An Open Letter to the Boy Scouts of America

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The following email was sent to the BSA on February 1, 2013 in response to their request for feedback regarding the ongoing debate about whether the BSA’s current policy disallowing the participation of LGBT individuals should be revised. 

Dear esteemed members of the BSA,

My name is Sam. I’m a 21-year-old Computer Science and Philosophy double major at Dickinson College. I was a member of the BSA for most of my childhood, starting with Cub Scouts in first grade, eventually moving on to Webelos and finally Boy Scouts. I went on numerous camp-outs and trips, went to the Camp Seaton summer camp, participated in the pinewood derby, and essentially did all the things that most boy scouts end up doing over the course of their involvement with the BSA. I made many friends, and those were some of the most enjoyable experiences of my childhood. For much of the time I was in the BSA, I was aware of the fact that I was gay, or at least that I was different from other kids who seemed to be interested in girls. I failed to communicate this fact to my parents and friends while I was a boy scout, in part because I was well aware, even at a young age, of the BSA’s policies on LGBT people, and the fact that if people found out I was gay, my membership might be threatened. Over the years I’ve seen or heard of numerous cases of den mothers, scout masters, and even scouts themselves being singled out and/or excluded entirely from the BSA solely because of their sexual orientation. I’ve even heard horror stories of Eagle scouts being stripped of their badges and rank or having their Eagle Scout projects denied and getting kicked out of the BSA simply because people in the BSA found out that they are not heterosexual.

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Game Launch = Religious Holiday?

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A friend of mine received this in his email a little under a year ago, thought I’d share:

Dear CS 250 Students,

Please note that the launch of “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” does not constitute a religious holiday, and that pending a more legitimate excuse, all of you will be expected to pass in your labs tomorrow without exception.

Thank you, that is all.

Facebook Doesn’t Get it — Privacy is the New “Cool”

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As Social Network points out, Facebook became popular mainly because it was simple, clean, powerful, and above all, it was cool. Twelve years ago privacy wasn’t cool because it was ubiquitous — back then, before Facebook and Twitter came along, things were private by default because it required a lot of effort (and money) to share a piece of information with other people via the internet. As a recent article points out, “publishing is no longer a job or an industry — it’s a button“.

Now Facebook knows everything about you, and all of your information tends to be public even if you don’t want it to be. If you change your privacy settings, third party websites still often have access to a huge percentage of your data, and Facebook uses tracking scripts installed on numerous third party websites to track its users’ web activity (this data is used for targeted advertising). No matter what site you’re on, there is a decent chance Facebook is watching. Recently, Facebook was slammed with a $15 billion class action suit for breaking U.S. federal wire-tapping laws by continuing to track users when they visit other websites even after they have logged out of Facebook. Just last week it got out that Facebook has been scanning users’ Facebook chats for illegal activity, in some cases reporting said activity to U.S. law enforcement. While this technology has only been used so far to catch serious criminals such as murderers and sexual predators, one can imagine a future where they go after petty criminals for things like underage drinking, DUI, or even illegal torrenting/file-sharing. Even Facebook’s public stance on privacy seems pretty grim. In 2011, Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg publicly stated that “anonymity on the Internet has to go away”, making it clear that the social networking giant is no friend of privacy or anonymous communication.

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An Atheist/Existential Take on The Tree of Life

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Recently I decided to see The Tree of Life, despite the fact that I am somewhat of a devout atheist, and I had heard, and could just tell from the trailers, that this movie must have some pretty thick religious undertones. Indeed, the movie did not disappoint in that regard (though the undertones were more subtle than I expected, to my delight), but bear with me, for if you ignore some of the religious subtext of this movie, there lies underneath a profound message about life that needs, perhaps, a bit of unpacking.

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Confessions of a TrackPoint Ninja

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My favorite input device of all time is most definitely the TrackPoint or “little red dot” input device found on IBM and now Lenovo laptops, particularly the ThinkPad series. As a graphic designer and programmer, I have found the TrackPoint to be an invaluable tool because of the superior accuracy, precision, and control I am able to attain using the TrackPoint, even when compared with a high quality conventional mouse. I have successfully used TrackPoints for numerous computer related tasks over the years, including FPS gaming, graphic design, general computer use (e.g. word processing and web browsing), and software development. Historically, the TrackPoint has been unpopular with the general public, so in this article I will attempt to explain why the TrackPoint has been such an important and effective input device for me, why I prefer the TrackPoint vastly to its ugly cousin, the Touch Pad, and why I think everyone should use TrackPoints.

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What is a Tablet?

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Perhaps this whole phenomenon has flown under the radar for many, but I can’t help but notice in the comments for recent Slashdot articles and other sources that there seems to be a huge implicit debate going on about the definition of a tablet and the criteria for being a tablet. This is not a new phenomenon, either, as the debate has really been going on for years. Some people look at iPads and say “that can’t be a tablet”. Other people look at devices such as Microsoft Surface or even a Lenovo tablet PC and say “that can’t be a tablet”. The one constant seems to be that everyone is extremely confident that their definition of tablet is correct and that everyone else is somehow confused or misguided. What I find most compelling about this, though, is that in most of the discussion threads where this issue comes up, people don’t even realize that they are disagreeing with each other. The general public is somewhat unaware of non-iPad tablet-like devices, so the prevailing public opinion seems to be that the iPad is a tablet, but (to make things even more confusing than before) Apple themselves have come out and said that the iPad is not a tablet.

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Hello World!

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A blog, just like a program, or some foray into a new programming language, inevitably begins with some sort of “hello world”. It is customary for programmers to create a print_f(“hello world”, “%s”); or <? echo(‘hello world’); ?> or System.out.println(“hello world”); program when they first begin a new programming language, or are getting the hang of a new framework or environment of some kind. Being new to the blogosphere, I thought it would be more than fitting to title my first post “hello world”.

My intent for this blog, and my motivations for creating it, are complicated. For a long time (years, now), the durosoft.com website has sat there, rather bland, with nothing much to say or do. Long ago it had a lot more to say and do, however, and you can read all about that on the “A History” page. Over the years I have desired at various times to start writing a blog. I have varied interests and experiences, including programming, computer science in general, graphical user interface design, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind, and a lot more that I don’t tend to mention that much but would love to write the odd blog post about. Very long ago I wanted to be a writer, and this blog is perhaps the inevitable product of that lost dream. At the time of writing I am a mere 21 years old, so really no one knows what the future holds for both myself and this blog, but time will tell.

This will be a tech blog. There will be articles about computer science, video games, programming, hardware, software, graphics, and a lot of things that fall in between, but this will also be to a certain and probably limited extent, a personal blog. I have had a lot of unique life experiences and perspectives, and depending on how things pan out (and how I’m feeling, probably), I might start to share some of these as time goes on.

I also have a lot of random creations that I often intend to share with the world (but never end up sharing). These include everything from software and graphics, to hardware ideas, philosophical ideas, and even techno or piano music (I compose both on a very sporadic, amateurish basis). Hopefully this blog will provide me with a means and source of motivation by which to begin sharing some of these things. So again, I say:

Hello, world!