Christmas in July (well June is close to July)

 The UPS truck dropped off a carton for me this afternoon.  It had a nice brand new Dell laptop inside.  No bill, no indication of anyone except Dell, maker of the laptop.  I didn't order another laptop, I bought a new Acer in person from a computer store down around White River, two years ago.  Could it be one of those robocallers who say "some an so is charging something expensive to your Amazon Plus card" ?  I canceled Amazon Plus a year ago.  I'm still getting the calls.

   Could it be Youngest Son and his very nice girlfriend sending me a Birthday or Father's day gift?  There is a tiny icon on the shipping label of a gift box tied with a ribbon.  A name that could be very nice girlfriend's first name, with a last name appears on the shipping label.  I have not learned very nice girlfriends last name so could mean anything.  

   So far, Laptop has powered up, connected to my home network, updated Windows and is currently trying to get me to open  an account with Microsoft.  I have avoided that on my current laptop (Redkey) and my Dell desktop (small box).  Microsoft has tightened things up and it doesn't like my email address.  I will see what comes.  I am expecting Youngest Son and very nice girlfriend up here this evening so we ought to be able to straighten things out. 

The Martian Chronicles versus Fahrenheit 451

The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories.  It’s old. Copy write 1950.  Back then little was known of Mars short of what could be seen in a telescope.  The Martian satellites and rovers are half a century in the future.  The short stories are various, some tell of live Martians on Mars, dealing with Terran explorers.  Some tell of Terran explorer's trials and tribulations getting to Mars, settling on Mars, whatever.  I encountered the Martian Chronicles in grade school and I loved it.  I read it repeatedly on my own time.  Still have a paperback.  It broadened my mind a lot. 

  The other book Bradbury is known for, at least in science fiction circles, is Fahrenheit 451.  This is a simple tale of future Nazi like bad guys who burn books they don’t like.  I didn’t read it until much later and it never lived up to the promise of the Martian Chronicles. 

   For some reason school teachers liked Fahrenheit 451 far better than they liked Martian Chronicles.  Probably because the book burning had been going on the Germany less than 20 years before and teachers understood it and detested it.  Martian Chronicles had a lot of stories that required serious thinking to get your head around them.  It’s a pity; I think Martian Chronicles would have developed a love of reading in a lot of children.  Reading Fahrenheit 451 was just work, not much fun.

Robocallers who mumble

The robocallers have sharpened up their game this month.  Used to be, I would pick up the phone, and then wait five seconds.  (one thousand, two thousand ...) If the robocaller failed to answer within 5 seconds (fairly common) I would hang up.  Now, the robocaller picks up the phone after 2 or 3 seconds and starts its spiel.  If the robocaller mumbles, so that I cannot understand what company it is calling from, I hang up.  If the robocallers suggests I press 1 (or any number) I hang up.  

We need a law criminalizing robocallers.

Bye Bye Internet Exploder.

Apparently Microsoft is going to drop Internet Explorer.  The Wall St Journal; ran a long front page article lamenting this, flavored with a lot of IE users tears.  What they did not mention was the history.  Netscape Navigator was the first real web browser and Netscape was selling it for $30, It worked, and lots of people were sending in $30 to Netscape.  Micro$oft woke up to the power of browsers and wrote Internet Explorer to compete with Netscape Navigator.  Only Micro$oft included Internet Explorer as part of Windows, which made it free.  This torpedoed Netscape’s business plan of selling Navigator for $30.  They sued claiming unfair competition.  The Federal Trade Commission dismissed Netscape’s suit. 

   Which was the end of Netscape as a company.  Netscape Navigator was very good, and a bunch of computer savvy hackers maintained Navigator for many years.  Navigator is still out there, it calls itself Firefox now.  I still use it.  According to figures I see on my blog, Firefox is still number three in popularity amount browsers.  Micro$soft and Internal Explorer, and the follow on Edge are so far down they don’t even show.   

Crypto currency takes a dive. "Investors" take a bath.

 The old line financial instruments I understand are stocks, bonds, and bank deposits.  These either grant ownership in a valuable company (stocks) or are backed by promises to pay (bonds) from strong companies (Ford, Facebook, Apple, and many more) or strong governments (USA, Britain, Germany, Japan and others).Bonds issued by dead beats like Greece or Puerto Rico are often bought, but should not be since Greece has no way of paying them off.  Most banks understand this but there were a number of brain-dead European banks that bought Greek bonds because the Greeks offered juicy interest rates. 

   Lately we have crypto currencies like Bitcoin coming on the market.  These sold because they have been going up dramatically in value.  There is nothing behind crypto currencies except the desire to buy them from other investors.  When the other investors stop buying, the crypto currencies sink, badly.  Right now the Wall St Journal has been running stories every day or so about how badly the crypto currencies have tanked and how badly investors have been burned. 

   One of my rules is don’t invest in things that have no value of themselves.  Stocks and bonds can be sold in markets that are open 24/7 and cash can be in your checking account within a day or two.  You cannot do that with crypto currencies.

 

 

What ever happened to that Supreme Court Leaker?

 You would think that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is enough of a lawyer to interrogate the small number of people who had access to the leaked material and figure out who done it by now.  And fire him or her.  And publicise the name, making any future employment in the legal system very difficult. 

Supreme Court Security Force.

We ought to have one. It needs to report to the Supreme Justice only.  It shall protect the lives of the Justices and their families, and any other important Supreme Court personnel that the Chief Justice shall designate.  It shall preserve order around the Court and on any such real estate that the court may possess.  This force shall not involve itself in anyway with plaintiffs before the court.  Its job is strictly to protect Court personnel and property. It shall not arrest people for failing to show up for a court hearing or trial, that is the duty of the various executive law enforcement agencies such as the FBI.

   Size of force, office space, funding, and equipment shall be at the discretion of the Chief Justice.