Present Shock – Will Technology Destroy Us?
Posted: 11 January 2012 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: Alvin Toffler, capitalism, Deus Ex game, Future Shock, G+, Google+, greed, medical technology, privacy, technology 6 CommentsIn 1970, Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock, wherein he speculates that we are being overwhelmed by the rapid changes in technology and society.
I was nine years old in 1970. We were guzzling .29 cent a gallon highly leaded gasoline and making calls on heavy bakelite rotary dialed telephones; many of us sharing party lines. Here we are a scant 40 years later and folks are walking around wearing phones in their ears or carrying around hand-held devices that only science fiction writers had the foresight to dream up back then. Where is this headed, and do we really want to go there as a species?
Technology is a wonderful thing, but like all wonderful things, men have a tendency to twist it to their own means. Einstein once said, “Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal.” This reminds me of another great quote, from 1970, coincidentally: Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly stated, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” This is a blog about technology, or one specific area of it, anyway. Maybe this article will make you think a bit about this subject.
To me, technology, like a handgun, is neither good nor evil. It just is. What is good or evil depends on how it’s used. The human race has access to absolutely amazing things these days. We have an emerging noosphere in the form of the Internet. What I wonder about is how all this technology and knowledge will be used. What’s it going to be like in another 40 years or so? Will we still be here?
The Doomsday Clock was moved up a minute recently as a result of stalled nuclear arms reductions, unsafe nuclear power plants, and climate change. That’s the least of our troubles. While technology provides jobs, improves our lives, brings us pleasure, enables instant contact with each other; there are entities out there in the corporate word bleeding every shred of data from us to use for their own means.
Privacy? This is quite possibly a thing of the past. We like to think we still have our privacy, but the reality is that Big Bro and everyone else willing to pay for it can gain access to every tidbit of data about us out there right now. I read today that Google is now going to include G+ data into the search stream when folks go there to search for something. Hmm… I always knew G+ was a means to an end. There’s a saying going around these days regarding free online services. I don’t know who first said it, but it’s disturbingly accurate. “If you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product.”
Where is this all heading?
Let’s talk about the medical field for a moment. We have pacemakers, manufactured joints, prostheses, etc. This form of technology is exploding at an amazing pace. In a few years, I wouldn’t doubt there there will be augmentations available similar to the ones in the game Deus Ex. I wrote a review of the latest game in that series earlier at Nocturnal Slacker v2.0. While the game is fun and the story is intriguing, the possibilities for abuse, as shown in that game, are terrifying. I’m 50 years old. I may still live to see something like this in the near future. Your grandkids will, for sure.
Speculating on the future is no one’s strong suit, really. It’s much too unpredictable because man is often an unpredictable animal. We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, though, you can make a difference in how the future turns out by staying informed, choosing leaders who you believe will make the right decisions for our future as a species, and standing up for your rights. Don’t let the greedy few trample the lives of the rest of us.
I’ll close now before I start into a angry diatribe regarding unrestrained capitalism and greed.
Whoops! See what I mean? 😉
Later…
~Eric
Dennis Ritchie
Posted: 27 November 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: C programming language, Dennis Ritchie, in memoriam 2 CommentsDon’t know him? You should.
Click the picture below and learn who Dennis was…
R.I.P. Dennis. You will always be remembered.
Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On
Later…
~Eric
Stop Online Piracy Act (U.S.) – SOPA
Posted: 17 November 2011 Filed under: Internet Privacy, Tech General | Tags: censorship, free exchange, freedom, government intrusion, Internet, knowledge 3 CommentsThis is something every one who uses the Internet and values free exchange of knowledge and information should know about.
Get involved. Write your elected officials. Pass out flyers. Post articles on your own blogs. Censorship of the Internet could spell doom for the way of life that we’ve come to know and cherish.
Read about this at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Read about it at Tumblr.
Read about it at AmericanCensorship.Org.
Don’t let them turn the lights out on us. Don’t let them restrict how we participate online. Don’t let them limit your rights to the free exchange information and knowledge in ANY way.
Raise HELL!
~Eric
Google Television?
Posted: 28 October 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: data mining, Google+, Internet television, privacy concerns 2 CommentsGoogle takes another shot at the TV market…
via Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:23pm EDT
The Internet search engine unveiled a revamped version of its Google TV service on Friday, bringing new features aimed at making the product easier-to-use and more appealing to consumers.
Remember folks, if you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product when it comes to companies like Google. Oh boy! I can hardly wait… TV that watches you while you’re watching it. 😉 Just what the world needs.
Read the rest of Alexei Oreskovic’s article HERE.
Later…
~Eric
Browser Testing
Posted: 27 September 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: benchmarks, browsers, Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, testing Leave a commentCheck out the interesting results from this Lifehacker article:
Firefox 7 is set to be released today, and with a big focus on performance, we thought it time for another round of browser speed test. We pitted the four most popular Windows browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab-loading times, JavaScript powers, and memory usage, with some surprising results.
OK, so it’s a Windows ONLY test. Still, pretty interesting.
Results:
- Opera 11.51: 82%
- Firefox 7: 73%
- Internet Explorer 9: 47.5%
- Chrome 14: 43%
Opera is a damned good browser. Always was. It doesn’t get the respect it deserves, though.
Later…
~Eric
Carla Schroder On the Cloud
Posted: 23 September 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: Carla Schroder, cloud, cloud computing, consumer, customer, greed, mega corp, security 2 CommentsThis woman tells it like it is. Bravo, Carla!
Carla says:
The problem with all this cloud nonsense is it’s exactly that–nonsense. Hosted services are nothing new. What would be new and radical and transformative are attractive products reasonably-priced, and good customer service.
Hear! Hear! As most of my loyal readers know, I’m not fan of the cloud. It’s a large cistern of feces (for you less ejoomacated folks – a crock of shit). It’s just another way for some mega corp to bleed you of your hard earned $ by teasing you with wonderful cloud services. Yeah… right.
Carla speaks about cloud security:
Not only that, but is there anyone who can claim bragging rights to good security, and protecting customer’s data from intrusions? Anyone?
HAHA! Yeah… sure. It’s secure. Just trust us with all yer data. We’ll take care of it fer ya’. Yup! Remember Yuri?
Read the rest of Carla Schroder’s rant. It’s a good one.
Cloud this!
Later…
~Eric
Hackers, Crackers, Phone Line Jackers?
Posted: 8 September 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: cracking, famous hackers, hacking, phreaking 5 CommentsBlack hat down: What happened to the world’s most famous hackers?
Here’s an interesting little article by Sebastian Anthony from ExtremeTech.
Excerpt:
Hackers can be any shape, size, color, and creed, but they are all graced with a level of mental acuity that mere mortals simply do not possess. Physically, they are rarely exceptional. Philosophically and morally, they can vary from ultra-conservative to bleeding-heart liberal. Even by nature and nurture, there is no obvious way to discern whether someone will become a hacker or not.
But there is something that sets hackers apart from normal people. Hackers see things differently, and they tend to have a very different view of how the world and its constituent parts are put together. Instead of merely accepting something as true or workable or ideal, a hacker needs to know the why; a hacker needs to tear the construct apart until he can look upon the constituent parts and decide for himself how and why it works — or, as the case may be, why it doesn’t work.
Check it out. It’s a good read. 🙂
Enjoy!
~Eric
Browsers… a Wee Bit Off the Beaten Path
Posted: 5 September 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: browsers, Composer, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Seamonkey 11 CommentsTired of those mainstream browsers like Firefox and Chrome in Linux? You have other options, folks.
I’m going to briefly talk about a couple of my favorite options here today. Let’s get started, shall we?
Opera Browser
From a Wikipedia article about Opera’s history:
The history of the Opera web browser began in 1994 when it was started as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995…
I’ve had Opera on my systems for a dozen years. I used it in Windows 98SE and XP. I’ve used it in Slackware, Debian, Arch, etc. for the past 6 years or so. Granted, it is installed as a secondary browser because Firefox is actually my primary browser. That being said, though, Opera is by no means to be thought of as inferior to Firefox. Opera has always been a high quality application from a dedicated company. The browser has many modern features. Some of its original ideas were “borrowed” for other browsers like IE and FF over the years. Opera has been an innovator in the browser field.
Opera has a lot of features that make browsing the Internet a joy. It’s stable, safe, and very secure. For much more information, check out Opera Browser’s website. Download it. Give it a test drive. You might like it a lot. It never hurts to have it on your system as a backup browser.
Seamonkey
What exactly is a sea monkey? Well, I dunno. However, I do know what a Seamonkey is. It’s my favorite backup browser on any operating system. A few eons ago, there was a browser known as Netscape Navigator. It ruled the Internet. There were no competitors in sight back then. Nothing is king of the hill forever, though. Along came a browser called Internet Explorer from a company called Microsoft, and Netscape’s days were numbered. That’s all ancient Internet history, though. Today, were here to learn a bit about a direct descendent of the Netscape Navigator browser. It’s called Seamonkey.
For someone like me, who uses Mozilla’s Firefox browser as my primary means to navigate the World Wide Web, Seamonkey is like an old and comfortable pair of shoes. FF and Seamonkey are cousins, you might say. Hence, they have a certain resemblance. If you like to customize your browsers like I do, you’ll find that Seamonkey is almost as customizable as Firefox. Many of your favorite FF extensions also work on Seamonkey. It’s also stable and renders webpages very well; using the same Gecko engine that FF uses.
One added feature that I love is Composer. It’s a full-featured WYSIWYG editor and webpage publisher application. Back in my Windoze daze, I used an app called MS Publisher to create custom HTML pages for different purposes. Nowadays, I use Composer. It’s a fabulous app, and comes free right along with the Seamonkey browser. For those of you using Linux who remember or have used KompoZer or Nvu before that, you’ll love Composer. It will look very familiar to you.
Give Seamonkey a try. I bet you’ll keep it on your system just for Composer, if for no other reason. However, even without Composer, it’s a fabulous little browser… fast, stable, easy on resources.
Have fun!
~Eric
Image credits: Opera logo owned by Opera Software. Seamonkey logo owned by Mozilla Foundation.
Head In the Clouds (Revisited)
Posted: 31 August 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: cloud computing, dumb terminal, hacking, information leaks, personal data, personal information, security Leave a commentHead In the Clouds?
More twaddle from the crotchety old geek, who needs to get with the program here. Or does he?
OK, here’s the scenario… Mr. Honor N. Integrity decides that he’s going to offer a service to folks. He prints up some flyers, places a few ads here and there, and rents a big safe that he has delivered to his new office in the strip mall on Mercantile St. You can’t miss him. 
He’s right in between Joanie’s Retro Punk Dress Shop and Bubba’s Jailhouse Tattoos.
So, what service is Mr. Integrity offering? Well, lemme tell ya’ about it. For a nominal fee, Mr. Integrity is going to take possession of your wallet or purse, your personal papers, your childrens’ personal papers, your partially finished draft of that really cool detective novel you’re writing, grandma’s will, and weird uncle bob’s tinfoil hat designs. He’s going to catalog them and store them in that big safe for safekeeping. You can have access to it any time, as long as the electronic lock on the safe isn’t being updated or oiled. Cool, huh? Yeah… right.
This, folks, is pretty much what the newest craze in the techie world is all about. It’s called cloud computing. What happens when you’re computing in the cloud? You’re sitting at home in front of what has basically devolved into a dumb terminal. All your applications, games, personal data, pictures, illegally ripped MP3s, copies of weird uncle bob’s tinfoil hat designs, etc. are stored on a server owned by Megaputer, Inc.*, a wholly owned subsidiary of ShadowSystems, LLC*, located in Bangladesh.
You’ve paid your yearly subscription fee for this service. You’ve read the TOS and EULAs. You have spoken with support tech “Steve” in New Delhi, India about the Super-Dooper Ver. 5.2 security system they have installed on their servers. You’re comfortable with all this. Good for you, you dummy. I bet you’re the same type who believes everything the doctor tells you without even the slightest need to question him.
Here you go… you sit if front of your system with the intention of banging out a couple chapters of that detective novel tonight. You’re at a really good part with lots of shooting and stuff. You fire up your dumb terminal and navigate using your Megaputer 
browser to your login screen so you can access YOUR STUFF. Oopsy! Page Not Found. Whaddya’ gonna’ do now, hmm? Call Steve in New Delhi, huh? OK. Steve tells you that the server is down for maintenance, but the real fact of the matter is that a 13 year old cracker named Yuri Titov has won a 1000 ruble bet with his buddy Vasily by breaking the Super-Dooper Ver 5.2 security system. COOL, huh? By the way, Yuri stole all your illegal MP3s and uncle Bob’s tinfoil hat designs. Hope you had those patented.
Sorry folks, computing in the clouds just ain’t for this old geek. I want MY STUFF on MY SYSTEM. Y’all are free to make your own choices.
Until next time… remember, doctors fork up too.
~Eric
*These are fictitious companies created 100% within the warped mind of the author. Any resemblance to real companies like Google, IBM, or Microsoft is purely in YOUR own head.
Additional reading:
Linux on the cloud: IBM, Novell, and Redhat – ComputerWorld
Cloud Computing – Infoworld
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This article originally published on my Nocturnal Slacker | Lockergnome blog. You can click HERE to read it there along with the original comments.
A Closet Misanthrope’s View of Online Social Networking
Posted: 17 July 2011 Filed under: Tech General | Tags: Chris Pirillo, Facebook, Google+, messengers, MySpace, RTTY, social networking, stream, Twitter, USENET 12 CommentsUp until recently, my experiences with online social networking were limited to the rare messenger conversation or occasional IRC chat.
Since the beginning of my Internet life, I’ve leaned more toward the post/reply model of online communications; such as boards, forums, USENET newsgroups, etc. When MySpace first came online, I thought it to be silly, juvenile narcissism. My feelings toward MySpace carried over to the Facebook and Twitter crowd, once those became the “in” thing online. I mean, c’mon… follow along with Ashton Kutcher‘s daily escapades? It was obvious to this middle-aged (damn…it’s weird calling myself “middle-aged”) semi-misanthropic biker that these newfangled online things were mainly for the young attention-deficit-disordered crowd.
Hmm… well. I may have to change my views on this now. I’m man enough to stand up and admit when I’m wrong. I just don’t get much opportunity to do that since I’m rarely wrong. That being said, online social networking may actually have value for all folks out there, not just the hormonal yutes of the world. I can see the potential of the technology. I can understand now that there is a whole new world out there for young folks, old folks, business, hobbyists, technologists, educators, journalists, alien invaders, hackers, spammers, data miners, and even you.
You may have read about my previous articles HERE and HERE regarding my recent foray into the realm of online social networking; specifically, Google+. Well, I’ve been at it now for about ten days. The first couple days’ worth of my time there was utilized mostly for feeling my way around the place and looking for folks to put into my “circles”. Once I got that all squared (or circled) away, it was on to the actual interacting part of the show. Social intercourse with other human beings from all over the world. Wow! What a concept! Beats the hell out of smoke signals or snail mail, huh?
There is a trick to enhancing your enjoyment of social networking on sites like Google+ (G+ for short). You need to have communicative and intelligent people, with whom you share some common interests, in your circles. Why? Simply because you need them to provide you with that steady flow (the Stream) of data that becomes your focus on these social sites. What is this “stream”, you might be asking? Well, if you’re my age or older, you can think of it as that steady rat-tat-tat of the old RTTY (radio teletype) machines tapping out reams of incoming data onto that tractor-fed paper roll. Or if you don’t remember those days, you can think of the stream as the news ticker that runs along the bottom (or top) of some modern cable news channels. The stream is the heart of your online social network. It’s where the action is.
If you have fun, smart, prolific posters, like Chris Pirillo for instance, in your circles in G+, you’ll have a steady stream of interesting and entertaining (and often very useful) data to read. If all you have in your circles is old uncle Bob, the retired carnival barker who can only access the Internet for 1 hour every three days from his cell in prison, then you’ll probably be pretty starved for decent stream data. Find those interesting folks. That’s half the fun of social networking. Whether you’re looking for celebs or scientists, chances are they’re on G+ (or Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Oh, and don’t forget to share. In other words, be sociable. Post replies to other posters in the stream. Post your own stream posts. Post pictures, music, tales of your latest bar-hopping spree, whatever… Sharing. That’s what social networking is all about. You don’t just want to be one of the quiet crowd hiding in your dark computer room and laughing to yourself about Chris Pirillo’s latest animated .gif posting. You want to be out there with the rest of those folks having fun!
Don’t be shy now.;)
See you on Google+…
~Eric
Nocturnal Slacker v1.0 