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Technology

Why Do People Want Everything For Next To Nothing?

by mark on July 12, 2011

You quickly realize how many nutcases are sharing the planet with you, when you read blog comments attached to posts about pretty rational things.

Take for example, Netflix’s announcement that their unlimited plan that lets you do all of the streaming while having one physical disk out at a time, all for $9.99/month, was going to be eliminated.

Now you can have a $7.99 plan that includes unlimited DVDs (1 out at a time), a $7.99 unlimited streaming plan, or both.

So, for $15.98, you can continue to have what you had yesterday at $9.99.

Oh the humanity! A 60% increase! Overnight! GASP!

The comments sections everywhere, Twitter, and Facebook have erupted into outrage. People talking tough about sticking it to Netflix with threats of taking their business elsewhere. Ingrates are saying that they’ve enjoyed Netflix, but this is it… the relationship is over! There are those complete dopes who can only muster up four-letter words to drop into the comments sections to express their outrage. %&#$ YOU NETFLIX!

Reality: Netflix gives people a ridiculously great bargain for years, and then when they ask for a little more — $5.99/month more to be precise &mdash to cover additional streaming costs, or royalties that have to be paid, people are ready to dump Netflix altogether?

I’ve been a customer since 2000. I love Netflix. I wish they streamed at 1080p instead of 720p, but streaming is convenient. They are really fast at receiving my physical discs and sending out the next one in my queue. They have a great website. They have a huge selection. At $15.98, it’s a great value.

Some of you might be too young to remember having to drive to the local video store to pick up a VHS or DVD, wandering around in the store looking for something worth watching in the store’s horrible selection, picking something out, paying $2.99 for a 2 night rental, forgetting to drive it back on time, getting charged another few bucks for the late fee… And I’m saying this while back in the 80′s my family owned a video rental store.

It still amazes me that there are video rental places that are still in business.

So where are all of the outraged people going to go? I will bet that half of them stay with Netflix, and the other half will go somewhere else, realize how much the alternatives suck, and return to Netflix.

Sure, Amazon has streaming, but you’re paying $2.99-$3.99 per rental, good for only 48 hours (at least that’s how it was the last time I checked). They give Prime members free streaming on a limited selection, but it’s mostly stuff you wouldn’t have paid for anyways.

I will remain a loyal Netflix customer as long as I feel that I’m getting value out of their service. I look at it this way: For the cost of two movie tickets at a theater where I’ll have to deal with uncomfortable seats and other rude theater goers, I can have unlimited movies for an entire month, delivered right to my mailbox or streaming device. If these price hikes ensure Netflix continues to improve and works towards 1080p streaming, they can keep hitting my credit card.

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DONT FLUORESCE ON ME

Don’t Fluoresce on Me: Big Government and CFLs

by mark on April 21, 2011

Nobody that I know likes the light produced by compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). I don’t like the 60Hz flicker that accompanies them, and the color is very displeasing. I’ve given them a chance more than once, but even my kids complained about the light quality. So I used them where we’re generally not living, reading, eating, cooking. I’ve been using them outdoors (but they take forever to warm up in the cooler seasons), and in rooms that we don’t spend much time.

They may cause migraines. They contain about 5mg mercury per bulb, requiring that they be disposed of at CFL recycling locations — inconvenient enough that many people will just toss them into their regular garbage and end up in landfills. What’s so environmentally friendly about that?

So now they might cause cancer?

Energy saving light bulbs ‘contain cancer causing chemicals’:

Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on.

Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin’s Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

Ann Althouse also justifiably rants about the activism that never ends. It’s always something that has to be made a big deal out of and the activists have to force their conclusions on the rest of us.

So before we have an adequate replacement for the incandescent bulb, politicians around the world are banning them and trying to force people into using fluorescent bulbs or alternatives that just plain suck!

Don’t take my choices away from me! Let the market deal with it in it’s own way, and when we have viable alternatives, people will switch to the best product that saves them money, is safe, and provides them with sufficient quality light.

If the government is going to mandate them, then consumers no longer have a choice. Manufacturers won’t have to expend any real effort to improve their CFL products or develop alternatives. If consumers don’t have a choice, where is the incentive to innovate?

UPDATE: Amy Alkon recommends a place to get a good deal on incandescent bulbs if you want to start hoarding them by the hundreds.

UPDATE: Don’t expect the GOP to come through for us on this one either.

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Who’s the Boss, You or Your Gadget?

by mark on February 7, 2011

This NYT article presents the competition between the pros and cons of all of the technologies that we have at our fingertips. There’s an app for just about every kind of task you can imagine. and they can be used to help along your personal and work life.

But if you’re not consciously making sure that it’s working for you, it can own you, and before you know it, those same apps are taking away from your life.

From a family perspective, many of the ideas that are discussed from the perspective of adults can be adapted to kids as well.

You bought your kids cell phones so they can keep in touch in case of an emergency, or just for convenience. Have your kids been taken over by the cell phones? Do they text constantly to a point of being completely distracted all of the time? Have your kids turns into bad-manners-monsters because they can’t put them down even when they’re at the dinner table at the grandparents? Have technologies taken control of your kid’s reports cards?

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Photo by Deryck Hodge

The 9-year-old Website Developers

by mark on November 3, 2010

As long as you don’t mind a website that looks like it was developed by 9-year-olds, then go for it.

Kids have an amazing capacity to learn whatever they put their mind to it. While they don’t have all of the discipline and experience to do what a professional website designer can put together, they can certainly create something that works for an auto-salvage lot. Nice work boys. I read about this in this story in the NY Times.

I really like the idea of kids at this age getting on a computer and actually learning valuable skills.

It’s also the rare case that kids get on computers and actually learn productive skills like these boys did.

As a parent, I’m going to overlook a bit of excessive computer time if the kids are actually learning something. But it’s time to pull the plug (or let ComputerTime push them off) when all they’re doing is social networking and aimless browsing.

How many of you think that your kids are actually learning valuable skills when they’re on their computers? Maybe I ask that question a different way… Given the amount of time that they are on their computers, do you think they are learning enough valuable skills to justify the amount of time they spend on their computers?

(Header image by Deryck Hodge.)

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Are Gadgets Making Us Rude?

by mark on November 2, 2010

The Today Show featured one of my favorite bloggers, Amy Alkon, talking about the trend towards more rudeness, especially with respect to us keeping our noses buried in our devices or yammering on cell phones.

Watch the video at Amy’s site.

People are losing awareness of what’s going on around them. They are living in a bubble caused by the portable game, iPhone, iPod, cell phone, whatever it may be.

Do you snap at your kids when you see them texting their friends at a restaurant, or around a dinner table with family? Do you ever make everybody shut off their devices in the car and make them all engage in conversation? Or are you part of the problem being a bad role model yourself, by being one of these rude citizens?

Amy’s bright and pretty down to earth. I love her directness with which she deals with other people’s rude behavior, and her vigilante style of going after people who need to have their asses kicked. Go buy her book and read it so that when you’re in a situation where no one else is willing stand up against the tyranny of the inconsiderate, you will be confident and prepared to do battle.

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How Must Trust Do You Put In Technology?

by mark on October 5, 2010

This past weekend, a GPS led a driver into a reservoir.

Not the first time people put total trust into a gadget and turning off their own senses. More examples here, here, here, and here, for starters.

Would these problems have occurred had they not used a navigation system? Do you think that people become totally dependent on their GPS’s rather than simply use them as an aid, along with a map, signs, visually observing what is going on around you, etc.?

Do you have any similar stories to share?

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Post image for Backup Scheduled for 2030: Your Entire Brain

Backup Scheduled for 2030: Your Entire Brain

by mark on October 3, 2009

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorelei-ranveig/ / CC BY-SA 2.0


He’s clearly a brilliant guy with some very significant accomplishments behind him. Ray Kurzweil offers predictions on where we will be with technology in the future.

In Kurzweil’s estimation, we will be able to upload the human brain to a computer, capturing “a person’s entire personality, memory, skills and history”, by the end of the 2030s; humans and non-biological machines will then merge so effectively that the differences between them will no longer matter; and, after that, human intelligence, transformed for the better, will start to expand outward into the universe, around about 2045. With this last prediction, Kurzweil is referring not to any recognisable type of space travel, but to a kind of space infusion. “Intelligence,” he writes, “will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst [and] spread out from its origin on Earth.”

The article didn’t elaborate on what you’d be able to do with this off-site backup of your life’s worth personality, memories, and skills. If you bump your head, will you be able to do a restore operation to put it back?

Will we be able to wipe one person’s brain clean and download somebody else’s thoughts into it?

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Study: Parents Think Computers Are Good for Kids

by mark on March 18, 2009

Computer Games are Good for Kids, Parents Say (Microsoft-commissioned survey of parents). Commenter “WinTard” says,

I would agree. My kid has been playing with computers since age 1, starting with Mother Goose. It allows them to familiarize themselves with a critical tool that will be necessary for their future success in the 3rd millennium and 21st century. And it develops an interest and passion for something worthwhile.

The major source of calamity in our society is people plodding through life without direction or objectives. And idle, bored minds turn to nasty things…

How did our civilization ever prosper in the days before computers?

Why do so many parents get this so wrong? Idle, bored minds eventually turn toward imagination and creativity. Parents need to read Richard Louv and Jane Healy.

There is plenty of time for kids to acquaint themselves with technology. They don’t need a mouse shoved into their hands at one year or even five. Jane Healy, who has studied kids and computers thinks age 7 is a good time to introduce kids to computers. Young kids should be exploring the real world with all of their senses. They really don’t need the distraction of computers.

When did your kids start using computers? Do you think what they have learned will be a major factor in their success in life?

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Take Giant Steps Away from the Computer Once in a While

March 2, 2009

As impressive as a robot playing Giant Steps by John Coltrane might be, it has no soul. It’s clearly not human. We can appreciate the technical merits, however we cannot appreciate it musically. For that we need the real thing as played by a talented human being. Likewise, while we can appreciate all of the [...]

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Everything is Amazing, but Nobody is Happy

February 26, 2009

“We live in an amazing, amazing world and it’s wasted on the crappiest generation of just spoiled idiots…” Video of Louis CK on Conan O’Brian Great comedy that makes a great point. People do take sooo much for granted. I would love to be able to channel this guy when I hear people complain about [...]

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