A Couple of Polls

There's not much today that I can say a whole lot about, but there were two rather interesting polls. The first one I want to talk about shows that most voters would like the government to do something about internet security. Ironically enough though, they hold low opinions of Congress and the FTC, who would be the ones to act. I think people need to be careful about what they wish for because too much government involvement could be a bad thing. Of course that may be a necessary evil to counter the increasing rates of identity theft and spyware. Another poll showed that the movie industry has a more pressing issue to deal with than piracy: people staying at home. It shows that significantly more people prefer watching films at home rather than at the theater, which is kind of surprising for me given the big screen experience at the movies. However, it is cheaper to just rent a movie. I think it's wrong to attribute the box office slump to this though because the good movies this year have been few and far between.

There is still some notable techie news to go. A newer article on Sony BMG's new copy protection technology reveals that it's quite flawed in that files from such discs won't work on iPods! More than that though, Mac users have much more freedom than PC users with such discs. The whole idea just sounds dumb now. BBC is running an article about the decline of casette tapes, which may become obsolete in the very near future. I personally only use it for when I jog, and even then I just record a CD onto a tape (hey, I've gotta save money). A blog supporting free speech tested out Microsoft's Chinese censorship stuff for blogs to find a title with "democracy" or "freedom" called profanity! The same people even came up with instructions for how to circumvent the restriction, and I'm glad that someone is speaking out against it. Lastly, Google was so impressed with submissions so far in its Summer of Code program that it has expanded its funds to allow for more submissions. I just think it's great that they're doing so much to encourage aspiring computer scientists, and if that wasn't enough for me I even found a picture of the spread at their office's breakfast table:



There is quite a bit of movie news today, and I'll start out with the multimedia. There's yet another trailer for War of the Worlds online making it look even better. Oh, and Tom Cruise announced that he proposed to Katie Holmes! I guess it wasn't mean to be with me and Katie, but I find the age gap between her and Tom scary. Tom Yum Goong, the upcoming Tony Jaa movie, has an even better teaser trailer at its site and now I'm all pumped up for the foreign action flick. There are some new pictures from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire online just in time for the ABC Family premiere of the second movie on Sunday, which I'll probably watch because I think it's a real fun movie. We now have an early idea of what Kong will look like in Peter Jackson's King Kong, but I don't think we'll see much more of the film until the teaser at the end of the month. Speaking of teases though, we finally have a teaser poster of the hotly anticipated A Scanner Darkly:



We now have word that a Dead or Alive screen adaptation has begun production, but what we don't know is just how bad (or good, I suppose) it will be. What would've been better news is confirmation of a 24 movie, but it turns out that such a production would be at least 2 seasons away. However, we do know that if Land of the Dead does well enough, George A. Romero would make a sequel his top priority! Let's hope that the movie meets everyone's expectations. And last but not least, AICN got another reader submission about The 40-year-old Virgin that makes the movie sounds like a real hit.

I do have some randomness today. After a long battle, Governor Rick Perry signed into law a bill that allows for a non-voting student member on the Board of Regents. The Board consists of some distinguished members who make the big decisions on the University of Texas system, and it'll be nice to have a student voice there. Federal Reserve Board member Ben Bernanke will now be on Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, and this only puts him closer to a chance of being Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's successor. I like his views and so I hope he can make some difference on the CEA. The last thing I wanted to mention was a great NY Times article about the importance of globalization.

Now for some Friday Feasting:

Appetizer
What's one word or phrase that you use a lot?
A friend of mine claims that I use the word 'indeed' or not, so I guess I'll go with that.

Soup
Name something you always seem to put off until the last minute.
Doing chores! I hate doing dusting and menial stuff like that. It's necessary of course, but I just hate doing it.

Salad
What was the last great bumper sticker you saw?
I don't pay attention to bumper stickers much so I can't even recall the last good one I saw. However, the last one that I recall seeing was one that said "Yale" on the car of an old schoolmate of mine.

Main Course
If you could be invisible for one day, how would you spend your time?
Peeking in girls' locker rooms! Ok, seriously I guess I'd try to figure out what makes girls tick (especially current and previous crushes). Maybe in some spare time I'd try to figure out what other people think of me.

Dessert
Describe your hair.
It's really thick right now because it needs to be cut! I usually wear it gelled up like spikes, but not totally straight spikes. I let it looks kind of like messy spikes because I think that guys with those perfect spikes in their hair spend too much time on it.