FrankBlack

Not to be a spoil-sport, but what good is a dictionary if you remove the word origins? It might just be me but that is the best part of a dictionary.

Back in the day we used to download files from certain FTP servers via an email with the correct terms. I never found it very interesting, but it was novel. It would have been much cooler had smartphones been around then.

Oh, how shocking! Google is scrapping a project! Someone catch me, I'm going to faint!

I have no beef with 8K in a philosophical or technical sense, but I only worry about bandwidth. To me, 1080p alone is already taxing the infrastructure given the mass of humans incessantly streaming. While my old eyes can certainly grok the difference between 1080p and 4K, I just wonder if it is really worth it in most cases? Do I need to see a sitcom in 8K? Is an unboxing video in 8K going to sell the product better than 1080p? I game quite a bit and I still think 1080p is the sweet spot for most games given the cost/benefit ratio of hardware and gameplay. The skeptic in me can't help but think it is nothing more than a ploy by the camera manufacturers and the ISPs to get me to spend more money. But then, I'm old, so take it for what it is worth.

My very first computer purchase was a ZX81 with 16K memory expansion and "high resolution" graphics expansion. Cost a bunch, everything was a tad confusing, crappy graphics looked crappier on a tiny black and white television, loading a cassette took more than 20 minutes... but it got me started in my career. Best purchase ever.

Perhaps I am just dense, but the article references, specifically, the "Pro" market. For most pros that I know (and I am among them), our OS choice is often based on our tools, not the other way around. If I need Photoshop, Lightroom, Logic Pro, Visual Studio, etc., switching will be quite a chore. For the average user, this is probably a much more appealing argument.

I am sure it was a slow change that we hardly noticed. I think a couple things contributed to this mentality (there are plenty of others): 1) The tragic death of Adam Walsh became national news and spawned his father's advocacy for victims of crime. That spawned "America's Most Wanted"; a show that convinced viewers that each person wearing a sleeveless undershirt was a criminal. Faces of missing people appeared on milk cartons. No one wanted their child to be next. 2) Cable TV news needs to fill up 24 hours a day, so it breathes fear into us with each story so we don't dare change the channel.

Or not...

I had a conversation today at work that was on an unrelated topic, yet still dealt with the difficulty of operating in the vortex of left-leaning politics. The main issue that drove me away from being active after many years in the fray was the blazing passion that came from many within the group (almost always young people) who wanted to emphasize their one-key issue over the broader message. Meaning, issues such as, environment, LGBT, animal rights, women, race, peace, etc. were more urgent as a particular issue than finding consensus for a broad range of issues as a unified political group. This splintering caused dissipation of unity, energy and resources. In the end, this behavior caused me to lose any motivation to work for the cause in any real "boots on the ground" way. I wasn't alone in that sentiment. This article echoes a bit of my feelings. I am not pointing fingers and saying this one is right and this one is wrong, I am just saddened because it seems so much energy is being used to attack those with whom we are allied or to preach to the converted just so we can hear our voices through a megaphone. If one was interested in making a particular group impotent, this strategy would appear to be quite effective.

I think most of the networks stream their shows for a short time on their web sites. At this point I just wonder, why not just cut out the middle-man and get on with it? I'll pay for subscriptions, but not for endless commercials and 490 of 500 channels that I don't even watch. Not for TV shows that have stupid animations in the corner every five minutes. Since the cable and satellite companies refuse to give us the choice we want, we simply choose to opt-out. Once communities start installing their own low-cost fiber and free wi-fi en-mass without the litigation, the last hope of Time Warner and such fossils will be gone. TV isn't dying, it is dead and just too stupid to realize it.

I guess it won't be long until the Discovery Channel hosts "Meditating With The Stars" and "Ultimate Meditation Championship".

For a fleeting moment, my work-weary eyes thought the title was, "Alabama Is Said to Move Toward an I.P.O. in the U.S.". After recognizing my mistake, I decided my first reading was more reasonable.