Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Lost and the Losers

I think I am not going gently into that good night as I age. I was made aware of the following yesterday and today which showed I am getting old and no longer fit:

Mr. Jobs in introducing his new tools said (among other things):
…Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”


Last night as I watched television with my two college educated young relatives, I suggested watching the presidential debates and was told that they wanted to watch the two-hour episode of “The Biggest Loser” which we did. Yes, this is a pun in so many ways.

The cherry on the top is that we will be implementing a new security policy in our office where we will need to change our network password every 60 days and it must be 12 (yes 12) characters in length and use upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols. Does anyone think this will reduce security on our PCs other than me for the OBVIOUS reasons?

7 comments:

  1. i say get a tv for your room! i think it was the best debate so far.

    the password mess...oh, do i remember the insanity! i had to change mine every month before i retired. i had to write the password down and keep it fairly available so i would not forget it. if we forgot to change it before the month changed, we were kicked out of the system totally. that required a memo and subsequent approval to have someone in another office downtown go into the sytem, re-enter our names, and give us a temp password which we had to change at once. what a messssssss!

    i will be glad when you can retire! :)

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  2. What? I may need glasses but I read.

    LOL The Biggest Loser? A new president is coming soon and it's an exciting race.

    12 digits? I can't remember 6 letters.

    I'm feeling out of it!
    HUGS from one grandma to another.

    Dave's daughter just gave us another grandson on the 14th. We need a girl. ;)

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  3. I loved the idea of the Kindle. I thought that people who commute by train would benefit the most.

    My library is still pretty busy when I go there. Somebody is reading.

    I have to admit I am tuned out for a bit from the Presidential debates, but I also didn't watch any shows, either.

    That is an insane policy for the passwords. Whew.

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  4. I keep a notebook with passwords, etc., in it - but even I would have trouble with a password THAT long!

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  5. Anonymous7:03 AM

    Kenju,
    That is one of the reasons I felt it was bogus. EVERYONE is going to write it down somewhere making it much easier for someone to break into the network.
    Tabor

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  6. You've got to love the morons who keep coming up with these ideas!
    Another good reason for retirement!

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  7. Anonymous12:48 PM

    Jobs may very well have gotten his statistics from a recent New Yorker article by Caleb Crain: Twilight of the Books (Dec.24&31,'07 issue). The only good news here, to me, is that we all sense there's a general dumbing down of the culture; Crain's article brings it out into the open so it's easier to talk about and address (and eventually adapt our security systems, etc. to.). ML,Full Fath.

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