band RADIOHEAD is releasing their latest album for free over the internet, and boy are they getting a lot of press about it. Now I think radiohead is a great band, there's no question there, it's just that with all this press about how they're sticking it to the record companies by releasing this album for free (actually the customer gets to set the price they pay), well I don't know if I really buy it.

Lot's of artist put out free music and work on the internet and accept donations for the work. This is also a very popular practice in open source software development. But you don't see these people making the news because of their charity, and bravery, and stick-it-to the man-ness, usually they just struggle to get noticed, no matter how good they may be.

The thing is that the only reason this is a big deal is because radiohead is a hugely popular band. And how did they become hugely popular? Could it have had a lot to do with major record companies promoting and marketing their material for the past X years? So now the band is just basically stabbing the people who financed their rise to fame right in the back by using that fame as a means to promote what their doing now with their "by donation" album. Not to mention the insinuation to up and coming artist is that "hey you can make it to, just be like us", when in reality, without some very inventive promotion no artist will make it, especially with this model.

I know that some think it's the essence of rock and roll, "sticking it to the man", but I don't really see it that way. I see it as exploiting the success that was the result of a system that they were happy to use to get rich but now that they are rich and popular they don't want to be a part of it. It's not that special, artist, authors, and software developers have been doing this for years and with alot more integrity...well I say integrity, I don't really know the hearts of the men in radiohead, all I'm really saying is that what they're doing is not all that special. Because of their major record label success they are able to do what everyone else has to do by default, and they're going to make alot of money at it, most good artist out there doing this very same thing are struggling even to make it. Why? it's basically because promoting the music is the hardest part of making a living at it. Getting in front of people, getting people to listen, and getting people interested. This is true for any good idea or product, not just music, anyway, radiohead got this service rendered to them with tremendous success by Capital Records etc... and now their being toted as some kind of "everyman's band" by the fact that their sticking it to the people that enabled their success in the first place.

Now I'm not sticking up for the record companies. I think that most of them are simply using copyright laws in order not to have to innovate and deal in a new digital marketplace. I mean the fact that we can still buy music on Compact Discs, which came out in like 1982 ... and there really has been no major progress in this technology since then...well that's just pathetic. By using copyright laws the record companies are able to artificially leverage the well returned investment they have in the compact disc technology way beyond it's market relevance, that's a good deal for them, but a bad deal for consumers who want instant access to the music they want through the medium we all share (the internet). No wonder the MP3 piracy revolution was so huge, and it scared the record company to death because they see that their ability to make money is threatened by losing the direct tie they have the CD product.

Maybe what the record companies should focus on instead is developing an industry standard file format for digital music, and then use their marketing might to promote the bands they want and digitally sell their content for them. Bandwidth and promotion are expensive, but it's easier to streamline and automate, and overall I can almost guarantee that the margins are alot higher than on manufacturing and distributing CD's. However it is different than what they have been doing for the past 25 years in marketing CD's, and besides, as long as they stick with CD's they can keep suing single moms for $220,000 a pop for using the technology of the day to get the music they want. Let's not even talk about the fact that the new digital economy makes it alot harder to sell really sucky songs by forcing people to buy an entire album just to get the one good song on the CD. Yes it's would be alot different for the record company to actually have to sell quality content in the format and method that the customer demands.

The whole copyright problem is a joke in itself. The problem is not a copyright problem is a problem with the ignorant lack of keeping up with technology. When the CD came out there was no broadband internet, file compression, or anything like that. Really there wasn't a whole lot of broadband internet until almost 20 years after the CD came out. Now that there are these technologies where a file of the same or better quality than a CD can easily and cheaply be transmitted over the internet, people naturally and rightfully want to use that technology to their benefit. Seems to me this is a problem with the record companies not innovating. People didn't have the equipment to reproduce records or 8-track tapes in their homes, cassette tapes were just bad quality, and when the CD came out the record companies had 15-20 years where people still didn't have or couldn't afford the technology to reproduce the music. Now we do have this technology, it's just the reality of reality, record companies have to deal with it or they'll go by the wayside as the bands with whom they DON'T Have contracts start to outnumber that bands with whom they do. It's like they're driving a horse drawn carriage down the interstate and screaming at all the people in cars for going way faster than they are.

What radiohead is doing may have this kind of "rob from the rich and give to the poor" ring to it, but I'd really rather see a band succeed at this from a ground roots level before I'll really believe that "by donation" content is really a good way for an artist or developer to make a living. But hey, it works for the church ok, maybe it will work here too. But wait even the church lets you partake of the content before asking for a donation, maybe radiohead should do the same. How can I decide how much an album is worth if I haven't heard it?

As for the record companies I hope they crash and burn, the destruction of the current system is the only way to make room for the new system (and that should have happened 10 years ago...)

Stuff I learned getting ActiveMerchant to work on Rails

I'm an intermediate or less level user of Ruby on Rails, and I have been recently trying to get ActiveMerchant to work so that I can charge people's credit cards over the internet. The funny thing about software writing is that there really is no central repository of information on how to do it...well there is, it's called google, and when you run into a problem you just hope and pray that when you cut and paste the error message into google it will find some blog, bulletin board, or chat archive where someone had the same problem as you did, AND at the same time, one of these magical uber uber uber geeks will come out of the ether and arrogantly berate some idiot peon like me while reluctantly providing the "simple" solution thick with sarcasm. Yes these are the ranks one must bear as you climb your way through the muck of software mediocrity, but just think, once you get it figured out you'll be able to show your boss the cool app you built and hear gratifying accolades like "Um, ok, but can you make the letters green?"

Well just in case your trying to get ActiveMerchant to work on rails with authorize.net here are the main problems I ran into that took me a day or two to figure out because I nothing came up on google.

1.) when you install the gem make sure you go "sudo gem install activemerchant -y"... the "-y" makes sure all the dependencies get installed.

2.) in addition to putting "require 'active_merchant'" in your config/environment.rb file (right at the bottom of the file), you must also put "include ActiveMerchant::Billing" at the top of your controller within the class.

example your_controller.rb:

require 'money'
class YourController < ApplicationController
include ActiveMerchant::Billing

If you don't do this you will get an error that says something like "uninitialized constant ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway" and you will pull your hair out trying to figure out how to fix it because apparently everyone else on the internet natively knows that you are supposed to do this and no one has ever needed to ask this question or no uber uber uber geek has felt generous enough to answer it when they did, so when you google the above mentioned error nothing really comes up (hopefully now it will though thanks to me).

3.) Finally, if you want the transactions on your app to run in test mode, but you don't want to set your entire Authorize.net account to test mode (like if you have another app using it and setting it to test mode might make you lose money), then what you need to do is NOT use the " ActiveMerchant::Billing::Base.gateway_mode = :test if RAILS_ENV != "production"" setting in your config/environment.rb like everyone else says to. If you do it won't work because apparently this is for some kind of "test" authorize.net account, and won't even work on your real authorize.net account (You'll get a response code 103 back from authorize.net which says something like your account is inactive or your username and password is wrong). To put the transactions from your app in test mode its easy (once you spend 3 hours googling it and finally figure it out), when you build the gateway in the action that charges the card just do this:

gateway = ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway.new({:login => user, :password => pass, :test => 'true'})

And then just remove the ":test => 'true'" parameter, when you are ready to really get people's money.

So a typical payment submission action might look something like this in it's early stages:

def purchase

amount = Money.new('1000', 'USD')

creditcard = ActiveMerchant::Billing::CreditCard.new(
:first_name => Dax,
:last_name => Ewbank,
:number => 1234123412341234,
:month => 01,
:year => 2010,
:verification_value => 123,
:type => master
)

if creditcard.valid?
gateway = ActiveMerchant::Billing::AuthorizeNetGateway.new({:login => user, :password => pass, :test => 'true'})
response = gateway.purchase(amount, creditcard)

if response.success?
##do something if it all works out
else

raise StandardError.new( response.message )

end
end

end

So anyway, if your as dumb as I am about all this maybe what I figured out here will save you the 2 solid days of hair pulling frustration in making this all work.

I got it all working now, but I sure wished that I could have run along this post when I was doing it, it would have saved me alot of time. So here it is for your reference. uber uber uber geeks leave me alone, I know I probably screwed something up in here and your all laughing at me, but hey, I got it to work.

Glad I could help...