Today, FEMA, DHS, and the FCC shut down all radio and television communication for thirty seconds while they tested the Emergency Alert System for the first time. I recorded the test. YOu can hear it spanning several radio and television stations. It kind of freaked me out to hear the same message broadcast everywhere, with nowhere to turn. Listen and judge for yourself.

We have always had an alert system at the state and local level which has served us just fine. Now creeping government has centralized this system on a national level. This clearly violates the Constitution, which grants very limited powers to the federal government, and leaves the rest to the state and local authorities, which can better respond to an emergency. Remember Big Brother in the book 1984 speaking to the entire populace with one voice? This system makes this reality possible. No yelling at the telescreen!

Recently, a friend introduced me to the King’s Corner app. Finally we have an accessible card game with Game Center support. Not only did we have tons of fun playing, but I realized that King’s Corner makes a perfect metaphor to describe the way government really works.

King’s Corner has simple rules. Imagine a 3×3 grid with the center square removed, making eight squares. Kings go in the corners, and any other number can start a pile. The game starts with four random cards in these piles. You then play your cards as you would in Solitaire. Whoever uses all their cards first wins. You can either play against a computer or from two to four players with Game Center.

Before I talk about Game Center, let me put out a passionate plea to app developers. We need more accessible card games! For those who just stumbled upon this entry and don’t know what I mean, I refer to making an app usable with VoiceOver, the built-in screen reader for the blind. It translates the iDevice’s environment into a spoken representation. It means so much to play card games, especially on the sleek and silken iPad 2! Please, we need more card games, especially with Game Center support.

When Apple first introduced Game Center, I brushed it off, as did pretty much all blind people. We figured we would never use it, and relegated it to a back page. I feel glad to say that King’s Corner has proven this wrong. Game Center can act rather temperamental, and it took us several times to get it synchronized and working. Once it worked we had some serious fun.

Sighted gamers have enjoyed multi-player games for years. The blind have gotten left out of most of the gaming excitement, usually sticking to niche games made just for the blind, keeping us shut in a world within a world. Apps like this break this boundary. Now a blind player can enjoy a friendly game of King’s Corner with other blind or sighted players sans restriction! We’ve spent several hours and games playing now and it makes us feel great, yet another futuristic use of Apple’s products.

While laughing and having fun, it occurred to me that a game of cards makes a perfect way to explain the way government works. On the game level, an observer would see players competing with each other. They would see people setting up good moves for themselves and blocking opponents. Ultimately, only one player wins – competition in its most brutal form. Move up a level however, and the observer would see a group of friends playing a game. They would compliment each other’s good moves, bag on each other’s bad moves, and all would cheer the winner. At the end of the game everyone remains friends – the game has changed nothing on that level. Would you like a rematch?

Look around the world and you will see. Governments help the banks which help the corporations which help the governments the most. Manipulated markets force out the little guy while giving the big banker boys an even bigger piece of the pie. Republicans and democrats for the most part support the same agenda, enslaving the people while devaluing the dollar. Mayer Amschel Rothschild once said: “Give me control of a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.” King’s Corner indeed! See beyond the game.

Today, Apple released Mac OS 10.6.6, which adds the Mac App Store. I wanted to give a sneak peak, especially from an accessibility point of view. I also wanted to share some thoughts on the matter.

Before I got my iPhone, I wondered why everyone kept talking about apps. For those who don’t know, an app refers to a software application, and up to now it meant software running on a mobile platform such as an iPhone. That has now changed. An app also usually has a very affordable price, anywhere from free to $5.99 seems to cover most. Despite their affordable price, if you ask most long-term iPhone users how much they’ve spent on apps, they will grudgingly tell you that they would rather not know. Apple made a very smart move offering software at such affordable prices, but will this clash with the established industry and its price points?

The Mac App Store behaves as advertised. It acts just like the app store on an iDevice. It has a toolbar with categories and a search field, then the main html area with the content. Within the content area, you will either see groups or links. For VoiceOver users, just interact with a group and you will see the link for more information, and the button to purchase the app. Activate the link, then go past it and you will see the information. For links, just activate them and a new page will come up, just as it would in Safari. I feel glad to report that I found the Mac App Store a fully accessible experience, and as satisfying as my sighted counterparts. Apps install immediately, just as they do on an iDevice. I indeed found it very enjoyable. Almost too enjoyable.

For some time, I felt confused as to what exactly the Mac app store would offer. At first, it seemed like they offer the same programs you could download and buy from traditional channels. I saw software with both traditional software prices and lower app-like prices. It seemed like a good mix. The app store knows if you already have something from iWork and iLife installed. It also correctly identified TextWrangler and Yojimbo. I had already installed these myself in the standard way one installs third party software. I started to get confused again. While reading Bare Bones Software’s Mac App Store FAQ, they said that the app store versions of two of their products did not include command line utilities to comply with Apple’s app submission policies. And here we go. This blurs the distinction between third-party software and apps.

Apple sells the software in iWork and iLife as individual pieces of software. I kind of wish I would have known this, as I recently purchased iWork and iLife. From iWork I wanted Pages and Numbers, and from iLife I just wanted GarageBand. Purchasing iWork and iLife cost around $120 for the complete suites. Pages and Numbers cost $19.99, and GarageBand costs $14.99. That would have saved me a considerable amount of money.

Apple has done something very interesting here. Users will love the influx of affordable software and effortless one-click install. It may even lead to Mac increasing its market share, something I would certainly welcome, especially among the blind. A lot of developers will see their programs exposed to a much greater distribution and potential market. Apple will most certainly make a killing!

But what about the traditional software developers? This article got me thinking last night. It paints a pretty grim picture for traditional Mac developers, seeing them overrun by a new world of cheap apps. We will now see the merging of two different cultures. One group, the traditional developers, work in a very established environment dating back to the eighties when the first Macs came out. They can charge $20-$40 for a utility, $50 for a game, and more for specialty programs. They also feel very loyal towards their Macs!

The other group, app developers, come from a much newer market and culture. The mobile app market feels much more like the wild west. Authorities don’t even know how to regulate it. Apps come and go, as do the most brutal reviews, and the apps that endure can become legendary. Before today, apps exclusively ran on mobile platforms, meaning they couldn’t do as much due to hardware limitations. Developers have managed to do some pretty amazing things, but most apps will handle a very specific thing. They also cost far less than traditional software, at just a few dollars for most. And therein lies the problem.

Will someone still pay $40 for a quality piece of software? Can these companies continue to sell their software at standard prices, or has Apple lowered the guillotine upon the succulent necks of their most devout group: Mac developers? I don’t think so. Hopefully, Apple knows better than to piss off the group of people who stuck with them through the turbulent nineties, and without whom they would not exist today and enjoy their current status as industry kings. They’ve done so much good for the blind. The MacBook Air looks so beautiful. And that apple logo feels so cool!

Still, something feels uneasy to me, like a character from a Vincent Price movie. I think of Wikileaks, how the establishment hates freedom, and how they want to regulate the Internet. What better way to do that than by regulating the very software allowed on a machine? Will this lead to a trend where Apple, Microsoft, and Google become gatekeepers, regulating the programs which can run on their operating systems? Will we eventually have to jailbreak all our computers? If we see them reach for the tired excuse of national security, we should immediately drop everything and run to GNU/Linux. I really hope that doesn’t happen. A lot of people love their Apples! I feel glad I’ve learned to love both. I also feel glad knowing that humans always find ways to adapt, programmers especially. It’ll work itself out. The Goddess prevails!

A recent article in the American Thinker inspired a discussion thread on abovetopsecret.com which attempts to link Obama’s agenda, George Soros, and Esperanto. I would not contest the link between Obama and Soros, or the link between Soros and Esperanto, but as an Esperanto enthusiast, I must take issue with linking all three, and tying Esperanto exclusively in to the New World Order. In fact, I would argue that learning Esperanto would help defeat it.

Esperanto began as the creation of Ludwik Zamenhof, who wanted a neutral language to help people of different cultures communicate. Its roots mostly come from the romance languages and German. The words have a regular spelling and pronunciation, and can freely combine to form new words. The grammar has no exceptions, and only sixteen rules governing its use. A student can gain proficiency relatively easily, reaching a level where they can carry on a half decent conversation after only a few months of study. Compare that with studying most languages in school, where after a year you can ask someone their name and where they live. In fact, learning Esperanto can help with learning other languages, since it lets the student concentrate on building their vocabulary and grammar skills, instead of concentrating on rules with exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. When considered logically, the idea of a neutral international language makes sense.

Since its inception, Esperanto has attracted a diverse group of individuals, from far left socialists to radical libertarians, from devout Christians to extreme atheists, from curious artists to hardcore linguists, and everything in between. Zamenhof belonged to the Jewish faith, translated the Bible, and created his own philosophy called Homarismo (humanism). While some may say that it sounds like the philosophy of the new world order, most Esperantists do not consider themselves homarismoj (humanists) and view it as something interesting to consider and nothing more. Additionally, Zamenhof’s own writings and speeches certainly do not show him as a servant of any evil agenda, much to the contrary. He never intended Esperanto to replace existing languages, rather to act as an auxiliary tool to give everyone an equal footing when communicating internationally.

Esperanto has had a long history of prosecution by those who would do us harm. Hitler and Stalin both denounced it for the same reason. If people have the ability to communicate without boundaries, they become much harder to manipulate. I recall an incident on a mailing list during the Kosovo conflict. A woman there emotionally asked how Americans could support the war, and the slaughtering of innocent civilians. We all of course didn’t, and asked what she meant. “Oh,” she responded, “The media here says that you all support it, and celebrate in the streets.” We all couldn’t believe it. Most Americans either opposed it, or didn’t even know we fought a war in the first place, and probably couldn’t even find Kosovo on a map. This sort of thing completely exemplified to me Esperanto’s purpose and power.

The Internet and Esperanto have a lot in common, in that both provide a global way to exchange information. The Internet began as a project by DARPA to build an informational infrastructure which could
withstand a nuclear war. At first, only governments and colleges had access. Gradually, access trickled down to the masses. The government thought they could use it as a method of control. Al Gore proudly helped fund it, hence his claims of inventing it. His reasons had nothing to do with benevolence and everything to do with control. They supposedly even referred to the WWW as the World Wide Wiretap.

Of course, since information seeks the quickest path to greater distribution much as electricity seeks the quickest path to ground, the masses quickly began using it as a tool of freedom. The net has always had a strong libertarian contingent even in the earliest of the hacker cultures, and this inherent freedom resonates to this day in software design. Now, anyone can read information on all sorts of things to empower them and expose the criminal elite which has begun taking over the governments of the world to impose a one world agenda. Just look at Climategate. Now, governments want to control the net, and impose China-style censorship, as has recently begun in Australia.

This represents a trend towards greater control. We have the elites running scared. If the Obama administration thinks they can wheel out Esperanto to further their iron grip within a velvet glove, I say permesu ilin. Let them. It will only backfire in the same way as their pathetic attempts to usurp the Internet to their own ends. George Soros actually speaks Esperanto natively, so I have something to say to him. Se vi pensas ke vi povas uzi Esperanton por helpi viajn tiranecajn celojn, vi estas malkorekta! Vi malsukcesos! Boneco chiam superfortas! Translation: If you think that you can use Esperanto to further your tyrannical agenda, you are wrong! You will fail! Good always prevails!

I started writing this article some time ago as a response to the criticisms by some rightly concerned individuals, and finished it today, on Zamenhof’s 150Th birthday. Today has felt very joyful to me, largely thanks to Twitter. Many Esperanto friends world-wide have tweeted in Esperanto. Google even put up an Esperanto flag with some information. The language has received a lot of good press today, and I hope people will give it a try. I don’t think Esperanto will ever become the international auxiliary language, but it has developed a culture all of its own, and that has value. Today, I think back on the fun times I have had,and the weird people I have met because of my involvement with Esperanto. I wish it another 150 years of success!

If you would like to learn more about Esperanto, you can try the following sites: Esperanto USA provides information to people in America, where most of my readers reside, and lernu.net provides free courses. Mi esperas ke vi trovos lerni chi tiun facilan lingvon.