Refrigerator post...

My daughter made this for me today...

It's going to the office tomorrow for permanent display.

Demotivational posters: funny yes... prophetic as well?

I have a poster on my office cubical wall that I bought from despair Inc last year. You can see it here in fact. The caption reads -

"MOTIVATION: If a pretty picture and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon."

Well I had no idea that this cynical proverb would prove to be literally prophetic in quite so accurate a form... If any one group of professionals would fall into the afore mentioned category, I'd say that runway models at least as a generality most definitely would fit the mold.

Behold the future --


According to this article, the robot is being designed specifically as a runway model.

A funny thing about computers...

This has occured to me often over the years but an email I got this morning from Tigerdirect.com brought it back to mind. It seems that computers (as well as a few other consumer driven technologies) are not affected by the rate of inflation. In fact they seem to get cheaper as the tech gets better. This phenomenon is less obvious than it was say in the 80's and early 90's but it still holds true to a degree. For the last I would say 15 years the basic cost of a home computer has not changed in relation to the level of available technology. In other words at any given point you could buy what would be considered a good general use system for between $500-$1000, a 'nice' system for under two grand and a cutting edge system for a few hundred more. The price range in relativity to the current technology seems fairly static and has remained so for a VERY long time. In some cases though, for instance with peripherals, it seem like prices are actually falling in spite of increasing technology. I recall my father buying a dot-matrix printer in the mid-80's for close to $1200!!! Today you can get a photo quality ink jet printer for $30!

Computer monitors are another example... they keep getting bigger and better as the prices get lower and lower. Eight years ago the standard was a 14" or 15" CRT (the old style of monitors that were typically deeper than they were wide). A 17" would cost you $250+. Today I got an email listing a 25" flatscreen LCD monitor for $220! It just blows me away.

Also on an anecdotal note... this reminded me of a fad that I recall taking place in the early to mid-90s (I personally knew at least 4 guys who had done this) where people with finished basements would set up a computer desk next to an inside wall (usually the inside wall connected to a utility room of some sort) and cut a hole in the drywall through which the vast bulk of their CRT monitor would go. This created the illusion of a flat screen monitor. which at that time in history only existed in Star Trek and other Sci-fi movies or TV shows. Only a few short years later, voila, we have 25" flat screen LCDs for $220!! What a world we live in.