Happy Trails, Wordpress.com

Today I finalized the closing of my Wordpress.com blog.  Anything that was there is now here on Blogspot.com.

Neil Armstrong, August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012

I just learned at 2:15 am Sunday morning of the passing of an American icon. Mr. Neil Armstrong, yesterday.

There isn't a space enthusiast anywhere who doesn't instantly recognize the man for not who he is, but for what he did.  Ask any Baby Boomer where they were on July 20 - 21, 1969, and you'll get a variety of answers.  All of them involving watching a black and white television not much bigger than today's laptop viewscreens.  We were kids that believed in heroes that had flesh and blood.  Not these comic book substitutes of today.

I went to Yahoo.com for the story.  It was modest, but it said what it needed to.  There were many kind and heartfelt comments left there. And of course the lunar landing conspiracy nay-sayers were having their sounding board as well.  All I could do was shake my head.  I'm not going to bash on the nay-sayers.  Only because these are people that have reached a point where it doesn't matter what you tell them, they have already tried and found the US Government guilty of fraud and cover up in everything.  Someone jokingly said to me once that someday they will find evidence that the American Civil War and the Colonial War of Independence are cover ups as well, and we're all still paying our taxes to the UK.  While there IS a crapload of BS in Washington DC right now, pointing fingers at a hero won't solve those issues.

Mr. Armstrong was part of a time when you had to have unshakable faith in what you believed in.  And we believed that we could beat the Soviets to the moon.  Hell yes, it was propaganda!  Did it have an effect on kids my age?  You damn well bet it did!  That was the effect it was supposed to have!  In 1969, we seriously had to learn to go into the school hallways, sit facing the walls, and cover our heads.  Back then it was either us or the Soviets.  We knew exactly who the enemy was then.  Neil Armstrong was THE symbol of American superiority!  We currently have a generation of people that accept terrorism, airport friskings, and shoot to kill" orders from the local police departments as part of everyday life. The only heros they have are corporations, politicians, and financial institutions that would blatantly lie straight to your face and say that everything is fine.  No wonder everyone craves fantasies like Batman, Spiderman, and the other comic forces.

The USA, no, the world has lost a great hero.  One that never considered himself a hero.  That's just how heroes are.  Enjoy your new trip to the Heavens, Mr. Armstrong.  You earned it.

I've Moved!

In case you haven't noticed, I've imported my blog from Wordpress.com to Blogspot.com!  I haven't been too happy with the Wordpress interface lately, so I finally made the plunge to change.  In all fairness to Wordpress, they were there when I needed to switch from Geocities.com when Yahoo decided to close Geocities down.  But time marches on.  This was as much a business decision as a personal decision, so I'm comfortable with it.

I'lll only keep Wordpress up until the end of August, and then it's parked here on Blogspot.  I'll look forward to seeing you here!

Don't Look Behind the Curtain!

I like to pretend that I'm tech-savvy.  A few days ago there was a great deal at Shopko on a 7 inch Polaroid tablet computer that came with a case with a keyboard.  Including the coupon, and the two year warranty, the price with tax was $105.  The tablet comes with Android ice cream sandwich.  Cool!  Or so we thought.

Now don't get me wrong.  This is a very nice tablet.  It is low end, which means I wait a few seconds for response times.  Of course if I wanted quick and snappy, I need to put out quite a few more bucks.  But this isn't a hardware review.  This is a rant about Google.

Since the OS is Android, I assumed "Great!  I can go to Google Play and access my music that I uploaded!".  Not.  Apparently Google has decided that since my hardware wasn't up to their standards, I wasn't allowed to download their Google Play app!  Huh?  That's right.  No Play on the Polaroid for me!

Fortunately, Polaroid has the Amazon app store already installed.  And Amazon says "Inexpensive hardware?  No problem!"  I downloaded their mp3 app to the tablet.  And surprise, there is all my music that I had uploaded to their cloud as well!

So my question is this:  When did Google suddenly become such dicks with their Play store?  They invite people to use their service, only to let us know that they're following Apple's business model?  If I wanted to do that, uh, I'd use an iPad and iTunes, folks.  I really wanted to stay completely in Google's universe, but ONCE AGAIN, they've pissed me off.  And there is Amazon, standing with their welcoming arms.  Needless to say, you know who I'll continue shopping with.

And So It Begins...

http://eyetap.blogspot.com/2012/07/physical-assault-by-mcdonalds-for.html

This story is starting to gain momentum.  A man and his family were in a McDonalds in Paris, France.  The man has a medical vision implant.  All very legal, with documentation to authenticate his condition. And yet employees from a public company purposely destroy the papers, and physically attack this man, due to their narrow-mindedness.

Now I could imply that the employees were acting out of instructions from the franchise owner of not allowing public photography as it could be a ruse for undercover journalism.  The McDonalds Corporation has a policy of not allowing anyone to do a news story on their premises without previous authorization. And only interviewing the general manager of that particular restaurant, or the corporate rep. And I can understand the logic of this.  It controls libel or slander or simply misreporting facts.

But this is far more than a simple  "keep the media at bay" situation.  I think this man was attacked by people out of religious principle.  Attacked out of fear of loss of control of a perceived lifestyle that can no more be controlled now, than thousands of years ago.  Fundamentalism is equally narrow minded in Islam, Christianity, and Judasim.  And God forbid if you happen to be from the American continent.  It doesn't matter if you are a Yank or a Canuck.  Then you also fall under global sterotyping.

They tried to yank out a medical implant.  What is going to happen when Google releases their final version of the Glass technology?  And not just Google. You know that other companies are lining up to release their own version of augmentation.  Does it become a stand off between cyborgs and fundamentalists?  A holy war between transhumanists and the religious right wings?  Or something even more ludicrous as the tech public against corporate elites?

Some reading this will say "Hey, you work for McDonalds. Why aren't you supporting the company?".  I'm not real proud of this right now, for my own reasons.  Whether or not the McDonalds corporation makes this right for Dr. Steve Mann is besides the point.  At some time in the future this will become personal for everyone.  We will need to take up positions on whether we embrace technology and the direction it's taking us, or shun it from our lives.

On this, I stand solid with the transhumanists.

A Thought on Transhumanism and Second Life

I like Second Life.  Once I finally got used to the interface, it was easy to go from location to location, where I could earn Linden Dollars, and spend them just as fast.  What kept me there was being able to exchange the L$ for US$. The notecards, pop-up messages, maps, and heads up devices are a nice reminder of what will eventually happen in the default world  when augmented reality finally becomes mainstream.  As long as Google keeps working on a head mounted display, it will happen.  And everyone will jump on that bandwagon.   But I've been aware of the constant draw to return to live in-world recently.

Transhumanism is a large and broadly defined way of life.  There is no one way to achieve Transhumanism.  But the closest single thing to it in my opinion has been Second Life.  That system has it's own global structure, politics, law enforcement, economy, and lifestyle.  If physical reality didn't rear it's ugly head and make you eat and go to the bathroom, the average SL citizen could get lost in their computers for weeks at a time, if not months or years

I wouldn't mind living in Second Life.  There are TONS of opportunities in-world that I can take advantage of.  But I'm quite comfortable with my default world existence.  Outside of exchanging L$ for US$, there is really no way for me to personally interact with SL/default on the fly.  I need to set time aside to focus on SL and it's lifestyle.  Then I need to detach and refocus on physical reality..  I'm finding it to be disconcerting, because both require focus and attention to detail.

For the summer, I'm going to cut back my SL involvement.  And that probably includes third party websites and contacts.  I'm going to refocus on virtual worlds that let me slip in and out unobtrusively.  Work with stuff that doesn't make me feel like a Transhumanist.  Because I'm not a Transhumanist.  I'm still Human 1.0.

 

 

 

I know! Let's blame.....

(Insert favorite scapegoat here.)  There's a crapload of problems with the global population right now.  Unemplyment is primary.  Government is next.  Of course the government doesn't operate without tax money.  And you can't tax an unemployed person.  So to look good government blathers on about taxing the rich; creating jobs, bailing out a particular industry, etc.  And it's all technology's fault!  There are too many robots!  AI took my white collar job!  My company downsized me into the unemployment line!.  I'm so tired of it all.

Has anyone noticed that North America has settled next to the EU in terms of spinning it's wheels?  The US will elect the same bureaucrats.  The bureaucrats will pontificate on the same dead solutions.. And come to the same dead conclusions.  Canada, who is more aligned with the EU than the US is, is already backed against the wall by people that think the government will pay their way through life.  What the hell happened to common sense?  Blaming a government or technology for your own sloth won't put food on the table.  It wont pay the bills. and it certainly won't apologize and offer you a great paying job.

There are thousands of people that have decided to use the system to their advantage.  I'm not saying "work with the system"  The system as a whole is certainly broken for any number of foreseeable years.  But like any good bureaucracy, the parts that made up the system still work just fine, and aren't going ANYWHERE!  Most of us have landed in a new place in the pecking order.  Sure, we fell from that comfy, high perch in the leafy branches.  So are you gonna keep sitting on your broken butts and whine that nobody is helping you get back up?  The only way back up is to climb!  The bureaucracy has LOTS of ladders..  But instead of whining until they give you one to shut you up, how about you start asking how to get one?  It's the old concept of Free Enterprise.  Also known as "do it yourself"

It's time that humanity relearned that concept.