The Fall of the Airport Laptop

Image from Airsafe.com

I’ve relized something in my latest travel, albeit small, quite significant. Just about a year and a half ago I’d enter the airport terminal to notice alot of people on their laptops, various types, dell, macbooks, Hewlett Packard, you name it and it was there.

Fast forward just a little later and those laptops have been replaced by smartphones (where it be the all popular iphone or android based ones) or the pads (same thing; ios or android). Its just a simple sign of the quickly changing technology market, the reliance on smaller touch screen electronic devices.

Before the trip, my mother had asked me I intended to bring my laptop along for the ride. I didn’t see the purpose, I had everything I needed with my smartphone, and it was a heck of a lot easier to to bring with me than having the haul around my macbook.

Anyhow, here’s a RIP to the once prominence of laptops at the airport and a welcome to the much smaller hand-held devices!

Oh No! The Internet’s Down! Whatever Shall We Do?

I recently watched an episode of South Park where most of the country’s internet goes down.  Most of the residents of South Park, Colorado pack up and head to California in hope of finding some internet.  It’s sad to think, but many of us, when we’re at home and our internet isn’t working, don’t really have much at all to do (when the truth is that we could actually probably go outside, exercise, read, clean, do something to fill that gap that’s even more productive).  In fact, the only thing we can focus on is getting the damn internet back up and working again.  It’s not to say that we’re to blame for this attitude (well maybe some of us..).  In fact, in some ways, society has forced us to grow ever so reliant on new forms of technology to get things done, especially bureaucracy.  Think about it.  The way we apply for jobs, the way we pay our bills, and file our taxes.  This can all be done online nowadays.  Not to mention that if you’re a student currently enrolled in school, your teacher most likely requires that you logon to blackboard and/or submit your papers online.  We don’t go crazy when technology fails because we’re technology addicted people.  It’s because society is requiring the average person out there to do everything online.

Texting and instant messaging has perhaps made some of us less likely to talk on the phone

Does modern day social networking increase or decrease the quality of personal communication?

That’s a question I’ve thought about quite a bit.  The dominance of Facebook in social networking through multimedia is what made Mark Zuckerberg Time’s person of the year for 2010.  With Facebook, we have ways of catching up with old friends we perhaps never thought we’d see again.  We can check our friends’ statuses daily.  It’s great right?  Well consider this.

If a facebook user happens to browse through their friends’ facebook statuses, would that facebook user be less likely to directly contact that friend to personally ask them how things are going because they already know from seeing their friends’ statuses? Perhaps.  And in some way, this new form of social networking discourages phone conversations or sometimes even meeting in person, in effect diminishing the quality of personal communication.  It also gives things the tendency to be taken out of context whenever they’re over texting.  But the answer to this question still remains a big, “It depends…”.  Perhaps seeing a friend’s facebook status would make the user even more interested in inquiring to an even greater extent about how things are going in their friends’ lives, thus encouraging the user to engage in further social interaction on an even deeper level.  It’s all a big, it depends.  But for the most part, its probably a good thing.  Let’s give technology one thing, overall it sure makes things a hella lot more convenient.

1968: The fictional birth of Apple’s iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

I recently read Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and couldn’t help but take interest in the futuristic technologic predictions made in the book, written from a 1968 perspective.  One of the more fascinating ones involves a device Dr. Heywood Floyd uses to scan over worldwide news headlines during his shuttle flight to the moon.  While it lacks the social networking perspective of the internet, it has a pretty interesting take on the news part.  Just interesting.

Excerpt from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey:

“There was plenty to occupy his time, even if he did nothing but sit and read.  When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-size Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth.  One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad.  Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and notes the items that interested him.  Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectrangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort.  When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination.

Floyd sometimes wondered it the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications.  Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hours, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased.  (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronic.)  The text was update automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news statellites.”

 

As Space Shuttle Program Nears Retirement, Orion Waits In The Wings

 

An artist's depiction of Orion traveling by the moon

For some its been a disappointment.  The last 30 or so years of space flight with the shuttle program have been described by some as having discovered the new world, then just hanging out on its coast, failing to ever venture inland.  That might be true in some regards.  However, it brought a more permanent solution to entering and exiting Earth’s atmosphere at a smaller cost.  The shuttle’s largest legacy may be its work with orbital satellites and helping develop the International Space Station.  When something went wrong, the shuttle always came in handy with a crew to help repair whatever orbital man-made object needed attention.  And that being said, the shuttle program could never venture far past Earth orbit, travel to the moon, or attempt to land on any natural space object.

NASA’s Apollo Program, the one that brought man to the moon is the one that really inspired man’s desire to learn even more about the unknown.  The last time man set foot on the moon was in 1972.  Since then, man has managed to bring unmanned spacecraft to successfully land on Mars, Saturn’s moon of Titan, and the Voyager crafts, launched during the 1970’s are still functional and exploring the outer solar system.  We’re also headed to Pluto to study the recently reclassified dwarf planet.  All these missions are unmanned though.

The Orion capsule as seen at a development facility in New Orleans, LA (Photo Credit: NASA)

What’s the future of human space flight after the retirement of the shuttle program? More or less, it may depend of wrangling in Washington D.C. with fights over budget cuts and re-prioritizing funds during a time of economic uncertainty not only for the United States, but for much of the world.  Cancellation for the Constellation program, deemed as the shuttle’s successor was in February of last year.  Most recently, NASA’s authorization act, signed by President Obama officially ended Constellation.  However, that’s not to say that the spacecraft developed during Constellation will go to waste.  In fact, Orion, the crew exploration vehicle still waits in the wings as the main successor to the shuttle.  I’d think of it as an Apollo program on steroids, fully capable of pro-longed space flight, except to an even larger extent than Apollo.  It’ll be able to venture to the moon, asteroids, and possibly even Mars.

Although Constellation has been cancelled, it’s really being re-tooled.  Earlier this month, the Orion spacecraft was shipped to from a facility in New Orleans to a Lockheed Martin one in Denver in order to undergo critical tests.  As retirement of the Shuttle program looms, Orion waits ready to inspire an entire new generation of space flight observers.

control+alt+delete: The Origin

If there’s one most memorable combination of keys on a keyboard, its probably control+alt+delete.  Whether it’s closing a program for the hell of it or trying to get your CPU to work right when it’s frozen, control+alt+delete has been one of the handiest tools that the computer keyboard has ever offered.

This famous key combination was developed sometime around 1975 by IBM designer David Bradley. Control+alt+delete was actually originally control+alt+escape, but Bradley found that the user could too often accidently hit this key combination, thus resulting in an accidental reboot of the system.  OOPS!

Why the Book Stores Will Survive; However, RIP Video Stores..

(Photo Credit: BeBook)

With the rise of Netflix & Redbox, it’s highly doubtful that Video Stores will last much longer.  Take for example the recent filing for bankruptcy by the former juggernaut video store Blockbuster in September of last year.  Then there was the previous bankruptcy of Hollywood Video last May, thus leading to the liquidation of all assets.  Sure, it’s sad to see the video stores go.  However, let’s just admit that when access to a movie you’d like to see is within the click of a button, the Video stores had it coming thanks to Mr. Technology who has finally caught up with them.  The newer ways of accessing movies to rent are just more convenient and even cheaper.  Like Bob Dylan once put it, “Times Are A’ Changin”.

So the same thing must be happening to the bookstores who are taking revenue hits from online sites like Amazon.com & the digital E-Readers, right?  At first glance, it might seem like the same case.  However, I don’t think so and here’s why: Watching movies has always been more so at the viewer’s convenience than reading books are.

When you want to watch a movie, you want to sit back and relax without having to put too much effort into concentration on text and whatnot.  Movie renters want the same convenient and effortless process in renting the movie as they have when watching it.  That’s why they’ve converted heavily towards using Netflix.

Reading a book is more so heavily focused on using effort and even sometimes patience(especially when some books start out slow).  Book lovers want to put the same effort into the process of selecting and purchasing the book as they do into their actual reading of the book.  A book lover wants to browse the books, feel the texture of them in their hands, and even read snippets from the actual books themselves.  Then there’s that proud process of moving the bookmark page to page and placing the book upon a neat shelf as if part of a collection when you’ve finished reading the book.

Basically, what’s tangible survives with tradition(such as books, they’ve been around thousands of years).  What’s more so intangible(such as viewing a movie) moves along with change as technology advances.

The IMAC G3: The Computer That Made Apple Hip

I remembered MACS as the outdated computers we used in middle school to practice typing and play Oregon trail.  The older ones required those large floppy disks.  They weren’t the prettiest of computers, in fact some of them were quite ugly.  However, they were what we had.  The PC had rapidly out-gained APPLE, especially with Microsoft’s release of Windows 95, the same operating system that every Windows release since has been strongly based after.  Windows 3.1 had been completely different.  Being PC was cool.  There was no coming back, then came the release of Apple’s IMAC G3.  They were the all in one computers that came in the different colors.  You’d often see them featured in commercials, perhaps the tag-line being “think different” or whatnot.  They quickly became a part of our early 2000’s pop culture, featured in a movie like Zoolander.  While the production of the G3 is long gone, their legacy prospers.

They started today’s modern MAC revolution.  The latest Apple desktop computers are the latest IMACS.  They were the first in what has since followed, stylistically attractive Apple products.  The slick, stylish look of the G3 makes it appear even cooler looking than many computers today.  You can find them on EBAY today for around $50.  However, beware the shipping costs.  I always thought they were cool looking.

I had recently purchased one off Ebay.  I reinstalled a new DVD drive, upgraded the memory to the max, and installed the Aiport card which would give me wireless internet.  However, if you’re expecting to use the Airport for wireless internet, there’s a range.  I’d say you’d have to have the computer within 2 yards of the router for a decent internet connection, so you might as well directly plug this bad boy in.  They’re older computers so don’t expect them to zoom nearly as fast as some of the newer ones on the market.  The DVD player is decent.  My G3 is running Mac OSX Panther.  I think that in from 2003 maybe? I can’t get the latest versions of firefox or safari.

The best use of the G3 nowadays(aside from looking cool) is as a word processor or internet surfing computer.  I wouldn’t suggest loading the G3 with a bunch of games, videos, or music(although a bit of music never hurts).  The built in speakers are nice.  It’s a heavy computer, although it comes with a built in handle.  Also, one bad thing about these computers are that since the CRT monitor is built in, after years of use, the monitor will eventually fail.  While the G3 comes with an external monitor plug in, there is absolutely no way to disable the internal monitor once it dies.  This can sometimes cause the entire computer to crash.  I do love the way that you can plug the mouse directly into the Mac keyboard.  I’m sure this is a feature used on the most recent MACS.  While the G3 wasn’t the ultimate operating machine, it certainly revolutionized and saved Apple with it’s sleek style.  You can thank the Imac G3 for a lot of Apple’s most recent success.

Space Junk: 21,500 Objects in Our Orbit

One interesting article I read recently is included in the July 2010 issue of National Geographic.  Titled “Clearing Space”, the article focuses on the ever increasing amount of junk humanity has put into space and the ideas to combat it.  In fact, NASA has their own office dedicated to space junk.  It’s titled, “NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office” and they keep tabs on the amount of stuff up there, orbiting our planet.  It reminded me of that scene from the animated movie WALL-E when the space ship takes off from Earth then flies through the thick cloud of orbital debris.  Perhaps this scene isn’t so far off after all.  NASA has catalogued 21,500 objects four inches or larger thus far, which are either in low Earth orbit or higher.

Here’s an image from UK’s Daily Mail showing the debris orbiting Earth:

Most recently, in February of last year, a communications satellite collided with an old defunct russian satellite above Siberia, thus adding 2,000 more debris to Earth Orbit.  There’s even concern that too much space junk in Earth’s orbit could lead to too much collision danger for new spacecraft.  It’s called “Kessler Syndrome”.  A conference was held last year by NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense to discuss ways to combat space junk.  For now it seems like keeping track of the junk is the best wade to evade it.  However, other ideas have come about-and one of the more interesting ones involves dragging the debris into Earth’s atmosphere where it’d burn up on re-entry.  Check out the official site for NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office by visiting:http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/

The Future of Space Flight for the Common Man

Imagine the idea that one day you could pay a couple hundred thousand dollars to travel briefly into the heavens.  You’d look at the earth from above and realize how small everything under you appears.  The idea that a “spaceport” could someday become as common as an airport is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but spaceports may one day soon become more prevalent.  Maybe if you’re that much of a dare-devil it’ll be possible for you to suit up and get into outer-space after all.  That’s if Sir. Richard Branson has his way.  Branson is a british business man who already own plenty of companies including Virgin Records and Virgin Airlines.  In 2004 Branson founded Virgin Galactic with the mission to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to a willing, and of course “paying” public.  Virgin Galactic operates out of New Mexico.  Sub-orbital means that the craft wont make a complete orbit around Earth but will briefly enter space before dropping back into Earth’s atmosphere.

You don’t need a shuttle to get into space after all.  Enter Space Ship II.  It’s a rocket plane and unlike the shuttle it only has sub-orbital capacity.  It flies into space briefly before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.  It was unveiled in December of last year.  Branson’s mission is to make spacelight affordable, starting prices begin at 200,000 and not to mention a deposit of 20,000.  Virgin Galactic isn’t alone in it’s mission to provide space flight for paying customers.

Here’s a good video of Spaceship II’s predecessor, Spaceship I making a sub-orbital flight.  This will look similar to the flights Virgin Galactic plans to offer.

Other companies are developing their own plans as well, but Virgin Galactic seems ahead of the mix and hopes to begin to regularly offer the public space flight within the next couple years.  So perhaps for now at a couple hundred thousand a flight it’s not exactly at the common man’s price just yet, but it’s a start.

For more information:

http://www.virgingalactic.com/