I had no choice but to give up reading InfoWorld when it ended its print publication. It still has a presence online. Although I still think it is far less useful as a pure web publication, I find myself straying over to the website from time to time. I also belatedly signed up for a few email newsletters, figuring half an InfoWorld was better than none. That is how I stumbled across this InfoWorld article: 10 Future Shocks for the next 10 years. InfoWorld, which is celebrating thirty years, is now looking ahead and imagining what information technology (IT) shocks might occur over the next ten years. Here are the predictions and my critiques as someone who also earns his living in IT.
Shock No. 1: Triumph of the cloud (Brian Chee)
My main prediction is that the high cost of power and space is going to force the IT world to look at cloud services, with a shift to computing as a cloud resource occurring in the next five years.
To me this is a “no-duh”. Everything in the IT stack is moving toward commoditization and optimization. Location is becoming irrelevant. Storage and systems are becoming wholly abstracted and the Internet is becoming a reliable enough medium to make a local data center obsolete. All the messy logistics of moving and securing data services and systems will be transparent when they are hosted in the cloud for a fraction of the cost of rolling your own data center. Many standards will have to be developed first, but the market will drive it, so it should happen.
Shock No. 2: Cyborg chic (Bob Lewis)
By 2018, geek chic will look a lot like what today we’d call a cyborg. The human/machine interface will be ubiquitous, with people walking around giving voice/whisper commands and using earbud audio and an eyeglass display that superimposes a machine-enhanced view of the world on ordinary vision.
I think we will get partly there, but we will not choose to go all the way there. Even with electronics miniaturization, such a vision would require multiple devices with plenty of portable power, probably not enough to walk around with them on all day. This will mean that we cannot be mobile and networked 24/7 because, like our cell phones, these devices would often need to time-consuming battery recharges. In addition, the human-machine interface cannot be only be made elegant to a degree. We will look unfashionable walking around so closely tethered to electronic devices. Instead. we will choose the minimal portable technology we need. Most of the time, our portable integrated systems will be turned off or on standby since most of the time we won’t want to drain their batteries.
Shock No. 3: Everything works (Sean McCown)
The interface is intuitive and sleek. It even changes based off what you’re currently doing so that you can access features of the OS that you need while you’re, say, working with e-mail or editing pics. We’ll call this OS “Windows Sci-Fi” because we’re all dreaming if we think that’ll ever happen.
This one is easy to call too: it’s not going to happen. Expecting that all information technology will work easily, quickly and transparently and all magically integrate together is just fantasy, yes, even if you are using Mac OS/X. Heck, we’ll still be trying to integrate our existing systems to work with LDAP directories. I guarantee you that ten years from now you will still be in password hell because the vast majority of your system will still be stove-piped systems that are just too expensive or specialized to reengineer. Even if it could be done, it will be something like trying to hold a conversation with a man on Mars. The latency of all the system impedance matches will be too much.
Shock No. 4: Nothing escapes you (Savio Rodrigues)
Vannevar’s Memex vision will come to fruition through your next-next-next-generation PDA. The device will continuously capture all audio and video from your daily experiences and upload that content to the cloud, where it will be parsed to succinctly recognize your tasks, interesting information, and reminders — all searchable, of course.
Sorry, no. First, there will be so much conversation going on that it will be difficult to impossible to sift through all the voices, articulate it all, and assign names to the voices. Second, such a device also raises all sorts of privacy issues. Third, there is a point of information overload and this volume of data is simply too much. Fourth, even if all that information could be captured it would be a virtually impossible task to be able to develop software smart enough to automatically and transparently record information like you have a dental appointment next Tuesday at ten o’clock. Human speech is too complex.
Shock No. 5: Smartphones take center stage (Martin Heller)
I see the smartphone evolving into the preferred instrument for constant connectivity, with voice interaction, facial recognition, location awareness, constant video and sound input, and multitouch screens.
This is within the realm of possibility, but it is unlikely we will see all these features within the next ten years. It is doubtful such a device would be widely in demand.
Shock No. 6: Human-free manufacturing (Bob Lewis)
I think the trend will accelerate but I cannot see manufacturing becoming completely human-free. Will computer assisted robots be able to unload a truck packed with supplies? Is any machine so perfect that it will be able to work without any maintenance whatsoever, or could be completely serviced by another machine?
Shock No. 7: Perfect image recognition (Sean McCown)
One day you’ll be able to see a picture of something or take a picture of something, and load it into a search engine and have it scan the pic, search, and tell you what it is. So you see a flower, stop and take a pic of it, and Google will tell you what kind of flower it is.
One day I think this is likely, but not in the next ten years.
Shock No. 8: Big Brother never sleeps (Bob Lewis)
In the next 10 years, perfect governmental tracking and monitoring of each human being will become reality.
Civil libertarians of course would do their best to make sure this does not happen. Technically, I am not sure it can be done. I do not think we have the storage, network or computer capacity to monitor everyone in real time and apply intelligence to it. Thank goodness! Technology like anything else suffers from the triple constraints of time, scope and cost. It may turn out to be technically possible but cost prohibitive or require generations to develop and deploy. Most likely this is one desire that is simply too complex and costly to create.
Shock No. 9: Unbroken connectivity (Curtis Franklin)
Checking to see if you’re connected to a network will seem as old-fashioned as turning on a device to get information in 10 years. From sports scores to friends’ activities, the idea of interrupting your activities to get the news will be a thing of the past.
While it may be possible in ten years to be always connected to a high speed data network, I suspect it will be cost prohibitive to do so, particularly in remote locations. I am also skeptical that data networks will ever be as reliable as say the phone system, because a data network is far more complex. The phone system is reliable because it is relatively simple and has redundancy built in.
Shock No. 10: Relationship enhancement (Jon Williams)
My 2018 prediction is that we use technology to remember and fortify social connections. You’ll get together socially with a friend, geo-locate, take pictures, Twitter, make notes and videos, and so on, and it all gets automatically filed away. There will be no difference between “online friends” and “real friends”. This will be life-altering.
I think we can make on-line relationships better with improved information technology but there will be no substitute for in-person relationships because meeting someone in person is a much richer and more intimate experience.
October 1st, 2008 at 07:20pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Information Technology
I have often joked to my wife that Microsoft’s greatest invention was its random behavior generator. If you run the exact same software, using the exact same data on the exact same computer day after day you should get exactly the same results. Except that, this does not happen in the world of Microsoft Windows. I believe this thanks to their secret random behavior generator. Some days you can be lulled into a sense of complacency. You think that things are finally predictable, only to discover later that either something surreptitious is going on under the hood, or some sort of bizarre behavior that never manifested itself the last hundred times has occurred.
Because of its secret random behavior generator, Microsoft has ingeniously generated hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. This has forced us to upgrade, buy new versions of their software, reformat our hard drives and reinstall Windows, and even buy entirely new computers. We also pay money to call their technical support lines to maybe solve these mysterious problems. What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results? By buying an iMac, I have demonstrated that I am now sane. Release me from the rubber room, please. I now have a computer, which while not perfect, works predictably with me instead of against me.
As I documented, it is not a trivial process to move from Windows to a Mac. There is a lot to learn and a lot to unlearn. There are some inevitable compromises. You may not find precisely the same software for the Mac as you will for Windows, but you can come close. As in the case of Quicken, you can expect to pay more money for the privilege of having it work on a Mac. What you get in return is consistency and reliability.
Quicken may be the exception. I found that moving from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for the Mac was a hugely frustrating experience. Quicken is not some fly by night company. It has been around for more than twenty years and owns the lion’s share of the personal finance market. It has expanded into the business market with its Quickbooks line. It also offers an array of online services. You would think that such a large and well-financed company would offer a version of Quicken for the Mac that is consistent with Quicken for Windows. You would think that you could simply move over your data files and use them transparently.
Sorry, no. Moving from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for the Mac feels very much like trying to solve some bizarre and distressing Microsoft Windows problem. I mean the real irksome kind, where you are reduced to hacking Windows registry entries and upgrading drivers in the wan hope that maybe you will return to some level of consistency and reliability. Quicken blew it big time with Quicken for the Mac. For some bizarre reason it is largely a different product than Quicken for Windows that also looks and behaves quite differently than it Windows version.
Ironically, Microsoft did a better job of porting its Microsoft Office Suite to the Mac than Quicken did with its flagship product. I installed Microsoft Word and Excel for the Mac and there is almost no inconsistent behavior with the Windows version. Yes, you get feature windows that sit outside the main window. That is standard Mac stuff. In addition, you have to use the CMD key where you would normally use the CTRL key. That is about it.
With Quicken for the Mac, not only are the features I took for granted (like scheduled transactions) missing, but also all sorts of things both subtle and overt are markedly different. For example, you might want to have your register show the date column first and then the check number column so it looks like your paper register. There is no way to do this with the Mac version, which markedly slows down the process of entering transactions into Quicken. Moreover, why is the category field now on the left and the memo field on the right? It would have been just as easy to keep it consistent with the Windows version.
All these sorts of annoying inconsistencies though pale compared to the hassle of actually moving your data from Windows to the Mac. First, according to their own knowledge base, you must go through the hassle of exporting each type of data (accounts, categories, etc.) to a QIF file, which is painful. It also tells you to do things like shorten your account and category names and to move over data in a stepwise manner, which is also painful. Yet despite all this, I was not successful moving over my Quicken data. Instead, I got repeated “Transaction File Full” messages while importing. I was reduced to calling their technical support line and waiting for a call back. Their technician was anxious to end the call early because their support closed at 5 PM. However, he did give me some useful advice. He told me to create a new QIF file with all my data in it and import just that. The good news was that it appeared to worked.
However, there were some problems. The import program ignored many transactions, making the account balances incorrect in many cases. As I had taken care to trim my account and category names as instructed, I expected no problems. The problems were occurring in transactions with category names I could not change on Windows, those “automatic” categories like _401KEmployerContribution.
Searching the Quicken support forums I found a number of people with similar problems but no one who had a solution. A number of people like me though were frustrated and tearing their hair out. With 18 years of Quicken data, going through probably one hundred thousand transactions and fixing those ones did not import or imported incorrectly was not a viable option. Why could Quicken not at least provide an error log? What to do?
I figured that as a last resort I could just create a balance adjustment so that at least the account balances would be accurate. Except that in most of my accounts, the option was disabled. Naturally, I sent an inquiry to Quicken. Their customer relationship management software just automatically pointed me to articles I had already read. Of course, no human was actually going to bother to read my email. That, like, costs money! Instead, just have a computer parse it for keywords, send an email with likely matches and hope the customer goes away!
In desperation, I was reduced to changing my opening balances. That was the only thing that Quicken for the Mac would allow me to do. So now, my account and share balances are correct, but I have no idea whether it is calculating my stock portfolio values correctly, because I am not certain that all buy and sell transactions were recorded correctly. Nor am I confident that any income or expense reports will be accurate. All this for the privilege of paying $69.99 for a Mac version, which you can get for about half this price and which has about 10% less functionality than the Windows version!
Quicken though keeps sending me emails that it is still vitally concerned about my problem. I cannot be bothered to respond because it is clear even they do not know what to do. If I had to guess, I suspect their advice would be to stick with the Windows version. However, I will not shell out $80 or so for Parallels or install Boot Camp to run Windows on my Mac. My whole goal of moving to a Mac was to put Windows behind me.
There is hope. Reputedly, Quicken is rewriting Quicken for the Mac from the ground up for a future version. Maybe then, it will have the same features as in its Windows version. Maybe then, moving over your data will be simple. Maybe then, future customers will not have to troubleshoot this bizarre accounting stuff largely by themselves. As for me, I feel justifiably disgruntled and used. This is no way to treat a loyal customer.
July 23rd, 2008 at 05:21pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Operating Systems, Quicken, Windows
After a couple weeks, my iMac and I are settling in comfortably together. There is little sign that this marriage will require a quickie Las Vegas divorce. Mostly I love what I am experiencing. However, after having spent the last fifteen years in the bizarre world of Microsoft Windows, I can see it will take some time for me to reorient my brain to think like a Mac.
The extra peripherals have arrived and are installed. The most important one is this matias OS/X keyboard. Finally, I can type reliably again, although this keyboard is of no higher quality than any other plastic keyboard I have used. The chicklet keyboard that came with my iMac just was not working out. Also installed is a super quiet OWC Mercury Elite Pro external hard drive. It is hooked up via an ultra fast FireWire 800 cable to a FireWire port on the back of the iMac. It has 250 gigabytes, which is about average for an external hard drive these days. Its real virtue is that it lets me enable perhaps the most important but most neglected software built into the OS/X operating system, a utility called Time Machine. Time Machine not only keeps hourly, daily, weekly and monthly backups of my hard disk automatically, but also has a cool interface so I can go back in time to easily retrieve previous versions of a file. Using it to search for previous versions feels a little bit being Tony and Doug in that 60’s TV show Time Tunnel. Its main virtue is not that it keeps backups. You could do that on a PC for many years too. Its virtue is that it does it all automatically so you never have to think or even worry about it. Like much else about the Mac, after a tiny bit of set up, it just works.
That is not to say I have not had a few quirks. Mac Mail, an otherwise excellent email program, hung on me yesterday. Fortunately, OS/X figured it out and gave me the option to restart it. In addition, Mac Mail got confused today. It told me that an email in my Inbox was from X when actually it was from Y. Hopefully this is just a momentary glitch because otherwise I really like Mac Mail. I like the way that when you are focused on a message it automatically highlights other emails in the folder from the same person. I like its slick integration with IMAP mail servers. IMAP essentially lets me put all my email on GMail, but has the advantage of a much nicer user interface than GMail. Of course, if all my email is in GMail, then I can access all ten years of my email from any browser.
My Mac is just phenomenal at finding stuff easily. There is always Spotlight, which is a super fast and super easy to use search index of your computer. However, many applications, like Mac Mail, have a program-specific version of Spotlight integrated into it. In Mac Mail, for example, there is a convenient search box. Type anything in there and you do not even have to hit Return for it to start searching. It starts showing a results window specific to folder you are focused on in Mac Mail. It took a while to figure out how to import my email on my Windows machine. I was using Mozilla Thunderbird. Mac Mail would not let me directly import it from my PC version of Thunderbird. So I had to install Thunderbird for the Mac and import from the mailboxes on my PC. Then I used Mac Mail’s built in import facility for Thunderbird for the Mac. Forty thousand plus emails saved over the last ten years imported quickly and flawlessly.
So far, I found equivalents for various PC programs that I was used to using. I used Webdrive to remotely access computers as drive letters inside Windows, using the familiar FTP or SSH protocols. You can do this with a Mac but it is something of a hassle to pass the authentication information in an automated manner. ExpanDrive is an OS/X equivalent to Webdrive. I also needed a good visual code merge tool. WinMerge is a Windows solution that is neat and has the virtue of being free. I found a Mac equivalent called DeltaWalker that unfortunately is not free. That is the general problem with Mac software. There is a lot more free stuff for the PC than there is for the Mac. I do not mind paying extra money for this software for the conveniences built into the OS/X operating system.
Quicken for the Mac remains an issue. It is a little disappointing to pay $69.99 for the software to discover that it cannot even do some of the same features as my Windows version. For example, it cannot do scheduled transactions. This is annoying but right now, the larger problem is simply getting my 18 years of financial data moved over. I tried the conversion tips but they did not work. I get a “transaction file full” error when I move over my transactions. It looks like I will need some phone support from Quicken to clear this hurdle. Unfortunately, this means that I cannot donate my Windows machine quite yet.
The Mac has a cool multiple desktop feature called Spaces. The only problem is that old habits break hard. I find myself ALT-TABbing a lot, which in the Mac world is CMD-TAB but it does the same thing. I will refine these skills with time.
I really like The Dock, which is something like the Windows application bar that hangs out on the bottom of the screen, only bigger and with better icons. Unlike the Windows application bar, which only shows running applications, this one allows you to store shortcuts to your favorite applications. It also tells you wish are running by placing a small luminescent blue dot beneath it. The Dock is always there so you do not have to navigate using a Start button. If an application needs your attention, it does so by jumping up and down. It is hard to miss and kind of cute!
I have just begun exploring some of the OS/X utilities. I have a movies folder and it is neat how in the folder view you can see a sample frame from the movie automatically. In addition, OS/X is smart enough to provide right and left arrow buttons on each side to let you easily browse your movies. There is also a scroll bar available to quickly zoom through your movies. On the other hand, I find some things annoying about the iTunes program. It does not seem to like Windows media and there is no conversion utility to turn them into MP3s, at least that I have found. Naturally, it wants to sell me iTunes. Moreover, iTunes seems to want to only work with an iPod. I own a Creative MP3 player. So far, to store music to it I have to mount it as a device and copy and paste MP3s into it.
I like OS/X’s Sleep mode. Windows has a Hibernate mode that most people do not use. Unlike Windows Hibernate, which can take thirty seconds or more of disk activity before it goes into hibernate mode, it is just a few seconds with the iMac. This is very convenient. Sleep mode uses very little power, and it takes only a couple seconds for the iMac to wake up. So I do not have to feel that guilty leaving it in sleep mode overnight. Everything is where I left it and fully accessible.
Unquestionably, OS/X is a superior to any edition of Windows. I would not characterize it as completely intuitive or 100% reliable. However, it is generally very consistent and reliable. With my memory upgrade to four gigabytes, it is also now blazingly fast. With its faster memory, it can download files much faster than my Windows machine. I figured the problem was that my Internet connection was relatively slow. It turns out that my Windows memory was the major bottleneck when I downloaded files.
Ah, engineering. That is what you really buy when you buy an iMac: premium hardware specifically designed to operate with the premium software. Using Windows is like driving on a gravel road. Using an iMac is like driving on a newly paved interstate highway with no traffic. It feels slick because it is slick.
More iMac adventures to follow.
July 10th, 2008 at 08:58pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Computers, Operating Systems
Back in January, I pledged to buy an iMac this year. I did not actually receive my iMac until Monday. Unbelievably, it sat in its packing box for four days. Hey, I was busy doing other things like buying a car for our daughter to drive to college. Last night I finally felt that I had sufficient leisure to open it up. I placed it temporarily on a card table next to my aging and noisy Windows desktop computer.
I generally knew what to expect from my three-hour Mac tour back in January. Mine is not the souped-up iMac, just the base $1199 model available on the Apple web site. It comes with a twenty-inch monitor. Originally, I was going to get the Mac mini, which is a small Mac box minus the peripherals. When I added up all the options, extra memory and bigger hard disk that I wanted, it was not that much more expensive to just buy the iMac. Particularly since I was not paying for it, but the government was (I paid for it with our stimulus check) I felt more inclined to go with a pricier model. Except for paying sales tax, my iMac was essentially free. (More specifically my grandchildren will be paying for it. However, since my daughter does not plan to have any children, I guess it is free.)
There is not much to assembling an iMac since the motherboard, CPU, memory and disk drive are stuffed somewhere inside the housing of its flat panel monitor. Also inside (but not obviously) there is a camera and a microphone. Presumably, the “i” in iMac is not just for “me” but also for “integrated”. Apple’s selling point has always been that you are getting a completely engineered package, with software optimized to run on a particular type of highly engineered hardware. Part of the reason that Microsoft Windows is so lousy is that it is expected to work with a broad range of off the shelf computer peripherals. When you control the hardware, presumably you have extra time to work on stuff that matters, like the ultra slick OS/X Leopard operating system that comes with the iMac. There are just four things to plug in: the power cord, the keyboard, the mouse (which plugs into the side of the keyboard) and an Ethernet cable.
I am sure some iMac bigots will tell me I am so full of it, but putting the on-off button behind the left side of the flat panel monitor is counterintuitive. I guess doing so would make the iMac itself look less “clean” since, as we know, Apple is big on aesthetics. For a few minutes, it did not seem to boot. Perhaps it did not power on right away because I expected something to happen instantly. Don’t panic. Press the button and give it a few seconds.
Also a disappointment: its Chicklet keyboard. It has to go. Fortunately, my friend Jim Goldbloom knows exactly what replacement keyboard to purchase. So while overall Apple does a great job of design, they have a few minor deficiencies. I do like its mouse though, and its tiny scroll wheel. I know some people hate it, but think it is much easier to manipulate.
I have just begun dabbling with the OS/X Leopard operating system but the features I saw in January are even more appealing now that I own one. OS/X has a curious absence of OK and Cancel buttons. In general, the Mac design is that when you make a choice it should be instantly set. This is one of those obvious user interface ideas that seems to have eluded Redmond and I really like.
The first application I installed was the Firefox web browser. I used the built in Safari web browser to download it. It was straightforward to install, but because a Mac is not a PC, it behaves a bit differently. I also struggled with moving my bookmarks. I eventually found the bookmarks.html file, put it on my flash drive, and then loading it from my flash drive. I had to reorganize the bookmarks I imported for them to appear on the bookmarks toolbar. I also need to move my cookies, which I am sure can be done, but Firefox provides no obvious way to do it.
Mac Mail was simple to set up. Mac Mail is a very slick email client that I look forward to exploring and integrates slickly with the iChat and iCalendar programs built into OS/X Leopard. I can already tell that it will be better than Eudora, my previous high water mark for an email program. I pointed it to the GMail IMAP server. IMAP allows your email to stay on the server. I could not figure out why the email was not moving into my local inbox. Since I had never used IMAP before, my confusion was understandable. Particularly nice about Mac Mail is how the Mail icon on the dock will show you the number of new messages. Moving my 10 years of email out of Thunderbird and into Mac Mail looks like it will be challenging.
Spotlight (which does ultra fast searches of your hard disk), the Dock (which anchors programs to an easy location near the bottom of the screen) and Spaces (which lets you divide your screen into multiple windows and place applications in each, essentially giving you multiple desktops) are all neat features. They demonstrate how far more usable OS/X is compared with Windows. Doubtless, I will discover much more in time. I need to buy an external USB hard drive soon so I can enable the Time Machine feature in OS/X. This lets you easily go back in time to see and retrieve previous versions of documents. It also transparently performs a general backup of your files.
There are some peculiarities with the OS/X Leopard interface compared to Windows. You can only stretch windows by dragging the bottom right corner of the window, rather than grabbing a side of the window. In addition, even though your application may not take up the whole window, a context specific menu always appears at the top of the screen.
Integrating useful applications will be a challenge. The Mac simply does not have the breath of software that Windows has. I determined though that it did not matter for the applications I needed. There is a version of Quicken for the Mac but you cannot easily export your data from the Windows version to the Mac. You have to trim account and category names to 15 or fewer characters, remove special characters from your investment fund names and then export to QIF (Quicken Interface Format) files. QIF is the equivalent of storing a spreadsheet as a tab delimited file, in other words it is very basic. I have a feeling I will be I will be uttering some swear words before I successfully have Quicken working with my Windows data on the Mac. The Mac version of Quicken tends to lag a year behind the PC version, which is not a problem for me because I tend to upgrade only every other year. I am a bit miffed because even though I own a copy of Quicken, I apparently cannot upgrade to the Mac for a reduced fee. In fact, Quicken charges a premium for its Mac version: $69.99. Yikes!
I need the equivalent of Microsoft Office soon. Apple has its own peculiar version called iWork. I am sure it is spiffy, but given the ubiquity of the Microsoft Office Suite, it is probably too much of a transition. I am more likely to install OpenOffice, since it is free.
I also want something equivalent to Choicemail for the Mac. ChoiceMail is a client-based white-list email filter. It requires people who are not in my address book to authenticate at a web site using a CAPTCHA interface. I suspect there are Mac Mail proxies out there but they will take time to locate and install. Mac Mail does have a reasonably good spam filter, but like all spam filters, it is not perfect. I should also be able to get Dreamweaver for the Mac, since I have a license for it for Windows. I hope that any upgrade costs will be minimal. In addition, I need to figure out how to easily mount to external web servers so I can keep earning bucks in my side business. Since OS/X is a certified version of Linux, this should not prove too challenging.
Stay tuned for more observations on the strengths and weaknesses of the Mac in the weeks ahead. As you might expect, my impressions in the first twenty-four hours are quite positive.
June 28th, 2008 at 08:52pm
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Mark |
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Tags: Computers, Operating Systems
About a year ago, I was in Colorado for my brother’s wedding. The airport shuttle parked me at a Boulder shopping center where my sister Mary and her rental car were waiting to take me to my first wedding activity. Plastered to the windshield was her Garmin global positioning system (GPS). Mary did not know her way around Boulder but it didn’t matter. Her GPS did.
Mary has an odd sense of humor. I asked her about her GPS. “Oh, you mean Jesus?” she said. “Jesus?” I asked her. “I call it Jesus, because Jesus always knows the right path.”
Reputedly, Jesus also had some skills being miraculous. Not only was he dead for three days and managed to resurrect himself, but he made a handful of loaves of bread and some fishes feed a multitude. He cured lepers and blind people. He walked on water. At least this is what the Bible teaches. I cannot claim to believe in these miracles. I suspect though that if someone could take a GPS back two millennium to ancient Palestine, teach it to speak Aramaic and programmed all the world’s known cities, towns, hamlets, roads and goat paths into it, things would be a lot different. Instead of the cross, Christianity would be symbolized by the now ubiquitous rectangular portable GPS. For surely only God could make a tiny little box speak. Only God could guide someone around the entire known world by itself.
“Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” was science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law of Prediction. To me my new Garmin nüvi 350 GPS must be magic. It defies reason to think that an object so small could be that darn smart. I bought it for a mere $200 through buy.com to help us navigate during our vacation this summer. I have been taking it on test drives. This thing is much smarter than I am, at least when it comes to knowing its way around town. It knows the names of streets before I get there. It gives me warnings before I need to turn. If I need a place to stay, it knows the hotels in my immediate vicinity, along with many popular restaurants. About the only thing it does not do is make Julienne fries. However, it can take me to restaurants that serve Julienne fries.
My nüvi is not my first GPS. My wife bought me one years ago as a Christmas present. It was also a Garmin, but it was relatively brain dead. It could tell me within a hundred feet or so where I was. However, with its limited memory it could not hold much in the way of maps. Therefore, I rarely used it. Telling you where you are is not that much of a trick. Telling you where you are in relationship to other places and what those places are, now that’s a trick. It’s a trick because in order to relate your location to other places you have to know where all these other places are located. My nüvi knows. Embedded somewhere in its silicon is a street atlas for the entire United States, Mexico and Canada, along with the locations of businesses, hotels, retail establishments and many points of interest. It can figure out the fastest route between two places, the shortest route and (for some extra money) route me around bad traffic. With an optional memory card, it can even help me in Quebec and Mexico, by translating common phrases from English.
I do not have to keep it in my car plastered next to my windshield. It is portable. With its rechargeable battery, I have four to eight hours of disconnected use. When I am in the car, I can charge it through a device connected to my otherwise unused cigarette lighter. I will use it when walking cities like Boston, so I will never be lost, and always know the way back to my hotel. While I may run out of gas on the road, as long as I keep my nüvi I will know how far it is to the nearest gas station. Moreover, if I need to stop at a fast food joint on my way home, it will take me there. It will also track my total miles, speed and trip duration.
Nor do I have to worry about my geographically impaired daughter. With a nüvi she can get where she needs to go and always find her way home too. Call me paranoid though but I will still insist she carry a road atlas with her. Not that she has fully mastered the art of reading maps, but just in case the nüvi’s batteries go dead she might be able to navigate her way home. More likely, she will call me on her cell phone and have me navigate her home.
Back in the 1970s when I was a pimply faced teenager, my friend Tom and I were the local space bigots. We were pretty obnoxious about it, which is probably why we turned off many of our classmates. We would hear things like, “What good is the space program? We’re spending all that money to send people into space, yet we have people starving right here at home.”
It was a good argument but a bit shortsighted. For the space program forced us to develop smaller and better circuitry so that both spacecraft and satellites could work in a vacuum with minimal power. One type of satellite shot into space is of course is the global positioning satellite. By broadcasting its signals, it allows my nüvi to know where it is. It is only relatively recently though that the technology became cheap enough for average people. All that rocketry also indirectly spawned something called ARPAnet, which later became known as the Internet, which I can use to update my nüvi software, or purchase additional services for my GPS.
It is amazing how complacent we are about these modern miracles like the GPS. Yet they truly are magical inventions. These synergistic devices harvest the fruits of many advanced technologies into one device that should truly astound us.
I promise you that I will not worship my GPS. Nor will I call it Jesus, although I may call it Aristotle, for being so wise. Yet for all the many faults of humanity, we can easily overlook our triumphs. A GPS is one of many modern miracles that we can attribute to man. It speaks to the genius and potential that man possesses.
June 23rd, 2008 at 08:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
one comment
Tags: GPSes
Four and a half years ago, I wrote about this new cool technology called RSS. Actually, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was hardly new in December 2003. It was introduced by Netscape in 1999 as “RDF Site Summary”. This original version is now quaintly referred to as RSS 0.91.
The problem in 2003 was that RSS had not caught on. Who really wants to manually check the same web sites periodically for new content when a solution like RSS was available? It took a couple trillion web clicks but eventually users realized this was stupid and inefficient. Instead, web savvy people like me were noisily petitioning content providers to create RSS feeds. Eventually web publishers took notice. They realized the cost of implementation was relatively small, the underlying XML dirt simple to generate and that it could expand their market for minimal cost. Now, it is hard to find any web content provider without news feeds. This blog, for example, is accessible in two RSS formats as well as the Atom 1.0 syndication format. According to Feedburner, approximately thirty of you access my blog via my RSS feed. Thanks for subscribing, by the way.
So RSS has caught on to the point where it is widely available, but it is still not as widely used as it should be. Only about 10% of us web surfers regularly fetch web content through news feeds. I can only speculate on why this is so. I know I often prefer the rich content available on a web site to the relatively dry text that comes through with RSS. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox let you subscribe to a site’s news feed with a couple clicks, providing the site adds appropriate tags to its HTML.
Syndication formats like RSS and Atom thus serve a different purpose than a browser. We visit web sites for the relative ease of finding the depth of information at a site. We subscribe to news feeds because we want its regular content on a small range of specialized topics. Those of us who are religious about reading content via a newsreader know that it is very efficient at aggregating feeds for us. Yet it lacks the breadth of information that is available on the web site. A newsreader does not facilitate curiosity the way a browser does.
Many of us would probably like to subscribe to hundreds of news sources but really do not have time to read all of them, even with the efficiency built into a newsreader. For example, there may be a site that you only want to read quarterly. In addition, these sites may have pertinent information, but much of it may be irrelevant to our needs.
The problems with email are well known. Given the overwhelming amount of spam, it is hard to legitimate email to make it to your inbox. There is never any assurance that you have received all email sent to you. More email than you think gets lost, but much of it probably ends up in spam folders because spam filters generate too many false positives. As dreadful as missing an important email is to us, many of us fear the alternative even more: having to sift through the dozens or hundreds of spam emails we would get daily if we turned off our spam filters.
I have been wondering if RSS might be an effective solution to broadcasting certain kinds of information. Generally you do not have to worry about an RSS feed containing spam, since you typically verify that the site is legitimate by visiting the site. Once you know it is legitimate, you then can add its RSS feed. However, as I noted, unless you are meticulous about using your newsreader on a daily basis, it is easy to lose these timely notifications.
For those feeds where I need certain information, but only sporadically, it would be nice to get an email with the feed content when the feed changes, or when certain keywords appear in the feed. Moreover, when I no longer need to receive a feed from a particular source, it would be nice to have a fast way of unsubscribing from the feed.
As usual, industry is way ahead of me. A simple Google search eventually led me to the RSSReaderLive site, which I have been testing out. You could also choose one of the many other alternatives out there. Among them are RSSFWD, SendMeRSS, and FeedBlitz. FeedBurner also has a notification service. Using RSSReaderLive, the only thing I had to remember is to program my spam filter to let all emails from it go into my inbox automatically. I just have to hope that the email will not end up dropped in some digital bit bucket on its way to my inbox.
As you might expect these services are not necessarily free. You generally have to either pay a small fee for the service or deal with ads in the email. I hope that email clients will get smarter and start polling RSS feeds for you automatically, and include feed items as emails in your inbox. For those who like to diddle with their PCs, there are programs like rss2email that you can install that will act as an RSS to email proxy for you.
I like it when a confluence of standard web technologies (email, the web and newsfeeds) can be leveraged together to solve a problem like this, minor though it may be. It neatly solves the timely broadcast notification dilemma in a way that works for both content providers and consumers.
May 20th, 2008 at 06:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
no comments
Tags: EMail, Internet, Newsfeeds
If you own a horse, you have to let it run regularly. If you own a sports car, you should take it on a racetrack occasionally for the pleasure of being smashed into your seat while you accelerate. Similarly, if you have a high definition television (HDTV), you do not buy it to watch interlaced analog TV signals with only 473 lines of resolution. You want content that will make you appreciate the fact you just spent $699 on a high definition TV.
That is how much we paid for our HDTV. It is an Olevia 37 inch HDTV that comes with more ports and options than we will ever use. Our TV room is small but despite its relatively modest screen size, it still seems enormous to us. The TV it is replacing worked perfectly fine. It is now sitting in our basement queued for a likely donation. While only about seven years old, it was doomed soon after it was bought. The FCC declared that on February 19, 2009 TVs like ours will be obsolete unless we buy a conversion box. Even if we did our picture quality would not have been improved. Neighbors would laugh at us for being so 20th century.
Both our cable provider (Cox Communications) and our phone company (Verizon) have spent years tempting us with their all-digital services. We have our Internet and cable TV service with Cox and an old-fashioned POTS line with Verizon. On a typical month, I pay Cox $93 and Verizon $32. Both Cox and Verizon have been luring us with bundled services. If we bundled all our communications needs with them, we were told, we could save some money.
Verizon has its fiber optic FiOS service. In addition to providing high-speed Internet access, you can also receive a lot of other content, including their version of movies on demand. Cox offers essentially these same services for roughly the same price. How do I know? Well, it is hard to tell. Masters of voodoo marketing are putting together their sales brochures. They excel in obfuscation. Yet they refuse to leave me alone. Roughly once a week I get a solicitation from each company. Typically, they come in the mail, but now and then, they also come attached to my door handle. Verizon has lately been very uppity, sending salespersons to my door to pitch their FiOS service. That was one strike against them; I hate door-to-door salespersons and by implication any company that would send me one. Moreover, I have an unlisted phone number. You would think Verizon would take this as a signal not to call me. You would be wrong. They have given me several calls pitching FiOS. Cox at least has neither knocked on my door nor solicited me over the telephone.
Now that we are HDTV owners it was time to consider their various offerings. As we soon discovered, analog TV on a HDTV looks ridiculous. Either much of the screen is black or if your TV is fancy like ours is, you can put it in a zoom mode. The screen fills up, but suddenly the picture looks fuzzy.
Both Verizon and Cox had mid-tier bundled service packages for $99.99 a month that combined telephone, digital TV and Internet service. At $99.99 a month, either looked like a good deal. Either deal appeared to be about $25 less than we were currently paying. The question became which one to choose? Which was better?
Naturally, both providers claimed they had a superior network, superior content and lower prices. Both though delight in obfuscating the consumer’s real costs. It is almost impossible to determine what you are actually buying and how much the service will cost you. I spent a couple hours on Verizon’s site trying to pick through the details of their bundles. Eventually I gave up. There is probably no way to know for sure without hiring a lawyer to decipher the fine print. Verizon though did have three strikes against them. First, they annoyed me by having salespersons knock on my door and call me unsolicited on the phone. Second, was their stance on network neutrality. Third and probably most importantly, like with their cell phone service if you select one of their bundles they want to lock you in for a couple years. I mean for such a steal as they are giving you they have to make up the difference somehow! I am old fashioned enough to think that if their service is that great it will be obvious to me, so I should not have to be locked into it.
Cox Communications had a few strikes against them too. About a year ago, I inquired about one of their bundles. I asked many questions and I did not like what I heard. I politely said no thanks, not at this time. A few days later one of their digital receivers arrived on my doorstep. That raised my dander. A phone call confirmed that I had not subscribed to their bundle. However, I still had to take an hour out of my life to return the box they sent me. They would not pick it up.
Nevertheless, between their latest brochure, reading their web site and a long conversation on the phone with their sales office, I was able to get a sense of what my bundle would actually cost me. Still, the devil is in the details. Did their $99.99 a month bundle include the rental cost of their digital receiver? Negatory. That was $4.50 a month, so the bundle was really $104.49. Did it include any HD channels? No except for the local HD broadcast signals. However, they did offer 31 HD channels. If I wanted them on top of our digital cable, they were $1.44 a month. What is this free digital tier that comes with the bundle? Apparently, the ones listed in the brochure were incorrect, but I could get the equivalent of their Variety Tier. This is what my wife wanted because she wants to see the latest Torchwood episodes on BBC America. Would there be an installation charge? Not if I install the digital receiver myself. They have to come out to the house to install the telephone interface, but there is no charge for that. Can I get extended local long distance like I have with Verizon? In other words, can I call my father who lives across the Potomac River toll free? No, but you can call the District of Columbia for free. Oh, and to get the bundle you have to choose Cox as your local long distance, long distance and international provider. Long distance rates are fifteen cents a minute, or more than three times what I pay Pioneer Telephone, my current long distance provider. However, this is not much of an issue since we hardly ever call long distance. We do email instead. Moreover, to maintain my unpublished telephone number I have to cough up another $1.71 a month. All totaled with taxes my $99.99 a month bundle would cost me $123.09. Hey, but at least I will only have to cut one check.
In short, I may save a few bucks a month but I will not be supplementing my retirement income with their fabulous bundled savings. On the plus side, we will no longer be stuck with analog TV signals. Digital signals will no longer be interlaced. The picture on these channels will not make them much bigger, but will make the picture smoother. Their 31 HD channels are expected to double soon and there will be no extra fee. We will get channels we do not get now, but that does not mean we are likely to watch them. In addition, as best I can tell I am not locked into a two-year contract.
In fact, the differences between Cox and Verizon are rather marginal, but I chose to go with Cox for these reasons. I may end up regretting my choice. Their eight-hour battery will keep my landline working during a power outage, but what if the outage lasts nine hours? While many of our TV channels will soon be in HD, I am still not sure I will watch any more TV. I largely gave up TV years ago. On the other hand, our daughter will be pleased.
Our next purchase will probably be a Bluetooth compatible DVD player. Apparently, regular DVDs are not good enough for a modern HDTV, which means that we will want to buy some of our favorite DVDs again so we can have a more proper theatrical experience.
Well, someone has to pull this country out of recession.
March 18th, 2008 at 08:40pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
no comments
Tags: Internet, Telephone, Television
Recently I wondered if cash was becoming obsolete. After reading this story in the Washington Post, I get the feeling that America’s oldest public institution, the U.S. Post Office, is nearing obsolescence too.
The milkman became obsolete in the middle of the 20th century. Analog TVs will become collector’s items after February 19, 2009 and most will quickly end up in landfills. The incandescent light bulb is on a ten-year death march, thanks to recent energy legislation signed into law. Why should the U.S. Post Office not see the handwriting on the wall?
There is little doubt about it: the U.S. Post Office survives largely due to the largess of bulk mailers. They just love inundating our mailboxes with junk. If you are like me, virtually all of it goes into the trash. Now consumers want the same freedom from junk mail that they have from telephone solicitors. They are pressing the Post Office and Congress to let this new freedom ring. Since it sounds good for the environment and I hate bulk mail, I know I would be among the first to sign up. Such an action though would untie the Post Office from its financial moorings. It is bad enough for the Post Office that first class mail is drying up. I pay about half of my bills online and I expect that I am one of the technology laggards. Most of my other creditors just have not graduated to the 21st century. These include our lawn service and a number of physicians. I expect they will catch up soon. They will find it is much less expensive to collect money online and wonder why they did not do it years ago.
The personal letter is virtually obsolete. Once upon a time, my siblings and I sent around a chain letter. Since I have many siblings, it took about two months for a new batch of letters to reach you. About ten years ago, at my insistence, we gave it up. What was the point when we all had email addresses? A bimonthly bundle of letters at least had the virtue of making me sit down and write my siblings regularly. Today, we shoot out emails to each other all the time. Yet I can go three or four months before I trade much in the way of actual news. I still have one technologically phobic sister, but her husband does email so he makes sure she gets copies (as in “printouts”) of our emails.
As I remarked a couple years ago, the Christmas card is another tradition that is becoming obsolete. We still send them out, but I am not sure we will this year. Most of my siblings did not bother to send us one last year, but they did send us holiday email newsletters. It certainly was quicker and there was nothing to stamp. It did not quite have that personal feel to it though.
I still “mail” most of my packages through the Post Office, but that is largely from force of habit. My wife typically chooses FedEx. It is not that she chooses them because she needs overnight delivery. She chooses them because they tend to be cheaper than sending packages through the Post Office.
If the Post Office went out of business, magazine publishers would have to adapt. I am not sure they would survive. How would we get our copies of Time, National Geographic and Reader’s Digest? I bet publishers would find a way. Perhaps they would make deals with Starbucks and tell subscribers to pick up their copies there. It is hard to find any community so remote that it does not have a Starbucks. It would also increase their coffee sales, which have been slumping a bit lately. On the other hand, perhaps magazines would use pizza delivery firms. Dominos is also ubiquitous, and their drivers are probably in your neighborhood once a day. They could deliver magazines too, for a small fee.
Increasingly, the whole business model of the U.S. Post Office looks shaky, as evidenced by the expected $1 billion budget deficit this year. Junk mailers (excuse me, “bulk marketers”) pay a hefty premium to clog up your mailbox. I notice that many local businesses avoid using the Post Office. Instead, they work with companies that wrap their fliers inside other fliers, or with local free newspapers that stuff them inside their newspapers. Some companies simply pay people to walk through neighborhoods and leave them on doorsteps or door handles. Even my church is going electronic. It is part of their green strategy. I get my church newsletter in PDF format. They have not yet figured out a way to receive my monthly gift electronically. That will come.
According to the article, the U.S. Post Office is looking at unorthodox ways of paying its bills. If it can get Congress to change the law, you may see a Starbucks in your post office lobby soon. Who knows, maybe there will be a Subway there in time too. My suspicion though is that these are half measures that will not reverse the long-term trend. The Post Office already has gotten periodic bailouts from the government, but it is supposed to be financially independent. I expect that the Post Office will either become like Amtrak and depend on subsidies, or Congress will just pull the plug on this most venerable American institution. It had a good, long ride.
Its death knell may be postponed for a while. The U.S. Post Office still has a few features that cannot yet be met electronically. Email has no guarantee of delivery. Even if the email reaches an inbox, there is no guarantee it will be read. The same is true with junk mail, of course, but at least you have to look at it to determine whether it is a legitimate piece of mail before throwing it in the trash. There is no legal equivalent of registered mail in the email universe. I suspect in time that mail protocols will be upgraded to provide equivalent functionality. Email programs will be required to present the electronic equivalent of registered email. Moreover, since Congress will probably require it, email programs will probably be required to present any unsolicited mail that you agree to be paid to receive. Most of us might supplement our income with revenue from viewing email from bulk marketers. Most likely, our internet service providers will demand a cut of this revenue too. In any event, the financial winner will not be the U.S. Post Office.
Unless, the U.S. Post Office wakes up. About a decade ago, the U.S. Post Office had a program where it offered the electronic versions of registered and certified mail. It quickly went nowhere. It might be an idea worth reviving. If emails sent through the U.S. Post Office network were required to be presented in email boxes of U.S. owned ISPs, both ISPs and computer users would probably sign up because, like registered mail, it would have the odor of being “legitimate” email. For example, if you knew that some email carried a U.S. Post Office digital signature, which meant that the bulk emailer paid the U.S. Post Office for the privilege to send it, you might be inclined to allow such mail through, particularly if you got a small rebate to read the email. Similarly, if you needed assurance that a financial transaction was legally electronically delivered to a creditor on a certain date, you might gladly pay a small fee.
This might be a new business model for a 21st Century U.S. Post Office. Otherwise, I believe it will go the way of the milkman.
March 14th, 2008 at 08:06pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
no comments
Tags: EMail, Post Office
I like to think of myself as a technology pioneer. In real life, more often I am a technology laggard. Take my television. It’s so 20th century. It still runs in analog mode with its mediocre 480 lines of resolution. I know in about a year I will either have to buy a high definition television or a converter box. I do not seem to be rushing to buy a HD TV, although I do plan purchase a set by the end of the year. I did spend the better part of a week last year replacing a door in our entertainment room with drywall. We intend eventually to mount a HD TV in its place. Of course, if like me, you do not watch much TV then there is hardly a compelling reason to go HD TV.
On the other hand, I listen to a lot of radio. Principally I listen to public radio. I am a news junkie, and in the Washington D.C. area where I live, there are excellent public radio stations. Consequently when I heard that my favorite public radio stations were now broadcasting in HD Radio (the HD stands for “Hybrid Digital”, not “High Definition”), and I could get two or three times the number of public radio stations by going HD, my only question was how to get a HD radio. I decided to let my wife do the shopping, and told her to add one to my Christmas wish list.
She succeeded, but finding HD Radios was quite challenging. The local Best Buy had exactly one model, which also came with a host of other features that I did not need like a DVD/CD player. Christmas morning though had me excitedly assembling it and placing it in the windowsill above our kitchen sink. I removed our venerable twenty-year-old G.E. portable radio. I was prepared to be overwhelmed. Instead, I was underwhelmed.
She must have bought a dud. It was not that we could not get a HD radio signal; it was just hard to bring it in any HD signals. When they came in, they quickly dropped off. It also suffered from a number of poor design decisions. The speakers were poorly constructed: high on the bass, low on the treble. It also came with a remote control you had to use to access just about everything. After a couple weeks, I had had enough. I returned it.
I still wanted the promised thrill of HD Radio. I ended up going online and reading reviews for HD radios. I ended up with a Radiosophy HD100 receiver, which with shipping came to about $125. I had never heard of the brand before, so I was a bit suspicious, but it got a decent review. Moreover, unlike the first HD radio this one was light and compact. It fit on a windowsill and did not have separate speakers. To adjust the volume, I turned a knob instead of pressing buttons on a remote. The sound quality was quite good for speakers that were perhaps four inches in diameter. In addition, it was reasonably portable, assuming you did not connect its AM antenna.
One of the surprising things I learned about HD Radio is that it is not just for FM. AM can play in the HD Radio universe too. Four AM radio stations in our area have taken the HD Radio plunge. During daylight hours, they are allowed to broadcast HD Radio signals. Unfortunately, AM HD Radio sounds like FM analog radio. Considering the low fidelity we have come to expect on AM, it is a huge improvement. Still, it does not quite sound high fidelity. This is because its signal tops out at 15,000 Hz. Moreover, when the sun goes down it reverts to the 10 kilohertz telephone quality sound that now seems hopelessly dated.
On FM, it can take 5-10 seconds for my radio to detect and lock into a station’s HD radio signals. In the meantime, you hear the regular FM analog signal on the default Channel 1. If your HD Radio is tuned to Channel 2 or 3, there is a period of silence before you can hear the channel.
We live about 15 miles from the center of Washington D.C. You would think that I would be plenty close enough to get high quality HD Radio signals. Yet that does not seem to be the case. Perhaps HD Radio cannot broadcast digital signals as far. All I know is that sometimes just walking around my kitchen will make the signal will disappear; I must be causing signal interference. After a time it will pick up the signal again. I think this will be disconcerting to many radio listeners.
What HD Radio needs are compliant radios that fit into a shirt pocket or snap onto your belt. Apparently, some models are in the works but they are experimental. HD Radios so far have much higher power requirements than regular radios. Considering the signal problems I have, I am dubious as to how well these radios will work in places that I frequent, like the health club or when riding on the W&OD bike trail.
We have three principle public radio stations: WAMU, WETA and WCSP. WAMU and WSCP have three channels each. WETA, which broadcasts classical music, has just the one channel, but it is HD. This is good because when I am in a classical music mood, the fidelity of HD Radio compared with FM radio is both quite noticeable and much appreciated. WCSP is C-SPAN radio, which means it broadcasts three times as much public affairs radio as before. Much of it though is not terribly interesting. Channel 2 is just the audio portion of C-SPAN television, and Channel 3 is the audio portion of C-SPAN 2. WAMU offers Bluegrass on Channel 2. Since I am not a Bluegrass fan, I do not listen. Channel 3 tends to be shows that are broadcast on Channel 1, but at different times. This means there is not much original content on Channel 3 as you might assume. However, Channel 3 also has a fair amount of BBC radio programming. It is nice to be able to pick up the BBC on the FM frequencies.
HD Radio is a large improvement over what we have become accustomed to hearing, but it cannot begin to offer the degree of listening experiences available on satellite radio. Of course, unlike Sirius and XM satellite radio, you do not have to subscribe to listen.
I will keep listening to HD Radio but I suspect over time I will migrate to satellite radio. With prices as low as $10 a month and with so many more channels, most of them commercial free, satellite radio probably offers a better overall value.
February 25th, 2008 at 08:22pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
4 comments
Tags: HD Radio
In my wallet is a bunch of crumpled greenbacks. In my pants pocket is a change purse bursting with loose change. Having cash in my pockets is as natural to me as fetching my newspaper in the morning.
Only fewer people are fetching newspapers these days. Instead, they are reading them online. The same thing may be happening with the greenback. While cash continues to feed a huge underground economy, (drug dealers just don’t take credit cards) for many of us cash is becoming unnecessary.
My daughter Rosie is this way. Her wallet is usually has no cash in it. In fact, she does not usually carry a wallet. Instead, she carries a little metal box for her handful of cards and documents. Since she got her checkcard a year or so back, except for an occasional bus fare, she has simply not needed cash. Every place she buys from has the ubiquitous card reader by the register. There is no pocketful of coins in her purse. One slim checkcard seems to be all that she needs.
I would say that she is the future but I think she is the here and now for those 25 and younger. (She is 18.) Money is becoming wholly abstract. I open my wallet and know with a quick glance how much I can afford for lunch. You see, the cafeteria in my building only takes cash, and ordinarily that is the only place where I still need cash. I cannot imagine the hassle of paying for gas with cash anymore. In fact, in many stores, cashiers are becoming obsolete. That is because they can save money by making you bag your own stuff at their fully automated registers. Moreover, since you are in a hurry, you are unlikely to stuff twenties into their bill machine. Slide your debit card in the slot, touch a few keys, get your receipt and you are out of there. It may not have that personal touch, but it is expeditious.
These days, I even use my ATM card to buy movie tickets. This is more due to the higher price of movie tickets than anything else is. Point in fact: virtually everything costs more. Hauling around change is becoming a pointless hassle. I am always getting pennies I neither need nor want. I religiously contribute them to the give a penny, take a penny jar by most cash registers. I do not want the hassle of hauling them around. My strategy does not seem to work very well. If it is not pennies, it is nickels, dimes and quarters instead. Of course, if you pay electronically, you do not have this particular hassle.
Granted, there are some drawbacks with using electronic money. One is that it is hard to keep track of how much money is left on an account. Yet my daughter does not consider this a drawback. When curious she goes online and checks her bank balance. She has no charge card so all of her transactions are on her debit/checkcard. Most debits these days clear within hours. She thinks my obsession with using check registers is rather quaint. In fact, if you download your transactions from your bank into a financial package like Quicken, you can see where your money went easily enough. It is generally easier to do this than to type them into a computer.
My daughter has a point, but then her financial life is very simple. She has no debts at all. So she does not have to worry about whether she is overdrawn. Me, I want a more intelligent card. It needs to be a smart card. Every time I make a transaction, it should store it on the card and keep my current balance on it. Ideally, it would recognize my fingerprint. When I pressed my fingerprint on it, it would tell me my balance and give me a way to scroll through my recent transactions. I keep waiting for a device like this but even though I wrote about this several years back, it is still not here. At least it is not available here in the States.
I am starting to realize that after our cafeteria remodeling is finished this summer, I will only need cash on the rare occasion that I use the toll road. Moreover, I really do not need it to pay cash for tools either, if I could get off my ass and get an E-ZPass.
One benefit of cash that I might miss if I were younger is its anonymity. The government should not be snooping into my financial transactions but I have a feeling they are doing it anyhow. Cash is a great way to hide certain transactions. Until we reach an age when we do not care, most of us men prefer to buy that latest copy of Hustler with cash. Should I be inclined to take some woman who is not my wife to a NoTel Motel, I probably would not charge it to my Visa either.
I have a feeling though that soon all our financial lives will be transparent. Cash is going the way of the horse and buggy. Soon we will be saving greenbacks so we can show our kids how money used to work. They will no doubt give us incredulous looks. Cyberspace is not real. Why should money be real? Besides, just how real is paper money? All it is is a government promissory note. The government is asserting that the face value of the money is worth what it says. It is not as if you cannot take it to your local Federal Reserve Bank and get gold bullion for it.
If we must go cashless, so be it. However, at least give us intelligent debit and credit cards. I realize that credit card companies in particular would fight this idea. They would prefer to keep us ignorant of how much we are spending. Someday though the Treasury Department will decide that printing all those greenbacks and minting all those coins is truly unnecessary in today’s modern world. Then maybe they will insist that banks and credit card companies give us all the sort of smart cards we need to make a cashless society useful.
Smugglers and dope pushers will not be happy of course. I have confidence though that they could find a way to circumvent any system that is created. People are ingenious when it comes to making a profit. In the unlikely event that we could not create an electronic system opaque to such transactions, I at least will not shed any tears. The benefits of going cashless are now obvious to me. It just needs a few tweaks so it will be obvious to all of us.
February 6th, 2008 at 09:49pm
Posted by
Mark |
Technology |
one comment
Tags: Money
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