The Better Humanitarian

I'm finally back! The trip to Dallas went well, and TI even put me up in a suite at a Crowne Plaza! Apparently, calculators are less than 5% of their business and they're real big in semiconductors. I had six interviews and most of them went well, and I'll know the results by Tuesday. In this post, I'll go over the news I missed from Thursday and Friday. I felt that the most provocative article that came out compared Bill Gates to Steve Jobs in their philanthropic efforts, and it turns out that Jobs had none! Everyone seems to put Jobs on a pedestal and associate Gates with the devil, which just goes to show you the power of public relations. Is part of it media spin? Why is it that when Apple comes out with a new product it's gold, but when Bill Gates donates large sums of money no one seems to care? I know that they shouldn't report on every little move he makes, but should they be mocking each one of them? Jobs is really the "greedy capitalist," and yet he's seen as a pioneer and almost a hero to Mac geeks worldwide. So which one really deserves to be called a hero? The one with a generous heart or the one who has changed technology as we know it? Or maybe I should phrase it this way: the one who has crushed companies in the past and stolen ideas to get his way, or the one who selfishly tries to generate billions of dollars to go into only his own pockets while shutting out other companies from his development libraries and use of FairPlay? Not all heros and villains are as black and white as you may think they are.

Following up a little bit on Jobs: MacSpeedZone has conducted its own tests on the new Core Duo iMac to discover that it's a lot faster than Macworld (the site) had previously reported (which I mentioned earlier this week). It discovered the best results on applications with multiple processes going on at once (surprise, surprise), and its processor was used more efficiently than a Quad Core PowerMac. It'll get better as more applications take advantage of the Core Duo's capabilities. I have a bunch of Google news. Some people are claiming that their site may get a slight facelift due to some visitors' results having an extra bar to the left that contains specialized search possibilities. This wouldn't be the first time such a slip-up has happened, so this will almost certainly become permanent soon. Google is also revamping its search algorithm to become better adept at concise results by doing things like removing multiple results for the same page and discovering illicit redirects. Some analysts have been speculating that Google will roll out its own version of iTunes to compete with Apple, which I think is a little far-fetched at this point in time, but it is altogether possible given their expansion of Google Video. Plus, their strategy isn't really very focused. Lastly, Joel Spolsky put up a second article in his series on design that explains what design really is. If you think it's just about the aesthetics of a product, then you really need to read his awesome post. I know that I had to make countless design tradeoffs for my Latin program.

There was a surprising amount of movie news, so I'll keep some of it for tomorrow. What you're looking at to the left here is Jack Black in Nacho Libre standing next to director Jared Hess (of Napoleon Dynamite fame). Speaking of Napoleon, Jon Heder is slated to star in a comedy where he'd be participating in a sumo open, and it's actually inspired by this article. Superman II will soon have a director's cut out on DVD and will presumably come out this summer in time for the release of Superman Returns (*gasp* what a coincidence). While I'm on the man of steel, Warner Brothers decided that the biopic on Christopher Reeves called Truth, Justice and the American Way cannot use that title and must change it or face litigious consequences. Lastly, Yahoo! Movies nabbed the trailer for Dave Chapelle's Block Party, which is all about a block party that Chapelle throws with the best hip hop artists around (not Lil Jon, I mean truly brilliant artists) including The Roots and Common among others.

For the first time in a long while, I'm going with the Saturday Six meme:

1. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?
I think my grandmother, who ended up dying after fighting it in the hospital for a few months.

2. How many jobs have you held in your life? How many of those were part of your chosen career field?
Two; zero. My job being a TA at summer camps falls under education and my babysitting job falls under child care, neither of which really piques my interest all that much. Granted, the TA gig was fun for a while, but that's just not where my talents are. Some people have a gift for working with kids, but not me.

3. Of those, how many did you leave voluntarily?
Both of them. For the former, I wanted to do summer school last summer and this summer I want an internship, and for the latter, it was a temporary thing anyway.

4. Take this quiz: What animal were you in a past life?
You were a polar bear - A bit of a loner, you enjoy introspection and solitude.
You are a fighter, and you will seek revenge on those who harm you.

5. What animal were you expecting you'd be?
I was hoping for a tiger, but you can't win them all!

6. Time to pull this tactic again: Your turn to come up with a Reader's Choice Question. What question would you like to see asked in a future edition of "The Saturday Six?"
When you leave your home, do you ever feel paranoid that you've left something behind?