Monday, April 20, 2015

Google to big to fail?

I did something today that I found very interesting. Interesting to me I am sure, but I do measure by bemusement against my own experiences and expectations and now against what others might generally accept.

Having recovered from an operation I am well enough now to only need be seen by the fine doctors that saw to me twice a year. So last Friday I set the appointment for 6 months hence. Today I got the letter, proving that the top heavy administration that is crippling our healthcare system is at least doing its job.

Then I set about the task of reminding myself. This is where my fascination set in. I was about to set my appointment in Google Calendar. Six months time. Interesting really isn't it. I had conversation about a week ago about a company that is too big to fail. Funnily, I can't even remember what I argued! Did I argue that Google is too big to fail? Or did I argue that Google was bound to eventually fall from grace like every other big company before it, lets face it - Microsoft is not what is once was. Apple fell and came back - but it fell. IBM once owned the market. Dell had a good byte (lols) of the cherry. But all these companies are clearly still here. What about Commodore, Atari, Amstrad.

Now someone could come back at me with every example I give and argue the toss. Excellent go on.

But think also of Yahoo! who fell (big time) and is back. Blackberry, Nokia. There clearly are examples of what I am talking about. And this is why it is good what I can't remember what I argued. It makes the conversation objective. It helps me remember that a lot of big, and I am really only talking about the BIG companies here, do at least fall. And when they fall the next giant either fumbles or falls strategically into its place.

The interesting example here is IBM who lost their superpower status to Microsoft in the eighties with the operating system wars and Yahoo who lost their superpower status to Google in the search market in the 90's.

All things come and go, all things. Period. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Mountains, time, physics, even Google. So when will Google change, and how suddenly and how much and for how long? Well, I hope they around for the next six months so I can remember my appointment!

:)

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Ubuntu Linux and my family

We have a Dell laptop... a Latitude E5420. It has a regular hard drive in it, that is, platters, slowness, not being an SSD (Solid Sate Drive). It was good in its day, and is by all mean still a great laptop it needed a rebuild. I wanted to make a dedicated laptop espiceally for the television, you know for things like Steam TV, Netflix, Youtube etc. A million reasons exist why I would want a good laptop plugged up with a HMDI cable to our TV.

Now on purpose I have NOT researched Linux. I say this because there are two other huge parameters the family laptop beside the TV has to meet. It HAS to be able to very easily play movies. This will be done with previously mentioned Netflix, but it also has to be able to torrent films! We torrent alot of stuff. So I have to be able to look up a torrent, download it, and watch it - easily. Very very easily. I have done this on my phone yesterday. On my Samsung S5 I torrented an episode of Modern Family on my mobile phone. It was extremely handy and clear and obvious what I had to do.

The second parameter that the Ubuntu Linux laptop has to meet is to be able to play Minecraft! Not some older hacked version that is made to fix Linux, I mean version 8.2 comes out on the PC (Windows) and I want to be able to play it straight away. It would also be great if I could play Minecraft on the little LAN my kids set up on the two Windows 7 computers and be a third computer, but Linux.

So why did I not research any of this, I could have of course, but if Linux is going to be taken seriously but the average home user it simply has to be able to do everything that Windows can do.

So here I go.... first step is to get a laptop that I will install Linux onto. As I said, I have a Latitude E5420 but I also had a 60 gigabyte SSD hard drive laying around. So I installed the hard drive instead of the regular one that was in Dell in the first place, albeit the HD in the Dell was around 160 gig I think, basically, I am loosing alot of real estate.

So I downloaded a program from http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/#button and that will make an installer for me so I can make my USB stick into a bootable device.

I don't know what a persistent file size is so I left it alone


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