Technology.talk ‑ An Imperfect Life

By Patrick J Suarez Regular Contributor to The DataBus

Common Sense Deficiency

Recently, I saw a tech news article about a poll that showed that Mozilla, the core Web browser within Netscape Navigator, cannot really compete with Internet Explorer. Time Warner, which gave AOL its walking papers, also released Mozilla in much the same fashion that baseball teams release players no longer found useful to future winning strategies. The Mozilla team breathed a sigh of relief, now able to take full advantage of the open source community. While Time Warner didn't necessarily need Mozilla, the Web‑wandering world does.

Mozilla provides something in the way of competition to Internet Explorer. It also is a vastly superior browser, but try telling that to Web users who lock‑step to Microsoft.

The irony here is that those same lockstep IE browser users whine, gripe and complain about Web ad pop‑ups, popunders and, my least favorite, those slimy layered ads that appear and ooze around a Web page but don't create a new window. You cannot get rid of them until you either click to look at their contents or they decide to vaporize, in their own good time. With IE and Netscape, you get them; with Mozilla, you don't. It's great. And it's free.

But try getting through the thick mental leather of people who simply refuse to even try this free application. "It won't work with Microsoft-specific Web page coding," they reason'. Poppycock. I use Mozilla exclusively, and I never have problems with any site. I try mightily to tell anyone who natters on about popups and creeping, slippery ads about the virtues of Mozilla, but they act as if I'm demanding that they sample a live eel as an appetizer.

If I sound annoyed, well, I am. I will never understand a general population that is too intransigent and stubborn about this, and yet cannot stop yowling about irritating Web ad technology. You can buy or download additional apps that block popups, but you add another program to all that background hoo‑ha that Windows makes us run if we want to remain off the front page of the newspaper.

For the love of heaven, Mozilla is free, rock‑solid, better than Opera and even has powerful e‑mail and newsgroup apps. And, once in Mozilla, if you go to Edit, Preferences, Privacy & Security, Popup Windows and check 'Block unrequested popup windows', you will never, ever get any of the three Web screen hassles I listed earlier in this diatribe, er.... article.

But wait, there's more! You can configure the popup blocker to allow any Web site you want to present popups. Can IE do this? No. Can Netscape do this? No. Essentially, the difference between Netscape Navigator and Mozilla is the popup blocking feature. Why anyone would use Netscape when he or she could use Mozilla is a mystery to me. They look the same; they function the same; one is as much of a pain about popups as IE, while the other offers clean Web browsing. Yeesh.

Find Mozilla at www.mozilla.org. Please.

Keystroke Cat‑and‑Mouse

It was with more than a tinge of irony that, on the same day, I bumped into ads whose products dealt with privacy

and monitoring but radically conflicted with one another.

The first was an ad for a $150 product called eBlaster (www.eblaster.com). EBlaster is keystroke‑logging spyware that records the hapless target's keystrokes. Yes, this is old news. But here's what isn't: when the target sends e‑mail to someone, eBlaster sends a copy of the message to the person doing the monitoring. The ad and eblaster.com proclaim this to be an effective way to monitor your child's online habits when the parent isn't around to watch little Sally sally forth electronically with someone who might be a 35 year old man inviting little Sally to do something that would instantly land him in jail in Greene County. Maybe, but I think it's meant for employers who want a more convenient way of keeping an eye on their employees' international desk-voyages during working hours. Mom and dad might cough up $50 for this, but $150 is more in the price range of businesses than that of most consumers, and that's the price tag for eBlaster.

As a parent or employer, you might feel a bit more relaxed having read about eBlaster. You might even be considering its purchase.

But before you make a move, consider Symantec's Norton Antivirus 2004. It has buffed up to include spyware-sniffing technology that defeats keystroke‑loggers and spyware. Hah! If little Sally's parents are not as PC-savvy as she is, they might fork over $150 for nothing. Little Sally could show mom and dad the bright yellow install disk for NAV 2004 and tell them it's the updated virus‑killer that she's going to install, making her PC safe from digital nasties. Picture, then, mom and dad beaming at their bright little daughter's proactivity against Windows‑wrecking infections ... and against them.

Employees might not get away with this as easily as little Sally. More and more companies are locking down their systems against employee-installed software and hardware. Too many people, well intended or not, have created too many productivity-killing nightmares with all the goodies they bring to the workplace. Let the employee beware: The Man can legally watch what you do while you are on his dime and any court of law will take his side. You've been warned.

A postscript about NAV 2004: It joins Windows XP and other products in the growing ranks of programs that cease to function if you don't register the product with a unique and traceable key included with the disk. The door is closing on free copies of software downloadable with a serial number that "works".

And Now You Are in the Crosshairs

This country started losing manufacturing jobs to overseas workers in the 1950s. "Made In Japan" used to be a sure‑fire crack‑up in Mad magazine, but nobody's been laughing in the appliance, auto and steel industries for a long time.

Now, in 2003, we are losing high tech jobs in a similar manner. All those geeks who looked down their noses at factory workers now find themselves sharing unemployment lines with them. For the same reason. And forever.

IBM has announced that, over the next few years, it will begin taking white-collar jobs to India and other places where they pay a fraction of US wages for equal brainpower. For IBM, this is news. For other companies, those you

wouldn't imagine, it isn't. And it is becoming an epidemic. It's almost as if one company stumbled onto something and other companies rushed in, too, wishing that they had thought of it first.

I recently took an online course with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). When I needed help logging in, I called the toll free number and a heavy accent greeted me. I had to call three more times for other reasons, and the same sort of accent greeted me each time. No surprise: they were working the night shift in Hyderabad, India. For DAU.

The US is in a major jam. We have become a service‑oriented country that imports finished goods. We are now on the verge of importing intellectual property. Our budget is a half trillion in debt for 2004. Our leadership talks as if this is a positive situation for us.

Most of our kids for the past generation or so eschewed science and math as too hard and boring. Meanwhile, Pacific Rim kids have been winning science and math contests for years on the west coast. We buy powerhouse computers for our children and they use all of that horsepower to ... play elaborate computer games. I know: I've read that playing videogames sharpens the thought process and reaction time in kids. Right. I'm sure that millions of youngsters will be fighter pilots as adults. But it seems as if that's all teens want to do with these electronic marvels. This calls to mind a comment I heard years ago: our kids are more interested in science fiction than in real science. And when they grow up and create a new generation of people, they pass down all that they know and have learned. Hmmm.

We are reaping a bitter harvest that has no end for at least another couple of generations. The post‑war (WW 11) boom is over, folks. Get used to it. What good is having The Bomb when a sizeable chunk of your brainpower

sits at home with advanced degrees but without paychecks? Why go through the intensity of earning a B.S., Master's degree or Ph.D. if IBM won't hire you but instead uses an immigration loophole to hire foreigners?

It's no shocker, coincidentally, that the online sex industry will balloon to $20 billion by 2006. As more and more young, attractive men and women find themselves with new bachelor's degrees and no work (or are still in college), many of them will say, what the heck, I can earn $100 an hour and I need to pay the rent. Or buy gasoline. Or eat.

And the audience for this fare is insatiable and global. Boring to watch repeatedly? Yep. The same thing only different every single time? Check. Horrid dialogue in those movies? Naturally. No dialogue in those movies and film clips? Probably. Will males and females, young and old, spring for at least three or four Web sites at a rate of $20 to $40 a month to get this stuff, especially if they subscribe to broadband Internet connectivity? Count on it. Is the market saturated? Saturated? Are you kidding?

Much of this sounds eerily like Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. And it's more than a little depressing and frightening. Where's my Zoloft?

Computers Make Our Lives Easy

The computer revolution that has dominated the past two decades has made us both more productive and more spoiled. And maybe more impatient. Access to information and contact with people far away from us, or across the same room, is unparalleled in the course of human history. Instant gratification takes too long. And is a birthright. Right?

But let's think about these appliances, PCs. Their inability to work with regularity supports an entire industry dedicated solely to flying or replacing them. To protect computers from other PCs, human miscreants and even themselves, you have to buy antivirus software, software to keep the operating system from eating itself, software that guards the PC's boundaries, software that watches other software and an endless parade of new software to replace the old software. PCs require constant attention: defragging and registry maintenance, disk scans and patches. Most people don't understand how their PCs function, landing them in immediate hot water when the inevitable occurs. It's almost enough to make television appealing... Nah...

Most PC users have become tolerant about the irony of depending on technology but not learning how it works or how to fix it. Actually, they've given in. They have accepted the truth that if they want to enjoy the fruits of online sowing, they have to pull the silicon plow themselves, blissfully aware that they don't know how to fix the plow when it cracks. They rely on PCs for their productivity, news, entertainment and relationships, but PC technology remains jittery and breakable.

With that in mind, the next time you need to go somewhere, think of how much fun driving would be if our automobiles required as much nonstop tweaking as our computers. Count your blessings. I do every time I get behind the wheel of my inexpensive and reliable Hyundai Sonata. It, maybe more than anything I own, gives me confidence that someone, somewhere is building something of quality that didn't cost very much money. I just wish it came from the USA.

Someday, it might.

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