TOPS

No, I’m not a blog dropout. I don’t have many readers, but some of you may have noticed that I skipped posting last week and am several days late this week. Sometimes, life just gets in the way of all our best intentions! I actually had to choose paying work over the fun of blogging, and this being tax time, guess which direction I went!

So this weekend, I am catching up on my tech reading which always inspires my tech (or not so tech) blogging. On weeks I am able to keep up, I usually closely scan about a half dozen tech magazines. Some of the information is very technical and makes my brain freeze, but usually I am able to glean thoughts and trends and tidbits that I think are interesting enough to share. Since I got behind on everything including my blogging and reading, I have a lot of notes, so bear with me. We may have to cover this over a two week period! Let’s get right to it.

Vista has been out for a little over three months now. The biggest problems (no real surprise here) are the lack of drivers for older hardware and the compatibility problem with older apps. Specifically, owners of many large format printers and industry specific software such as AutoCAD are either not happy with Vista or are avoiding it all together. There has also been some frustration with video cards and software.

The Department of Defense and the FAA (which is part of the DOD, but managed separately) have both announced that they are placing an indefinite moratorium on upgrading to Vista. This affects approximately 60,000 federal computer users, but is apparently not considered a major problem by Microsoft who has no comment. No doubt, as drivers become available, new hardware is purchased and minor glitches are patched, these government departments will come around. As Windows 98 and 2000 support falls by the wayside, Windows XP becomes the veteran. This cycle will continue and Vista will become the accepted standard until the next big thing comes along.

Spam Redux – For the majority of my users, spam and the time it takes to deal with it is a major time waste, so my antenna perks when I see interesting statistics published. A company called MessageLabs handles approximately 180 million emails daily, and on their website they have an interesting graph which dynamically shows what percentage of that is mail they consider to be spam. It’s worth a visit just to confirm your own feeling that most of what you see is junk! Check it out at:

http://www.messagelabs.com/publishedcontent/publish/threat_watch_dotcom_en/threat_statistics/DA_112495.chp.html

And while on the subject, another tech site, http://www.theregister.co.uk/ reported on just one spammer out of many. I’m going to type the zeros in the numbers. I’m wondering if the punishment fit the crime.

Sent 9,000,000,000 (that’s billion) messages in 14 months.

Apparently earned $52,000 from that spam.

Was fined $97,000.

Last but not least – I have some strong feelings about the net neutrality question that is being brought before our lawmakers, but have not really tried to put those thoughts down on paper. Now, I don’t need to, because I read an article that brings it to the user level quite nicely. Here’s a link:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2100176,00.asp

I read an interesting article in an old issue of Wired Magazine this week about tapes of the blurred images of the first step taken on the surface of the moon back in 1969. There were three interesting aspects about this story, two of which are unrelated to the third, so bear with me here.

First, it seems that NASA has lost the archive tape of that video transmission; and second, if the people who have taken on the project to locate the tape ever find it, there is only one machine in the whole world that can play it. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but scientists had to devise a special camera and video protocol to be able to send the images back to Earth. The images were transmitted directly to a base station in Australia where the footage was converted to US broadcast standards for TV. As the feed was received at the base station, it was recorded to huge reels of magnetic tape for archiving.

Recently, there has been some interest in retrieving those images, because with today’s technology, there is a probability that much more detailed views can be achieved. Except, they’ve lost the tapes. A few reels from about the same time period were discovered and scientists hopefully went searching for a machine to play them…only to find that there is only one known machine that will handle the format, and it was only months from being destroyed as outdated.

Now, this is a sad state of affairs, but we can all relate. How many of the generation that remembers the Moon Walk of 1969 also owns numerous VCR tapes of their children’s first steps, first birthdays, first formal dances? Can you find them? And, if you can, how much longer do you think you will have a VCR in the house that will play them?

The third interesting factoid in this article was extremely exciting for me, personally. I didn’t watch the 1969 Moon Walk on TV, but rather listened on the radio, and so had a greater interest in the audio transmission. I sat riveted by the first words of the first man to take the first steps on the moon, and I knew what I heard. It was an elegantly simple statement, one I’m sure someone worked very hard to perfect. And for decades, I’ve heard that statement misquoted as: “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” But that wasn’t what I heard. What I was sure I heard was: “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.” A subtle difference, but very meaningful.

The article I read about the NASA visual tapes also casually stated that it was important to find the tapes to correct small misconceptions, since audio engineers had recently been able to discover that Armstrong had actually said “…step for a man…” It’s great to know I’ve been right all these years!

Microsoft released their new operating system Vista recently and word on the street has it that the new Mac OS, code named Leopard, will be hitting the streets sometime this spring, maybe as early as April or maybe just before the June World Wide Developers Conference. Apple always manages to be very tight with their information, so rumor is all we have on that.

Anyway, these two major releases have me thinking about how new OS’s often result in a need for new hardware and how frustrated my customers get with that fact. There’s a great divide between the mega rich software guys who drive the companies that release these great new packages and the ordinary user who just wants his email to work and a basic word processor to write out instructions for the babysitter.

My customers cluster more on the lower end of that equation, and I am often challenged to patch together hardware that we hope can last just one more year. For the most part, I don’t mind that, even rather enjoy the challenge. You have to understand that I haven’t bought a new computer since about 1995. In my office, although I’m currently as up-to-date as I’ve been for awhile, all my computers were purchased used. I run one beige G3 on Mac OS 9.2 because my scanner is a SCSI scanner and won’t connect to any of my new(er) computers. I do my daily operations on a souped up G4 running OS 10.4.8. I carry an old Mac PowerBook that will run in either 9.2 or 10.4. And for the PC side of what I do, I run Windows XP. I doubt my PC will be able to support Vista, and I am a little concerned that my trusty laptop will not tolerate the new Leopard OS.

So, you see, I feel your pain. I am often asked why the new software so often requires new hardware, and the answer (as you all know if you just take time to consider) is economics. The automobile industry is a good example of this. I can remember each fall when new models of each of the Big Three’s offerings were eagerly awaited. My dad always wanted one of the new ones, my mom always told him the old model was just fine. All a car really needs to do is get you to work and to the grocery, but Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler couldn’t build an industry on that. Their employees liked to receive weekly paychecks, have health care, and build up retirement accounts.

Each year, like clockwork, you could count on the introduction of new models with new features and cool new designs that would just scream “Buy Me Now.” The manufacturers loved designing them and felt righteous about offering consumers what consumers wanted. The consumers, well some of them, bought it…the whole package. The very essence of having “made it” was to be able to trade up every year or so.

Back to my original subject…consider this: according to InformationWeek magazine, February sales of new computers shot up 67% over last year’s February sales. Microsoft introduced Vista on January 30, 2007. Why do companies design new software that requires new hardware? Economy. Just be glad that they have not (so far) adopted the auto industry’s business plan introducing new models EVERY year!

On the other hand…look where the auto industry is today.

And on a side note that may or may not be related, I also read today that Kodak has heard your absolute disgust of the whole cheap printer/expensive ink scenario. Their new line of EasyShare AIO printers sells for $150 to $300, not that bad for a good office printer/scanner/copier, but more to the point, black ink cartridges will cost $10 and color $15. Kodak is a company in financial disarray, but I sure give them a lot of credit for listening to the consumer. I hope they can make this work!

From time to time, maybe once a month or so, I plan to pass on some very cool and/or interesting websites. The last couple of days have been snow days, so I spent a little time on the internet. Here are a few sites I use regularly and/or discovered and found to be helpful, informative, interesting, or just plain amusing.

http://www.scienceaddiction.com/

In spite of the name, this one is not so scientific as it sounds. It’s amusing and irreverent and intelligent. I have an opinion (well, more than one) about the RIAA and digital rights management, so I especially got a kick out of the entry called “If Making Ramen Was Like Playing a Guitar.”

http://www.wordspy.com

This is a cool site for writers and lovers of words. It also keeps you up to date on certain slang terms and newly minted descriptive phrases such as “age fraud” or “murderabilia.”

http://zman.typepad.com/zmanmuse/webtech/

This is a blog, but a very professional one. This guy covers it all!

http://www.tradetricks.org/

This site appears to be just parked, as it hasn’t been updated for a very long time. Still, it includes the archives of a lot of tricks of various trades from Public Speaker to Landscaper to Auto Mechanic.

http://macslash.org/ and cousin site http://slashdot.org/

These are technology news sites that pull together rumors and news reports from various sources and about various topics.

http://www.myway.com

Many of you know that this is my favorite “home page” type site. It can be personalized for your location to show you weather and news, TV listings and movie times.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/

This site just gives me a touch of perspective. It is the website that reviews and discusses news stories in Britain. You know what? The British love scandal (they enjoyed the story of the American astronaut’s diapered cross country quest to solve her love triangle), the weather (a predicted snowfall will theoretically paralyze London), and top ten lists. I particularly enjoy the daily feature, “10 Things We Didn’t Know Last Week.” Some of the knowledge I’ve gained here — Americans are no longer the tallest people on Earth, as the Dutch have taken on that title (I personally know a VERY tall Dutchman, but I didn’t know he was the norm), Palm oil is in one in 10 supermarket products, and there are twice as many privately-owned tigers in the US as there are in the wild in the rest of the world.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

After I posted my weekly thoughts, I received a newsletter that many of you may find interesting. This newsletter is written by a computer professional who knew, used and wrote about all things Windows. Last fall, he decided to open his mind and immerse himself in Mac OS X for three months so he could better understand what might be best for his readers.

Those of you who use Macs know what happened next. Those of you who use Windows will have to read this to believe it. Here’s the link:

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/88.htm

If you thought the Y2K problem was going to break your computer a few years ago, the next thing you have to worry about is the daylight savings time switch in 2007. Of course, in Indiana, DST annoyances plagued our computers and VCRs last year. Most of us just manually changed the time in April and October, because we really didn’t know whether the Indiana (East) or the Eastern designation was correct once our state (well, part of it) made the switch in time zones and use of DST.

Welcome to Chapter 2 of that problem. In a further effort to “save” us time, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which decrees that this year (2007), Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. Previously, it began on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October.

It would be really nice if all our devices that measure time had network connections and could just read the “real” time from a server somewhere…one clock that could be adjusted for these legislative changes. Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. The allowances for time zones and time switches throughout the year are programed into each individual computer or VCR, and we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with this problem.

For years, Indiana was an exception in the space/time continuum and computer programmer’s finally acknowledged that with a special setting in their computer software. When we set our new computers up and chose a time zone, we were offered one called Indiana (East) which took care of the calculations (or lack of them) because we did not observe daylight savings time.

Don’t get me started on the events of the past two years, suffice it to say that the PTB (Powers That Be), decided to fix a problem many of us did not know existed, and consequently, Indiana has now become a state of several time zones and counties who may or may not now observe daylight savings time. Setting up new computers required actually thinking about where we sat at the time and what time it really was as we sat there!

Now this new monkey wrench. So, I’ve done some reading and at this point here is the way computer owners will need to respond to these new DST rules:

Mac OS pre-10.3: During the newly saved time (three weeks in March and one week in November), you will either display the wrong time or you will have to manually reset your clock. Forever until the end of time (or when the legislature decides to change time again).

Mac OS 10.3: There is a “fix” that can be installed for this version of operating system. The fix has been developed at Stanford University, so I tend to trust it, though I haven’t studied it extensively. It (and information about what it does and how to use it) can be found on

http://www.stanford.edu/~icomfort/panthertz/Panther-TZ-2007a.dmg
http://www.stanford.edu/~icomfort/panthertz/patch-panthertz.sh
http://dstpatch.com/

Mac OS 10.4.6 and higher: This version of software will reflect the changes.

Windows 2000: Microsoft has announced that they will issue patches to deal with the DST time issue only for supported operating systems. Windows 2000, while in use on many computers and servers, will NOT be patched to automatically adjust for this time change. You are on your own.

Windows XP and Vista: Although I have not yet found specific confirmation, I would guess the above statement (Microsoft will issue patches for supported operating systems only) means that some of those software upgrades that download to your computer at the most inconvenient times will include patches. The new Vista (again, I haven’t confirmed this) will probably be correct out of the box.

If you use eBay, a calendar program, email or any business software on your computer, you will need to deal with this issue. Not doing so will cause you problems in so many unimagined ways! eBay auctions are time sensitive. Email is time and date stamped (and, I suspect, legally admissable in a court of law), as are documents you create on your computer. Having the incorrect time on your computer will cause you to miss (or be early, depending on the time of the year) meetings, church services and school programs if you use any kind of computer datebooks.

But remember, we are saving a lot of daylight here!

Email is on my mind lately. We get a lot of it and most of it falls into the spam, advertising, useless categories. Some of it is amusing, some frightens me. Most of it aggravates me. I do have a sort of guilty pleasure in looking through the emails that qualify as phishing.

Sidebar Comment: I love the sense of humor of the computer geeks who name things. Terms like spam, phishing, virus, worm, hacker … I appreciate the images they invoke and their descriptiveness. Phishing is a way of — well, fishing. And to take it a step further that most fishermen can understand, it’s a way of fishing for suckers using a huge net. Take an absurd premise, for instance one I just read about recently, pretend you are a hired killer. Write up an email that explains what you do for a living, explain to the recipient that you have been hired to kill them, and offer, for a small sum, say $80,000, to NOT do the job. The real premise of a phishing plan is that if you send millions of emails, you only need one or two to pay off. It’s the old $1 chain letter theory … I can make a pretty good paycheck if only a small percentage of people respond.

Anyway, if your junk mail or spam seems to be getting worse, it is. Spammers are constantly coming up with ways to get around any junk mail filters we might add. We used to be able to just build a filter of words we didn’t want to appear in our email, and anything with one of those words would get trashed before we saw it. Consider the unfortunate law firm chosen to represent the pharmaceutical company Merck concerning lawsuits involving the drug Vioxx! I wonder how many of their perfectly legitimate emails actually got through!

One of the reasons you are once again seeing an onslaught of junk email is that spammers are pretty good problem solvers. I can just imagine their brainstorming sessions — if users are filtering for certain words we have to use, how can we get around that. In other words, what will ALWAYS go through a filter? Pictures! Now, spammers just take a picture of the message they want to send you. Your filters and your email programs can’t tell the difference between a picture of a junk message about Viagra and a picture of your favorite grandchild. They’re both going to land in your IN box!

I have no answers, but everyone feels your pain! Consider Grand Valley State University near Grand Rapids, MI. According to an article I read in InformationWeek, this school gets 1.2 million incoming messages per day. Read that again, 1.2 million (per day). As they say in the infomercials on TV … “but WAIT” … consider this … 90% of those 1.2 million messages (per day) are spam.

Now that’s a spam problem.

First, an interesting side note to my Christmas entry about the travels of a young couple from Nazareth to Bethlehem. One of my favorite monthly readings is Harper’s Index column in Harper’s Magazine. The column just publishes various statistics or figures garnered from various other sources, with no commentary and only slightly tongue in cheek juxtapositions. According to the Index in the December. 2006 issue of Harper’s, were Joseph and Mary to make that same trip today, they would be required to pass through at least 10 security check-posts. No comment, as I said, it’s just an interesting side note.

Now on to business…

Just a few thoughts on this weeks news from the 2007 Macworld Expo. There’s a lot of pressure on Apple and Steve Jobs now, as the Macworld Expo has a reputation of being the source of BIG THINGS coming from Apple. Everyone (including yours truly) was expecting the iPhone. The last system update I downloaded sometime in December even included some iPhone software. In addition to the iPhone, we also got AppleTV.

My first impression was relief of the decision NOT to introduce the iTV. I’m getting pretty tired of i-everything. It was clever, now I’m over it. Seems like Apple may have to give up the iPhone name, too, as Cisco has held a registered trademark on that name since June of 2000. Apple was aware of the legal aspect and the two companies were in negotiations at the time of Jobs’ introduction of the device, so Cisco feels they have no choice but to sue Apple over use of the term. Not sure how this is going to play out, but interesting, all the same.

Basically, the iPhone will be a phone, iPod, internet, personal assistant type device at a cost of $499 to $599. It has touch screen controls and as is required of Apple, very sleek and cool design. Not sure I’ll be getting one anytime soon, but if someone wants to send me one for evaluation, I wouldn’t turn it down!

The AppleTV device is interesting for different reasons…no controversy, no pre-release hype. I see it as a part of a well-planned strategy as Apple enters and positions itself in the rapidly growing home network/entertainment/theater market. Their Mac mini was, to my way of thinking, the first foray into this market and I see the AppleTV device as the natural next step. The home entertainment aspect of computers, networks and TV viewing is exploding and is exactly the right place for Apple to go. Nearly every home I can think of has more than one TV, more than one computer, some sort of broadband internet connection, and some sort of TV delivery service such as cable or satellite. Becoming the company or one of the companies that brings all this together could be a very sweet thing.