Progress?

- There is a new service in San Jose, Red Kiosks that dispense DVDs, Blueray, etc. They only have the latest titles, obviously, and they are becoming quite popular. Our local supermarket has two, one inside and one outside the main door. Herein lies the rub. They are so popular on a Saturday night that there is a queue at both kiosks and the people in them block the entrance so other shoppers cannot get into or out of the store!

- There is a new app, Explore Your World: Virtual Globetrotting ( Virtual Globetrotting ). Once you learn to use the categories, its quite fun. However, Google Earth's Street View has one major problem.: The vast majority of its pictures are parked cars! As if I want to see every parked car in the world! Virtual Globetrotting? I can see all the parked I want by driving to the supermarket.

- Electric cars? I foresee a major problem: Lack of infrastructure.They may have a range of 200-250 miles without a charge, a reasonable distant for routine around town driving with recharging every few days. This is fine if you have a charging station, but what happens if you live in an apartment complex? Does one expect the complex to install the very expensive units? One per car? How about a "long" trip? Vacation? Holiday visits? People in California routinely drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back, a distance over 400 miles each way. Its a whole lot cheaper to drive than to fly and you don't get groped on the way and its actually faster because you don't incur the trip to the airport, checking in, the TSA hassle, waiting for the flight, taxi time, the flight time, and the reverse (minus the TSA) on the other end. Then you go through all of the rigmarole when you return. What happened to the passenger rail infrastructure we had up until the mid 50's?

- When are they going to upgrade spell checkers with a college education!!! When I use an erudite word, they do not recognize it, and give a list of inane choices. For example, the word "anhedonia" which one might encounter in a undergraduate pscyh class is not recognized and the checker gives me list of "Macedonian, Caledonia, Macedonia, and hedonism", none of which are even close!

Progress? Technology has again opened a new doors without considering the consequences.


TTFN
(Bright)