Laptops for Kids

Just a little while ago, your humble blogger was attacked by a roach. I think it clung a towel we have in the kitchen and jumped onto my wrist. I'm not a fan of roaches so that really freaked me out and doesn't improve my impression of the vermin. I wonder why they even exist! Well anyway, CBS has kind of a crazy article about buying laptops for kids. Unless your kid is a child prodigy, I can't see that as being a good idea. It's so unbelievably easy to run into the wrong stuff online and it will likely only serve to spoil the kids. What will they do on it besides chat with friends and play games? Study?! Hah! I've used that excuse a hundred times back in the day. There's a difference between monitored home use and unrestricted transient usage. If you give it to a high school student he'll probably end up being new to puberty and downloading porn. So my verdict: be careful. None of this was a problem back when I was growing up since I had to work out of Windows 3.1 and DOS learning commands from when my brother would type them and just playing some demos that we had lying around. Then e-mail started with Juno, and the Internet didn't spring up until I was almost done with middle school. I learned a lot sure, but computers were much cleaner back then for kids.

I'm going to start out the technology news with good news for those tight on cash like me. We may soon see $20 cell phones with the advent of single-chip technology from Bangalore, India that could reduce cell phone production costs by 30%. I guess its only fitting that the development took place in India with the fast growing user base there. Microsoft will not be needing cheap cell phones, however, as they have just won a big lawsuit against the "spam king" for a handsome $7 million. I'm glad that someone is doing something about spammers. Many of you know that Discovery landed successfully this morning in California and now NASA has released a podcast from onboard the spacecraft. I wonder if it's authentic or if they simulated it? How would we know the difference anyhow. In an effort to standout, Yahoo has discovered that its search engine spans over 8 billion more documents than Google does! To counter, Google has added wildcard functionality to all queries on their search engine (including questions). A lot of people use search engines that get the best of both worlds though to compromise. Lastly, Amazon seems to be looking more towards entering the DVD rental arena, but it's not really for sure yet. All we know is that they're still looking for good labor for the project, and if it's still available next summer I may consider them more serious for an internship.

Today's movie news is a day of trailers. I know I linked the foreign trailer for Oliver Twist a little while ago, but now we have a trailer in English and it looks like it won't be bad but will feel as long as reading David Copperfield. Charles Dickens must've loved to talk when he was alive. There's a website up for Nicholas Cage's next movie, The Weather Man, and it includes a trailer that looks pretty good. I think he's a really underrated actor and I hope this one does turn out well. The last trailer I wanted to mention was for an indie horror flick called The Dark Hours. The trailer is a bit confusing, but it doesn't look like another dumb teen oriented horror film and it won an audience award at an International Film Festival. Don't expect another Batman Begins out of David Goyer in his adaptation of The Flash as the producers says that it follows a different tone and may be a return to more cartoonish films for the writer. We have confirmation that James Franco will reprise his role as Harry Osborne in Spider-man 3, but we still don't know whether or not he'll emerge as a villain or not (though most of us suspect that he will). He doesn't have a script yet himself, but apparently the main shoot will start in January. Meanwhile, the role of the mutant known as Leech has been cast for X-men 3, and the propaganda continues as to how dedicated Brett Ratner is to the project. Superhero Hype has an interview with the director of Ghost Rider, and it sounds like he's on the right track with the film. Some people are skeptical from the leaked footage, but I'm optimistic. Lastly, AICN has another great (and terse) review for The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and I have still yet to run into a bad review for it.

The Ten on Tuesday meme is back, baby:

10 Best Current Actors/Actresses
10. Christian Bale (he's really coming up)
9. Jodie Foster
8. Kiefer Sutherland
7. Uma Thurman
6. Bruce Willis
5. Johnny Depp
4. Al Pacino
3. Julia Roberts
2. Tom Cruise (screw the Tomkat nonsense, you know he's good)
1. Brad Pitt