Posted by: goofy328 on: October 24, 2009
A lot of the latest technological buzz is not as much of a big deal as users once thought that it was. This is a look at some of the latest hype of the last year or two.
The iPhone with respect to AT&T’s network
Everyone knew that AT&T’s network was privy to “dead zones” in which you could not use your telephone. In fact this was one of the major selling points of Sprint and Verizon, whose services often cost more than AT&T. Everyone but Apple fanatics who bought the iPhone on the well deserved reputation of Apple that were completely ignorant to the tomfoolery of AT&T.
AT&T may have been the network that allowed Apple the best return on their investment, but the arrangement is not the best for consumers. Apple customers, who are used to their products working except in rare occasions, are now tying up AT&T’s technical support lines. The best thing for Apple to do would be to open up the iPhone to competitors, but then again, Apple has already made their decision. You also have to realize that this is the same company who only had a handful of corporations making “clones” of their PCs, so don’t hold your breath.
The BluRay player, with respect to pricing
Okay so HD DVD was a better product to some, but the large storage capacity was part of the hype that positioned BluRay to overtake the format. It did not help matters that Microsoft was the primary force behind HD DVD either. The irony of BluRay, is that the extra storage is not being used. The format still has not taken off on the PC and players are still exorbitantly priced considering how cheap they would have been if there were still two competing high definition formats. Also, for reasons as varied as the fact that people honestly think that you need cable or satellite to watch television now to the thousands of dollars individuals have invested into DVDs, the old format will not die.
The digital video disc has become the MP3 of the video industry. A format that is essentially compact and “good enough” for most purposes. A DVD renders just fine on a television that is smaller than 30 inches, and considering that larger televisions, a decent one anyways, still costs more than $500 and a BluRay player is still more than $200 high-definition media is not an appealing option for consumers.
High-Definition television
You have to love a technology that was in effect in the computer industry long before anyone seriously thought about bringing it to regular television. High-Definition is still a widely misunderstood technology, and is just now maturing with OLED on the horizon. That spectacular image that high-definition promises is only spectacular if your eyes shift back and forth between watching standard television. Once you have grown accustomed to the mundane in high-definition it is no longer that big of a deal.
What provides you with a spectacular picture is not the high pixel count however. If you aren’t buying a high end model, and are using a sub brand, there isn’t much to get excited about. The fundamentals of providing superb color saturation to a picture have not changed with high-definition technology. An HDMI cable helps, but will not take your signal any farther than what the technology in the weakest link in your equipment is. I am not suggesting that your cable receiver pales in comparison to the tuner in your television; generally, stand alone equipment is superb to anything built into a monitor. What I am suggesting is that a cheaper tuner, on a cheaper television, or the cheapest BluRay or DVD player you can find, is still cheap. The fact of high-definition being an all digital technology does not change that.
Misunderstandings and misgivings about Windows Vista, or any version of Windows for what it matters …
Most consumers continue to have issues with Vista because they refuse to run it with enough memory. A 32-bit operating system can exploit up to 4 GB of ram, and anyone running a 32-bit operating system should be using 4 GB of ram whether or not they think they need it if they do not want to be slowed down. Some consumers who do have 4 GB of ram on their systems are still running services that aren’t completely necessary that could conveniently be set to manual. Other users fall into the trap of running more programs or allowing more to open simply because they have the ram. The fact that you have extra memory does not necessarily suggest that you should run extra software when individuals that are running the OS on the bare minimum Microsoft says it requires to run are having problems.
The ball has been dropped on the 64-bit version of Vista, which technically, should be able to run more memory than anyone would ever conceivably need. Adobe Flash is still a huge issue, and considering that this is not the first 64-bit Windows this should not be the case. Vista has issues with memory, but it is not ME, and once you get used to it, is not that much different from XP. I will say this much though; if you are unaccustomed to going under the hood or want an OS that “just works”, Vista may not be for you.
Windows 7 suggests an OS from Microsoft that runs better than Windows XP, considering the positive reviews it has gotten. However the high price of upgrading suggests that only a Windows XP user should make that shift. Quite honestly, it is too early to tell if anyone should actually “upgrade” to Windows 7, though clearly if I bought a new computer I would not buy anything other than one with Windows 7 on it. The bottom line is that Microsoft has yet to put out an OS that is actually worth paying retail for, because their Windows OS almost always has issues when installed an old hardware. I have yet to encounter a version of Windows that did not give someone issues who clearly had met the minimum requirements when attempting to upgrade.
Windows 7 already has a larger market share than Windows 2000. The best, and safest bet, is to let the early adopters have at Windows 7 and jump in once its market share exceeds that of Windows Vista. I would not expect the market share of Windows 7 to exceed that of Windows XP for at least five to ten years however; the OS is just too entrenched for Microsoft to ever duplicate that success.
There are countless examples; do not be an early adopter and get caught up in this electronics madness. If you are not willing to part with your money, or care too much about it to loose it to the tomfoolery of various configurations and circumstances that no one consumer can possibly consider, then hold onto it. Chances are there are other ways corporations can make some money by supporting the old technology you do have. However, if you are stuck using something more than ten years old, then by all means upgrade, if not for the sovereignty of your expertise or you being up on the electronics “game”. It may seem like a way to keep up with the Jonses, but once it goes on the brink, it is then about survival …
Posted by: goofy328 on: October 24, 2009
There is a double standard at play when it comes to pundits who are quick to criticize other African-Americans for making a few profits for exploiting the issues surrounding making money off of exploiting issues in the Black culture. There are far more individuals who make a nice sum by exploiting the rhetoric and insecurities of their race or creed than not! If Woody Allen, Adam Sandler, and Larry David can continuously poke fun at their own culture why do we then hate Tyler Perry for doing so with his own African-American culture? One may make the argument that buffoonery and showing a monolithic, elitist view of your race are two different things.
One can also argue that exploitation is exploitation, and that any work that does not show the full range of possibilities of the race, as opposed to those that show a one dimensional, monolithic viewpoint that is often used in comedy for cheap laughs essentially has denigrated the culture, so why the outrage? We say that we should support Black owned businesses, but then are upset and cry foul and hint at usury because we do not like the prices at the retail establishments of these businesses. However we run to the ticket booth to see movies and plays that do not show us in the most positive light, or comedians that like to put the mirror to our to culture so what is the difference?
You would rather save more money to buy more stuff elsewhere and essentially spend more money at the discount store instead of buying just one thing from your own where is the logic in that? You already know that if you use the same products that mainstream America uses and attempt to wear the same clothing that mainstream America does that it will not work the same way, and will not fit the same way, so in attempting to save a few dollars you are actually spending more. The irony of this is that there was a time when no one provided services for African-Americans at all, and we were forced to either create our own goods and services or we did without.
So you then had entrepreneurs like Madame C.J. Walker that offered goods and services to African-Americans, and became rich, because no one else wanted to offer those services to us. These days it would seem as though everyone but African-Americans are involved in anything but entertainment. America pays good money to see African-Americans put their own unique perspective to whatever it is that they do; they are not interested in seeing us emulate mainstream society at all. Unfortunately, we fail to see this for what it is worth and then hate the next man for doing what works to make a few dollars.
Why did we stop supporting filmmakers like Spike Lee? Is it that we did not grow and change with him, or that we weren’t true fans to begin with? We talk a good game, but there are plenty of artists that just happen to be Black that are incredibly skilled and talented, but because they aren’t exploiting the rhetoric of what it means to be Black in this country, no one is interested in their work. African-Americans had been designing their own clothes forever, and have always had fashion lines. It was not until a group of individuals declared that their clothing was “for us by us” that anyone took notice.
It took us a while to realize that this may mean that the quality of the goods may not be as good as that of those who weren’t us, that we just happened to wear. Yet how serious about the fashion business when so many of us start up fashion lines just to sell them off after five or ten years? People who think that their favorite lines are still Black owned would be surprised to learn which companies own them now and how they are no different from any other line. People forget that while it took a lot to get these businesses and franchises off the ground the money that keeps them going is often coming from somewhere else.
In real life a lot of us like ideas that are prototypically “Black”, or of whichever race you may find yourself to be, and idaes that aren’t as well. I like a song by the Black Eyed Peas “Meet Me Halfway”, because it transports me back to the disco floors of 1975, but it isn’t a “Black thing” that they are doing right now. The irony of the Black Eyed Peas is that when they were “Black” per se, no one listened to them, so they “crossed over” and to look back on it one would think that they are more comfortable in their skin now than ever.
A lot of us cannot get ahead by doing what we think people want us to do and will never fit in playing up to those stereotypes. The truth is that in this country, you are either exploiting your own culture or finding a creative way to play by the rules of the mainstream and in many instances indulging in a little bit of both just to get ahead if you do not look or act like everyone else. I would love for America to get out of its own way and accept people for who they truly are, for the great ideas that they truly have, but until we recognize each other on the same level and with the same respect for doing a good job as we do with doing something “Black” better than the next person you cannot expect any real change to come about …
Posted by: goofy328 on: October 22, 2009
So far Obama’s team going after Fox News has been a rather lukewarm effort. I have to admit, when Fox News broadcast a clip of a reporter at NBC interviewing Obama about this new stance of the administration the best he could offer was that he was not loosing a lot of sleep, and would “take media as it comes” particularly if the media is acting “as a talk radio format”. Okay so he starts off denigrating Fox News and anyone else that is acting like a talk radio format, which could be a “dis” towards bloggers. Here is the issue, when you say that you are not loosing a lot of sleep over how America perceives you, it speaks volumes and says about all most Americans want to hear with respect to how you are running this country.
Listen, this guy lost a whole lot of sleep, and probably lost some weight, when it came to how people perceived the incident involving Reverend Wright. Clearly, he was on his “A-game” during the debates, and even addressed his haters once he finally did win telling pundits that he was their president, whether or not they respected him as one or not. So what happened; has Fox News and Michael Steele taken the wind out of his sails, or does he recognize the loud voices from the GOP for what they really are, distractions to take him off of his game.
People have a right to speak out against the President and quite honestly, Fox News is allowed to take a swipe at him. It is hard not to watch Fox News because they are the preeminent news organization these days. However, it is difficult to see their bias these days, now perhaps when Bush was in office clearly their prejudice showed through, but they are getting better at it, and one would be hard pressed to take issue with what they say on the clear weight of the fact that they were those who said it.
I have to agree with Fox’s reporters; you knew that this question was coming so why wasn’t there a clearer, more calculated response from Obama as we have seen previously. The only thing that bothers me is that Fox is trying to ride this for all it is worth for ratings, and they are still talking about this after everyone else has moved on. This is the Fox News that we hate, and the organization that seems to be desperate for material. Fox was also particularly ugly and in bad taste after having broadcast Obama’s speech to school children. Yet for what it is worth, though Fox has an obvious issue with the President they offer a perspective that is worth listening to.
We are in a day and age where an increasingly larger number, if not most, Americans are receiving their news from alternate sources. This Administration embraced new media and used it in new ways to their advantage to win the election. Fox News, in essence the newest media with respect to television cable news, is the thorn in the President’s side; some of this could have something to do with the way that Fox was the only outlet on the side of President Bush during his last term. The President needs to stay above the fray and come to Fox News with the truth and allow them to interview him and take a shot at him because if he is right, and his cabinet is on the right course, the end results will bear witness to Fox’s rhetoric and portray him in an even better light than if he allows his staff to wage war against Fox News. This is how the election was won, and the best possible way for him to either silence Fox News, or at the very least, put their rhetoric into perspective for viewers that are on the fence …
Posted by: goofy328 on: July 12, 2009
testing out wordpress application for yahoo mail now writing this post from within yahoo mail
Posted by: goofy328 on: July 12, 2009
testing out wordpress application for yahoo mail now writing this post from within yahoo mail
Posted by: goofy328 on: June 28, 2009
A quote by David Goldberg in the article “G.M., Detroit and the Fall of the Black Middle Class” in the New York Times Magazine says it all; “It wasn’t that long ago that Detroit was the home of the nation’s most affluent African-American population with the largest percentage of black homeowners and the highest comparative wages”. While the rest of us are preoccupied with the fact of the death of Michael Jackson, himself from Gary, In, an old working town the truth about the reality of the Black Middle Class, which has shifted from Detroit to elsewhere in the country there is never enough that can be said about the rise and fall of the middle class from a small Midwestern class to the rest of the Midwest for those looking to redeem themselves through the manufacturing sector. Detroit was never an “educated town” full of white collar administrative jobs in call centers or government jobs or service industry jobs as many places where an African-American with enough of an education to stay off of the streets but not enough to make $50,000 a year could reside. No instead Detroit is a place where Blacks were once relegated to a single side of town and had eventually grew in population to take over the city and make the city their own. Detroit was that rare city in the North, in particular the Midwest, where this was possible whereas in other cities, including Chicago, the politics of having a city that was “half and half” or where Blacks were a minority created a situation ripe for the complex yet convulted politics of having enclaves of power and influence in small neighborhoods in the city yet no real presence in the city itself.
It isn’t that Detroit was the first American city to have a Black mayor, though many may have simply assumed that the designation actually goes to Cleveland of which Carl B. Stokes was the first African-American to become the mayor of an American city in 1967. Yet it was not long behind as Coleman Young held the office of mayor in Detroit from 1974 to 1993, and things have never been the same in Detroit. Many will say that Young destroyed the city, others will point to his legacy as a reminder that no one is perfect, five times or not. The truth of Detroit, as always, is somewhere inbetween; on one hand the virtual isolation of African-Americans in Detroit not just from other racial groups but the cultures of African-Americans in other cities as well can be a serious problem, on the other hand it has created the underpinnings for a unique celebration of African-American culture that can only truly be understood and appreciated by someone who was born and raised in the city.
It is not that Detroit does not have a diverse population outside of the Blacks and Whites that live there, but the way in which the city has developed has always encouraged and fostered seperatism, as was the case with many cities up North. To this day the demographics of the city is 81% Black, 12% White leaving just 7% for other ethnic groups which in a city of over 900,000 is still over 63,000 which means there are larger ethnic neighborhoods in that city than African-American neighborhoods in general elsewhere. Yet that in itself may speak volumes for a solidarity that you do not often see in other cities where African-Americans would be more likely to engage with other cultures and try on other things and experience something outside what outsiders may percieve to be the monolithic culture of Detroit.
You also see this in Atlanta and cities like Washington DC where generations were able to benefit from the “opening up” of the city. Washington DC actively and aggressively recruited African-Americans to work in the city as early as the forties whereas other cities were about to be thrown head first into our civil rights struggle a decade later. At least this is what I remember having read in a museum in the city somewhere; that African-Americans could easily find work in the city or is that revisionist history, have things always been as rosy in Washington DC as they are now? It isn’t that hard to figure out; when you have great pay at jobs that do not require an advanced education to get that were relatively easy to obtain and you could get the entire family to move into the city and you were free to celebrate your culture in ways that you may not have been able to do elsewhere it makes for a powerful combination. The question is, can the city leverage that level of committment and reinvent itself and make it a place where African-Americans would want to move to again in the near future or are those successes of the past a big part of how the city may get in its own way? The answer to that question is in part of what could put it over the top again years from now and help it to differentiate itself from the rest of the North as it is now pecieved as being the biggest casualty in the Rust Belt.
So it is easy for someone else to question one’s level of commitment without exploring where that commitment comes from. I can look at the city and raise any number of questions, but the city hasn’t done for me what it has done or given that sense of pride of me to that which has been born and raise there in particular if they are of a second or third generation resident. So the arguments are a moot point because in all truth the city does off a unique experience over other American cities, despite what it may look like to outsiders. The strength and relevancy of the city is not measured by residents through the same means that we measure the strength and relevancy of our own city or those that we admire.
Posted by: goofy328 on: June 28, 2009
If Cnet is correct and I can cop Windows 7 for as little as $49 it may be worth the time and effort. Vista is horrendously slow as I am using ReadyBoost and caching as much as 20 GB to keep it moving at a decent speed. If 7 is as good as they say it is it could be worth a look. Hopefully the install can handle the migration okay. Microsoft claims they have a business to run, but they know that Leopard users are only paying $29 to upgrade, and they also know that Linux is on their heels so I am hoping that this means realistic prices for Windows in the future. By now everyone and their grandmother has Windows XP, so the $99 upgrade price from that operating system may be within reach for everyone’s budget. Are they undercutting themselves with respect to Vista to get 7 out there yes, but so far doing that seems to be working better for them than actually improving Vista through service packs, so we’ll see …
Posted by: goofy328 on: June 23, 2009
Apparantly 700 teachers in New York are essentially getting paid to do nothing while they figure out what disciplinary action to take against them because of a nice contract set up by the union there that makes it difficult for the public sector to fire them for misconduct. That doesn’t surprise me, but I’m sure it may anger some to find out that some of these teachers are getting paid up to $70,000 a year when they aren’t even teaching, apparantly this is costing the city around $65 million a year. It is the type of story that makes you wish you had a job as a public servant in New York because of their history with the unions there.
The last time we heard about unions in New York it was about the MTA strike of 2005. That didn’t last long though, and eventually the penalties incurred under the Taylor Law were deducted from the pay of those on strike.
Posted by: goofy328 on: June 17, 2009
This is interesting, more than half of the students at a South Side school in Chicago aren’t even passing the eighth grade. Should we be surprised, or is this evidence of deeper problems of the Chicago public school system that we are just now learning about? A week ago we heard that 1,000 jobs were being cut at Chicago Public Schools. I had figured that at the very least, Chicago Public Schools was at least better than Detroit Public Schools, but this article suggests otherwise. I would have enjoyed going to a public school that looks like this though.
The system is the second largest employer in Chicago. It also has a history of high dropout rates. Apparantly only 35% of students who attended schools ran by Chicago Public Schools in 1998 or 1999 graduated from college within 6 years. What is startling about South Side though is that we’re not talking about high school; in public schools all across the country there are high rates of students not graduating from high school, but eigth grade. At one point in this country many schools simply “pass through” students that could not graduate, which was not a good policy either, then in the nineties many school districts across the country instituted policies that would test kids before allowing them to graduate. Today everyone is tested you can’t even get out of kindergarden without meeting some basic requirements, and a lot of children just are not passing these tests.
Children that cannot get it right are pushed out of the system before they can reach their mid twenties, at which point they are then expected to get a GED. However I am not sure if this can totally be laid at the feet of Bradwell Elementary though. Are the parents involved in their children’s education, and if their children are failing seventh grade is this something completely different or have they also failed sixth grade and fifth grade as well? The reason I am asking this is that one must wonder if there is not a disconnect between the involvement of the parents into the children’s education or if this high failure rate is not evidence of an even larger issue at the school. What are the teachers like; a lot of public schools tend to have a sterile, factory like feeling as though if you do not want to make it no one is going to push you or encourage you to get ahead; there may be little incentive to prevent students from falling through the cracks.
You can’t just put out a headline “Nearly 60% Won’t Graduate At South Side School” and then, oh by the way, mention that “44 Of 77 Students At Bradwell Elementary Did Not Pass Eighth Grade”, without thoroughly exploring the premise. Sure the South Side of Chicago has a bad reputation, but there isn’t a South Side in America that doesn’t, so that doesn’t really explain anything to me. In fact all I could really find on this school was a lone posting in an forum by someone that suggests that Bradwell Elementary has the highest number of Section 8 housing students than any other elementary school in CPS. That was one and a half years ago though, perhaps that “fact” has changed sinec then.
Posted by: goofy328 on: June 16, 2009
Am I to understand that Miley Cyrus is quitting Hannah Montana? Do I care, should I care? I know that my niece will be upset, but then again she may be over it and will have moved on, after all she does like the Jonas Brothers. If any of this is true what does it mean for Miley Cyrus in the future, or do we just wait and see?
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