Reality, Truth, and Freedom

Reality is my perception of what is real, tangible or intangible. These things are the way that I believe and construct a background and stance of the world.
Websters online: 1 : the quality or state of being real
2 a (1) : a real event, entity, or state of affairs (2) : the totality of real things and events b : something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
3 : television programming that features videos of actual occurrences (as a police chase, stunt, or natural disaster) —often used attributively
— in reality : in actual fact

Wikipedia: Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist."[1] Literally, the term denotes what is real; in its widest sense, this includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to include nothingness, as well. By contrast, the term existence is often restricted solely to being (compare with nature).

“The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.”
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” ~Douglas H Everett
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/reality/
I believe I can change reality. By my definition, other definitions and quotes, Reality is only a state of something being real and who determines what is real? If real is what I believe, then I can change what I believe. I can change what I think is real, and therefore, I can change my reality.
~~
Truth is not a lie. It is typically fact or true. Truth is not even omission it is 100%.
Webster’s: 1 a archaic : FIDELITY, CONSTANCY b : sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 a (1) : the state of being the case : FACT (2) : the body of real things, events, and facts : ACTUALITY (3) often capitalized : a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality b : a judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true c : the body of true statements and propositions
3 a : the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality b chiefly British : TRUE 2 c : fidelity to an original or to a standard
4 capitalized Christian Science : GOD
— in truth : in accordance with fact : ACTUALLY

In life's wilderness,
Choked by the weeds of error -
Bloom of beauty: truth.

Truth ...
“Is the opposite of lies.”
“What is truth but what we believe to be truth?”
“I don't believe that there's one truth. There are so many different people, and there are so many different ways you can look at things. I don't see how there could be just one truth.”
These quotes, giving vague descriptions of truth, point towards relativism - a doctrine instructing that truth and morality are relative and not absolute. Relativism asserts that what is accepted as truth is relative to a person's situation or standpoint, and denies that any standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.

If truth is relative, then absolute right and absolute wrong become doubtful and obscure. And if truth is relative, then only subjective and indefinite answers exist for the purpose and meaning of life. So is there any absolute or real truth in this complex and uncertain world? http://www.whatistruth.org.uk/

I can’t be sure something is true. I have to believe that something is true. This concept is the basis of any faith. One must believe something is true in order for it to BE. For instance, in Christianity, it is believe that Christ died on the cross and rose again. Those who believe this are Christians. No one really knows if this is true, but it is believed to be true and therefore, we have faith that it is. I believe truth takes believing.
~~
Freedom is what my husband is fighting for, not just for the US, but for other countries. It is the ability to go about my business without the intrusion of others, especially the government.
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn- the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints exemption: immunity from an obligation or duty

Websters- 1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous d : EASE, FACILITY e : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken f : improper familiarity g : boldness of conception or execution h : unrestricted use
2 a : a political right b : FRANCHISE, PRIVILEGE
synonyms FREEDOM, LIBERTY, LICENSE mean the power or condition of acting without compulsion. FREEDOM has a broad range of application from total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly hampered or frustrated . LIBERTY suggests release from former restraint or compulsion . LICENSE implies freedom specially granted or conceded and may connote an abuse of freedom .

I believe that some people really are free. For the most part, the United States is free, unless its values are compromised or threatened. Therefore, we aren’t 100% free when we get on an airplane. We aren’t 100% free to wear a fire arm in all buildings. We aren’t 100% free because we can’t smoke in all restaurants or buildings. However, in the grand scheme of things, we have a Constitution that allows us to be free and have freedom. I believe we are free enough in the United States. However, if something were to happen like in the story with an attack on a city and the DHS reacts in this manner, we would NOT be free enough. Those acts do not seem to make me believe that we truly are innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.venik4.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/flag-raising-iwo-jima.jpg
http://msp79.photobucket.com/albums/j123/vil1313/firemen-flag-09122001.jpg

Chapter 20

In this chapter, Marcus ends up back at Treasure Island. Severe Haircut lady was still there and put Marcus through the beginning stages of water boarding before being rescued by the journalist. I had always heard about water boarding but the description in the chapter as it must have felt for Marcus to go through it was horrific. I nearly cried. I could not imagine what it must feel like to be strapped and up-side-down with the feeling that I was dying. So, water boarding is pretty much when someone uses water in an effort to make you talk, only you’re tied down and upside down with streams and then rivers and then waterfalls worth of water going over the chin, the lips and eventually up the nostrils. It then goes to the back of the throat and begins to choke the individual. If the person coughs or gasps, it just brings the water right into the lungs.

The chapter concludes with the workers at Treasure Island being arrested, Marcus is still alive and there might be a light at the end of the tunnel as the California Highway Patrol were the ones who helped save the day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

Chapter 17

I loved this chapter. Coming out and telling people about W1n5t0n and m1k3y and owning everything that “they’ve” done. I love that Marcus has a partner in crime in Ange. In this chapter, a girl named Masha is introduced to help Marcus get out of his situation. There is a vocab word introduced in Domain Name Service and it is the way your computer converts another computer’s name. I found more information about this below:
DNS (Domain Name System or Service) is a distributed Internet directory service. DNS is used mostly to translate between domain names (www.domainname.com) and IP addresses (123.123.123.123), and to control Internet email delivery. Most Internet services rely on DNS to work, and if DNS fails, web sites cannot be located and email delivery stalls.
DNS has two independent aspects:
1. It specifies the name syntax and rules for delegating authority over names. The basic syntax is:
local.group.site
2. It specifies the implementation of a distributed computing system that efficiently maps names to addresses.
In the DNS naming scheme, a decentralized and hierarchical mechanism is used by delegating authority for parts of the namespace and distributing responsibility for mapping names and addresses. The naming scheme of DNS is used to assign network device names globally and it is implemented by geographically distributed set of severs to names to addresses.
http://www.javvin.com/protocolDNS.html

Chapter 15

I thought that the way M1k3y held the press conference was really neat. It was such a great idea to use an online game that allows for conversation and interaction. The concept of jamming includes switching up people’s FasTrak and BartPass numbers along with ATM numbers and any other passwords in order to get the cops to see erratic or unexplainable movements around the city. In chapter 9, Marcus’ dad got caught up in this and the cop insisted that he had been over the San Mateo bridge 3 times that day when he really hadn’t been. The jamming messed up everything in the city and it took people hours to get home from work. Some people were pulled over and questioned by the cops many times in their short commute. Marcus pretty much proves a point to the DHS that this type of surveillance does not bring terrorists to the surface and he begins to beat them at their own game.

Marcus takes a leave from jamming in this chapter. He says to fellow Xnetters that it’s because he is smart enough to know that he’s better free than in prison. He also begins to think about how if one jammer gets caught, everyone else can get caught because of the chain of friends. He wants to have a good idea that is going to work the next time he starts to jam and doesn’t want to get caught because he wants to prove the DHS isn’t fighting terrorism because he and the Xnetters aren’t getting caught.

Chapter 10

This chapter made me think. I haven’t ever had to understand crypto (except in the previous chapters of this book) and so the concept of a party where you exchange keys and then send private messages to people in your circle is intriguing. The concept of “transitive” trust is neat. It is described as “trust that moves across the web of our relationships.” So, because you trust your best friend, you trust the information that he/she passes to you. You also trust it more than say, some stranger on the internet who has posted a number or something.

A key signing party is where everyone gets together and signs everyone else’s keys. Marcus and Jolu set boundaries that those invited could bring a maximum of one person and it must be someone they have known for at least five years.

In this chapter, Jolu backs out. He is scared of things that could happen, says he respects Marcus. Marcus meets Ange in this chapter…which I think was very needed. The book was getting dull for me and I felt like it needed something extra. The technology was getting hard to relate to because it was over my head, though the author does a great job of explaining it even if you don’t understand. Anyway, I think the introduction of Ange at this point was a great turn of events.

Chapter 9

In this chapter, Marcus' dad goes crazy and Marcus must figure out just who he can trust. Trust seems to be a powerful word and you can trust people, but in a time when one questions everything, people you trust can be questioned, too. This part of the book started to make me think because it began to talk about technology that I had not ever thought about. It made me respect the type of people who’s brains work like this on a regular basis. Me, I have to think about this stuff and draw it on paper (which defeats the purpose of being all about computers) and I just can’t believe Marcus and his friends. They are so tech-savvy and smart! I thought it was absolutely GENIOUS that he and Jolu decided to throw a key-exchange web-of-trust party for a key-signing.

I thought it was neat that Marcus brings in the knowledge he has from his mom’s experiences to explain how things are different in Britain. He says the average Londoner is photographed five hundred times a day, just walking the streets. If you are remotely suspicious, anyone and everyone will snitch on you. So, for them, the surveillance is natural and second nature.

I think this chapter really makes me think about safety and being free and what my rights are and just how far behind the Constitution is with regards to the digital movement. I could not imagine something like this happening, but it seemed so real and possible in the book. And by that, I mean everything. The attack. The kids knowledge to take on the DHS. The hidden island. The massive amount of DHS workers. The piss-poor security. The "violation" of rights. The second-guessing of FREE. The jamming of a city. All of it.

Chapter 8

I thought this chapter was so fascinating. Pretty much, the arphid cloner is an automatic terrorism detector, or so the DHS thinks that monitoring the patterns of the people using the technologies captured via the cloner means they’ll catch terrorists. This cloning device pretty much begins the war on the DHS as Marcus posts a HOWTO for building an arphid cloner and how to use it effectively. He warns of the paradox of the false positive and that terrorists are really rare (like the disease mentioned in the previous blog). He also says that for a city like San Francisco, to catch 10 bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate 200,000 innocent people. He sums it up in this statement, “What this all meant was that the DHS had set itself up to fail badly. They were trying to spot incredibly rare events-a person is a terrorist-with inaccurate systems.”

Marcus is now on a mission and begins to have followers on the Xnet. In this chapter, Operation False Positive begins. These cloners mostly captured and switched numbers on ATM cards, Fastrak, and Fast Pass. People throughout the whole city had produced the arphid cloners and jammed up the city. Marcus closes the chapter saying that his dad got home 3 hours late that night because he had been pulled over, searched, and question twice! So, this is coming back to bite his dad in the behind.

Chapter 7

Here is a simple introduction to Bayes' rule from an article in the Economist (9/30/00).
"The essence of the Bayesian approach is to provide a mathematical rule explaining how you should change your existing beliefs in the light of new evidence. In other words, it allows scientists to combine new data with their existing knowledge or expertise. The canonical example is to imagine that a precocious newborn observes his first sunset, and wonders whether the sun will rise again or not. He assigns equal prior probabilities to both possible outcomes, and represents this by placing one white and one black marble into a bag. The following day, when the sun rises, the child places another white marble in the bag. The probability that a marble plucked randomly from the bag will be white (ie, the child's degree of belief in future sunrises) has thus gone from a half to two-thirds. After sunrise the next day, the child adds another white marble, and the probability (and thus the degree of belief) goes from two-thirds to three-quarters. And so on. Gradually, the initial belief that the sun is just as likely as not to rise each morning is modified to become a near-certainty that the sun will always rise."

In symbols
Mathematically, Bayes' rule states
likelihood * prior
posterior = ------------------------------
marginal likelihood

or, in symbols,
P(e | R=r) P(R=r)
P(R=r | e) = -----------------
P(e)

where P(R=r|e) denotes the probability that random variable R has value r given evidence e. The denominator is just a normalizing constant that ensures the posterior adds up to 1; it can be computed by summing up the numerator over all possible values of R, i.e.,
P(e) = P(R=0, e) + P(R=1, e) + ... = sum_r P(e | R=r) P(R=r)

This is called the marginal likelihood (since we marginalize out over R), and gives the prior probability of the evidence.
Example of Bayes' rule
Here is a simple example, based on Mike Shor's Java applet. Suppose you have been tested positive for a disease; what is the probability that you actually have the disease? It depends on the accuracy and sensitivity of the test, and on the background (prior) probability of the disease.
Let P(Test=+ve | Disease=true) = 0.95, so the false negative rate, P(Test=-ve | Disease=true), is 5%. Let P(Test=+ve | Disease=false) = 0.05,, so the false positive rate is also 5%. Suppose the disease is rare: P(Disease=true) = 0.01 (1%). Let D denote Disease (R in the above equation) and "T=+ve" denote the positive Test (e in the above equation). Then


P(T=+ve|D=true) * P(D=true)
P(D=true|T=+ve) = ------------------------------------------------------------
P(T=+ve|D=true) * P(D=true)+ P(T=+ve|D=false) * P(D=false)

0.95 * 0.01 0.0095
= ------------------- = ------- = 0.161
0.95*0.01 + 0.05*0.99 0.0590

So the probability of having the disease given that you tested positive is just 16%. This seems too low, but here is an intuitive argument to support it. Of 100 people, we expect only 1 to have the disease, and that person will probably test positive. But we also expect about 5% of the others (about 5 people in total) to test positive by accident. So of the 6 people who test positive, we only expect 1 of them to actually have the disease; and indeed 1/6 is approximately 0.16. (If you still don't believe this result, try reading An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning by Eliezer Yudkowsky.)
In other words, the reason the number is so small is that you believed that this is a rare disease; the test has made it 16 times more likely you have the disease (p(D=1|T=1)/p(D=1)=0.16/0.01=16), but it is still unlikely in absolute terms. If you want to be "objective", you can set the prior to uniform (i.e. effectively ignore the prior), and then get


P(T=+ve|D=true) * P(D=true)
P(D=true|T=+ve) = ------------------------------------------------------------
P(T=+ve)

0.95 * 0.5 0.475
= ------------------- = ------- = 0.95
0.95*0.5 + 0.05*0.5 0.5

This, of course, is just the true positive rate of the test. However, this conclusion relies on your belief that, if you did not conduct the test, half the people in the world have the disease, which does not seem reasonable.
A better approach is to use a plausible prior (eg P(D=true)=0.01), but then conduct multiple independent tests; if they all show up positive, then the posterior will increase. For example, if we conduct two (conditionally independent) tests T1, T2 with the same reliability, and they are both positive, we get


P(T1=+ve|D=true) * P(T2=+ve|D=true) * P(D=true)
P(D=true|T1=+ve,T2=+ve) = ------------------------------------------------------------
P(T1=+ve, T2=+ve)

0.95 * 0.95 * 0.01 0.009
= ----------------------------- = ------- = 0.7826
0.95*0.95*0.01 + 0.05*0.05*0.99 0.0115

The assumption that the pieces of evidence are conditionally independent is called the naive Bayes assumption. This model has been successfully used for classifying email as spam (D=true) or not (D=false) given the presence of various key words (Ti=+ve if word i is in the text, else Ti=-ve). It is clear that the words are not independent, even conditioned on spam/not-spam, but the model works surprisingly well nonetheless.

All text from: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~murphyk/Bayes/bayesrule.html

Chapter 6

Cryptography (or Crypto) is a secret writing to hide the message that is actually being delivered. Some say it has been around since 1900 BC in Egyptian times when they used hieroglyphics. Pretty much, cryptography is necessary when communicating over any un-trusted source, including any network on the internet. Also, crypto is hard math. Marcus does not go into detail in the book, but it sure sounds complicated. From what it sounds like, the crypto is only as good as the person that made it, and you would want to use a crypto that has been around for a while because it hasn’t been broken yet, versus a new crypto that hasn’t withheld the test of time and hackers.

I was very shocked that Marcus’ parents made him go to school so soon after coming home. I guess though, they may have been more lenient if he had told the truth instead of telling them he was stuck in a shipping container on the docklands. My mom probably would have let me stay home for a few days to recoup. I enjoyed the encounter with the owner of the Turkish coffee shop. I think this situation begins to opens Marcus’ eyes on how the attacks have affected businesses and people from other countries. I was a little shocked at how dependent Marcus was on Wikipedia, but that is just how we are these days. I thought it was genius that Marcus burned twenty ParanoidXbox discs to hand out to people he thought would use them and get in on the underground network. I didn’t see where the book was about to take us with this. I had no idea that people would follow like they did.

http://www.garykessler.net/library/crypto.html

Chapter 5

5- So, this is what it would be like for parents to have a child disappear for 5 days and then suddenly show back up. If I were Marcus, I don’t know if I would have told the truth. I mean, after withholding privileges and being beaten, I would have been freaked out about telling the truth and then getting picked back up by DHS and detained again and treated so bad.

I thought it was brilliant that Marcus took a picture of what his laptop looked like. I mean, who would remember the fine details so many months later? I want to know how DHS got to his laptop to put the tracking device on his keyboard; that is crazy. And then the Xbox thing was awesome. I had no idea that this type of thing was even possible. To run a real computer operating system on the Xbox instead of only playing games on it. And then, to go so far as to use a Paranoid version of something so that the government can’t track it is brilliant. Wow.

“It is a fictional operating system set in the book little brother(Cory Doctorow) that assumes that its operator is under assault from the government (it was intended for use by Chinese and Syrian dissidents), and it does everything it can to keep your communications and documents a secret. It even throws up a bunch of "chaff" communications that are supposed to disguise the fact that you're doing anything covert. So while you're receiving a political message one character at a time, Paranoid Linux is pretending to surf the Web and fill in questionnaires and flirt in chat-rooms. Meanwhile, one in every five hundred characters you receive is your real message, a needle buried in a huge haystack.” Quote from Cory Doctorow.
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/2008/06/05/paranoidlinux-now-under-development/

Chapter 4

There were so many concepts in this chapter that I had never really thought about. Safety, security, and rights. Like I mentioned before, this chapter confirms the fact that they thought Marcus was guilty and had something to hide. One of the DHS people even said “convince us that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I think that is absurd. Why should Marcus have to prove this? What probable cause do they have for searching him and taking his belongings and then locking him in a cell? What I thought was even worse, was they were only going to allow him to give one thing a day for 3-4 days and then he’d get privileges. They weren’t even trying to set him free. They really thought he, a 17 year old, could pull off one of the worst terrorist attacks to date.

Esprit d’escalier is described at coming up with a witty remark too late. It is from the French and they “call it the staircase wit, indicating that one thought of that perfect retort on his or her way out.” http://wordsmith.org/words/esprit_d_escalier.html

I thought it was so weird that Marcus had to sign documents that pretty much said he was detailed voluntarily and was submitted to voluntary questioning. I mean, can you really call what they did voluntary? They were holding him hostage and dangling things over his head to get him to cooperate. That doesn’t seem voluntary to me.

Chapter 3

The rush to the Powell Street BART sounded like WalMart on Black Friday, only times 10 with panic. The group of four decided to get out of there and head back up to the street. They noticed that Darryl had been stabbed by someone in the crowed. All the cell towers were busy as Marcus tried to call 911. This is the first time technology hasn’t been in their favor and the first time we begin to think about terrorists. However, the group still doesn’t know what the commotion is all about.

I couldn’t believe how Marcus was treated once they believe he could be a terrorist. I almost felt appalled because the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be on your side. I also wondered how he seemed to be guilty until proven innocent. It just didn’t seem right. And then, when he was asking for a lawyer, they were being so rude and pushy about things. I never knew that the DHS was allowed to play by different rules than other law enforcement.

According to Wikipedia, “The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a Cabinet department of the United States federal government with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the U.S. from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters. Whereas the Department of Defense is charged with military actions abroad, the Department of Homeland Security works in the civilian sphere to protect the United States within, at, and outside its borders. Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Homeland_Security

Chapter 2

During this chapter, Marcus and Darryl have skipped school to “play” Harajuku Fun Madness. This game is an Alternate Reality Game, where players are sent coded messages that need to be decoded and are then used to track down clues that lead to more coded messages and more clues. Marcus plays with Darryl, Van, and Jolu. The team uses wifinders to locate the HarajukuFM network and find clues.

Life changed for the four friends that day when voices came over the loud speakers saying “REPORT TO SHELTERS IMMEDIATELY.” The friends headed down to the BART station, along with a ton of other people.

One thing I thought was particularly interesting in this chapter was how Marcus was able to communicate from his phone to his server at home to bomb Charles’ phone with hundreds of SMS messages at once and ultimately freeze it. Then the noise in the hallway gets him caught and he gets in trouble, not Darryl and Marcus. The other thing that was neat was that they stuck the library book in the microwave to nuke the arphid. I have put CD’s in the microwave and watched them pop, but I would have never thought to stick a library book in there just so you don’t get caught by the tracking.

This book is starting to get interesting with all of the links to technology. It is hard to believe that kids my age think this way and are going around the system. I can’t wait to see what else Marcus does!

Chapter 1

In the book Little Brother, Marcus explains that he runs an invisible to Windows version of Firefox. He knows that it is invisible because the program is called $SYS$Firefox. He is able to get on the internet without being traced or logged by the school, since he is using his school issued laptop. These invisible programs are invisible to the operating system and aren’t able to be seen on the listings of the hard drive or process monitor.

I think it is really neat that people are able to find a backdoor to get on the internet and do what they want. Sometimes schools have website blocked for no reason. Every now and then, it would be nice to access Facebook or some other social-networking site on my SchoolBook, especially if I am at home. Schools should be up with the times and realize that we are using these sites as a means of communication to our other classmates. It’s not your mother’s networking anymore.

I thought Marcus’ character was super smart in this chapter. He knows his rights with the law and even challenges his principal. He cracks his SchoolBook within a month and runs invisible programs on it so he can use it like a personal laptop with no trail. He puts rocks in his shoe to throw off the gait recognition software. I think that is just awesome. I don’t know if I would think of any of these things to get past security.