#59 - Paperless Books

I was discussing college costs with an aggrieved parent the other day. After the usual, "Wow isn't college expensive", discussion we moved on to "Why do text books cost so much". I asked the question, 'Why aren't all text books on line?" Plenty of storage on the Internet to hold these books that have very little value other then in taking a class. Very few text books are worth being long term reference books. You would either pay a fee associated with the course or buy access rights to the book online. All the information would be online and if you really needed a hard copy of a couple pages, that is what a printer is for. Its not like you couldn't take the book to a copier now so I don't see the difference in copyright protection.

In our discussion, the point came up of security. The fear of the book publisher is that students would share names and passwords to save money. What really needs to happen with the Internet, is that there is no more anonymous access to the web. That's the big problem with spammers and pornographers. They can get on the web anonymously and cause all kinds of havoc. Using an identity method such as finger print or retinal scanning could be used to identify the individual.

I-books (my coin of phrase) would be less expensive and a boon to the environment. Less trees, bleaching and ink chemistry is good for the world. I think text books would be an ideal start to ridding us of another worthless college expense. What do you think? Just click the orange comment word below and let me know.

#58 - Rain and Travel

Just a quick update today. Raining on a Friday, what's new about that? I'm off to a meeting in Blacksburg, so no big blog today. Hope to take in the memorials and sense of the campus before finals begin. I'll be back with a blog on Sunday night!

#57 - Does anyone really program anymore?

I first saw a computer in the fall of 1972. It was an IBM 360/370 at Virginia Tech. It took up a room and only could be communicated with by using punch cards (IBM cards!). You had start the cards off by learning JCL (Job Control Language). Then you could actually program the beast to do something using Fortran (number cruncher)or Cobol(data cruncher) programming languages

Engineers learned Fortran (actually Fortran IV/Watfiv). Business types did Cobol. The original PCs from Apple and IBM had a language called BASIC that you could use to program them. Basic language was a subset of Fortran so wasn't too hard to pick up. I loved programing in Basic and wrote all kinds of game and database programs. I remember being asked to help our church at an auction. I whipped out a Basic program to keep track of what items we had to auction. Who won them and how much they owed. This was done on my Apple IIe that I dragged to the church with my Sony TV monitor. This would have been an early data base program, but customized to the auction.

With the advents of Windows, programming languages were developed to handle the graphic nature of the new operating systems. Visual Basic and C++ were developed to support graphic operating systems and became standards of the computer industry. Neither is very intuitive or easy to pick up. You have to have a computer bent to pursue either. The languages of the Internet are Java and HTML. Java was developed by Sun Microsystems to move TV type applications to the PC via a network. HTML is the graphic language that sits behind every web page.

So in 2007 the only people programming are those trained to program. I've heard of people teaching themselves C++, but JAVA is something completely different. Out of the blue the other day, I decided I wanted to write a program for the first time in a decade. What I first discovered was that there was no programming language on my PC. So I go to the Internet and find a free language Fortran95. Its the successor to the Fortran I grew up with, but has lots of hooks for Graphics so that the program can look good in Windows or on a MAC.

I'll let you know how my experiment goes.

#56 - Security Technology

Making the world a more secure place has become more of a priority for many administrators and business owners. There are bad people out there and technology can help you protect what you value.

One of the biggest improvements in security is IP cameras. IP cameras take their images and record them on hard disks in a PC. Running security camera feeds through computers allows for unlimited options of problem identification. There are programs that can zoom in on a persons face and match it with a large data base of criminals. Also you can store longer amounts of data to review days after an incident. Security cameras are one of crime fighters best tools.

There are several methods of personal identification that can be used to access equipment or be used for building access control. Finger print identification is the one fatherest along. I have a finger print reader on my new Lenovo laptop. Just pull your finger over the sensor and you are in. No passwords required. The technology certainly has come a long way, but its still not quite there. It usually takes me an average of 2 swipes before the computer gets it right. Another technology that is still cost prohibitive is retinal imaging. A scanner reads the unique image of your retina and matching it with a data base. I've seen it in person twice and it seemed to work pretty good. I'm just fussy about my eyes. Access security needs to be quick and hard to penetrate. I'm sure one of these technologies will meet that bill soon.

#55 - Another reason to dislike Microsoft

Today I had at least 5 different customers with Internet Explorer problems. The problem was they all used msn.com as their home page. msn.com added a new Microsoft ad on their site that requires Adobe Flash Player 9 add in program. If you don't have the version of the add in program the site freezes and gives an error. So many couldn't go anywhere on the Internet. The stupid Microsoft ad was for Office 2007. Now that made me laugh.

Not a laughing matter is how to fix this issue. If you have the google toolbar on your IE you can type in Adobe Flash Player 9 Download. And then download and install the fix. If you don't want the fix you can change your home page to something less obnoxious like google.com or yahoo.com. Click Start, Control Panel then Internet Options. Type in google.com or yahoo.com into the Home Page block. Viola no more errors.

So all this to do over a stupid Microsoft ad on the msn home page. Makes you wonder if someone fell asleep at the Microsoft wheel. Sometimes the people at Microsoft make some crazy assumptions. Like everyone has the latest software and greatest hardware. Just like they do! I hate to tell them every time I work on a customer happy with Windows 98 and their Pentium II processor. Now there is a horror story...

#54 - Internet of the future 2

When last we talked about technical issues the Internet and its future was the topic. Let's continue on that path today. One of the driving forces of changing the Internet as we know it is the situation that we are running out of Internet addresses. Known as the IP (Internet Protocol) address, this is the 4 digit number that uniquely identifies everyone on the Internet.

For example Google's IP address is 64.233.187.99. You can take those four number with periods and put them into a web browser and Viola you are at Google.com. Of course remembering www.google.com is alot easier! The Internet translates your www info to the correct IP address and you get to where you are going. The problem with our current IP address system (known as IPv4) is that it is limited to about 4 billion addresses. With the advent of cell phones and PDA's getting on the Internet and with everyone having a blog or web page or my space page, we are running out of addresses.

A new IP protocol (known as IPv6) has been developed and is being implemented as we speak. This address scheme will allow 3.4×10^38 unique addresses (that's alot of addresses). Unfortunately the change to the protocol requires just about everything that underpins the Internet to change. Suffice to say, Change isn't easy. IPv6 addresses are normally written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits. For example; 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334 is a valid IPv6 address. That has to be understood by all the software and hardware running the Internet. So the gurus of the Internet are now implementing the changes that will move us down this path.

The US government has funded the change to take place in 2008 at its Internet backbone facilities. Tons of public funds (think $Billions) are going into this enterprise. Hopefully much of it will be done without us noticing. But with any change, you can plan on the unexpected.

On another front, the US is sponsoring a completely new Internet built from scratch that will parallel and then completely absorb the Internet as we know it. Research is going on at Stanford and several other universities to define how the "clean from scratch" Internet will look and feel. Your tax dollars at work!

#53 - Trying to make sense

Its the day after and an emptiness that I can't describe has descended upon me. Today we found out that there were people we knew that didn't survive yesterday in Blacksburg. A lovely young lady that joined us at our happy hour. A dedicated young lady that befriended our neighbor and adopted daughter Rebecca. An fine professor that taught our niece. And those are with a bit more then half the victims identified. Oh the unfairness of life!

The convocation held at Virginia Tech today was just the right medicine. We were impressed with all the speakers and our soul lifted when Nikki Giovanni finished with "We are Virginia Tech". The vigil held tonight on the Drill Field was another step in the healing process. Please keep Virginia Tech in your thoughts and prayers.

#52 - Stunned

Horrific, Terrible, Stunned, Madness, Depression. Those are some of the emotions and descriptions that I had on this nasty day. As many of you know the Moga's connections to Virginia Tech are many and deep. Our nephew Sam is a freshman and with many friends children are enrolled, we were worried this morning. We had the relief that none of students we were directly related to were hurt. Our feelings of sympathy goes out to the many parents and some spouses that did not get the good call today.

I certainly don't have any answers. Insanity is not unique to this generation. And I truly believe you have to be insane to take human life so indiscriminately. Please keep the Virginia Tech family in your thoughts and prayers.

#51 - The Internets future

This blog is either late or early depending on your point of view. Late for Friday, Early for Monday. Hopefully it won't be boring!

News on Friday was there is a group of Internet gurus who are looking at scrapping the Internet as we know it and moving to a more secure faster better Internet. You know the government will get involved so buyer beware!

The Internet as we know it has it roots in a government network called ARPANET. Begun in 1969 ARPANET allowed the 4 networks of UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah and th University of California, Santa Barbara to talk to each other. The key to making these independent networks work together was the concept of packet switching. Invented by Donald Davies, Paul Baran, and Leonard Kleinrock, packet switching is where packets of information are routed between nodes over data links shared with other traffic. This allowed for information from one network to smoothly arrive at another network by finding its network address.

The Internet was never designed for what it is today. It was a government/academic collaboration. Security was very low priority. The goal was to gain network stability through spreading the hardware between many different hosts that had the same goals. That is very far from where we have landed today. Just about everyone on the planet knows about the Internet an about 25% of the population has some kind of access to the Internet (70% in the US). This is way larger then the 4 initial networks back in 1969.

So where does the Internet go from here? The incubator for many of the emerging technologies shaping the future is known as Internet2. Formed in 1996 it's a Petrie dish for networking experiments. The project's goals are to create new applications that can't run over the existing Internet and to develop the infrastructure that supports those applications. I think many of these improvements will come as evolution not revolution. The advent of Broadband Internet this past decade has shown that the venerable Internet can handle higher speeds and the volume caused by movies and videos being hosted on the Internet.

The adding of cell phones and PDAs to the Internet provides more pressure on the existing bandwidth and security. Some changes that I would like to see is true IP addressing. Meaning that you couldn't get on the Internet hidden from everyone. That's what the SPAMMERS do. They hide and run so they are very difficult to catch. Also viruses and malware would have a much tougher go if every packet of information had a real start and stop address. Hope it happens soon!

#50 - Why?

Well this is #50. Its been a bit over 2 months of posting Monday through Friday. Is it worth the effort? Am I getting anything out of doing it? Are my fingers getting sore? These and more are the questions I need to answer today.

We've had 244 visitors over the past two months. Many of them repeat viewers. Most read the days blog and then bop off the site to the Internet. I hope what I have written is informative. I hope my opinions aren't over bearing. I wish I wrote better! So far it has made me think a bit more about how I feel about technology. That's hard for an engineer. We live for technology! Always wanting the next higher tech gizmo. I've learned some history and revisited some that I had forgot. So over all, in my mind, it has been worth the effort. I would like a bit more feed back (hardly anyone comments on the posts). Let me know how I'm doing! If you agree or disagree, just click on the comment item at the end of the blog.

Am I getting anything out of doing it? Well certainly nothing monetarily. So what I'm getting is knowledge, the satisfaction of writing and knowing someone is listening and just thinking up topics keeps me on my toes. I guess a better question is 'Are you getting anything out of it?' Are you learning? Are you being challenged but what I'm saying? What would you like me to comment on? Lets make this blog more of a two way street!

I first thought, Hey I can drop a few paragraphs off every morning, Monday through Friday, no problem. Um that hasn't been the case. As we have gone on the topics have taken longer to think up. Once I have a topic, it hasn't been an issue on putting out the blog. Just have to get that initial idea. AND make sure it has something to do with technology. There is the challenge.

OK here is the question for you dear reader. Which blogs did you most enjoy? Which left you bland? Those thoughts will help me move forward to the second 50. Thanks!

#49 - The $100 Laptop

Here's an outrageous idea: What if every child in the world could have a free personal laptop? Put some e-books on it, make it Web-capable, and add a palette of media tools so children could work on creative projects. Wouldn't that be incredible?
One Laptop per Child (OLPC). What a great dream! With a history over 4 decades old, a group of old time computer people got together to put a dream into reality. The organization (OLPC) is lead by Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT. Their goal is to put a laptop into the hands of every child that they can in the developing world.


This is not going to be your average laptop. Its designed to be a learning tool for the children, not just a glorified Internet Browser. Labeled the XO Laptop, the machine is now in beta 2 release. The end is getting close for bringing the dream a reality. The goal of the laptop is to encourage the concept of "LEARNING LEARNING". A computer uniquely fosters learning learning by allowing children to “think about thinking”, in ways that are otherwise impossible. Using the XO as both their window on the world, as well as a highly programmable tool for exploring it, children in emerging nations will be opened to both knowledge and to their own creative and problem-solving potential.


Here is some info on the laptop. The design of the display is unique. It's only 7½" diagonal with dual modes of color and Black and White. The Black and White mode is for e-books. One of the most expensive items for developing countries is text books. If all your children have the XO, textbook costs just went down a bunch! The keyboard is rubberized and ruggedized. The case is extra thick plastic. There is no hard drive. The Laptop has 256MB of memory and a 1GB flash memory capacity (like an internal pen drive). It uses an AMD processor. It will have wireless capability (see the cute antennas?) and very minimum battery power requirements. You can charge it from a car or any outlet. The XO has a Linix (free) opereating system and will have an internet browser and educational games designed just for it.


Will it cost only $100? Hmm that's a question that might not mean anything. The design and development of the XO is essentially being done for free by the OLPC foundation. They are 501c3 charity that you can donate to. Here is a link to their web site. http://www.laptop.org

Maybe this is one way technology should be used.

#48 - Who's your daddy?

It seems we finally know the daddy of poor Dannylyn yada yada Smith Marshall Stern. Now we wonder if that dad will really care about the child or the mega millions that might come from the Marshall side of the family. The point in a Technology blog is the process of DNA identification. There is no greater impact on justice in this country then that of DNA identification. Even a tiny hair fragment can prove the guilt or innocence of a defendant.

There is almost complete identity between any two human beings. Look at your neighbors. You're 99.9% identical. That should make you feel very common, part of a common species. But of course, in a genome of three billion letters, even a tenth of a percent difference translates into three million separate spelling differences. So when we do DNA comparisons, we can't read all three billion letters. What is done instead is that a very small handful of sites of variation are examined. Sites of variation here on this chromosome, perhaps, or one here, or one here, and one picks enough sites of variation to be able to have enough markers of difference.

Interestingly, there isn't an agreed on procedure to look for the common variations in DNA for identification purposes. That's one of the reasons the testing takes so long. Its not like there is one place to look for the identifiers. You have to look in many places and match them all. Close relatives have more matches then non relatives. Only identical twins have the same DNA. So when one gets a DNA match it is always within some realm of probability. Now that may be astronomical probability, say 2 million to 1, but still some probability of not being a match.

The question today is "Should everyone's DNA be on record?" Certainly it would help in criminal identification. ACLU types are fighting with their last breaths to keep that from happening. I suppose there are ways the government could abuse having your DNA information, but hey they already have my social security number. Some worry that a government gone fascist might try to eliminate some with "bad' DNA". State legislatures have decided in some states to set up DNA databases, not for all citizens, but for only those convicted of, say, sex offenses, and other states for those convicted of any felony. With the increase in criminal offenses this database may begin to approach a goodly percentage of the population. Something to think about!

#47 - Technology and Money Part2

I'm back and feeling better. Still sniffling with allergies, but not achey or sleepy. Lets finish our discussion on Technology and Money. We talked about Visicalc and how it led to a PC on every business desk. Let's get a bit more personal.

I just finished my taxes and to be honest I didn't do a detailed analysis of the whole process. I've been using Turbotax for years and have grown comfortable with just answering the questions and letting the program do the rest. I used to do the taxes every year, but this is so much easier. As the tax code and my finances get more complicated it makes a lot of sense to let the program do the work. Spend the $49.00 and get the peace of mind that the program works. I even got the Phone Tax rebate this year because of TurboTax!

We also use Quicken and/or Quickbooks for family/company finances. The reports and reconsiliation keep us straight and always on the know to our personal finances. I print out my checks and never have a problem at month end. If you aren't using a financial program you should consider getting one today.

Our bank of choice, Highlands Community Bank (HCB), is going online soon. We'll be able to get updated balances, transfer money and pay every bill we get online. There are some security concerns in going online, but let me say that HCB has taken every precaution to protect their customers. They took their time in making sure that every twist and turn of online finances is being covered.

So when will we be cashless? It can't be too far down the road. I saw my nephew pay for a $3.50 grocery bill by credit card. So why carry cash at all? There still are a few places that don't take plastic, but those are also dwindling. Its too bad that the most unscrupulous financial people out there are the credit card companies. They are the masters of hidden charges, fees and just not being nice to their customers. There are exceptions, but for the most part you really need to know the policies of your credit cards. A one day mistep could easily cost you hundreds of dollars. I can't believe a financial company can get by charging 17% interest, but there are hundreds of credit cards doing just that. Buyer beware!

#46 - There has been an interuption in our service

I've been under the weather the last couple of days with a sever allergy attack. I'm coming out of it today, but I'm still not coherent enough to post a new blog. Between cough and allergy medications everything is kind of fuzzy.

Have a great holiday. I'll be back next week.

#45 - Money and Technology - Part I

I'll bet you didn't know that finance (more specifically accounting) was a major driver behind personal computer development. I've seen it written that without the invention of the spreadsheet, PCs as we know them today, would not exist.

And now for the rest of the story. Dan Briklin was a MBA student at Harvard in 1978 when he first had the idea of the electronic spreadsheet. For centuries accountants the world over used huge sheets of paper with columns and rows to organize finances. He teamed up with Bob Frankston in 1979 and formed the Software Arts company. Dan wrote his first electronic spreadsheet on an Apple II in Apple Basic (my first PC!). They named it Visicalc. It was first used at Harvard in graduate classes and it quickly became the hottest software product in the fledgling PC world. After a great reception and some copying, a lawsuit eventually did in Software Arts. Their publisher got in a battle with engineers and no one but the lawyers won. Visicalc was eventually sold to the Lotus Corporation. During the lawsuit Lotus had copied the Visicalc idea and came out with Lotus 1-2-3 Designed for the new IBM PC, Lotus 1-2-3 soon became the #1 software product and drove more sales of PCs then any other reason.

Companies found a way to be more productive and get quicker financial answers. Sales of PCs took off driven by Businesses desire to get a better hand on where there organization was heading. Lotus 1-2-3 was the precursor to Excel and is still available for sale by IBM.

I had Visicalc on my old Apple and then moved on to Lotus 1-2-3 ( I still have a version lying around!). You can still download a free version of Visicalc (Free From IBM) here: http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm. Note that this program is a tiny 25K in size. Way smaller then a typical jpg picture file. Amazing.

#44 - The TV Computer

This is Monday mornings blog on late Sunday night. Its a busy week for PCSS. We'll be on vacation Friday and Monday so keep that in mind if you are looking for a new blog!

So how long do you think it will be before we buy all in one computer/TVs? I can bring my cable into my Computer and set up a window that shows what is on TV. The quality isn't the best but it is TV. You can now watch most TV shows after the fact on the web. I pick up NBC's The Office on the web because I have a meeting on Thursday nights. I think that more and more content will be on the web and you can watch it there. In fact its like having EVERYTHING Tivoed. Just find the program on the web and either download it or if you have a good broadband connection just watch it on line.

One new item that doesn't make much sense to me is the iPod or Phone video craze. The screens are just too small and the audio (at least for phones) isn't the best. To make matters worse, iTunes and their ilk are CHARGING money for free TV episodes. Something is very wrong about that. Hope this poor concept goes away soon.

Now one new web phenomena that is interesting is YouTube.com. Being able to post all sorts of interesting video on the web has certainly turned on human creativity. Yes, much of it is very sophomoric but there is some interesting content. The music videos are especially creative. I've found new artists that bring a different look to modern music.

I think the key is the ability to get the entertainment you want, when you want it. Other then live sports, most entertainment should be available when you feel like being entertained not when someone thinks you should. VCRs and Tivo type systems have brought us part of the way there. "All the way" would be a system in which you come home and pick and choose what you want to watch, not whats on from an almost endless supply. I'll let the marketing gurus figure out how to pay for it!