BlackMan Time

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

How ironic! Communicating seems clearer when we had less choice even with the following:-

• Broadband
• Cable
• Fibre Optic
• Internet
• iPlayer
• IPTV
• Mobile Phone
• Multi-Channel
• Mobile Internet
• Multi-Room
• Non-Geographic Telephone Number
• Satellite
• SatNav
• Set Top Box
• SMS (text messages)
• Wireless Internet (aka Wi-Fi)

Extinct

Today, we veer more towards the virtual than the real and face to face communications is in danger of becoming an extinct animal.
Okay, so the new technology has shrunk the planet, making it seem a much smaller place.

For some communities the technology has made communicating much easier, faster and cheaper, but at what expense? Are we any friendlier with our neighbours?

Maybe the only people having problem with the advent of new technology at such an unprecedented scale are those who would otherwise have communication issues, some may argue.

What do you think?

You might be interested to know that if you own, use or communicate using a mobile phone, email address or landline telephone that information collected on you by the respective companies concerned are privy to government departs in America, Europe and soon the rest of the world.

That means every detail of your phone conversation, email correspondences, MSN, AOL and/or Yahoo Messenger conversations are recorded, retained and stored by your Internet Service Provider. In the UK such records now have to be kept by a law which was silently activated on April 9, 2009. Yes, just last week!

Wake up, this is not a drill! This is the world today and these measures are being done in the name of protecting you against terrorism. It’s rather awfully kind of our governments to do this for us. Thanks, but no thanks!

The only way to escape any potential snooping and prying into our private lives is to opt out of every modern telecommunication device and to live remotely where people still use the drums, carrier pigeons or cryptic voice sounds to communicate messages. But if the snoopers see no communication from you they might interpret that as suspicious and arrest you or call you up for questioning.

Suspicion

In their minds “no data” means suspicious person or an attempt circumnavigate their elaborate snooping devices!

This is still the norm in certain remote parts of Africa, South America or South East Asia. This is not because those regions want to avoid being snooped on but because they just don’t have the infrastructure, resources or finances in place yet. Their more pressing need, in some cases, is to stave off hunger of hunger…

Rahtid! We all thought and assumed that technology would improve the quality of life for everyone, not just for prying bureaucrats and bean counters. Communication has certainly increased and improved many fold in recent years. But there is a but…

Are we happy it has apparently done so to the detriment of our civil liberties, individual freedom and privacy rights?

So, after being bombarded with many ads hitting me from all over the place Virgin finally persuaded me to sign up with them for internet connection.

Their campaign was so pervasive and plentiful! They were on billboard posters, radio, TV, internet sites, magazines, newspapers, leaflets through my letter box and text messages on my mobile phone!

I had nothing to lose because they promised to install the wires (this bit is funny because they said they were giving me a wireless connection!), set up the cable modem and give me a wireless router. I went for their size L internet package which I could try for 31 days and if I was not unhappy in that time I could cancel.

Mohammad, the Muslim technician who came to do the installation was professional and we rapped a little about his home country Morocco, as well as about politics.

Choose One!

But, at the end of his work he discovered that I could only have the phone package or the internet package due to the layout of my flat’s existing wiring. I chose the internet package because I was lured to Virgin by their claimed 20MB package.

Finally, after Mo had left I configured the main desktop computer and the wireless router onto my laptop and I was surfing! I didn’t really notice a great deal of improvement in speed though. So much for Virgin’s marketing hype.

However, to be honest, I was disappointed that I couldn’t have the internet and phone package as described. I felt Virgin should have already known this because they have made numerous other installations in the area. I was left to bemuse the fact that Virgin came to flat and couldn’t complete the package I had ordered.

Typically, I thought, for Virgin to not go all the way!

I recently spent an entire working day (approximately eight hours straight without a break!) talking to someone on the phone.

Afterwards, as I recounted this story to another friend, they asked: “What in the name of [insert your favourite religious leader's name here] can anyone talk about for that long?”

Looking back at the exchange I realise now that what we talked about was of less importance than the fact we wanted to spend some time together. Given that we were separated by oceans the telephone was the tool we chose to bring us closer together and the manner of communicating chosen was talk.

Maybe we could just as easily have chatted online via the internet in lieu of being there facing the person you want to speak with. But it continues to be a marvel of modern technology that we can do this.

The reality is conversation with someone with whom you share a lot in common and whom you find totally interesting is easy. There just aren’t enough hours in the day to speak with such people. The chances of meeting such a person is also so rare that when (or if) the opportunity comes along its irresistible!

Nevertheless, it’s still amazing to hear myself answering “Oh, nothing much!” to the question my friend asked speculating on what I could have been talking about for so long!

How many times this year have you been caught out by internet or web scams? It may be something as innocent as being blackmailed into forwarding an email to friends, else something bad will happen to you!

Anyway, a friend sent me this amusing email which outlined a number of the more prevalent internet scams ever devised. See what you think…

As we move closer to the end of another year I wanted to thank you for all the e-mails you have forwarded to me over the past year.

I must send a big thank you to whoever sent me the one about rat shit in the glue on envelopes, because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing.

Top Savings

Also, I now have to wipe the top of every can I open for the same reason.

I no longer have any savings because I gave it all to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time. But that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates and Microsoft are sending me for participating in their special email programs. Or from the senior bank clerk in Nigeria who wants me to split seven million dollars with me for pretending to be a long lost relative of a customer who died intestate.

And I need no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me.

I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward emails to seven friends and make a wish within five minutes.

Drink Up

I no longer drink Coca-Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

I no longer can buy petrol without taking a friend along to watch the car so a serial killer won’t crawl in my back seat when I’m filling up.

I no longer go to shopping centres because someone will drug me with a food sample and rob me.

I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number and then I’ll get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore and Uzbekistan.

Drop Axed

I can’t even pick up the five bucks I found dropped in the car park because it was probably put there by a crazed axe murderer waiting under my car to grab my leg.

If you don’t send this email to at least 144,000 people in the next 10 minutes, a large pelican with an acute case of diarrhoea will sit on your head and fleas from 12 camels will infest your back.
I know this because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbour’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s plumber – and it was on Good Morning Australia.

By the way…. did you know that a South American scientist has, after a lengthy study, discovered that people with low IQs who don’t have enough sex, always read their emails while holding the mouse.

Don’t bother taking it off now, it’s too late…

Regards,

Your friend

Wow! Time sure does fly! How old do you think the humble DVD audio visual format is? Go on, have a guess! Three years? Five? No! If you say 10 you’re awfully close but the real answer is 11 years! Yes, that’s right.

For some reason I was under the illusion it’s only been onto the market for around three to five years but when I had to research audio formats over the years, I was surprised to re-discover that the DVD format has actually been out since 1997! Hard to believe, isn’t it?

The DVD, aka the “Digital Versatile Disc” or “Digital Video Disc”, is still indeed a popular optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storage. Among the most common DVD formats¹ are:-

• DVD-ROM – has data that can only be read and not written.
• DVD-R and DVD+R – can record data only once and then function as a DVD-ROM.
• DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM – can both record and erase data multiple times.

At the speed at which technology is advancing there’s no telling what the DVD’s future will be. Already we have new formats lapping at his heels.

These include the Blue Ray Disc (introduced in 2006) and slotMusic² (introduced earlier this year!), a type of microSD a removable secure digital flash memory card introduced this year, developed by SanDisk preloaded with music in MP3 format.

In fact with so much technology flying around it’s a wonder the DVD has lasted this long! Watch this space…

1. Thanks to Wikipedia for research information. [↩]
2. See more about slotMusic here [↩]

There was a time when internet top list sites were dominated by technological sites or sites either hosting the technology or the technical infrastructure that made the internet work. Not any more.

These days that honour now belongs to search engines and social networking sites. Topping the list, certainly as far as Alexa’s Global Top Sites list goes, is Yahoo, followed by Google then Youtube.

Microsoft’s Windows Live holds fourth spot with Facebook fifth, MSN (Microsoft’s dialup access and content provider) next, MySpace seventh, Wikipedia eight, blogging site Blogger.com ninth and the Japanese version of Yahoo rounding out the 10th place slot.

My surprise is that sites such as Microsoft which dominates the operating system and browser market wasn’t more dominant, as it was back-in-the day. It languishes at position 15th and way below this comes other sites for product information, support and news.

The main focus is currently highlighted by search, social networking, wikis and blogs, the last two being social networking tools.

I somehow expected ringtone, movie sites, especially those peddling pornographic material, news sites like the BBC and shoppong sites like Amazon and auction sites like eBay figuring more prominently.

It all goes to show the growing maturity of this internet thing as the general public and businesses embrace it in ways that both reflect their lifestyle and usage desires.

The Alexa Top 10 (as at December 22, 2008)

1) Yahoo
2) Google
3) YouTube
4) Windows Live
5) Facebook
6) MSN
7) Myspace
Wikipedia
9) Blogger.com
10) Yahoo Japan

A total of 2,425 people have viewed BMT over the past eight days spanning the period December 12 to 19, 2008! This means we’re averaging 303 people per day, all reading my humble thoughts – and actions!

At the moment we’ve got a Google PageRank of 3 and according to Amazon’s ranking system Alexa BMT is the 1,646,434th most popular site in the universe.

I believe we can do much better than this, and we will! These two respective systems reflect the importance of web pages by considering a number of variables. Important pages receive a higher PageRank.

In fact the site’s popularity has risen 510% over a three month period. This trend looks set to continue upwards since BMT is getting more popular.

The stats show that BMT is now visited by people from at least 51 countries with the majority coming from the UK and the USA.

I am particularly thankful to all my readers and folks who regularly visit the site for making it what it is. It would be good if you could make a comment here on there, just to let me (and others!) see you are actually there!

Please come again and tell your friends about us too!

And there I was thinking that BMT (short for BlackMan Time) would not be too popular as an internet site name or abbreviation. Wrong!

In fact there are so many BMT named sites out there I decided to make a collection of them all. Or, just a selection of them anyway.

Below is such a list…

1. BMT – this blog!
2. BMT Group
3. BMT Defence Systems
4. BMT Cordah
5. BMT Isis
6. BMTSupport.org
7. Building Market Transformation /a>
8. Bone Marrow Transplant
9. Bone Marrow Transplantation
10. Branded Moments of Truth
11. BMT Sales & Marketing
12. BMT College
13. BMT file extension
14. Blood & Marrow Transplant Information Network
15. Business and Management Training
16. BMT Micro
17. National Bone Marrow Transplant Link
18. Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation
19. BioMolecular Therapeutics

BMT Meanings

• BlackMan Time
• Basement Basic Military Training
• Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (New York subway line)
• Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (early Subway sandwich promotion)
• British Maritime Technology
• Badminton
• Big Mutha Truckers (game)
• Benton Mackaye Trail (GA, NC,TN)
• Bayerische Medien Technik GmbH (Germany)
• Before My Time
• Bachelor of Music Therapy
• Bench Marking Test
• Ballistic Missile Technology
• Biological Mechanical Treatment
• Brushing My Teeth
• Bachelor of Medical Technology
• Bone Marrow Transplant/Transplantation
• Battalion Maintenance Technician
• Biggest, Meatiest, and Tastiest (Subway sandwich slogan)
• biosonar measurement tool
• Benslow Music Trust (UK; formerly Rural Music Schools Association)
• Bilateral Myringotomy Tube (surgery)
• Bomberman Tournament (game)
• Ballistic Missile Translator
• Burton Memorial Tower (University of Michigan)
• Bracket Mounted Terminal (Channel Commercial Corp.)
• Base Military Training
• Beam Management Terminal
• Basic March Test (reliability testing)
• behavioral modification technique
• Billion Metric Tonnes
• Burst Mode Transceiver
• Bulk Moderator Temperature
• Begemann Milieutechniek BV (Dordrecht, The Netherlands)
• Bottom Middle Top
• Buckeye Mini Trucks (Cardington, Ohio)
• Boston and Maine Transportation Railroad
• Bilateral Myringotomy Tympanostomy (surgical procedure)
• Big Motherloving Truck (polite form)
• Bean Managed Transactions

Looking at the abundance of gadgets flooding the market I ask myself: “How did we ever survive before the advent of electronic gimmickry?” Of course the answer is we had the humble notebook (paper) and pen!

Before that we had papyrus, tablets, stone and even cave walls. They all worked to record our thoughts and history, if a little cumbersomely…

Fast forward to much later and these morphed into the Filofax which rose with the emergence of the Yuppies in the 1980s. The Filofax dimmed with the beginning of the 1990s and by the dawn of the New Millennium mobile phones and electronic devices became the new business and communication order.

Now, it is inconceivable to run your life and business without a Blackberry, iPod, feature-filled mobiles such as the iPhone, Nokia N96 or the Samsung Omnia.

Nowadays you’ve got the power to traverse the world with these powerful but tiny devices capable of running your business at the touch of a button before taking their places in your pocket. If you think this is scary just wait till the next generation of electronic devices are unleashed!

Going back to the humble notebook would seem like returning to the age of the dinosaurs. But for those who harbour such desires technology has even got them in mind: the notebook is now a portable computer or a laptop!

Oh, cruel irony! Or is it oh mocking significance of technological advancement?