10 Thoughts for May 7, 2014

1. Dogs that are both deaf and blind -- I was thinking about the kind of life you'd have to give them.  True, dogs use their sense of smell first and foremost, so their handicap isn't that overwhelming.  But you can't ever get angry at them and the only acceptable response to every one of their actions, is love and patience.
2. I often read that Russians believe America is behind some scheme to box Russia in, harboring a cold war mentality.  But for better or worse, Americans really don't care that much about Russia.  Oh sure, online there are volumes of comments on the subject, but in the offline world no one ever asks me to explain what Russia's doing in Ukraine or otherwise expressed concern about Russia.  There are no grand protests or hearings.  Had Russia not intervened in Ukraine, most Americans wouldn't have known where Ukraine was.  The truth is, since Russia stopped being an existential threat following the breakup of the USSR, Americans have stopped paying attention.
3. Watching PBS News Hour, I had to laugh when Stephen Cohen (yet again with his feudal-based outrage) said that Russia is facing an existential threat.  Bull.  They have nuclear weapons.  Maybe Russian influence in the world, long under decline, faces an existential threat, but Russia and its culture will never disappear.  And no, the west has no hidden agenda to make Russia its lapdog.  
4. Tuesday was ChromeOS day, with every Google ChromeOS partner showing off their plans and devices (Chromebooks, Chrome Box, Chrome AIO) for this summer.  We're talking Lenovo, Acer, Asus, HP, Dell, Toshiba, LG and Samsung.  The general plan for this summer includes chromebooks with Intel's Core i3 processors, and wider use of touch screens.
5. I watched half the games between the Portland Trailblazers and Houston Rockets.  The conclusion I reached: the Trailblazers have the talent and therefore capacity to beat anyone, but they can't seem to operate anywhere close to 100% at 100%.  They'd be at the point of breaking the game wide open, and then suddenly go cold and unfocused.  Instead of 6 passes around to find the open man or run a play, they'd rush into a quick shot, inevitably off the mark.  Suddenly, layups became missed easy opportunities.  Mental errors.  This is not a championship team, yet...but I hope I'm proven wrong.
6. I know many people around the world, and especially here in the US, dispute anthropogenic climate warming.  Farmers.  When they start seeking annual compensation for crop damages, it'll be too late to avoid the worst-case scenario and its effects.  We're going to be stuck with a substantially different planet in a few decades, and we're well on our way.  Worse, the cost to both adapt and at the same time reverse these effects will create economic and global chaos.  Thank goodness I'll be dead by the time the worst of the effects will be here.  But just a reminder: I did my part to reduce my carbon footprint; I didn't pass down global warming to the next generations.
7. YES, Net Neutrality does matter.  Comcast is arguing that it should have the right to slow speeds down because it has limited bandwidth.  This is untrue, however.  We still have a lot of dark fiber -- unused -- laying in the ground.  Furthermore, the cost of traffic is down to pennies per MB, and once you have fiber optic lines, the cost to increase carrying capacity comes down to upgrading the ends of the fiber to divide light into smaller bandwidths and not laying new lines of fiber; fiber optic is not like copper or coax.  Furthermore, Comcast is already charging customers for an advertised speed on traffic going one way -- from content hosts to you -- so your traffic has already been paid for.  Finally, let's say Comcast gets its way and is paid by content hosts to stop throttling speeds -- do you really expect Comcast to lower your bill?  No, that double-billing goes to Comcast's profit margins and acquisition costs to further spread its monopoly.
8. I've briefly written about Videostream for Chromecast before.  It keeps getting better with fewer bugs.  Also, it turns out that if you pay for it, you can add playlists -- perfect for music videos.  Videostream is painless and is much smoother than casting a tab from Chrome then dragging a video file onto it.  There remains some drawbacks of Videostream, but it is absolutely a dream app to have.  It's so good, I somehow expect Google or someone else to buy out the devs.
9. I did not know that, up until this week, our friends up North didn't have Google Play Music.  Wow.  If you have Android devices, Google Play Music is a must-have app.  One of these days I'll write up a separate piece on how I've reached Nirvana of home networking, with Google's services at the center of it all.
10. In the middle of the punch list at the radio station, I stopped and listened to streaming music (from Portland Radio Project) on some KRK Systems studio monitors.  I've been depriving my ears, apparently.  I could have sat there all day long and listened to music.