lines in the sand

What moves you...first thing in the morning?

What sound do you wake up to?  The clang of a windup alarm clock?  The buzz of an electric one?  The radio?  A ringtone? 

This Telegraph article says the last one is becoming a good bet.

Research has shown that the timepieces are on their way to disappearing from our bedside cabinets for good, because we rely on our phones to do the job instead.

I've been doing that for the better part of a year.  It started not long after forgot to put on my watch one day and realized that evening that I didn't miss it (the article says lots of people no longer wear wristwatches, either.)  

Some other things I no longer need physical appliances for include a metronome, pitch pipe, tuner, sometimes a flashlight (even before downloading a 'flashlight app'), and a kitchen timer.

Decades ago I dropped out of Jaycees because their main purpose seemed to be teaching how to make a life revolve around a pocket calendar.  I knew that wasn't necessary because one day I would have an iPhone.

Got me an iPhone...

...last week and look what it did

iPhone grabs top smart phone spot.

Old becomes New

Today I received an email from a tech firm pushing a webcast about one of the current latest things in networking - centralized computing.

Learn how thin clients are simplifying corporate computing environments and helping companies deal more effectively with their IT security, management, and budgeting needs.

When I got into IT it was on an IBM midrange computer.  Each workstation was a "dumb terminal", the "network" was a more or less direct connection to the computer via twinax (if you don't know, you don't want to,) and all the computing was done on the System 34.  It was secure because it wasn't hooked up to anything else.

Then PCs started turning up with desktop modems, software and internet connections: EDP DP IS IT shops feared losing control of computing.  It's been a struggle, but we've made headway with proxies, firewalls and switches, got help and incentive from the spammers, hackers and even Senator Sarbanes and Congressman Oxley.

Now the advance of technology lets us give users dumb terminals thin clients, do all the work on a central computer server and any contact with the outside world has to go through us.

That was a close one.