CSotD: Cloudy with a chance of bollocks
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On The Fastrack often features geek humor, but it acknowledges the culture without kowtowing to it. And, in contrast to the wildly popular but still niche-y Penny Arcade, it does so on a level that is accessible to the general public, assuming the general public is somewhat computer literate.
Which is to say, those who may not know how to replace a master cylinder, but know that, when you press down on the brake pedal, the car is supposed to stop.
While Penny Arcade caters to an audience deeply invested in games and gamer culture, Fastrack simply operates in a world where most of us know enough about our computers to get jokes like this:
or, say, this …
… and also …
… which is particularly funny because, most of the time, I lose things because I assumed the damn computer was asking if I wanted to save it to the same place I saved the last three files, but, in fact, it just pulled out some folder more or less at random and I didn't notice.
But then, it's not necessary to learn why the computer suddenly asks if you'd like to save an image to the May 14 folder when you haven't saved to, or even looked at, that folder in three weeks.
It's only necessary to learn to check where the computer is suggesting you save something.
Think of your computer as a three-year-old. If it asks, "Can I eat this?" you really need to look at what it is holding before you say yes, because the answer might be "no" or "hell, no" or even "Gaaaaaaaah."
Cartoonists and comic strip fans sometimes complain that you can't cuss on the funny pages. Jan Eliot even titled one of her Stone Soup collections, "You Can't Say 'Boobs' on Sunday." But, as someone who has had to take a few phone calls, I'll defend keeping the comics family-friendly, because I never had a reader call to ask what *&$%*& means. Give them a little credit.
That doesn't mean you should assume that the readers are all 80 years old and have lived in a cave since 1970.
There's nothing wrong with cartoon strips for older readers, whether it's Pickles, which references them specifically, or Red and Rover, which is about a kid but set about a half-century ago. I like both strips very much.
But check out this Edge City from a few days ago:
My reaction was "'N Sync? Wouldn't that make her, like, 19 now?"
So I looked it up and, if she was 14 when they became hot, then she's 29 now and, while I think the LaBans are pushing it just a little — the kids in the strip seem about 10 — it's a whole lot more credible than if she'd whipped out a Monkees or gawdhelpus Beatles T-shirt.
And maybe she was an 'N Sync fan at 17. Point is, it's more reader-friendly than the moldie-oldie cultural references in most syndicated comics.
Meanwhile, back at the strip, I like the double-jab at the popularity of cloud-talk and at the insularity of geeks, because, as one of those people who knows when the car needs a brake job but wouldn't begin to try to do it myself, I find the rush to the cloud a little puzzling and a lot annoying.
In part, all the excitement is part of the "new is better" mantra which means an iPod so small you can't find it is better than a reasonably compact one that you can, and that on-line games are invariably better if you have to watch a mini-film of groovy graphics with every move. And desk-tops are uncool because now we can compress everything into a handheld.
And after all, there's no real difference between this:
and this:
However, whether my resistance to microsnobbery is reasonable or not, I have no doubts about hating the corporate greed aspect of the cloud. That's easy.
Adobe has decided to stop selling finished versions of its "Creative Suite" — Photoshop, InDesign and some other critical stuff — and go to the "Creative Cloud" where you have to subscribe for between $20 and $70 a month, rather than simply biting the bullet once for $675 or so and then living with the software until it's so outdated that you need to pony up again.
The cheerleaders say you'll save money over updating every time they launch a new version, but, first of all, Adobe only upgrades every two years, so, no, you almost certainly won't, and, more to the point, who the hell does that anyway?
Never mind the little guys like me — we sure can't afford it. But I've worked at some pretty large places where the software was a couple of versions behind.
Apple built its brand on upgrades each of which made everything you owned completely obsolete, so I guess the model exists. Except that Apple quit doing that because people hated it. So I guess we'll see.
Meanwhile, the issue of cloud storage is more puzzling and makes me feel like the old geezer who won't put his money in the bank because you can't trust'em.
Well, comical as Uncle Grumpy may be, he lived through a time when, by golly, banks failed and people lost their money. He needs to understand that, these days, banks are federally insured, but it's not like he's totally delusional.
And you know what? Some of us have seen things go wrong in cyberspace. Not only have we seen actual screw-ups, but we've experienced companies deciding "don't wanna to do that anymore" and just bolting off into the ether. And I don't think anybody has fixed either of those things.
Nor had I heard of a federal program similar to FDIC, for insuring that everything stored on the cloud would be guaranteed against loss, at least, until last week when we all learned that, by yompin' yiminy, the NSA is making backup copies of everything! Hurray for them!
But until we figure out how that's going to work in the event of a cloud failure, I'm backing things up right here on good old terra firma.
And stashing that separate hard drive under my mattress, where it'll be safe.
(Speaking of obsolete cultural references … but, of course, I'm being ironic …)
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