Are You Taken Over By The Internet?

The McPaper of the US, USA Today, has started a “book of lists” series to celebrate its quarter-century existence.

The latest and the sixth is entitled How the Internet Took Over.

For us, consumers/proponents/devotees of the Internet, it might be entertaining to slither through memory lane, just on a 25-year span, to relate with nostalgia how the 25 items on the list personally touched and affected us on a personal basis.

Twenty-five years ago the Internet as we now know it was in the process of being birthed by the National Science Foundation. Since then it's been an information explosion. From e-mail to eBay, communication and shopping have forever changed.

So, let’s start with No. 1.

1 World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee created user-friendly “Web pages” that could travel over the Internet, a network built to shuttle research between universities. The world logged on: 747 million adults in January.

The ubiquitous 3 Ws in each URL we had to type constantly reminded us that we were accessing and becoming part of that Web. But that didn’t preclude our puzzlement over how to distinguish it from the Internet that some had grown accustomed to. It was initially quite difficult to create a mental image of the differences between the web and the Internet, even after consulting their respective definitions.

In review, we present their differentiating definitions:

The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly available worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

A hypermedia-based system for browsing Internet sites. It is named the Web because it is made of many sites linked together; users can travel from one site to another by clicking on hyperlinks. Or "The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge." - Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

Are we clear now?

2 E-mail
Tech’s answer to the Pony Express. Programs such as 1988’s Eudora made it easy to use. In-boxes have been filling up ever since. Nearly 97 billion e-mails are sent each day.

E-mail gave us the term, snail mail. Just a little pejorative to drive deeper the world of difference between the former with other forms of traditional mail – whether through the postal system, or those private mailing companies like UPS and FedEx. Mail through the speed of light is now our standard measure for efficiency and effectiveness of our communications.

Never got to install Eudora, since I started with the Netscape Navigator email client, which came and gained fame before MS Outlook. When Internet Explorer got bundled with MS Windows operating system, starting with the 95 version, that too signaled the demise of Netscape and its other services. Although the “bundling” got Microsoft back to the courts and into a number of litigation against it. Nevertheless, Internet Explorer was well on its way to its unchallenged monopoly, that is until recently when open-source FireFox threw down its gauntlet for a mighty challenge.

Anyway, back to email.

Now, many users are partial to web-based email services which can be accessed from anywhere internet access can be had.

Can any Internet or Web user now live without one, whether web-based or computer-resident?

3 Graphical user interface (GUI)
Most computer displays were blinking lines of text until Apple featured clickable icons and other graphic tools in its 1984 Mac. Microsoft’s Windows took GUI — pronounced “gooey” — to the masses.

I can remember Apple’s Macintosh proudly display its initial version of GUI, still quite coarse and very low resolution. We can also remember how Windows beat Apple to the draw in capitalizing on GUI, clearly sealing the defeat with the introduction of Windows 95 in 1995. This heavy loss most probably drove Apple to the courts to seek redress, claiming it had prior proprietary rights to graphical interface. No such luck, since the courts ruled against Apple after some years passed. Now GUI is so commonplace that most users now suffer selective amnesia when asked what came before it.

4 AOL
AOL turned people on to Web portals, chat rooms and instant messaging. Early subscribers paid by the hour. AOL once boasted 35 million subscribers. It bought Time Warner for $106 billion in 2001.

AOL blazed through the entire web, decimating whatever competition was already extant. It became the ISP to be a member of. And Steve Case of AOL became the darling of consumer technology enabling AOL to gobble up giant Time Warner.

Say, whatever happened to Steve Case and how is AOL doing?

5 Broadband
The answer to the drip-drip-drip of dial-up, high-speed Internet service fuels online entertainment. About 78% of home Internet users in the U.S. have broadband, up from less than 1% in 1998.

Yes, broad against narrow band of dial-up. Yet even during the drip-drip-drip period of AOL, I shied away and consorted with the “freebies”, starting with Bigger.net and then moving on to Netzero.net before it became for-pay. With Bigger.net and Netzero.net one simply allowed ad sponsors clutter to colonize one’s monitor screen to get free access.

In a couple of years Bigger.net went kaput to be replaced by Netzero.net. The latter has survived to this day but subscription is now for pay. Still cheaper compared to AOL.

Broadband now comes in different flavors – DSL, cable, or satellite/wireless/microwave, and even using your home electric wiring system.

6 Google
So popular it’s a verb. The search powerhouse, with a market capitalization of nearly $149 billion, perfected how we find info on the Web. Google sites had nearly 500 million visitors in December.

What more can one say about Google. The search engine of search engines.

And who were the precursor webcrawlers?

7 Mosaic/Netscape
Created by Marc Andreessen and others, Mosaic was the first widely-used multimedia Web browser. Spin-off Netscape Navigator ruled the ‘90s until Microsoft’s Internet Explorer took off around ‘98.

I still have somewhere the earliest version of Netscape Navigator stored on floppy disks. Numbering 2 or 3 maybe, each holding 1.44Mb of data? But remember during those times, the entire Windows 95 suite resided on 12 floppy disks.

8 eBay
Thanks to eBay, we can all now buy and sell almost anything (skip the body parts). eBay has 230 million customers worldwide who engage in 100 million auctions at any given time.

And who has not gone through the eBay site, either to browse or purchase, and if the latter, kept coming back to find out how your bid(s) did? I still maintain an inactive account since I haven’t purchased any lately. I was for a while quite active on obscure rival, uBid, though.

9 Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos’ baby began as an always-in-stock book seller. It survived the tech bubble and now is the definitive big box online store. It was the second most-visited online retailer in December, after eBay.

Any book buyer worth his salt must have gone through Amazon. And of course, those who write and publish books. But still a funny name for a company selling essentially books and other publications.

10 Wi-Fi
Have coffee shop, will compute: Wireless fidelity lets us lug our laptops out of the office and connect to the Net on the fly. More than 200 million Wi-Fi equipped products sold last year.

For many years, Ethernet was the buzz word for wired networking with its bulkier and more robust wiring, which was double that of your ordinary phone line. Cat5(Category 5), then Cat6, were the standards for PCs connecting to the network, and eventually to the Internet/WWW. And we thought that further future development was heading and winding in that direction, until wireless reared its head and made the wired network connection go limp for many.

Whatever happened to Gigabit Ethernet?

11 Instant Messaging
LOL! Web surfers began to “laugh out loud” and BRB (“be right back”) in the mid-‘90s, with the launch of ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. Millions use it to swap messages and photos, even telephone pals.

Was never a devotee of IM, but I could decently frame and send SMS, which is very popular in the old homeland since it is quite cheap, sometimes even free, to send and receive text messages.

12 Yahoo!
Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created this popular Web portal in 1994. It remains a favorite for email, photo sharing (it owns Flickr) and other services.

Okay, so I use Yahoo!Groups where I participate in at least a dozen email lists, being a moderator in at least one. But Iwon continues to be my home portal, with a customized MyIwon page. One good reason? Using it gives one the opportunity to win various cash prizes, and great items, too.

(To be continued.)

Which Language To Emphasize And How To Teach It?

I have been hearing the phrase, teaching English as a second or secondary language, since I finished high school in the Philippines, and since I have been here in the US way back in 1980.

The only part of the methodology of teaching English as a second language that I have been exposed to and therefore familiar with has been that whereas before English had been taught primarily through the total immersion process with very neglectful regard to the native dialects of the learners, it is now being taught on top of and with deferential regard for the primary languages that migrant or foreign students are born with.

Using a poor analogy for the latter, it is much like using and learning Windows on top of DOS, which was the situation prior to Windows XP. (Though many would still contend that WInXP continues to have remnants of DOS.)

Tracing then my contemporaries’ journey in learning English, we can vouch that the old ways were “imposed” on us in earnest and with obvious noble intentions. While we had Filipino English teachers in grade school, most if not all of our English teachers in high school were young American Jesuits who spoke no other languages, both foreign and local. Additionally, since the school administrators were also American Jesuits, all English teachers starting from the primary grades had strict instructions to follow total immersion “techniques” in teaching English. (And I believe the concept or art of teaching English as a second language had not germinated then. At least not in that milieu that we were exposed to.) A quite tangible, and not easily forgettable, imposition was the draconian rule that only English could be spoken within campus. And sanctions were strictly imposed on violations, which for us was a possible unwanted trip to the office of the Dean of Discipline for a “jug” sign-up.

It should be noted that an all-girls college across town, run and operated by an all Filipino complement of nuns, also followed this total immersion process, complete with pecuniary sanctions on violations to the English-only rule. As I recall, each violation divested the violator of 10 centavos, quite a fortune during those idyllic times.

Then on the way to the forum, certain things changed. English would be taught as a second language. New books, still in English as were all the other textbooks in school, were published and given adequate promotion incorporating this new methodology, mode, or approach. I can’t really recall what brought this wind of change. It just happened. There were no pious or remorseful admissions that we, the prior recipients of the older method of teaching English, were incorrectly taught.

We in no way considered ourselves deprived, under-taught, or any such thing in our learned English. I suppose this whole thing was pretty much like the onset of the new Math (remember that?) which came about the same time. Was that then considered a period of Renaissance or Enlightenment in the education process?

Who knows? But whatever happened to new Math, anyway? Consigned to the dustbin of best-forgotten history?

Anyway, when we arrived in California in 1980 with school-age children, we unerringly got exposed to bi-lingual education in the public school system, with focus on teaching English as a second or secondary language. At that point, we had what they called education centers for the major minorities, such as Chinese and Filipinos, and of course, Hispanics, whose numbers had outstripped all others. New immigrant schoolchildren went through these centers prior to being sent to “mainstream” schools, ostensibly to get a better grasp of English before being diluted with the rest of the student population.

It all sounded good on paper. But when overall student scores started falling, specifically in English proficiency and in the sciences, questions about bi-lingual education started being asked. And relevantly so, when California students compared negatively with the rest of the country.

Nowadays, bi-lingual education has lost a good portion of its luster, and its once-avid proponents in the education field appear to have cooled off.

Imagine callers to San Francisco city hall complaining that they could hardly understand the English of staff members answering phones. Or that newly-hired airport screeners had to undergo intensive re-training in English prior to being deployed to their respective assignments, most requiring interaction with the riding public. And US citizenship is required for the position. Or that call center operators in the Philippines, India, or maybe, China, are being hired at a premium based on their English proficiency.

But those described above and much more are the realities, not only in the US but arguably for the rest of the globalized world.

So how are the various authorities responsible for general education responding to the situation?

World countries, states, and provinces where English is the official language are dark blue; countries, states, and provinces where it is an official, but not a primary language are light blue.

English as a global language

Because English is so widely spoken, it has often been referred to as a "global language", the lingua franca of the modern era. While English is not an official language in many countries, it is currently the language most often taught as a second language around the world. It is also, by international treaty, the official language for aircraft/airport and maritime communication, as well as being one of the official languages of both the European Union and the United Nations, and of most international athletic organizations, including the Olympic Committee. Books, magazines, and newspapers written in English are available in many countries around the world. English is also the most commonly used language in the sciences. In 1997, the Science Citation Index reported that 95% of its articles were written in English, even though only half of them came from authors in English-speaking countries.

From Manchester Central School of English

When The End is Not The End

On the 25th of the current month, we are re-confirmed for our flight back to the place which we now call home – for us, our married children, and the grandkids. The temperate haven that is Northern California.

The two-month trip is nearing its end, though it seemed only yesterday that our connecting domestic flight brought us back to the big island of Mindanao, to a place in its northern section called Cagayan de Oro, which is just a little over an hour’s flight from the capital region called Metro Manila.

Having taken this same trip route for many times over the over quarter century that we left the old homeland, this latest one seemed no different from a reflex act, one not requiring much focus and thought.

It just happened. And nearly two months later, it will be ending.

The very hectic weeks can be blamed for the rather hasty flight of time, which did not allow for much slack time for reflection and careful introspection. They just happened and things were done. And looking around and back, my wearied eyes survey the visible results of the works done – a few renovations in the residence, more time-consuming sprucing up in the commercial building, charitable endeavors planned and executed for proper discharge when we are gone, and various odds and ends not worthy of mention.

Reading this so far one may be predisposed to think that I must not only be self-satisfied with what has been done, but must welcome the winding-down phase to happily make way for pleasant thoughts about home, family, and the familiarity of place and routine.

But my cross mind will have none of that. It seems to work on the premise that there are still a lot of sticky loose ends to attend to before one can truly write finis to this episode. And my acutely critical self would seem to confirm this.

There appears still a myriad of little chores to be done, the kind that requires time for its germination and resolution. They cannot be hurried if one desires proper resolution. My trusty little yellow-pad note still has pages of uncrossed-out hand-printed notes that cry for attention.

Thus, when the 25th day of the current month comes, the end will not be ushered in. Rather, it will simply provide the temporal and causal link to yet another planned return trip precisely to attend to still unfinished business.

The over 14-hour return trip notwithstanding, the next few months promise to be yet another long drawn-out episode in this continuing saga to cram as much of life in a solitary lifetime as possible.

So, life, here I go again. Be swift and be kind.

Beyond Quirky, Maybe . . .

Maybe bordering on delusional misperception? Or to an outsider, maybe just flagrant displays of puerile behavior.

The Filipinos hold senatorial elections this coming May. The shortened campaign period appears to have galvanized eager politicians and their paid minions to almost frenzied escalation of campaign activities, believing that more is always better. More sorties into all corners where the electorate is massed in considerable numbers. More boring campaign speeches and noisy motorcades around the already traffic jam-burdened narrow city streets.

And then, there are the campaign posters pasted in every and all conceivable outdoor locations where any flat surface is expansive enough to be lathered with goo, glue, rugby, or whatever it is that they are now using to plaster and paste these election posters, so those self-indulgent, self-serving, cosmetically-enhanced images and text messages of various candidates are allowed to assault the already much harangued consciousness of the public.

As a kid growing up in this same milieu, it titillated me to no end how the property fences and building walls exposed to the streets almost always carried a prominently located and oft-repeated warning sign, Post No Bill.

In a place where property fences, typically made of hollow blocks and built as high as 6, 10, and even 15 feet and laced at the top with embedded broken glass or sharp barbs depending on one’s social status, are viewed as a crucial part of the security measures for the precious domicile of residents, one does not have to stretch one’s imagination to realize the abundance and ubiquity of this type of enclosure around the city.

Definitely, very fertile grounds for savvy political campaigns to attach their election posters to. Typically done in the stealth of night, these miscreants are able to do their deplorable deeds almost with impunity. And I suspect, most times with the silent and tacit tolerance, or pesky annoyance, of city officials.

Ironically, while the practice of high fences is still the norm, the warning sign however is somehow on its death throes. One hardly sees them around. I surmise the reason is that property owners may have thrown their hands up and given up the fight to keep their fences and walls free from these ugly and unwanted finishings, whether during elections or not.

The practice of indiscriminately pasting these election materials where any flat surface may reveal itself, whether in public or private areas, is so ingrained in the local psyche and so rampantly done that the fight against it was a lost cause right from the get-go.

But during this particular election cycle, I feel a new height, or rather a new low, has been reached.

Again, where any flat, or not so flat, surface reveals itself – electric posts, street signs, traffic signs, or any standing post, etc. Most are trashily blanketed with this paper ugliness, which prominently deliver their equally “trashy” messages and images.

As shown in the pictures, the once beautiful unimpeded view of a nice and neatly maintained park beside the city’s historic cathedral has been usurped by the repetitious ugliness that has covered it like a dark and foreboding fog. That appears to announce the impending demise of what stands for beauty, probity, and even reason and logic.

The other one appears even more prophetic, because it covers the imposing physical symbol and presence of the people’s government. The provincial capitol grounds has literally been rained on by the locust swarm-like monstrosity that appears to have landed and got stuck on the trees.

And these posters show the smiling countenances of the politicians who in theory are supposed to be tasked with honorably and respectfully serving the lowly constituents and their interests. But quess what, even prior to their elections, they are already showing the crass mettle that they are made of. They can’t even respect the symbol of that noble task and power.

Oh, well.

May they with the most numbers of ugly posters crammed in the tiniest or most unlikely places be the declared winners. Give them “A” for effort, at least.

After all, more is always better, regardless. Or is it?

UPDATE:

Speaking of the devil, a news item excerpted below highlights the issue on campaign posters, which calamity has plagued the entire country since it started holding “free” elections:

SIX men belonging to militant partylists (Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, and Kabataan Party) were charged in court for violating election laws after they were caught posting campaign materials outside the authorized poster area in downtown Barangay 21, Cagayan de Oro City.

The filing of charges was the first time in Cagayan de Oro that legal action was taken against campaign posting violators since the 2007 election season opened, said lawyer Stalin Baguio, the city’s Commission on Elections registrar.

Posting of campaign materials outside the common poster area is a violation of Section 11 of Comelec Resolution 7767 or the Rules and Regulations Implementing the Fair Elections Act.

The suspects were caught posting campaign posters of leftist partylists such as that of the Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, and Kabataan Party at around 3 a.m. last Thursday, said SPO1 Penil Ramas, Macabalan police precinct investigator.By Danilo V. Adorador III

Needless to state, this rather superficial attempt at law and order is both too little and too late, if I may be allowed to bloviate.

A Typical Day At FICCO?

Ever wondered what awaits your average bank client in Cagayan de Oro, on a typical banking day, but most especially after the hiatus of a long weekend? Which the previous Holy Week weekend was.

Lines and crowds galore, whether it be in the elegant premises of the big commercial banks with strategic branches scattered around the city, or in the tiny modest lobbies of the biggest multi-purpose credit union in the entire country, FICCO.

Granted that FICCO also has 19 branches and 5 satellite offices scattered throughout the province of Misamis Oriental and in some contiguous neighbors, the scene at its main office yesterday noon could be characterized as representative of the other branches smartly positioned thereabouts. Clients huddled and milled about, awaiting their numbered turns to do their specific transactions and thus be freed and able to get on with other mundane businesses. Serious dads and moms, some with petulant or antsy kids in tow, clutching either their share capital passbook, or deposit passbook, or the bright yellow passbook for loans which in my estimation outnumbered the rest.

The entire multi-storey concrete building of the main office is adequately air-conditioned, but when you crowd in an unusually large number of people, the temperature starts to rise, not only with regard to that in the room. But also in the mind of each individual member when his or her wait starts to heatedly exceed an almost interminable hour or so. Though by and large the mood was that of quiet patience and resignation, it was not difficult to feel the growing impatience, as one saw a kid slouched in one of the comfy couches, slumped and dead to the world in her deep sleep, and the mom dotingly doing her level best under the circumstances to make her feel comfortable.

I had purposely chosen to experience what it was like being part of the crowd under those trying and stressful conditions. We came in almost 30 minutes past noon and did not see daylight again till almost 2 p.m. And I can surmise that the rest also suffered the same fate, in a manner of speaking. Though I definitely have noticed in Cagayan de Oro that that would be equal opportunity suffering because in every bank office one goes, milling crowds are the daily fare, and the “take a number” process is the inevitable bullet to bite.

That long arduous wait gave us sufficient time to reflect on several things, aside from and over and above what one could read on the bulletin boards and pasted-on communications on the walls. BTW, I was mildly taken aback reading a letter from Xavier U president, Fr. Villarin, exonerating one Mr. Isagani Daba from any claims of fraud perpetrated on a certain university fund. Then I realized that Gani, who I know personally from way back, is or was an officer of the university and is also currently a director of FICCO.

Anyway, back to the serious stuff. Now that I have gratingly made my point about the daily crowds in bank offices and have mentally translated that to countless man-hours lost for those who sit and wait for long periods, unable to do any productive work. Unfortunately, I did not see any in the crowds I have seen reading textbooks, doing home or house work, or even clipping nails. Yes, many fiddled, toyed, and played with their cell phones, which is quite ubiquitous even in these unlikely gatherings. Thus, the dire prognostication. Though a sobering thought would have been that at this point in time, the over 10,000 members, or even half of them, of this main office did not collectively decide to converge as one.

Cannot any thing be done to greatly curb or even eliminate these tiresome but more importantly, economically disastrous, losses in man-hours which a beleaguered country such as the Philippines can ill afford?

Especially from motivated groups such as these whom we may impute regard highly value-laden and productive activities?

They obviously value banking services, don’t they?

Aside from giving ear to traditional time and motion studies that have earned great kudos from business past, credit union management may well serve to look at how to marshal the services of other staff members when crowds start to swell out of hand. In this particular instance, one could easily see that other staff members in the building, easily recognizable by their neat uniforms, were leisurely sauntering about among the waiting horde, obviously attending to their own duties, though unrelated to tellering and cash operations and thus, with not much or none at all impact on the gathering crowd that was not subsiding in number.

And I could have brought this urgent matter up to the sitting general manager, who is also a personal friend. Unfortunately, he was out on his lunch break and would not be back until 2 p.m.

And as a final general observation, one can readily recognize this great economic waste in many other areas of city life, such as in unnecessary congestion in traffic, where the losses extend beyond to just man-hours but leap into losses in precious scarce resources – unnecessary wear and tear of vehicles and unproductive use of expensive gas and oil.


Hopefully, some things positive ensue from this whiny piece.