bytes + beans

My friend Brennan Beck wrote to me in an email we were discussing a Star Wars campaign based on G.U.R.P.S playing elements, something to consider about galactic distances and how big is big. I thought this might be of interest to my non existant audience, and asked him permission to post his musings on bytesandbeans.com. Here is how it all started:

For my “Star Wars” campaign and just out of interest, I decided to try and do some math and get a better idea of how big our Universe is. In the Star Wars movies “the galaxy” is the setting for the movie, but it must have been a REALLY small galaxy.

Here’s my model of how big the universe really is based on the idea of driving across our own galaxy in a car at highway speeds. I’ve calculated this from information freely available on the web, but I feel confident that if you do the math you’ll get pretty much the same answer. Now of course, this fanciful journey is impossible for a number of reasons, but if you “could” drive across the universe, when would you have had to have left in order to be arriving from there to here today? This assumes 8 straight hours of driving per day at 60 miles per hour (8 hours of sleep and 8 hours for eating, getting ready, and otherwise having some sort of life, but only 8 hours of driving each day – which is a whole lot if you have to do it for more than a day.) If you imagine a car going out of control at 60mph, you’ll realize that 60 mph is REALLY darn fast for a human being to be traveling.

Across one time zone (at the equator, which is a bit larger than in the US) Roughly the distance from Orlando to Dallas) – You would have had to have left two days ago (8 hours per day @ 60 mph)

Around the whole world at the equator – You would have had to have left almost two months ago (It would take about 7 weeks to drive around the world if there were a highway around the world).

From the moon – You would have had to have left one and a half years ago (Christmas before last, basically)

From Mars – You would have had to have left about 300 years ago (About the time of Issac Newton, Bach, and Handel)

From the Sun – You would have had to have left about 500 years ago (About the time of Christopher Columbus and the end of the Medieval
period)

From Neptune or Pluto – You would have had to have left about 16,000 years ago (No one’s sure what was going on back then, but this was probably about the time of the invention of fire and the wheel. It’s definitely way back before any sort of recorded history such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs) (This takes our current space probes about 10years, which should give you some idea how fast they move – about 60,000 mph).

From Alpha Centauri (the closest star system to us) – You would have had to have left 140 million years ago (Again, who knows but this is generally believed to be before the ancestors of humans existed. It’s the time of the dinosaurs.) (Even at our current fastest speeds of 60,000+ mph you would have had to have left before the invention of fire and the wheel).

From the other side of the Milky Way (our own galaxy) – You would have had to have left about 3 trillion years ago (Still, no one knows… but this is generally agreed upon to be before the “big bang” occurred. In other words … before the Universe began) (Even at space probe speed we’re talking about having left before dinosaurs existed. And at the speed of light you would have had to have left before cave men drew the first cave drawings.)

From the nearest galaxy to us (Andromeda) – Are you serious? I’ve already said we’ve slid off the scale of all time and existence before we even left our own galaxy! (Even at 75,000 mph you would have to have left before the big bang is believed to have occurred. And even at the speed of light you would have had to have left 2 million years ago – which is almost back to the time of dinosaurs.)

Millions of Galaxies are known to exist with more space in between them than the size of the galaxies themselves. In short, even our own galaxy is so ridiculously large we can’t even begin to imagine its size, and yet it’s just a speck of sand on the beach of the universe.

So Apple is out, as well as Sony.
I really do want some of these products, but I’m fed up with the companies that present them.

I’m in the market for several new products:

1. Smartphone
I want to ditch AT&T and would like something that is as flexible as my older generation jailbroken iPhone. (VNC, Strong developer base, etc)

2. eReader
Though eInk displays are pretty much all the same, anyone have any luck with an eReader that isn’t Sony but lets you have flexibility with the device?

3. A non-rented media recorder
ie: Non-Tivo and non-TV company owned. Is MythTV really the only option right now?

4. Unicorns.
I mean, as long as I’m asking I might as well get it all out there.

So it starts like this:

Have fun overpaying for your products! I’m glad you like getting reamed and boasting about it.

::shrug:: defend it however you want. The fact is, they are selling less numbers of the same hardware, but making more money. If you can’t see that means they are charging more than their competition for the same hardware, I don’t know what to tell you.

I don’t think Apple is selling the same hardware as most other PC companies. For instance, Apple is selling a lot of all-in-one desktop computers, which isn’t big in the PC-world at all. Also, Apple is selling laptops with very long battery life, without sacrificing on the looks, weight and performance too much. That’s the sort of stuff people will pay premium for.  That’s why Apple is making more money than the rest.

Just look at the revenues and profits of the companies listed on Wikipedia:

Apple Inc
HP
Dell
Lenovo
Toshiba
ASUS
Acer

As you can see, every single company is making less money than Apple, except for HP. And I’ll bet you that when you look up HP’s annual financial reports, it will show they’re not making that money in the PC-market.

McDonalds didn’t become #1 by making the best hamburger. McDonalds became #1 through marketing.

Wrong. McDonalds became #1 by pushing cheap assed burgers well below the price of a decent burger.

When push comes to shove a much higher percentage of people are willing to get something that works, even if barely so, at a significant cost savings. Same reason why Wal-mart is the #1 retailer. I haven’t seen a Wal-mart commercial in YEARS. Sometimes I doubt that they even have a real marketing department. They’re #1 though, because while they sell junk, it’s CHEAP junk.

The same applies to PC’s. HP sells a metric ton of systems because their systems are cheap. Same with the other top few manufacturers. Together, they collectively stomp Apple pretty good.

Apple itself couldn’t even survive without their draconian tying of hardware to their OS. When clones were licensed and they came with cheaper hardware even Apple’s customers FLOCKED to the clone makers, nearly bankrupting Apple, because what most of them wanted was MacOS. Most couldn’t care less what hardware the OS ran on. This is the reason why Jobs immediately terminated the clone licenses upon his return to the company.

Apple has basically just managed to create an OS that is so good that they can con you into paying 3x as much for a plain old computer with a “Can run MacOS!” flag set (and they’ve also convinced users to rejoice in the fact that they’re overpaying for this hardware).  Sure, you can claim that “They’re a hardware company.”, but that’s misleading. Let them drop MacOS (software) and sell their shiny machines with Windows and see just how fast that company tanks. They’re a hardware company as much as a strip club is an alcohol vendor – it might be what they make money off of but people aren’t paying $5 for a bottle of Bud Light because they just like the way you pour it.

When you buy a computer from Apple, you are buying a computer that it has been tested and will run any iteration of Apple’s Operation System (OSX) that it is made for.  Although this is quite different for Power PC (because its an older generation with a different architecture), any machine running an Intel CPU will be able to run any OSX for Intel CPU’s.  You are buying a computer that works out of the box for more years than the average computer lifespan of productivity.

And besides, if it’s the software that people like so much, why not just build a Hackintosh?

If a Hackintosh provided the same experience, yes, it would work. However, you might note that a Hackintosh does not provide the same experience, because first you have to hack it together to work (hence the name) and then you have to do without support from Apple.

In other words, the same reasons the year of the Linux desktop has never arrived.

I think most of the critics coming to the iPad as a device come mostly from people who plainly speaking they do not like Apple.

Although with news, journalism and technology itself, every time there is a device that doesn’t appeal to the critics sense of what is right or wrong, it gets bashed, demoted or marked as trash and it shouldn’t be bought or looked at.  Some people find these new devices like a breath of fresh air, considering that there has not been a significant technology innovations since well the iPhone rolled out.  I am pretty sure if it had been Nokia, Motorola or Blackberry to name a few, the criticism and comments would be normal.  Apple is the mold breaker, and therefore they get all the attention good or bad.  Because they are different, and present to its consumers products that in the hands of other creative individuals, would seem mundane, boring and not thought out.

Apple has taken the lead again to appoint innovation and progress in not only technological aesthetics, but improvement as well.  Apple takes a lot of pride in keeping the products they develop secret, and out of the eye of journalism or critics so they can contain the “wow factor” they want to present to their consumers intact.

The iPad is no exception.  Ever since the idea of making notebooks more portable, mobile computing and the rise of netbooks as a product itself, if you have noticed there has not been much improvement in aesthetics and functionality.  This happened with mobile phones as well.  Up till the iPhone rolled out we didn’t have much of a mobile computing device as much as we had an extension of a peer to peer messenger service.  We had seen the ideas of Microsoft and Palm come in the form of Pocket PC and Palm devices years before the iPad, iPhone came out, but they were clunky, disorganized, non-user friendly and boring.  Even Microsoft left their Windows Mobile OS decay, because they thought there was nothing else to innovate into.

Apple is a people oriented company.  Even if you are not a fan, deep down you have to admit, they come out with nifty, cool looking devices and most of the time, very functional and easy to use.  When they design a product, they try to bring forward a closer interaction between the user and the device.  This kind of functionality is not seen in many products out there, and between Apple’s rivals the only one that has a “similar” sense has been Google.

This being said, a lot of people lack the understanding of what the iPad really is, and it’s not the same as what they wanted it to be therefore they don’t justify any of the modifications and additions it brings.  A lot of people label Apple to be a closed platform, while the “PC” has been more open all the time.  This is sort of right, but most people do not look at the benefits this “closeness” in design and implementation brings, again considering this is not a Netbook, notebook or personal computer.

The iPad is the in-between of a Notebook and a Phone (or portable media device).  I don’t include netbooks, because netbooks and notebooks aside from size, processor and size are practically the same.

Let me give you a real scenario as an example.

At my household we have 2 Desktop Computers (1 MacPro & 1 Gaming PC currently connected to the 46″ LCD TV), and we have 3 Laptops (2 Windows 7 and 1 MacBook Pro).  The laptops are 1 in the bedroom, and 2 in the living room, where my wife and I use them.  I mostly do my gaming on the Xbox360, and some other portion of gaming on our Gaming PC.  The MacBook pro is for programming for the web and other stuff and the Windows 7 Laptops are for meh. <– yeah meh.

If there were 2 iPad’s in our house, I can tell you right now, those laptops would be at our computer room, and the MacBook pro would be strictly for web work.

Why?

Portability & comfort.  I work as part of the engineering team doing IT infrastructure, when I get home, I want to chill in my couch as much comfortably as I can.  I also like to play some games that aren’t as active as ones I play on my Xbox360.  Currently I do that on my iPhone.  My Nintendo DS and PSP are currently gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, because I cannot interact with anyone else with them.  On my iPhone I feel connected to my friends who play the same games as I do.  When I am not playing games on the iPhone I am chatting with a distant friend.

Let’s get back to the Portability and comfort part.  Can I do that with my laptops? Sure, I lay back and use them in an orthopedic way that make my wrists hurt after using them like that for 4hrs.

If I am at an airport, I don’t have to take my laptop to remote into the office and do work, we use Citrix VDI and I can remote in easily, using a Bluetooth mouse to use Outlook 2007 or remote into my work PC at my office.  Time to board the plane? No problem, I got movies, games, books all at the flicker of a finger.  This is genius human design, and it’s catching on.  It is why the iPad even if your portray it as a Big iPod Touch or a Limited iPhone if you get the 3G version, is being so successful.

This is only the beginning for this device, comparing how long it took the iPhone to catch up to a couple more functionalities than it had when it began, the iPad will be more in tune to our need to communicate, socialize and work than any other device in the market right now.  The more people buy it the more it becomes a mobile platform you can think serious right now.

The only company who I think could bring out a serious device than can compete with the iPad and the line of thinking of Apple is Google.  But in my opinion, Android is still in its infancy and has to mature a lot.

But this is today, tomorrow my thoughts are going to be old and in a week they will be obsolete.  Technology is the same way, the only thing you can do is wish things get better and portability, comfort and ease of use become something truly spectacular in a device like this, and others.  I can’t really wait to see what kind of stuff comes out.  I have surely seen a lot of changes, in computing, a lot of powerful innovative companies rise and fall, including Apple that is enjoying of its second reincarnation.

“Is this the police?”

“Yeah what you want?”

“Hi. I found a phone. It was working and I logged into facebook and everything; but now it’s just dead.”

“What’ you want son? Haven’t got all night here.”

“Well I was thinking that you should send a car and open an investigation to return it to its rightful owner. I don’t want to be called a thief or anything.”

“Hold on a sec. Charlie! CHAAAARLIIEE! Come here hear this one!”

This was supposed to be a long post about something that happened.  But I got more important things to do today so here is the short version.

It seemed like a monday like no other.  I got to work early, found a spot in front of the building, which meant a short walk to my office.  Everything looked normal, you know like another monday, intense, surprising (i found out i liked mondays because there was always a surprise for us in store).

The day gradually started getting typical, lots of emergencies, everyone wanting their stuff for yesterday, everything a priority, its kind of like a FedEx building but worst a lot worst, but this is our day-to-day, it wouldn’t be work if it were any different.

Then there is Goober, but that is topic for another post…

From the three of us that compromise the team, my boss put one of us in charge, you know, at the helm of the team, (it wasn’t me thank God) and which is fine, because I have a pile of work big enough, for not wanting anything else.  Then Altiris, our deployment server which in my opinion it”s a piece of “bantha poo doo”, but it’s what we have and God forbid we don’t use it, crashed and wasn’t fixed till 4pm.  That means we didn’t really were able to do any Images.  It’s funny because when someone has a problem where their computer is down and they can’t do any work, it’s a PRIORITY to do anything we can to help them, yet when Altiris went down, no one cared about it, it didn’t matter we weren’t productive, it was just not a priority.

Then I got hit in the face by a comet, (you all probably think I am on meds), it hit me, after reading an email, I actually forgot to do something and in the end it bit me in the buttola.  I felt bad because I take a lot of pride working hard so everyone has their computers up and running, and forgetting to ship one out well it makes me feel like Santa Claus forgot a present for some kid in Cambodia.  But between last week, and how I projected this week to go, it’s going to be like Arkham Asylum raised to the 10th power.

But like I said before, it is what it is, and it can’t be any different because it was (repeat after me) a case of the mondays.

I know… That last sentence was not original at all… but neither is my ringtone.

It had to happen and not even on a monday, otherwise it would have been perfect…

I screwed up my own 6yr old blog. The DB is still there but for some reason it’s not linking.

Oh well time to move on to better and larger things. Like writing new musings. This is very good, because I have been pondering the idea how to start over without starting over, and this is it. No running around behind your tail, like a dog on crack.

I am kind of glad because when 2010 I turned a new page so in a way it feels good to start a new blog on a new page on my life.

Good Riddance!