Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.

Illegal file sharing has emerged

I don’t personally think of torrenting itself as a major problem, and it’s difficult to sympathize with big companies when the RIAA is being stupid. At the same time, it’s pretty easy to see how having hundreds of movies, TV shows and music albums distributed through torrents can take away from earnings for content producers. (Some dispute this and argue that those who pirate movies and TV shows are those who will purchase related memorabilia or boxed sets.)

In any case, it is virtually undisputed that new technologies have made distribution of such content much easier. In the previous decade, pretty much everyone was on dial-up Internet and only the students at universities with blazing connections were able to do it (think about the controversial Napster).

The best known site for illegal content

YouTube happened

YouTube and hundreds of other video sites have revolutionized the way we watch video. What used to be distributed on tapes and discs has moved onto the Internet in a way that allows ordinary folks—not videophiles or geeks—to share their multimedia with the world.

YouTube is also the icon of the so-called Web 2.0, which is oriented on user-generated content. (Flickr deserves an honourable mention for high quality pictures, just like Vimeo for high class videos.) It has made it possible for teens with crazy personalities and high-pitched edited voices, artists who post music videos, and crazy dancers who travel the world to reach out to a vast audience. Above all, it’s a legitimate new form of entertainment.

Following the success of online video, major content producers began to license music for online distribution (think Pandora or Last.fm, not to mention Internet radio) as well as movies and TV shows (think Hulu).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Open source projects have become worthy challengers

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the Apache HTTP server became the most popular web server in use; today it has surpassed 100 million web sites served.

Mozilla Firefox, having risen out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, although not the most widely used browser in the world (it’s 2nd), is apparently used by 32% of the market analyzed by StatCounter.

While I still use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is also a notable alternative to the proprietary and dominant office suite, especially on non-Windows operating systems.

And then there are the programs used by geeks, like the Eclipse IDE or Aptana Studio, that are depended upon. (For all of you multimedia geeks, there are open source programs that do the job much better than their closed source counterparts; think about Handbrake, VLC…)

Businesses can now also depend on open source projects like Sugar CRM that build their revenue model around support and premium features.

News has moved onto the Web

My primary news source  now is the Web. Google News is one of my frequently visited sites, as it is a fantastic aggregator of headlines. I subscribe to e-mail summaries from the Toronto Star and breaking news alerts from the New York Times. ArsTechnica and TechCrunch are my sources for technology-related news, and occasionally Mashable and Neowin. Those pesky short links in the tweets of people I follow also make for engaging news articles.

Wikipedia happened

At the beginning of this decade, I was researching in books and print encyclopedias. The conventional wisdom today of “just Google it” didn’t work so well then. And certainly there wasn’t a Wikipedia for the wealth of human knowledge that it now contains.

Today, I can near-instantly read up on the history of Wal-Mart or read up on the Beslan school hostage crisis and its media coverage. If I truly need it, Wikipedia connects with Wikisource, the free library and Wikibooks where I can read Anna Karenina online (and I wouldn’t, because Constance Garnett’s translations are really lacking).

It’s truly amazing that the sum of all human knowledge can be collaboratively archived and updated through the likes of Wikipedia. Perhaps they need your support this holiday season!

What do you think? Did I miss out on something big that happened in this decade in the world of tech? Write a comment!

(I did, however, intentionally exclude social networking—i.e. Facebook—because I don’t think it’s been revolutionary in any major way. Sure, it has connected people in new ways, but it’s still relatively fresh and more time is needed to see where it goes. Similarly, I omitted touch because it hasn’t entirely caught on yet; tablet PCs were a dismal failure a few years ago and I haven’t yet seen their widespread success. Furthermore, I omitted cloud computing because it doesn’t directly affect a large number of people. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.)

Worldly Matters

I think September 11, 2001 marked the start of a new era of warfare and international affairs. The terrorist attacks, inasmuch as they have been abused to justify ill-advised battles, did shock the world.

I recommend you head over to the Big Picture where you’ll be dazzled by splendid photos of this decade, including commentaries on the World Trade Center attacks and war. And dozens of other things like natural disasters (remember Katrina, or the Sichuan earthquake?), the Beijing Olympics, and terrorist attacks in London.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I look forward to the future.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2010!

To give you some background before I go into the content here, I had just concluded a successful interview (the first of two) and was stopping by the library on my way home. The trip from there was bizarre – random acts of generosity sprung up, seriously making me wonder whether the world was conspiring to be generous, or whether it was some kind of karma day.

Act I: A mother with a stroller

I held the door open. Seems ordinary enough, right? It all started here.

A mother with three kids, one of which was in a stroller, was trying to get out the front door. Maybe that entrance wasn’t accessible, because the door wasn’t opening for them.

So before I entered, I held the door open for them, allowing her to get her stroller out.

I entered the library no wiser that this was the first act of many.

Act II: Library

I only had to check in two books, and the library has self-serve check-in machines, to which I wandered when I entered.

It’s really an easy process, but the lady overseeing check-in still had to help the patron in front of me, for whom it was probably a first-time experience.

“Yeah, that’s it. You just push here on the screen and put your books on the table.”

My usual experiences with librarians are far worse.

Act III: Viva

Viva bus at a bus terminal; credit IRT.BMT.IND (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0)

I ran across the street to catch the bus that was about to leave.

For those of you unfamiliar with this transit system, an individual with a ticket ‘validates’ the ticket on a machine before boarding the bus. That’s what I attempted to do.

The machine that takes in a ticket and validates it

I became frustrated because the machine wouldn’t take in the ticket – even after 4 or 5 tries, and even more frustrated because I was making the bus wait. I gave up, and boarded anyways through the door beside the driver. I genuinely intended to validate the ticket.

A minute or two into the ride, I asked the driver whether it was okay if I validated the ticket at my destination. His response surprised me.

“Sure… if you want.”

What the heck? Now, Viva is nicknamed “Free-va” because of the honour system on which fares work. Offenders keep their tickets without validating them – avoiding the fare – and are occasionally caught by enforcement officers.

Was this generosity, entrapment, or plain dereliction?

I fully intended to validate my ticket at the destination.

When the bus had taken me as far as it could, I got off and validated my ticket at that terminal. As the bus driver passed by – probably his coffee break – I showed the ticket casually, and he said:

“No problem, my friend.”

Whoa. What the heck.

Act IV: YRT

Staying on the theme of bus drivers, the story follows me as I transfer on to another bus. I recognized the driver when he pulled into the terminal, and he didn’t even bother to check my validated ticket, gesturing as though he knew I would always pay my fare properly.

The bus slipped out of the station and began its journey, only to be interrupted at the next red light, when the driver stopped and opened the door.

He recognized someone who was walking by, and invited her in. Probably friends or something.

They hugged, talked a bit – and though the light had turned green, I wasn’t complaining; it’s not like I had to rush. Then he gave her a transfer and she left.

Wait, what?! Did he just give her a transfer when she didn’t pay a fare?

Shock and realization occurred at the same time, when I discovered another act of generosity… or dereliction.

Epilogue

How does this kind of stuff happen? Do bus drivers decide to be really nice during the summer, and grouchy the rest of the time?

Was it karma? Or, perhaps, was it what happens when one walks out of a successful interview and notices only the good things occurring around oneself?

Deep questions to ponder. What do you think?

I experience stress on a daily basis, and perhaps much more so this month. As for my methods of dealing with stress, I enjoy music, knowledge, and technology.

Music

Classical and soundtrack music are especially enjoyable for me. I find that they contribute to a calmer emotional state, especially with beautiful orchestral pieces. (See what kind of music I like at Music to Hear.) Listening to the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, for instance, Ennio Morricone film score, Planet Earth incidental music, or Hans Zimmer’s remarkable compositions, or Karajan’s amazing interpretations, probably bring my mood from stressed out at 8/10 to 3/10. This is one of the reasons that I listen to music while I’m doing work.

Take a look at a video of one of my favourite pieces, conducted by the composer Ennio Morricone at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learning

TED videos are really inspiring to watch. Whether it’s Al Gore or someone talking about the importance of bread, I find TED to be an absolutely amazing source of inspiration.

Developing knowledge helps to take my mind off pressing matters, at least temporarily. And that’s one of the reasons that I like reading news, reading design blogs and so on.

Humour

FAIL Blog, NotAlwaysRight and FMyLife are all amazing sources of humour. Laughing is probably the easiest way to enjoy oneself for a while.

Today, I got a cross-country job promotion. I decided to plan my Going-Away-Forever party, and bought a pack of 100 invitations. After mailing them out to all my friends, I have 92 left. FML (source)

This keeps me amused, but is by no means as effective as music — after all, I can listen to music while working, and this humour stuff takes away from time I could be putting towards resolving causes of stress.

Et vous?

What do you do to keep your stress at an acceptable level? (You can select multiple answers. Choose any item if it has a soothing / stress-relieving effect for you.)

I think it is time for me to post another something to my blog. I have been pleased to observe a strong support for the experiment, particularly the part where I will expose myself to new kinds of music.

First, a comical quote:

A client called in inquiring about a package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, “Would it be cheaper to fly to California and then take the train to Hawaii?”

Wow. You should start using StumbleUpon. It’s great for times like this boring weekend when surfing random sites on the Web becomes a fun activity. (also, see the things I liked from stumbling)

Anyhow, back to the less fun things. There’s more after the jump.

Music

I haven’t yet had a chance to listen to all of the music that people have sent to me by means of drop.io. However, here are a few pieces of music that I currently can appreciate, thanks to the input from everybody.

Preferably, you should add comments to this post with the title of the song and the artist, because I use imeem as the legal means of discovering new music. (A note about imeem: I like using this site to discover new music, particularly to follow up on recommendations, given that this company has signed licensing deals with Warner Music, Sony/BMG, EMI, and Vivendi Universal, and can offer a legal means of listening to full-length content.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

My appreciation of Viva la Vida reflects my musical education and the fact that I am still clinging on to the dignity of classical music. Though the lyrics are great, and I appreciate the vocals, it remains true that the harmonic progression and (generally classical) instrumentation appeal to me most.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: for some songs, imeem will only stream full-length tracks to registered and logged-in users to comply with licensing terms.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of all of the music I have heard up to now, hip-hop is just too strange for me. Even metal, which is, indeed, loud and harsh (in timbre), at least appeals to me. For both of the pieces immediately above, I would appreciate them much more without the screaming vocals, since the instrumental parts are amazing… and once again, I have to refer to the similarities between the harmonic devices used in metal/rock and classical.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For this song (I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing), my first impression of it was the unsightly singer on the music video on YouTube, which I watched because Matthew Wu posted a link to it. However, it is a nice song, one with a great singer whose voice is acceptable — in harsh contrast to the vocal ‘talent’ from the heavy metal — and it is from Armageddon, a film that I liked. (Have my musical tastes been shaped already?)

And, of course, I have to take this opportunity to share some of the classical pieces that I have recently discovered and liked:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think what the pieces above show is that my musical tastes have shifted from primarily Bach to primarily 19th-century (and a bit of early 20th-century) music. Hmm. A few more months and it’ll probably move to 20th- and 21st-century stuff. What genres I adopt will remain to be seen… though, if anything is to be indicated by the music I have liked thus far, I am unlikely to appreciate hip-hop.

Play a role. Comment here.

This social experiment involves two parts:

• A part in which I am the experimenter; in this, I will attempt to modify the behaviour of others
• A part in which I am the subject; in this, I will allow others to influence my behaviour and actions

See more after the jump.

Now you must be wondering what this experiment is all about.

Part I — Intolerance

This is the less dangerous part of the experiment in which I attempt to engineer the influences impacting those around me in order to direct people away from intolerance, to being more accepting characters.

Under normal circumstances, I would immediately reject such action as being immoral — certainly, trying to preach one’s morals to another is unfair to their beliefs. I would also ordinarily say that I am able and willing to deal with friends who have radically different views from me, but these are not normal circumstances.

Indeed, I have discovered that intolerance is one of those things that severely limits my willingness to deal with a person. This is rather unfortunate, as some of the best people are, themselves, ignorant and intolerant; intolerant of those with differences, not accepting of those who are in the minorities for which many unjustly blame social problems, and, at other times, entirely ignorant of the precious differentiations that keep us so wonderfully diverse.

It is ironic that, in attempting to address this intolerant attitude, I am, myself, acting intolerantly toward them; I am not accepting their views as one ought to. And here I fall into the dangerous pit of self-justification. “Is this not truly better for the world? Does it not benefit those oppressed minorities to attack the behaviour that is harming them?” Unfortunately, this route of using moral excuses has been abused far too often. I am placing myself in danger of losing sight of some of the values for which I have always stood: acceptance, tolerance, and diversity.

You may be wondering what actions there are that I could possibly undertake to reverse the actions of bigots.

Yes, I use that provocative term of bigotry. My friends are not bigots; they are not entirely unaware of the radicalism of their views, nor would any of them believe that their views are any more right than those of others. Am I a bigot, or ignorant? for believing that my views of acceptance, tolerance and diversity are superior to the harmful actions of intolerance? for taking action to change the views of others? the views of those with whom I associate most closely?

Anyhow, to return to the subject and to answer, “what actions there are that I could possibly undertake?”, remember my previous writings. I have previously written how a shift in the interpersonal and environmental influences can collaboratively result in a certain result. Could I apply this theory to life? Could I apply it to subjects who are entirely aware of the actions I am taking against them? More importantly, could I live with myself if my theory proves realistic?

All these questions must be addressed by you, the people who will be impacted. You alone have the capability to determine whether or not I give up on this experiment, and if I decide to go forth with the plans, you will likely be changed. Do you wish that to happen? Would you give me the chance to tweak with your mind?

The comments section is the only place where you can share your answers to those questions.

Part II — Music

Anyone who knows me also knows my love for classical music and film soundtracks that are orchestral. For years, I dedicated myself to the study of an instrument, and the musical theory that is needed to best appreciate and operate the instrument. (I have since concluded those studies.) Yet these studies have shown me that there is a quality to classical music that is unmatched by anything of the modern or contemporary eras. Until this year, I have never seriously given legitimacy to the possibility of listening to contemporary music.

This shows several things about me, the subject:

• I do not often like to ‘fit in’
• My musical tastes are long pre-established
• “until this year” — there is a chance in reforming my views on music, as the influences of friends and acquaintances have already shown
• I am now more open-minded toward current music
• Any music that relates, even if insignificantly, to my established tastes will appeal to me

In this section of the ongoing experiment, I invite every friend and acquaintance with whom I deal on a near-daily basis to attempt and shape my musical tastes. This is no joke, and I will offer passive resistance to a change in my musical tastes only if the music is clearly distasteful (for instance, profanity, sex, drugs, violence… are themes that I cannot accept in music to which I listen frequently).

Please try.

The success of this part of the experiment will be defined by two things:

1. I accept and listen to styles/genres of music which are (a) not classical; (b) performed and recorded within the last five decades; and (c) also accepted and listened to by others who have played a role in shaping such musical tastes.
2. You have found a friend in me, whether as a result of my willingness to change, to adapt, and to adopt your preferences, or as a result of the changes themselves.

If I may satisfy these two goals of this part of the experiment, I will be content.

On a side note… subscribe by e-mail to get updates in the future!

ADDENDUM: Part III — Harry Potter

In the days following the initial publication of this post, I have realized that I have neglected another important part of my life that is already being heavily influenced: literary taste.

I have, of course, previously argued against Harry Potter, in Why Friends Suck, but now I will consider it — and if my friends are successful in influencing me in this part of the experiment, I will like Harry Potter by the end of the year.

This part of the social experiment calls on my friends, or at least the ones who are obsessed with Harry Potter, to make me a Harry Potter fan. If they are successful in doing so, it will demonstrate the power that friends have over each other. (Despite the fact that this sounds incredibly ‘corny’, it is true and has already been discussed in my previous writings.) At the same time, those who do not like Harry Potter are encouraged to present me with opinions to the contrary… so in the end, whether I like Harry Potter or not will reflect the success of one group over the other.

The Call to Action

You must comment, in support of, or in opposition to, my social experiment.

If I can gather the support for such an ambitious endeavour, I will launch into the project for the remainder of the year, and will publish notes detailing how this experiment could be improved upon to form a sound, scientific trial, as well as how any results from the experiment can be analyzed.

Please, I ask for your support in this matter. Tell me that my idea isn’t stupid. Tell me that you support my desire for sociological advancement. Most importantly, tell me that you will take part in the subtle social experiment.

Thank you.

All you have to do is create a Twitter account and click the follow button under my name. You’ll be alerted of all of my future tweets (only about one message a day or less) and you can post your own 140-character messages as well.

Go on, see what I’ve been posting on Twitter.