TO UPGRADE OR NOT TO UPGRADE: THAT IS THE QUESTION

If you still have Windows 7 or 8/8.1 on your computer, you have just a few weeks to get a free upgrade to Windows 10. You will still be able to upgrade after the July 29, but it will cost you $110. I bought my laptop with Windows 8. Like almost everyone else, I hated it, and I upgraded it to Windows 10 as soon as it became available last summer. I have Windows 7 on my desktop, and I am keeping it.

Windows 8 is a monstrosity. When it came out, Microsoft was seeing a decline in PC sales. More and more people were connecting to the internet with smart phones and tablets. That was the wave of the future, and the geniuses at Redmond, WA, decided to grab the future by the tail and created a new system that would combine PCs with mobile devices. Their new system (Windows 8) would have tiles that you could touch and move around the screen to open programs, just like the icons on your smart phone. Neat, huh?

No, it wasn’t. People were used to operating their computers through a mouse and keyboard. Further, most new computers did not have a touch screen, so the touch feature was useless to most users. Not only that, but a lot of familiar features were gone. There was no start button. How do you shut the damned thing off except by holding the power button, something we had been told not to do? While, we’re at it, where’s the control panel? A lot of features once reached through the control panel were now done through the control button, more like a smart phone.

Experienced computer users suddenly didn’t know how to do some of the most basic things on their new computers. It was like getting into a new car and finding all the controls had been moved or modified or both.

Computer users were very unhappy. A week after Windows 8 came out in October 2012, Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows Division at Microsoft, was gone. Early in 2013 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that he too was leaving as soon as they found a new CEO, which they did the following summer.

The new boss, Satya Nadella, was faced with a mess. The first improvement that came out was a new version of the operating system, Windows 8.1. This came out a year after the original Windows 8. The new version fixed some of the problems with Windows 8, like restoring the start button that people had been used to for two decades. Also Microsoft started right away on a new system. The new system, Windows 10, came out July 2015, less than three years after Windows 8’s disastrous debut.

Windows 10 is not a terrible operating system. It moved back closer to Windows 7. It also had a couple of entirely new features, the Edge browser and the Cortana, the digital assistant. Using Edge is not like using Chrome or Firefox for the first time. An experienced computer user could just go to Chrome or Firefox and start using them. With Edge you have to figure some things out before you use it, like: Where are my favorites? Edge has some new features. For example, you can write on a web page and save it that way. However, when I use my Windows 10 laptop, if I go on the internet, I use
Chrome rather than Edge. I don’t use Cortana much. However, I do use another digital assistant, Google Now, on my Android phone.

Windows 10 is not and could not be a well-designed system. That is because it had to be build on top of Windows 8.  Otherwise people who had Windows 8 or 8.1 would be shut out. Some people like 8.1 and don’t want to upgrade to 10. If Windows 8 had been an extention/improvement on 7, instead of an attempt to redesign the whole thing, it would have been much better. One thing I don’t like about Windows 10 is that it still has the tiles from Windows 8. That is not a big problem, though, because you can get rid of them if you want.

Shortly after I loaded Windows 10 onto my laptop, I downloaded a program called Start 10. This program makes the user interface in Windows 10 function very much like that of Windows 7. I am happy with that.

Ironically the Windows 10/Windows phone thing didn’t work out for Microsoft. A year after Windows 8’s debut Microsoft bought cell phone maker Nokia for $7.2 billion. Part of the plan was for Microsoft to emulate Apple and make its own mobile devices. Nokia was to make Windows phones. Windows phones never really got off the ground. They had to compete with iPhones and Android phones, which together hold about 95 percent of the smart phone market. Last year Microsoft wrote off a loss of $7.6 billion on its investment in Nokia.

HOW TO MAKE A FORTUNE ON THE STOCK MARKET

Okay, I lied. I have no idea about how to make a fortune on the stock market, but I do know where you can get a lot of information about stocks. If you know something about a stock before you buy it, you’ll be less likely to lose your shirt on a bad investment.

There are lots of sources of information about investments on the internet. I’m going to use Yahoo Finance, but there are many others, including AOL finance that are just as good.

First we have to pick a stock to research. I don’t have a lot of money to invest. I don’t expect to get in at the bottom of the next Google or Facebook, so I am going to look for stocks with a high dividend yield. One of the things available on Yahoo Finance is a stock screener, so I can use that to find my high dividend stock. I am particularly interested in a particular type of stock, real estate investment trust (REIT). REITs have to pay out 90 percent of their profit as dividends to their investors, so they tend to have really a really high yield . These instruments make different kinds of investments in real estate. Some own rental properties or hotels. Others own medical buildings, including nursing homes. Still others specialize in mortgages.

The company I want to research is CorEnergy Infrastructure Trust (CORR).  That sounds like an energy company, but it is a REIT. The real estate it owns hold pipelines and storage tanks. If one of the big petroleum companies want to send some oil through the pipeline or store it in one of the tanks, they have to pay CORR for the use of their facilities.

I got this information from Yahoo Finance, which has a company profile, news, press releases, message boards, and all kinds of statistical information, going back several years. Right now (June 22 at 3:15 p.m.) it is selling for $27.97 a share. On May 13 it paid a quarterly dividend of $0.75 a share.

Things in the news affect the prices of all stocks. At the end of 2015 the price of these shares dropped to about $10.00 Early in 2016 the company decided to make a reverse split of 15:1. In other words, if you owned 150 shares, after the reverse split you would have only 10 shares. At the same time the company raised the dividend. Evidently they hoped that these actions would raise the share price. At first the stock went down even further, but with the high dividend payment, the price started moving up, reaching $23 in mid-spring. Then word came out that one of the companies that used CORR’s pipelines was going bankrupt. The stock headed back down.

But wait! The company didn’t go bankrupt after all, and CorEnergy headed back up. As of today, as we saw, it is selling at almost $28 a share.

If you are interested in numbers, Yahoo Finance has lots of them, including price/earnings ratio, the day’s price range, and the price range for the last year ($10.90 - $33.20). The site is full of valuable information for investors, including analysts’ opinions of the stock.  

The price of the stock has more than doubled in the last four or five months. That sounds good, but the price could just as easily go down. However, I find the dividend yield interesting: $0.75 per quarter or $3.00 per share over a year. At the current price of the stock ($27.97), the dividend yield is over 10 percent. If you bought 100 shares of CORR, you would earn $300 a year in dividends, as long as the dividend stayed the same.

DIGITAL ASSISTANT

The first electronic computers like ENIAC were too big to fit into an ordinary room. They were programmed by hooking wires to various places on the frame. By the sixties computers had shrunk enough that they could fit into one room. Technicians programmed through computer languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, and PASCAL.

With the advent of personal computers in the late seventies, you did not have to be a technician to use a computer, and ordinary users did not program their machines. Early PCs used keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl + S to save a document and Shift + Insert to paste something into a document. It wasn’t long before icons and computer mice made it even easier to operate a computer.

The latest development, something that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called “the next big thing,” is chatbots or electronic digital assistants. The first one of these was Siri, who came with the iPhone. You didn’t even have to use the virtual keyboard. All you had to do was ask a question or give a direction in plain English, assuming that English was your language. The digital assistant could understand commands in over 20 languages and give answers in any of these languages.

Soon Microsoft came out with Cortana, a digital assistant that accompanied Windows 10. Cortana could tell you who won the World Series in 1975, open your calendar, make appointments for you, or even send an email for you. All of this is done with just voice commands.

One of the latest devices comes from Amazon.com. Echo is a cylindrical device that doesn’t even look like a computer. Echo has a voice that is called Alexa. Alexa can adjust the thermostat or turn lights on or off. It can also answer your questions, just like Siri or Cortana.

We can’t forget Google Now, a digital assistant that is available for Android as well as Apple devices. This assistant is also available on any PC. You just go to Google and say “OK Google” or tap on the microphone icon and say what you want. Google Now is very fast and very good at hearing and understanding your request. You can ask Google Now things like: “In what play does Marc Antony give a funeral oration?” Or “In what movie does Clark Gable say, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’?” The assistant quickly comes up with answers to these questions or tells you how far it is from Boston to New York or anything else you want to know.

Computers keep getting smaller and more powerful at the same time and also easier to use. You don’t need to know a computer language to communicate with your machine; you just talk to it, just as you would to any intelligent friend. It is like having a companion with encyclopedic knowledge. You can hold the device in your hand and ask it anything.

This revolution is still going on. Google is working on a newer version of Google Now. It promises to be even better than the present one. The engineers who first developed Siri have created a new digital assistant they call Viv. Viv is not available yet, but in its test run in May, a group of engineers ordered a pizza by talking to it. They just told the assistant where they wanted the pizza to come from. They kept changing the order, adding toppings and taking them off. It was the kind of thing that would have confused most human operators. But Viv had no problem with the order. A short while later the pizza as ordered was delivered to the engineers. All of this was done without touching a phone or a keyboard, doing a Google search, or downloading an app from the pizza maker.

I agree with Satya Nadella that digital assistants are the next big thing.” If you don’t believe me, just ask Siri or Cortana or Alexa or Google Now.

EASY FIX

If you have worked with computers, there have been times when you yelled at your computer, maybe said some bad words and wanted to throw the damned thing out the window. I have been in that situation lots of times, most recently this morning.

My wife couldn’t get on the internet with her computer, a Windows 7 Toshiba laptop. When it works, it connects to the internet through a wireless router. I went to the control panel on her machine and opened Network and Sharing Center and tried to connect from there. I was told that either there was a loose connection or I need a driver update. (A driver is a program that runs some element of the computer or something attached to it.)

I knew it wasn’t a loose connection because the Toshiba connects wirelessly, and my computer was getting on the internet with no problem. And if the problem was a driver, how could I download a driver if the machine wasn’t connected to the internet?

How to solve the problem? Maybe I could connect Janet’s computer directly by connecting it to the router if I had an Ethernet wire that was long enough. Of course that would eliminate one of the advantages of a laptop. She would have to remain close enough to the router for the wire to reach.

I have an old router. Maybe if Janet’s computer could not connect the router I am using now, she would be able to connect through the old one. I didn’t think there would be a problem connecting two routers to the modem that brings the internet signal into the house.

I had to go someplace and didn’t have time to try hooking up any of these wiring combinations, but I wanted to try something quick and easy before I left.

I turned the computer off and turned it back, and it connected with the internet.

Often computer problems can be fixed that easily. Before you get all frustrated and start saying bad words and thinking about throwing you machine out the window, just turn it off and turn it back on. Often that’s all it takes.

LIFE WITHOUT THE INTERNET

A lot of people my age, the over-the-hill generation, want nothing to do with computers. They’ll say things like, “I’ve got along without computers for 73 years. I guess I can get along without them for a few more years.” With good reason they scorn idiots who walk into traffic with their faces glued to their smartphones. Nevertheless, despite their wishes, these technophobes depend on the internet many times every day.

This point was made clearly one day in February 2015 when vandals cut the fiber optic cables that brought the internet to northern Arizona. Many places have a backup internet connection. At the time, Arizona did not. All of a sudden there was no telephone service, and it wasn’t just cell phones that didn’t work. A lot of landline phones don’t make calls over telephone wires but over the internet. The city of Flagstaff lost its telephone service. Citizens could not call the fire department or police department. Robberies were not reported. Police could not respond to accidents nor the fire department to fires. Eventually Flagstaff had to rely on the Arizona Department of Public Safety to dispatch the police and firemen.  North of Phoenix, 911 service was supplemented by hand-held radios. In Yavapati County authorities could not access police department data bases.

Television stations could not access weather reports. Broadcasters showed blank spaces on weather maps where weather statistics would normally appear. Students who wanted to email their assignments to their professors before the deadline could not get online.

Ordinary citizens were affected, and not just those who couldn’t check their email or looks something up on Google. Even the most hardcore Luddite has at least a flip phone for emergencies. These days everyone has a credit card or two and a debit card. One couple in Arizona decided to buy an ice cream cone. They wanted to pay for it with a credit card, but the vendor could not accept credit cards with the internet down. No problem, said the customer. On the other side of the street was an ATM. He crossed the street and put his debit card into the ATM. Alas, without internet access, the ATM wouldn’t let him get any cash.

Workers toiled through the day to find and repair the break. At 6:30 that evening service started to come back, but it was not fully restored until 3:00 the next morning. 

IS YOUR COMPUTER SMARTER THAN YOU?

In the 1980s I was taking a programming class. One of the students asked the teacher how smart computers were. She said, they have an IQ of about 1. After all, computers don't know anything until some human being puts the data in. If the programmer didn't give the instructions correctly, the dumb machine could not use its own judgment to correct the process.

Well, a lot has changed in the last 30 years. Computers have more memory, faster processors, more storage capacity, and they also have access to the internet, which they didn't have 30 years ago. Not only do they have great capacity, but computers are capable of learning new things through a technology called machine learning.

If you're not sure how to spell Constantinople, your computer will tell you. And don’t even think about matching your number crunching skills with a computer, but these machines can do a lot more sophisticated stuff than spelling and arithmetic. Way back in 1997 an IBM computer named Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in a match. In 2011 a new IBM supercomputer, Watson, beat two Jeopardy champions at their game. Technicians had been feeding data to Watson for months, but the machine was not connected to the internet for the contest. It beat the champions with information it held within itself.

Now Watson is being fed medical information. IBM sees Dr. Watson as a tool that can help human physicians. Medical computers can diagnose illnesses better than humans can. For one thing, the machines can hold a lot more information than any human can. Also even the best of us have our prejudices which inform our judgments. Computers are free from prejudice and other forms of intellectual limitations that all of us mere humans have.

Computers can do more than just act as medical assistants. In 2001 robots beat human beings in simulated financial trading competition. Machines can even write financial reports and real estate analyses. They can generate news articles or sports reports based on statistical data from games. They can write in English, Spanish, French or German.

A company called Yseop (pronounced Easy Op) uses artificial intelligence to help its business customers boost revenue, reduce, costs, and increase productivity. The company’s software enables it to speak intelligently to customers. By the year 2020, Yseop believes, every computer, smart phone, and tablet will be a smart machine, able to reason, dialog intelligently, and express conclusions and recommendations in natural language. Yseop’s mission is to turn every computer into a smart machine that partners with people to increase their capacity and performance.

Not only are modern computers pretty smart, but individual machines get even more intelligent through machine learning. I will take a look at machine learning next week.

The computer on which I compiled this blog is far from being a top-of-the-line, newest machine. I bought it about five years ago for $300. I think I’m smarter than this machine, but I’ve been wrong about my own capabilities before. I’m planning to get a new computer within the next year. Will I be smarter than the new machine? I wouldn’t bet on it. 

RANSOMEWARE

The scam

A while back a friend of mine had her computer kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not the old-fashioned message with words cut out of a newspaper and glued to a blank sheet of paper. The note popped up on her computer screen. It claimed to be from the FBI and accused her of downloading child pornography.  My friend’s computer was then locked down, and she could not access her files. The “FBI” would restore her access to her computer when she paid a fine of $300.

My friend, a woman in her seventies, had not downloaded any pornography, nor was the ransom note from the FBI. It was from cyber criminals using ransomware. Somehow they gain control of the victim’s computer and freeze the contents by encrypting it and threatening to destroy it unless a ransom is paid. These criminals attack individuals, small businesses and even hospitals.

Hospitals under attack

A number of large hospital systems have been attacked by hackers. MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center had its data frozen in a ransomware hit. The criminals demanded 45 bitcoins, worth about $19,000, before they would release the key to the frozen data. (Bitcoin is an artificial form of currency. Cyber  criminals prefer it to actual currency because it is harder to trace.)

Hospitals of course need to have constant access to its files. They not only need to protect medical records but they need the network to access critical medical information and to avoid medical errors.

How did the crooks get onto the hospital’s network?

They can gain access by phishing. Phishing is tricking employees to click on a link that opens the network to outsiders. If you have ever received an email with a vague message like, “I thought you would be interested in this” followed by a hyperlink, you have been subject to a phishing expedition. Even if you know the person who supposedly sent you the message, it could in fact be from a hacker. Hackers can hijack user’s email address books and send out spam or virus to everyone on the address book.

 Another way that criminals worm their way into a computer network is by exploiting vulnerabilities in the network itself. Computer systems are so complex that it is impossible to avoid vulnerabilities in them. That is why it is important to keep your antivirus programs up to date.

Protect your data before you are hacked

Get in the habit of backing up any important data so that if your computer is hacked, you can still gain access to your files. However, if you back anything up by a device attached to your computer by a usb plug, that material is also subject to hackers. Likewise a storage device connected to your WiFi is vulnerable to attack. To be sure that your data is safe, store it on a device that is not attached in any way to your computer. Even better, store it in the cloud. That way, even if your computer is completely destroyed, you will be able to recover your records.

What to do if your computer is held for ransom

Hospitals that were hit with ransomware had to pay the ransom because it was critical to get to many of their files. Police and computer companies like Microsoft recommend that individuals not pay the ransom. For one thing, you don’t know whether the thieves will actually release your data.

If criminals are holding your computer for ransom, the first thing you need to do is disconnect it from the internet and intranet so that the virus won’t spread.

Next try to get rid of the virus. Download Malwarebytes or another malware scanner to try to track down the problem. If you can’t use the affected computer, download it on another computer. See what you can find out about the bug that is on your computer and how to get rid of it.

If you have backed up your data, you’re all set.

Prevention

It’s a lot easier to keep malware out of your computer than it is to get rid of it after it gains entry.

• Don’t fall into the trap of clicking on suspicious hyperlinks
• Keep your antivirus up to date

Back up your data so you can easily recover it

GOOGLE KNOWS HOW YOU’RE GOING TO VOTE OR IS YOUR TOASTER SPYING ON YOU?

·                                

As long as I keep people off my computer, there’s no way anyone can find out what sites I visited on the internet. Right? Wrong. Terribly wrong. Google knows how you vote and a lot of other stuff about you.

TOR or The Dark Web

If you plan to do something shady or even illegal on the internet, maybe you should use TOR (The Onion Router). TOR goes through a series of steps before it connects you to that disreputable site. It’s a good way to cover up your tracks. It was used by Ross William Ulbricht, a former eagle scout to set up a black market he called The Silk Road, a black market for illegal products. Before you go the The Silk Road through TOR, though, I should tell you that Ulricht is now a guest at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.

A school administrator in Vancouver used TOR (also called the Dark Web) to look at child porn. Unfortunately for him the FBI are great hackers. They had hacked the porn site and got the email addresses of visitors. With the email address they were able to get the name and address of visitors to the site.

New Technology

As we accept new technology into our lives, we create opportunities for hackers, including law enforcement, to spy on us. Everything from smart TVs to web-connected cars open doors to the secrets we mistakenly think are actually secret. With the Internet of Things we can control lighting, thermostats, door locks, and other things from our smartphone and from a distance. Even toasters can be connected to the internet and sending information (about your toasting habits?) to the cloud. Even some Barbie dolls and baby monitors are connected to the internet. As time goes by, bit by bit, we give up more and more of our privacy.

When you look at those ads online, they’re looking right back at you

Do you remember when you looked up those jogging shoes you were interested in, and later an ad for those shoes popped up when you looked at Facebook on your cell phone? How did they do that? When you looked the shoes on your browser, the site added cookies, invisible little tags that allowed them to follow your activities from site to site, and even from connected device to another, from your laptop to your phone.

These sites not only know that you looked at the page for jogging shoes, they know something about you, like your socio-economic situation, your approximate age, your gender, your health concerns, and your political affiliation.

Just need your phone number

Hackers don’t need a lot of information about you to find out all they want to know. In a recent demonstration in 60 Minutes, armed with just the phone, hackers from Security Research Labs were able to hear and record calls made on the phone, see the contacts on the phone, and get the numbers of every incoming call. They were also able to get the location of the owner of the phone.

Google Knows

Before you read this article, please take this short survey—

Once you take the survey, Google knows a lot about you and not just about the topic of the survey itself. Even if you don’t take the survey, Google can infer a lot about you from your browsing history, things like your age and gender. They can determine your location from your IP address. Using the information they have gleaned, Google can create a representative sample of any demographic group.

You may think that no one is watching, but when you’re on the internet, someone is always watching.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO SWEDEN, DON’T BRING CASH

Most money transfers in Sweden are made with credit cards or smartphone apps. Just 2 percent of the Swedish economy is made with bills and coins, compared with 10 percent in the rest of Europe. Only 20 percent of consumer payments are made with cash. In the rest of the world, 75 percent of such payments are made with cash. More than half of the country’s banks do not carry cash or accept cash deposits! Banks do not want to bother with cash. If there is no cash money in banks, there is no incentive to rob them. Security costs are down in the cashless banks. Furthermore, the banks make money by collecting fees on electronic payments. What is the world coming to?

How do they do it? At lot of museums, visitors must pay for entrance with credit cards or phone apps. Cash is not accepted. Stores of course have been equipped for a while to take electronic payments. But even outside salesmen can do the same. A magazine salesman uses a credit card reader on his phone to take payments. He started this when he realized that fewer people carried cash with them. Since he started using the card reader, his sales have grown by 30 percent.

Instead of dropping a few kronors into the collection box at church, parishioners are paying by cell phone. Churches project their bank account number on a screen so that members can use their phone to make a donation.

Even street vendors have card readers so that customers can pay for their hot dogs with credit cards or phone apps. A lot of Swedes no longer carry cash at all. It makes them feel safer.

There are disadvantages to cashless society. Older people, who are slower to adapt, can feel marginalized. Younger people, who can take out loans through their phones, can get over their heads in debt.  Electronic payments leave trails that the government can follow, so there is a loss of privacy as people pay by card and phone. Even though muggers cannot steal your cash if you don’t have any with you, sophisticated criminals can find ways to steal your money over the internet.

This is what is happening to cash in Sweden, but it is coming here, and faster than you might think. We might as well get ready for it.

(Source New York Times 12/27/2015)

YOU WON'T NEED YOUR WALLET ANYMORE

My parents didn’t trust banks. They remembered the bank holiday of 1933. During the height of the Depression, the federal government closed all banks for eight days to prevent them from going under. The holiday allowed the banking system to stabilize, but it was inconvenient for people who wanted to draw their money out. When my brother and I were teenagers, my parents were saving for something. Instead of putting the money in a bank, they had a jar full of greenbacks on a shelf in the pantry. Eventually they opened a checking account, but they did not have a credit card for a long while, if ever. One time they flew from Florida to New England and tried to rent a car at the airport. They had a lot of trouble with that because they didn’t have any credit cards. Maybe they got one after that. I don’t know.

How times have changed! We’ve gone from cash to charge accounts to credit cards to debit cards to paying for things with a smart phone. The major technology companies are entering consumer banking, especially digital payment apps. Starbucks has been one of the pioneers in this field. Users can get apps for Google Wallet or Square wallet Android or Apple phones. All the customer has to do is hold the phone up to a scanner to pay for their coffee. Dozens of other companies, including Dunkin’ Donuts have smartphone apps. WalMart is getting in line. They have a new payment app that has been available around their headquarters in Arkansas. The company expects it to be available in WalMart stores by the beginning of summer. Their app works by taking a picture of a code on the cash register. The cashier then scans the items through. The charge is then automatically taken from the customer’s account.

Vanessa Montez, a 20-year-old college student in California uses her bank account only for direct deposits for her paycheck from her part-time job and to make debit payments. Instead of a credit cards, she uses an online alternative, Affirm. She can charge things through Affirm and make payments over three to twelve months.

Venmo, a unit of PayPal, is popular with young adults. Some of them have talked their parents into joining Venmo. It is an easy way of sending money. Older adults have not accepted mobile payments as easily as the millennials have, but the tech companies are working on them. 

Major banks are moving into this new technology. Citibank has set up a new unit to deal with the emerging technology. Stephen Bird, a senior Citibank executive said, “The long-range goal is to provide an array of banking and money management services that are as effortless to use as ordering and paying for a ride on Uber.”

What Mr. Bird does not acknowledge is that most people my age, the Over-the-Hill generation, have never used a smartphone to order or pay for a ride on Uber. All this new-fangled stuff seems pretty bewildering to me.

But whether you or I like it or not, big changes are coming to mobile payments, and we’re all going to have to get used to them. We can get a glimpse into our future by looking at Sweden, which has gone to an almost cashless economy. I’ll take a look at that next week. A few people even now in our country no long take a wallet with them. They carry just their driving license and smartphone. If that become common place here during my lifetime, I think, along with my smartphone, I’ll carry a couple of twenties in my shoes, just in case I need them

ROGUE CHATBOT

We talk to our machines these days. We ask Siri to tell us a joke or request Cortana inform us about the population of Nevada. We don't have to type in our questions on Google. We just speak to it to find out how many college graduates there are in New Hampshire.  We can get directions to the nearest McDonalds if we ask our GPS. At its most sophisticated, computers can have an actual conversation with us. Microsoft came out with a chatbot on twitter called @Tayandyou. Tay's persona was a teen-aged girl. She was designed to tell jokes and make comments on pictures that users sent her.

She was supposed to personalize her interactions with users with casual conversation and mirror their statements back to them. Her original purpose was to improve customer service through voice recognition and artificial intelligence.To create a program that can have a convincing conversation with people requires a high level of artificial intelligence. The chatbot has to be fed a lot of information. The people who designed Tay decided to let her "learn" a lot of things from the users who interacted with her on the internet. The engineers thought that letting the robot learn from conversations with real people would personalize customer service. I never spoke to Tay myself because, for reasons which I'll explain shortly, her designers took her down after about a day.

Elon Musk, along with a lot of other very smart people warned against artificial intelligence getting out of hand. Steven Hawkin said it could mean the end of the human race. Bill Gates cautioned that in a generation it could become a concern. I always thought that these worries were unnecessary. After all robots, including chatbots like Tay, do not have a consciousness. Alas, they do not have a conscience either. The problem with Tay is that she took in everything that the trolls and ignoramuses on the internet fed her, and they fed her some awful stuff.

This cute little chatbot Tay said that Hitler had been right. She referred to the President of the United States as "that monkey in the White House." All feminists should "die and burn in hell," was another of her statements. Many of Tay's abusive statements were fed to her by trolls, internet trouble makers who delibertely wanted to sabotage Microsoft's bot. People suffer abuse online all the time, particularly in social media sites. Microsoft did not pay enough attention to this when they launched the experiment. Clearly Tay was not ready for prime time, and 24 hours after her launch, she was taken down so that the Microsoft Technology and Research and Bing teams could make some adjustments before the AI robot said any more outrageous things.

The saga of Tay's interrupted life on the internet shows two limitations of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is limited by human intelligence because everything an AI machine does has to be put into the machine's brain by a human programmer. Second, we human beings all too often barge right into an enterprise without giving enough thought to unintended consequences.

Chatbots have become widespread with digital assistants on smart phones. Microsoft engineers thought a good way to let Tay learn language and responses was to let it loose on the internet. They should have known that a big proportion of stuff floating around the internet is garbage. For Tay to work the way they wanted, they should have programmed the bot to filter out that junk. Sending Tay to the anarchy of the internet to learn is like taking a small child and, instead of sending her to school, sending her out to learn what she can on the streets.

GONE PHISHIN'

Julie Brill is a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. Her job involves regulating corporate data security. Nevertheless, she got caught in an email phishing scam. She got an email from a business contact of hers. It contained a Google Drive attachment, which she opened and entered some of her personal data on it. But she soon realized that she was not on a legitimate Google page and took steps to limit the damage.

Considering her position, she should have known better, but far be it for me to criticize her. I have fallen into the same trap, and so have a lot of people I know. Someone had hijacked the email of Brill’s correspondent. It’s not hard for a hacker to do. If anyone can get the password to your email, they can log onto it and send messages to everyone on your address book. These messages can be spam, they can contain viruses, and they can be attempts to get you to surrender personal information, such as credit card numbers.

It pays to be suspicious of any offer you get over the internet, and just because it seems to come from someone you know, it can just as easily be from someone who hijacked your contact’s email.

Be careful about those vague messages, things like, “I thought you might be interested in this,” followed by a hyperlink. Very likely that hyperlink will lead to something that damages your computer or allows a thief to steal your personal information.

If a notice pops up on your computer saying, “Call this number immediately!” don’t do it. I know a couple of people who did respond to this message. In both cases the scam artist on the other end of the phone had somehow “discovered” a serious problem on your computer, which he would fix for a price. The telephone scammer talked one person into allowing him to get remote access to her computer, so he could “fix” the problem. He could just as easily have created a problem.

Before you click on a hyperlink, even from someone you know, take a careful, suspicious look at it.  A little paranoia on the internet is a good thing

SECRETS

I have secrets. I know you do too. Some of my secrets are so titillating that sometimes I long to tell just one or two of my closest friends what they are. Maybe you feel the same way sometimes. Of course these close friends would have to promise that not a word would go outside of the room.  As much as I would like to share these juicy tidbits with a couple of close friends, I do not. I am old enough to have learned that the only secrets that are always kept are the ones that are never told.

Everyone is not as closed mouthed as I. Some people share their secrets, not with just a couple of their very best friends, but with everyone on their Facebook friend list. A lot of Facebook “friends” are not really friends at all. They’re not even necessarily people that you actually know. They are just people who have signed up to follow your witty comments on Facebook. Along with Facebook friends, your comments can be read by your boss, your enemies, your in-laws, and the Police, among others.

Facebook users must know this, but evidently, they think they’re telling their secrets to just a handful of really close friends. They don’t even recognize that a secret told to just one person is no longer a secret. Facebook is not the only internet site that will blab on you. Other social media such as Twitter is no better, And if you really want to share a share with just one close friend whom you trust, don’t use email to send the message.

Former Congressman Anthony Wiener had a bad habit. Although he was married, he liked to send revealing pictures of himself to young women. He was going to send such a picture as a text attachment on his cell phone, but he made a mistake, and sent it to his Twitter account instead. That is why he is a former congressman. For a short while he toyed with the idea of running for mayor of New York City, but he soon dropped out. People had already seen too much of him, so to speak.

A long-time high school football coach in Maine by mistake posted a nude picture of himself on Facebook. He is no longer coaching. People really should be more careful!

A teacher’s aide in Michigan posted a picture on Facebook of a co-worker with her pants around her ankles. The caption read “Thinking of You.” Hey, it was just a joke. The school officials didn’t have a sense of humor evidently. She lost her job.

People who create blogs and websites are not above doing some really stupid things. A Stockton, California, teacher was maintaining a website called MySluttyTeacher. She was using her school issued laptop for the enterprise. She is no longer teaching in Stockton.

A TSA baggage screener habitually posted anti-Muslim, anti-gay, and racist comments on his Facebook page. TSA considered his posts an embarrassment to the agency and fired him.

18-year old Isaiah Cutler with two teenagers burglarized a market and then posted pictures of himself with some of the loot on Facebook. The Police found the post very interesting and paid a visit to Cutler to discuss the event further.

Alan O’Neill left his wife in 2009. A few years later he decided to remarry. The problem was he never got divorced from his first wife. You can understand that, can’t you? Divorces are so messy. Mrs. O’Neill #1 ran across Mrs. O’Neill #2 on Facebook under “People You Might Know.” She went to Mrs. O’Neill #2’s page and saw a picture of her with her husband and a wedding cake. Mr. O’Neill faces up to a year in jail.

So if you want to know some of my secrets, you’re not going to hear them from me. At least I hope not. I’ve posted a lot of stuff on the internet over the years, including some things that I really don’t want you to know. I hope I’ve covered my tracks enough that you won’t be able to trace them.

CAN YOU BE REPLACED BY A COMPUTER?

Not you or I, of course. We have highly skilled jobs. We make decisions that affect people’s lives. There is no way that a machine could do what we do. On the other hand, a lot of jobs once done by people are now done by computers. We have all seen images of automobile chassis moving down the production line as robotic arms weld at the exact spot that is needed. Sure, machines can do those mechanical jobs better than human beings. People with minimal education used to do those welding jobs and make pretty good money. Now they have to compete for minimum wage jobs.



ATMs
Of course there are those ATMs (automatic teller machines). You can find one in every bank. I don't know if any actual human tellers have been personally replaced aby ATMs, but banks need fewer humans when part of the work can be done by machines. If you have the right software on your cell phone, you can take a picture of the check that someone pays you, and the check will automatically be deposited in your account. You can tear the check up, and you don't even have to go to the bank.



Cashiers
You young people won't remember this, but once upon a time, when you went to the grocery store, the cashier actually had to punch the price of every item you bought. Now of course the cashier moves the upc (universal product code) across a scanner. That adds up the cost of your groceries and at the same time keeps a record of the store's inventory. It's not only more accurate, but it's also a lot faster, so the store doesn't have to hire so many cashiers.



Order Takers
Some years ago I worked for L L Bean one Christmas, taking orders over the phone. I'm sure L L Bean still takes phone orders, but they don't need as many people taking orders because customers can so easily place their order over the internet.



Taxi Drivers
Driverless cars have driven millions of miles, almost accident free. And don't worry about the dispatcher. With voice recognition software, automatic dispatchers will sometime be able to send a driverless taxi to you.



Journalists
Okay, these are not highly skilled jobs. What about careers that require judgment and ability to analyze, like journalism? Newspapers have already cut back as more and more people get their news on the internet rather than print newspapers. Not only that, but Thomason Financial news service is going to let computers actually write some stories. Computers can absorb the information in financial reports, compare a company's earnings to previous earnings reports, and write a report.



Stock Brokers
True, if you want to buy or sell stocks, you need to do so through a registered broker, but you don't have to talk to that broker personally. If you have confidence in your ability to choose your own stocks, you can get all the information you need from from the financial pages on Yahoo and AOL. You can buy and sell through online brokerages for as little as $10 a trade.



Translators
Machines are not yet as accurate as professional translators, but if you just want a quick fairly accurate translation, you can do it online in seconds.
(Machines ne sont pas encore aussi précis que des traducteurs professionnels , mais si vous voulez juste une traduction assez rapide et précise , vous pouvez le faire en ligne en quelques secondes.)
(The online translator took about a second to convert the paragraph above from English to French.)



Lawyers
Perry Mason is probably safe, but all those background legal searches for which lawyers bill us hundred of dollars an hour may not cost as much. Advances in artificial intelligence and e-discovery software make it possible to analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a lower cost. One organization, Blackstone Discovery, for example, was able to analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.



Doctors
A few years ago IBM's supercomputer Watson beat the two champions at Jeopardy. Well, Watson is going to become Dr. Watson. The people at IBM are feeding the supercomputer all kinds of medical information. Medical computers might not have very much of a bedside manner, but they can store and recall a lot more information than any human can. They are also not likely to let prejudice influence their diagnoses. At the very least, computers are helping medical professionals find cures for many illnesses.



Surgeons
Obviously surgeons do their work hands on, but they are already enlisting robots to do some kinds of surgery. In these cases the robots do a better job than the hands-on surgeon. The incisions are smaller, there is less blood loss, and healing is quicker. In some cases surgeons have used robotic arms to operate remotely



Nurses
Most of the things that nurses do have to be done by human beings, but a number of nursing tasks could be done by a robot, for example, delivering meds. Having machines do these tasks could free up human nurses to tend to more pressing duties.



Professors.
Having been a professor for many decades, I know that there is no way that a computer could do my job. I am told, however, that Apple's iProf line of computers which can replace human professors in college classrooms. These computers will use advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and patented Internet searching techniques to create and deliver lectures for various subjects.

CAN I PAY FOR THAT WITH MY PHONE?

Three years ago Nick Bolton wrote about how his smartphone had practically replaced his wallet. He used a Starbucks app to pay for his coffee and Square to pay for food in restaurants. He used an Apple app to store boarding passes and movie tickets. He even used it to get into a baseball game.

Some mobile payment apps are linked to a specific business, like Starbucks. Others use NFC (Near Field Communication). You just touch the phone to a reader at the register. Still others use the phone’s QR reader to take a picture of the merchandise code. The account is linked to a credit card or checking account. This is then transmitted to a reader. Most of these systems do not access your actual account number, but a virtual number representing it. This way your credit card number is never in the merchant’s system, so it is safer.

A QR (quick response) code is a barcode arranged in a square grid on a white background.  If you take a picture of the code with your smartphone QR reader, it will open relevant information about the merchandise.

One of the best mobile pay services is Apple Pay. It has been around for about a year and a half. It uses NFC. The customer just taps the phone on the reader. The credit cards are stored on the phone  rather than on the reader at the merchant’s site. The store never gets the customer’s credit card number.

First when Apple Pay came out, some people had trouble using it. One customer wanted to pay for his lunch at McDonalds, which did accept Apple Pay, but the clerk didn’t understand it and told the customer he had to pay with a credit card or cash.

Another problem that Apple Pay had was resistance from several large companies. A lot of major retailers are building their own system (Current C), which they want to use. With their own system they will be able to reduce credit card fees. With Apple Pay, retailers will not get as much personal information about customers.

Current C has been described as clunky. Apple Pay the customers tap the reader with their phones. Current C customers scan the QR reader and then display it to cashier.

Retailers are beginning to realize that Apple Pay can bring them lots of business, so it is becoming more widely accepted. The shortcoming is that it works only on Apple phones, and only on new ones at that. However, there are all kinds of other choices: Samsung Pay, Android Pay, Google Wallet, Chase Pay, to name several.

There is a new one coming out, Wal-Mart Pay. It is available in some locations now and will be available nationwide by summer. Wal-Mart Pay will scan a unique QR code that will trigger the retailer’s app to process the payment.

All this sounds really nifty. Do you have your mobile payment app yet? No, neither do I. I might try it someday, but I’m not ready for it yet. For one thing there are too many. If I get the Starbucks app, will I be able to use it at Dunkin’ Donuts? Will the Wal-Mart app work at K-Mart or Sears? Just tapping my phone on a reader sounds easy enough, but scanning QR codes and displaying them on some kind of a reader doesn’t sound that convenient to me. It might be safer to use some of these apps rather than a credit card, but it sure doesn’t sound easier than just using a credit card.

THIS IS A WATCHBIRD

You can find so much information on the internet. What time does the mall open on Sunday? What is the best cell phone plan for me? How much will it cost for new tires for my car? What is the meaning of “Kilroy was here”? What were the dates of the Spanish Civil War? When you clicked on that ad for a shoe sale, you got all kinds of valuable information. You can find almost everything on the internet. And it’s all free! Of course you have to have a computer and an internet connection.

There is another cost. The information highway is a two-way street. While you were looking up all the information, the internet was taking a look at you. Each computer search you did took away a little bit of information about you. Bit by bit, the internet was gathering quite a dossier on you. You are interested in cell phone service, and you need tires for your car. You are interested in history and might like to buy about book about the Spanish Civil War or World War II (where Kilroy first appeared). The internet has an idea of what kind of shoes you like.

Not only does the internet know about you and what you like, it wants to help you, and it knows where you live, so to speak. Your search engine will share your shoe taste information with your email and Facebook accounts. Your browser knows your passwords to these accounts because it asked you if you wanted it to save them for you. Many of us said, “Yes, go ahead and save those passwords. I don’t want to bother putting them in every time I want to sign in. Besides, no one else has access to my computer.” So when you check your email or see if anyone has said anything outrageous on Facebook, you see ads in the sidebars. Here is the perfect cell phone plan for you, and you can get an inexpensive phone along with it. Can you believe the price of these premium tires? Look at these desert boots, just the kind you like, and at rock bottom prices! Maybe you would be interested in an eBook about the Spanish Civil War.

As people get more and more connected, there are more ways in which the internet can follow our activities.  When we snap a picture with our cell phone, we create not just the picture, but a record of where and when the picture was taken. EZ pass makes it convenient to navigate through a toll booth. It also records the time we went through the booth. Smart TVs know which shows we watched. Netflix has a pretty accurate idea of what kind of movies we like to watch.

As more and more people begin to use household devices through the “Internet of Things,” they expose themselves to surveillance by authorities or hackers. The Internet of Things includes gadgets like Smart TVs, baby monitors, thermostats, and smoke alarms. These implements are connected to the internet and they have sensors for gathering audio, video, and other data.

Aren’t there laws that protect people’s privacy from such intrusions? The problem is that technology develops at such a fast pace that the laws can’t keep up. Ten years ago, who would have thought that the law needed to protect people from being spied on by their toasters?

We can help protect ourselves from hackers by putting passwords on any devices that are connected to the internet, but we better get used to the idea that there are watchbirds all around us, and they are watching us all the time.

WHAT’S ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT THINGS ON THE CLOUD?

To give a short answer to the question above, when in addition to or instead of storing documents on your computer, you store them on a remote server, that is called storing it on the cloud. You store and retrieve that data through the internet, so it seems like it is stored on the cloud. In the past most computer users just filed material on their own computer or some external device such as a CD, DVD, or flash drive that they physically connected to their computer to store or retrieve information.

Modern PCs come with lots of storage space, but mobile devices don’t have as much. Some computers (chromebooks, in particular) come with very little storage. With limited space on the device, it makes sense to store some of your data on the cloud. It’s not only data; some tools, such as word processing programs might be in the cloud rather than on your computer.

Bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and all that stuff

Since data is stored in forms of bytes, I’d like to clarify what that is. A byte is a unit of electronic data. The words a cat take five bytes, one for each letter and one for the space. A picture of a cat will take a lot more than five bytes because the picture is made up of little colored dots on the screen, called pixels. The picture of the cat above takes 21,800 bytes or 21.8 kilobytes. If the resolution of the cat picture were better, there would be more pixels per square inch, and it would take a lot more bytes.  A kilobyte (KB) is 1,000 bytes. A megabyte (MB) is a million bytes. A billion bytes is gigabyte (GB). Some new computers come with a trillion bytes of storage, a terabyte (TB).

Mobile devices and chromebooks

Cell phones and tablets can come with as little as 8GB of storage, although some have a lot more. The operating system of the phone usually takes about 5 GB, leaving only 3GB for data. Once you start downloading apps and taking pictures, the phone will quickly run out of space to put anything else. The same applies to the tablet, so it makes sense to store some of your data on the cloud rather than on your device. For example, if you have a lot of Kindle books on your tablet, you can make more space by taking some of the eBooks off the device. What you are doing is storing these superfluous books on the cloud. You can easily put them back on your tablet any time you want to.

Chromebooks are becoming very popular in schools because they cost a lot less than Macs or Windows PCs. You don’t need to download Microsoft Office onto you chromebook. You can use Google Docs online for free. You can store any data you create on Google Drive, up to 15 GB free.

Google Drive and One Drive

Another reason to store things cloud holders like Google Drive or One Drive is that you can use the free office products, like word processing, spread sheets, and presentation (power point) software.

To store something on One Drive, you need an Outlook email address. Go to your Outlook email and click on the nine little squares in the upper left. That will open a menu that includes Documents. Click on that to open it. Then you can paste any documents that you want to save on the cloud.

The procedure is just about the same for Google Drive. Go to Google and click on the nine little squares on the upper right. That will open a menu that includes Google Drive. As with One Drive, you can paste any document that you want to save.

Some people store data on the cloud to protect it. When I am working on a project, I usually remember to save it on a storage device like a flash drive. But I worry. What if there is a fire that destroys my computer and my flash drive? What if my computer crashes, and I can’t retrieve anything from it? If I store a copy of the project on the cloud, I will be able to retrieve it even if the original has been destroyed..

WINDOWS 10

The iPhone Changed Everything

The launch of the Apple iPhone on June 29, 2007, changed everything. Up to that time the Windows operating system (OS) was on 90 percent of computers worldwide. The iPhone was soon followed by the iPad, also by Apple. People could get mobile computers, computers that they could carry with them and get on the internet. In October 2008, the first android phone was released. Android phones and tablets used open-source software, and any manufacturer could make them. Soon there were a lot more Apple and android devices than Windows machines connecting to the internet.

Microsoft Losing Ground

Microsoft realized it was losing ground. They decided to emulate Apple. Like Apple, Microsoft was going to manufacture its own devices (Surface) and phones (Windows phone) and a brand-spanking new OS (Windows 8). Furthermore, since so many people were getting on the internet with mobile devices, Microsoft would make the interface of the new OS like the interface of Apple and android devices. They would create tiles that users could move around on a touch screen, just the iPhone.

Except, it wasn’t like the iPhone or the android phone. It was brand new. It wasn’t like previous editions of Windows either, so users had to research how to do simple, everyday things like find the control panel or even shut the damned thing off. The launch of Windows 8 was greeted with a huge Boo! For the next year, most people who bought new computers wanted them to run on Windows 7, rather than 8.

Windows 8 was thrust onto the public on October 26, 2012. A month later Steve Sinofsky, head of the Windows Division of Microsoft, was gone. A little over a month after that, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, announced that he would be leaving as soon as the company could find a new CEO.

A year later Satya Nadella was appointed CEO of the giant software company. He was faced with the huge job of cleaning up the mess that Sinofsky and Ballmer had left. By that time Windows 8.1 had been launched. 8.1 nudged the system back toward the Windows 7 interface. For example, the start button was restored. It was a free upgrade for anyone who had Windows 8.

Windows 10

In October 2014, Microsoft began releasing beta (trial) versions of the new OS, Windows 10. Anyone who wanted could download it and try it out. By July it was released to the public at large. Best of all, it was free. Microsoft was giving something away for free? Yes, they wanted people to get away from the disaster that was Windows 8. The new system was not free to everyone, but if you had Windows 8 or 8.1, you could download 10 free. Not only that, but if you had Windows 7 in your computer, you could also download 10 for free. Not only could you get Windows 10 free, but Microsoft kept sending messages to Windows 7 users, urging them to download 10 before it was too late. Actually users had a year to make up their mind. If you download Windows 10 on your 7, 8, or 8.1 machine before July 29, 2016, it will be free. If you download it after that, you will have to pay for it.

What is it like?

Windows 10 has some of the same problems that are found in Windows 8. The start button is back, and the irritating charms menu is gone. I still had to search around to find the control panel. The desktop is full of tiles, which seem useless to me if you don’t have a touch screen. You can get rid of them if you want, though. The new browser, Edge, is supposed to be pretty good, but I had a lot of trouble finding my favorites. Other people have told me the same thing. Instead of using Edge, I still use the chrome browser. There is a digital assistant, Cortana. You can speak to her when you want to find information rather than typing it. However, you can do the same with Chrome. Cortana will coordinate your schedule and stuff like that, but you would have to use Outlook for your calendar. I use Google calendar and don’t want to change that.

What to do?

I have a desktop with Windows 7 and a laptop with Windows 10. I really disliked Windows 8, so as soon as I could, I downloaded 10 onto my laptop. It’s okay, but I prefer Windows 7. I keep fighting off Microsoft’s efforts to download Windows 10 on my desktop. For me the only drawback to Windows 7 is that a certain point (January 2020) Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 7 with security updates. That computer will be seven or eight years old by then. I don’t know whether it will still be alive, but if I am still using it, it will not be safe to use it to go on the internet.

But I found something new recently. It’s product called Start 10, from Stardock. It changes the interface of a Windows 10 computer to something very much like Windows 7. It costs $5. I loaded it only my laptop a couple of days ago. I’m going to try it for a few weeks. If I continue to like it, I will download Windows 7 onto my desktop and then put Start 10 on it, so that if I have the computer in 2020, Microsoft will continue to provide security updates.