Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, September 22, 2015
There is new material in Chaos Manor Reviews http://chaosmanorreviews.com/ and there will be more. Tell your friends.
I recommend http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-night-alexa-lost-her-mind/ to your attention. Alexa is an Amazon home control gadget that has become quite popular; I have one, but I have nothing for it to operate, so it just sits there in its handsome box. I ordered it on whim when they were not yet available, and Amazon duly shipped it months later after I had forgotten it. I don’t even know where to order things for Alexa to activate or control. I had forgotten it until I saw this article, and now I suppose I will need to find out just what it can do for me.
I can also recommend https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/21/what-apples-ad-blocking-fight-is-really-about/. It’s clear to me that the current ad situation cannot endure. I am willing to put up with some ads – after all, they sponsor the shows I am watching – but there is a limit to what I will endure. After that I won’t watch that show unless I can record it and fast forward through the ad. I seldom watch shows as they are broadcast; why should I. I used to have sympathy for advertisers – I grew up in the radio business – but we thought double-spotting a bit rude, and three or four ads in a row went beyond the bounds. Naïve, weren’t we?
It’s too hot to walk, and for some reason I didn’t feel like writing. Funk, I suppose. I’ll get over it. It’s hot in here, too.
- Web companies are fighting in court for the FCC’s net neutrality rules (WP)
By Brian Fung September 21 at 9:35 AM
A top Washington trade group for Internet companies such as Dropbox, Facebook and Netflix is now defending federal regulators in a major court battle over net neutrality, adding a legal brief to the flurry from both sides of the debate.
Arguing that the FCC acted legally when it rolled out strong new rules for broadband companies this year, the Internet Association said Monday that the regulations help protect consumers from Internet providers who control access to the Web. The “friend-of-the-court” filing called for the FCC’s net neutrality order to be fully upheld — endorsing for the first time the legal approach the FCC used to implement its regulations.
“Consumers and innovators will benefit from the Internet openness promoted by the FCC’s net neutrality Order,” it reads.
Opponents of the rules, such as AT&T and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, filed a lawsuit against the agency in April. They’re arguing that the FCC overstepped its authority in designing its net neutrality policy, and are calling for the rules to be overturned by the court.
The FCC’s net neutrality policy subjects Internet providers such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to some of the same rules that govern legacy telephone service in the United States. The move was hotly contested by industry amid fears of an administrative power grab that critics said would lead to the government’s direct involvement in setting retail prices for Internet.
The FCC’s rules also regulate providers of cellular data in similar ways — a move that the wireless industry argues is illegal. But Internet Association president Michael Beckerman said the FCC used its authority properly.
“Internet access has changed over the past few years,” said Beckerman. “My expectations are now the same whether I’m accessing the Internet from my mobile device or from my home computer.”
And the beat goes on. Meanwhile the net shuts down for about fifteen minutes at 1600 every day for me. I don’t know what Time Warner is doing. I am sure there is a regulation against it. I just kiva with it and continue to count my blessings; it took a decade to get reliable high speed Internet at Chaos Manor.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2015/09/22/iphone-6s-6s-plus-3d-touch-great-camera-add-up-tempting-upgrade/72591074/ gives a pretty good review of the Apple phones, if you can endure all the ads that go with it. I confess I could not; fortunately I got a copy of the actual text article, free of ads, pop-ups, strange offers, distractions advertising other articles which will bring with them even more unavoidable unendurable advertisements for products I avoid, etc. Anyway, he tells you a user’s reasons for liking the new Apple phone.
What we’ll encounter on the path to the jobless future
By Michael Fertik and Vivek Wadhwa
In just two short decades or so, we’ll enter a jobless future.
Thanks to highly disruptive advanced technologies, jobs — even industries — will soon vanish, becoming remnants of a distantly remembered past. Other positions will be more efficiently done by machines, eliminating the need for human employees. This has happened before – indeed, since the dawn of the Industrial Age – but never in history at the same speed and scale. It’s the advent of the “labor-light economy,” as defined by noted MIT researchers Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, who have explored the benefits and downsides of rapid technological advancement.
At the same time as machines displace most of us, our fundamental needs — think of Maslow’s basic hierarchy — will be met through the application of technologies. Food, energy, shelter, and health care will be free or so low cost that they’re virtually free. Even education will be eventually be free.
There’s a lot more, and it makes more sense than do a lot of similar articles. Of course science fiction has been presenting stories of the jobless future for years, one of the most memorable being one by Poul Anderson in the 50’s or early 60’s. If the problem for socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money, the march of technology has made it increasingly more likely that most of the money will come from robots who, presumably, won’t want it. Marx envisioned such a future, when machines did most of the work, and no one would have to labor more than a few hours a day if that. He saw it as an utopia. Other writers have seen it as a nightmare.
There is no question that over half the things people do for money now can be done by robots, and it is becoming cheaper to roboticize more and more jobs including many that seemed safe. There is also financial incentive to use robots rather than risk regulation…
One thing never discussed is personal service and domestic service. It is politically incorrect to want a housemaid. And if the government is going to rob some robot to give away enough to live on and more, why would you want the job.
If idle hands make a devil’s workshop, think of how many such workshops are in our future.
Breakthrough in cloaking technology grabs military’s attention (USA Today)
Kyle Jahner, Military Times 10:09 a.m. EDT September 21, 2015
An academic says he and his colleagues have demonstrated a major breakthrough in the quest for invisibility, and he has the military’s attention.
Boubacar Kante, a professor at the University of California-San Diego, and his colleagues tested the first effective “dielectric metasurface cloak.” That’s a fancy way of describing a super-thin, non-metal material that manipulates electromagnetic waves, including visible light and radio waves.
IF you can’t see it, it’s harder to kill it…
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327740&
3D Printed Parts Help Regenerate Nerves (EE Times)
Custom scaffolds regrow nerves in rats
9/21/2015 10:01 AM EDT
PORTLAND, Ore.–Today more than 200,000 people per year experience traumatic nerve damage from accidents or disease. Whoever thought a 3D printer could help. The University of Minnesota professor Michael McAlpine has proven that 3D printed scaffolds customized to each particular patient, can now regrow complex nerves, which has never been possible before. Current successful trials are in rats, but McAlpine says that human trials are just around the corner.
I’ve been using regeneration stimulators in my stories for decades, but I confess I neverc thought of sending wounded soldiers to the print shop.
APOD: 2015 September 18 – A Plutonian Landscape
Jerry
Look at this:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150918.html
Boring planet, not.
Ed
But planet, yes.
https://techpinions.com/why-ios-could-become-the-enterprise-os-of-the-millennial-generation/41847
Why iOS Could Become the Enterprise OS of the Millennial Generation
Tim Bajarin / September 21st, 2015
For the majority of my life, Windows and the Mac have been the operating systems that have dominated my personal computing experiences. iOS and Android only recently have become supplemental operating systems I use in my smartphones and tablets. But I believe there is a changing of the “OS Guard” happening as Gen Y and Gen Z users grow up and become millennials and move into the business sector. The tech tools they use and how they use them will be quite different than the generation before.
This younger generation does use PCs. However, they actually spend the most time on their iPhones and iPads and Macs are mostly relegated to serious productivity projects. More importantly, they know iOS inside and out as they spend much more of their day in this operating system then they do on any computer they have.
And much more. And now I have to get to work.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
