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Y2K and Y2K38

Do you remember the Y2K scare? It is also known as the Millennium Bug. On this Eve of a new year, I am recalling this scare that stemmed from a widespread concern in the late 1990s that many computer systems would fail when the year changed from 1999 to 2000.

Why? Many older computer systems and software programs represented years using only the last two digits (e.g., "1999" was stored as "99"). It was feared that when 2000 arrived, these systems might interpret "00" as 1900 instead of 2000, leading to several problems.

Systems that relied on accurate date calculations could produce errors or fail entirely. For example, financial systems calculating interest rates or loan payments might miscalculate. Concerns arose about critical systems in utilities, transportation, healthcare, and government shutting down. Files or databases might become corrupted due to incorrect data processing.

Probably the greatest concern was in banking and finance where it was feared that miscalculated transactions, stock market crashes, or ATM malfunctions might occur.

Some people predicted power grid failures or water system disruptions, and aviation navigation systems and air traffic control collapsing.

What if there were malfunctioning military systems, including nuclear launch systems?

And so, billions of dollars were spent worldwide to identify, update, and test potentially vulnerable systems. IT professionals worked tirelessly to ensure compliance before the deadline.

What Happened? The transition to the year 2000 was largely uneventful. A few minor issues were reported, but there were no catastrophic failures. It wasn't that there was no reason to be concerned, but the successful outcome is often credited to the massive preventive effort rather than the fears being overblown.

The Y2K scare highlighted the importance of forward-thinking in software development and helped establish rigorous practices for handling date and time in computing.

If you want to start preparing or worrying now for the next similar scare, the Y2K38 Problem (Year 2038 Issue) arises from how older computer systems store time as a 32-bit integer, counting seconds since January 1, 1970 (Unix time). On January 19, 2038, this count will exceed the maximum value for a 32-bit integer, causing a rollover that could result in misinterpreted dates or system crashes.
Impact: This potentially affects embedded systems, infrastructure, and older software. Modern systems are increasingly being updated to 64-bit time representations, which kicks the problem far into the future.

The Dangers of Having No Landline Phone

The Centers for Disease Control realized how important it was to account for cell-phone-only households when it did its health surveys. It isolated those households without landlines and found higher use of alcohol and tobacco, less health insurance, and other "risky behaviors."

I would have suspected that that might be because they were younger and more likely to take risks, but age and even income were not the key factors.

"Old-fashioned" landlines are now in less than half of U.S. homes now. These "Daredevils Without Landlines" are the majority of U.S. homes and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks them through their National Health Interview Survey. That in-person survey with more than 40,000 households annually is conducted face-to-face by Census Bureau interviewers. It contacts landline households, wireless-only households, households that have no service at all.

People who are wireless-only are more likely to smoke, more likely to binge drink, more likely to be uninsured.

What is going on with wireless-only people?

The Ghent Altarpiece

Some 600 years ago, the Van Eyck brothers created one of the first large-scale oil paintings titled “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.” It had such detail and realistic portrayal of people, that the “Ghent Altarpiece,” as it is also known, is considered one of the most influential paintings ever made, though it is not commonly known.

In 1432, it was first installed at Saint Bavo Cathedral in what’s now Belgium. But the Altarpiece has been looted, burned and torn apart by multiple armies, including those of Napoleon and the Nazis.

After World War II, the Monuments Men brought it back to back to Ghent, Belgium. You may have learned about The Monuments Men via a movie by that name about this group set up by the Allied armies to protect cultural heritage from the Nazis.

One of the panels, titled "The Just Judges” is still missing following its theft in 1934.

Enter modern technology. The freshly renovated exterior panels of the Altarpiece can now be explored in ultra-high resolution on Google Arts and Culture. Their robotic Art Camera took about 4,000 high-resolution close-ups of the artwork and used those to create the highest ever resolution image ever made of the panels. You can zoom as much as you’d like into more than 8 billion pixels.

Fear of Missing Out

You were away for a five days of vacationing and you didn't have phone service. It was kind of nice to be disconnected. But now, you're back home and reconnected.

You check your email accounts. Half junk and half things you now need to read and respond to. But what about all the posts you missed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social networks?

It is difficult to actually scroll through days worth of social media. Leave your Twitter feed unread while you're at work and when you sit down after supper there are hundreds or thousands of missed posts.

If you can just shrug and say "So, I missed some things while I was gone. No big deal," then you have a healthy attitude.

But if you feel like you have to go back and at least glance at what you missed, you may have "fear of missing out" or FoMO.

FoMo is real. It is defined as "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent."

If you suffer from this newly-recognized social angst, your desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing is strong.

Of course, almost all of us don't want to miss out on good things. The crew from your office went out last Friday after work for drinks and had a great time. You were away at a meeting all day and missed it. Do you feel regret?

With FoMo that regret is a compulsive concern. It makes you question decisions on how you spend your time.

"Things could have been so different if I had only..." is a a common FoMo thought.

This didn't start with the Internet. Fifty years ago without the Net or mobile phones people were worried that they might miss out on important things. I have given up subscriptions to print magazines and newspapers because they were piling up unread and I couldn't bear to just recycle them unread for fear that there was some story or article that I would really love. (Somehow I can easily ignore/delete digital issues of those same publications.)

25 years ago, if I went on vacation, I would come home and wonder what I missed. I'd look at the local paper and talk to friends. There usually wasn't much that had happened.

But technology has moved so much social and communicative experiences online, and it moves so fast and with so much content that we just "know" that we have missed a lot.

It is said that social networking services allow us the opportunity to be socially engaged with a reduced "cost of admission." I have more contact and "conversations" with people I went to high school with on Facebook than I ever did when we were in school together. Is that sad or wonderful?

A psychological dependence on staying connected can certainly produce anxiety when you are disconnected. Fear of missing out has become more than a meme. It is something that has a negative influence on people's psychological health and well-being.

Advertisers have known about this for a long time and used it. Campaigns based on "not missing out" and feeling included in the popular or "in" group are classics. I once belonged to the Pepsi Generation and was also a "Pepper."

1979 Commercial for Dr. Pepper soda with David Naughton (An American Werewolf in London)

The cure for all this seems simple: disconnect. But that is no more of a solution than telling anyone with an addiction to just stop giving in to the desire to use.

Step One: Recognize the problem. Disconnect from all media for a weekend. No phones, TV, or news in any form. Go to a desert island of your own making. Then, monitor how you act during the weekend and also how you when you return to the world. Any fear that you missed out on some good things?

MORE

http://time.com/4358140/overcome-fomo/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160330135623.htm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/how-can-i-let-go-of-my-fe_b_12575496.html

Click Here to Install Windows 10

I haven't clicked the link yet to install Windows 10 for a free year trial, but I will in the next week or so. I keep thinking that some enormous holes in the new OS will appear and I'll be able to avoid them. But Microsoft has been testing and people having been using Windows 10 for months and it looks stable.

This is Microsoft's shot at a device-agnostic platform that could be reinvented whenever and however the company wanted on any given day. CEO Satya Nadella said, "It’s not just another release of Windows, it’s the beginning of a new era" and that is their intent.

A few thoughts about 10 so far.

Windows 10 is delivered as a service and is automatically updated with new features and security updates
Think of this operating system not as a new release but as the final release. 10 will just keep evolving. Not that someone won't have to keep track of versions. What version of Amazon.com are you using? Right. You don't know.
Should we think of it more like Google Chrome which stopped back in 2010 from pushing updates every few months to releasing them every six weeks and fixes could be updated whenever they were ready.
Microsoft wants 10 to be a universal operating system. One experience across PCs, tablets, phones and many other devices like Raspberry Pi, Xbox One, and their HoloLens. Microsoft says they are testing more than 2,000 devices for compatibility.
Can Microsoft deliver big updates without affecting Windows’ daily performance? There will still need to be times when it will require Windows 10 to do an automatic restarts so that updates can take effect.
Being that they can push updates and features to you, how often will those be things that you would NOT have chosen to download or update? Will you ever be able to reject a change?,
What happens after a year if I don't like 10?

For some nostalgic chuckles and grimaces, check out this Windows 95 commercial.

Does the Web Mean the End of Forgetting? And Is That Good or Bad?

I wrote a post once about the virtual life that is likely to follow you after your death. I joke to friends that because of my queue of posts to various sites that I have, I will probably be posting new things for awhile after I pass from this world.

And I know I have forgotten more than I remember. Can the Web help me with that?

This 2010 article from The New York Times suggested that "The Web Means the End of Forgetting."

Is that a good thing? Could this also create an existential crisis? Does what the Internet offers make it impossible to erase your posted past and move on?

...a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever...

Our character, ultimately, can’t be judged by strangers on the basis of our Facebook or Google profiles; it can be judged by only those who know us and have time to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, face to face and in context, with insight and understanding. In the meantime, as all of us stumble over the challenges of living in a world without forgetting, we need to learn new forms of empathy, new ways of defining ourselves without reference to what others say about us and new ways of forgiving one another for the digital trails that will follow us forever.

But Has Technology Really Changed Your Pedagogy?

Although those of us in educational technology constantly talk about how it has changed education and how it will change education, it is much harder to explain how it has changed teaching.

If all the technology you use in the classroom were gone tomorrow, how would it affect the way you teach?

Has your philosophy, your pedagogy or your methodology changed in any permanent way?

Take away the computers and the Internet and projectors, your electronic gradebook and all the rest, and I am sure any good teacher could still teach.

There are media stories all the time about people trying to go "cold turkey" on their connections by giving up the Net or their smartphones. It's difficult, But I suspect that giving up all the technology in your classroom would be easier for most teachers K-20.

Could you go back to paper books, papers, pens, a non-digital whiteboard or easel? Sure, you could. But would you actually teach differently?

I have read several times that if doctors, engineers or even farmers lost all the technology created in the past 30 years, they would have a very difficult time doing their jobs as well using the methodologies of 1983. Not true of teachers?

Yes, this is a very hypothetical question to ask and the technology isn't going away (except for those short-term situations after disasters). My thought experiment is to take the 2013 math teacher and put her in a 1983 classroom world. How does she teach? Whatever falls away is what technology changed in her pedagogy. Would the science teacher be more affected than the language teacher?

My own personal reflection on this is that as much as I use technology in my preparation to teach and in the classroom, I don't think my own teaching style has been dramatically changed over the years by technology.

The biggest exception is my online teaching. If that needed to go back to 1983 and some correspondence model of distance learning, it would require a major shift in my content and my methods - but my philosophy and pedagogy would not change as much.

Advanced Search

I'm always a bit surprised when I see someone do a search online and be disappointed to get either too few results or, more likely, too many irrelevant results. Most search sites have an "advanced search" feature which often solves those issues and others.

On my Serendipity35 tech learning blog, I wrote about using Google for better search. That's useful for yourself and is also something anyone who teaches should make sure their students know and use.

I want to note here an example of a vendor search. Most of us use Amazon to find books and media, but far fewer people use their advanced search feature.

Start by going to the Advanced Search on Amazon. From there I could set up a search for books on "HTML5" published after "2011", and available for the Kindle and get only those results.

After doing my advanced search, I can even limit the search further from the list provided in the left column on the results page. If I wanted the really new publications, I could choose to see only the titles published in the last 30 days.

Amazon's advanced search also works for music, TV, movies, magazines and toys and games.

A Parent's Struggle With a Child's iPad Addiction

recent piece by David Pogue

I think my 6-year-old is addicted to the iPad.

He asks for it constantly. He wants to use it in the car. He wants to use it at every unscheduled moment at home. He brings it to the dinner table.

When I tell him it’s time to shut off the iPad and head up to bed, or put his shoes on, or head out to the bus, he doesn’t hear me the first three times I ask. Sometimes, he gets bizarrely upset when I say I have to take it away now — out-of-character upset. That’s what makes me think he’s addicted.

And trust me — having read The New York Times series on the physiological effects of electronics on young minds, I’m plenty worried...

A Parent's Struggle With a Child's iPad Addiction - NYTimes.com

Streaming TV Players

So many ways to watch TV besides the traditional way.

I'm a Netflix user and was very tempted to buy their Roku streaming player (less than $100 bucks) which gives you movies on demand, all you can eat, with your Netflix subscription.

But they keep adding devices on which you can instantly watch movies and TV shows.

Now I see that Netflix will be on Google TV devices that will be available later this month. Here’s Google’s announcement about it - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/here-comes-google-tv.html

The choices are (like a lot of technology these days) overwhelming to the point of me making no purchase at all. (Still hung up deciding on the iPhone versus Android when the iPhone goes on Verizon.)

Apple TV's newest model, Boxee Box by D-Link, and the Roku XD Streaming Player all sound pretty good.

Any recommendations. dear reader, based on actual experiences using one of them?

Your Digital Tattoos

You've heard the term "digital footprint?" A digital footprint is the data trace or trail left by someone's activity in a digital environment.

You interact with your mobile phone, the Internet, mobile web and other digital devices and sensors and you leave invisible footprints behind - data on what you have done, where you have been, how long you stayed, maybe even where you are physically located and what your friends think about your travels.

Now, I have heard a new term: "digital tattoo." Maybe it's another footprint, maybe it's something new. But, like getting inked, it's worth giving some thought before proceeding.

You leave a permanent mark in cyberspace whenever you post, publish, or comment. It's like a tattoo because it is difficult to remove (maybe impossible) it's going to be there long after that impulse that made you do it.

A Good Sign for Reading?

Should it been seen as a good sign for the state of reading that the top-selling, most wished-for and most-gifted item on the Amazon website is the Kindle?

I can see most-wished-for (as in their customer wish-lists) since it would be cool to have one, but they cost a couple hundred bucks. (Even with Black Friday deals).

The Kindle Store currently has more than 360,000 titles, including 101 of 112 books currently found on the New York Times Best Seller list. New York Times Best Sellers and most new releases are only $9.99, and there are a good number for less.

I suspect that if I had one, I would be even more behind on my To Read list.

Or should this be viewed as a positive economic indicator, rather than one about reading habits?

Mickey Rooney Discusses Twitter with Ben Stiller

Watched this video tonight after coming home from visiting my mom (91 this year; Mickey will be 89 next month) and trying to explain to her why her TV needs a digital box to get Comcast's signals now. She doesn't want digital TV, she says, just the channels she was already getting.

After spending more than two hours on the phone with Comcast last night and tonight trying (unsuccessfully) to get her Digital Transport Adapter activated (after 8 calls and talking to the computer voice and 4 service reps, one who said "My computer just froze."), I think Mickey is right.

Mickey actually understands Twitter well enough to know that it's not entertaining and that it's not much fun.

Next, Ben should ask him to critique facebook.com/benstiller

Kindle time?

The Amazon Kindle is now $299, so is it time to buy one? I have yet to actually know someone who has one, so all I know is the hype. Any Kindle love stories out there?

Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy. Over 300,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, and magazines. Many of the New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99.

It is tempting...

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