I imagine it started once we as humans started to have an imagination.  At that point we could start to imaging “what if?”  Both science and creating a good story start with the same question.  Also while science must be grounded in reality so must a good story.

Leonardo da Vinci made drawings of airplanes 400 years before the Wright brothers. One of his glider designs was later built and it flew!

In his novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne describes a nuclear submarine 70 years before the first real Nuclear sub was built.  The real one was named after the Nautilus in Vern’s story. It is also 20 years before nuclear power was starting to be discovered.

In other Sci Fi stories various futures are dreamed up.  Those futures range from utopia to post apocalypse.  What should scare you is that any of them are possible.  With imagination the writer has extrapolated what can happen from now till what ever is happening in the story.  Some of them are just fluff, violent fluff at that.  Some of them tho really are possible.  It is those that we should pay attention to.  Many of them are social commentary.  Others are telling of how past events could replay them selves in the future and how technology may affect the outcome.  Next time your watching a show where society is different than our own ask your self how did they get there and what can we do to be like that too, or should we do to prevent it.

Tom Uncategorized SciFi

Recently I was asked to look at doing some lighting for a display. Normal thing given my back ground. Typically I would simply use professional theatrical equipment and be done with it. However this situation had some other requirements. Namely it had to run outside for a month, theatrical dimming and instruments are massive over kill, and (as always) cost. My search led me to a company that builds UL listed outdoor dimmers with integrated program memory. They have a wireless option and a few other things (including cost) that make it the perfect solution.  Some problems: the programer only runs on Windows.  OK I can deal with that.  The show files apear to be non-human readable and the protocal on the wire is closed.  That sucks, I am locked out if the company goes down, very posible given the media bashing the economy.  So if they go away I am left with files and hardware that is only compatible with one program.  And now, the deal breaker: The software has an expiration date.  After that date the program will not load.  No message telling you that, it just will not work.  There comment in a forum “a valid user would not have this happen to them”  So now I am not a valid user if I do not follow there forum anounceents?  I don’t have time to track expiration dates on programs.  Sure the updates are free, for now, but what if that company goes down?  Congratulations, you now have a brick.

Similar problems happen with other software.  Microsoft Works and Publisher files ONLY work witht he same version they were saved with.  Lose those programs and your sunk.  Atleast they did not put in a time bomb kill switch.  Update your computer? You dont have a licence to install the old version on your new compuetr, if it will even go.  If you find your self in this situation save the Works file as Ritch Text (.rtf)  Almost any word processor can open that.  With Publisher your sunk.  There are othe examples but enough ranting and bashing for now.

What’s the solution?  Open Standards.  A friend sen’t me a document he made in OpenOffice.org I happend to be on a Linux computer I had not installed OpenOffice.org on.  I did not realise this tho.  I just cliked on the file and it opend, in AbiWord. No probem.  The fie format is open.  Infact just to see if I could I opend an OpenOffice.org file in Firefox,  It opend it, Pictures and all!  So even if any one of thos went away you could still read YOUR fie.

What about the light show?  Well if they stored the file in a human readable form then even if they go away you could open the file and retrieve your data to use in anoter control program.  Or make a quick tweek in a text editor, yes I do this with other programs.  At least I would not feel locked into them.

Comanies, provide a way for your customers to get at there own data if you go away.  Consumers, DEMAND IT!

Tom Computers, Linux, Open Source Computers, lights, Microsoft, Openstandards, OSS

I got my start in computers with the Commodore 64, Apple IIe, SRS80, and Tandy 1000. I had the C64 at home as a kid. It was so cool, it had COLOR! The 64 stood for 64 K ram. Yes to any kids reading this, that is Kilobyte, not Megabyte, not Gigabyte, Kilobyte. As in 65,536 bytes of ram.

As the years went on I had the 286,386, 486SX, 486DX, 486DX2, Pentium 60 and so on. Around 10 to 12 years ago I built an AMD K6-2 based computer and bought an Apple Mac G4-400. I still have those. In fact I am using the G4-400 to write this. I have a modern OS on it (Fedora 10 PPC Linux) and it runs fine for web surfing, word processing, E-mail. The only real limitation is lack of Flash player for PPC. I guess no Youtube.com. The K6-2 is not used right now. As I remember it has a bad component. But it is still here and I could fix it if I wanted. But why?

In the last 10 years there has been an important change in computers. We no longer need the post powerful computer made JUST to get work done. I would bet 99% of home users (read web surfing, word processing, and E-mail) would be just fine with this old mac G4-400 if it could play Youtube with out problems. The K6-2 could, it has a Flashplayer available for it. We only need the high power units for CPU and video intensive games. In reality there are very few games that NEED the most powerful computers. But then I am not a computer gamer. But I am a power user.

We start running in to problems as the operating system (OS) needs more power “just to run” Microsoft Vista is one example. It does not run on our laptops. We have a set of 1.6 GHz, 512 Meg ram laptops that will not run Vista, even tho that was our only choice at the store. They are SLOOWER than this G4-400. So painful that Vista has been removed from them. The wife’s now has Fedora 10 Linux only. Mine has Fedora and XP pro. Under Fedora 10 they run GREAT. Fast boot up, full DVD quality video from out MythTV server, audio editing, graphics editing. I can have a dozen applications open spread across 4 desktops and slide from one to another as needed. All this from a $300 clearance computer that CAN’T run M$ Vista. Oh and the kiker? The linux partitions of the hard drive are encrypted. This is done at the basic level of the OS. It is in place BEFORE the real install starts! Other than a nice long pass phrase at start up I don’t even notice it. If some one takes it all they get is the laptop. They can’t even look at my web browsing history or file names.

So next time your looking to “upgrade” that “OLD SLOW Computer” Think about what you really need it to do. If it is running Windows XP maybe it just needs a clean reinstall. (DON’T FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR DATA!” If it is running VIsta (or any Windows variant) maybe a true upgrade to Linux is in order.

Have fun computing!

Tom Computers, Linux Apple, Computers, Fedora, Linux, Microsoft, Vista

Welcome to tjbaudio.com.  This is the personal web site of Tom Bourke.  This Blog will contain information about Open source software, computers in general, sound and lighing, and whatever else crosses my mind.  Hope you enjoy.

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