Mike Monteiro – “Fuck you pay me”

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How many dongles do real people want to wear?

Zero.

Out of necessity, One.

Out of hubris, three.

Four or more and you are a technology journalist who has no sense of how real people live.

 

 

(I wrote this about 5 years ago. I was probably annoyed at sombody.)

Keeping You Scared and Angry as a Tool

If I can figure out who you are, what you like, what you dislike, who your friends are, what your friends like and what your friends dislike, and I can manipulate you.

All I have to do is get you scared, get you angry and keep you angry.

Are you religious? I will show you an image of Hillary Clinton as a devil, Jezebel and heathen along side an image of Donald Trump wearing a halo. Then, I tell you Hillary will be in charge of your country. So you get scared, get angry and do something.

What is scary here, I have the data you are religious, not the B.S. message. I am looking for you. Now all I need to do is keep you angry. So I do it again. And again.

Do you like guns. There are groups wanting to use the government take your guns from you. And there are rapists and armed criminals running free; how are you to protect your family from these people without guns. These groups need to be quieted and and you need to stop these groups. So you get scared, get angry and do something.

What is scary here, I have the data that you like guns, not the B.S. message. I am looking for you. Now all I need do is keep you angry. So I do it again. And again.

Keep a base of people scared and angry, by any means necessary. Using the best data mining and analytics technologies available to automate feeding questionable messages, eliciting fear and anger. Again and again.

This is where we now live.

 

You are probably not reading this.

If you are an average person, according to my stats, you are probably not reading this.

Blogs have this excruciatingly simple barrier to entry. Really, you could go start three blogs right now with $0 in your pocket, an internet device and some free WiFi from Starbucks. Starting the blog is never the problem. Maintaining the blog is a problem.

This blog my 4th. It is also my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I have brought in most of the content from my earlier efforts.  Links will be broken. Pictures missing. Content is dated, especially the stuff about Ted Stevens.

The following references will not make sense if you are under 40:

I once thought ‘Ask a Ninja’ and ‘Rocketboom’ were the most brilliant things ever.

Time will change your perspective, without your permission.

I miss my favorite blogger. Cancer sucks.

Instead of coming up with excuses as to why I have not blogged in so long and why you should care, I will tell you to, please, remain indifferent; and, if I want to, I will write more later. And if you choose to you can read it. But as I said, you are probably not reading this. I’m good with that.

Average Facebook outrage soloution

“I have a misguided solution to your non-problem, non-issue, non-existing law, or video that ruined your morning,” exclaims Facebook comment. “Glad to fix it for you with the first result from a search engine. Here is a link to an unvetted news source with bad information. ”

World saved.

Yosemite, Trim for SSDs, and the pain of the bleeding edge.

So you want to run Yosemite, the new public beta of OS X and you are one on the brave few who decided to update your hard drive in your Mac to solid state. Well, to get the best performance out of the SSD, you need to need to instate the “Trim” command. But the Cupertino company does not like this – it means you are not running Apple sanctioned hardware. I got a grey screen with the “NO” symbol after I turned Trim on with Yosemite. Not a good feeling.

Cindori Software came out with a Trim Enabler interface that made instating the command as easy a flipping a switch.  Thank you Cindori.

Back to Yosemite – Apple’s attempt to flatten out OS X to match IOS’s flat interface and bring the 15 year old OS X into the future (not that I don’t like Yosemite- it’s just different looking). Cindori has a full write up on what Apple has done to make it harder to use your own SSD in Apple machines along with a fix and updated Trim Enabler.  All I will say is that Apple is locking the OS down to make such tampering harder. The reason is either for a more secure OS or to stop the tampering. But blocking a computer from booting altogether as a security measure is throwing the baby out with the bath water – which is exactly what happens unless you do Cindori’s voodoo fix.

Oye.

What do I think of Yosemite generally? Everything is where you expect it to be; and it is not Windows 8. I like that a lot.

 

Agent – do not disturb & more: a review

Never do I come across an app that floors me. Well now I have. Agent has so much functionality that I am surprised this program is not immediately swallowed up by Google to become part of the base Android operating system.

In a nutshell, Agent senses what you are doing, where you are at, and shuts off interruptions based that information.

Driving? All instant messages get muted and an auto response can be sent to senders telling them you are driving.

Sleeping? Like with IOS, you have preset do not disturb times.

In a meeting? The phone goes into “shhhhhh” mode.

It is very configurable and very adaptable and very accurate. And very FREE. It WAS $2.99 some months ago, but, that is not longer the case for now at least.

Swipe this one up and give it a go… https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tryagent

The Campaign to Make Data Rarefied

Recently I was watching live television for a quick morning news fix and between weather and traffic I saw an ad promoting Bright-House Networks Free WiFi access spots. The crux of the ad was promoting that their WiFi was everywhere and it is cheaper to use this service than use your 4G access on your cell plan. I am not disputing the claims in the ad because there is some veracity to the spot that is encouraging subscriptions to Bright House Networks. But where the hell did the unlimited plans go? When the hell did data get so, well, rarefied?

I have an unlimited plan at home. I have an unlimited plan on my phone. Right? That was the word THEY used, not me. I think it is too late to take the thing that I was, and still am being told there is an unlimited amount of, and then, after the fact, “limiting” the thing.

Just in-case you think I am wrong, it’s working… for them.

Comcast, for instance sold unlimited internet. Here is a box that hooks up to the computer. “Use it. Eat all the bits you want – we’ll make more” to paraphrase. Then the letters started going out. I did not personally receive one but I have been told about the 300 GB  per month limit. That may seem like more than you could ever need, but this is the new definition of the word “unlimited” that I have not been previously aware.

Data was rarefied before – in the 1980s and early 1990s. CompuServe was expensive. Dow Jones was expensive.  America On Line was expensive.  AOL is an interesting case – they were an expensive 500 pound gorilla and creator of premium content, that became aggregator of premium content, that became a deliverer of webpages. Then they became just an ISP. Then just host of your email address with a good free IM. Then just some website. Well that was the order that happened for me. Your experience, if you were around, probably looked different. It was like watching the snowball effect, backwards – snatching defeat from the mouth of victory.

Data over dial-up internet became reasonable quickly in the mid to late 1990s. ISP’s were competing hard for your dollar, beating up big ol’ AOL. An ISP’s service could be had for 20 bucks per month. But  ISPs had to keep upgrading their data centers to keep up with peak-time data connections, or just oversell the network. Then came the always-on, unlimited cable-internet and always-on, unlimited DSL with much more speed, bathing you in all the bits you could ever want, for what was only double the price – beating up the dial up ISPs. The advent of ISP began the age of “unlimited.” We did not have to worry about a thing.

But, competition vanished.

No more ISPs. We now have one or two choices for the home and five or six choices in our pockets. Data, which was so plentiful it couldn’t be contained, has now become precious. Or faux-precious.

Over cell and over the line, we are entering a world where we get smacked on the knuckles with a ruler when we go over some measly limit. The encroachment has begun, with warning shots across the bow with warning letters and passive-aggressive text messages.

And there is a huge battle on the horizon. When 4K video, video 4 times the size of HD, starts being offered  in the next few years, suddenly you will constantly be reminded of your 300 GB limit. Or pay extra for your provider’s 4K offering. But that is down the road. The tees are being setup today.

Have we come too far to go back to the days of all you can eat data plans? Not yet. Maybe. This may not be an issue for you. Yet. Until it is 8pm and you are using your Roku and your kids are on the iPad watching Netflix, while somebody is in the office VPNing into their work computer to finish up some last minute bit of something. After which you may get a letter stating that this thing, that you though you had an unlimited amount of, is a thing you ran out of because it has been made rarefied.