Tag: comparison

Categories
Faith and Religion

What does Biblegateway.com, Zondervan, NIV, Gay Sex and Satan have in common?

Question for you disciples of Jesus out there: What does Biblegateway.com, Zondervan, NIV, Gay Sex and Satan have in common?

As a recent website author I found this week noted, “Everything.”

After meeting Jesus and being born again, I was given an NIV Bible.  For a few months I read it like any other Bible.  Then someone introduced me to the King James Bible which, to me, was only of interest for it’s cool Ole English literary style.  So I read that for a while.  I strangely noted that the KJB was more ‘meaty and direct’ than the NIV.  I couldn’t explain it other than ‘it felt more direct and more truthful’.  So I just kept reading the KJB and never read the NIV again in my Bible time other than on a few occasions ‘just to test’.

Today, something uncool happened.  For the last few years I have been a diligent promoter of the website Biblegateway.com.  It is also linked daily to www.odb.org which is the publisher of Our Daily Bread Ministries.  ODB might want to considering immediately un-linking.  It’s perhaps a bit of a stretch but I just happened to find that Our Daily Bread and Zondervan are located just a 6 min drive from each other in Grand Rapids Michigan… coincidence?  Hopefully….

ourdailybread_zondervan_close

Biblegateway used to be just a straight-up Bible website where you could go, read the Bible, and have the Bible played to you.  Over the last couple of years, however, I started seeing a lot of advertisements for the NIV Bible on the side.  Then, slowly, I noticed the appearance of more and more ‘flesh’.  The girls in the banner ads started showing a bit more skin, my eyes started wandering a bit more until today when I was basically lusting after an ad of a woman lying on her back wearing nothing but a bikini-looking top with closed eyes and ‘inviting’ expression advertising some weird new age ‘floating’ activity.

On my daily Bible webpage???

Enough is enough.

It’s time to find out what’s up.

Immediately I did a whois lookup to find out who owns this website.  Someone is starting to control me and I don’t like who they are.  Check out these results as of today, August 13th, 2016.  I give you the date because I would not be surprised if they immediately change the ‘ownership’ of the website after I finish this blog.  The date is also in the screenshot:

zondervan_Biblegateway

I had remembered only one thing about Zondervan Corporation: they owned the NIV Bible which I had ‘funny feelings’ about.  So I decided to do some quick searches and found this quick summary (pardon this person’s old-school web design and style and focus on the facts):

WHAT DO THE NIV, SATAN, AND GAY SEX HAVE IN COMMON?

Shocking?  It gets worse.

I decided to start looking at the actual scriptures and see how they compare.  This page (same author) although it’s full of a lot of his/her anger, covers the details that you need to read.  If anyone finds a better ‘snapshot web page’ of this KJV versus NIV, do let me know and I’ll update.

THE NIV BIBLE EXPOSED

So, as you can see, Satan has definitely had his contributions to the writing of this ‘modern Bible’.

But, if that’s not enough for you, this next stuff really caught my attention.  You see, a friend of mine has been teaching me ‘You have to always follow the money train, Wayne Out There.”  He’s right.  Whether it is a business, family, church, government, etc, you have to follow where the money train stops and you’ll note that many decisions – moral or immoral – about the world are made there. If you read from the link about the section under “The NIV and Zondervan” he writes the following points:

  • Zondervan and NIV were purchased by HarperCollins
  • HarperCollins publishes pro-homosexual books and the Satanic bible.
  • HarperCollins is apparently a subsidiary of The News Corporation owned by Rupert Murdoch including Fox Broadcasting and a bunch of newspapers

Here is another link if you want to look more into the corporate stuff and the money train.

The conclusion is simple.  You either support these people or you don’t.  I don’t.

Today will be my last visit to my old favourite website Biblegateway.com.

Goodbye, Biblegateway.com.

Too bad you got in bed with the world.

Categories
Freedom and Privacy Technology Ubuntu

Ubuntu Phone About to Shake Things Up

I’ve been an Ubuntu fan since 2009 now.  As soon as I met Ubuntu it was game over for all my desktops, laptops, netbooks, home media servers, etc.  There was no competitor who could make a new or existing machine run so quickly and reliably, and without the pain of viruses and continual financial investments to keep it up to date.  The most exciting thing was that no one owned me.  When I heard that Ubuntu was moving to the phone, I purchased a Nexus 4 (N4) so that I could go along for the ride, as that was the first device for development.

I flashed it on, and took it for a ride.  The first thing I noticed was how amazing the user interface was.  It was as if (shocking as this may sound) someone had actually designed a phone with the user in mind.   When I was forced to use a fruit-phone by the big fruit company for a job once, it was like driving a luxury sports car with one arm cut off and in a cement warehouse:  high quality hardware, perhaps, but I’d rather have my freedom and functionality, thank you.  The big US spy agency phone (google/android) not only spied on me, but also has a user interface experience that never quite made sense.  It was (and still is) difficult to do some basic setting changes.  I tried cyanogen mod as a bit of a ‘lesser-of-two-evils’ but it too had the same issues because ultimately it’s all built on the same shaky foundation.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, is built with freedom and people in mind.  Randall Ross wrote a great post a while back about the pillars of Ubuntu (seven P’s).  This article really helps us understand why Ubuntu is not just software.  Randall has been preaching this message for years but only now it’s starting to really hit home with some people.  People are starting to ‘get’ that they have been sold a bad deal for computers (Ubuntu has already taken over that show) but now also the computers we carry in our pockets.

As a business owner as well as sales person for our company, I will not deny that there were some bumpy roads in the beginning.  I needed some basic things that a smart phone could offer which were a bit buggy when Ubuntu launched on the phone a few years back.  I would flash back and forth between the bondage robot (android) and Ubuntu on my N4 while I tried to do my sales job.  No battle is easy and it was never promised to be so.  Some naysayers would laugh and say ‘why don’t you just wait until they have fixed it’?  This would anger me because “relying on they” is what has caused the world to be enslaved by their technology.  I knew that I could not wait for ‘they’ to fix things.  I had to become part of the solution somehow.  So I would stay up to date the best I could, periodically flash in and out and watch the growth. I would offer my feedback and needs to the developer groups and to my surprise, I found out that I wasn’t alone.  Others were listening, fixing, building, changing, debating, enhancing and more.  I realized one very exciting thing – I was and still am part of what is a major revolution in technology.

A revolution?  Isn’t that word a bit strong?

No, it’s not.  Do you remember just a few years ago when every phone in every pocket was either a Blackberry or a Nokia?  It wasn’t that long ago.  I believe it was around 2006, perhaps.  Their day is over.  A revolution occurred, albeit perhaps not one that has not helped the world.  The employees at Blackberry and Nokia felt the revolution and when it came time to renew your nasty cell phone contract, you felt the revolution too.

But this revolution is different.  This one comes without catches, snags or enslavement.  This one allows you to finally have some control over your phone instead of it and ‘they’ having control over you.  Now tell me that that is not a revolution?  Unless your head is really deep in the fruit and robot sand, you will be nodding your head in agreement with me and looking painfully at the ‘nice phone’ you just bought.

And so we are at another turning point.

How do you know when it’s a turning point?  For me it’s when the ‘thing’ moves from the underground to the masses.  It’s the point when it starts to ‘peek out’ and when ‘regular people’ start to acknowledge that something is happening.  For me, it’s when the mainstream media has *no choice* but to start covering it or be forced to lose respect.

I believe today is the day.

This article on a very mainstream technology website (you can tell it’s mainstream by the nasty ads for Microsoft, etc, that interrupt your reading) covered the revolution.  This article explains how the excitement is now here.  The author is unable to deny that something is going on.  He is unable to restrain from wanting to be involved.

The timing on this article was also interesting for another reason.  It perfectly confirmed advice I gave to a friend who is in the middle of launching a kind of ‘uber business’.   He launched his business with the traditional iOS and Android ‘app’ approach.  He wanted to show it to me and so he instructed me to ‘download the app’.  After a short discussion, I explained to him that this business model may be outdated and on the way to extinction.  I did not want to be forced to give a big bad company my information (including GPS location!) to explore my friends business on my phone. I explained politely that he was violating my privacy.  By the end of the conversation, I believe that he took my advice to *strongly consider* moving his development to the Ubuntu platform – a place where he will be immediately received with a warm embrace, not to mention a place that is future proof.

Every business that uses technology (and I believe that is *every* business) needs to seriously consider where they will be in three years.  The way of the fruit and the slave robot is now over.  With the Meizu Pro 5, there is now a very exciting and viable option out of the box.  There are no more excuses to not jump in with all support.  Not only will you bring more freedom to your customers but you will also sleep better at night knowing that the future of your success is not in the hands of a few very powerful people.

Today is a new and very exciting day for the Ubuntu project.

 

Categories
Technology Ubuntu

What is Ubuntu: Quick, Technical Summary

Today a friend got mad at me.  He barely can even call me his friend it seems! He is upset at my lack of key understanding, and so he should be.  It is kind of funny that we allow things to control our lives and not even understand the very basic stuff about how they work.  It would be like driving your car and not understanding that there is an engine under the hood of the car that needs gas to burn and the burning gas moves the car…

So I guess he got frustrated today because he took the time to educate me.  In fact, the sharp rebuke educational email course was so good that I decided to blog it out there as the best ever snapshot of what Ubuntu is, on a technical level.

Before reading this, though, also understand that Ubuntu is much more than software and you should read about that before thinking it’s just the technical stuff below.

Without further adieu, the *best ever* Ubuntu technical course I’ve ever taken summarized in a few bullet points!

  • Linux is a kernel.
  • BSD is also a kernel.
  • An OS needs a kernel to “talk” to hardware.
  • Ubuntu is an OS.
  • Therefore, Ubuntu needs a kernel.
  • Ubuntu now has two kernels that can be used: BSD or Linux.
  • Some people think Ubuntu = Linux.
  • The people above are wrong.
  • Computer science courses are useful.
  • A trip to KFC contributes to heart disease.
  • Wayne! What the heck is wrong with you???? (I edited this so kid’s could read it)
  • Read this! http://blog.josephliau.com/ubuntu-challenged-chicken/
Categories
Freedom and Privacy Technology Ubuntu

Apple: Always the Ubuntu Wannabe

Today after reading an article about how the fruit company plans to introduce continuity as an innovation, I just chuckled to myself.

Again, the fruit folks are sitting there watching all the innovation going on in Ubuntu and scrambling to try to take the ideas, recode them on their own locked down proprietary systems, and implement them for profit.

As a quick review of the article, it is accurate in portraying the nasty price one will have pay in order to get to enjoy the bars of their fruity electronic jail cell, but they ended on a big *inaccurate* note with this line: Continuity is great and there is nothing like it anywhere else.

Error #1: There is nothing like it at all.  FruitLoops Inc doesn’t have it yet.  They are announcing it.

Error #2: Ubuntu has been presenting continuity as key for *years* so there *is* something like it somewhere else and it’s much better because it’s free and safe.

But these errors shouldn’t surprise anyone.

  • Ubuntu had the Software Centre before Itunes (same concept without the bondage)
  • Ubuntu One was running long before anyone heard of icloud (free on Ubuntu, currently discontinued by Canonical)
  • Desktop switching and fancy effects?  Always an option on Ubuntu
  • Ubuntu Edge project launch attempt defined continuity and lead innovation

It is obvious that the ‘innovators’ over at Fresh Produce Ltd, sit there staring at what the creative people are doing all over the world in the Ubuntu project and then bring it to their bosses as ‘innovations’ who then announce it to the world with lots of marketing money (that they took from the end user) who, in their ignorance, hand it over because they didn’t know there was a better way to live – much like North Koreans who praise Kim Jong Eun and his ‘leadership’.

But, before I get too harsh I need to own my own stuff as well.

Have I contributed to the Ubuntu project to make it better?  Not enough.

Have I been spreading the good news of Ubuntu to captives locked in Fruitdom instead of watching them and feeling sorry for them?  Definitely not enough.

Thankfully these kind of misleading articles rekindle my belief in the people of and the project of Ubuntu and where it is going and I’m just so glad I know that there is a better way to live.

 

Categories
Freedom and Privacy Technology Ubuntu

Why Ubuntu: A Bird’s Eye View

I have been a happy member of the Ubuntu community and user of the product for years now.  Today I decided to ask the internet ‘why’.  I had my own reasons why but I wondered what Mr. WWW was telling people.

I was surprised.  I couldn’t find any short summary.  It was all too product-based or too philosophy based but didn’t quite sum up the ‘big picture’ for someone who wanted a quick read.  I was tempted to call this post “Ubuntu: Why all the Hype?”

I remember Randall Ross saying somewhere… or writing somewhere something about ‘How Many P’s are there in ‘Ubuntu’?”  I searched his blog but was unable to find the P’s.  I’ll kindly request that Randall officially publish those or if someone could fire a link to these in the the comments below that will be much appreciated.  The P’s that I remember are Philosophy, People, Product which are the key things that got me moved over to Ubuntu and kept me there.  I think Privacy might have been one, too.

Even the official Why Use Ubuntu page on ubuntu.com wasn’t really that satisfying for me.

So without further adieu, my spew:

~philosophy~

  • it doesn’t cost you money, and therefore is not reserved for the elite.  A child in a poor country has the same rights to be involved as a rich man
  • it is built by the community and therefore for the community.  Instead of a boardroom of software execs deciding which new thing they can craft up that will keep the users in bondage to their business model, a grandpa alone in Moosejaw (that’s a real place, by the way) can, with the help of the community, suggest or even write a change to the system and watch it take place before their eyes.  They can do software instead of being done by software.
  • you remain in control of your hardware that you paid for.  Now that I’ve been an Ubuntu fanboy for a while, I find it disturbing to think that the operating system – the thing that has complete control over your hardware – could be shipped to you pre-installed without your consent.  The company could limit you from what you could do with that hardware you paid for, or they could give themselves power over it without your consent.  I no like.

~people~

  • you’re not alone.  There are people out there who are really excited about Ubuntu and they’ll help you.  They want to see you succeed because when you succeed so do they.  People are volunteering lots of their time to organize meetups, to write helpful material and to write code to improve everything.  You can join or start local groups and you can network online.  Instead of clicking aimlessly online you can talk to people.

~product~

  • it’s unified.  it is the only operating system to have unity (hence the name Unity) from a PC, to a laptop, to  a netbook, to a tablet, to a TV all the way down to a smart phone (search ‘Ubuntu Phone’).  Across all hardware, Ubuntu unites them.
  • it works.  Ubuntu never fails to amaze me.  Whenever I use it, everything just feels and works better.  I don’t get paralysing crashes, slow bootups, lag times, etc.  Its smooth and it works.
  • it’s fast.  On one occasion I was forced to use a big slow operating system.  For fun I decided to boot Ubuntu from a USB stick which should be slower than the native operating system since it’s running on the external drive.  To my surprise it was like someone handed me a new laptop – it was alive again and snappy fast.  The proof is in the pudding.
  • it’s safe.  I challenge you to find any virus written for Ubuntu and if you do, I challenge you to show me that it had any negative impact.  I have not so much as thought about viruses since I made the switch years ago.  Want the world to see everything you do on your hardware?  Do not use Ubuntu!
  • it’s both cool and creative.  I just love the way that every few months I have something to be excited about. I know that someone in the community has changed something for the better and that soon enough when I upgrade to the next release something will get cooler.  Compare that to my crippling and enslaving experience with big proprietary company’s updates when I dreaded the next release because I knew something I paid for in the past would no longer be supported and I would have to pay extra to get it working again.
  • it’s simple and easy.  My mom and dad are 74 years old and have been with Ubuntu for years.  They haven’t experienced any major problems and if they did the community was there to help get it resolved – for FREE
  • its growing.  Although I don’t have the reference here I was under the understanding that Ubuntu was the fastest growing operating system in the world (reference needed).  The point is is that it’s not dying like many other systems and seeing a downward curve.
  • its freakin’ awesome.  No further comments

~project~

I found another P in Ubuntu.

I hope that this has been helpful in converting you from darkness to light and from folly to wisdom.  The great part about having a free will is that no one will stop you from smashing your own head against a cement wall if you want to.  That’s your right.  No one  can take that from you (although they probably should).

Do what you choose but I strongly recommend doing your due diligence and doing the right thing wherever you can.  Imagine regaining your freedom and how sweet that would feel?  It’s empowering.

Join the Ubuntu Project today.