Have to admit that I have resisted Chrome though I loaded it up long ago along with Safari, which Apple forces on one when you have an iPad. But today Explorer blew a gasket, I think because its really out of date and can’t handle the new IP address system. I’m still on XP on this computer (heck I’d be on 2000 if I had my druthers.)
Anyway, I’m uploading my latest Novel to Smashwords and I’m waiting to see if I pass the great Meatgrinder approval check first try.
Private space flight becoming mainstream
Ability for a person of moderate means to buy tools to build almost anything
Quantum effects erase the speed of light barrier
Ability to design materials down to the atomic level
Personal communication between any two people anywhere on earth with minutes if not seconds
What of the above was not science fiction a decade ago…well maybe the last, but it was definitely sci fi twenty years ago.
We live in an age of wonders…we just don’t always appreciate it.
Surprising how many Monty Python lines really have something to say. I used to be able to watch the movies, but not any more, but the individual vignettes in the movies, and the show….priceless.
I will try to do better in the coming weeks.
Cheers
Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club [Jesuit Influenced arch Futurist Conservative] had a piece on M.Daisey and the comparison with the treatment (in the ‘media’) of R.Limbaugh. in that piece he referred to a new york times CampaignStops Blog article by Stanley Fish… Two Cheers for Double Standards…I thought I’d misread or mis understood the quote Mr.Fernandez used, I read the article, here is the last paragraph:
I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.
This article glorifies the degradation of the polis that was so clearly pointed out in this article I blogged about only yesterday!
The trouble is that I see no road forward that does not lead down at this time. I am always a short term pessimist long term optimist and I see there are new highlands in our reach. But right now we seem headed into the goup with a long slog to the trails up.
As far as I can see the whole mess with Mike Daisey is the common American confusion between celebrity and profundity. The Wikipedia entry above starts out :
“Mike Daisey (born 1976) is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues…”
And that sums it up, he’s not a reporter, does not purport to be one and yet his monologuing is taken as a serious expose of Apple’s factories in China. The whole problem is that NPR got confused about what they had, it was in some ways not even Daisey’s fault…until he denied any fault as with so many things today, “..it wasn’t the break in it was the coverup…” inept spinning.
Now Apple knows that its old core and even its younger adherents are biased to the progressive/lefty “down with capitalism” side. Apple is also forced to build their products in China these days, they could not keep their products in the painfully but not prohibitively expensive category otherwise. They will not purposely turn a blind eye to abuses at their Chinese factories, especially as they know that they are likely to depend on Chinese customers for a lot of growth in the not too distant future.
Victor Russell Mead at Via Media has the best overall take on the Daisey mess, I won’t go into it any more.
However thinking about Apple and China does bring up other issues about manufacturing and the outsourcing of said. Two Questions of Apple:
And the answer is the same in both case. Apple has an extremely short product cycle most of the time and tries to keep their products under wraps until the last second. They use a very deep supplier base on the Asian shore to the fullest extent, the parts are cheaper and more available there, and Apple parcels the parts out so its hard for their competitors to figure out what’s coming until the last month or so before introduction. Final assembly of many gadgets is the most labor intensive part of the process and the hardest to automate, it can be done but if you are only going to build the product for a couple of years then completely rejigger why put the capital into a fixed site? And its the Social IP of how you design and proof out a product like the iPad in a very short time that is the secret sauce as much as anything else. And that IP the IP of the Apple way, the Apple Corporate Society, that gives them the edge, and its not one that anyone can copy easily. The whole infrastructure of design spin, parting out, having multiple products at various levels of development at one time, and staying mum, that keeps Apple ahead, their competitor’s head’s spinning and the Apple paparazzi merrily dancing in trail.
From Keith DuQuette’s The LeftyBosco Picture Show, Jem, is like so many of Mr. DuQuette’s portraits, leaves one wanting to meet them, and remembering better times. Always a flash of warmth.
An update from TechnologyReview regarding the Qualcom Mirasol based products. Only in 5.3″ and all obviously based on the same hardware platform right now. 5.3″ is more in line with Asian tastes than US so it makes sense to focus there first The long hang time (4 years from first hoopla) and small size indicate issues with the manufacturing technology, but nothing helps ManTech more than going to volume. Hopefully 7, 9 and 11 inch units will follow soon.
iPad, Pandora App
I’ve said it before but want to reiterate that Pandora + iPad have made a deeper impact on how I live my life more quickly than any other technology change. And in some ways that change is more ‘SciFi-ish’ than any other change I have experienced.
Don’t get me wrong other things have had more impact but they were much more profound in and of themselves.
How can I even compare two pieces of Triviachology like the iPad and Pandora you ask?
Well I have worked from home a significant amount of time since 1997 and I have very consciously tried to limit the amount of paper I generate and find ways to get information in electronic rather than paper form. I have felt that the eReader was going to reach takeoff eventually and while the pundits always poo poohed it I saw a steady decrease in the Paper load in the engineering world probably a leading edge in the utilization of information that had made it paper heavy for a very long time. When the piles on young and not so young engineers desks began to collect dust I figured it was because they weren’t shuffling through them so often any longer because the primary sources were in electronic not paper form. The paper was for reference and for making notes on (BtW Paper / print / writing / reading is a fantastic intricate and powerful technology if you stop for a moment to think about it.)
Now I can carry around a single small compact rugged and handsome slab of Al and Glass that is book, magazine, note taking device (typing or hand writing, I take copious ‘ink’ notes on my iPad, Check out the Penultimate app if you want to try it.) calculator with some of the calculators capable of solving and displaying very complex systems of equations (MathStudio or SymCalc HD) and I do some quite complex artwork for fun and other purposes using ArtStudio. I load a lot of papers and other tech pups (pdf) onto my iPad (iBooks) so I can read them at my leisure.
Now the iPad is no replacement for a laptop (for me.) But unlike many commentators I do not see that as anything but a special case. It is a fabulous adjunct, extender, even amplifier, but I see it as a reasonable laptop replacement for certain users, especially those who are more interested in consumption than creation. To be honest I think the combination of an iPad and a smart TV may be all that an even larger cadre of users need. But that does not denigrate the iPad as a consumption device, it’s an adjunct amplifier to your digital life, that can be a replacement under certain limited circumstances.
So…there you go the iPad as significant life changer, what about Pandora?
Well here my story is a bit weaker and it’s really the combination of Pandora and the iPad and to an extent Netflix streaming service. And let me tell you right now that I hate TV’s in the bedroom and my wife is addicted to the BBC versions of many US TV procedural cop shows..and insistes on watching them (on her iPad) late at night if she can’t get to sleep……I must have been bad in a very twisted way in some previous life…! Anyway Pandora in itself was a revelation, as I have said before it mix of being able to select music you like and then let it go off and find things similar in ‘feeling’ has opened me up to huge swaths of music I had never heard before. Add that to the ability to have that music with me most of the time with the iPad and one can feel a bit like one is living in a movie with your own sound track, though I found this soundtrack doesn’t do a good job of foreshadowing the next scene. And even though I curse Netflix fairly regularly it is nice to be able to browse in ‘the long tail’ of shows, see things I never had a chance to watch, like BBC’s Primeval, or some Nova or History Channel programs.
So while those two services are not responsible for as profound a change as the iPad is in itself, added to the iPad they are a very profound change in my and my family’s habits…and as one would expect not always for the good.
iPad Netflix App
You are the co-star of The LeftyBosco Picture Show. In a variety of styles and subjects, from playful to poignant, Keith DuQuette, aka LeftyBosco, presents a drawing a day. Daily drawings by Keith DuQuette engage, inspire and challenge you to add your witty and wise comments. Play along with LeftyBosco and his friends – or have fun watching from the sidelines. The punch line starts here.
Another use for a robot, inspecting for bombs etc, this is the general-robotics Ferret. I find the name of the company interesting it’s turned up in SciFi forever, following General Electric, General Motors, General Mills, General Atomic, etc, etc, it became a claim on greatness then a cliche. The parent company is in electrooptics and it’s influence can be seen in the video glasses. Does not take away from a great idea. I wonder if the inventor was watching his Rumba vacuum under the couch when he had the flash?
This World and Others 