An appeal to our visitors

For the past ten years, I have operated an independent website at this address. For the past six, the operations of 4d2 dot org have met the current legal definition of an Internet Service Provider. I am proud of the fact that we have provided hosting to a number of individuals and groups who might not otherwise have had a voice on the Internet.

Perhaps this “mission” of ours has become less important and less interesting as Internet presence has become cheap and ubiquitous; however we are still receiving requests every few weeks from people who are interested in joining us. Even though our members have often posted contentious material, we have never placed restrictions on the free speech of anyone we have hosted, thanks in large part to the freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution of the United States of America, from which we operate.

Today there is a distinct possibility that we will lose those freedoms. At this moment, the U.S. Congress is debating the “Stop Online Piracy Act” bill. Disguised as an effort to combat online piracy, this bill will in fact grant the government broad-reaching power to censor and control the Internet in unprecedented ways. It places onerous restrictions on small Internet Service Providers like us — restrictions with which we have no reasonable means of complying. This bill will require us to adhere to a government-mandated “blacklist” of forbidden websites, preventing our users from accessing these websites by any means within our control. Because we provide Internet access to our customers via shell sessions, virtual desktop sessions, proxy systems, DNS lookups and other means, we will be required to comply with these unreasonable restrictions if this bill becomes law. For our administrative staff of one, this is an unmanageable burden.

Every major Internet advocacy organization has spoken out against SOPA. The creators of the Internet have even expressed their categorical opposition. Yet, the future of the Internet — a revolutionary open forum which we have all helped shape into what it is today — is being decided even now by a group of politicians, most of whom do not know the difference between a website and an inbox. If government truly does derive from the consent of the governed, there is no evidence of it today. The future of a medium rests squarely in the hands of people who do not understand, do not care, and answer only to their corporate benefactors.

I am writing this note because I believe our online home is under genuine attack by my government. Although 4d2 dot org has been my project, I like to think that a piece of it belongs to all of us who have used it as a meeting place over the years. If SOPA is passed in its current form, the future of this project is deeply uncertain. As a U.S. citizen, I cannot legally fail to enforce the restrictions imposed by SOPA, but as a conscionable and reasonably intelligent denizen of the Internet I categorically refuse to enforce them. If this bill becomes law, I may be left with no reasonable option but to shut down 4d2 dot org, at least in its current form.

I would like to encourage all of you who are citizens of the United States of America to read more about this bill, and if you agree with me to write or call your Congresspeople and express your displeasure with this bill and for the appalingly broken process that has brought it to the floor of the House.

Sincerely Yours
Michael Proctor
December 15, 2011
michael@4d2.org

I’ve been thinking recently about how consistently bad keyboards are. All of the improvements to consumer computers over the past couple of decades have marched to more or less the same beat — smaller, lighter, faster, more features — but this has been disastrous for keyboards. Virtually all keyboards available in the consumer marketplace, and certainly 100% of keyboards available at retail, are just terrible. Companies routinely sell kits that contain a sophisticated laser-tracking optical mouse, and a horrible keyboard. But it has lots of media buttons!

In my opinion there are really only two things that make a keyboard an ergonomic success. A keyboard should be heavy, so that it is more or less immobile on your desk. It should also provide tactile feedback to the user’s fingers that occurs at exactly the same moment that the keypresses register. That’s basically it. IBM figured both of these out with the buckling-spring Model M keyboard of the ’80s and ’90s, and it was very successful. However, a drive toward quieter keyboards in the workplace resulted in the replacement of the expensive and complicated buckling spring mechanism with a cheap membrane sheet akin to what you might find in a calculator. For some reason, keyboard manufacturers have been continuing to get away with foisting this crap on us for many years now.

Today’s cheap membrane keyboards fail both of my ergonomic tests. They weigh nothing, and all the little rubber feet in the world won’t prevent them from sliding around on your desk. They also provide no tactile feedback, and the keypress registers at an indeterminate point between when you first feel resistance from the key and when the key reaches the bottom of its travel. In my book, this means that they suck. I don’t understand why people who may spend $1500 or $2000 building a desktop PC from the best parts available will turn around and spend $75 on an expensive “gaming” keyboard that has lots of programmable buttons but is mechanically no more sophisticated than a calculator. Keyboards used to be inelegant mechanical things, and as long as human beings are made of meat, the inelegant mechanical keyboard will remain the superior device.

I’m a fast typist, so maybe this just matters less to other people. For me, the difference is huge: I top out at about 85 wpm on a membrane keyboard but can sustain 125 wpm on a Model M or comparable keyboard. That’s almost a 50% increase in speed. For someone who types 30 or 40 wpm, I can imagine this kind of improvement making a significant difference.

There is a fair variety of mechanical keyboards on the market these days, but many are aimed at the enthusiast market and I believe the majority of those are overpriced. I would like to put in a plug for the keyboards manufactured by Unicomp, who inherited IBM’s keyboard business via Lexmark. The Unicomp Customizer is virtually identical to the legendary Model M, metal backplate and all, with the exception of single-unit keycaps and a USB interface. You can buy one at Unicomp’s incredibly outdated website. They are $80, assembled pretty much entirely by hand, and worth every penny.

At first, I was irritated because I was only finding counselors who identified as ‘Christian counselors.’ I find this offensive mostly because I don’t give a crap what religious beliefs my counselor ascribes to. Michael pointed out that in middle-American English, Christian roughly translates to “good person with similar values.”  And I figured  my refusal to see someone based on that identification was as goofy as the people who would only see someone with that identification. I was wrong, at least, in this case.

I tried to stay positive. The building the office was in was really neat… built in the 60′s and labyrinthine. Hallways that dead-end and stuff. Great place to shoot a horror movie. So I was excited about the building. The waiting room was pretty spare. I filled out my paperwork, noting with a chuckle that the counselor in question treats for sex/pornography addiction (which, I don’t believe exists). And so, after maybe ten minutes, my appointment began.

The room was not disturbing, at first. It looked out onto a pretty lake, and the sun was out. There were pretty normal books laying around (The Feel Good Handbook, kids books about divorce, that sort of junk). So I talked for 20 minutes and then she said the magic, horrifying words, “I have a treatment I’d like to try with you.” And my bullshit flag activated.

So she gave me a lecture about EMDR. For twenty minutes. She uses bilateral sound and bilateral sensation. And she put the headphones on my ear and I was like, this reminds me of binaural tones. Which Michael used to make me to listen to so I could sleep at night.

Then she said, I’d make you go more in depth about the traumas you’ve undergone. And I looked her in the eye, and said, “Honestly, I was a child for most of this stuff and couldn’t give you any more details than I have.”

As I wrote her a check (since she couldn’t give me a receipt for cash… seriously?) , I noticed she had *three* separate certificates for hypnotism. As in, regressive hypnotism. As in, hypnotize trauma patients and implant shit in their heads.

These things mostly amused me. But the most disturbing thing to me is this: I cried, and she sat and watched me. Didn’t hand me a tissue, didn’t reach out at all. This woman, this cold and awkward woman, is making people relive traumas. You can’t break people down emotionally and not be there to hold them. Hell, Donnie Darko’s counselor held him. I have never known a counselor who didn’t at least move closer when you cry. My last counselor actually would hug people – in sessions, leaving sessions. She told me once it was her job to make sure everyone left feeling loved and accepted. I miss that woman.

There’s a lot more ridiculous counselors than I thought. For my part, I’ve mostly soured on finding someone locally whose not crazy. Guess I’ll just take my ass down to Mel Bond, our local faith healer. For my part — a hypnotist counselor and a faith healer are both ripping off the poor, desperate and stupid. In much the same way.

But, the appointment cost me $12, I got a laugh. And, it reminded me I could be worse off. I’m not perfect, but I’m not a crazy counselor and I’m not her patient. Winning.

I spend most of my day browsing the internet, which, as I made to understand, is populated entirely by men. I think you have to be a pretty cynical person to not see the values that a young man today has.

1. He values freedom, most especially freedom of thought.  Maybe I hang out with intelletuals, but most men I know are interested in pushing the boundaries of their own thought, and the social thoughts of the day. He values transparency and access to information as a means of preserving his freedom of thought, and as the only way to really seek the truth in a given situation, bringing us to…
2. He values the search for truth. I have to deliberate on this point a bit. I think that the idea that women are emotional and men are logical is a misunderstanding of men’s search for truth. Men seek what is right. Women are capable of seeing how a situation looks from a ridiculous quantity of perspectives. BOTH skills are important in the ultimate search for truth and righteousness. But I think most women misconstrue their own role in that search.
3. He values humor. When a man says he wants a laid-back partner, he mostly means one that will laugh at his farts with him. I apologize if you’re a woman or an uptight man and you don’t think farts are  funny. They are, though. Especially as the crux to elaborate anecdotes where someone ends up vomiting from the smell.
4. He values self-sufficiency. Most men I know want to be considered Renaissance Men. They’re intelligent – they can play an instrument and write a sonnet. But they can also fix their car or their computer, brew beer, build some really cool shit, shave with a straight razor, what have you. It means a lot to a man to be on his own.

I see, at the heart of this, a discussion about how men can form a culture, a direction. Most men I know have expressed confusion about how they can form a culture that tiptoes around every other culture. They’ve expressed outrage about the common thought that simply because they are men, the culture they form would be oppressive (for some reason…). They’ve responded by sinking slowly into the roles that have been approved for them.

Men today can’t be proud of their past and their history without a healthy helping of guilt, yet many men have supported groups of all kinds in their respective fights for civil rights. Many men still do.

So, if we’re disappointed in the current generation of young men, who should we blame? Their values are values that men have shared for ages. The only reason a person would act differently if their values were the same is because of social pressures.

And when will someone write a paper about how women suck today? Probably no one, because there’s more women than men in college and graduate and post-graduate environment these days. I have a rant brewing, that I will likely never share, about what I see as the deficiences in my female peers today. It is shocking to me how many women want what they want,  equal or not. And just don’t get it.

I don’t think men are a secondary class. But I think we may be, as a society, pushing them there. And blaming them for it the whole time.

Wake up to cat scratching around my side of the bed. Yell at her. Hear a little more scratching, then nothing. Fall back asleep for a few minutes.

Wake up to cat scratching again, sit up to yell at her. Cat crawls out of a CLOSED cardboard box (the flaps were interlocked) and runs over. Pick her up, throw her out of the room. Shut door. Attempt to sleep again.

Wake up to cat meowing. Try to sleep. Cat begins howling. Try to ignore her. Cat begins headbutting door and loudly jumping at the doorknob. At this point, she has woken Michael up. I open the door, pick her up and carry her outside. She stands by her empty food plate and looks at me. I give her food. Then I sit down to watch Louie. At this point, it is maybe 6:30. I went to bed at 1:00am, and was hoping to get some good sleep.

Bored after Louie, so I decide to try my new yoga dvds. I go into my yoga room and shut the door. The cat begins meowing. Turning my attention to the task at hand, I realize the dvd player is not hooked up to the tv in that room. I do a cursory search for a cable, but come up empty. I’m not deterred – we just got cable and there’s yoga programs “on demand.” So I pull one of those up. And realize there’s no sound. I check the input cables and everything is fine. The volume on the tv is up extremely high. I know the cable isn’t messed up because I just watched tv in the other room.

As I ponder my options, the cat is howling. She’s not allowed in the yoga room because I know she will destroy my mat. Also, at this point, I’m pretty ticked she woke me up on a Saturday before seven am.  Doing yoga on the other tv won’t work due to lack of space, and also lack of privacy from the stupid cat, who has not left me alone all morning (she is, in fact, underfoot, meowing and looking up at me). I’m already wearing workout clothes and at this point I’m so agitated, I could use a good burn.

So I head to the gym at our complex. I turn on a treadmilll, turn my music on random, and the song I’ve had stuck in my head all morning comes on and I’m feeling pretty good. This lasts for ten minutes and then I realize that my old sneakers are terrible. They’ve always sort of pushed my feet onto the outer edge and made them sore, but now the pointed-in heel support is digging into my feet. So much so, that I realize I’m in a lot of pain and need to stop. My heels are still hurting. And I’m moderately irritated. Mostly with the cat, who ruined my morning and is somehow oblivious to this. She is following me everywhere, crying for attention and leaping in front of the computer as I type.

Somedays I hate my cat, and most days I am grateful I do not have any children, yet. Although, I guess with most kids you get the comfort of knowing they won’t always just cry and whine at you. The cat will never know how to do anything else.

Oh well. The days a little more than third over, so there’s plenty of time to turn it around. We’re only in the second period of the day. That’s cool.