Category: Tech

Supertech!

Sometimes I think the best part of my post-college working life was seeing the incredible advances in technology from the inside of the high-tech industry. I marvel every day at what’s now available to consumers for next to nothing compared to 25 years ago, when I first accessed the Internet from home with a DOS/Windows 3.x computer that, with add-ons, cost $2000, which is equivalent to $3500 today.

For only $100 you can buy a 10-inch tablet with an HD screen, and for another twenty bucks add a Bluetooth keyboard and turn it into very workable desktop computer. 25 years ago that would translate into a measly $70. Some of the new keyboards even include a built-in bracket for holding the tablet, but I’m using an old wire book holder and, no, I still don’t have a smartphone. Those things are expensive!

Jukebox Joy

It’s alive! After replacing the belts in my 18-year-old Sony CD 300-disc carousel I was frustrated by a skipping problem. I’d been using an otherwise idle Panasonic DVD player for CD’s, but I missed having the changer.

So, with my Trustee duties mostly completed, and having lots of free time in retirement, I took one more stab at fixing the skipping and succeeded, with a couple of Q-tips and some silicone lubricant. It’s working perfectly in every way, once again. Yay for me!

An old PS2-type computer keyboard is used to enter text for CD’s that don’t include CD Text and, alas, none of the CD’s I stuffed into the changer offer CD Text. As mentioned in the previous post, the forward-sounding Sony is different than the more reserved Panasonic, but I like the strong bass.

H I A B L M

Gary Lockwood as the ill-fated Frank Poole

I’m back on Watch TCM, except it’s only a computer screen this time, not the projector, and I’m in AZ, not MA. I never tire of seeing “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Even 50 years later, it’s a stunning achievement.

Keir Dullea as the ?-fated David Bowman

In a recently discovered interview with Stanley Kubrick, he revealed the original concept behind the “Star Child” evolution of Dave Bowman. Although Arthur C. Clarke’s name isn’t mentioned, he most certainly was involved with how the enigmatic conclusion of the movie is presented.

The closest that IBM has come so far in creating a real HAL computer is its Watson system, which performed so well on Jeopardy!, defeating both Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The decision was made by IBM to devote Watson to medical intelligence, but that hasn’t worked out as hoped, and there have been a lot of layoffs.

Speaking of computers being used for medical records — which was how I made my living for 36 years — one of the earliest visionaries in the field, Dr. Warner Slack, died a couple of weeks ago.

A Turner Original

As I prepare yet again to return once more to Phoenix to do Trustee work, I have TCM’s streaming video app running on an Amazon Fire TV stick. After an extended rough start, with annoyingly choppy playback, TCM has the technology figured out, and its streaming service works great. It’s now in HD, so it doesn’t matter that the station is in SD on my Verizon FiOS TV service. What matters is I have the channel in my cable package, and that gives me access to the streaming service.

Almost two years ago this was my plan for TV watching in retirement on the porch, when I returned one of my two cable boxes and replaced it with an over-the-air TiVo DVR. It’s finally all working as it should, and as of this month the TiVo DVR has paid for itself.

This weekend I watched two MGM favorites from the 50’s — “Forbidden Planet” and “North by Northwest” — and they played perfectly. Not having a Blu-ray copy of either movie, I was knocked out by the picture quality on Watch TCM. “High Society” is playing right now, but I’d better turner it off, as Grace Kelly has always been very distracting to me, and I have a lot to do on this 4th of July!

Facelift

I recently saw a shorter version of this video played as a commercial at the AMC Surprise Pointe 14 theater in Arizona. It’s the sort of public relations message that a corporation produces as damage control when it sees the potential for serious, perhaps permanent, harm to the company.

My first thought was that a lot of what’s said in the video borders on being patronizing, in particular the Data Science Manager’s chart of The World of False News. But then I decided that these people, who are undoubtedly extremely well paid, are sincerely struggling to figure out what they’re doing.

The catch is that in any company everything comes down from the top, and I do not believe that Mark Zuckerberg has a sincere interest in cleaning up his mess. The only thing that will scare him straight is a mass exodus of users.

Today it’s being reported that Facebook’s secret sharing of user data goes much further than previously revealed. Like the Haight-Ashbury Hippie Movement in San Francisco that started out optimistically with the Human Be-In, only to crash and burn during the strung-out Summer of Love, Facebook has turned into a bad trip.