This is not Iowa

On my way to work today, I encountered a new phenomenon. That of the lost tourist searching for the White House tours. Following September 11, the White House became a bunker. Only recently has it reopened to tours and only under some pretty strict rules. Today, I encountered people running (literally, in circles) around the perimeter of the complex asking everyone in sight (including the members of the Uniformed Secret Service, who, while polite, were not in the business of helping lost tourists) for help.

Now, DC is not all that tourist friendly. In fact, as the National Capital, it is almost hostile. The locals do not care that you are lost - despite the fact that most of them are lost too half the time and do not know where anything beyond their locality is.

The city is not really well marked. Sure, it has grand vistas (most of which do not exist any more because of building plopped in the middle, overgrown trees that either the city or the Park Service cannot afford to cut back, security bollards or fences that screen the view, or just the general lack of signage), so getting around is sometimes a challenge. But with all those faults, if you are coming to see the White House and have to be there at 0700 in the morning, would it not make sense that you should venture out the night before and find out exactly where you were supposed to go? They were all clutching letters that said which entrance and off of which street, so it was not a mystery, but it seems that looking up at signposts seems to be beyond their skill set.

In case you are wondering, yes, I pointed them in the right direction. No there is no sign that says "White House tours this way" and I only hope they had all the ID required of them in the letter, because some of them, frankly, looked like this was their first trip to a city of any size and in DC especially, if you cannot prove who you are, well, there are some imposing people with guns that will be happy to tell you to go away.

Reflections on the Pope

The Pope (that would be the titular head of the Roman Catholic Church, in case you were wondering) visited Washington, D.C. this week. He caused, as you might expect, all the fawning and chaos of any visiting dignitary, but while I was generally avoiding his holiness's presence, I did catch a rerun of him leaving the mass at Nationals Park and only had one thought: How much of a political animal do you have to be to survive long enough to become Pope?

Which, of course, spurred another thought. How sad is it that the head of the Church is a politician.

Here comes IPv6...guess who is not ready

In about 100 days, the United States Federal Government will be required to be running large portions of their systems on IPv6. Now, for the non-technical in the crowd, it means that the address your PC uses to connect to the Internet, in most cases, is IPv4. Version 4 has been around almost since most of you started networking your machines to the Internet (it was around in the early 90s when I started doing all of this). IP version 6, which debuted in 1995 was designed to "fix" some of the things that were broken in IPv4, such as the limited address space (it may surprise you but there are only so many addresses in IPv4 that can be allocated). IPv6 increases the address space to some ridiculous number like 1000 per cubic meter of the Earth - in other words A LOT!.

So, as part of my testing, I figured I would call my ISP and request a block. Might as well get while the getting is good right?

So, here is some of my chat with my ISP (try not to laugh those of you that are techincal):

Me: I want a block of IPv6 addresses. How do I request them?
ISP: As I understand, you wish to block the IP Address of any Domain name. Am I correct?
Me: Negative. I want to request a block (say a /48) of IPv6 addresses.

As you can see, we are off to a roaring start.

But it gets better:

ISP: I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you. I am not getting your concern correctly, could you please elaborate your concern once again for me?
Me: I would like to request a block of IPv6 addresses for use on my home network. How do I do that?
ISP: Alright. As I understand, you wish to block of General Unicast IPv6 addresses for your Home Network. Am I correct?
Me: Correct.
ISP: I would love to assist you however we have a different department...

So, I call the department...and they do not even know what I am talking about...until they find a supervisor...who tells them that the "service" is not supported.

Tell me again why the Fed is pushing to convert?

Now, how do I apply for an IPv6 address block?

On Christendom

I wrote this in September of 2006...I still think it is relevant and I never posted it here.

I just read a very interesting (for lack of a better word) article (OnPoint) on a site that (no surprise) supports a sometimes radical view of the world. What struck me initially was this:

"The most critical question, and it remains an open question, is whether what remains of Christendom will defend itself or simply roll over and die."

While the author may think this is the most critical question, I heartily disagree. A much more critical question is: Is there a continued roll for religion, any religion, in its current form where the strong use it as a tool to dominate and intimidate the weak among the world's population?

I am not a big believer. Like Martin Luther, I see no value in organized religion. It serves me no purpose to go and sit in a building once a week and ask an icon for help that I am myself unable or unwilling to provide. I find little purpose in believing in something because someone tells me that I have to without producing a large degree of tangible evidence. The scientific method has stood the test of time (Aristotle's observations being some of the more well documented proof of this) and the ability to evolve and change ones mind based on new information is something that all humans share. But to take on faith the claptrap that surrounds modern religions is stretching the bounds of credulity.

Another sentence in the article that I have a problem with is this:

"It is improbable, to say the least, that any Western political leader will rally Christendom to defend itself."

Is this the job of a political leader? If Christendom is going to defend itself, a point that I would question, as the failure of the First and the Second Crusades pointed out quite strongly some 1000 years ago, it is not the job of a political leader but the Church, the soldiers of 'God' to defend it. The problem, however, is that most of the strongest of the soldiers have little power to convince the people in the decision making seats that defending Christendom is actually something worth doing. Now, it can be argued that the Religious Right in the United States is making great strides in dictating to the United States Government how they would like to see things done, but it is clear that the United States is rapidly becoming not only a pocket, isolated from the rest of the world view on this matter but also it is becoming clear within the country that the the goal of religion are not the goals of the American society in general for the very reasons that there is little value seen in defending Christendom.

It can be further argued that many Americans have abandoned all but a few hand selected tenants of the dictates that pass as the Christian religion, choosing those parts that make sense to them and abandoning those that do not. For the most part, the pieces that are selected are those that also tend to survive a strong philosophical examination as well. So the idea that murder is wrong is generally accepted while honoring your father and mother is less well accepted. What is strange about the current trend among those that consider themselves to be staunchly in the fold is the ability to completely ignore direct teachings (the "Golden Rule" jumps to mind) while misinterpreting others and we will not begin to discuss the whole coveting thy neighbour's wife (or thy neighbour). This then begs the question - Which form of Christendom are you going to defend?

War between culture have been occurring and will continue to occur long after the artificiality's of the state concept have faded into antiquity. Any scholar, whether historian, geographer or military leader will tell you that wars between cultures are not new, so to classify them as a Fourth Generation is simply misleading at best. They will mean as much or as little as the states and the citizens involved in the wars want them to mean. A state that is united can be as powerful or more powerful than any culture. It is when the state does not enjoy the full support of all of its cultures that it begins to have problems. A state that is comprised of a single culture will always be stronger than an agglomeration. Again, this is not new and this is a problem that the United States, despite its rhetoric of being a melting pot is going to have to come to grips with if it is going to continue to exist as a state able to wield influence in the world.