the end is near

On the technology front I have gone back to Adblock.  It turns out that the ads on the pages that forbade me entrance due to my Adblock, and the ads I had been blocking before on the pages that allowed me on with my Adblock, took so long to load that I couldn't look up anything.

I guess the original sin (I am working this thing to death) there is when they discovered that there was no way they could physically charge people to listen to their radio programs.  I suppose the internet, back in the mists of its time could have found a way to make money without ads but that time has long past.  I suppose I could pay for some of those sites that offer an ad free viewing, but you know, when you get something for free, you really hate paying for it later.

Speaking of which I have been corresponding with a new friend lately who swears by Roku.  I have been content for years with Netflix and have even come to enjoy the little ritual of getting the DVD in the mail and dropping it off in a mailbox when I am done.  But Netflix is on to newer and more lucrative things and doesn't want to bother with this horse and buggy enterprise of its youth.  I get DVDs that skip and sometimes rinsing them off under the bathroom sink does not do the trick, and the wide variety of selections has shrunk, and I'm ready for new things.  I examined one of those Rokus at Target yesterday afternoon and it looked reasonable and I probably will go that way, but as long as I'm here at The Institute this morning I thought I'd inquire of Old Dog who knows some things about tricky ways on the internet what does he think of this device?


The Science Channel had a thing about seven planets circling a dwarf red sun last night.  A few of them were in the sweet zone where water is wet.  I don't know why the channel has to pad it's schedule with all that alien crap when the real thing is more interesting,  Anyway they are only a hundred light years away.  A hundred years ago I think radio was just beginning to succumb to commercials so those red dwarf planeteers should be able to pick up our first broadcasts from then .  Though I suppose since their planets are seven billion years old to our youthful four and a half, we should be picking up theirs.

I don't know what kind of technology it takes to pick up radio signals from that far away, but it seems to me, and I may well be wrong here, that we should be able to pick up something, something that we could tell is not the usual racket of the universe.

But we haven't heard anything, and I am thinking that you need civilization to be able to send out those things and that the same force that gets you to civilization is the thing that destroys you,. probably not to long after you discover radio, so friends, the time is near.