Times they are a changin’

We’ve gone through about five major stages in technology in regards to the field of information. (The Computer)

1. The introductory stage.  This was when PC’s were only being used to keep a phone number/address data base as well as your favorite recipes.

2. The discovery of the World Wide Web.  The internet use to exist on the corporate level probably 15 years before the WWW.  This new ability to communicate instantly without a stamp or a phone actually hurt the USPS.  As for the phone and cable companies, it was a gold rush windfall.  In the early 90’s companies were racing to buy up what were at the time, local cable TV companies.  Most of the computers in the early to late 90s had what we would call primitive motherboards by today’s standards, but tech heads drooled over the 450 megabyte chip.

3.  Then about the time everyone was buying PCs or Macs; sound files were being compacted into the Mp3.  I predicted (as I’m sure many did) that the next big thing would be the Mp3 player.  Meet the IPod.  Why Apple was the first to jump on this amazes me.  Apple couldn’t even play Mp3 formatted files.  They had to be apple converted files.  But they sold a lot of IPods.

4.  Soon everything had to be “Wireless”.  And I was told by a silicon valley CEO that the future of computers (at the time) was to push email, then, Wireless, then finally the marketing of storage.  We now call it “Back up”.  But external memory drives were also being marketed around the turn of the century.

5.  Finally MULTI-MEDIA.  Here’s where Apple made their comeback.  The IPhone.  It did it all.  They say there is more technology in an I4 than all the technology that went into the Apollo space missions.

But in the old days when new “Updates” came out for a product or software you had installed, you could trust the company that supported your Mp3 or Mp4 player.  In the first 10 years of the 21st century, we got in the bad habit of hitting the next button until we either had to find a folder to file the update in, or hit the finish button.  Believe it or not, companies we use to trust have crossed over to the dark side.  Recently, Real Player which was a desk top Icon on my screen for 17 years, sold its’ soul to Satan.  In the last update, it bundled a ………. A VIRUS.  There I said it.  It was bundled in the update under the name Re-Markable.  I wasted 10 hours yesterday finding the culprit.  What sucked is, it manifested its’ self, two weeks after an install.  That made it really hard to find.  And to make matters worse, they will even offer a nefarious fix on line when you go to a search engine.  But the only way you will find it is to look for the “NAME” of the company that is on the “Pop-ups”.  Then say a prayer before searching for a removal fix on-line.

If I had a company that dealt with removing computer viruses; I would say that rule number one would be: “Have your I.T. guy look at the update then, read every word of every page before you click next or even worse “Agree”.

It’s a new day and a new time and cyberspace is now full of cyber villains.  Take your time so you don’t install a virus under the guise of a “Tool bar”.  By the way, Real Player, (Which is now Real Cloud) whom I trusted for so long, has been rated amongst the top 5 worst software companies in recent years.