The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!

I've read an article the other day about the death of the PC by the hand of the tablet... (remember 30 years ago... the death of the mainframe by the hand of the PC?). The guy was absolutely bursting at the seams with excitement, like he'd found the Actual Truth. And I thought - another one bites the dust (no, not about the PC). In the past 80 years or so (since the first computer has been built for the military in WW2) they have followed a very old and common pattern of falling prices and diversifying audiences. The first computer was the domain of the USArmy, 15 years later only governments could afford one, another 15 years and we have computers restricted to big corporations' "data rooms" (read, ivory towers), another 15 years we had PC getting in every home, then yet another 15 years (today) we have the computer appearing in every pocket. We started with one for all humankind, and will end with several for each person. It happened before so many times - telephones, anybody? Or the car, maybe. Let's look even deeper in the past - written books? i don't think we can find in the miniaturization and "personalization" of the computer any paradigm shift of the sort the guy mentioned before was exposing. But I guess it makes good news and it sells (I only read it because it got a "+1" from a friend of mine). Anyway, I am convinced  computers will get smaller, cheaper and more powerful every day. And make no mistake, mainframes or smartphones (and everything in between, including PCs and tablets) - they are all computers. And just like the big corporations still employ plenty of mainframes, the PC will be around for a long time. What will actually happen in the personal computer market is the so called "personal cloud" - I am basically going to build myself a central server where I'll store all my files, and all the other computing trinkets - my gaming PC or my wife's email/web browse tablet - will connect to it. I'll put a RAID5 array (four 2 or 3 GB hard drives) in the server and one 128GB SSD in my PC. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Rational Optimist

Just read a very good book over the weekend - The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. A rare breath of fresh air in a world where everybody dances to the tune of "it's the end of world as we know it". For a change, the guy's motto: life is beautiful, and it's only going to get better.
For years I was of the opinion that people see their lives as getting worse (the crappy present versus the now gone golden age) for a very simple reason: life was obviously better 30 years ago, when I was young, healthy, and with no obligations whatsoever - as opposed to today, when I'm older, have worse health and lots of obligations: family, work...
Actually, life today is much better that 30 years ago - if I only compare the life my kids have today versus my childhood 30 years ago - you can easily see huge improvements everywhere - health, food, clothing, toys, education.

Another gem

Been a while, eh? Anyway, I found another interesting gem out there the other day: http://www.greatcanadianrebates.ca/. Basically, you get some cash back while shopping on the net. And also an interesting offer: be approved for a credit card with no annual fee, receive $60 and a free wifi reader. The credit card is the MBNA Sony Rewards MasterCard, and the reader is the new Sony WiFi Reader. The reader retails today for $150 on http://store.sony.ca/. So all in all you stand to receive $210. Way to put that good credit rating at work for some hard cash. The small print: apply before March 15 and make 5 purchases on the card (no minimum amount required) before May 31. 2012, yeah. Not bad eh?