Right Brain Thinking

Technology moves so fast, doesn't it? One minute you can be driving around in your brand new saloon car, listening to digital radio appreciating the climate control pumping cool air into the car and a sweet female voice telling you to take the next left, when all of a sudden you collide with a guy in a fibreglass anti-grav hover-car doing 210mph who's not looking where he's going.

My Dad is always very keen to bring up things he's heard about when it comes to new technology. I think it's because he knows it's one of the few things we can usually talk about without ending up in an argument (much unlike the taboo subjects of financial responsibility, my driving and my eating habits). Sitting round the dinner table this weekend though, conversation went turned to the new UEFI system that my old man had read about online...

"So, have you heard that they're finally replacing the computer BIOS?" Says Dad...
"No, I hadn't heard. What're they replacing it with?"
"Some new system called U-E-F-I, it's meant to load windows in 5 seconds, which is 25 seconds faster than the BIOS program can"
"Well, it'll not be exactly five seconds, and my computer takes less than 30 seconds to load..."
"No the guy who invented BIOS himself said that it takes 30 seconds for a computer to load and has done for the last 25 years."

Yeah, diplomacy broke down shortly after this.

"It hasn't been exactly the same for the last 25 years, Dad, don't be daft."
"Yes it has, the guy who made it said so."
"No, he just means that the BIOS technology has been in place for all this time, not that it hasn't been updated at all."
"Yeah but I saw it on the news and on Google that they were using the same system."
"Well how could they be? Technology has advanced in the last 25 years somewhat, they've had to update it constantly to accommodate for new hardware and software, it gets updated all the time."
"No it doesn't."
"...What?"
"Windows gets updated but not the BIOS."

*stunned silence* 

"You can't be serious." I said.
"Well you never see a message saying 'Your BIOS is being updated' do you? So it must be the same one. And this new one it does it in 5 seconds."
"You're talking nonsense. The BIOS gets revised before it gets installed onto your computer. It doesn't get updated after installation as it's installed on... you know what, forget it. And it wont be '5 seconds' either. Computer hardware varies from pc to pc and the memory and processor speed will still have an impact on the time it takes to load a computer; I'm not disagreeing that it'll be faster, but there'll be no 'set time'."
"Yes there is - 5 seconds."
"Mum? I'm going out..." 

 Ahem. Well, at least we agreed the BIOS was a bit outdated. The reality is that the old BIOS system is simply not designed to cater for the modernities of present day technology, let alone being future-proof. The new UEFI technology is specifically designed to be adaptable to new peripherals and multiple inputs over different ports and also for future technologies such as touchscreen (it's not THAT common on PCs) and natural gesture interfaces.

God help us when he hears about 3D TV.

-Ken