Jason’s Random Thoughts

In many of our popular science fiction stories, characters either come from or visit planets that orbit two or more suns.  I’ve often given this kind of solar system design some thought as I try to comprehend Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and how the gravitational planes would work in these scenarios.  I must say … it’s an interesting study.

Scientists at NASA have recently used the Spitzer Space Telescope to examine quite a few of these systems looking for the potential of planets.  Because our telescopes can’t directly see planets at such a distance, what the scientists did instead was examine the dusty disks that surround each system.  The idea is that if gaps in the disks exist, there is the potential that planetary bodies have swept the area clear of debris (much like the 8 planets in our system have done).

Oddly enough, what scientists have found is that planets are just as likely around these stars as they are around single-star systems.  Since most of our galaxy is made up of multi-starred systems, this opens up huge areas of real-estate where we can look for signs of life, or even potentially colonize in the next millenium.

No matter how often I hear of these discoveries, I’m always impressed by how much we can learn about the universe from our tiny vantage point.  I grew up watching Star Trek, and the crews that manned these incredibly powerful starships had technologies light years ahead of ours.  Despite this technology, they would continue to venture out to witness first hand many of the great wonders of our little corner of the galaxy.

When I consider the technologies that we have today, with the technologies that we may have in 50 years, I’m forced to ask myself “Will we ever need to leave our little solar system?”.  As it is, our technology is growing by leaps and bounds.  Sure, by the time we start colonizing planets other than Mars we will likely have vessels that could travel at near-lightspeed, if not faster.  Einstein’s theoretical speed limit is just begging to be broken.  But if we can learn so much about the universe from an insignificant section of it … would we ever need to leave the comfort of home?

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For the last few days I’ve been a bit tied up when at home, and because of that, the topics I’ve written about over the last few weeks have been pretty short, or incompletely written.  At one time I had considered pre-writing my entries on paper and then typing them into the site … but there just hasn’t been time for that.

Over the last few months I’ve been working on putting together my options for working in Japan.  As it is, when not studying or helping someone with whatever chore, I’ve been able to get some extra work through Guru.com … though nothing sizable enough to warrant becoming a contract programmer.  This is about to change, though.

Recently I’ve started working on a small project for a great little company based in Portland, Oregon.  Because of the NDA I signed, I can’t really plug them, but it’s all good.  This project is serving two purposes.  First it will solve a small business problem that they’re experiencing, and second it will show the quality of my work and ability to understand their business processes.  Yesterday I had fired off the finished project a whole week ahead of schedule and today we agreed to continue working together in the future.  They’re currently working on a specification for a larger application that will be used on three platforms and will tie together all of their services.  I’ll be one of the main programers called in to make their ideas work.

Exciting times, indeed.

On top of this, I’m being given the opportunity to have a very different relationship with my other employers.  One advantage to this will be my ability to work from anywhere on the planet.  No longer will I need to travel to one of a few different offices (depending on the day), but instead I can work remotely and upload my finished work.  This extra freedom will permit me to do something I’ve been trying to accomplish for just over a year … moving to Japan.

In three weeks I’ll have officially started my own software company, and for the moment I’ll be working alone.  I’d like to get enough work to have two or three other people work with me, and it would be great if they preferred to work from home.  The reason for this (right now) is costs.  I can’t really justify the huge cash outlay that would be necessary to open yet another software shop in Vancouver and stock it with decent furniture, computers, servers, coffee makers, etcetera.  These things are just a bit beyond my reach right now.  However, as it stands I have the opportunity to earn 20% more this year than last, and the current relationships that are being forged seem to be strong enough to support me for at least one year.

It’s what comes afterwards that leaves me wondering, though.

I’ve read many columns written by people who have run their own business.  The biggest worry that these people had was money.  Where would their next paycheque come from?  Could they afford the bills that month?  Who would try to get out of an invoice on a “technicality”?  These are the problems that sometimes confront small business owners.

I’ve had my share of problems in the last year with people who have skipped payments, but these are usually resolved when I show up at their door and discuss the matter.  But if I’m on the other side of the globe, how will I go about ensuring payment?

There are always ways to collect on debt, I’m just hoping that I won’t have too many troubles with it.

In the next month, I’ll be launching another site outlining services offered and all the standard things that one would expect from a software site.  This is going to be my first official venture in over five years, and I’m hoping that this will give me the flexibility and financial resources I’ll need to move to Japan and be with my Reiko.

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With all the talk of China blocking sites and telling Google what they are permitted to show, have you ever wondered if your site could be viewed from within the country?  GreatFirewallOfChina.org will give you a pretty easy way to check this out, and I’m happy to see that my site has not yet been singled out by the government … yet.

Over the last few months I’ve noticed quite a few hits from China.  A few are from people I talk with on IRC, while most are from crawlers that seem to enjoy hitting 20 pages in each of the 10 languages available within the space of five seconds.  Luckily, my web host can handle this kind of traffic.

Of course, we need to keep in mind that it’s the provincial internet providers that actually do the site blocking, so even if your site doesn’t work according to GFOC, you might still have viewers in other parts of the country.

I wonder if the Chinese immigration office will begin linking websites with contributors in order to keep the people that post potentially controvertial material out of the country….

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When is life considered life?  More specifically … when does human life begin?

This is a subject that we hear debated in government halls, religious circles and respectable newspapers … but never can we find the common ground to say “This is when life is life, and this is the stage where we protect it.”  I don’t claim to have an answer, as this is a very loaded question, but I do have a question back to everyone that believes that life starts at the time of conception and we should protect it as the barely-multi-celled organism has the same rights as us; “What makes this life so important?”

Whenever I hear this argument I strain to listen in order to hear what insight some new minds might bring to the table.  This is a very touchy subject for many as humans have an inalienable claim to certain rights.  These rights include protection from exploitation and the right to food, water and shelter.

So this brings me to the subject at hand … the Human Paradox.

A group of scientists in the UK have applied for permission to inject human genetic material into cow eggs that are devoid of their own genetic material.  The end goal of this action is to create a steady supply of human stem cells with which to examine the onset of certain diseases.  This gets around the current bottleneck of using human eggs supplied by women, which is not realistically feasible as a long term supplier of this material.

Ten years ago, a team lead by Jose Cibelli was successful with their attempt to fool the cow egg into thinking it’s pregnant so that it will begin the cell division process using human genetic material as the blueprint for reproduction.  However, this event was condemned as unethical by President Bill Clinton and opened the monumental question “When is life, life?”

Unfortunately, after a decade of heated debate, we’re no closer today than when the question was first asked.

The idea here is to inject DNA from people afflicted with Alzheimers, Parkinson’s and a plethora of other diseases into these devoid cow eggs.  From here, the eggs would be tricked into multiplying for a period of five days, where they will then be “killed” and the stem cells harvested.  With these cells, researchers could examine these diseases right at the very start of their development.  With this knowledge, scientists would have a much better understanding of the root causes of these diseases and could begin working on viable methods of repair.

“Exciting” does not even begin to describe this field of science.  The potential rewards for research in this area includes the abolishment of diseases and conditions that cause considerable pain.  This would be as important to medical science as the discovery of pennicilin.

But at the same time this means we humans would be, in effect, playing God.  We would be creating inter-species life that should not have existed for the sole purpose of killing it, extracting what we want from it, then discarding the rest.  Heck, this could be viewed as rape on a cellular level followed by an immediate abortion.  I can certianly understand why so many people are offended by the mere thought of scientists playing with the very foundation of life.

But is a cellular organism only five days old human?  What makes us human?  Is it the amount of time that we spend in the womb?  Is it our ability to speak and reason?  Is it our mostly hairless bodies with two arms, two legs, and all the other features that make up our person?  Is this a question to be answered philosophically, or politically?

As it stands, we humans turn a blind eye to the millions in distress all over the planet.  We ignore the homeless.  We ignore the unfortunate people in war-torn nations.  We ignore the attrocities in Darfur.  We ignored the heinous crimes that happened in Sierra Leone.  We pay little attention to the countless children forced into the sex trade industry….  The list goes on and on.

And this is just for crimes against other humans!  I can dedicate half a Wiki to the bullshit we do to animals, and another for our crimes against the Earth.

So why does a clump of non-sentient, semi-functional, cross-species animal cells warrant so much of our attention?  Is it because we’re not ready yet as a species to play God?  Or is it because we’ve messed up everything else so bad that we want to protect the last frontier we’ve yet to exploit and bastardise?

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It’s a sad day for some in the development community as Microsoft has announced that the next version of Visual FoxPro will not be released.

This is a shame, but I can certainly understand why the plug has been pulled on this product.  FoxPro was the first Windows-based database engine I had the opportunity to work with.  I enjoyed the fact that I could open each database file and index as required, and working with a event-driven model rather than procedural.

There was a time when FoxPro databases were everywhere and the platform of choice in small to medium-sized businesses.  However, with the big strides Microsoft has made to push SQL Server as the solution of choice (which is not surprising considering it’s raw power and larger price tag), there seems to be very little room left for the little guy.  Gone are the days when you can host a database on a simple file server.

Naturally, Microsoft will continue to offer support on the current releases of Visual FoxPro until 2015, but SP2 will likely be the final update to this package.  I am curious to know if MS will release this software as part of their Shared Source Initiative, though.  I can see FoxPro having many more years of active development if some of the die-hard FP Programmers out there kept the projects going.

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