My Chromebook Experiment

How's that webby thing workin' for ya?

It's been only a year since I wrote up my early impressions of working with a Chromebook. I was giving it a serious chance, because there were so many things to like -- simplicity, convenience, security. And I tried to stick with it partly due to the dangling carrot of being able to run Android apps on it someday -- a carrot that so far continues to recede in front of my nose.

But in the end I'm signing off. I bit the bullet and replaced it with a Dell XPS 13 running (initially) Windows 10 and (soon coming) Linux. Not till I dived into the new machine did I really appreciate how much I'd been chafing under the restrictions of Google's webcentric tool.

What Happened?

So what happened? A list of things.

After my initial disappointment at not being able to take full advantage of Dropbox, I used Zoho for writing until I ran into too many sync issues and formatting questions. Once I had to resort to restoring an earlier Dropbox copy when my latest edits failed to save. Bad!

Plus, if I used LibreOffice to open one of the documents that I'd edited in Zoho, it would ask me if I wanted to use Open Document Text format when I saved it, revealing that Zoho's ODT was somehow not the same as LibreOffice's. One of the ODT viewers on my phone and tablet would refuse to open the files, too, probably for the same reason. Not good.

When Even Linux Fails

Then I lost my ability to boot up the Crouton version of Linux. It simply stopped working after a Chrome update and I was unable to get it to run again. This revealed what a weak link in the chain this solution is. It's too small a project with too few developers to make it robust. Unlike a  normal Linux distribution that will install on practically everything from a Raspberry Pi to the largest super-computer, Crouton is at the mercy of the underlying Chrome platform which may shift without warning. And it's not possible (at least at my skill level) to do a true dual-boot installation of Linux due to the way Google has locked down the platform. It's almost like trying to install it on a Mac.

Add to this the minor annoyances, like having to buy a third-party app to be able to access my remote desktop at work, and the non-standard keyboard missing the delete, pageup and pagedown keys. And that's worse than it sounds when you're used to using them to jump around and edit lots of words.

I started to ask myself, if Microsoft tried to sell me this (like their RT version of Windows for netbooks on Arm processors), would I bite? And the Chromebook limitations go much further than the ones on RT.

Obsolescence

Then there's the issue of planned obsolescence. Google put out the word that they will only guarantee support for 3 years after a Chrome device was first introduced. Too bad if you made your purchase two years into the product cycle. I've never liked the way Mac hardware becomes day-old toast every year when the new models come out, and this rubbed me the same way. Down here on the street, we are right to expect a five to seven year life cycle to our hardware. My wife is still happily using an HP laptop from 2011, and the end of its life might be the eventual demise of Windows 7. Even then there could be a lightweight Linux distribution in its future.

The final decision came when I realized I was thinking about replacing the Chromebook with a higher end model from Dell that was going to cost about as much as the XPS laptop. For the same money, it was a no-brainer.

The Plunge and the Future

So I've plunged back into the mainstream. Ahh ... 128 gigs of solid state drive instead of 32, eight gigs of RAM instead of four, a standard keyboard, illuminated even, a Dropbox that works again, and the full version of LibreOffice at my beck and call.

The idea of running everything from the web -- like the ancient days of client/server computers and terminals -- is still an interesting one, and it will probably continue to evolve and improve. Google has promised that all new Chromebooks will be able to run Android apps (though maybe not older ones like mine), which will make them a lot more useful. Beyond that, they're developing a whole new operating system (yikes!) that proposes to merge the features of Chrome and Android and eventually run on all devices including desktops.

From the other end of the spectrum, Microsoft is pushing Windows to become ever more mobile and webcentric. Soon they will collide in the middle. But I'm not sure I'd put my money on Google in this confrontation. One of the advantages of both Android and Chrome is their reliable Linux foundation. If Google throws out that baby with the bathwater then they may find themselves sailing on a ship as leaky and fraught with bugs as the SS Windows.

But to me it's all about striking the right balance. It's wonderful to be able to open a Dropbox folder anywhere and have my files available. Not wonderful when they're inaccessible because you're offline, or when you can't edit them because your software is also online.

So much computing power can be put into such a small package now that there's no reason not to do most tasks "locally" while mirroring data to a cloud resource. Right now that's the best of all possible worlds, regardless of your platform of choice.

Speaking of platforms, I'm even having some fun with Windows 10. But that's for another day.

Small vs. Fast

The smaller it gets, the faster it goes ... the faster it goes, the smaller it gets ...

I had a small epiphany recently while watching the apps on my phone download and update themselves. Of course it's not necessary to watch, but I have to. Long years of experience on PCs have accustomed me to the virtues of monitoring this activity for signs of trouble. Plus, there's something satisfying about watching the little progress bars turn blue from end to end while the status line indicates a download icon, then an "installing" message, then "installed", then a security scan, and finally "Application X is safe," indicating that all is well with the world.

Only once in a blue moon does anything go wrong. My wi-fi connection might flake out, interrupting the download, or something is amiss with the package on the server so that it won't install. But even then there is little downside. Simply trying again will insure success, if not today then tomorrow, and in the meantime the existing app will keep plugging merrily along.

Gone are the days of waiting hours for a huge file to trickle down through a dialup connection only to have it error out a few percent before completion, making it necessary to start over. Gone, too, are the frequent disasters that sometimes still plague complex software installations on PCs -- be they Windows, Mac, or (dare I say it?) even Linux. Let's face it, Android and IOS have taken the end user experience to new levels of ease and reliability. People who used to stare dumbfounded at a screen asking them to press CTRL-ALT-DEL can now do whatever they want with the swipe of a finger or even by uttering some verbal commands.

But my epiphany was not about ease of use. Instead I found myself marveling over how small and compact all my apps were, and therefore how efficiently coded they must be. Some were only a megabyte or two, while the largest were not much above 20 megs -- miniscule in comparison with 700 meg CDs or 8 gigabyte DVDs. Then it suddenly hit me. Back when we had to install everything from floppy disks, each disk held barely more than a single megabyte (about 1.4). So those 20 meg files I was downloading in a fraction of a minute represented a dozen or more floppy disks -- exactly the sort of packaging that used to be required by something like Windows 95, Adobe Photoshop, or MS Office. In other words, these baby apps are about the same size as major applications used to be, only speed has made them seem trivially small. And the smaller the hardware gets, the faster it goes.

The same thing happened to Unix. If the PCs of 1985 had been able to run it, there would have been no need for DOS, Netware, and Windows (or the Mac OS) to serve as poor substitutes. But back then you needed a huge mainframe to get the resources of memory and disk space that the full-blown, multiuser, multitasking, network-connected Unix had to offer. Ten years later a Finnish computer student was able to create a Unix-like kernel small enough to run on a 386 PC. With the GNU project added on top it became Linux, which now runs on everything from supercomputers down to TV set-top boxes, and yes, Android phones -- while incidentally powering most of the Internet. (A different Unix clone, FreeBSD, lies beneath the pretty skin of OSX.)

So the next time you're fidgeting with impatience at how slow your updates are happening, reflect on the alternative. You could wait for a package to come in the mail, then start feeding one disk after another into that voracious slot on the front of your PC, listening to the measured thunks as the head moved from one track to the next (80 tracks per diskette -- you could count them), while hoping and praying that there were no bad spots or copying errors that might crash the whole procedure.

Don't you feel better now? I know I do.

Are Humans In Jeopardy?

Is the era of human supremacy coming to an end?

What to do now that computers can beat us at our own game. That game, of course, is "trivia," the ability to access random information on a variety of subjects, which would seem to be a prototypically human strength. Yet the contest on TV's "Jeopardy" was one of the most foregone conclusions ever presented for our viewing pleasure.

Following months of hype, Watson - IBM's supercomputer - faced off against the same two contestants it had already trounced in a trial run. After all the publicity, watching the event itself was kind of like seeing the Packers and Steelers on videotape a week after the Superbowl. But this latest victory is still a milepost in the history of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence and Chess

It's a victory that has been predicted since the earliest computers were in their infancy. Alan Turing, whose pioneering work with logic and theory laid the foundations for computer design (and helped to break the German Enigma code in World War II), could see no reason why his electronic offspring should not eventually meet and even surpass the capabilities of those who designed them.

That was quite a stretch of the imagination back when computers were little more than rapid calculating machines. Others at the time (the 1950's) believed there were certain types of thinking in which humans would always excel. Oddly enough, chess was often cited as an example. But as we now know, the game of chess is trivial for computers, given enough memory and processing power.

By the 1980's futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that a computer would be able to defeat the best human chess master by 1998. He was wrong, because it happened in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue overcame Russian grand master Gary Kasparov. By this time most of us were not even surprised, because in most cases we ourselves could not defeat a toy sold by Radio Shack.

If humans still had any claim to unique capabilities, it may have been in our ability to rapidly synthesize a solution based on hazy and tenuous relationships between apparently unrelated things. Though typified by parlor games like "Trivial Pursuits," the same mental ability gives us creativity, the capacity to invent, write music and literature, to produce art and original scientific theories.

But now we may have to cede this advantage to the next generation of supercomputer. Recently Kurzweil picked Watson as the favorite in the Jeopardy competition, saying that even if it lost it would soon improve enough to come back and win. At the rate they're going, he is convinced that within a few decades they will exceed the memory capacity and thinking ability not just of a single human, but of all humans combined.

Passing the Turing Test

What's next for artifical intelligence? Maybe all that's left is the so called "Turing Test." Alan Turing proposed setting up a pair of teletype machines, one leading to a computer, the other to a human operator. If someone conducting a conversation by teletype could not tell the difference between them, then the computer would pass the test - meaning that it had demonstrated human intelligence.

That sounded far-fetched at the time, but those working in the field of AI have come to believe the Turing Test is actually too easy. In fact, demonstrations have already been done which were good enough to fool a certain percentage of human subjects. But the methods used were not nearly advanced enough to be considered true thought.

So other tests will no doubt be devised, with computers - or whatever they come to be called - rising to the occasion, and passing over one bar after another. IBM's room full of computers will shrink to the size of a chip, as it has done before. And perhaps one day computers will be the ones proposing the tests, asking us to demonstrate what it means to be "human."

Ready to POP

I've become a walking hotspot ...

Let's face it, we all hate to pay for stuff, especially when it feels like we're being overcharged. This happens especially in markets where pricing has not settled down yet, such as mobile data access plans. Rates on these things are nuts, obviously dictated by what some marketing department thinks the customer will bear rather than on the intrinsic value of the service.

Consider: I pay AT&T $20 a month for 300MB of data, and I usually use pretty close to that because I'm careful to do all my heavy downloading when I'm on WiFi. That works out to less than 7 cents per meg. But if I run a wee bit over I have to pay another $20 for another chunk of data I might not need. Effectively the price per meg could almost double. Make sense?

How about this: For an extra $10 a month I could get 3 gigabytes of data, or ten times the amount I get now. The price per meg then would be only 1 cent, or 1/7 what I pay for the smaller amount. This is intended to make the $30 plan hard to refuse, but sheesh, couldn't there be something in between? Or couldn't that low end be a bit more generous?

On top of this there is an arbitrary restriction on my service that prevents me from sharing my cellular data with another device through tethering (where the cell phone becomes a mobile hotspot). Now, if they're charging me by how much I consume, and if I'm already using as much as I'm paying for, why should they care if I divided my usage between two or more devices? Obviously, it's just a way to force me to buy a separate data plan for each device, or to upgrade my service.

How much more? Turns out it is a minimum of $40 for a 1 gig shared data plan, PLUS an extra $55 for each additional device. So instead of $20 or $30 per month I'd be paying $95 just for the ability to share access with my tablet. That's 9.5 cents per megabyte, or 35% more than my current plan, and 850% more than an individual 3 gig plan. Any rhyme or reason there?

Alternatively I could buy a separate data plan just for my tablet (assuming it had 4G built in, which it doesn't) for $50 per month for 5 gigs, or a penny per megabyte. But that would be in addition to the data plan for my phone, so I'd still be paying a total of $70 a month. And it might be way more data than I would need or use. Any wonder why it makes me crazy? Any wonder why people jailbreak their phones and install software that bypasses the restrictions? (Not me, of course.)

But hey, this is Capitalism, and market forces are beginning to work. When I heard about FreedomPOP's plan to give out 500 megs per month of free 4G mobile data I jumped all over it. All you do is send them a "refundable deposit" for one of their access devices and agree to pay reasonable overage charges of 1 or 2 cents per megabyte. If you want more you can buy it for amounts that make sense rather than nonsense, and use it with any number of other devices. Now we're talking!

I paid about $100 for a tiny (2.5in/6.5cm square) mobile access point that you can slip in a pocket and which will support up to 8 WiFi connections. I wouldn't expect very good performance with a maximum load, but it works just fine for my phone and tablet. If I use it for a year with no overages I will have paid about $8 per month for my 500 megs, or about 1.7 cents per meg. If I use it for three years the price will fall to less than half a cent per meg, or less than 10 cents per day. At prices like that I will gladly pay overages if only to encourage them to keep up the good work!

Got data leftover? FreedomPOP even lets you share it with friends who have their own FreedomPOP accounts. An inspired piece of viral marketing, but generous nonetheless. Try giving away your unused megabytes on [insert vendor of your choice].

The only drawback to the service is the spotty coverage map in my area, because FreedomPOP uses the Clearwire cellular network, but in the corridor between my home and office I'm gold. Clearwire has now been bought up by Sprint Nextel, so assuming they don't decide to drop FreedomPOP altogether, the coverage is likely to improve.

My only other concern is that the access point is so small it would be easy to lose. I misplaced it once already, forgetting that I had plugged it into my USB port to charge. But on the road it's easy to tuck away into a pocket of my computer bag where it's pretty secure. Now I just have to remember to turn it off when I'm not using it to preserve the battery. I did a dry run the first week, leaving it on during my commute to and from work even if I wasn't using it, and the charge lasted nearly 5 days.

Time will tell if this new "freemium" price model will hold up or will be imitated. It seems to be doing all right for services like Dropbox. And with both Google and the government talking about free super-WiFi over the whole country, I think it's safe to say that eventually the current draconian price structures of the phone companies will go the way of Compuserve dialup rates.

Remember those? It cost $6 per hour for a 300 baud connection, at which speed you could read text as fast as it downloaded across the screen. For $12 an hour you could upgrade to 1200 baud -- 4x the data for 2x the price. Now we get 3MB download speeds for as little as a dollar a day. And what ever happened to Compuserve anyway?

[Yet another price model is offered by Karma using similar hardware. They offer flat pricing per megabyte with no contract and no monthly allotment. Just pay as you go for what you use. The advantage there is that you never leave unused data on the table -- it just rolls over. A good fit if you need lots of time one month and little the next.]

[In the short time since this was posted, FreedomPOP has added a new level of service, possibly in response to the Karma plan. For 3.49 per month you can now get data rollover, accumulating up to 20 gigs from months where you use less than your allotment and using it when you need it. Obviously prices are still in a state of flux.]

My Device Family Tree

How many do YOU own ...?

For a long while now I've had multiple computers in my household, most of them mine. But until recently they were always some form of desktop or laptop connected through a router. Now I find I've accumulated a family of devices, each one smaller than the last, that seem to specialize in the jobs that each does best. They all feed from the same pool of online files and services, but each fills a niche based on the size of images it can display and the level of operating system it runs.

The Dell desktop with its 22" screen is still my platform of choice for web development. I can boot it into LinuxMint or Windows 7, and the ample display size is great for keeping multiple windows open. It has enough horsepower to run Windows XP in a virtual machine with VirtualBox while simultaneously playing music and browsing the Internet. For spreadsheets, document formatting, web pages, graphic design, and games, this is the place to be. It's a year and a half old with "only" a dual core processor, but 8 gigs of RAM keeps it going smooth as silk.

Next up is its little brother, an Acer netbook, which shows how much can be crammed into a much smaller package. This also boots my choice of LinuxMint or Windows 8 (I know, but I had to put it somewhere), and offers a more comfy way to answer email and do writing while ensconced on the couch. The 10" screen is easy to read while still compact, and the whole package weighs in at just 2 pounds, probably less than the power supply on the Dell. It also sports a dual core chip, though its 2 gigs of memory is only adequate, and graphics are just meh -- OK for games as long as they don't require 3D acceleration. Tiny and underpowered as it is, this gadget still outperforms the desktop system I had 10 years ago, and does it on batteries.

The newest size slot belongs to the Nexus 7 tablet, which is doing its best to displace my now archaic Sony as my ebook reader of choice. There is still something comforting about the solid e-paper display of the Sony and a battery that lasts for weeks instead of draining while you watch. But when it comes to magazines and news feeds like Flipboard, not to mention Facebook and Google+ updates, not to mention Youtube and Netflix, it's pretty clear where the future lies. We just have to trust that in the fullness of time Modern Science will deliver a combination of screen and battery technology that will give us the best of both worlds.

And when deciding whether to use the netbook or tablet, it's easy: am I going to be typing or reading? For us inveterate touch typists there is no substitute for real keys. I've tried a bluetooth keyboard with the Nexus and it feels OK, but if I'm going to put the keyboard on my lap where do I put the tablet? The netbook is a typewriter, amplified. And the tablet is a book, electrified. Simple as that.

"But don't forget me!" says my Android phone. (It's an HTC Vivid running 4.0.) After all, the phone started all this by showing me how much could be done in the tiniest of packages. It's my second one, but this is the one with a big enough screen and adequate resources to let me read books and watch movies. True, the 4.5" screen is kind of tight for those things, but I always have it with me in my pocket and it's always ready to whip out and go to work.

Now it seems as if the Nexus tablet is just a grown up version of the phone. It still runs Android with its wealth of apps and beautiful integration with Google's wide world of services, but now with a form factor that feels like a book and performs like a personal TV. Dare we imagine that a desktop version is in our futures? Rumor has it that Google is about to merge Android with its Chrome operating system to put the final desktop nail in the Microsoft coffin. Or if you don't care for that scenario, how about integrating a tablet with your home entertainment system? It can be done even now if you can assemble all the bits and pieces, but it's easy to imagine it becoming a seamless standard.

On the other end of the scale, we're about to see even smaller devices coming online. Pebble and Apple will be selling smart watches that we can expect to take on more and more of the things phones are doing. So instead of pocketing them we'll be wearing them. And then there's Google Glass which is pioneering the kinds of user interface we will need when the devices grow too small for a touchpad. The lower limit, it seems, has yet to be reached. And the upper one, too.

Windows - Now Cheaper Than Ever

NOW how much would you pay?

For months I've been watching the approach of Windows 8 with dread. Ever since I tried running one of the preview versions in a virtual machine it's been giving me the heebie jeebies every time I see an ad for that screen full of multicolored tiles.

Anticipating an "intuitive" experience I had attempted to blunder around in it like a normal user might and found myself completely stymied. No start menu. No apparent way to find my programs. No way to quit an "app" or switch between the ones that were open. No apparent way to even turn it off -- I had to force my virtual machine to shut down, the equivalent of pulling the plug, before I discovered that you have to 1) open the "charms" menu, 2) select Settings, 3) select Power, and 4) select Shut down. Or, alternatively,  1) figure out how to log out (click on your user name in the corner of the screen), 2) click in the lock screen to get back to the login page, then 3) click the power button in the corner. Sheesh! Who designed this thing?

But love it or hate it I knew I would have to deal with it someday. I might never run it myself, but sooner or later either my company or one of my family or friends would expect me to be able to help them with it, so I'd better get some familiarity with it. On the other hand, I was reluctant to actually pay for something I didn't want. But Microsoft had an answer for me. For a limited time I could upgrade for only 40 bucks -- and if I had purchased a computer running Windows 7 recently I could get it for even less: $14.99. Wow -- the only deal better than that would come with free steak knives! (Or a free Linux download, but don't get me started on that.)

I hesitated to sacrifice my Windows 7 dual boot installation on my desktop. Even though I seldom use it I have to be able to get real work done when I need it, and the last thing I wanted was those bloody tiles in my face. Anyway, I bought it too long ago to qualify for the $14.99 deal. But wait -- I bought another Windows 7 machine more recently, namely the Acer netbook that I wrote about, and which I wouldn't mind sacrificing to the cause. Especially since I still had the version of Windows 7 that it came with tucked away on the hard drive that I replaced with an SSD, so I could always downgrade.

Best of all, the Acer was purchased within the magic time period that qualified me for the lowest possible price, so it seemed to be a no-brainer. I proceeded with my online purchase, jumping through a couple of hoops to enter a promo code that I had to register for, and then downloaded the approximately 2 gig package for installation.

Right away I detected differences that told me Microsoft is really making an effort to get more hip. Download instead of CD or DVD. Offering ISO files that can be burned to disk, and even packages for USB flash drives. A software assistant that pre-certified my hardware and existing programs for compatibility -- it even cleared LibreOffice! This is not your father's Microsoft, even though Balmer is still at the helm.

First I tried out the ISO file, but learned it was not a "hybrid" image that would boot from a flash drive. So they are still one step behind the convenience of some contemporary Linux distros. But they didn't at all complain when I went back to download the flash drive version. There is also  no option to boot directly into a working version of the OS to try it out before installation -- the "live" disk is still the province of Linux. But this was the first time I ever made it through a fresh Windows installation without any complaints about missing drivers for the built in devices on my motherboard -- and this was on a netbook with wifi card, camera, and touchpad.

The only complaint I have is the amount of disk space it demanded. I had pared down the Windows 7 partition to 40 gigabytes, which gave me about 10 gigs for file storage. There was 8 gigs remaining, but the installation program insisted on having a bit more -- about 8.9. So I uninstalled LibreOffice, deleted files, and ran disk cleanup to increase it to almost 9 gigs free. But now the installer warned me that I "should" have at least 1.2 gigs more than what it told me in the first place. Ah, now this is more like the Windows I'm familiar with.

This disk space issue was just because I had asked it to do an upgrade instead of a fresh install, so it needed enough working room to do its business before overwriting my existing installation. I decided to do a clean install instead. Accordingly I used the partition manager to delete all my partitions -- even the Linux ones -- so I could start from scratch. (Integrating a nice graphical partition editor with the installer is another way they have caught up to Linux installers. Though naturally it only handles FAT and NTFS filesystems.) This time I gave 50 gigs to Windows just to be sure it had plenty of room. The joke is that once the installation was done it only took up 20 gigs, so my original partition would have been ample.

The installation itself was effortless and completed much more quickly than I expected, though I forgot to time it. OK, so installation done -- but how would Windows 8 feel about dual booting with Linux? I was encouraged that the Advisor told me my computer did not support UEFI Secure Boot, so that "feature" would not be available. Yay! And I was further encouraged that the installer told me I should use the Advanced option in case I wanted to dual boot with "other operating systems." But I still had to try it to be sure. So I reinstalled LinuxMint, and voila, I was back to where I started except with Windows 8 in my boot menu instead of 7.

There I was at last, face to face with the dreaded tiles of the Start screen. The touchpad on a netbook is not the best way to do the fancy swiping that the Start screen is designed for. But I knew that touching the Windows key would always whisk me back to the beginning, and that Windows+D would jump to the traditional desktop. And trial and error showed that scrolling up and down on the edge of the trackpad was equivalent to scrolling side to side on the Start screen. A little confusing, but better than click and drag. So I started playing around.

Gee, those tiles are pretty. I think the colors have been designed to appeal to something childlike in us which is attracted to bright geometric objects. They perform a function also, which is to add color coding to the white icons on them, making them easier to recognize. Google could take a lesson from this, since they seem to be seriously challenged when it comes to icon design -- they really prefer words. Apple is at the other end of the spectrum, creating eye candy that resembles 3D objects. The new Windows look is flat, clean, and simple, and there is certainly a design argument to be made for it.

People praise this new interface as "fluid." It does scroll fluidly, and when you click a tile (or touch it) it fluidly flips and expands to fill the screen. Even when you don't touch them they fluidly scroll information updates, such as emails or news feeds. Fluid fluid fluid. The problem comes when you actually try to, well, do something. It soon becomes clear that the apps have been designed for the child in us as well -- the toddler who can only bang on big buttons or Whack the Mole with a hammer.

Gone is the richness and subtlety that have won praise -- however grudging -- for past versions of Windows even from those of us who might prefer to use something else. Windows 7, for example, is about as nice a user experience as I've ever had. I certainly prefer it to OSX, and it offers conveniences that I actually miss when using KDE under Linux. For example, the ability to rename a file while selecting it as an attachment. It doesn't seem like a big thing until you find that without it you have to cancel out of the attach dialog, open a file manager window, find the file and rename it, then go back and select it again.

Then of course there is the schizoid nature of the two separate and competing interfaces that seem to be fighting for your attention. Just when you think you might be able to live in the new world of tiles, something as basic as the Control Panel flips you back into the old world, And you can't really stay in the old world either, because to start a different program you must go back to the tiled Start screen. The fact that third party "start buttons" are selling like hotcakes should be a big red flag to the MS developers.

Another frustration turned out to be trying to watch Netflix. I had just got the movie service to run under Linux using the Wine kludge that made it think it was really running under Windows, but on the netbook playback was so jerky it was unusable. Surely this was something Windows 8, with its fluid fluid fluid interface would excel at, right? Well, I grabbed the free Netflix app from the Store, and it started up smoothly enough. But when I tried to play a movie it failed to load and gave me an error message stating that my video card was not adequate and I should see if there was a new driver for it that was compatible with Windows 8.

Aha, the dreaded driver issue. Unfortunately, the support site for the Radeon graphics reported that I was already using the latest driver. So out of curiosity I fired up my Chrome browser instead of the Netflix app, went to their website, and tried to run a movie that way. Result? NO PROBLEM. So what's the big deal with the app and special drivers? The difference is something to do with that new world of tiles, giving me one more reason to ignore and avoid it.

I fear that for all their bold efforts to strike out in a new direction Microsoft is going to experience the exact opposite of the "halo effect." With Windows phone barely making a dent in the smart phone market they have tried to force us to pay attention to their tiled interface by shoving it under our noses on the desktop. But after learning to hate it there, it is unlikely we'll learn to love it on phones and tablets.

Which is kind of a shame, since it is actually a fresh and interesting attempt at a tactile interface that could be useful on handheld devices, at least after it matures. Unfortunately it was rushed out the door half baked, and it really really REALLY doesn't belong on the desktop.

Geek Heaven, Part II: Hardware

But I don't DO hardware ...

I'm predominantly a software guy, not hardware. I know this from my worst failure ever, when I tried to assemble my own motherboard, CPU, and graphics card, and ended up shorting them all out and turning them into a recycling project. Since then I've done nothing more challenging than swapping out a hard drive, adding memory, or replacing an expansion card -- tasks which could be accomplished by anyone who can follow some simple instructions.

I've especially steered clear of daring to open a laptop computer case. Those things feel as if the components packed inside them are going to spring out like Slinky toys when you lift the lid, never to be reassembled. Don't you have to have the careful fingers of East Asian assembly line workers to deal with all those fragile connectors and tiny screws?

Necessity, the Mother

But necessity, as they say, is a mother. I was driven to the attempt by my inability to find a netbook computer with the exact specs I wanted for a price I was willing to pay. I wanted a solid-state drive instead of a hard drive, for the durability and extended battery life, but for marketing reasons they are only selling those preinstalled on high end "ultrabooks" priced from $700 on up. This is due to the cost of the SSDs, which currently runs around $1 per gigabyte, compared to only 10 cents per gig for a hard drive. (I remember when hard drives cost $16 per gig, so progress is being made!)

Instead I bought a low end netbook for $279 and added my own 128 gig SSD for an additional $119, saving half the money while getting what I wanted in a smaller package. (Ultrabooks seem to need larger keyboards and screens to justify their price.) For an extra $20 I also doubled the memory capacity from 2 to 4 gigs. Worth a bit of effort.

The case in point is an Acer Aspire, 722 series, which came with an AMD dual-core 64-bit low-power processor, Radeon dedicated graphics, and a 250 gig hard drive running Windows 7. Performance out of the box was surprisingly good, even with only 2 gigs of RAM. I played with it a bit just to be sure everything was working before I proceeded to jeapordize my warranty.

Compatibility Testing

Assured that the hardware was OK, I next tried running Linux on it to check compatibility before installing it. This is another huge advantage that Linux has to offer -- the Live disk. You can boot up a fully operational desktop directly from a CD or DVD without doing any installation whatsoever, so you can find out in advance if there will be any problems with your hardware. Contrast this with a typical Windows install, with its multiple reboots and requests for drivers that you may or may not be able to find. (Most people never make this comparison because they never had to install Windows, it just came with their computer.)

I used Linux Mint 13, KDE version, which is based on Ubuntu 12.04. The netbook did not come with an optical drive, but the Mint ISO files are "hybrid" images that can be burned to a USB flash drive and will happily run from there. I just had to go into the BIOS settings to be sure the Acer would try to boot from any USB drive before falling back to the hard drive, then plugged in the flash drive that lives on my key chain.

The Hack

As expected, almost everything was properly detected and "automagically" configured in the boot process. Within a minute I was looking at the familiar Mint desktop. The only exception was the wifi connection, but I had looked this up in advance and knew how to work around it. The system would detect available wifi networks -- even the very weak ones emanating from my neighbors' houses -- but if I tried to connect to mine it would freeze the whole computer. Not a problem, due to an inspired hack published online.

The Acer netbook also has the option to boot from a network server, and if you place that option first in the boot hierarchy it will initialize the wifi and look for a server to connect to. In a matter of moments, not finding one, it gives up and proceeds to boot from the next available device. But now, with the wifi properly initialized, it works perfectly under Linux.

True, it may not be pretty to have to look at a routine error message each time you start up, but it seems a small price to pay for the ability to run my software of choice. Likely this shortcoming will be addressed in future releases anyway, and I'll be able to eliminate the hack. One of the things said about open source is, "We'll fix it for you while you sleep!" Thanks to the tireless efforts of programmers around the globe, in the fullness of time most everything is eventually resolved.

Attack of the Clones

Finally ready to begin, my first step was to "clone" the Windows installation from the hard drive onto the new SSD. I could have just installed Linux onto the blank drive, but I hate to throw anything away. Somewhere in that $279 price tag was a fee I had paid for Windows, so why not keep it?

There was one difficulty in this, namely that the SSD was about half the capacity of the hard drive, which complicates the process because you have to deal with resizing the partitions on it. You also need to mount both drives at the same time so you can copy from one to the other. I opted for the easy way out by getting an SSD from Crucial that comes packed with a SATA to USB cable and software that does the cloning for you in one simple step. (They sell the kit separately for $18, and Corsair sells one too.) I thought that cable might come in handy for something else some day, so it was worth paying a bit extra for it.

One of the photos shows my keychain plugged into one USB port so I could run the cloning software from it, and the SSD plugged into another. The copying process took about 35 minutes at around 20 MB/sec. I might have been able to speed it up by monkeying with the settings, but hey, I only had to do this once. With that complete I finally came to the hardware portion of the evening.

Outpatient Surgery

All it took was removing the battery and a single tiny screw to slide the back cover off. Underneath, the hard drive and memory card were readily accessible. Also visible were the wifi adapter and cooling fan. Releasing the metal clips on each side of the memory board, I popped it out and replaced it with the new one. Then I had to coax the hard drive out of its snug fit between the rubber cushions that serve as shock absorbers, and remove two more tiny screws to unhitch it from the connecting SATA cable.

The photo shows the new memory installed and the empty hard drive bay. Truly, the hardest part of all this was making sure not to lose those teensy screws or drop them into the innards of the computer. A magnetic Phillips screwdriver was helpful for that.

After attaching the cable and screws to the new SSD and fitting it into place, I replaced the cover and rebooted to make sure it still worked. When you change the size of a partition that Windows lives on, it insists on "checking the disk for errors." You just have to let it do its thing so it will stop complaining, then all is well again. No errors were found, and I noted that the bootup process was noticably smoother and a bit quicker than before, though I didn't time it.

Almost done -- all that remained was to boot up again from the USB drive with the Mint install disk on it. Once you're up and running from one of these Live disks, you just double-click the Install icon to launch the installation process. If you're setting up a dual boot with Windows the only tricky part is deciding how to partition your drive.

A Drive Divided

One annoyance was that the Windows installation itself, with hardly any extra software added, was occupying almost 30 gigabytes. Compare that to my 1 gig Mint install disk that was going to end up at about 4 gigs after installation. 30 gigs is only about 12% of a 250 gig drive, but almost 25% of the SSD I put in its place. On top of that I was going to cut the drive in half to accomodate the two operating systems. And on top of that, the hard drive had come with two additional partitions that were taking up some of the remaining space. I was running out of room, and I hadn't even started yet!

But I hit on a simple and elegant solution. Those two extra partitions were not necessary. One was a sytem diagnostic area for testing hardware issues. The other was for restoring Windows in case it became hopelessly scrambled, a substitute for providing a Windows install disk. The diagnosic area didn't matter since it was only a few measly megabytes. But I didn't need the Windows restore because I had the entire hard drive I had removed as a backup. So I used the 10 gig restore partition for my Linux root -- where everything would be installed except my own personal files -- leaving the rest up for grabs.

I told the installer to resize the Windows partition to about 40 gigs, which left me 10 gigs for file storage under Windows. That small limit was no problem because I only need it for the occasional Windows-only program that I have to run, while most of my files live under Linux. This left me with the lion's share, about 66 gigs, to devote to my /home folder, plus the satisfaction of seeing my Linux root come first in the list of partitions, with Windows sandwiched between that and  /home. I created a swap partition too, equal to the 4 gig size of my RAM as recommended.

But don't let all this scare you off. If you're not as picky as I am you have the option of letting the installer resize your Windows partition for you and assign the rest of the space automatically. Or, just wipe the whole drive and use it all.

[And before anyone points out that the 100 megabyte diagnostic area would have been big enough for a Linux /boot partition, I considered it. But again, why throw anything away?]

Life is Good

The Mint install went smoothly and created the dual boot loader for me, naturally respecting my wishes to keep Windows available. So life is good. While happily installing my favorite software -- Chromium, LibreOffice, Dropbox, et. al. -- I paused to marvel. Balanced on my lap in this 2 pound (1 kilo) book-sized package was more computing power than I would have dreamed of in a desktop unit just ten years ago. Software has advanced, but hardware is sure coming along too.

Life in Geek Heaven, Part I: Software

I don't usually get all geeked out here, but indulge me for once ...

In the Beginning

Way back around 1996 I first tried installing Red Hat Linux on my home computer. At that time Windows 95 had recently replaced Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 while Microsoft server functions, such as they were, were still being addressed by Windows NT 3.51. The ever more bewildering mishmash of versions yet to come (Windows NT 4.0, 98, 2000, Me, 2003, XP, Vista, and 7) were still pipe dreams in the head of Bill Gates and his numerically challenged marketing staff.

 After years of watching DOS boot on my screens and then various versions of the Windows GUI, it was unbelievably cool to see a totally alien set of status messages scrolling across my 12" CRT monitor and terminating in a cryptic command prompt. I felt as if in the middle of the Cold War I'd been given a computer from the Soviet Union, something with an entirely different heritage. From reading the documentation I knew enough to type "startx" to launch a graphical desktop. Unlike Windows, I learned that you had a choice of such environments in Linux. One of them, called FVWM, bore a resemblance to Windows 95 with its flat teal background and bottom task bar. It was a new project, a bit half baked, but seemed like a way for the programmers to say, "You want something that looks like this? We can do that."

In the years since then Linux has grown by leaps and bounds. FVWM never really went anywhere, but soon enough there were not one but two premier user environments to choose from -- KDE and Gnome -- with still more to try if you cared to. On the server side, Linux and the related open source software that ran on it, like the Apache web server and MySQL database, were largely responsible for the explosive growth of the Internet. Now, 15 years later, it powers the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Skype, not to mention everything from Android phones to wireless routers to more than 95% of the fastest supercomputers in the world -- even the Large Hadron Collider. Don't you want some of that?

Progress

In those early days it was often a struggle to get Linux running with your particular brand of hardware -- especially on laptops with their custom touchpads, graphics, and network interfaces. Linux user groups would hold "install fests" to help people over the technical hurdles, just for the fun of it. But once you were up and running, there wasn't a lot of software available for the desktop user. Unless of course you wanted to built a web or file or database server, in which case your tool set was second only to the big commercial versions of Unix. That too has changed. So much free software now comes along with most Linux distributions that someone has claimed, "If Microsoft put all this stuff on one disk the Department of Justice would be all over them for monopolistic practices."

Over the years I've installed various flavors of Linux on a succession of ever more powerful hardware. Starting with an old 486 processor with 16 megabytes of RAM and a 10 gig hard drive, and ending up with a dual core beast with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a full terabyte drive. This thing has enough horsepower to run one or more extra operating systems in their own virtual machine windows while hardly breaking a sweat. (Of course, dual core processors are now so last year. Any self respecting video gamer is running an i7 with 8 cores.)

The Challenge

Until recently, though, I have only tried installing Linux on one laptop. This was a reconditioned machine purchased by a friend that was delivered for cheap without an operating system. Rather than blowing over a hundred bucks to add Windows, it turned out to be a simple matter to get a free Linux installation working on it. There was only one challenge. The friend wanted to use a cellular data card to access the Internet, and the system refused to recognize it as a valid network connection. Finally I realized that it worked like a dialup modem -- it was basically making a cell phone call to get online, like in the old AOL days. Naturally, Linux has had dialup support for years, so all I had to do was configure PPPD (for Point to Point Protocol Daemon) to make the connection, then write a simple script to connect, and another to disconnect. Voila, le Google.

This was not a task that an average user could be expected to perform. But luckily things have progressed even further now, to the point where I can pretty much recommend that installing my favorite operating system on your laptop -- even the most basic netbook -- is a thing you should really try. I know because I just did it myself.

[Next time -- my own netbook experience.]

Phone Envy, Phase Two

If you have any doubts that the pace of technological change is still accelerating, just upgrade your phone ...

Less than two years ago I first joined the smart-phone world (as I recorded here). The gizmo that accomplished this was an HTC Aria running Android 2.2. It was no iPhone, but it had the advantage of a 100% subsidized price from AT&T at a time when a reconditioned iPhone was going for $99. In other words, it was free.

This little jewel became my constant companion, singing and reading to me as I made my way to and from work each day, answering my questions, finding my way, sending my emails and messages, uploading the photos I took with its camera. Its weight in my shirt pocket became as familiar as the feel of the wallet on my hip.

Then about 8 months ago it slipped out of its comfy perch and landed face down on a pebble on a concrete floor. Don't talk to me about Gorilla Glass. If you hit it right, it breaks. It's GLASS! Miraculously, the pieces of the screen held together, and with a plastic protector over it the thing still worked almost perfectly -- which was just as well, because replacing this free phone before my 2 year contract was up would have cost me $350. Ouch!

Since then I've been peeking once in awhile to see how close I am to the end of the contract and what phones I might be able to get as a replacement. Last week the time came, and the result -- while not as revolutionary as the whole smart-phone concept -- is another leap in performance and usability.

The case in point is an HTC Vivid (certified reconditioned), which came out in the last quarter of 2011, and was available at the same price point (0.00) as the old Aria. Of course, out of gratitude for this free gift I spent $52 for two pieces of plastic. One is called a "case" and the other is a "screen protector."

While you might argue that the screens should come with protection, and that a case around the case should not be necessary, these items qualify as "personalization" and give you the opportunity to customize the look and feel of your mass produced device. Needless to say, these purchases also subsidize the "free" phone, along with the $480 I will spend over the next two years for the required data plan that comes along with it -- which of course is on top of the monthly phone charges.

But how can I complain? Just look at the difference between the old and new phones:

Speed: My old processor poked along at 800Mhz with a single core. The new phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core. Twice as good, right? No, actually more like three times as fast because the Snapdragon cooks at 1.2Ghz.

Space: With only 256 megs of RAM, 512 megs of ROM, and a dinky 2 gigabyte SD card, my old phone was cramped. I quickly ran out of space for apps, and the SD card could hold only about a dozen albums from my vast music collection. The new Vivid has 1 gig of RAM and 16 gigs of onboard storage, or about 4x the memory and 8x the storage even before I add an optional SD card, which can increase it by up to 32 gigs more. I can still recall paying $160 back in the 1990's for a whopping 10 gig hard drive to add to my PC. The cost per gig of the thumbnail-sized SD card is now about $1, and this phone will fly loop the loops around that old desktop computer.

Size: First a 2G network connection, then 3G, now 4G -- faster, yes. More power consumptive, yes, that too, but not so much. The real power hog on the new beast is the screen. According to the Vivid's own confession in its statistics, the screen uses over 60% of the power, at least the way I use it. But at 4.5" it sure is easier on the eyes than the old one which was less than 3". At 540x960 it's bigger than an iPhone, though not quite as high res. The iPhone claims 326ppi while the Vivid is about 245ppi -- but after all, 300ppi is good enough for laser printing, so what do you want? With my eyes I can't see the dots anyhow.

Video: Speaking of the screen, it's suddenly big enough to make watching videos interesting, so I've added Netflix and Ted Talks to my list of apps. And while my old camera was 5 megapixels, the new one has dual cameras, 8 megs rear and 2 megs front -- so necessary for those Skype video calls. (Another SciFi dream comes true. Back in the 1960's comic-strip cop Dick Tracy traded in his old 2-Way Wrist Radio for a new 2-Way Wrist TV. That happened because radio was no longer fantastic enough.)

Audio: And speaking of media, the Vivid comes with Beats audio -- which as it turns out is only a marginal improvement in sound quality. As far as I can tell it's just a kind of equalizer setting that you can't even adjust. (That, and a way to sell really expensive fashion-statement ear buds.) As soon as I get around to it I'll be looking for a new media player with a more complete equalizer that I can adjust for different kinds of music. But I guess after investing $300 million in Beats, HTC is pretty much obligated to include it with all their products.

Android: Which brings us to the operating system itself. Online specs seemed to indicate this phone ran Android 2.3 but could be upgraded. I felt a little dubious about that after my experience with the old Aria. That came with version 2.2, but when an upgrade was offered by AT&T (via email and text message) it involved downloading an update package to a PC, then installing an installer program (Windows only), connecting the phone to the PC with a USB cable, being prepared to lose everything on the phone if it didn't succeed, and praying. After reading the instructions I said to hell with it and continued using the old version for the rest of the phone's short (see above) life.

The first pleasant surprise was that the Vivid arrived with Android 3 (perhaps as a result of being "reconditioned"). And then as soon as it woke up it immediately offered to install an "important security update" right over the air. Still not completely trusting this process, I figured the time to try it was before I wasted hours tweaking the settings and installing all my apps. But nothing could have been simpler. Truly, a COMPLETE IDIOT could do it. Just touch the button and wait for the process to complete. At the end the phone reboots, and voila -- not version 3.1 but 4.0 instead!

One Ring to Rule Them All: Yes, one major version per year since 2010. And the newest one is really pretty nice, very smooth animations, easier screen manipulations, and improved media experience. One footnote here -- HTC and Android ran into patent problems with Apple over the use of the "slide to unlock" feature, so they came up with an alternative where you "pull a ring" instead. Which kind of demonstrates how small the nits are being legally picked. But I like the ring. It also offers shortcuts to the most likely destinations, such as Phone (after all, underneath all the bells and whistles it is still a phone). The moral of this story is that if someone sues you for patent infringement the best thing to do is to invent something better.

The Future: If such progress continues I expect that in 2 years I will be able to upgrade to a quad-core processor running at 2.5+ Ghz, with 4 gigs of RAM, 250 gigs of storage, Android 6.0, a high-def 3D screen with optional goggles and surround-sound headpiece, and further wonders we can only imagine. And the price? Still zero.

From the Annals of Cyber Monday

When it's too late to take the stitch in time that would have saved nine ...

I've had better Mondays. Coming off the Thanksgiving weekend I spent my re-entry day dealing with two critical problems where I work. I started thinking that instead of "Cyber Monday" it should be called "Blue Monday."

The first issue was that one of our printers, an expensive laser photo-imaging device, was down. Indications were that one or more of its lasers were not working (it has red, green, and blue ones). There are also three computers driving this beast. The first prepares images to be printed, the second is dedicated to feeding them to the printer because it's a delicate operation that requires tight synchronization. Neither of those systems had any problems, but the one that sends the images lit up with a warning screen about the bad lasers.

A call to tech support for the printer reminded me to check the third computer, which is tucked away inside the machine and normally not used by the operator. Unlike the first two computers, which run HP Unix, this shy unit runs a command-line-only version of ... you'll never guess ... Windows 98! Which kind of shows how old the whole thing is. Anyway, this computer has a job to do in controlling the lasers, and it was simply powered off.

But why? It's supposed to come on when you start the machine. Turned out the little button battery that keeps the CMOS memory alive when it's powered down had finally run out of juice. (That's where all the BIOS settings are saved.) After all, it was at least 10 years old. Apparently when that computer failed to boot up properly the system just shut it down. Tech support coached me on how to put the BIOS settings in manually so we could get up and running, and we sent out for a replacement battery. For want of a $6 part the whole thing was dead. Problem solved.

In the middle of all this the second problem came up. One of our Mac users couldn't get on the network. I couldn't find any obvious reason. Then a Windows user came to report that he had the same problem -- in fact "the whole network" was down. Well, I knew that wasn't true because I'd just been on the network at my desk. And the Mac user confirmed that at least some of the other Macs were not having any problem. While I was looking into the network settings on the Windows machine it suddenly started working again. So, maybe a temporary glitch? But no, the other computers were still having problems.

We now had a select group of Windows PCs, Macs, and even one Unix machine exhibiting the connection problem, and scattered between our two buildings. It couldn't be a network switch, because most likely that would have affected all the computers connected to it, but I restarted the switches anyway. No help. We tried our wireless access point and could connect to it, but could not access the Internet, so it seemed to be having the same problem -- it couldn't connect to the network gateway to the Internet. It seemed like it had to be something on the server, but the server appeared to be working normally and to have Internet access itself. Time to call in our friendly IT support company which does all the heavy lifting on our server issues.

Meanwhile I noticed that all the machines having the problem had similarly misconfigured IP addresses. Our network uses 10.1.1.x addresses, and these all had 192.168.3.x addresses. I tried manually configuring one of them with a correct address. It still didn't work, but now we were thinking about DHCP.

[If you want to know, that stands for Dynamic Host Control Protocol, which is simply a procedure by which a server can control the addresses of the computers on its network. When each computer starts up it shouts down the hallway, "Hey, I'd like to join the network -- what address can I use?" Everyone else on the network ignores this request, but the server shouts back something like "10.1.1.203."]

The first thing the support tech told me was that the DHCP service was not running on the server. Aha! that made sense. Only those computers that had recently rebooted, or whose addresses had to be renewed, were having connection issues, because they couldn't get an address on the network. All those that had been left on over the weekend were still running normally. So, just as simple as starting the DHCP service up again, right?

Not really. Because we didn't know what had caused it to shut down. And we didn't know where those bogus IP addresses were coming from. Normally if the computer asks for an address and can't get one, then it simply has no address; it doesn't substitute a different one. The network engineer deduced that something else on the network -- either an unauthorized device or a piece of malware -- was acting as a DHCP server. If that was the case, then it would cause the Windows server to stop its own DHCP service to avoid conflicts. And it would explain where all those similar IP addresses were coming from.

We had not added any new equipment, so the only thing to do was try to find out which machine was the culprit. Time to play detective. The engineer began unplugging one system at a time from the patch panel in the server room. After each one he tried to connect to the network with his iPad. As soon as he was unable to get an address, he knew he had unplugged the offending device. The answer was port 18 on the patch panel. Using our sketchy documentation of our wiring plan we located the guilty party.

If your prejudices are like mine, you probably think that either someone had plugged in their own router somewhere, or else one of the Windows machines had gotten a virus. But surprise -- it was a Mac Pro workstation.

So now we knew where and what, but not how. Why would one of the Macs suddenly decide to start acting as a DHCP server? Consulted by phone, a Mac guru identified the problem by that "3" in the IP address, which is not commonly used. It's an address range used by the Internet connection sharing service on the Mac, by means of which one computer can share its network access with a group of other computers, and which works by acting as a DHCP server.

But why would this service suddenly be switched on? We questioned the users -- had they made any changes, had network problems that they tried to solve? No, but, now that we mentioned it, the only unusual thing about that Mac was that over the weekend it had been moved from one desk to another, so it was plugged into a different port on the wall. But why should that change anything?

Of course, it shouldn't. But the Mac Pro has two ethernet ports on the back which can be configured differently. Sure enough, the other port did NOT have Internet connection sharing enabled. All that had happened is that when the computer was moved the network cable had been switched to the other port, with all the resulting complications. Normally it would not have been a problem, and everything would have "just worked" as Macs are famous for. But somewhere in the past someone must have configured that other port for some long-forgotten reason, and it had emerged to bite us.

They say you're always supposed to learn from your mistakes, but that implies that you can figure out what your mistakes were. What we learned from this is that the littlest things -- like that bad CMOS battery -- can have far reaching implications. In an organization of any size, where the network must run smoothly, even a small glitch can bring everything to a standstill. In this case, we lost several hours of impaired production time while we tried to find something that should have been apparent as soon as it happened.

If an IT support person -- me, for example -- had moved the Mac instead of one of the users, then the problem still might have come up. After all, there was a 50/50 chance that I might plug into the "wrong" ethernet port, and even if I were careful about testing the connection the problem might not have been noticable on that computer because it was the one causing the problem. But at least I would have known that this was the last thing that had changed on the network, and I could have started looking there. I might have just disconnected it, and when that solved the problem we could have left it disconnected until we had a chance to get down to the source of the problem. Instead, since I was working in the dark, we had to take the long way around to the solution.

What else could we have done? Well, if time travel was an option, I would suggest going back to when that second ethernet port was configured to support some external device. Then we could document what was done, and why. We might even label the port as being dedicated to a specific purpose in the hopes this might prevent someone in the far future from trying to use it to connect to the network.

The moral, I guess, is that the future arrives sooner than we think, and the past -- in which all mistakes happen -- is right now.

Cloudier and Cloudier

There's more than weather on the horizon ...

Here are some more examples of what I wrote about recently in Life in the Cloud -- and in a way, the fact that I forgot about them is the best evidence that we're already taking them for granted.

You've Got Mail

Yes, as AOL likes to tell us, we have mail, and most of it is spam. Over 80% of it, in fact, ranging from the annoying and disgusting to the viscious and destructive. In this environment it is unconscionable for any provider to give you an email address without some industrial strength spam filtering. Unfortunately some of the most commonly used services (that means YOU, Hotmail and Yahoo!) are less than stellar in this department.

What makes matters worse is that many of us are still stuck on using a local email client on our desktops. In this traditional model our computers suck down everything that comes through the pipe, then flag some of it as suspected spam. How well that works usually depends on how good a job we do of "training" the software, and even then we get lots of false positives along with things that make it to the inbox anyhow. Since some viruses and worms can spread this way even if you never act on them, the damage is not prevented.

When I started using Gmail my first concern was convenience plus a more pleasing user interface than what Bellsouth/AT&T provides for webmail (which is AWFUL). It was only after I used it for awhile that I began to notice something amazing: an almost total absence of spam! Though it's not highly publicized, Google is doing a better job at this valuable service than all but the best enterprise-class filtering systems. And they're mostly giving it away in the public interest. (Contrast this to the service used by the company I work for which costs about $33.00 per user each year.)

I still have a spam folder in Gmail, and I can look there to see if anything good has got caught in it. But that happened so seldom that I stopped checking long ago. I don't even have to empty the spam folder, because everything in it gets deleted automatically after 30 days. Spam? What spam?

You can use a local mail client with Gmail if you want to, but that's a step backward from the security of just looking at your mail while it lives on Google's servers. Of course, it still can't help you if you look in the spam folder and click on that Britney Spears link; but at least she has not automatically downloaded herself onto your hard drive first!

It's a classic example of a formerly desktop-based service being supplanted by a cloud-based one. It's safer, and offers the convenience of access to the same mail from any web browser on any Internet-capable device. This only makes sense, when you think about it. Email only exists online, and anything we have stored on our local machines is just a copy. Sometimes people express reservations about using a completely online service because it won't be available if they lose their internet connection. True, road warriors who are too far from a wifi connection may not be able to look for something in their mailbox. But now that you can check your mail anywhere from your phone, is that really a problem? And what good is email if you're not online?

In addition, Gmail gives me big file attachments -- up to 10 megabytes -- and storage space that keeps growing faster than I can use it up. For example, a few years ago it said on the bottom of my screen that I was using 200MB or 7% of my 3 gigabytes available. Now it says I'm using 600MB or 8% of my 7.5 gigabytes. At this rate I'll never have to delete an email for the rest of my life. (Though of course I usually delete those with huge attachments.) And when my computer crashes or gets stolen I won't lose anything.

Docs

In that previous installment I mentioned Dropbox, which is a great way to back up your critical files while also making them available wherever you are. (There's also Box.net and others that focus more on sharing files, including really big ones.) Google Docs is a different approach that encourages you not only to store your files online but also to create and edit them there, using software accessed exclusively through the web.

What's good about that? Well, suppose you're at the public library someday and you'd like to look at your budget spreadsheet. With Dropbox you could find the file or even download it, but without Excel or OpenOffice installed on the library computer you can't see what's in it, much less edit it. But upload it into Google Docs and all you need is the web browser -- even the one on your phone will do. Since your docs can be shared, you can also use it as a collaboration tool. Plus, with everyone using the same software on the website there are no version control problems. The light begins to dawn ...

Backups and Operating Systems

Dropbox is one way to back up your critical files, but it's not really designed for automated industrial scale backups. For that you can consider something like Crashplan, which offers moderately priced "unlimited" storage for personal use. But as our need for storage grows and our personal ability to manage and protect it remains limited, the whole model may be about to turn inside out.

A couple of years ago it was rumored that Google was about to launch a service called Gdrive which you would be able to use for all your storage needs. They seem to have backed off from the idea, perhaps because they didn't think the market was ready for it (or that they couldn't make money from it). But during the discussions online it leaked out that one promotional angle was that the online version of your data would be the "real" one while anything on your own computer would be just a local copy.

That may sound nuts at first glance, but when you consider that over time your computers will come and go but your data lives on (hopefully!) then it starts to make sense. Whatever is on your local drive now might only be needed for temporary computational performance reasons -- like editing a big spreadsheet or working with image files.

Gdrive may only have been postponed until it can be linked with Google's forthcoming Chrome operating system. Chrome is intended to move the OS online as well. Your computer will be able to install, load, and run completely from an online source, with the benefit of automated updates. Computer geeks may prefer to keep "rolling their own," but for the vast majority of cases where the computer primarily surfs the web and plays games, this will be all people need. And if that sounds limiting, consider that those online apps will keep growing in usefulness, and even online gaming will soon achieve locally-installed video performance levels.

The cloud is coming, and in the immortal words of the Borg, "resistance is futile."

Life in the Cloud

There is no Cloud, only a silver lining ...

Long ago someone predicted that when computers acheived true commodity status we would no longer speak of "using a computer" any more than we speak of "using an electric motor" while vacuuming the floor.

This is nearly true now, as we use our cell phones, televisions, microwave ovens, and even cars, oblivious to the fact that they all contain microprocessors running operating systems and software. Instead we just call, watch, cook, and drive -- all of these activities enhanced or made possible by the ubiquitous chips within.

A similar development is about to happen to "The Cloud," that overused and constantly hyped buzzword that could easily be dismissed as just the latest in a long series of so-called paradigm shifts or "revolutions" flogged to the public consciousness. Nevertheless, The Cloud is about to achieve commodity status, and the less you hear about it the more certain it is that you'll be using it and relying upon it.

Here are a few cases in point:

Music

CD's may have been the death of LP records, but it took MP3's and the Internet to transform the music industry and its distribution system. The physical package has been replaced by a digital format, no different from anything else that can be turned into packets and sent round the world. But people still buy and collect music. Why? What does it mean to "own" a copy of something so insubstantial?

What we're really buying is a license to listen to it any number of times. But to protect that right we have to carefully store our copies and back them up to protect against loss, because the only way to legally acquire another copy is to buy it again.

But this model is based on the ownership of physical artifacts, and it has nothing to do with listening. How many times can I listen to a favorite song? Dozens, certainly. Hundreds, probably. But thousands? Would have to be a really good tune! And in my own case, with the equivalent of hundreds of CD's and many thousands of tracks (I refuse to call them songs, because most of them aren't), it would take me months of listening 24 hours a day just to hear everything I have just once.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a license to listen to anything that has ever been recorded, whatever I might choose at the moment? If the price was low enough -- and there's no reason for it to be expensive -- I would happily pay a monthly fee, or even by the hour, for the priviledge. This way I wouldn't have to acquire my own copies and worry about their preservation. And I wouldn't have to limit myself to a single set of performances of the Beethoven Symphonies, when others might be equally interesting. This service should also keep track of my favorite composers and performers so I could easily find them again, and find new things for me as they became available.

Remember what Jean Luc Picard could do on the Starship Enterprise? He could request some music ... make it guitar music ... no, not Spanish, classical ... Bach, perhaps ... by Julian Bream ... something slower ... and whatever his whim, the ubiquitous ship's computer would provide. There are nascent services like Rhapsody and Last.fm that are attempting something like this with pop music. It has a long way to go, but don't be surprised if it happens, and seemingly overnight.

Movies

You might think the exact same thing was going to happen to movies -- and certainly the MPAA is afraid that's true. But films are fundamentally different from music in two ways. First, they're much bigger, so storing your own copies presents more of a challenge. But second, and more importantly, there is a much more limited number of times they will be watched. Sure, you might sit through another rerun of Casablanca or Citizen Kane no matter how many times you've seen them before. But let's face it, most films wear thin even the second time around, and most of us will quickly move on from been-there-done-that to something new, even if it's not as good.

The result is that there is more of an impetus to changing the distribution model for movies than there is for music -- meaning that music stores might outlast video rental stores. Within the year there will be multiple choices for internet-based movies and TV from big names like Google and Apple as well as traditional cable and communications companies.

Netflix is pushing to eliminate mailing DVD's back and forth to you. They would rather get you to grab what you want online, even if they have to give much of it away for nothing. The whole idea of seeing what's on the shelf at Blockbuster already seems so quaint that the firm has filed for bankruptcy protection -- despite its own efforts to move online, the firm is bogged down by the weight of its bricks-and-mortar stores.

On the consumer side, permanent storage of the media has been replaced by streaming, which means you don't have to spend hours downloading a DVD but instead can watch it while the data pours in. Temporary storage is available in the form of Tivo-style recorders that let you pause or backup or even play over what you're watching, while recognizing (and incidentally enforcing) the idea that you won't want to see it more than a few times.

The shift to streaming is happening so fast that for many people the upgrade from DVD to Blu-Ray will be skipped over -- the first time a physical format has been trumped by a purely digital one before it achieved wide adoption. Even the idea of consulting a schedule to find out when your favorite show is "on" will soon be a thing of the past. TV by appointment is over.

Once we get used to this with visual content, we'll look again at our music collections and wonder why not to do the same thing with them.

Computers

Which brings us back to computers, where we started out. If you live with one or more of these beasts, and most of us do, you have undoubtedly had your share of upgrades, crashes, lost files, and maddening tech support phone calls. Of these, the most insidious is that it is so easy to lose everything we thought we had carefully saved. All those photo albums ... emails ... financial information ... passwords to websites ... music collections (see above) ... cute videos of the kids at Christmas ... all up in smoke, either literally or figuratively, due to the failure of some cheap part on a motherboard, a dead hard drive, a dreaded virus attack, or a catastrophic software failure.

For years I've protected myself against these disasters (and many of us don't even try) by making periodic backup copies to some form of removable disk, or uploading them to a secure place on a server that I had access to.

But recently I began keeping some of my most useful files on Dropbox,* a service that gives you 2 gigabytes of free storage space online, with more available for a low cost. Google offers such space, too, through their Google Docs service -- and for an even lower price. But what makes Dropbox worthwhile is that it gives you a special folder that will automatically replicate everything you put there into your folder on their website. Not only that, but it will also replicate your files onto any other computers that you set up to use with the service. It even keeps the copies in sync and allows recovery of deleted files.

The convenience is eye-opening. What a pleasure to know the files I saved at home are available automatically at my office the next time I log in. The more I've used it, the less reason I see not to put ALL my files there -- at least the ones that don't take up too much space. It would be expensive to back up my vast music library, but not a problem at all to keep all my word documents, spreadsheets, and things I need for working with websites. Once you get used to the idea, you wonder why computers shouldn't just work this way, period.

The answer is, they soon will. Computers (if they're still called that), just like phones and tablets, will become nothing more than platforms to access software, data, and services that will be housed exclusively online. Any local copies you save will be just backups for the real thing. Just as with movies and music, what matters is access, not ownership or physical location.

Right now to save all my files with Dropbox might cost me from $8 to $30 per month (for 50 or 100 gigabytes). That's not cheap, but comparable to what I pay for Internet access. Google will sell you a full terabyte for $20 a month, showing that prices can go much lower. Now imagine that the service is bundled with your Internet package by your provider, just as you get a "free" email account along with it. And naturally your provider will take care of those tedious backups for you. Life is good!

The cloud is upon us, and as soon as it disappears you'll know we're living in it.

*[Like to try Dropbox and get some free extra storage space? Contact me for an invitation.]