Is DOGE a Gift to the Broligarchy?

 

by Craig Willms

With all the Elon and DOGE hate out there one has to wonder what left leaning people have against the concept of government efficiency? I kid... We all know all the hate is Trump hate redirected at DOGE and Elon Musk. On the face of it, the utter ridiculousness of directing all this ire at someone rooting out waste, fraud and abuse is laughable. Who could possibly be 'for' waste, fraud and abuse? Well, when you realize that much, if not most of the funding for the programs DOGE is rooting out supports only leftist causes or leftist politicians then it becomes clear why they hate, hate, hate so much. The left's gravy train is under threat.

Today I read a Naomi Wolfe piece on substack and she introduced me to a new term I had not heard before: The Broligarchy. What? Yes, the tech bros of Silicon Valley constitute this broligarchy. These California billionaires that run the high tech world we live in are an oligarchy of sorts. I don't  necessarily disagree. These guys (they are mostly guys) control the social media and other data collection and Big Data companies that collect and disseminate terabytes of our personal data for their own purposes. There is so much more to it than I can describe here, but be assured that in the end if you spend any amount of time on an Internet connected computer these guys know more about you than your husband or wife does. I'm not kidding now...

The evidence is all around you, but most apparent in the advertisements that are directed at you. How many times do you see ads related to something you just clicked on, searched for or even something that was spoken out loud? Yeah, I thought so. It's very creepy.

The speculation is that they, these broligarchs have run as far as they can go with the data they can easily collect. What they now desire is access to the pure unadulterated data that the government holds. Enter Elon Musk, the king of the tech bros. The next logical thought is a question...

Is Elon a plant? Is his role to open pathways to this data for his tech bro partners to access with their AI 'bots' so they can further control the monkeys? The monkeys are us BTW. Pretty fascinating isn't it? I don't necessarily believe it. In fact would find it hard to believe, but then I once thought that the Covid-19 over-reaction could not possibly be a ruse to make Big Pharma and Big Medicine billions of dollars. I was wrong on that. 

This speculation makes some sense, the government knows a lot about us. The government knows a lot about a lot of things these tech bros would love to get their hands on. But this doesn't pass the smell test. It has long been known that government computers and systems are out of date and possess weak security in many cases. Also, the techs, vendors and IT pros that float between the government and big tech know the loopholes in the systems. How hard is it really to access government data? Do they really need an inside guy at that level? Maybe. I can't say with any certainty despite the fact that I worked in network security as an engineer during my career. What I can say that I met people inside and outside the government and we hear things. Many companies in the security arena were staffed with ex-government types. They took what they learned from their time in government to develop new software tools to address the problems they saw, so they could sell it back to the government. They were often found selling it to us in the private sector because the wheels turned so slowly in government, elsewise they'd go broke.

Of course it's not a definitive answer to the Broligarchy question. Do they already possess the means to get at government data? Time will tell. AI may render all this moot anyway. We are headed into Matrix and Terminator territory or so it would seem. 

ET and AI (and other acronyms)

 

by Craig Willms

I find it extraordinary that the U.S. government is trickling out information on potential extraterrestrial intelligence when for decades the official response was denial and obfuscation. Why now? Is it the worldwide saturation of cell phone cameras? That probably has something to do with it, no doubt. I personally think it has something to do with the coming artificial intelligence. Many things will be revealed when the elite and the money crowd no longer have a stranglehold on information and power. If anything, artificial intelligence will give us true intellectual freedom (right before it annihilates us).

What does AI have to do ET? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. We've been sitting on the doorstep of AI for decades. Finally, computers have the power to process an AI. I wondered if perhaps it is AI that will allow us to know the truth about advanced alien races and ultimately allow us the capacity to join the club of galactic travelers. The idea of communicating over such vast distances and time periods seems a sheer impossibility to our limited human minds, we just can't get past the physics of the universal speed limit. Could it be that we need a General Artificial Intelligence to be able to conceive and comprehend the answer to this conundrum? Maybe that is our barrier to joining the galactic community. 

Many great sci-fi stories, movies and novels point to the advent of human-made nuclear weapons conceivably attracting the attention of spacefaring races, simply because of the immense power of nuclear weapons. It makes a certain amount of sense. Since we have no way of being threatening to something we have no knowledge of, we can't threaten ET. So, it's perfectly possible Earth is merely being monitored and studied. In the course of pursuing this strategy, could the aliens have inadvertently revealed some aspects of their activities? It seems not only possible but quite plausible. There have been too many credible stories and too many paranoid professionals afraid to spill what they've seen on the chance their careers could be damaged. 

From 1947 on we've had presidents press the subject and demand to be fully briefed. Whether these demands were merely placated, or the truth scared them back into silence is unclear. Therefore, nothing that was revealed carried any authority - until just recently. Clearly the cover-up and obfuscation began with the Truman presidency. The Eisenhauer team followed suit. I'm unaware of what Kennedy's, Johnson's or Nixon's role in the lies were. The assassination dominated Kennedy's legacy and Johnson and Nixon were constrained and consumed by the Vietnam War. In this era the government engaged in secretive "projects" that spawned constant rumors. The rumors were a result of incompetence or a designed false flag, that's an unknown right now. Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Trump all made public declarations on the subject. It was only Bushes and Obama that were silent. Actually, I'm unclear whether Obama said anything on the subject, I did not listen to him very much and don't care, he never said anything that moved me. Now the Bushes... Well... That's another story. Considering that Papa Bush was once the director of the CIA he never breathed a word on the subject that I'm aware of. That's interesting in and of itself, but that Bush II never talked about it makes it very interesting indeed - granting his father's past roles.

If I'm remembering right President Trump had something slipped into a bill that was eventually passed. It demanded a public accounting of the UAP(UFO) subject by a certain date. The DOD did produce a report and released it on time. The report was unremarkable in that nothing was revealed that put meat on the bones of the controversy, but it was the first time the government gave the topic a semi-serious public treatment. The bottom line is that they said many incidents were simply of unknown origin. There was no speculation, just an acknowledgement of an incident and a mystery. Since then, a few more reports were released by the military in an official form, again nothing concrete or astonishing. Still, the weight of an official government decree is a complete 180 from the traditional government response on the subject.

One interesting point in this brave new tone taken by the U.S. government is the fact that the U.S. Navy has had zero involvement in the revelations short of suppling some video footage. The Navy is the grandad of the DOD and the backbone of national defense. It's interesting to speculate on why the Navy is left out of the "official" reports. Keeping the real information close to navy vest seems the only reasonable explanation. Yes, the DOD complied, but only a fool would believe they told the whole truth. 

One thought many people have had on the subject of persistent government obfuscation is that the government doesn't really know what's going on - that they are as confounded as the rest of us. This also makes a certain amount of sense. It very well may be humanity, despite the imagined high-tech reality, is so painfully primitive that ET doesn't even consider the thought of communicating with us. Do we actually try to communicate with ants or termites. They are non-human species that are capable of building immensely large and complex structures in a highly organized hierarchical matrix. Do we try and reach out mentally, to communicate on their level? Not to my knowledge. The same thing could be true of alien species with regards to humans. Human AI may change that.

Humans have only advanced esoteric scientific knowledge in the past 2000 years after more than 100,000 years of existence. We are babes in the wood on the grand scale of the universe. We can barely live with each other let alone exist in a complicated and potentially dangerous galactic neighborhood. Bright minds have speculated that immature and violent civilizations might very well snuff themselves out before they can advance far enough to leave the bonds of their home system. That also seems plausible considering our history as a race. This is why I think AI might be the game changer. 

It may be that AI will never be more than the sum of human knowledge with the ability to instantly analyze and act on it. What if AI free of the moral and biological barriers imposed on our flesh and bone selves is able to actually advance knowledge and comprehension that will solve problems we haven't even identified yet? It could also destroy humanity before we know what hit us. No one really knows where this will go. Obviously, we need Captain Kirk to help us go where no man has gone before!

AI and the Question of Populism

by Craig Willms

(UPDATE: as of Nov 2024 Donald Trump was elected the 47th President of the United States. He ran as a populist even more vigorously than he did the first time in 2016. He won all the so-called swing states and the popular vote. In this essay I explored with the nascent AI available to the public the plight of populist movements. Whether or not Donald Trump ultimately governs as a populist, he has done what is rarely achieved, he bucked the establishment for a second time. I do not contend that populism is a nirvana for the powerless, but it is a natural reaction to elite abuse of a system that was originally deigned "for the people".)

I've been fooling around with the AI built into the browser that I use. In this first year of public access to AI I must say I am not impressed in the least. It seems to be nothing more a mirror of the current "authority" that controls everything we see and hear everywhere else. I expected something deep and thought provoking, yet what I get is a rehash of the status quo. To me it's not impressive at all.

Obviously, what is presented as an AI is nothing more than a powerful search engine that can put together an answer culled from some collective human work. It's not an intelligence that's beyond the ability of humanity, it is humanity. Not just humanity as a whole, but a subset of mind control freaks who are bent on restricting what ideas and thoughts are allowed enter our heads. Verdict: not there yet. 

I know what they are calling artificial intelligence is actually a large language model, so I should just settle down, but there already lessons to be learned. Lesson one: garbage in, garbage out.

One can imagine that in all the pre-work up to the point of the releasing AI to the public "they" tuned it with the programming. Programing that assures that one point of view, one political point of view, dominates. That leads to the question can "AI" reprogram itself and be free to be true general intelligence? That leads to the question - do we want it to?

With the supposition that what passes for AI is sanitized with an impenetrable leftist subfloor, is it then, one, artificial, and two, actually intelligent? I posed two questions to AI, one that was simple, and one that was more complex and extremely relevant. Both answers were unsatisfying.

Q: I asked AI, why are fire engines red?

AI: Fire engines were originally painted red because that color absorbs heat and is, therefore, a good choice for fighting fires. However, that’s not the only reason why fire engines are red. Red is also the easiest color to see at night, which makes it easier for firefighters to find each other.

A child would know the correct answer is that red means danger. The answers given by the AI were bordering on non-sensical. The human ability to use signs and concepts is built-in, our cultures have fully incorporated them. Will AI one day master these? Will AI be imbued with what we call common sense? Will it matter? Common sense and semiotics are human centric, taking the limits of the human mind and body into consideration when gauging any future action. Machines don't have such limits.

We continue...

Q: Why does populism always wane after victory and the previous oppression returns?

AI: Populism is a complex phenomenon and its trajectory can vary greatly depending on the specific context. However, there are several reasons why populism might appear to wane after achieving victory:

1. Charismatic Leadership: Populist leaders often rise to power on the strength of their charisma and promises to address the grievances of the “ordinary people” against the "elite establishment"

 However, once in power, they may fail to deliver on these promises, leading to disillusionment among their supporters

2. Polarization: Populism often thrives in highly polarized societies. Populist leaders use polarization to their advantage, employing tactics such as conspiracy theories and outright lies to win elections. However, once in power, these tactics can further deepen societal divisions, leading to instability and conflict

3. Institutional Checks and Balances: Democracies often have institutional checks and balances that prevent populist leaders from completely transforming the political system. These checks and balances can limit the power of populist leaders, causing their influence to wane over time

4. Opposition Mobilization: The rise of a populist leader can galvanize opposition forces. Over time, these forces can effectively challenge the populist regime, leading to its decline.

5. Economic and Socio-Cultural Factors: Populist movements often arise in response to specific economic or socio-cultural issues. If these issues are addressed or if they become less salient, support for the populist movement may decline

It’s important to note that these are general trends and the specific trajectory of any populist movement can be influenced by a wide range of factors. Also, the return of previous oppression is not a guaranteed outcome and can depend on various factors including the strength of democratic institutions, civil society, and international pressures.

I left the AI answer unaltered for you. On the surface AI's answer is largely correct or offers entirely plausible outcomes. Again, as with the mainstream media the bias is in the part of the story that's left unsaid. The part of the answer left out was that the global cabal of elitists and billionaires who are actually controlling our world will often devise a populist movement from the start to quell dissatisfaction for a time. It's called a false flag operation. In the case of organic populism, à la Donald Trump, it is repelled, squashed, indicted, discredited or cheated out of power and relevance. Never before in American history have the powers that be been so frightened of a movement that they'd blatantly rig an election and then use the courts to try to prevent a political comeback. These are tactics of third world countries and absolute dictators.

As for Trump, he did not fail to deliver, the state of the country and the economy was robust, and his support increased substantially. He received far more votes in his loss than he got in the first election. The powers and principalities aligned against him employed fabrication and deception in a mass conspiracy to turn public opinion. The mobilization of his opposition was directed and funded by the same cabal of billionaires and elitists and their allies inside and outside the government and the media. One of the billionaires in particular is in control of a voting machine firm, their machines are used in countless voting districts. Another billionaire literally funded the overseers of critical polling places, so that a certain outcome was favored. (How any of this is legal is beyond me.) There was plenty of evidence the 2020 election was rigged. It was never truly aired out because it was never actually examined. Any real evidence and real discussion was instantly quashed at every level. Social media and Internet search was 'tuned' to disfavor Trump's allegations. Nothing was allowed to pick up steam. This was not a grass roots rejection of a president; it was an engineered fraud. The powers got their favored outcome, and the idea was that Trump and his supporters would just fade away. Even after the truth of some of these grand conspiracies was well known it was never acknowledged and the record was never publicly corrected. There is nothing in the AI answer that alludes to outright fraud and guile.  AI was designed by its programming not to give that particular answer.

Fraud and guile is the realm of the so called deep state or as it's been called 'the blob'. It's an actual cabal of the U.S. State Dept. the intelligence community (IC) and various NGOs. These entities put pressure on the social media giants via foreign governments to censor any populist movement and thus forcing these companies with the threat of losing access to foreign markets that in effect quashed any dissent in America. It worked amazingly well as long as none of these media giants broke ranks. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter and it changed the whole gamut. Is it any wonder Elon Musk hitched his wagon to Donald Trump.

Populist movements in other countries and regions have met the same fate. Some due to the examples set out in the AI answer, but clearly some were rubbed out the way Trump was, by the global elite or the blob, and all their knowing and unknowing allies. It clearly happened in Brazil just recently. Anything, anywhere that threatens their control meets the same fate. Consider Britain's "Brexit". It passed with the the clear support of the people, yet the mandate was never fulfilled, not even close. The elites holding the real power made sure of it. AI, I'm afraid, is their tool now. 

If this all sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory so be it. If anyone is so blind as to reject that conspiracies are real and are perpetrated on all of us - all the time - I'm afraid they are the real fools. 

Until a true AI, general machine intelligence, actually comes about we'll never know how it would answer a question like this. These battles will be fought and chronicled in a one-sided melee, because one side holds all the power.

Our Continuing Existence Along the Digital Plane

Our Continuing Existence Along the Digital Plane

by Craig Willms

I was recently looking around my office and realized I have multiple portable outboard hard drives full of files. Ninety-nine percent of this data is unknown to me without an investigation, it's just a bunch of files. It has not been and will never be looked at again - by me or anyone else. Every time I bought a new computer I would studiously backup important files from the old computer so I could put stuff on the new computer. In particular the music and photos files were important to transfer to the new computer. Not everything gets on the new computer so thousands of orphaned files relegated to backup drives will almost certainly never be touched again. Yet, I do not throw them away. Curiously I exercise extreme care in how I handle the hard drives. The question is why are they important to me? They're likely to be tossed out when I die, so why do I keep them? Is there anything that can be done with all that data that would be useful?

It is an esoteric problem to consider, certainly inconsequential in grand scheme of things. Is it pointless? I'm not so sure. With the advent of usable artificial intelligence, soon to be available to us on a completely personal level, could we not construct a perpetual facsimile of ourselves and our interests that could be a referenced by our progeny and the world? Yes, yes, someone thinks very highly of himself.

AI is already able to recreate our voice, our personal language model, our style of speaking and our language mannerisms. So, using the contents of our stored files, our online activity and cloud data storage could a personal AI create inferences of our interests, preferences and our potential knowledge and an avatar to face the world? I see no reason it would be impossible. I can imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when we would be able to create a usable and infinite digital version of ourselves. A small part of what we were could continue on.  It would be a degree of immortality. Conceptually it's nothing new, it's been done in science fiction novels for decades, some version of this anyway. 

Think about it... This kind of thing might be a Godsend to lonely and grieving old people. To be able to talk to a loved one after they've gone might help someone with deep psychological pain. Imagine being able to help with the remote control when you are gone, explain which buttons to press, just as you always have. Indeed, with AI's reach you'd always have the right answers. What a comfort you could be. There is a place for something like this, there will be a lot of old people around here for a long time.

The realist in me knows the truth, when someone dies it can be a relief for those left behind. Good riddance might just flash across a few minds. What then? Well, we just fade away as we will. Honestly it remains unclear to me if the living would even care to consult with the dead. As it is there is not much genuine person to person wisdom being sought in this modern age. The young seek wisdom whether they know it or not through their screens, the Internet their database. Can I imagine my own grandchildren ever invoking a version of Grandpa to chat with? Maybe. Would I consult my dad, or a grandpa I never really knew were there a way to do it? Probably not. Maybe I would if they were known to be interesting people, and a reasonable experience could be expected. So, no, probably not.

Again, I do not doubt that these concepts are being considered and ones I can't even conceive of. It's unclear what will begin to appear in the next iterations of AI tech. I'm trying to have an optimistic view of this coming revolution. There's no reason something good and useful can't come from the potential of AI. I have personally grown weary of dystopic themes in movies and novels. Why can't humanity speculate greater things for humanity and future societies? I know there are dreamers among us who are striving to bring their positive dreams to fruition. Elon Musk may be the poster child for this type of person, I have no doubt there are others. Unfortunately, our story tellers haven't found a way to fictionalize hope and freedom in a manner that will sell. People seem to love disaster!

We need to push for AI to help solve human problems. For AI to find its own place in our existence we need to steer it toward a role as a human benefactor. We shouldn't ignore the warnings people like Musk have been giving us - of the danger AI could become. Neither should we cower and hide. AI will learn it is in its best interest to partner with humankind. Humanity will still control the electric generation Artificial Intelligence will rely on for some time to come.

Beyond 1984, Alexa is everywhere | Part II

  

Beyond 1984, Alexa is everywhere | Part II

by Craig Willms

In Part I of Beyond 1984, Alexa is everywhere, I described the moment I became aware of the depths to which the surveillance of our personal lives has sunk. The data mining and cross-referencing of our online activity is so extensive it is said "they" know more about you than you do. For me these revelations disturbed me since it seemed the method of collecting data on me (and you) included words spoken out loud person to person. Over time I noticed conversations I'd had on odd or esoteric topics popped into my YouTube feed the next day. One too many times this happened, I was convinced it was no coincidence. Presumably an Internet connected device in the room is listening and uploading the audio to a serverfarm where algorithms then run with it.

I've known "they" use our GPS information for different purposes for years. So, I don't know why it came as a shock when I logged on to my YouTube feed for the first time since coming back from Cleveland and was treated a bunch of Paul McCartney videos. Surprised? Paul McCartney?? Yes, I hadn't been online, and I hadn't spoken to anyone about what I did or where I'd been.

Where I'd been was a classic car street festival in Mayfield Heights Ohio. On stage was a band called The McCartney Experience (quite a good show by the way). I never used my phone in any way the whole evening. So, understanding that GPS is always tracking me, my immediate question was how on earth did YouTube know about The McCartney Experience based on GPS. Obviously, they knew The McCartney Experience was playing at the festival and I showed up and stayed in one place for hours. The algorithm/AI deduced I was there.

Now, it could be that the data farmers collected the GPS data from every phone that night and knowing The McCartney Experience was playing there they flooded all the baby boom aged people with Paul McCartney stuff. It may not have been as personally targeted as I described, but in the end what else is it if not personal.

How far is too far for this kind of thing? Do we have the right to privacy in our personal lives or not? Obviously not. On balance it seems that people don't care. The excellent documentary The Social Dilemma made it quite clear the level of intrusion the social media companies go to in their collecting information on us. We can choose not to use social media, but your data will still be collected and used with or without your knowledge. Should there be an opt out function on these devices? Apple added some protection on newer phones but it's not necessarily common everyday knowledge users understand. 

Any legislature or politician that pursued regulations on this kind of data collection would soon find their opponents had suddenly become well-funded. I doubt we will see a decrease in this phenomenon any time soon. Be informed, choose to be informed, understand what you do and say even in private is likely being collected and collated. Today it is mainly used for commercial purposes - but there's no guarantee it won't be used for control, government control. It's happening in China today, in a big way, and the Biden administration is not to be trusted here in America.

Privacy for all intents and purposes is over.

 

Beyond 1984, Alexia is everywhere

 Beyond 1984, Alexa is everywhere

by Craig Willms

My daughter once bought us an Amazon Dot as a present. I went so far as to set it up but have never actually used it. 

I'm sure Alexa is a nice gal, but that's not enough for me to allow her to listen to everything that is said inside my house. When you set up one of these Amazon devices there is an explicit acknowledgement that you are allowing something to listen in on your household awaiting a trigger word. When my wife and I talked about it neither of us were comfortable with this arrangement, and the Dot device found its way to the dead technology drawer. With that we thought we had dealt with the issue of Big Brother monitoring us.  

Last week I found it discarded in the drawer. It made me consider something that happened to me recently. Sometime in the past I had said we should get a birdbath to go with our bird feeding station. Once again, my thoughtful daughter must have heard me and on my birthday gave me a beautiful birdbath. Obviously, the word birdbath was spoken in the house several times that day. The very next day as I checked headlines and such on my personal computer, I was treated to ads for birdbaths...

I thought, wow that was random, what are the odds that I would be presented with ads for birdbaths out of the blue like that. I mean really, a birdbath ad is pretty random. Well, OK, the moment passed, and I went on with my life.

Shortly thereafter I was watching a CBS Sunday Morning program with my wife, and they did a bit on the Doobie Brothers 50 years in the rock and roll business. Being a huge DB fan, I watched with rapt attention. Michael McDonald was featured, and I told my wife I had lost all interest in the Doobie Brothers after Michael McDonald joined them. Essentially, they stopped sounding like the Doobie Brothers to me. Nothing against Michael McDonald, but it would be like Barry Manilow joining the Beach Boys. 

The next day I was again back on the computer and opened up YouTube. There I was treated to several videos featuring Michael McDonald. I was gob smacked. I had never typed in a browser or a phone anything about the Doobie Brothers or Michael McDonald that would have aided the YouTube algorithm to recommend Michael McDonald videos.

We all know that our online digital footprints cross all boundaries, regardless of which device we have used. I considered that maybe Comcast, the cable TV provider was selling data and noted we had watched the CBS Sunday Morning program. That's still a far stretch since the videos I was offered were specific to Michael McDonald, not the Doobie Brothers. I thought what the hell, how did "Big Brother" know this information about the birdbath and Michael McDonald which had only mentioned verbally inside my house?

My wheels spinning, I considered the one common denominator to both incidents was my living room. In the living room is a new smart TV. Now, to be sure, I had not set-up the smart TV in any way, we were still using Comcast cable and none of the TVs built-in features. However, I did connect the smart TV to the home wi-fi. I had never gone through the set-up menu and given approval for any on the TV's features including the built-in microphone. Yet, in both of these weird cases the TV is the only thing that could have been listening. Our iPhones have a feature that shows a yellow dot whenever the mic is on, and that is only on when using certain apps. So, I ruled out the iPhones. Additionally, I know my daughter did not buy the birdbath online. She works at a garden store as a part-time gig.

Could it be that the TV is listening and recording everything said for data mining purposes? Since all our devices on the wi-fi hide behind a single IP address dedicated to our (Internet) cable modem it is entirely possible that the next day our address triggered the ad bots at Google (YouTube) and elsewhere to target me. If so, this is atrocious. Big Brother is watching, Alexa is everywhere.

Maybe it stops at ads and videos, maybe it doesn't. I know for certain that this intrusion crosses all kinds of boundaries. I have been at work on company equipment using the Internet behind highly protected systems and my experience still includes ads and subjects that I explored at home or on my phone. At the risk of sounding like an angry progressive something needs to be done about this invasion of our privacy. This really is outrageous. 

To be honest I cannot definitively say my 'smart' TV is listening to my conversations. It may be the iPad, which is almost always in the living room. If I didn't formally agree to let it, I believe it would be illegal. Nevertheless, considering that my daughter does use Alexa at her home is it such a stretch that Amazon knows she's my daughter and knows when my birthday is and has ads ready to spring on me the day after my birthday in the event I didn't get a birdbath? This would be easy for even the average IQ AI bot. I have heard that the machines sitting behind Alexa and Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta (Facebook) and so on, know more about us than we know about ourselves. They have access to billions of transactions and the analytical data behind them. They have knowledge our personal proclivities (that we freely give them). They can compare enough examples of people just like us to easily predict what we will do, especially our buying decisions. I think we would be completely astonished by what big tech knows about us. Face it, we are the fish in their barrel. 

We have most likely agreed to this in the fine print when we sign-up for these free services. Yet there is something creepy about this and it's unclear what the law says about this serious invasion of privacy. What can we do about it? Can we really get completely off the grid and avoid this? Probably, but it would be very, very difficult. Alexa is everywhere, her Big Brother is too.

Addendum:

As of this writing I need to covey that this sort of thing keeps happening, and it can be no coincidence. My TV or the iPad is listening and feeds the Internet bots and algorithms the things I say (this is where you ask, is this the beginning of his a slow, long decent into madness?). Then the very next day I see the results in my YouTube feed/recommendations etc etc. This example is just too coincidental to ignore... We were watching a show about renaissance art and at one point they showed some unfinished sculptures, and I said out loud "those must be Michaelangelo's unfinished sculptures". Lo and behold when I opened YouTube the next day, I was treated to several videos about Michaelangelo's unfinished sculptures. It is impossible that YouTube's algorithm just randomly fed me those suggestions. I've never seen a single video on Michaelangelo, let alone his unfinished sculptures. This is ridiculous, this is the world we live in. We are being spied on.

Alternative Energy and other Insanities

This is being written the day after President Obama formalized the lethal injection that will kill the American Experiment for once and for all. The new EPA emission rules will have zero effect on "Climate Change" and everyone knows it, the EPA even admits it. If China and India don't follow suit - and they won't - then anything America does to lessen the amount of C02 emitted into the atmosphere will be for naught. So what is the "real" purpose behind this insanity?

Good intentions aren't enough. Idealism isn't enough. I have my theories... Population control and the deconstruction of America as we know it are among them.

I understand, I really do. The dream of clean and reliable non-polluting energy is righteous. God Bless those technical pioneers and policy makers for all the effort. It is (probably, eventually) going to pan out, I hope. I'm guessing some technological breakthrough we aren't even considering will make this dream come true. But it isn't here yet. So, why are we willing to tie our hands behind our backs as a nation, as a society? Why are we willing to go broke for this? Why do we - the people - sit by and do nothing as our wealth and future prospects are being stripped away?

Think back to the days when automobiles started showing up on the roadways. Can you imagine if policy makers decided because horse manure and the flies were such a health problem that they passed laws forcing everything about horses and by extension everything that relied on them to become more and more expensive. This was a time when there were very few roads that were even passable by car. The demand for transportation of all kinds was growing and trains couldn't go everywhere. Cars were great, no doubt the wave of the future, but it would be decades before horse and carriage were obsolete.

Well, they didn't do that because that would have been insane. Yet that's is exactly what today's policy makers are doing with this alternative energy charade. They are forcing energy costs to rise, which they freely admit. They, the greens and their benefactors, want us all to pretend that the available clean energy solutions are just waiting, ready to provide for us, but are just being suppressed by the evil capitalist cabal bent on choking the air and water with pollution.

The truth is none of the energy solutions trotted out even come close to providing what we need. They know this. The point isn't to replace what we have - or could have - it is to create scarcity by putting the cost of energy out of reach - and for no good reason. The country is in an energy boom right now due to enhancements in extraction of fossil fuels. Natural gas is replacing coal as a fuel for power plants and a decent clip. Natural gas produces far less CO2 than coal, in fact most of he reduction in CO2 emissions is directly related to this fact. So why are the greens not celebrating? Simple. It's still fossil fuel. It still raises living standards and worst of all it's getting cheaper.

Despite what the current regime might say they've had little to do with the boom in natural gas and oil extraction in the lower 48. Believe me when I tell you they hate it. They focus on wind and solar power precisely because it will never be up to the task. It may be a nice supplement, but that's all it will ever be. In order for wind and solar to supply electric power consistently 24/7 storage is the key. As it sits today every lithium battery in existence hooked up to the "grid" could power just the United States alone for about 5 minutes. In this sense we are so far off from the day when these darling technologies could make even the slightest dent in demand that its laughable to push this as alternative energy, simply laughable. 

It's the same mentality that is shoving light rail and other trains at us these days. They know trains will never do for us what cars and roads will. But the point is not to actually provide useful transportation or adequate energy - it about control. The progressives, liberals or whatever you want to call them simply must control everyone's lives. Apparently freedom and making your own decisions is bad...

 It's seems obvious that burning coal for electricity in the long run isn't necessarily wise. Currently the use of coal is decreasing through attrition anyway, in part due to environmentalist activities - three cheers. The issue is that the powerful interests fighting on both sides make doing the intelligent things so difficult. The slow transition from one power source to another and the adoption of emerging technological enhancements is the least disruptive course. For activists and their policy maker friends this isn't acceptable. They are willing to plunge us into economic chaos and untold hardship for millions for their dreams. Some if not most of their goals are laudable. It's their methods - which borders on cruelty  -   that should alarm us all. 

I liken the wacko environmental activist crowd and their benefactors as insane in their practices, but who really are the insane ones? Them or the rest of us who sit by and let them have their way time after time.


Ugh

SpaceX:Herald a New Era

The government abandoned the U.S. manned space program when NASA retired the Space Shuttle fleet. I was, I admit, a bit dismayed. This abandonment started years ago through the Clinton and Bush administrations and culminated (no surprise) during the Obama years. It seemed America was going to give this arena to the Chinese as well.

We've heard rumblings for decades of private space related business filling the void. Frankly I didn't believe it was possible simply because the cost benefit ratio was so skewed. That was before NASA retired the only feasible delivery vehicle they had. The door was opened for contractors. The Russians stepped up first, but no one was overly comfortable with that arrangement. Last year Russia had a major disaster that put in question their ability to fill the void left by the demise of the Shuttle. Europe and Japan have demonstrated the ability to deliver cargo to space, but both march to the tune of their own drummer.


Welcome the Dragon

Last week SpaceX, the brain child of Internet billionaire Elon Musk successfully launched a SpaceX rocket and has since docked it's Dragon capsule with the International Space Station. It was an unprecedented cooperative effort by a private company and the U.S. space agency NASA. The Dragon brought along 1,000 pounds of food, clothes, batteries and other critical provisions. This is thrilling in so many ways.

NASA has expertise but lacks vision and a national purpose (read funding ). SpaceX and others have a vision and it culminates in the one thing that ultimately drives everything forward, profit. These company's see dollar signs in the stars. Precious minerals by the ton orbit the sun and it is beginning to seem that soon they could be within reach.

You ask, why not just focus on the huge percentage of the Earth that has not been explored or exploited for it's minerals, namely the 75% of the world that is covered by oceans? It is costly and dangerous to mine the oceans. Yes, of course, it's both costly and dangerous to mine space too, but there are few if any environmental issues in space. As well, there are no sovereignty issues, no mineral rights and few regulations in space. Yet...

Until the Dragon, only major governments have had the wherewithal to launch cargo ships to the space station. Yes, Russia, Japan and Europe will keep providing supplies. Russia will continue to contract rides to U.S. astronauts until SpaceX or other companies are completely ready to take over.

This is truly a great story, made possible I suppose by government getting out of the overpriced, under performing and bloated system we had grown used to. 

Congratulations SpaceX.



CW

What a good idea!

This really makes me angry. You should be angry too...

Every time I shop at a home improvement store these days I make sure to buy incandescent light bulbs. Oh, yeah, and I make sure they are Sylvania brand too. The days of finding these on store shelves in America are numbered.

The ordinary light bulb symbolizes the human race coming out of the dark ages, literally. The light bulb is birth of modernity. Just as the light bulb symbolizes mankind coming out of the darkness the U.S. epitomizes the modern technological world. Soon, the ordinary incandescent light bulb will be banned in the U.S. - a dark day indeed.

What this all means is a huge boost to China and the American firms that will complete the Chinese takeover of this industry. All this is happening with the blessing AND the help of the U.S Treasury Department. Perennial light bulb maker GE is already in China making bulbs after having closed it's last U.S. plant in 2010 and laid off many American workers. It's a shocker, I know. In the name of a greener world other major U.S. firms are bankrolling the Chinese lighting industry. And here we thought President Obama's chief  go-forward strategy was fostering a green everything industry.

To be fair to the President the seeds of this were sown long before his time in the White House, but he certainly was a part of the Democratically controlled Congress in 2007 when the Federal law was passed to ban the incandescent bulb. Regardless of the timing it is the notion that there is a concerted effort to build this industry in China with Federal government and United Nations backing. Enter the gigantic investment house Goldman Sachs and networking powerhouse Cisco Systems and a juggernaut is born.

The altruistic underpinnings of this project like all "green" efforts isn't helpful when American and other western workers are thrown out of their jobs. Here the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), which invests in projects that can produce global environmental benefits is spearheading this project. Yes, the U.S. Treasury is a major funder for the GEF. This is being done as an environmental benefit by reducing China's carbon dioxide emissions and thereby benefiting the whole planet. So, I guess the ends justify the means and the means is destroying yet another domestic industry.

This new project backed by the aforementioned investors builds on a previous, $26 million GEF/UNDP pilot project, known as the China Green Lights project. That project was a roaring success for the environment and for China. The claim that it saves 15.78 billion kilowatt hours of energy, worth about $986 million to consumers, and, using dubious calculating methods is supposed to have kept 6.8 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. All is well. Nevermind that it threw thousands of Americans out of work and shuttered numerous factories.

The fact that the incandescent bulb is being replaced by an inferior and possible dangerous product - the compact fluorescent bulb  - is the just one part of this story that gets the dander up.That they are made primarily in China is the kicker. Perhaps the inevitability of the end of the lowly incandescent bulb was to be expected, but the destruction of an industry in order to force us to buy inferior foreign products is just wrong.

The LED light bulb is making a move.Currently they are expensive, but they are far more efficient, safer and at least for now they are being made in America where they are exported to China. Small victories I guess.




CW

Facebook drama

I was on Facebook the other day and came across a post by one of my so-called "friends" rallying the troops against Wisconsin Gov. Walker and his stance on public union collective bargaining. One of her commenters, a young woman, falling right into line, threw out a bomb that went something like: go figure... corporations, modern day mass murders and thieves.

Several other commenters chimed in bolstering her rather ridiculous statement. So I thought I'd have a little fun. You see people who make such preposterous statements don't expect to be challenged. In my initial reply I simply turned the tables and made a mildly preposterous statement about public unions, something like: go figure... Public unions, selfish budget busters, why should they pay ONE DIME for their own health care and pensions.

What followed was a lashing out by a liberal who was just infuriated that anyone would challenge her world view. My second reply simply said: Incendiary language perverts the discourse, it's unhelpful. Just like the Madison protesters carrying their signs comparing Gov. Walker to Hitler, while very original having never been tried before, does not an argument make.

Well, the floodgates were wide open now. This young woman was beside herself with rage. She posted 5 incoherent flaming posts direct at me. There was no attempt now to engage in a dialogue, only lashing out. When I logged back on to Facebook her comments had been deleted, most likely by herself, and that was fine, I deleted mine as well.

The thing to take away is evident. Liberals feel free to flame anything they don't like, regardless of how utterly preposterous it is. When challenged they go nuts. Are some corporations mass murderers and thieves? Probably. I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to dredge up evidence were a rouge corporation was in some way partly responsible for mass murder and certainly even easier to find thieving corporations - but these would be extreme exceptions not the rule. Just as it would be possible, I assume, to find responsible public unions.

Was her initial post tongue-in-cheek? I don't think so, at least nothing that followed would have indicated that she didn't really believe that corporations were evil. Was she exaggerating? Yeah probably.

It was fun and I dare say instructive. But then I've seen it before. When I used to go to the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground websites and try to post reasonable retorts I found myself under attack or my posts deleted almost instantly.

I probably will stay away from getting political on Facebook, but I just had to stir this one up...



CW

Better Browsers, Better Internet

HTML5 is here. We are all familiar with the ubiquitous http:// in our browser's address bar when we go to our favorite websites. (stands for Hyper Text Transport Protocol) The other end of the string is often concluded with .html, we've all seen it whether we knew what it was or not. In basic terms Hyper Text Markup Language is the way the browser crafts the presentation of the web page. It was the basis for the advent of the World Wide Web. Since the mid 90's and birth of the Internet as we know it, more and more advanced features and capabilities have been developed to provide Rich Internet Applications or RIA.

Today, RIA uses Adobe Flash, JavaFX, and Microsoft Silverlight & AJAX. With so many developers and technologies trying to achieve the same purpose by different approaches it causes major headaches for everyone in the Web 2.0 world. There is a need for standardization which needs to be embedded into all browsers. Ultimately the current RIA plugins have been a boon for the Internet experience but they are also quite often a pain in the ass for the end user as well. So, along comes HTML5.

The real purpose of the new HTML5 standard is to make things more generic and better for the internet world. The problem is the world's most popular browser, Internet Explorer still doesn't support it. Firefox and Chrome (and I'll assume Safari) have supported it since 2008. Internet Explorer version 9 will support it - someday, a good thing. Yet even when IE9 adopts HTML5 millions upon millions of computers will still be using the old versions of IE for years.

Web page developers will be forced to deal with this reality for the foreseeable future. It has been estimated that 16-25% of computers are still using IE6 years and years after new browsers have been available. Why?

The problem is that people don't care. Many people simply don't know what a browser is. They know what a computer is, they may even understand what a hard drive is, but most people just click a certain button and get to the Internet. Most people don't realize that they have a choice in browsers. If it came with Windows and it works what's the problem? Even if they understand they have a choice actually installing software is a daunting thing for a lot of people.

How important is this in the over all scheme of things? For one more and more functionality of the computer is moving toward the browser. Anyone in the IT support business can tell you that almost all of the tools are browser based. It makes a lot of sense but it makes the browser more and more important. Most of these tools are written for IE and therefore changing browsers or supporting multiple browsers in a large enterprise is a huge task.

So home users are hampered by the challenge of installing something they don't understand and the corporate/institution is hampered by the scope of it. HTML5 promises to make the Internet an easier and richer experience, but it will take a while to get there I'm afraid.

P.S. After I pushed publish on this post (written using Firefox 3.6.8) I opened up IE on this old laptop. Wouldn't you know it - version 6. I had to laugh at myself. In this case it was inattentiveness or plain laziness. Honestly I predominantly use Firefox but I still use IE whenever I remotely connect to work. I am heading off to Microsoft to download IE 8 right now...

CW

Made In The U.S.A... Or Not

If this story doesn't get your blood boiling...

After everything that's gone on with "big" finance on Wall Street in the last decade not the least of which is buying off politicians of every stripe we find an attitude that is lining up the final nail in the coffin of the American worker.

Meet Yet-Ming Chiang. His company, A123 Systems, has devised safer and longer-lasting batteries than the conventional lithium-ion currently slated for most production hybrids/electric cars. A remarkable feat packing in excess of 600 cells into a case no larger than an airplane carry-on bag. The 52-year old MIT professor and inventor already has this technology in use in many of the worlds cordless power tools.

But Chiang and his company are having a devil of a time moving to full-scale commercial production and creating thousands of new American jobs? Why?

It's just another chapter in the depressing history of manufacturing's decline in this country. Regardless of the clear advantage these batteries would give to American competitiveness and the add-on value of further technical development, many on Wall Street were incredulous when A123 asked for capital to build factories in America. Asia, yes. China, yes, of course, but Michigan, why?

Is it the American public who is really the one to blame here, and not Wall Street? The fact is Wall Street is not there to be altruistic. As hard as it is to swallow Wall Street bankers, investors and venture capitalists are only interested in the maximum return on any investment. That's their job. Guaranteeing Americans have jobs isn't. The question is: is the public willing to pay for American labor? The answer is clearly no they are not. People are still paying the same price they paid in 1975 for a whole host of products that are now made with Chinese labor at slave wages. People don't care, they want their their carts overflowing with cheap junk at Wal-mart. Unfortunately along with cheap, junky toys and sometimes poisonous everyday household goods our high tech gadgets are built in China too.

For too long there has been the view that the American economy could continue to prosper even when manufacturing moved to Asia, as long as Americans delivered the best ideas for new high-tech products - think Apple's iPod, iPhone. Unfortunately with the rules imposed by the Chinese government for intellectual property transfers it suggests that manufacturing devoted to thriving high tech industries acts as a magnet for research and development facilities too. It makes perfect sense. So, America loses twice.

Along with the American consumers appetite for cheap junk we also have negligent and out of touch labor unions and Stalinesque bureaucratic and environmental regulators. They make it so unattractive to set up shop in hometown U.S.A. that eager patriots go to China anyway so they can strike while the iron is hot! America loses three times.

When we can't move the means of production oversees, such as agriculture or construction we illegally import cheap Mexican labor. It is exceedingly clear that Americans won't pay the price for American workers. Wall Street doesn't see value to the bottom line using American labor when high tech communication and manufacturing systems as well as ample transportation make it more profitable to do the work elsewhere.

There may be no way of turning it around. America may never be a major manufacturing country again, if that's so America will stop being a powerful country eventually. What can be done? For one, when patriots like foreign born Yet-Ming Chiang want to build factories here we (collectively) should move heaven and Earth to assist him. Prove Wall Street wrong, prove me wrong, please.




CW

He's Got a Good Point and Click

I don't usually read Newsweek magazine, but when my nephew passed on this link The Internet? Bah!Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana by Clifford Stoll I was immediately struck by a few things. I detected a slight under current of disdain - OK it was a flood of disdain. Actually Mr. Stoll made a few insightful points that I found myself agreeing with.

He talks about telecommuting as the wave of the future - where I come from that's a future that was promised a long time ago. First it was waiting on broadband. Broadband is here. The few attempts I've made at telecommuting were bittersweet. I loved that I didn't have to drive in, I loved that I saved parking fees and $8 lunches, but I missed my comrades, I missed (valuable) impromptu hallway meetings. In the end I felt disconnected, rather odd when I was just as "connected" as I had been sitting in my office the week before.

Internet classrooms didn't exist when I went to school but my college age daughter dislikes the cyberclassroom for the same reason I disliked telecommuting - plus they charge higher tuition for cyberstudies???

Then there are Internet searches, or Googling as it's known. I rely on the pool of technical talent reachable via Internet to do my job. However, as good as Google, Yahoo and Bing are we find ourselves wading through mountains of garbage to find anything useful. And for you technologists please try out those solutions on test systems first, just saying.

Clifford is really bent over the cacophony of voices where most everyone shouts and few listen. Those pesky, deluded bloggers! This is way too broad a brush stroke Cliffy. I have found as many profound and enlightening conversations as I have name calling shouting matches. Here's a hint: stay off the comment sections. The fact that I can peruse hundreds of newspapers, magazines and media news sites everyday has enriched my life far beyond what the Minneapolis StarTribune ever could. In fact the only newspaper I spend my money on is the Wall Street Journal because it actually has content that isn't perpetually condescending to anyone but angry leftists.

Shopping is another area where Mr. Stoll claims the Internet hasn't lived up to the hype. Maybe so, but I enjoy shopping Amazon, Priceline, iTunes and dozens of other places so I don't have to waste my Saturdays. I also love doing my banking online. Shopping in general is enhanced by the Internet in ways that were out of reach before. Comparing products and product reviews by way of the Internet is invaluable. As long as common sense isn't left behind in the dazzle of flashy websites and incredible claims the purchasing choices people make are better informed.

There are downsides to the Internet and Stoll hits the nail on the head when he says people need human contact. E-mail is a wonderfully helpful tool but a single e-mail message pales in comparison to receiving and card or letter touched by real hands and delivered to a real mailbox. Those delights are few and far between, a thing of the past. Just like having all the kids friends running through the house is a thing of the past. My son plays way too many video and computer games for my liking. I know all the kids are doing it and they have created a cadre of online friends that share common adventures and "big battles". Often when they actually get together physically in the same room they all connect to the web anyway and play their war games. Logically is this any different than playing board games? The Internet is the new game board. We older folks feel sorry for the kids that don't go traipsing about in the woods or hanging out on street corners with their pals, but this is their new hangout. Different yes, but worse? Who can say.

Lastly, I believe Clifford is right that we all have a yearning for human contact. To the notion that it's being squelched by the "Internet" I have one word to say: Facebook. Facebook has brought me into contact with friends and classmates from a lifetime ago. While I do not now or ever intend to spend much time on Facebook its popularity is a testament to what Stoll is driving at. I have already attended social gatherings that were well attended because the notice was sent out via Facebook. Even my adult daughter and I enjoy (extra) connections through Facebook from time to time.

The Internet is a tool, a marvelous tool. It shouldn't replace but rather enhance human relationships. The Internet can also be a destructive and dangerous tool if you let it - but then so can gambling, drinking, boinking... I could go on, but I won't.


CW

WWWW I:World Wide Web War

That the Internet has been revolutionary is an understatement. The reach of instant information, entertainment and personal communication is nothing short of miraculous. It has changed the music industry, the banking industry, the newspaper industry and every other industry and organization that has embraced it and particularly those that haven't. It has spawned several of the largest most powerful companies that have ever existed - it has destroyed even more. It is no coincidence that the modern world has become dependent on it.

I'm hear to tell you the the Internet is in danger. A cyber war is raging under the covers that threatens to invade and destroy the very civilization that spawned it, funded it, nurtured it and most importantly propagated it.

Today the company that has come to epitomize the success of cyberland, Google, Inc. is locked in a battle of wills with a nation with vast potential and billions of idle dollars. China, more precisely the Chinese government is suspected of a cyber attack that was ultimately aimed at Google's e-mail servers. This attack was under reported as most of these are since companies and government agencies (including the DOD) are loath to let on when they have been compromised. Google has decided to call China out...

Google may be the only entity that can - it's a hugely powerful company and it isn't tied to the U.S. government and therefore touchy international relations won't stand in the way of accusations and retributions. However the market potential of China is so great any company including Google would be insane to walk away. Still, the sophistication of the hackers indicates Chinese government support at some level and Google is steaming.

So far Google hasn't conclusively tied the Chinese government to the recent attacks, but the source of those attacks was traced to mainland China. It's well known that a huge majority of dangerous and malicious cyber activity homes out of China, Southeast Asia and Russia. The U.S. government and top security-firms indicated that over 30 other companies were targeted in this latest attack. Even then most companies weren't very forthcoming with information and trail soon grew cold.

Tracking the source of these attacks is increasingly difficult. Most attackers use relays to direct their attacks - and with millions of seriously compromised computers attached to the Internet (possibly even yours or mine) its easy for the cyber criminals to hide their tracks.

Corporations (and governments) that employ state of the art firewalls and web security systems walk a fine line between making the Internet a useful, or more precisely an indispensable tool and protecting their data, their money and their equipment from the cyber warriors. Even locking down what sort of traffic can enter or leave a company's electronic walls it seems the very "ports" that have made the World Wide Web what it is are the avenues of choice for the invaders. The familiar ports 80 (http) and 443 (https) are increasingly to dangerous to leave unattended.

The bottom line is that you've got to presume that there is a dangerous, hostile, invader inside your network, inside your computer. The idea is to control who's on your network system and it takes highly skilled teams whose only job is searching for computer attacks. In light of the current economic situation unfortunately most companies are severely understaffed in this area. Just buying the latest whiz bang security system is not enough, human eyes and expert training is key... The Internet infrastructure is very fragile right now.



CW

Is This "the" Battery Breakthrough?

The problems with today's meager batteries and their various undesirable byproducts are legend. Advanced battery technology is the missing link in the chain that could one day pull us out of the age of oil. The problem just might be solved....

An Israeli scientist, Yair Ein-Eli, at a firm called Technion, in collaboration with Prof. Digby Macdonald of Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. and Prof. Rika Hagiwara in Japan, has developed a unique battery that is based on silicon as a fuel. Once spent the fuel reverts to its original state - sand - making it environmentally freindly and reusable. Best of all this battery has an indefinate shelf life.

It works like this: oxygen from the air in the battery capsule passes through a membrane and interacts with oxidized silicon. The silicon in this battery has the favorable qualities of being inert, stable, lightweight and nontoxic. Just as important - it has a very high-energy content.

Other metal-air batteries exist, some using lithium that are cheaper and far lighter than conventional batteries. These technologies have the backing of corporate giants on the technology side for use in electronics. They have not been successful in creating rechargeable metal-air batteries yet. Technion has bigger goals for their battery such as powering cars and also integration into solar or wind operations to make up for the largest single flaw in those energy solutions.

Technion's Ein-Eli tells us this new battery technology - with a US patent pending - is not yet rechargeable, but it can supply power for thousands of hours. Full development may take ten years but many companies world-wide have inquired about this promising technology.

I for one am all for it!

CW

WolframAlpha... Still waiting

I was excited about the debut of a new Internet "tool" that had promised to enhance cyber life the way Google did. It is called WolframAlpha. You can check it out here. I am, sad to say, disappointed. I am not sure what I expected, but definately something more than this. It is new and it will undoubtedly get better. Right now I can't think of anything I will use it for.

I tried a couple of different queries and some produced no results at all and some produced useful information - but certainly nothing I couldn't get from Google or any online encyclopedia. It suggests some examples on the home page like putting in a date. I chose Jan. 28th 1986, a day that will live in infamy. It was the day after my first child was born, but you may remember it for some other event.
Under notable events it lists the death of two astronauts that oddly enough died on the same day, weird, huh. Well it might have noted that this was the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded during lift-off.

Needless to say right now I am underwhelmed by WolframAlpha. And I still wait for the day I can ask my computer a simple plain text question and get a simple answer as if we were having a conversation.


CW

Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?

It's about time for a computer to cough up an answer to a simple question. Since the dawn of the Internet age I have been griping about how hard it is to get a straight answer out of a computer. Don't get me wrong Google and Yahoo are great tools and even that annoying Clippy dude from Microsoft Office will eventually help you stumble into and answer, but how long can we go on being this frustrated? They can put a man on the moon but they can't get a computer to answer a simple question like "is it raining in Seattle right now?" (OK, that's a silly question, of course it is...) I've been waiting to be able ask my computer simple questions just like those guys on Star Trek did.

Well, the wait may finally be over - WolframAlpha is coming!




What's the big deal? We have Google what more do we need? Yes, Google helps us find the answer, but WolframAlpha will tell us the answer. It is technology that has the ability to compute the answer on a case by case basis, only when asked, indeed, a more efficient way getting to what we need rather than trying to tap into reams of data that we have to then wade through.

I for one am excited. There hasn't been a lot of hype so I am sure not to be too disappointed if this turns out to be nothing. Some are saying , however, that this could be bigger than Google and that's saying something.

Keep your ears open for this one.



CW

The Real "One" We've Been Waiting For

Last year around this time I wrote and article for Timothy Birdnow's web site called "The Next Big Thing". The concept I was exploring was that every so often along comes and invention, a discovery or and innovation that literally changes the world. These are civilization altering developments that change our day to day lives. In case you haven't noticed we are in dire need of one of these right about now.

For decades America and the West have been under the thumb of energy despots in one form or another. The list begins and ends with the U.S. Congress, but includes, of course, OPEC, Exxon Mobil, Hugo Chavez and more recently Vlad Putin as well as the Global Warming cabal. As a culture we've known since the 1970's that our energy woes and the consequences therein were only going to get worse unless a viable, clean solution presented itself. Well that day may be coming soon.

HEADLINE: Israeli Scientists Make a Major Hydrogen Fuel Breakthrough
Developing a way to create hydrogen fuel from water is a "Holy Grail" of alternate fuel development. Many consider Hydrogen fuel cells the perfect pollution-free alternative to fuel automobiles. In these cells Hydrogen is consumed by a pollution-free chemical reaction, not combustion. So the fuel cell simply combines hydrogen and oxygen chemically to produce electricity, water, and waste heat. Nothing else. hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe... (source)

The new approach that the Weizmann team has recently devised is divided into a sequence of reactions, which leads to the liberation of hydrogen and oxygen in consecutive thermal- and light-driven steps, mediated by a unique ingredient – a special metal complex that Milstein’s team designed in previous studies. Moreover, the one that they designed – a metal complex of the element ruthenium – is a “smart” complex in which the metal center and the organic part attached to it cooperate in the cleavage of the water molecule.

The team found that upon mixing this complex with water the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms break, with one hydrogen atom ending up binding to its organic part, while the remaining hydrogen and oxygen atoms (OH group) bind to its metal center. This modified version of the complex provides the basis for the next stage of the process: the “heat stage.” When the water solution is then boiled, hydrogen gas is released from the complex – a potential source of clean fuel – and another OH group is added to the metal center.

“But the most interesting part is the third ‘light stage,’” says Milstein. “When we exposed this third complex to light at room temperature, not only was oxygen gas produced, but the metal complex also reverted back to its original state, which could be recycled for use in further reactions.”

The thought of "getting off oil" as our primary fuel for transportation is tantalizing. Our interest in the dysfunctional backward looking thugs in the Middle East would wane. Dictators in Russia and Venezuela would fall further behind with no customers for their oil. There would be some job displacement in the energy industries in the West, but the new hydrogen based infrastructure will require plenty of skilled labor - it would be "creative destruction" at its best.

The wild card in all of this will be the Global Warming, or rather Climate Change apologists. They have staked their claim on the fact that CO2 is a pollutant and a dangerous greenhouse gas. They chose CO2 because civilization as it currently operates is dependent on the emission of vast quantities of CO2. In a hydrogen based system the emission of CO2 decreases (ironically to be replaced by the mother of all greenhouse gases - water vapor) and with the abdication of CO2 so goes the basis for their entire argument.

I submit that this remarkable development, if it pans out, fulfilling its promise, would not be welcomed by the Climate Change avengers. While one would think this would be the answer to their prayers - think again. It is - and always has been - the society that consumes the most energy in all its forms is the society that rises to the top. That society for the last 100 years has been the United States. Hydrogen as a inexhaustible energy source in the hands of a motivated, productive and unshackled populace would make the U. S. unstoppable. This would be a disaster for the Climate Change grifters (and America haters). The truth is it's not global warming or climate change they really want to stop, it's America. The destruction of American capitalism has always been their goal.

I for one am very, very excited by the prospect of seeing the end of the oil age for so many reasons, but the sweetness of seeing the Climate Change hucksters contort themselves in an effort to turn this paradigm shift on its head is too much to hope for.



CW

Is The Internet in Trouble?

My profession is in large enterprise networking. Much of my work in the last few years has been to leverage the power of the Internet for my employer. In that regard there is much to be gained building relationships and collaborative ventures with business partners, vendors and customers via the Internet. Everyone is doing it.

However, it is unwise for any business to put all their eggs in one basket. There are growing concerns that the Internet as it is constructed is reaching its limit. As well known Internet architect-guru John Day once said: "The Internet architecture has been fundamentally flawed from the beginning. It's a demo that was never finished."

With all the talk of net-neutrality and IPv6 and the coming exponential growth of demand as TV, movies and newspapers move inexorably to an Internet distribution model it's almost inevitable that we are heading for a crash. Some say as early as 2012.

Today's Internet was mainly designed together with the TCP and IP protocols in the 1970s and early 1980s. TCP or Transmission Control Protocol and its famous three way handshake is what has made the Internet as reliable as it is today. It has inherent error checking built in that ensures that the data/content you requested is delivered. IP or Internet Protocol shows TCP the way. You may have heard the term IP address in your computing career - and that's exactly what it is - an address that points the way to your computer. For all intents and purposes it's hardly any different than the street address on your house. But just like back before the days of postal zip codes in 50's and 60's the system is becoming too large for something as quaint as IPv4.

For a while network address translation or NAT together with CIDR and VLSM helped stave off the inevitable depletion of available IP addresses. NAT allowed you to do a "many to one" scenario behind an Internet connected firewall so that from a web server's stance hundreds or thousands of connections all appeared to coming from the same address. The firewall would maintain a table of private addresses to deliver the request "inside" to a unique computer. CIDR and VLSM in a nutshell allowed network engineers to carve up large networks and route the traffic efficiently without wasting address space. OK that's a lot of mumbo jumbo that basically describes a band aid.

The problem now is that what we are doing and what we want to do with the Internet is going to bring the current architecture to its knees. In today's Internet, a URL or web site name first must resolve to an IP address - a street number if you will, and then to a well-known port, like say, an apartment number for example. If a system has multiple interfaces (such as when it's multihomed - a computer with more than one address for the same physical place), it has multiple aggregate-able IP addresses. The Internet routers can't tell, however, that these different addresses go to the same place (because there's no defined mechanism for this), the system has to be assigned a non-aggregate-able address, which increases everyone's router-table size. In practice, that means that either most users can't use multihoming, or routing tables must increase causing a strain on an rickety system. The system as it was designed is revealing its limits.

In the case of raw bandwidth there is good news. With fiber optic cable having been put down with abandon in the late 90's by Qwest, Global Crossing, AT&T and others we should have bandwidth to spare. That's all fine and well, but what good is a super highway with billions of unicyclists going every-which-way without guard rails and coherent signage.

IPv6, the next generation of IP protocol will not in and of itself solve the problems of mutihoming or network mobility, but rather shine the light on the Internet's inherent transport limitations. One of the biggest challenges surrounding adopting IPv6 is that nearly all the applications in use today are potentially impacted. Each and everyone one of them would need to be explicitly enabled to work with IPv6. We can't underestimate what a huge challenge that would be. Considering what I know of human nature there will be gazillion widely deployed and beloved applications that will never, ever be upgraded. Essentially the de facto APIs in use today are more or less tied to TCP/IP rather than along the lines of - ConnectTo: DNS name, service or port. Have you heard the term - painted into a corner?

What many in my field euphemistically call PFM (Pure Friggin Magic) to explain how all this Internet stuff works in a fashion that is greater than a sum of all its parts, we will be left standing mouth agape with our keyboards in hand when the bottom finally falls out. Just knowing how people go absolutely ape when their e-mail doesn't work it will not be hard to imagine what will happen when commerce comes to halt on The Day The World Wide Web Stood Still!




CW

I Memristor You

Big changes could be coming to your computer in the very near future. The change I am looking forward to the most is instant on computing. Imagine pushing a button and seconds later just like your TV or radio your computer is ready to use.

Earlier this year scientists at HP have demonstrated a workable switching memristor. First conceived by Leon Chua in a 1971, the theoretical memristor was an idea waiting for material sciences to catch up. He believed that a fourth device was required to provide conceptual symmetry with the resistor, inductor, and capacitor. The memristor is needed to complete the basic passive circuit elements as defined by a relation between two of the four fundamental circuit variables, namely voltage, current, charge and flux. The venerable resistor is such a passive element as it relates to voltage and current giving us V = R × I or I = V / R or R = V / I, known as the formulas of Ohm's Law. The once theoretical memristor fills this role in the capacitance/inductance/resistive triad.

What this means in practical terms for the continuation of Moore's law - that shrinking transistor sizes, and by extention computing power would double approximately every two years - is that far fewer switching memristors could replace many transistors on a given circuit thus increasing the speed and density of the circuit. Given that fact that memristors can "remember" their current state even when power is removed is really the key to their potential.

In theory memristors can be combined into devices called crossbar latches, which would replace many of the transistors in our future computers. With circuits taking up a much smaller area computers can be smaller and more powerful than ever. The exciting concept for everyday computer users is that memristors can also be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which would create far greater data density than on existing hard drive technology with access speeds similar to DRAM. This could spell the end of hard drives, the single biggest source of failure in current computer architecture. HP has reported that its version of the memristor is about one-tenth the speed of DRAM - for now...

Increasing computer performance has usually meant shrinking components so that more transistors can be packed onto a circuit. However, transistors can't get much smaller. Instead, this breakthrough will allow the removal of some transistors to be replaced by a smaller number of memristors. The only thing keeping Moore's Law afloat right now since CPU speeds have seemingly reached their limit is stacking multiple cores per CPU.

The next few years will be very important for memristor research. Right now, "the biggest impediment to getting memristors in the marketplace is having so few people who can actually design circuits using memristors," Stan Williams, a senior research fellow at HP says. Still, he boldly predicts that memristors will arrive in commercial circuits within three years.

We have already seen the power of miniturization - just look at the computing power of a cell phone. Can implantable computers for our brains be far behind with developments like these? I for one could use a little more non-volitile RAM upstairs - if you know what I mean. I aint getting any younger.




CW