10 problems with technology in entertainment.

TV and movies are great.  They entertain us with stories and adventures to brighten our dreary day.  Entertainment often runs afoul of technology when it comes to story lines.  In fact nearly any technical representation of real life has elements that were not true at the time, or not true ever.  But we all know that the real world just isn't as exciting without that movie magic!

-  Passwords take more than 3 attempts and 5 minutes - This happens ALL the time.  Team X may be good or bad guys but they need an expert computer hacker.  What is that for?  Breaking those silly passwords into Team Y's computers.  The scene usually starts with dumbfounded members of Team X stare at a computer terminal blinking greenly at them and call for the hacker.  The hacker assumes a position on the computer terminal and starts typing quickly, 'DAMN' they will say after the first try, 'This is really strong security'. Team X leader, 'But you can hack it right?' Hacker with some smugness will say something clever and vaguely technical indicating their disappointment in the leaders lack of faith.  2 - 5 more password tries the triumphant cry 'We're in' and that's the last time you will see the hacker until it's time for them to get shot.  Bottom line.  Passwords are as hard as you make them, but even the most simple of passwords leading into a computer system not only has to have the right password, but often needs to originate from the right location.  It's not a question of skill, it's a question of knowing the password.  A good rule of thumb is to have passwords 9 characters long or longer that only make sense to you.  A better rule is to use a password manager that you have the password to that has all of your other passwords.  Then use a password that is much longer and just a favorite sentence or catchphrase.  It doesn't really  need to be tricky, it really needs to be LONG.  A favorite password I used for a while was 'A short time ago in a galaxy nearby'

-  PEW PEW PEW! - One of the oldest tv/movie tech problems.  In the movies, anything that blocks light will block bullets.  Do not believe this in the unlikely event that you find yourself in the middle of a fire fight.  Bullets can go through an amazing array of things so just because you are hiding behind that barrel, it may not protect you at all.  Best to stay out of fire fights.

-  Hackers all dress quirky - I'm not sure what this is all about.  Hackers (which according to TV is used interchangeably with computer professionals) apparently must dress like they are going to comic con every day.  The most accurate portrayal of a hacker in TV or movies was probably Mathew Broderic in War Games.  How did he dress?  Tshirt and Jeans.  Wow.  that totally blows my mind!  it's so out there!  Wild!  For some reason since that movie hackers are required to dress either like they are cosplaying a character from revenge of the nerds, or in clothes are are classically unwashed with the last weeks meals standing in evidence.

- Computers do not have feelings - Yes yes, I know people are trying really hard to approximate emotion in computer.  In fact there are whole movies on the subject.  Here is the problem.  Emotions don't do us any favors. Some say they are the crossroads between our higher brain function and our most primal instincts. In fact, we make some of our worst decisions under the influence of emotions.   As a result a computer would not feel empathy, nor would they feel any of the host of emotions attributed to them.  So the computer that suddenly does the 'right' thing based on their sudden empathy for the good guys (terminator, i'm looking at you here) doesn't seem to make much sense.  Why would you program a computer with genuine feelings when you know that makes them unpredictable?  Because otherwise the movie doesn't work.

-  The Cure's on the way! - When you have been infected with some kind of pathogen and you are the hero, there is a cure out there usually in the form of an untested antidote or vaccine.  This cure will probably immediately change you from a vampire bent on the destruction of your loved ones back to who you were.  No side effects, no problems, happy ending.  Of course we all know that there is not much that you can count on in the world of medicine because the nature of human beings is much broader than the answers medicine gives us.  This is why every commercial for the next wonder drug has a longer list explaining possible side effects than the list explaining the fantastic benefits.

-  Is there anything Kids don't know? - The operating system is the language that allows the different elements of the computer to integrate and talk to you.  It's how you can tell the computer what to do.  In Jurassic park a young girl exclaims 'This is Unix!  I know this!' and then proceeds to 'fly' through a graphic representation of internals of the computer system in order to help the group with her supposed hacker skills.  Everyone knows that she wasn't really a hacker because she was dressed pretty normally.  Of course she was still in grade school, so maybe you don't have to dress that way until you make computers your career.  The point is this.  Unix (great grandad of Linux and Mac) was not the sort of thing you have in school, or at home, or nearly anywhere.  It was not graphical by nature (like MacOS or Windows) and it is not friendly.  Why does this matter?  Because one of the rules of the movies is that if there are kids and adults in a room where there are computers.  The kids MUST be better at computers than any adult in the room.  Because it's cute, and it's how computers make some of us feel, like we are slow and old.

-  Computers that think are either evil or stupid - Some of you may quote short circuit.  Those were not computers those were animation models for Wall-e.  If there is a computer that is sitting there thinking by itself eventually it will say something like 'Wow, this world would would be a LOT better without people messing it up'  Then it would start curing of the world.  Otherwise computers that live with humans tend to be like really dumb people that are always not quite in on the joke.  They still hang around and do things in their funny way because they aren't evil.

-  Zoom...Enhance - All you need to identify a vehicle or a person or anything in surveillance video is to grab a frame of that video and say 'enhance that'.  The computer then zooms in and creates an HD picture of what you need instantly.  It's easy.  Except of course that you can only enhance things so much.  You ever listen to an audio recording that has been cleaned too much?  It sounds watery and strange and most importantly, not accurate.  Same with pictures.  Of course our good friends at the NSA are trying very had to make enhancement software that can do what we are talking about, but honestly it's only as good as the data available on the picture.  If you have a cheap 7-11 video camera picking up things, you are not going to be able to turn that into an Ansel Adams.

-  The Government has better technology than we do - They WISH!  We often think of the Government with a capital G.  Big Brother.  Everything wrapped into one big all seeing eye.  In the movies they have space age virtual reality with a cherry on top.  The truth is while we see it that way, the actual government departments often do not communicate with each other and do not make available tricks and tips they they have that might be handy to other departments.  The NSA may have some great hacking tips, but they aren't going to give them to the CIA.  Also, often the technology available to the regular citizenry is every bit what the government has and might be a bit more?  How?  Because it takes Government institutions a LONG time to institute new ANYTHING!  Doesn't mean they aren't still full of tech and constantly wanting more, but they aren't as all put together as they would have you believe.

-  Computers alternatively boot instantly or take hours -  Looking for a plot complication?  Computer Reboot!  This age old answer to every question is terrific for adding enough time to make something more intense.  'We can't get out until the computer has rebooted and authenticated our exit point!'  When it's a part of the plot, the computer booting takes an excruciating amount of time.  When it would be in the way of the plot moving, the computer usually reboots within seconds of initiation.  I think this is the technological equivalent of 'A watched pot never boils'.

Gimme a couple of weeks, we'll find something else to talk about.

10 Things we don't have to worry about anymore

It seems that as the years go by there are more and more things that are quickly becoming anachronistic.  So many things are just not practical anymore where once they were a mainstay.  Kind of like the Hotdog Cooker, wow that thing was great.  Always fascinated with that device.  Anyway, I digress.  The more technology we get, the more we seem to lose a little bit of the past that we used to rely on.  Lets look at a few things that we just don't really worry about anymore.

1 - Weather - For some reason, the weather seems like one of the favorites on TV.  What is the weather going to be like tomorrow?  Well thanks to weather apps and computer reminders, we constantly have weather updates.  Do people still watch the weather report?  Of course!  Do they need to?  No, not in the least.  There are so many sources for weather reports that you would think people live most of their lives outside.  If they do, they probably don't get weather reports.

2 - Maps - When you were going to any place outside of your immediate neighborhood, you would go to your trusty car map.  In fact comedians would joke about how you could never get your map folded back together the same way you had bought it and it would get laughs because it was a common experience shared by all.  If you were going on a vacation, then a trip to the local filling station would be in order not only to get your car a tune up but to purchase some maps that would direct you and your car to the destination city.  It might require several maps and if you were daring, you would only buy the more distant maps that routed the interstates and find your way to your destination when you got within city limits.  Along with this,  you would make advanced reservations at hotels along the way and plan out rest and points-of-interest stops.  Now, all of this is on our smart phone.  We use them all the time and we don't even think about it.  Our biggest complaint is when the phone sometimes guides us into a lake or is out of range of a cell tower,  but really that's a small price to pay.

3 - cursive - I recall the good old days in school when the size of pencils where inverse in proportion to your size and you had to learn cursive and good penmanship.  At the time in 2nd grade, so much was riding on the slant and consistency of your lettering.  THIS was a basic and necessary part of training on the long road to becoming an adult.  Now I'm afraid that this 'skill' has become the sole domain of art.  If you want to make fancy fonts or perhaps an artistic word design, then knowing cursive is still important to a point.  It is not by any means necessary for communication.  Soon, you will have cursive historians that look at handwriting in the 1900's that will be able to decipher what was being written.  Capital Q looks like a 2?  Really?  It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

4 - Newspapers - In their own cute little way, newspapers are still around.  More of a boutique business anymore.  news is in the hands of the gossip mongers and the heresayers.  More people wonder about something, they look it up with the web search of their choice, usually Ask.com I think.  Then BANG!  As much as you would want to know about the latest sports scores, crimes committed, celebrities being pedestaled or pilloried.  It's all there and much more than you ever wanted.  Newspapers?  That's old news.

5 - Family Reunions -  My family was never big on reunions.  They rarely happened and seemed almost to be more of a cry for help than anything.  But most people had family reunions where family members from out of town would come in, usually around the 4th of July to take advantage of the day off, and get together for a large scale pot luck.  Now this part probably doesn't change much, but what happens afterwards does.  During these reunions people would sit and visit and catch up on what everyone else is doing in the family.  Now, everyone knows.  It's like they all live next door, or maybe in the next room.  Everything on social media tells people more than they ever thought they could know about their kith and kin.  Now the only reason to get together once a year is to trade recipes that you have to taste in person to decide if you want.  That's going to go soon once being able to print food is more mainstream.  Yes they are already doing it.  I'm just not sure how good a big mac is going to taste if it's made with hp-food-grade-printer ink.

6 - Yellow Pages - Yeah, the internet has made this just a sad little (and I mean little) book that shows up on your door step every... I don't even know how often it shows up because I just throw it away.  There was a time when local service lived and died by the Yellow pages.  it was THE advertising of first resort.  Everyone was supposed to let their 'fingers do the walking'.  Bold entries, fancy artwork, pages so thin they could only be in competition with pages of scripture.  Yellow pages had what you needed.  Now?  What they have is a direct route to the recycle facility where they are recycled into more even smaller yellow pages.  One of the great things about the phone book was it was supposed to be a feat of strength to be able to rip a phone book in half.  Now it's a demonstration of readiness to be released from the hospital after an operation.  The yellow pages do have a website somewhere.  I've never actually been.

7 - Full Service (Oregon, don't read this one) - There was a time when you would trust your car to the man who wore a star.  There was a time when gas was dispensed and the windshields cleaned and the oil checked by your friendly service station attendant.  Back then they called them service stations and the row of pumps were called full service because you got service on your car. Sometimes there was another row of pumps that were called self service. NOW we just don't do that unless we live in Oregon where it's against the law to pump your own gas.  In this nutty bit of legislation, gas stations must hire a gas station attendant to pump patrons petroleum properly and promptly.  I think that last alliteration was actually a part of the law, I'm not sure on that.  Anyway, the rest of the country we get out of our cars and pump our own gas.  We don't for a minute think about the good old days of full service.  Unless you live in Oregon, where the good old days are still old if not good.

8 - When/Where are we meeting - You are going to meet friends for a movie or perhaps to some event.  When we would worry about this kind of thing, we would arrange, very carefully, the place we were all meeting and the time we would expect to see each other there.  If this was a friend you had not seen in some time, you would also probably explain to each other what you were wearing or what you would be holding so you could identify what was going on.  The conversation would go something like this:  "Ok, I've already talked to Fred and we are going to meet you at the south end of the Mall right by the fountain on the GAP side.  We'll be there at 5:30 but Fred might be late, but I'll be early.  Ok?  5:30.  We'll see you then" hang up.  Now, we just use cellphones to say 'Hey, are you there yet?'  Better yet you can use some apps to track friends via GPS to see exactly where they are.  Did you know that the NSA is your friend?  Oh yes, they are a very, VERY good friend.

9 - Librarians - There was a time when the Dewey Decimal system ruled the roost of informational archives.  Librarians were the google before google so maybe altavista, but even before that.  The librarian would be asked how to find nearly everything in the library.  They would also be asked strange questions because the assumption was that the librarian had in fact read all of the books that they guarded with their shield of silence.  Now, the library and librarians are another strange artifact of an archive that is just aching for a massive global power failure.  The librarian secretly longs for the day that the printed page reigns supreme again.  They complain about the brightness of technological displays and revel in the perceived comfort they  feel in turning dried pressed pulp between their fingers.  Anymore, people just want things faster and if they don't have to leave their houses, so much the better.  There are still libraries of ancient tomes in Universities (that will be on this list in another 50 years) that are guarded by the earnest librarian and there will always be some place for bound books.  But the mainstream just doesn't think about them as much anymore or how they are organized.

10 - Who is calling/Busy Signals - Do we ever think about the busy signal on phones anymore?  I'm not even sure they exist unless you are trying to call a Radio Station to win some free concert tickets to the Bread reunion tour.  The worst that can happen when you call an individual is that you are given a voice mail prompt.  If you call a company you will of course have to navigate the electronic gate keepers to eventually be given voice mail or possibly an automated customer service rep, but you will never hear a busy signal.  On the other side is that feeling of dread you had when the phone would ring at a strange hour of the day.  You would wonder with some trepidation who it was on the other end of the line that wished to talk to you at that time.  Now, caller ID is everywhere.  You will get some places that refuse to show you who is calling.  That's a very good indicator of if you should answer the phone at all or not (Answer: not).  We now can answer the phone directly with hello Fred because you see that Fred has called you on his cellphone.  Kind of takes the wind out of that 'guess who' that someone might pull to see if you remember the sound of their voice.  That was always annoying anyway.

There are some things that we just don't think about much anymore.  If you still do, you won't for long.  Thanks for reading!  Happy New Year!

10 Pet Peeve's of people in Technology (programmers)

This blog has always been about what I think. But not really much about me. Small distinction I know, but still I don't provide a whole lot of details about my life here. Well by trade I am a Database Programmer. As such my name occupies a place in the roll of the TECHIE. A TECHIE is anyone that makes adept use of technology such that people around them recognize them as at least a semi-authority. Once you are deemed a TECHIE, there are several things that happen, most of which are at first flattering, but quickly annoying. I've found that there are likely several parallels in the fields of medicine, law, and auto repair.

10. Because you enjoy something, that should be payment enough - One of the problems with being a species based in mortality, we create a subclass of people that are thrifty (read CHEAP). These people believe that the value of anything done on their behalf is based on the need or discomfort of the individual providing the service and not the value of the service itself. They will often start a request for free labor with 'I've got a challenge for ya' The challenge of course is how long can you work on this persons problem before you realize that you will be doing it for free.

 9. Once you've agreed to help, the person being helped turns off their brain - This is not unique to technical support, but is also present in driving and happens in nearly the same way. When I don't have a GPS with me, I have a very good sense of direction. Once I have a GPS, I have no idea where I am, or what direction i'm going or how long it will take to get there. The same thing happens to most people when they get technical support.

8. People's field of vision is largely limited to a one inch circle around their mouse - It's really amazing. When you watch someone else driving around their computer, you quickly see that they are not only looking where their mouse is, but they only look where their mouse is. If they want to look at a title or something else on the page, they feel the need to move the pointer to the place they are looking. The reason this is annoying is because a LOT of information lies just outside of the radius around the mouse.

7. If you are technical AND you have touched my computer, you OWE me free support from that time forward - This happens from time to time where people will say something like "Right after YOU fixed my computer, it stopped working (in another way that is unrelated)....(silence with expectation)" Yes, you are expected to fix whatever other thing is wrong based on what you fixed before. It's yours now. you touched it, you OWN it.

6. You're technical, come look at this - 'Technical' is actually not a bullet point on a resume unless you are looking for management. Like medicine or law or nearly any other profession, the classification of that profession is usually MUCH larger than the specific area that you work in. A doctor that has specialized in Orthopedics doesn't really know much about Oncology. A lawyer that is in personal injury will be a fish out of water in a copyright infringement case. If you ask a PC pro to take a look at your printer, they may or may not have information that will help.

 5. Here, let me google that for you - Once you are found to be somewhat helpful . You are obligated to provide service because you have the know how.  Then people start getting lazy.  Instead of asking you for help when they need it after they have exhausted all options, they start asking you for things like you are their personal google.

4. You think you're SOOO smart - After dealing with computers you begin to see the same mistakes and gaffes by the general populous crop up.  You start making assumptions about human behavior and begin to generalize that behavior.  You know.  Like everyone else does to Techies.  We are mostly socially inept and have little contact with the outside world.  So many times, without hearing the entire problem, we make a general diagnosis and prescribe a treatment.  Often involving rebooting.  For some people, when our initial prognosis doesn't work there is some glee that crosses the face of some as though to say 'Well Mr. I-know-more-than-you, looks like you don't know EVERYTHING....HA!'  A word to the wise.  Like auto mechanics, GOOD tech people you can relate to are hard to come by and should not be mocked.

3.  This just isn't working - A followup to the above, when you are in technology, you have a problem in that if something doesn't work, and you are unable to fix it, you take it personally.  You mutter under your breath something about 'Nothing breaks unless I SAY IT BREAKS'.  Of course the problem is, technology decays over time and will fail eventually (yes, even Macs).  This means, that over time those that are technically inclined will be stuck in this infernal catch 22.


2.  Is this a good one? - The technologically inclined will usually spend quite a bit of time evaluating and finally purchasing technology.  Getting the best bang for the technological buck is somewhat of an internal competition among the TECHIE lot.  That's why it is particularly infuriating when a commoner just happens to buy some bit of hardware be it a Monitor or a Tablet computer, and it just happens to be the best or close to it and we the techie watch as you use maybe 20% of it's overall capacity.  Why don't you just hit us in the collective head with a tire iron.

1. TV could at least TRY to be accurate - The truth is, a lot of TV tries for technological accuracy by avoiding the subject.  Every so often the show will try to explain to those that are not in the know about some kind of technology that often ends up being patently wrong.  We love it, but we hate it.  We hate it at the time we watch the show, because it takes our mind out of the story.  We love it later because we can carp along like Comic Book Guy about the brazen inaccuracies and show off our tech cred.



Well, this will be the penultimate original entry for by blog this year.  The only reason I say so, is because there are so few occasions to actually use the word.  Get your Holiday shopping done and enjoy the season!