November 19, 2017

The Problem with Using One Note for Work

The caveat – I love using One Note. I think it is one of the best apps that Microsoft ever made.

The problem – Microsoft does not understand sharing, what it truly means, and why clamping the file down to the computer that created it is a bad idea.

I’ll elaborate. There are certain times when I do not want data I create for work purposes to be solely on the work machine I created it on. Why not, you may ask? Excellent question. Sometimes it can be a security issue where I may not entirely trust our IT department to back up the data or more often than not, I just want to have access to that information from various devices. I could be out at the mall and get a call from work that requires that I look at some of my data. It has happened more often than one might expect.

One Note is not friendly to this type of use. I cannot create the notebook in Dropbox and then use their app to see that notebook across platforms. That is not sharing. For instance, I’ve created a great notebook on my work computer which is a Surface Pro but I can’t access that notebook on my MacBook Pro. I know that I should be able to. That isn’t the reality.

I’m sure tons of techie folks will challenge what I’ve said. Whatever you suggest will never make One Note work the way I think it should.

Why Aliens Won’t Visit Us

I recently heard a great idea about why we as a species would never be visited by an alien race. The idea is simple. Sentient beings are not capable of truly getting along with each other and always end up killing themselves off before the Star Trek utopia actually happens. Sentient species that are capable of murdering each other are not capable of creating an environment where interstellar travel is a real possiblity. Politics, hatred, and a plethora of other emotions cause them to commit hanous acts of violence against each other and while they are doing that they never reach the level necessary to travel between the stars.

Hell, we can’t even agree of what global warming really is. It is extremely difficult for any scientist to apply static science to a dynamic situation. The Earth doesn’t stay in any one pattern so how do you know that it is or isn’t following one? Easy. It never is. Does the over population cause a problem? Sure. How much of our weather is a result of that versus nature? Not really sure that anyone on this planet is qualified to truly answer that question.

The reason I felt like even writing anything about this has to do with an article on the space.com website titled “Slaughterbots video depicts a dystopian future of autonomous killer robots.” The idea is frightening enough but after watching the video you feel like you want to join their cause to ban these weapons. That isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the fact that simply “banning” something doesn’t stop it from being produced by anyone with enough drive, money, and determination to do so. We were so busy asking ourselves “if we could” that we didn’t stop and ask ourselves “if we should.”

This post could simply been about why aliens won’t visit but there is so much more to explore than that. Let us speculate that an alien society does exist that has mastered the subtle art of co-existing in peace with one another. They reach the level of technology necessary for interstellar travel and they stumble upon Earth. Would they want to contact us? Why? How would they choose which nation to approach? Would the fact that we are not all united under a single earth government matter to them? So many questions but you can certainly get the idea.

I’m including the link to the video. It is worth a look.

Here is a link to autonomousweapons.org. A website devoted to stopping the production of these types of weapons.