O Tempora, O Mores #6

Excellently funny article out of New Zealand about the dangers of letting kids near computers:
Toddler buys real digger online
A New Zealand couple nearly found themselves in a financial hole when their three-year-old daughter bought an earthdigger in an internet auction.

The child, Pipi Quinlan, was trying out her online skills while her parents were asleep in bed.

They only unearthed the truth when they received an email demand for NZ$20,000 (£8,000) from the seller.

Pipi's mother, Sarah, had left the computer logged on. The owner of the digger is not insisting on the sale.

Shock

Sarah Quinlan told the BBC that she had been looking for toys online, and using an automatic log-in to an auction site.

But a shock was in store when she got up the next day.

"When I found an email from a guy who said 'can you deposit the money?' I thought - hang on - this isn't quite what I expected," she said.

Pipi had only been allowed to use the computer for the first time the week before - but is obviously a fast learner.

"It's been a lot of fun," said Sarah, "She's earned a bit of notoriety."

But Sarah is determined the same thing will not happen again, and has urged the parents of other young children not to be caught out.

"I've taken all my automatic log-ins off anything she could purchase from," she said.

O Tempora, O Mores #4a

Well, it looks like we have found a way to outwit technology.

After I had pointed out how Google Reader captures the contents of all posts in its subscription list, including those that the author decides ought not to be shared with the world at large, my friend Tara D posted a solution on the comments to the post. For those who don't read the comments, here is what Tara said:

Instead of deleting the post, delete all the content of the post, and re-post it with the words "Post Deleted by the Author" (or any variation thereof), and re-save it without changing the title of the post. Of course, every visitor hereon in will see this new text, but that is a small price to pay to prevent all us evil geniuses (like me) from reading your inadvertently public private thoughts.

O Tempora, O Mores #4

Some months ago, when I started listening to different podcasts and reading the blogs of a number of my friends on a regular basis, I discovered the joys of Google Reader. It was so convenient: enter the feed address in the "Add Subscription" box (you can get the correct address by clicking the RSS button), click OK, and - hey, presto - Reader does the rest. It downloads all entries, including those from years gone by if they have been so formatted, and automatically downloads new entries as they are published.

It's fantastic. However...

This is technology we're talking about, so there has to be a pitfall or two (dozen). Here is a major flaw that I've discovered recently.

If you decide to delete a post, the general public may be blissfully unaware of it, but not someone who uses Google Reader. Reader captures the post, and does not delete it. Worse still, I don't know how to delete a post from Reader.

So, dear authors, beware the next time you consider posting something confidential or controversial on your blog. With some people, you may not be able to take it back.

Touching story

I have already mentioned my love of Wikipedia in a previous blog post, It is the first place I turn to nowadays to find out more about...well, just about anything. And while it is very, very good, being that it is open for anyone to edit, and that there is no rigorous peer-review procedure, it is not unfallible. (Then again, neither is the gold standard amongst encylopaedias, Encyclopædia Britannica.)

BBC Radio personality and comedian, Martin Kelner, sometimes prefaces his references to Wikipedia as "that unimpeachable source", while I refer to it as "The Source of All Knowledge", or TSOAK. As a rebuttal to that, my blogger friend, Charlottalove, calls it TSOaAK (the small 'a' standing for 'almost').

I visit Wikipedia almost every day, and I particularly enjoy the featured articles and the "Did you know..." sections. I've even been known to while away slow hours (and even not-so-slow hours) browsing some of the 2.4+ million articles. In fact, all my knowledge of Israel's military history was acquired at the feet of TSOAK.

Earlier this month, the "Did you know..." section had a link to the entry for the Podgórski sisters, The blurb read:

Did you know...that the Podgórski sisters—six-year-old Helena and her teenage sister Stefania—harbored thirteen Jews for over two years in the attic of their house during the Holocaust?

"No, I did not know that. A teenager and a six-year-old did that? For two years? Tell me more."

So Wikipedia told me more. And I am...humbled by these two amazing siblings. The world is a better place because of people like the Podgórski sisters.

Here is their entry in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website.

I have chosen to publish this post today as it was on 27 July, 1944, that Przemysl was liberated by the Soviet army, and the war ended for the Podgórski sisters and their 13 Jewish friends.

O Tempora, O Mores #3

In this day and age of e-commerce and online shopping and trading, I feel it almost anachronistic to have to answer the doorbell and find someone trying to sell me an encyclopaedia. Yet, that happened to me in Chennai not too long ago.

Some young lady rang the doorbell one afternoon and attempted to sell me an encyclopaedia. She had only volume on hand with her, and I wasn't sure if that was one volume or the whole kit and kaboodle. She had hardly started her spiel when I interrupted her (I know; that wasn't very polite of me). "What are you -- nuts? Why would I waste money on an encyclopaedia? Haven't you heard of Wikipedia -- The Source Of All Knowledge -- which I have been known to abbreviate to TSOAK? There are over 2 million articles (to be said in a Dr. Evil accent) on that site. There is no way your puny mass of cut trees can compete.

"Why, only the other day, my mother was asking me if it would be possible to find out some details about a medicine that a patient of hers was taking, the name of which that she (my mother) had not come across before and so was delaying her diagnosis of the situation. In the time it took her to say that to me, I had spied the chemical name of the medicine on the information pamphlet, brought up the relevant entry in TSOAK and given her all the information she required.

"Tell me, can your miserable collection of words printed on dead oxygen-providers do that? I don't think so."

Actually, what I said to her was, "No, thank you", and gently closed the door. But the stuff before is what I thought of saying to her.

O Tempora O Mores #2

I told you the previous story about my choosing which camera to buy to set up this story about my laptop purchase.

I have had my laptop for over five years now. It wasn't exactly top-of-the-line when I bought it, but after travelling to six countries with me, and now bearing the resultant bumps and bruises, it has definitely started to show its age. So I have been thinking of upgrading for some time now.

I nearly did so in Qatar, but I didn't. On returning to India, my choices had been narrowed down to two brands, Sony and Toshiba. I went to the respective showrooms and got an idea of which one I preferred.

I then did the sensible thing. I came home and typed the name of two models in a Google search box, the Sony Vaio VGN-CR 36/B and the Toshiba A200-E562D.

This is what I found.

Lightning strikes again.

Incidentally, I went with for reliability.





But I nearly went for the fashion statement.

O Tempora O Mores #1

This is the title under which I will make my observations about how technology is influencing life in general, and mine in particular.

* * *

I remained a stubborn holdout against the digital bandwagon in the world of cameras for a number of years. Not that I had anything against going digital: I was just waiting for the number of megapixels on offer to reach my minimum threshold of 8.0, and at an affordable price.

Also, for the past few years, I've been using my cousin's very nifty Nikon F-601 SLR camera, and I was very pleased with the results. So I was not going to go for a compact digital camera, but one of the big daddies, a digital SLR.

Last year, by the time I got to Qatar, I had identified the one that I wanted: the Canon 400D. Unfortunately, every time I went to the mall to buy it, it was out of stock.

Finally, it showed up in December, just before Christmas. I was stoked. Until I discovered that it didn't come with a memory card, and also without a proper bag. That made the quoted price not that attractive.

I was with my friend, Shaun, at the time, and he suggested we look at a couple of stores to see if any of them had the camera in stock. We went into another store which didn't have my camera, but had the Olympus E-510 on sale. It looked very nice, but I wasn't too sure as I hadn't done any research on it, and it was a little more expensive than the Canon.

Shaun then told me that there was an Internet Cafe a few doors down in the mall, and we could go and do a little research there. I went to Google, and then typed in the two camera models in the search box.

This is what I found. Someone was looking out for me.