Showing posts with label tech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tech. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Apple vs. Microsoft: Which is better at Planned Obsolescence?

As much as i enjoy supporting the underdog and for years have applauded the ad campaigns for the Apple Corporation that encourage the negative perspective of huge corporations like Microsoft, are they really any different? A fundamental screw-job for you and me as consumers that most manufacturers deploy is planned obsolescence. Some, usually those with an interest in business, might justify technological changes and suggest reports are just conspiracy theories, but are they? Ask yourself how many items have you purchased in the last decade are you still using? For instance, cell phones?

While the Microsoft Corporation have long been pros at wallet-milking, the Apple Corporation may be even better, seriously. The difference is that Apple is more creative at pointing the finger at Microsoft.

Politics, I mean, business as usual. And we get fooled again. But there is hope, we hope.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

buy this... a lot

You get home from work and the sun goes down and you turn on the lights because you don't want to sit in the dark... what if you could turn on the lights without using any electricity?

Little Sun from Studio Olafur Eliasson on Vimeo.


and the next step?... is it so far fetched to believe that solar energy cells can power everything we need if we just invest in the technology to convert solar radiation into power for everything we need?... just a little over a hundred years ago people would have laughed at the idea of something replacing candles and gas lamps... if humanity wants to survive, we will... believe it... work for it... invest in it...

Monday, June 11, 2012

NFC

Now much of the world might think this is going to be about football, but noooooo, this is about near field communications - technology that turns your phone into your wallet and virtually does away with the need for credit cards or cash. If i had investment capital, I would be buying some stocks...
Companies like ISIS will provide software, though i can see many jumping on that bandwagon once the hardware companies get going. The question is, will you, Lucy and Ricky Consumer, buy in.

The new technology is for electronic payments but not with a credit or debit card, rather, with your phone... Convenient, sure, but how secure is the question. What if you lose your phone, can you call it from another phone, download all it's information securely by entering some code in your new phone, and then push a button on your new phone to make your old phone self destruct?. Kind of like mission:impossible, but will passwords be enough protection? How about a fingerprint scanner, that should be a simple and secure addition.

So you have a way to wave your phone like a magic wand and create an electronic transaction. The next question is will merchants do their part? Are they going to invest in the hardware and software needed?
Of course they will, eventually, and so will you, eventually, when everyone is as sure as we can be that it is as safe and secure as the current system of monetary transaction, the credit or bank card. The question is how long will that be and more, from an investment perspective, which company will emerge as the leader in hardware and software production for the new NFC world.

Something to ponder if you've got money to invest.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

new toys

did i mmention the htc inspire?... if not, look again, i'm sure there's an entry somewhere about it, at least... meanwhile, i just ordered this... i will let you know about it when it arrives and i have the chance to play with it a bit...

meanwhile, the htc inspire is doing well :)

Monday, January 3, 2011

toshiba

it dawned on me that this blog may take on a rather negative tone if i just come here to rant about faulty products (is that what i've done so far?... i haven't been here in so long i've forgotten and don't feel like looking back before writing this)... and i also realized that i type most of the words i type daily (not to mention all the web wandering and communicating i do via the net) on this toshiba laptop and over the years toshiba has proven to me that they deserve some kudos...

of all the electronics i've owned or used, maybe 40% have been toshiba products and the memory is consistently positive... in spite of the windows vista crap on this laptop, it performs very well and none of the issues lead back to toshiba... they do put too many programs on the machine as most manufacturers do, but they worked ok and the laptop is fine with them turned off as well...

so thank you toshiba, for solid products...

Sunday, April 4, 2010

ATT does not care

in early March ATT sent me an email telling me they were deleting all my web pages that have been on their server for almost ten years and i had to transfer my account before march 31 to save the pages and emails addresses that i've had since the nineties...

so i followed the email instructions and transferred my account and it took eight hours on the phone with at least a dozen different customer service people, tech support people, supervisors, and managers and was transferred more over and over and had to explain the same problem over and over (email would not work after i followed their instructions) and was cut off or hung up on at least a half dozen times and finally the last techie i spoke to fixed the problem in less than two minutes after eight hours of run around) and then i went to download the web pages and found them gone...

i didn't have another eight hours to deal with their ridiculous left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing corporate structure, so i went back another day to the website to try to get help and found my account no longer was valid and in the fine print it said "if you transfer your account before saving your web pages, you are shit out of luck"...

ok, so it said the equivalent in more legaleze (which is more obscene, if you have ethics), but the bottom line is the pages were blocked... i wrote to ATT on every website they have, including corporate, and then sent back form emails promising to respond to my concerns (and emphasizing the return address on the emails were not valid in big "DO NOT REPLY" letters), but no response and the march 31 deadline has passed and the written gardens, my thousands of web pages and years of writings, both pouring my personal heart out and creative rhymes and images and more, all gone...

that is why, instead of trying the ATT u-verse, i am giving bright house a chance now after more than a decade of staying loyal to ATT wireless and internet services... ATT does not care... the rest of corporate america probably cares just as none, but ATT has taken up my time just to insult my intelligence and screw me and destroy my creativity and work once too often...

consumer beware... ATT has become too big, has too many departments, and the lack of organization within their organization prevents them from providing reliable service and makes it virtually impossible to resolve the problems that their lack of organization creates...

choose another company...

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

bright house, not so

more like dark house as the internet connection, promised to be 20mbps and touted to be upwards of 30-50mbps has not given me much more than my 2-3mbps that i got with my att aircard and tonight, there is an inability to stay connected to the internet and limited connectivity, down to under 100kbps at times when it does stay connected...

so i might be moving on to att u-verse next, but since the bright house tech said he credited my account for a month of free service, i'll give bright house another month... i was going to cancel the aircard, but i am very glad i did not do that yet... at least the tech was courteous and apologetic...

try try again...