Windows Vs Linux

Even though I do all my work on a two year old HP Windows laptop, I have an old eMachines desktop that I've been threatening to upgrade to Linux for years. I got it from a friend that bought it new almost 10 years ago. It originally came with Windows Vista. I finally put Windows 7 on it about a year ago. But now Win 7 is reaching end of support on 14 January 2020.

I'm quite familiar with MS's end of support cycles. I started out with Win 3.1 on a Packard Bell. Which was cutting edge for me then. I had been using Commodore computers before that. But since the eMachines is still a working product, I'd much rather upgrade it to Linux. This way I'll know that the machine will be stable, rather than trying to shoehorn Win 10.

I very much enjoy working in Windows. But... Ah, where to begin? Since Microsoft has been guiding everyone to the cloud, Windows has made some significant changes. They haven't affected me to badly, but I'm concerned that if I make changes on files in One Drive, their online storage system, it possibly changes the file on the C: drive. I have done stupid things in the past like delete whole folders, and then find that the folder is missing on the machine. Fortunately I keep a master backup on a USB drive. Google has done this to me as well.

Linux, as far as I know, has no cloud storage feature, unless you use One Drive or Google's cloud through the web browser. This is what I think is best for me right now. I need to be able to control what I send to the cloud, and when. I really don't need EVERYTHING in the cloud. I'll fill you in on how the instillation goes.

The Future of eXtended Reality and the Metarverse

I wanted to mention a little bit about my opinion on the current state of XR. As I see it, eXtended Reality is reaching critical mass. I know a lot of people have been saying this. But when someone like me can see where things are heading, you can place bets that this is a sure thing. Because I never speculate this far ahead without being seriously wrong in the end.

Consider the gaming industry as it stands currently. While companies are still offering single player titles, The majority of titles are MMOs. Zombies and war titles abound. And when you get tired of shooting and bombing the undead, you can always run them over with stolen vehicles. But when even that becomes tedious, you can now go to your favorite in-game casino and kick back and win some moola to buy more stuff to run more people over. Cool, huh?

Switching gears, no pun intended, now I ask you to consider the loosely termed "social" world games, such as Sansar, VRChat, and the like. You can kick back after a long day in the default world, and visit with your friends from around the globe and do anything from shopping to intimate cuddling. I don't need to explain much here.

Tying most of these experiences together is a VR headset for immersion. Anyone in the default world that bleeds pixels will own one (or more) by now. But a vast majority, myself included, are still waiting for prices to drop. Which is why companies like High Fidelity have had to change direction to stay afloat.

Augmented Reality has its own unique position as well, and which is one that will explode once Apple releases an AR head mounted device. Anyone that would know on that is Robert Scoble. He is part of a group of tech watchers that live and breathe AR. And if Mr. Scoble says that Apple will release an HMD, it's simply a question of when. I personally get frustrated that the entire industry is in a holding pattern to see what Apple does.

Another thing that has been taking place is the parallel development of blockchain tech. There are dozens and dozens of indie developers that have latched onto the potential of cutting the ties to the industry giants, and taking the metaverse to the next level. Cryptocurrencies are a wildcard right now, giving default world governments ulcers as they all try to figure out how the hell to milk them for taxes. That's all I'll say on that.

And one more item to complete this exercise, is Artificial Intelligence. The Amazon Echo and the Google Assistant are neck and neck in voice interfaces. Microsoft, like High Fidelity, have seen the battle, and have taken Cortana in another direction around it, and are putting her in business boardrooms.  The "Holy Grail" will be AGI, if you will indulge me. It's so close now, there aren't many big thinkers that dismiss it out of hand. I'm going to gingerly sidestep "sentience". That's for the theologians to determine.

I think you can see where I'm going here. We're living in an eXtended Reality universe already. It's been seeping into our lives for years. One bit of innocent tech at a time. When Neal Stephenson wrote about The Street, he wasn't too far off from whats in existence today. There's just a heck of a lot more teleporters. People hate walking.

Mars Rover, "Opportunity", 2004 January 25 - 2019 Februrary 13. R.I.P.

It's only fitting that I post about the Opportunity rover. I had honored the Spirit rover back when she had passed several years previously. There's not much to say here. Many others will be more descriptive in their obits of the robot. Perhaps some day in the future, both Spirit and Opportunity will be singled out and honored in a VR or AR presentation. As will all the other machines that were successfully landed.

To me, the names of the rovers perhaps embodied what it meant to represent the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA was the premiere agency that the world followed along with in many missions. Perhaps some day, the world will, again. But for now, let's raise our glasses and toast to the community that was behind Opportunity. Well done, team! Your offspring earned her retirement.

Rest in peace, Opportunity. Your sister, Spirit, is waiting for you on the other side. :-)

Getting Back Up To Speed

Trying to get back into a rhythm is difficult, as many of you can attest. Once a person lets themselves slide, it can be an uphill struggle. I've already let a couple of weeks go by without blogging. But I need to post something, so here's what progress I've made.

I've gone back to my weekly tasks. It's a list that I've kept on my desktop in sticky notes forever. I'm glad I did. Its a visual reminder of the goals I need to keep to. Here it is

Tuesday -
   #HTML
        •blog
        •web page
Wednesday -
   #VR
        •X3D/VRML
            •office
            •avatars
Thursday -
   #AR
        •Westlake Transportation Systems
Friday -
   #Chatbot
        •Mariah
Saturday -
   #microtasking
        •cryptocurrency
Sunday -
    off
Monday -
    off

I might wind us swapping the blog posts to Saturday, and shifting everything up a day. It might give me some content to post about this way. Stay tuned!

Daily Life

It's winter and the snow is falling. It's not bad today. Last week we got dumped on. So anyway, I'm on a seldpm used desktop. I needed to wipe my laptop from a suspected rootkit. it's bgeen running slower and louder for weeks, and I've finally had enough. Windows has made it almost too easy to do this. I spent almost an hour trying to get into the BIOS using key combos of either f2 or f10 to no avail. Then in desperation, I turned to the web. That waasnt much help. So then I get into setting on the laptop, and there staring me in the face was the "recovery" feature. *sigh*

The blog will take me a bit to come up to speed as I get refocused. Also, *sigh*.

Testing... Is This Thing Still On?

Hi, everyone. Sorry about blowing off most of 2018. My mind wasn't into much of anything. Including blogging. Hey, it happens.

Granted, this entry isn't much to speak of, but its a new start to a new year. Let's see if I can get some momentum going, shall we?