...and We Wait With Bated Breath!!!

Apparently Apple today will finally announce the new tablet PC and all that it entails.  I fully expect it to do everything under the sun other than fry an egg on it, but who knows - maybe even THAT will be possible.

The Mac world is a a-flutter, the anticipation of the second coming is here - all hail the mighty iPad.

I scorn, I scoff, but sure as God made little green apples, I'm quite sure that the shiny new technology will make me salivate and ponder to cross the world to Mac-dom!

We'll File This One Under...."It Sounds Good In Theory...."

I read an article in the paper today and although I cannot authenicate the author's claims, if this is the case, then I think that this is a perfect illustration as to how sometimes technology focuses too much on "The Wow Factor" and neglects to consider common use and makes their products less than feasible in reality.

The author wrote a review on a water-proof, WIFI MP3 speaker.  The basic concept was that you could have any MP3 player within 100ft of the speaker, and the speaker itself could be in the shower, assumedly so one can groove away while soaping up (which in itself could be a dangerous combination!).

Among the drawbacks to this device was the author's claim that when docking an iPod in the docking station, that the engineers didn't really consider the "how" of how an iPod would dock, and the net result was that it was necessary to put the iPod in upside down - and backwards.  Of course, this would make using the front panel of the iPod (which is now upside down and backwards, virtually impossible to use.

I am aghast that the engineers didn't have the common sense to give a look-see to see how practical their product was for an iPod.<

Just another case of something that sounds good in theory....

Woe to He Who Downloads Illegally!

Case in the US District Court today.  A woman in Minnesota and charged and convicted of downloading 24 MP3 files.  The original judgment against her was for a $1,900,000 penalty or $80,000 for each song.  U.S. District Court reduced this judgment today to "only" a total of $54,000.

Regardless of if they have any chance at collecting on this judgment, I'm willing to bet that the individual involved wishes that she had never done this in the first place.

For these reasons - and for the fact that my nephew is a lawyer in the entertainment law industry - I shall remain chaste and legitimate as it relates to my acquisition of music :)

Out of this World Wide Web

Article today on Yahoo that astronauts finally get Internet access from space!  Really?  Wow - that's kind of cool!

Can you imagine how cool it would be to be on Yahoo Messenger with a 'naut as he floats around the space station? :)

Now if I could only get WiFi up at the family cottage in Parry Sound, then that would be the cat's pyjamas to be able to be connected up there too - but then again, maybe that's not such a good idea!

Censorship - How Far is Too Far?

I've been starting to follow this controversy over China's decision to limit and censor websites/pages/content that does not agree with their political agendas.

In the past, Google has complied with their policies and has filtered search results accordingly, but after there were some mysterious hacking into private GMAIL accounts (belonging to employees of Google) with emails forwarded, Google has done an about face and stated that they will no longer filter web content and will then proceed to pull their China presence out if there is an ramifications from the Chinese government.

First of all, I'm unsure how much the Chinese government would really be fazed by a Google pull-out.  I'm sure that in a lot of respects that they would probably prefer this as they would be removing a thorn in their sides.  I don't get the sense (although I'm not a very political person!) that the Chinese government cares too much about the freedom of access of the population.

Now, the Americans (the Clinton's among others) are publicly criticizing the Chinese government over their restrictive views and as expected, the Chinese are firing back at the Americans.

From what I understand, China is a growing market in the global economy and certainly, they have a large percentage of the world's population.  I wonder how long it will be before the Chinese government attempts to use political/economic pressure to stifle this criticism.

Although I think that unrestricted Internet access is a good thing, as with many things in life, that's not an absolute.   Web content containing child pornography, libel, inciting terrorism, etc... cannot be condoned but where is the distinction between the line that we (the "democratic society") draw in the sand and what the Chinese are trying to do?  At one point is censorship appropriate?  I'm not sure that this is such an easy question to answer!

Now, the Americans (both Clintons among others) are publicly criticizing the Chinese over

I'm Humbled

Read a very interesting article this morning on a systems engineer in Macedonia. He received his first systems engineering from Microsoft and last month he became a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.

This in itself would not necessarily be news worthy, but what caught my attention is that Marko - is only 9 years old!



http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10435937-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Very interesting quote from him - and one that I find particularly refreshing:

I do not play games on computers because there is nothing serious about playing games on computers...If you want to play, go outside and play with your friends.

I think that is just awesome :)

Silent Reflections in a Digital Age

As a very young laddie, I do recall watching the television show “Romper Room” (once again for fear of dating myself). One of the highlights of this show was the “Magic Mirror”. The hostess of this show used this mirror to “see” each of the children in the viewing audience. Of course, she was just rhyming off random children’s names but for the little child sitting in the living room in his jammies, it felt like someone was able to reach through the technology to see him.

In today’s society, I almost see the Internet like this scenario and it’s not always a good thing.

So many of us are tech-savvy to the extent that we understand about the importance of firewalls and the basics of privacy on the web. However, our digital footprints are scattered throughout the virtual landscape of the World Wide Web and there’s very little thought to how this information represents us.

In computer technology, there is what we call a WORM drive. This is an acronym for Write Once Read Many. Most of us have an example of a WORM drive at home – and it’s our CDR burner. Without the ability to re-write information on a CD, we can write once and read many times.

Many people don’t understand that this is the equivalent of what the Internet is – especially as the search tools become more sophisticated. Very few people take into consideration that these digital footprints are not like the breadcrumbs that Hansel and Gretel spread to find their way out of the forest. Think for a moment if those breadcrumbs were permanent. How easy it would be to find the lost children. This same thing applies to the Internet. A vast majority of our electronic personas on the Internet is available to anyone.

So much of what we do on the Internet is captured electronically and is next to impossible to get rid of. The scary part is that more and more people are using these tools to lookup information on us. The searchers might be a prospective employer, or perhaps someone who we are recently dating, or perhaps someone with more nefarious intent.

A few cases in point.

A year or so ago, I applied for a volunteer position. I received a strange phone a few days later from the organization and the man asked (with some hesitancy) if I had musical inclination. Knowing how much I am NOT musical at all, I laughed and told him that I didn’t. I then asked why he asked that question. He stated that he had googled me and found a fit for another Rick McCallion who was in a band that promoted social anarchy. This gentlemen then went on to say that there were initially hesitant to have me involved in this project if I was that Rick McCallion.

There are numerous postings that I have made years ago on software support sites. Although there is nothing incriminating about these posts, it still makes me a little hesitant about what I post online.

I was also quite interested to find out that when I googled my name, that even though I closed my account a few months ago, my Twitter profile was still there. Thankfully, there wasn’t anything embarrassing in it, but it goes to show how dangerous our personas can be.

One final example, in my technology blog (plug here!!! http://techumanity.blogspot.com) I had noticed after I had posted a blog entry that I had a spelling mistake. I went back and corrected it but am vexed that the original blog entry has still been indexed by Google and as a result, this typo is evident when someone Googles my name.

You think that perhaps because some website has since ceased operation – that your content is gone? Nope. There are a few websites that permanently keep archives of the World Wide Web. Try going to the Internet Arhive Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org and try looking at existing domains or even those ones that are no longer in existence. Truly some scary stuff!

The Internet plays for keeps. For the most part, what we write is accessible to all and that is the very scary reality.

Time for us to all make sure that our silent reflections are what we want others to see.