Noah? No

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Ted

Here’s a footnote to my prior article on Cosmos and God:

If ever there was a Bible story that makes absolutely no sense, it is the story of Noah. It’s so easy to find logical fallacies in the telling that it hardly seems worth the trouble to do so. However, Noah has recently received more than his usual amount of attention, thanks to the Darren Aronofsky movie starring Russell Crowe. An assortment of articles (such as this one) debate the story’s “accuracy.” Several Christian groups are alarmed at the movie’s supposed misrepresentations.

Although there’s not much I can add that has not already been said, I’ll offer a few personal thoughts anyway:

• In Genesis 6-9, God expresses his regret at creating “man” because all men have become evil and wicked. Really? Isn’t God perfect? If so, how could he create something he later regrets?

As an aside: Can you imagine what would happen if someone alive today claimed to be having conversations with God similar to what Noah had? They would almost certainly be declared insane.

• Can it really be true that everyone on earth was evil at the time of Noah, as God asserts in Genesis? What about newborn children? What about most children really? What about the people in distant parts of the world that were unaware of what was going on in the Middle East?

Did everyone really have to die to appease God here? Why couldn’t God have selectively destroyed just the truly evil people, similar to what he did when the Egyptian first-born were slain — as told in Exodus and recalled by Jews every Passover? For some reason, this was apparently not a possibility.

Instead, if the story is true, God executed the biggest act of genocide in history (as others have pointed out).

• Moving on to the specifics of the flood (and again as has been pointed out by others), it would be impossible for the ark to contain a pair of every living creature. There were just too many. It would certainly be impossible for them all to survive for the duration that the ark was afloat. For starters, the varying ecological requirements for each species would prevent this.

Digging a bit deeper, what about the polar bears in the Arctic, the penguins in Antarctica, or all the animals unique to Australia? What about species that live exclusively in caves? Or in the jungles of South America? Did they somehow make it to the ark? If so, how? And if not, how do we explain their existence today?

On a smaller scale, consider insects. There are “more than 925,000 species of insects that scientists have identified. Still, this represents only 20 percent of all species believed to exist” today. Were all of these species on the ark? What about all the microscopic organisms that existed at the time? Were these “paired up” and put on the ark? Not likely.

Yes, one could argue that God intervened, in some miraculous way, to allow all these animals to board the ark, co-exist and survive until the flood waters receded. But resorting to miracles is a slippery slope. If God could use a miracle to accomplish something like this, why require an ark at all? Why couldn’t God have instead used his miraculous powers to keep the necessary animals alive without an ark? Wouldn’t that have been much simpler?

I am sure that the people who take the Noah story literally have invented answers to respond to all of these questions. But that’s the point. They are “invented” answers. They are suppositions. They have no basis in fact.

My view here extends beyond the story of Noah to the Bible as a whole. Rather than viewing the Bible as literal historical truth, it makes more sense to view it as a collection of stories created by humans in an attempt to comprehend the world back when humans had very little knowledge about how the world really worked.

Consider this: From the time the New Testament Bible was written, it would take about 1,500 more years before we came to accept that the earth revolved around the sun and not the reverse. It is only in the last two centuries that we’ve come to understand that stars are actually distant suns light-years away from earth. At the other end of the spectrum, it took us the same 1,500 years to discover that microscopic organisms exist and the critical role they play in our lives. It’s been less than 100 years since we broke the genetic code and began to truly comprehend how reproduction and inheritance work. In that context, it’s not surprising that people might take the story of Noah seriously thousands of years ago. But not anymore.

Presumably, an omniscient God, present at the time of Christ, knew that someday we would “discover” bacteria, DNA, computers, space travel, black holes and all the rest that makes up modern science — including many things we have yet to discover. And yet the Bible makes no mention of any of this. Rather, as you would expect from a document written by humans, it is restricted to the (very limited and often incorrect) knowledge humans had at the time.

That’s why for me, rather than come up with torturous explanations for the contradictions and impossibilities contained in the Noah story, it makes far more sense to accept the obvious: The story amounts to a folk tale, a fable, a legend, a morality lesson. Call it whatever you want. Just don’t call it true.

Posted in Entertainment, Evolution, General, Movies, Religion, Science | 2 Comments

Deleting, archiving and reinstalling iOS Apps

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Ted

Recently, Kirk McElhearn posted an article discussing what to do with apps that you no longer want but are still in your Mac’s iTunes Library. He pointed out that, when a forgotten and unwanted app shows up in your Updates list, you can Control-click the app’s icon to delete the app directly from the Updates view. You don’t need to shift to the All or List views to delete the app. Good to know.

However, this got me thinking that it was time I did a major clean up of my own app collection. I have over 600 apps in my iTunes Library and I no longer use the majority of them. I suppose I could simply delete the dormant apps. However, the hoarder in me wanted an easy way to keep track of what I’ve deleted as well as retaining the capability to quickly reinstall deleted apps without having to re-download them from the App Store. In other words, I wanted some sort of Archive/Unarchive function.

Unfortunately, iTunes does not provide such a feature. Still, after a moment’s thought, I realized I could manually perform an equivalent action. This may already be obvious to you. If so, you needn’t read further. For the rest of you, here’s what to do:

1. Go to your apps list in iTunes and select the apps you want to delete, either singly or in groups.

2. Control click to bring up the contextual menu. Select Delete.

3. From the first window that appears, select Delete App.

4. From the second window that appears, select Move to Trash. But do not empty the Trash.

5. Repeat as needed until you are done with all your deletions.

6. Open the Trash window. Drag all the apps there to a new folder (title it App Archive or something similar). You can locate this folder anywhere, even on a hard drive separate from the rest of your iTunes Library.

That’s basically it.

Now, whenever you want, you can open the App Archive folder to see a complete list of all the apps you’ve deleted. Additionally, if you double-click any app in the folder, it will reinstall itself in your iTunes Library. The archived copy of the app will remain in place, so you’ll need to separately delete it if you no longer want a duplicate in the Archive folder.

If the app has been updated since you deleted it, you should soon be presented with the opportunity to update the reinstalled app.

Posted in Apple Inc, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mac | 2 Comments

The decline (and fall) of the DVR

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Ted

Remember the videocassette recorder (VCR)? What a glorious piece of technology. For the first time in human history, people could record TV shows for later viewing (“time-shifting”). Freed from the shackles of when the networks offered programming, people could instead watch shows whenever it was convenient. Hooray!

The revolution moved on

And yet…about the only place you’ll find a VCR today is at electronics recycling sites. What happened? The revolution moved on. DVDs replaced cassettes.

While DVDs were a vast improvement in playback quality and convenience, they were almost never used for recording TV shows. For starters, DVD recorders were far more rare than the ubiquitous players. No matter. As it turned out, most people had never used their VCRs to record shows. It was just too complicated. Unless you planned to be home for the starting time of a show, you had to figure out how to record while you were away. A successful time-shift required that you (a) remember to insert a blank tape and rewind it if necessary (b) make sure the tape was sufficiently long to record your show, slowing the record speed as needed and (c) set the VCR to the desired television station or input setting.

Even after you overcame these hurdles, the Mt. Everest of hurdles remained: Figuring out how to program the device to start and stop at the correct time. The majority of people gave up at trying to get rid of the pesky blinking “12:00.” Even if you succeeded, you had to do it all again each time you wanted to record a show.

So most people wound up using their VCRs and DVD devices almost exclusively for playback of prerecorded material. And that’s where things stood until…

The revolution moved on…again

The digital video recorder (DVR) arrived! Suddenly, time-shifting was drop-dead simple. Want to record six different shows each on a separate station? No problem. You can even set up a season pass to record a series without needing to know exactly if or when episodes will air. And you can almost instantly select to playback any of your recordings. Fantastic!

There remain a couple of drawbacks to DVRs. For one thing, unlike with a VCR, you need to pay a monthly fee, typically to your cable company, in order to make use of the DVR. But, by now, this is a minor extension to what people are already doing. More troublesome, it’s almost impossible to make external copies of your recordings. This means that you can’t, for example, make a backup copy of a show or lend a recording to a friend—as you could easily do with videocassettes. And, should your DVR break and need to be replaced, hold on to your hat: you lose all your recorded content.

And that’s about where things stand now.

[Note: TiVos are better than most other DVRs in terms of offloading content. The latest Roamio TiVos can send recorded video to your iOS devices. And almost all TiVos can transfer shows to your computer, albeit it a painfully slow rate. Good, but still not an ideal solution.]

The revolution keeps on moving

The rumblings that signal the next major technological shift are already here: internet streaming and cloud-based video services such as iTunes, Netflix and HBO GO. Devices such as Apple TV and Roku are now serving as DVR alternatives in many households, despite the lack of any recording option. As these services and devices continue to improve, DVRs (as well as DVD and Blu-ray players) will eventually join VCRs in the dustbins of the not-too-distant future.

More substantial change is on the way. Here’s a glimpse of one possible future:

Imagine a cloud-based service that stores every movie and television show ever recorded/filmed/whatever (except perhaps movies currently in theaters and the most recent episodes of TV shows). Now imagine that you can access this immense library merely by paying a monthly fee. I expect the fee to be fairly steep by today’s standards, around $100/month. But it will be comparable to what most people are paying now for similar access (via a combination of payments to Netflix, Hulu, renting and buying movies, etc.).

As a subscriber, you will be able to stream any movie or TV show (without commercial interruptions) to any of your Internet-connected devices (TV, computer, tablet or smartphone).

You’ll also be able to watch content when you’re offline, for no additional fee. To do so, you’ll just download your desired items to your digital device. There will be some limitations here. As with current rented movies, the downloads will “expire” after a brief period of time, say a month. And there will be a limit to how many downloads you can have active at one time (perhaps a half dozen). Still, this should be more than adequate to cover your viewing for those occasions when you don’t have an Internet connection.

What about those movies you have to “own”—perhaps because you’re worried they might get removed from the cloud service someday? Once again, not a problem. There will be an option to purchase content, just as you can now do from the iTunes Store. However, because you’re also paying a monthly fee, I expect the purchase price to be cheaper than the current going rates.

There you have it: one service for just about anything you might want to watch (except for live sports and news shows), available just about anywhere and anytime you want to watch it. And no need to remember to record anything. Nirvana.

Roadblocks

The essential technology to implement this system exists today. In fact, for music, via services such as Spotify or Rdio, you can already pretty much accomplish what I’ve described here. Offering the same capability for video is not as simple. It will almost certainly require upgrades to the current Internet bandwidth. But that’s coming. I don’t consider this a dealbreaker.

The bigger question mark is whether the existing content creators and providers (Comcast, TV networks, Hollywood studios, etc.) will ever willingly go along with such a system. At present, given their track record, I’d have to say no. They will certainly put up a fight — a big fight — similar to what they are now doing with Aereo. But they do this with every outside challenge to the status quo, dating as far back as when Hollywood railed against television as a dire threat to its survival.

[Note: Aereo, although much more limited in scope than what I have proposed here, offers a feature not included in my proposal: it can function as a cloud-based DVR for live broadcasts. If this too became widespread, it would be another nail in the coffin for the traditional DVR.]

Still, I remain optimistic that, when a strongly desirable technological advance becomes practical, as is the case here, it cannot be blocked indefinitely. As the forces of change gather steam, the opposing parties will reluctantly make the necessary concessions while at the same time figuring out a way to continue to make money. Yes, there will be some losers as well as winners. But that’s how progress happens.

Something of this sort may well be what Apple has been trying to cobble together with its yet unannounced but long-rumored venture into television. If so, it would explain why they are having such a difficult time bringing it to market. Getting all the relevant parties on board is a balancing act that even Steve Jobs might have been unable to pull off. Regardless, I expect we’ll see the fruits of Apple’s labors sometime within the next year.

The other possibility is that Apple fumbles the ball and someone else (such as Comcast) picks it up and runs with it. I hope not. The result probably won’t be nearly as good for consumers as what Apple would have done.

Whoever succeeds and however they do it, one thing is certain: Change is coming and, when it arrives, it will be curtains for the DVR.

Posted in Apple Inc, Entertainment, Movies, Technology, Television | 2 Comments

The cost of a digital life

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Ted

If you’re single, start with your monthly smartphone bill. Double that if you share expenses with a spouse who also has a smartphone. Or, if you have some sort of shared “family rate,” use that number.

Now add whatever you pay for Internet access.

Next take your monthly cable (or satellite of whatever) television subscription.

If you’re as connected as I am, these three costs combined could equal or exceed $360 per month. That’s $4320 per year.

But don’t stop there. Let’s move on to all your monthly and annual fees that exist only because the Internet exists.

For openers, let’s assume you have Netflix streaming. Count Amazon Prime if you mainly joined to have access to their streaming videos. Add these two together and you have almost another $200 per year.

Do you pay for something like Backblaze to backup your data to the cloud? Do you pay for cloud storage to Dropbox or iCloud or anything similar? If so, toss those in.

What about music subscriptions services such as Spotify or Rdio or even iTunes Match?

Do you pay to subscribe to digital versions of magazines/newspapers? If so, count them, unless you would have otherwise paid to have a print subscription.

Finally, add in any other Internet-based fees that you pay on a regular basis, from website hosting to VPN networking.

The combined total will obviously vary a lot from person to person. For me, it comes to about $4800 per year, or about $400/month. For most people who are active Internet users, I believe the number will be similar.

Remember, this is all money spent on services that largely did not exist twenty years ago! And the amount we spend each year seems to only get bigger — as newly emerging services become commonplace to the point of becoming “essential.”

If you’ve wondered why you have more trouble coming up with the money to pay your bills each month, even when most of your major expenses (rent, food, etc.) remain stable, now you know.

Posted in Technology | Comments Off on The cost of a digital life