Posted by Raul on July 19, 2010
It is my belief my laptop probably was built before WWII and being in service for the past many, many years, at least I bought it used on eBay, I believe around 2005 and have repaired it at least twice since then, including a new, slightly bigger hard drive and a complete reprogramming in XP Pro.
At first it worked great but then, gradually, it started go slower and slower until coming to a virtual crawl. Now, even if I want to check somebody else’s blog, the ventilation fan goes crazy, heat starts coming out from the vents and it all seems to be part of either a computer menopause process or a virtual heart attack and it scares me for my beloved laptop.
It is a Dell Inspiron 5100 with Pentium 4; 2.4 GHz; 1 GB RAM; 80 GB HD and about 30 pounds net weight!
Not being sure if the problem is the laptop or my internet provider, who gives a limit in bandwidth usage, I wanted to know how much bandwidth I was using so, following my son’s finding I downloaded and installed a free bandwidth meter from the net called: ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter 1.3.1 (101 KB)
http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/
As you can see in the picture, it takes a little space in the lower, right hand corner, out of the way and it has proven to be very useful to know the “weight” of every page or site I visit. So far I discovered my blog has an average of 0.6 MB to download when opened and most of the blogs I visit range between 0.4 to 2.5 MB, with one or two going up as much as 6.0-8.5 MB (it all depends on how many pictures and moving stuff the page has). Now I’m checking everything I open to know what’s the “weight” (I know, new toy 
One of the recommendations given when creating a blog or website is that it has to be a fast downloader or people will get bored and move somewhere else; this bandwidth meter helps to see if we are going too far in implementing our cyber space or if we still can do some more without making it too “heavy”, specially for people using 56K connections.
Some may say “who would be using 56k these days?” but I know that’s the main available connection in my country (using a phone line) and for those wanting to reach beyond the bigger countries boundaries that should be a point to consider.
Do you know how “heavy” is your blog to download?
Do you keep in mind a limit in size when implementing your blog?
Is it important for you to be able to reach other countries?
Let me know
Raul
Posted by Raul on January 25, 2010
I just read a post in another blog about someone complaining because his picture, which he published in his Facebook page for his friends to see, was to be found now in some other site posted without his permission.
He was complaining that there should be rules or laws in place to prevent those kinds of situations from happenings, or at least a way for the affected person to enforce his right to privacy.
I believe this person is missing the point about technology. We want more and more capabilities from our internet connections and the sites we visit and/or create so more can be done to reach a wider audience. The same we ask from our cell phones, so we can be able to take pictures and videos anywhere anytime and then download them quickly and easily into our computers, blogs, websites, YouTube, etc.
The problems is that the easier it becomes for us, it’ll also be easier for everybody else, and not everyone has the same moral concepts we have, or simply put, we are different people with different views of the same situation. What is right for me might not be right for you and vice versa.
We want to reach the biggest number of people and go worldwide with the internet; we want the possibility to take pictures and videos fast and then be able to upload them in our posts or pages in social sites without hassles, so we demand better technology and use it.
The problem then is that, at the same time we have all these conveniences, everybody else get it and use it, so no longer we can assume things will work the way we expected or think is right. We post in our blogs and want it to be worldwide for everyone to read, yet we don’t accept our pictures can be worldwide for everyone to see when is posted again by someone else.
With the new technology available don’t be surprised if one day you find yourself in a porn site in a video that shows you naked taking a shower, and after the initial shock you discover that it was in the showers of your local gym, and all you can remember is someone talking on his/her cell phone at that moment.
Technology can and will be used for good and bad purposes; most people will use it to enhance their lives, while some others will consider enhancing their lives getting money for videos or pictures taken to unaware people in awkward situations.
There are many sites out there posting “funny” pictures of people that I’m sure didn’t know they were being photographed at that moment.
The point here is that as soon as we upload something in the internet we can assume it is gone in a life of its own and we cannot control it anymore; so the only way to be safe is just not to upload what we might regret later.
We live in a new kind of world, where we are to become public in every aspect of our lives. Even if you make a search of yourself in the internet you will find your information available to everyone. There are sites out there that, for a small fee, will deliver to you information like your name, address, where you work, if you had bankruptcy at any time in your past, your spouse name, your children’s names, etc
My guess is that if you want to be sure about someone you can use the information in these sites to make a decision, but at the other hand your information is also available for everyone to see.
We live in a world where private life is less and less probable because of the technology available, so we have to be very careful on what we post in the internet, being it a social site, a dating site, a blog, a website, etc, even when we send emails we cannot be sure of who will get it and what they will do with it.
If we post something in the internet we must automatically assume it will take a life of its own without us being able to control it, and we must accept that as a fact of the modern world we live in.
Raul
