WEEK 5 of 2018! Best Youtube Video/Channel!

Kudos to CEREAL AT MIDNIGHT for some excellent content on his blog and Youtube videos. His Youtube video on COLLECTING MEDIA IN A DIGITAL WORLD….  absolutely essential viewing.

 

http://www.cerealatmidnight.com/

 

As someone old enough to remember the pre digital days and the coming of vhs and dvd and cd, those formats empowered the consumer. And these Millennials growing up to think physical media ownership is a burden, and the instant gratification of the cloud is the way to go, do not realize the power that they are relinquishing back to the studios.

Do not realize that the freedom to be free of physical media, comes at the cost of never being able to have a product that is not subject to being removed, or altered or banned, at any time.

Comes at the expense of having anything that you can actually own, without the oversight of gatekeepers.

VHS and DVD and CD, in fundamental ways started an evolution that empowered the consumer and got the market to cater to the consumer. Increasingly with digital (sans physical media) the conversation has returned to a one way monologue.

Consumers being dictated to, rather than catered to.

And that will get worse if we let physical media as a companion or alternative to ‘in the cloud’… disappear. Because we have sold a new generation on a lie that privacy and physical ownership is a burden, that takes them too much effort… to preserve.

Much as our media and politicians are selling them on this idea that Liberty and Democracy and Civility… are likewise burdens that take too much effort… to preserve.

So yeah give CEREAL AT MIDNIGHT some patronage, especially that video. It currently has about 500 views, it deserves to have 5 billion.

KICKSTARTER OF THE DAY : Worthy Causes!

REFOUNDRY – Sports a worthy goal of combating the explosive and unsupportable rates of incarceration in the United States. I think the rewards could be a bit nicer, and priced less steeply, but that said I can see putting a frame on the HAND MADE HAND and using that as a bit of art, and the $25 Door Stop would make a memorable paper weight; and above all that… the funds are going to a needed cause. With 56 days to go this is well on its way to meeting its goal.

SELF JOURNAL – Making lists, writing down your goals I find indispensable to productivity, But I find myself often using an awkward combo of sticky pads, and computer apps. I think the SELF JOURNAL is an artful way to wean myself off the sticky pads.At $26 it is a might on the expensive side, but if this gets you in the habit of journaling you can always transition into more affordable journals. Also this project has been fully funded.

BEST LAPTOP STAND – I am not an Apple user or fan, but man this is a nice stand. And it appears it will support my Dell Latitude in the open position. And this serves the worthy cause of getting rid of hunched over the laptop syndrome. At under $50 it’s not bad. Plus this kick-starter is already completely funded. Sold!

BATBAND Earfree Headphones – A headphone that uses the scary sounding vehicle of Bone Conduction to bypass your outer ear to deliver sound to your inner ear. It’s like LaForge’s visor from STNG but for your ears rather than your eyes!

At $149 it is not even remotely cheap, and while a woman may get away with wearing this as a fashion statement, I think it will look silly on most guys. But as the first stab of an idea, it definitely has promise. It just needs to be designed so it is less obtrusive, and i think it will be ready for prime time.

It’s implications beyond simple music playback could be staggering. Does it work better than conventional headphones? Can an evil super-villain use it to remotely turn your brain into jelly? Who knows, but boy I’d like to try it. It is projects like this that reminds me in a good way, that we are living in the 21st century. 🙂

Linux, Cloud Computing, Trusted computing, Gnome and other technologies to be concerned about!

As much as previous posts have lambasted Microsoft, Linux is not without its faults.

The major one being Linux distros, following in Microsoft’s Footsteps to a degree with the instant on technology, and integration of the web into the desktop experience.

Jumping on the idiotic ‘Cloud’ bandwagon, which is really if you think about it, a process to reduce your desktop to the thin client paradigm of yesterday.

The difference being that rather than trusting a centralized server for serving applications and storage of your sensitive information, the cloud is you trusting the entire internet with access to your desktop and your data. It’s the evolution of this inherently moronic Youtube, Facebook, twitter idiocy where the bulk of people blithely surrendering privacies to strangers at best, and corporations at worst.

Everyone moving to reduce the desktop experience to the same thin client style interface as the mobile experience. Hey it that’s your cup of tea, you want the entirety of your life freely roamed and stored on the internet, well more power to you, though every week brings news of one online database after another being violated and hacked.

Not to say a desktop can’t be hacked, but you’re looking at one point of failure, as opposed to having via peer to peer, and facebook, and gnome, and numerous other sites, now potentially thousands of points of failure, and entry to your sensitive data.

Ubuntu, a great Linux distro, unfortunately is also embracing this ‘no-desktop’ paradigm, as is Gnome with their latest update.

It is not for me.

I want to decide when and if my computer connects to the internet, with this new instant on/cloud push, being shoved down peoples’ throats, you don’t turn on the internet, the internet turns you on… and that is a dangerous and insecure place to go.

Trusted Computing, another Microsoft word game, doesn’t mean you can trust your computer, it means Microsoft and its partners can trust you, because they have every bit of information about what you are doing with your computer.

So Ubuntu, you’re going in the wrong direction. Gnome, you’re going in the wrong direction. And Microsoft … well that goes without saying.

I would suggest people avoiding any version of Gnome later than 3.0, (3.0 has a lot of issues, but it’s a lot to like about it as well, and with a little work you can clean up most of its garbage and built in insecurity) and I do find many Linux distros are heading toward this cloud idiocy, and becoming problematic because of it (example being Opensuse 11.2? very good, 11.3? not so much, 11.4? pretty darn broken. However Gnome 3.0 on top of 11.4 does resolve many of 11.4s issues).

So, in summation, just research your computing options with care, and realize that ease of use, at some point becomes ease of abuse.

Word to the wise.