One thing that has always made me laugh is that Christians are always the first to kick up the dust about Homosexuality, saying it's "Against God's plan", and "God hate's gays". Time to quote from your beloved book, your teachings, your life, your religion, The Bible:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13: 34-35

Lets break down these two verses into there literal meanings. "A new command I give to you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so that you must love one another." Basically, Jesus is saying here, that he wants his disciples to preach the teachings of Jesus, and remain friendly, and follow the ways of Jesus, as Jesus had taught them to be. Now to break down the next bit. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another". This basically says, if you follow the ways of Jesus, people will know that you are a follower of Jesus.

I'm not going to disregard anything the bible says about homosexuality, but there are two quotes  (one from the Old Testament (Leviticus 18 and 20), and the other from the New Testament (Romans 1)), but these two quote are taken literally by Christian Extremists, and are often misunderstood/miss-preached. These are the ways of the old teachings of the Bible, back in the day when people couldn't read and write, and they were taught by a preacher/priest, and they were taught the literal meanings of these two passages. Now that people are thinking for themselves, they are working out what these two passages actually mean.

A few Gay Activists seem to think that they are simply condemning the homosexual acts carried out by Heterosexual males and females, but it will never be known what these passages actually mean, and that it's down to the interpretation of the person reading the bible.

There is a rather shocking statistic that there are around 80 countries world-wide where you can STILL be punished for being gay, and yes, most of them are African countries, countries which live by the literal meanings of the Bible, and are taught those literal meanings by preachers, and have influences pushed upon them by politicians. Don't you think it's a bit old-fashioned treating homosexuals as criminals in a time where change is needed?

I mean, there's even European countries that are still a bit old fashioned when it comes to homosexuality - Poland for example. Back in 2005 during the presidential campaigns for election, a number of Politicians made homophobic remarks, and then one of them actually became president. Lech Kaczynski says that he would continue to ban gay demonstrations, as "Public demonstrations of Homosexuality will not be allowed". Now,  I know Poland isn't part of the EU, but surely it needs to get its fucking Act together and stop living in the middle ages.

Now... You've probably all been waiting for this one... Uganda.

This country is a fucking joke. MP's are promoting Homophobic hatred, and are trying to get it where they can issue the death penalty for homosexual acts committed more than once. I mean what kind of country can claim that Homosexuality is punishable by death? They even have Christian Pastors and Teachers preaching that homosexual acts are wrong, and that it should be hated. They even have hatred videos as well, more commonly joked about in the Modern world for "Eating da poo poo". I mean as a gay, I have to laugh my fucking arse off at this. They are targeting every gay, bisexual and lesbian in Uganda, just because there's an act committed by a very tiny percentage of homosexuals. Just to show how fucked up Uganda is, they publish the names, addresses, telephone numbers and vehicle registrations of homosexuals in the national papers! They may as well have just got a big flashing neon sign saying "Homosexual" and put it over their house.

In conclusion, most of the world can accept that homosexuality exists, and that it's not a problem to their lives. It's just the very tiny percentage of countries which get recognition for hating something so much. That's how fucked up society is. That's what needs to change.

Sources

http://www.amnestyusa.org/lgbt-human-rights/country-information/poland/page.do?id=1106582

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yrt1c

I often find myself asking this, but nobody can give me a solid answer. Most people think of friends as those little requests that you get on Facebook, but tell me, is that a friend, or someone you just know? Is a friend someone you follow on Twitter, or someone you add on Live Messenger? I didn't think so. These are people you know, you might be friends with them, but just because you add them on Facebook, doesn't mean they are your friend.

This whole area is somewhat grey, because everyone has different views on what friends are. Not everybody agree's with what other people say friends are, but that's down to their own interpretation of the word friend.

This is what I personally think friends are;

• Friends are people who will be there for you when things get difficult. They will offer you support and guidance to help you get things sorted, and if they can't help you sort things out, they'll be there for you just for moral support.
• Friends are people who will give their time for you to help you out. They will give you a bit of their own time when things are getting tough, or even if it's just for some quality friend time.
• Friends will always be there in the darkest hour. They will stand by you, and help you through when you think there is no help.
• Friends are the ones who will accept you for what you are, and for who you are and never judge you on the choices you make.
• Friends will always tell you the truth, even if the truth hurts.

One thing I really do dislike is when people think that friends should lend them money, or buy them things. A friendship is not about money, and should never be treated like it costs. If people think that money is everything when it comes to friendships they are incredibly mistaken! People need to remember that money can't buy happiness, and happiness is with the people you love.

Blocked

Anyone in school now, will absolutely hate this page. It is the grim reminder of George Orwell's "1984", where "Big Brother is watching you". Everything we do on the Internet is monitored by someone, in some way, shape or form. Whether it's monitoring traffic usage, file downloads, or the actual text on the page- no-one is safe at all.

Every time you visit Google, your location on the website is tracked by advanced analytics, every time you do a search, it is tracked by state-of-the-art monitoring software, every time you click on a result, metrics are stored in a massive database. You can't even go on Google without them knowing about it.

Even this website tracks your location on the website, but it doesn't track for security reasons, it tracks for analytical reasons, to monitor the presence of the website on the Internet, and then it allows me to alter certain aspects of the website in order to make it more visually appealing, easier to navigate, and even give it a better structure.

One website notorious for tracking your location is Facebook. Every link you click, every message you type, every picture you view is tracked and used for both security and analytical reasons. They have invested millions on a state-of-the-art website with an extremely complex back-end system, which is capable of processing millions of operations per second. However, Facebook don't always keep this information secure. Sometimes this information may end up in the wrong hands, such as advertisement companies who create and host invasive advertisements for high-return gain. These adverts are usually so invasive they don't always give you a good viewing experience, and often result in you moving away from the website. Do they care? Do they fuck, they just made money!!

So, with this "Big Brother" attitude, many schools, colleges and corporate companies have invested thousands of pounds in Website monitoring software. This software can do many things in order to categorise it as safe or unsafe, but the common favourite is checking for banned words in the Domain. Domains such as www.iamascam.com will return as blocked, whereas domains like www.superfriendlywebsite.co.uk won't. However, this presents problems, as false positives are very popular. Domains like www.iamnotascam.com will be blocked, as it contains the word scam, and www.superunfriendlywebsite.co.uk will not be blocked, as it doesn't contain a trigger word.

This is where the next generation of software comes in to play. It works on two stages:

1. Monitor the URL - This is quite a complex procedure, but is the first port of call when it comes to filtering software. What the software does is monitor the domain for banned words, and then categorises the banned word based on the severity of it. Once the domain has been categorised, some software will then perform a lookup on the IP address, and determine whether it has come from a blacklisted IP, or a range of IP's which has been known to host dangerous websites. The website then is categorised into two categories, safe and unsafe. Unsafe websites are totally blocked by the software, resulting in a message being presented to the user, and possibly a message being sent to an administrator. If the website is categorised as safe, it passes onto the next process.
2. Parsing the HTML - Some expensive and advanced software will parse the HTML text on the website, looking for words in the banned words list. This process can take up to 10 minutes on some websites (depending on the load of the server), but usually takes less than 1 minute. When you view a website, the software will check a database to see if it has already been categorised as safe. If not, it will then begin to parse the website, displaying a message that the website is being checked. As the software parses the website, it will look for key words, defined by a massive bank of words defined by the manufacturer, or by the systems administrators. If certain words have been found, and have been repeated, or a list of words in the banned words list have been found on the website it is banned. If very few or not many words at all have been found, then the website is regarded as safe, and the visitor is allowed to view.

There are a couple of drawbacks with the HTML parsing software, one being the amount of time it takes to parse the HTML, and the other being how does it decide if a website is safe if it is full of images. The software has to be incredibly advanced if it is to be capable of scanning images quickly and efficiently, and often can be tricked by using different scripts, or a font which utilises images and text.

There are often many ways to trick the software, the biggest one is to set up a remote Proxy Server. However, this has big implications, as many different filtering software are run on Proxy Servers, which are needed to access the Internet. If you were to edit the Internet Connection options in your operation system, and set it to connect to a different proxy server, it will be very unlikely that you receive data from outside the network.

Another way to gain access is by setting up a web-proxy, which will act as a gateway between you, the proxy server, and the webserver you're trying to gain access to. However, this may cause problems as some sites utilise cookies quite a bit, and the cookies will not transfer to the browser as planned.

Different companies will use the software for different reasons. Schools, for example, will use the software to restrict the use of dangerous sites to minors, which will often result in them viewing pornographic, and potentially illegal, images. They will also restrict some websites as they contain information about exams, hacking networks, and games. Other companies may utilise the filtering software to increase productivity of their staff by blocking access to social networking, games and joke sites.

In conclusion, the filtering software may be extremely useful, but can also be very obstructive. It can sometimes decrease productivity of a user by making them wait 10 minutes for a website they need to access to be scanned, and can also cause problems by people finding alternative ways to access the websites. I personally dislike the use of invasive software to restrict the access to websites, as it decreases my productivity, and often results in me getting very angry!

This topic has somewhat pissed me off for a very long time, and it's got to the point where I really can't be arsed with people like that in my life. I mean, how hard is it to be truthful to someone's face? Is it so hard for people to stop being so two faced about other people?

Being Two Faced?

I'm not going to look at this from one side of the coin as well, because I'm not like that. I can understand why people are two faced, because they're afraid of people's reactions if they were truthful to their face. They hide behind their lies when you confront them as well. But if you say this is basic human nature, you're gravely mistaken! Lying to protect yourself from danger is basic human nature, but lying about being two faced is just cowardice!

This is why I like my friends, because if I do something wrong, or piss them off, they tell me. They don't go around bitching about me behind my back, for me to find out off someone else. Neither do they spread bullshit and malicious rumours about me behind my back, which in all honesty is stooping as low as the low.

I am not here to be liked, but I do expect people to tell me too my face if they have a problem with me. I'm not fighting to get rid of people being two-faced, because that would simply be impossible, and I am certainly not expecting people to change because of me writing this. But you know who you are, and have some fucking decency and tell me what you think to my face!

You can now access my blog via:

• www.keiranbolton.me
• keiranbolton.me
• www.keiranbolton.net
• keiranbolton.net

(For the record, the .net domain was purchased by mistake, but hey, I like it!!)

Yeah, this has been Virgin Media's promise for a long time now. Only one problem... that's if you can actually connect!

I've now been without Cable Internet & TV for a whole week. After a few phone calls, and a visit today, their engineer has come to the conclusion that the cable is broken! HOW THE FUCK CAN A FIBRE OPTIC CABLE BREAK UNDERGROUND? We are the only people in the street with problems connecting to the Internet who use Virgin Media. So why did our cable decide to break? I don't think it has broken, I think they did a shit-job installing the cable.

Lets do a little bit of science now... What's inside a fibre optic cable? Protective sheath? Flexible Rubber Buffers? Glass Fibre?

How the hell does a glass fibre cable corrode over a period of 15 years, in which the cables where laid? It can't.. you know why? Because it's fucking GLASS, GLASS doesn't corrode. Yes, it can snap, but when the cable's underground, and they say the cable has snapped underground.

Now I have to wait until the 17th February for the cable to be repulled because we're not considered a priority because we don't have a Telephone line... So they'd rather carry on taking our money for a service that we aren't getting. Virgin Media, if you read this.. I expect to be upgraded to 50Meg for FREE for life for this monumental fuck up on your part.

One side effect to doing this, is all my previous posts have vanished. This I do not care about, for I'm starting fresh!

Also, you'll be seeing more and more blog updates, including pictures and media that is/isn't relevant to the post itself!