Postage on E-mail

I've ultimately decided that I'm going to call up TI tomorrow morning and accept their offer. I received an e-mail from Goldman Sachs on Saturday saying that they were turning me down, but in all fairness, I would've done a lot more if I really cared (like mixing more at the reception and sending a "Thank You" e-mail and such). I was pretty relieved to not have to make a difficult choice, and I think I'll have a lot more fun working in a fab factory. The only really controversial article that popped online this weekend was about AOL and Yahoo unveiling a program giving preferential treatment to companies who pay a penny or less per e-mail for their messages to bypass all filters and go straight to the recipient. Supposedly, the companies will have to prove that the recipients agreed to receive the messages, but I still think it's a horrible idea. One reason is, of course, underhanded dealings where unsolicited e-mail would go right through. Another is that they're going to lose the confidence of their users and many of them may switch, which is a precarious situation to put themselves in given the rise of Gmail. Who's to say that they won't purposely stall legitimate, non-"certified" e-mails just to make the "stamps" more appealing? This really sounds like a half-baked idea to me and I don't think anyone has given it an especially warm reception as of yet so I wonder what will become of it.

How cool is that picture?! That really is a Google snack room, though you have to wonder if it'll survive their stock drop. Last week I posted a video of various advertisements from Apple's history, but one site has go so far as to provide almost every single ad that Apple has put out. It's a great way to kill some time or avoid doing work. I thought it was a bit odd that the tech jobs in highest demand out there are .NET developers and quality assurance analysts, neither of which sound all that exciting so that must be why there in such high demand. I guess I just haven't caught the .NET bug yet. Canon has been working on CRT-like flat-screen televisions, which means no dead pixels or most of the other disadvantages to LCD screens, but it's still pretty thin. I still say that you might as well just invest in DLP, which is ever so cool (my opinion isn't all that biased, just go to an electronics store and see for yourself). If your monitor actually has dead pixels, by the way, there's a free program over here that may be able to solve your issues. Lastly, Post-Star has a good list of the top 10 video podcasts out there, three of which I already subscribe to and a few more I plan on trying out. I'm actually rather behind in my podcasts, but they're all fun to hear/watch.

The box office was dominated by When a Stranger Calls, which is yet another critically hated movie to top the box office. In fact, it didn't even screen for critics! I guess a lot of teenagers just needed their thriller fix. Walk the Line came back from off the chart to get ninth, and Brokeback Mountain clutched the #4 spot. I had to work on my CS 337 project today (which was actually kind of neat because we had to compress text files), so I missed the superbowl, but the movie commercials are now online for your viewing pleasure. The only one that looks better than its past previews is Cars. Lastly, there's an Mission Impossible: 3 featurette at its site to keep you pumped for the movie, which had better have some awesome special effects.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings, as always:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Taking sides::Team
   
2. Couples::Fight
   
3. Right of refusal::Liberty
   
4. Marla::Fight Club
   
5. Multiple::Math
   
6. Trinity::Carrie-Ann Moss
   
7. Sneeze::Aachoo
   
8. Sweatpants::Ice cream
   
9. Steve::My cousin
   
10. Fabulous::Fabolous