My Crystal Ball 2013

Article = none , personal experience.

I suppose it is a hobby of everyone to try to tell the future and guess where the world is going.  This is my latest shot at it.

First : What is the crystal ball made of. 

Or , what technologies do I think will affect the world ?

• 3D Printers. They're down to 1300$ , and only getting cheaper
• Nasa's Pizza 3D Printer. Doesn't exist yet , but they have commisioned the creation of a 3D printer that makes pizza's for the astronaughts up in space.
• Artificial Intelligence : Emily is getting smarter. Who is Emily ? The voice system when you cal bell canada , that computer that answers , and can understand what your saying. If your accent isn't too heavy.
• The Internet. Pretty certain it's not going anywhere.   
• Cheap Sewing machines. down to 88$ for an electric one. They can't go much farther down , all that can happen is more features

So what do I see in the future with these four things ?

I see Star Wars.

I see Uncle Owens farm , a small family riding herd on their robots , cleaning and maintaining them while the robots go out and do all the farming.  I see simple clothing , loose pants and tops , made by automated machines. I see spare parts for the robots being made by "3D Printers" which will likely be called something else by then.

I see very few formal "jobs". I see the return of the craftsman , making his goods via commanding robots to do it and just maintaining the robots. I see a small family getting work maintaining the electrical grid , or the internet grid , for a small city block. I see people processing farmed goods into goop of some kind for the 3D food printers. I see other people making and recycling plastics for the other 3D printers. I see 3D printers for metal parts.

I see people making the electronic guts of various devices. Some guy might specialize in the internal workings of a cell phone , for example , and sell that. People will buy it , and print out their own case for it. And just slip it inside.

I see work needs to be done (usually by robots) in electrical power, in internet infrastructure, in construction, in food growing and preperation, in transport, in elevators, in all the "essentials" that we cannot do without. (Hmm..don't forget robot maintenane in the list , dang things will be everywhere) I see people overseeing small companies with robots doing the work. And they just watch monitors and give the robots hints.

I see children coming of age, and as a going away birthday present they get a couple of robots of their own before being sent out on their own to make their way in the world. Much like today you give them a microwave or vacuum cleaner or some such.

I see all the cooking and cleaning being done by robots, I see most of our "manufactured goods" being made at home , with no need to buy things, just more and more plastic or metal goop for the 3D printers.

I see a lot of "Luxury" shops. Restaurants. Bars. Coffee shops.  People don't need a restaurant they can cook for themselves, but still they will go out and congregate with other people. There will be small fancy clothing shops , but no big super stores for cloths (or foods) since the robots back at home will make the "cheap" stuff. Store bought cloths and food will be Luxuries, not neccessaties.

I see a world full of people who mostly just maintain and repair their own personal robots as a primary skill , and as a secondary one other thing (farming , electronics, making cell phones or computers, etc) . I see large corperations will vanish because the economies of scale theory is dead in the water with 3D printers. Well , most corperations. Oil Companies are here as long as the oil lasts, we need the electrical power. And after that the nuclear reactor plants and the hydro electric companies are probably with us forever.

And police. There will always be a-holes out there who need to be locked up. That's just human nature.

And thats , in general , my vision of the future. Other than adding a few more professions that will never go away , that's it. People running their own little companies, bossing around their robots who make stuff both for their own internal use, and to sell and bring in a little cash to pay the electric bills.

Crazy Eskimo

Article = none, personal experience

Did I mention the crazy eskimo guy I have as a room mate ? (one of seven room mates actually , in that house).

My first encounter with him was when he accused me of catching a fly and putting it in his room. Not sure how you catch a fly with your bare hands , undamaged , but he's pretty sure i did it.

My second was when I lent him my phone and he called up the Land Lady and informed her he'd just called city of ottawa because living in a basement was against the rules, and there were three people living upstairs in the same room (it was a large room , and they were one family) also illegal.

Yep. He didn't let her wonder who called he city of ottawa. He phoned her up and told her himself.

This instigated the part where I help clean the room on the main floor (those guys were disgusting pigs ! ) and move half my stuff up there and live there for a while. And while I was helping the land lady clean my new digs, she mentioned him.

Oh yes, and how she mentioned him. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks he's eight ball crazy. City of Ottawa says he can't live in the basement and she's saying he's got to be out by the first (so she told them). Not to mention that all sorts of other unspecified problems she's been having with him.

Then the real fun began. Crazy Eskimo caught me in the hall and asked if my welfare was being cancelled, and I said no. He insisted that everyone in the city of ottawa had their welfare cancelled, were they saving money by this ? I told him that was extremely unlikely , but he insisted they were. Apparently he likes to lead with a question , but he's not interested in the answer , he's already made up his mind before he opens his mouth.    Told him I was on disability and I'd checked with my worker , no problems for me, maybe disability wasn't affected ?

This guy lives in his own little world , I swear. He doesn't want to hear what anyone else says.

There's no drinking allowed in our place , but I keep noticing these beer cans in the kitchen piling up along one shelf. And then I notice that at night Crazy Eskimo likes to sit at that table. And talk to people.

What does he say ? Well , that night , first he complained "McMasters University is Shit !" a few times, then asked one of the roomies what Universy he went to. "Ottawa University. " "Ottawa University is shit ! Every University in Canada is shit ! " repeat a few times. Needless to say we both walk away.
   A little later I use the kitchen microwave to heat up some chicken broth (I'm on a no food day , they want to x-ray my belly the next day ) and he looks at me and says, slightly slurred "Too many fucking old men in this country. Fucking old men just don't die. "
   "Wonders of Free Health Care I tell him. "
   He just continues repeating that.
   Half way down the hall and into my room it occurs to me. I have a head full of grey hair , and a grey beard too.  This guy is deliberately looking for a fight it seems.

   I decide upon a plan , a plan I call avoiding Unneccesary Drama. Basically ... it's only five days or so to the end of the month , and this guy is out of there by then. I'll just visit the girl friends for five days and skip over this whole melt down thing.

   Interesting that he thinks welfare cut off everyone in the city though. He may use that as an excuse to try and stay longer , claiming he has no place to go. Maybe I'll give him until a little after the first.
   I'll just drop by long enough on the first to pay the land lady and be gone again. 

Kidnapped by Islamic Terrorists

How an Alberta woman abducted in Somalia survived captivity Amanda Lindhout, the Canadian journalist taken hostage in Somalia in 2008, has released a new book detailing the 15 months she spent in captivity and revealing how she endured thoughts of suicide. The now-32-year-old Alberta woman was captured while working as a freelance journalist near Mogadishu and held for 459 days. During that time, Lindhout says she was beaten and sexually assaulted before considering suicide about a year after her capture — that is, until a small brown bird flew into the doorway of the room she was trapped in.

So what do we have here ?

• Beaten
• Sexually assaulted
• Kidnapped (ie: committed no crime)
• Terrorists are 1.3 million richer

You wonder why people hate Islam ? This goes under the catagory of "They did it to themselves" . How can you not believe they are inutterably evil acting like this and then claiming their religion requires it ?

And this business that "You're not Islamic you deserve it" is just horse pucky. There are three major forms of Islam , and they all hate each other , and they all will happily murder you if you're not of their particular brand of Islam . So no matter what you do , someone out there wants you dead.

There's nothing to be said. They've already said it all themselves. They've already done it all, demonstrated it all.

U.K ad firm uses Wi-Fi-enabled trash cans to track people

Article

LONDON -- Officials demanded Monday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London's financial district.
The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the hulking receptacles to measure the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of "cookies" -- tracking files that follow Internet users across the Web -- to the physical world.
"We will cookie the street," Renew Chief Executive Kaveh Memari said in June.

It's not enough the government spies on us. Now every advertiser in the world wants to spy on you. Tracking your cell phone's unique id number so it can tailor ads to you specifically. The ultimate in targetted marketting. 

The iTrashCan (as I call it) has a clock on it and can easily sport a video screen as well. One can imagine how entertaining it will be to call out your name and publically try and sell you condoms or other embarrassing products. 

   Plus it wants to store "cookies" on your phone. Heck no to that , why are you suddenly using my phone in a hostile manner against me ? And yes, I do mean "Hostile". Advertising companies are spending millions , each , to try and find out when you are most susceptable to a sales pitch , what kind of salespitch will most likely work on you, etc etc. Is it any wonder I accuse them of attempting mind control ? 

   And while the concept may sound ludicrous, well , they are spending a lot of money to try and make you do stuff you don't want to do ... sounds like they believe it's possible. Though I'm sure they'll find a nice user friendly name for it rather than "mind control".  "Customer Education" or some nonsense like that. 

State of the DisUnion these days

Article = None, personal experience.

And the City of Ottawa thinks my rooming house is illegal and so two people got kicked out, and I got to move to the main floor since living in the basement in a room the size of the average broom closet is apparently against Health and Saftey rules.

I don't mind the new digs , despite having to haul all my junk up the stairs alone (that's going to take days). But I talked to the other room mates and apparently a year ago this place got declared illegal and all the roomies were given a months notice and kicked out.

Kicked out. No emergancy housing, just you have a month to find other accomidations, thanks and good night.

I swear if I have to move again I'm abandoning most of my stuff and just getting a big duffle bag for a few changes of cloths. And maybe a bigger computer bag for my lap top. It doesnt' quite squeeze into the current lap top bag I have.

Bought a garbage can and 6$ got me 100 bags for it. Why am I mentioning this ? because I had to help clean up the room I was about to move in , and it was a disgusting stye.  Also ... my own room down in the basement was none too clean ... mostly I admit because I didn't have a garbage an (my fault) and going up those stairs to throw out a bag or two of garbage was just too much in my current state of health (not my fault).

In the news today ...

Lavabit , an encrypted mail service  , got raided by the US Government. They decided to shut down rather than give the guys in jack boots anythings. They also got hit by a hush order, making it illegal for them to say anything. But when you publically state "It is illegal for me to talk about the issue" , and you live inside the united states, it's pretty obvious the united states government is shutting you down.

More disturbing is Silent Text pre-emptively shutting down before the US Government can force them under. Disturbing because their servers are based in canada, not the USA , but they say Canada cooperates way too much with the USA so they're not taking any chances.

Hmm... thats not good to hear.

I went looking for a canadian based mail service. Found a big list, started down it. Ping the mail server, then use a location service ( http://www.iplocation.net/index.php )  to find out where in the world that address where the mail server is.   The five or so I checked were all inside the USA.  So much for trying to get to a mail server outside of the USA.
   I remember when I worked at rogers they actually were hosted on gmail servers, despite the rogers.ca address. And the competition  Bell , were hosted on hotmail servers specially rented for the purpose. Which was a pain since hotmail and gmail were constantly fighting and locking each other out and refusing to accept mail from each other at the time ...

I think we need to petition the Government of Canada to set up some free email servers here in Canada for canadian use. Because sending in the FBI to grab all the email and arrest anyone who doesn't cooperate ? I firmly believe Obama has lost his mind. I really do.

It's going to be interesting, the next two years. That being how long Obama has left to be President of the United States.

Unless they impeach him.

Snowden link to encrypted email service closes

Article

Texas-based Lavabit service has shut down but said legal reasons prevented it explaining why. Correspondents say Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop US officials accessing customer details. In addition, secure communications firm Silent Circle has shut its email service because messages cannot be kept wholly secret.

What does this mean ?

Well, "Legal Reasons" means the USA Government , since they are based in Texas. It is there for clear that the USA Government has shut them down. It is also clear that the USA Government has muzzled them and threatened them to prevent them from saying why.

Why do we care ?

That the USA is shutting down services it cannot spy on is worrying. That Google, Yahoo, and most of the services we use are USA based is even more worrying. It may be time to start deliberately looking for non-usa providers for ... well...everything.

The part where no one is allowed to say what the USA government is doing or they get tossed in jail is particularly worrisome.

Apparently , USA has become the new Communist Russia. Communist USA, it seems. Throwing in jail all political opponents. Muzzling the press. Oh , and they recently decided to ignore a copyright decision that they lost because it would be bad for their economy.

I don't think we should be trading with these people anymore. I think we need to cut all links.

Seoul hits at Obama’s Apple veto in patent dispute

South Korea’s trade ministry on Monday criticised the US president’s weekend veto of a patent infringement ruling against Apple, expressing “concern over the possible negative impacts that this kind of decision could have on Samsung Electronics’ patent rights”.

Mr Obama vetoed a June ruling by the US International Trade Commission banning a range of Apple devices – which the court ruled had infringed a Samsung patent – from being imported into the US.

So basically , what we have here is the USA saying "we don't care that one of our countries companies is infringing on your copyright. But don't you dare do it to us. "

Aha.

His intervention over the weekend on behalf of Apple in the first case was made because the Samsung patent involved technology that is key to technology standards, potentially giving the South Korean company “undue leverage” in licensing negotiations, according to the reasoning for the veto.

"Technology standards" . In other words, the USA gets to make the standards with their for-profit companies and get that "undue leverage" but other countries do not.

Is it just me , or did US Copyright law just become a club for beating all non-usa companies to death ? I'm sure all the americans are cheering , but I'm not an american.

Basically , the US copyright system can now be ignored , since it is demonstrating a bias in favor of the USA and against everyone else.