Tinys World of Technology BS

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

Happy New Year!  It’s that time again for everyone to make their annual predictions about what will happen in the future.  Not me.  You all should know by now how I am usually a little different.  After all, people with much more intelligence than me can probably predict the future with much more accuracy than I could ever hope to achieve.

For instance, the following prediction: “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.  It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”  This prediction was made in 1932 by none other than Albert Einstein.

Is there anyone who hadn’t heard about Steve Jobs predictions on a stylus pen, smaller tablets and larger phones?  That puts him in the same league as Thomas Watson, IBM chairman in 1943, when he said there was a world market for maybe five computers.  IBM predictions improved in 1959 when they told Xerox that the world potential for copying machines was about 5000.

There are many other examples of brilliant people making the same types of accurate predictions.   In 2005 Steve Chen, the co-founder of YouTube claimed that the platform couldn’t survive.  He said, “There’s just not that many videos that people want to watch.”  A year earlier, Bill Gates predicted that SPAM e-mail would be solved within two years.  He also stated that his company, Microsoft, would never make a 32 bit operating system.

I could go on and on for pages about other people who made tech predictions that didn’t quite come true.  How about these other predictions?:
1) Subsidized cell phones will continue to decline and maybe even join floppy disks in the “I remember when” category.
2) Smart watches pass out of the what is it good for stage and replace cell phones the same way that automobiles replaced the horse and buggy.
3) Windows 7 will hang on as long as XP did.
4) Apple will invent wireless charging.
5) 3D television will make a comeback.
In case you might be interested, those are all predictions that I made in my January 2016 column.  You can see that my accuracy isn’t any worse (or better).  I’ll only make one prediction for this year: 2017 will bring some great computer club meetings, a lot of information on the club’s web site and some excellent monthly trips to Texas.

Thanks for reading.

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

Sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to write about in this monthly column.  There are so many things that I wonder about.  Many of them are big enough that I can write a whole page on the subject.  Others are so minute that I occasionally need to write a potpourri column like this month.

As I write this, the iPhone 7 is about to be released.  I long ago quit wondering why people would sit in a line outside the Apple Store for weeks to buy a phone.  This time I’m wondering about the missing headphone jack.  Personally, I think that is really the future.  I hardly ever plug into the jack on my phones.  I’ve used the one on my current phone twice.  Once when I first bought the thing to make sure it worked.  I also used it one time when I forgot to charge my Bluetooth headset.  The thing I’m curious about is what the new iPhone owners will do when they fly on an airplane.  Bluetooth isn’t allowed on many airlines because of interference with the aircraft’s navigation equipment.  I’ve got a feeling that the rules will soon be changed.

Sometimes I wonder if I should buy a dedicated e-reader.  I must admit that I was pretty envious when Tom showed off his new Koby.  Every time I think I’m about to pull the plug, I realize that my tablet(s) are really sufficient for my reading needs.  I’m at the point where I’ve got so many of them that they’re scattered around my house like bread crumbs from an old sandwich.  I’ve even got my first tablet, an Archos 70.  I got it back in 2011.  I use it for videos and reading.  Someday it will probably be just another picture frame.  Soon, I’ll be wondering if I should buy the new Nexus 7 that is supposed to be released in October.  It probably will depend on the price.

Almost every morning when I open my Facebook account, I wonder why I don’t just close the darn thing.  Then all of a sudden, among the obviously false political claims and impossible to believe factoids, I see some information about a relative, make a silly comment and log out.  Thankfully, I’ve avoided all other social media.  You can’t Twit me a Snapchat or Google+ me an Instagram.

Sometimes I wonder how long it will be before there isn’t any disk drives at all in our computers.  Long gone are the days of having stacks of floppy disks sitting alongside our machines.  After they disappeared, CD drives soon followed.  Hard drives are slowly giving way to solid state drives.  Someday in the future, all of our computers will have their operating system stored in flash memory.  Every thing else will be stored on remote servers.  I’ll be long gone, but the hobbyists of the future will be the only one that use local storage.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wondered if the major Operating System manufactures will ever play nice with each other?  The main reason I don’t buy any Apple Products is that they don’t play nice with my other technology.  Long ago, I quit using Microsoft Outlook because it was too difficult to synchronize with Android.  Unfortunately, it is getting worse instead of better.  Have you ever tried to video chat with an Apple product with Android, or vice versa?

Over the years, I’ve wondered about lots of little things.  For instance, why does Windows always make you click on start to shut down the computer.  I wonder if I will ever get all the old newsletters scanned and uploaded.  I wonder if I’ll get a good gift at the club’s Christmas exchange.  I wonder if people like the monthly Mindbender puzzles.

One last thing I wonder about.  Should I end this article?

Thanks for reading.

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

Recently, I was reading an article in “Astronomy Magazine” about the Pluto New Horizons mission.  There was a section on why it was downgraded from planetary status.  Now I’ve got to unlearn some things about the place.  Like so many other things, that got me to thinking about how I’ve had to forget or change my thinking on many other subjects.

For years I’ve saved all my files with an eight character file name.  Back in the DOS and early Windows days, file names were limited to eight characters and three more for the extension.  You had to be creative in naming files so you could remember what they were.  Over the years, most file systems have allowed us to use up to 256 characters.  I finally unlearned using non-descriptive file names.  I still haven’t unlearned that it’s not okay to use a space in a file name.

I’ve had to unlearn a lot of terms over the years.  Sometimes, I still find myself saying, “dial the phone”, even though my pocket computer doesn’t have a dial on it.  Unlike my wife, I’ve finally quit saying “tape a TV show.”  There isn’t any tape in the VCR.  Oops!  I meant DVR.  Many others like myself still, “film a movie”, “roll down the car window”, “blow off steam” and make a “carbon copy.”  People that haven’t unlearned this stuff should “hold their horses” before they start sounding like a “broken record”.

There is a lot of things I haven’t minded unlearning.  It is so much easier to double click an icon to start a program on my computer.  Long gone are the days of having to type “load program name,8,1”.  There were many times I sat and waited for a program to load.  I would finally realize that I had forgotten to hit the return key.

I also don’t mind having to remember to make sure there is enough room on the VHS cassette tape before recording the latest Star Trek program.  The same goes for setting the clock on the machine.

I’ve also have many non-technological things to unlearn.  Before I pour a glass of milk, I still shake the container even though there isn’t any cream to mix in.  I still let the water run before filling my glass.  I don’t want to get a spider in my glass.

About the only thing I’ve found worse than having to unlearn something is the things I’ve had to relearn.  I’ve been teaching the grandson how to code a web page.  Unfortunately, I’ve had to look up some commands that I used to write without even thinking.  One of the problems with programming languages is there are so many of them.

Isn’t technology great? I wonder what I’ll have to unlearn in the future.
Thanks for reading.

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

This month, I’ve been thinking about self driving cars. Every day it looks more and more like we soon will all be riding in one. I just hope the built in GPS will take me where I actually want to go and not a block or two away. In my mind I imagine future car advertisements that induce me to buy their model because it won’t accidentally drive me off of a cliff.

If you do an internet search, you will find all kinds of articles either telling you how great or how bad the technology is. (Doesn’t that sound like you could researching any article about technology?) You can catch a few extra winks on the way to work or you won’t have any control in case an accident is eminent.

Personally, I’m not concerned with any of those mundane arguments. I find myself concerned with other things that might happen.

Just think of all the state highway patrol troopers that could lose their jobs. With self driving cars, accidents will be avoided. With fewer accidents to investigate, less patrol officers will be needed. What will happen to them? They won’t be able to become truck drivers. The trucks will be driving themselves.

The same scenario happens to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Why would a driver’s license be needed? Doesn’t it seem that when you buy a self driving car, the title would include the right to control the vehicle? Do you suppose all of the DMV employees will be relocated to pet licensing?

I can think of several small towns that might go out of existence. Autonomous cars will automatically go the speed limit. The speed trap towns would lose their major source of revenue. Perhaps they will have to start making traffic stops for other reasons. The officer will say, “the reason I pulled you over is because your rear window is dirty.”

It’s long past my time but I sure wish I could have had a programmable car back in the “Can I borrow the car tonight Dad?” era. It sure would have been nice to know where the car was and what time it was going to get home. When the self driving car becomes the norm, do you suppose the youngsters will be asking, “Dad, can I borrow the password for the car tonight?”

Once self driving cars become readily available, I can foresee people buying customized vehicles. Can you imagine your car as a mobile game room? You could have your game console hooked up to a medium sized monitor and play the latest edition of “Grand Theft Auto”. The workaholic could have a desk in the front seat and a secretarial station in the rear. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could sit and relax in your auto spa while your car did the driving? Personally, I’m going to save my money and buy a specially created bathroom car. I do some of my best thinking in the facilities. Just think how many articles I could be writing while on the road.

It’s not a problem for me, but I know lots of people that will be happy that there will be no need for a “back seat driver”. Those people will have to start criticizing the computer programmers. Maybe they’ll have to settle for criticizing the GPS system.

There is one thing that will definitely not change when our cars drive themselves. The monthly car payments will keep our wallet empty.

Thanks for reading.