Category Archives: Essay

Sometimes You Really Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover: Border Crosser by Tom Doyle

Border Crosser by Tom Doyle
Paperback, 383 pages | September 15 2020 | Ring of Fire Press

I’d reviewed a few things by Tom Doyle, starting with American Craftsmen (2014), a story about a unit of paranormal operatives for the US government that goes back to George Washington’s time. The other day he reached out to me to see if I wanted to take a look at Border Crosser, his latest book.  I’d really liked American Craftsman, so even though I’m as buried in books not yet published as ever, I said, sure…I’ll take a look.

The cover very nearly stopped me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m up for occasional glam gals in spacesuits with guns and explosions, but the level of cheese here made this a hard sell. Still, I’d promised, so when a copy arrived at my Kindle, I thought I’d give it a quick look, then get back to stuff I needed to read. You probably know how that goes.

Border Crosser has a lot of problems, but not being a good book isn’t one of them. Continue reading →

Zeynep Tufekci is a Nexialist. Who? What?

Back in March (2020 if you are living in the future) the New York Times ran an op-ed by a “professor of information science who specializes in the social effects of technology” on why the CDC was wrong about who needs to wear face masks. Zeynep Tufekci’s article may have been the tipping point in bringing health professionals out of the woodwork to say what they’d been thinking all along: masks, any mask, reduces the chance of viral transmission.

Today, August 24 (still 2020) the Times doubled down with an article about Tufekci and how she “keeps getting things right.” And why. The why is that she’s a Nexialist, but we’ll get back to that in a minute. Continue reading →

Eggs

In my senior year of high school, I was sent to live with my grandparents, because I was being difficult. One of the upsides to this was that when I went to the new school, they asked me what classes I wanted to take, something that had never happened before. I’m pretty sure that’s because I was on some sort of college track, which kept putting me in upper-level math and science courses, which I kept nearly failing.

It turned out that you could take classes in drawing, ceramics, and photography. There was even something called “Interdisciplinary Environmental Science” which included a week (in the dead of winter) at the NJ State Ecological center where I slept in an unheated cabin and hiked all day. Continue reading →

The iPhone’s Shrinking Niche

Diagonal Image Sizes: HTC One Max (5.9), HTC One (4.8), iPhone 5s (4.0)

Diagonal Image Sizes: HTC One Max (5.9), HTC One (4.8), iPhone 5s (4.0) The iPhone 6 is rumored to have a 4.7 inch screen, bringing it into line with Android’s standard size.

Yesterday I went down to the Sprint store to pick up a replacement for my Android HTC One smartphone and came away with a sense that Apple’s iPhone has become a niche product.

My HTC One had developed an annoying inability to focus across it’s entire field of view so they replaced it. The new one works fine, thanks.

While they were loading my contacts in my phone, which was unnecessary since they’re backed up to my Google account, I browsed the displays and see if I could generate some techno-lust for a new phone. While there were Android phones in a wide range of sizes, from minis like Samsung’s Galaxy  S4 mini (4.3” Super AMOLED display (960x 540)) to “Phablets,” like the LG Flex with its brilliant curved 6.0″ HD OLED  Screen, I decided I was still happy with my current phone.

But I was dismayed by the iPhone offerings. Granted, there’s only one company putting out the iPhone, so they only need one display rather than the side by side displays for largely equivalent products from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, and Sprint, but instead of the range of phones available within each of those brands, Apple’s idea of variety gives you options in color, metal or plastic, and some performance specs.

All with a screen size that hasn’t changed much since it was an iPod. Granted that its resolution has been jumped up from the original 320×480 to 640 x 1136, but still only managing a 4 inch diagonal on the iPhone 5. Of course, Apple’s nobody’s fool, and it looks very much like their next phone,  the iPhone 6, will have a 4.7 inch display, much more in line with the majority of Android devices.

But even so, Apple is playing catch-up.

The problem with cosying up to early adopting hipsters is that you build a barrier between yourself and the great unwashed, which may not be up for paying premium prices for the first ever gizmo, but make up for it by buying a lot more when the product becomes commoditized.

While I was entering the store, a sales rep was explaining to the guy in in front of me in the intake queue how he could free up memory on his phone, explaining some of the Android features at the same time, with the caveat, “Unless you switch over to an iPhone.”

To which he burst out with, “Hell no.” More of a wry disclaimer than a rant, but pretty much the last word on the subject.

Links / References

  • http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/04/24/the-sleek-large-screen-iphone-6-emerges-as-the-leaks-suddenly-get-physical/

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Post by Ernest Lilley.

When Did the Smartphone Get So Smart?

Brain_Booster_Forbidden_Planet_1956

Walter Pidgeon tries on the Krell Brain Booster in the 1956 Sci-Fi classic “Forbidden Planet.” Though it increased his already considerable intelligence to astounding levels, it also unleashed the dark side in his subconscious. Let’s hope smartphones use their power for good, rather than evil.(photo: MGM)

IBM brought a touchscreen phone named Simon with more than phone functions to the market in 1994. Nokia produced the Nokia 9000, a clam-shell phone/PDA with a keyboard in 1996, which was, at the time, their best selling phone. But it wasn’t until the 1997 that Nokia called the GS 88 “Penelope,” the successor to the 9000 a “smartphone,” coining the term that would describe all phones with computing capabilities built in from then on.  That’s the official story, and it’s factual, but I think it’s off the mark.

The Way of The Dinosaurs

The GS 88 was smart, certainly, and a phone, arguably, but its clamshell with a keyboard format showed its mini-computer heritage, coming out of “palmtop” computers like the HP100 LX and the Psion MXs, which were trying hard to be laptop computers you could fit in a pocket, though it had to be a big pocket. They were an attempt to get around the size and weight of early laptops in a time when the concept of something like an ultra-book was still in the realm of science fiction. While palmtop computers were a good idea, they never really caught on, and represent a branch of computer evolution that went the way of the dinosaurs. Like many techie folks, I’m fond of dinosaurs, and I was very fond of my palmtop computer, and sorry to see it die off. But it did, and we (mostly) moved on.
Continue reading →