Reinventing Modern Computing?

PC Magazine is running an article on what they claim are the five ideas that will reinvent modern computing, but I always take their articles with a grain of salt. Their first one already has me suspicious: IMAX at home. It sounds cool and all, combining a bunch of $1000 computers to simulate IMAX, but who cares that isn't rich? What does this reinvent? I'll give them the quantum computer and the midair mouse though: those are both things that could be big. We wouldn't need pointers for presentations and such, just the same mouse you always use. The quantum computer could theoretically break RSA encryption, so that's a massively huge deal. I also like the idea of extreme peer-to-peer: like BitTorrent for servers or even home networks. Interesting, but complicated and hard to fit in one's head. Much easier to fit in your head is simulating the human brain, about which there's actually a course at UT, and it's a ridiculously large project. I personally don't know that I believe that a computer, even with thousands of processors, can simulate a human brain, but one of my most respected professors believes so, so I'm sure it is theoretically possible. Still, how close are we to attaining than? And when we do, what will we do with it? I don't know if these are the top ideas reinventing computing, but I'd say that four of them are valid.

Microsoft's DRM has been cracked in an interesting arms race between a hidden hacker and Microsoft. He keeps releasing new versions of FairUse4DRM, which strips DRM from .wma files, and he's done it once again to crack Microsoft's latest patch. What stuns me is that one of the richest companies in the world cannot attain the identity of one dude so they can sue him. Kudos to this guy for being great at hiding, and I hope he keeps it up. He's sending a great message: DRM will never be unbreakable.

There's no doubt that Firefox is a great browser, but could it be better by taking lessons from Safari? One blogger is pointing out several things it should take from Safari, and I think I agree with spawning windows from tabs, draggable images, highlighted text fields, and better bug reporting. I'm not convinced that page rendering is noticeably faster in Safari (please comment with benchmarks if you have them, I'm not saying it's not possible), and these are rather nit-picky things. Safari is still a second-class browser compared to Firefox. Plus, if you care so much, write an extension for it (for some of these things they already exist).

Now for the rest of the news: Apple stuff. If you're getting your first Mac then you'll probably find this site helpful, which is filled with articles to help ease the switch. What I love about this site is that it's not fanboy dribble. Just check out this article and see for yourself.

This is really a really interesting rumor: Jay-Z may be starting a label with Apple since he's reportedly been interesting in leaving Def Jam to start a "superlabel" with Beyonce. It sounds crazy, but it may be profitable for Apple, though I imagine they'd be control freaks so not sure if this will pan out. Still, could mean very interesting things for Apple to get involved with music production, though may spread them a little thin, in my opinion.

Now for some one-lines. iPhone users can also check out this site for more great iPhone apps in an iPhone friendly format, no less. If you're looking to hide your iPod or iPhone from crooks, you may want to protect it inside a brown Zune. That thing is so ugly no one would dare want to steal it. I love that they noticed the idiocy of the "squirt" term as well.

Harry Potter did predictably well in the box office with $140 million grossed since its release. It underperformed its predecessors over the weekend, but made more money in five days than they each did in a week, so that's pretty good money. I should probably go see it, huh? Transformers came in second with an impressive $36 million, and Ratatouille was close behind with exactly half that. Those movies both have some great legs on them, and are slaughtering Die Hard with its unnecessarily long title.

Yay for Dark Knight news! Despite previous intimations, it looks like Two Face will, in fact, be in The Dark Knight! I hope they don't try shoving too much in this film with so many villains. And alas, check it out, spy pics of The Joker!


I don't usually dig romance movies, but I think I'm interested in Feast of Love. I don't know why, but I really dig the trailer. It has Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear after all, so it has to be at least somewhat good.

We have an early review of Rush Hour 3, and it's just as I suspected: not as good as the first two. Disappointing, but that's what happens when a franchise becomes a cash cow, I suppose.

Last, but not least, we have rumors about the plot of Indiana Jones 4 about the Soviets wanting immortality. It's too involved for me to even summarize, so just go read it for yourself.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Situation :: Room


2. Theme song :: Human Giant


3. Kelly :: Clarkson


4. Club :: Music


5. Swerve :: Cologne


6. Couch :: Potato


7. Bigfoot :: Chupa Cabra


8. Arbitrary :: Random


9. Inventor :: Device


10. Blazer :: Blue

Life at Amazon

If you've come here for corporate secrets, then too bad, I'm not cracking! You'll just have to wait and see what Amazon is working on when they release it. Instead, I'm going to give a look at the working environment because I've been asked about it and I know I would've liked more information when I was looking for internships. Working at Amazon is almost exactly as I had pictured a place I wanted to work at. The culture really is great and welcoming. Really, Amazon isn't paying me to say this, I'm just enthused about being here. The people in my organization are extremely smart, and the team I'm on seems to have a great management structure. I'm only 3 levels away from an SVP, who reports to Jeff B. Speaking of the management structure, it's actually fairly flat. When I see superiors in the hall, I may get a little nervous because I figure I should be, but the other employees have a great opinion of them and even joke about them in a good way. Even though I technically have two bosses, my manager and my TPPM, they're really more of guides to keep me on track than anything else. It doesn't feel like red tape or bureaucracy in the least. My TPPM is more technical, more hands-on, and more of who I keep posted directly about my progress and sometimes get advice from. My manager is like the team's spokesperson to the business units, has a good idea of what our customers want, sits in meetings so we don't have to, but it a computer scientist at heart, as well, and still very much has a technical understanding of what's going on. In fact, our VP used to work on an Ada compiler back in the day, but he's still a phenomenal leader.

The thing is, if there was no management, things would easily fall apart. Let's face it, SDEs are bad at estimating, often misguided in planning, and not likely to prioritize the business necessity of projects but rather are more likely to prioritize what they think is more fun or more cool in their mind. Even then though, management manages to be fairly unobtrusive, but very much in the loop. Our scrum meetings in the morning are for everyone to answer what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, and if they're blocked on something then what is it so the TPPM (the scrum master) can help with that, and that's really cool, I think. There's always a sense of how we're doing in the sprint and it gives everyone on the team accountability. Last summer, at TI, I really didn't have that. People weren't motivated to get things done. At Amazon, people are just extremely smart and very self-motivated. It's incredible. It's like the difference between high school and college: people genuinely want to be there. People don't think it's perfect, and they're not blissful, because work is work for a reason. They're satisfied overall though, and the work environment is really laid back. No one checks on you, if you take breaks no one cares, there's free tea/coffee/hot cocoa, you can bring your dog, you can wear practically whatever you want (within reason), you can bring your nerf gun, you can request another monitor, etc. Amazon will do whatever they have to if it makes you more productive, though they still have a policy of frugality. So the prices on the site you get are seriously as low as Amazon can make them. They do not have money fights or anything, they just pay top dollar for top talent, and it shows. If you're trying to compete with Amazon then you're going to need a miracle because the people here strive to be on top, are proud of it, and are ridiculously talented. Everyone fits together like a nice little puzzle, and everyone supports each other, and it's just a very friendly community.

As for the internship program: my project is great. I love that what I'm doing really has a business impact (adding geographical data to our logs and producing a visualization for the business units with this information), and that I picked the group I would work with. It gives you a lot more control, and makes you responsible for what you do in the summer. I'm treated like another member of the team, and though I'm sure I've annoyed my co-workers with a lot of confusion for the first several weeks, they've been pretty nice about it. Plus there's the company picnic and intra-company sports, which even Jeff B sometimes plays (I hit an SVP with a dodgeball ball two weeks ago). The only intern-only events are rafting, Mariners game, a dinner, and then there's a couple of UT intern events (lunch and dinner). Rafting on the Skykomish was a ton of fun (I'll share when I get high res pictures), and our raft actually hit a rock called Fly Paper sideways and flipped over. It was scary being under the raft for like 10 seconds but our guide flipped it back over and 5 of the 6 of us got right back on (the other guy was picked up by a support kayak). It was a very well planned trip, I just wish we'd have one or two more of those. Plus, my recruiter is really cool. So overall, I'd totally recommend Amazon as an employer. The downsides are few and kind dumb to even mention (little company discount, offices not consolidated on one campus, not enough intern unity), whereas the benefits are much better (subsidized housing for interns, two computers and two monitors for work, very competitive pay, great management, smart co-workers, etc.). I seriously have sometimes woken up on Sundays and been like, "oh man, I'm not going to work today!" The biggest drawback for me though is not being with my girlfriend, and so that's the only reason I'll be glad when this summer is over. The experience has been amazing though (working with different design patterns, MySQL, BDBs, more Linux, being in a scrum, hard lessons of design/planning, etc). I'm very grateful to be here.

Should I even bother with real news today? I guess I'll go over a couple of things. AT&T has taken the route of deep packet inspection and will be aiming to throw "pirates" off their network, but we're not sure what their stupid algorithms will considerate a pirate so it's really a horrible idea.

Do you remember what the web looked like in 1994? This video is an awesome look back at the good old days of picture-less Internet. We didn't even get the Internet at home until 1997, and the Internet didn't really become popular until 1996 (maybe late 1995), so you can imagine how far back that is.


Rumors are abound that we'll see a Beatles-inspired iPhone loaded with the Beatles library in time for its release on iTunes, a full month before competitors. It's a fun rumors, and that's why I'm blogging it, but quite unlikely, in my opinion. Why would Apple Corps even give Apple, Inc temporary exclusivity? I'm more interested in the faux SDK one developer is making for the iPhone by way of a little markup language. Thumbs up to him: it looks pretty dandy. His site is getting slammed so the demos may take a while to load, but they're impressive given the simplicity of his project (make your window small and pretend you're on an iPhone viewing them).

This is almost unbelievable: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix managed to rake in nearly $50 million, more than a fifth of which were late Tuesday showings (mainly midnight). That's actually a record for a Wednesday opening, so any bets for how much it'll rake in by Sunday? I imagine it'll be between $150 and $200 million.

The only upcoming fantasy movie I want to see is The Golden Compass, so I just thought I'd share the new posters.

Lastly, we have a few trailers. The first is for December Boys featuring Mr. Potter himself (Daniel Radcliffe), and I think it could actually turn out to be a good movie, but I'm worried about it getting caught up in being a feel good movie and getting corny. The other trailer now on Yahoo Movies is for Death Sentence, and it really doesn't look good. Does Kevin Bacon no longer care about his career? Lastly, there's the trailer for The Dark is Rising which is a really kiddie fantasy movie. It's based off of actual books, but why does it feel like a hack of Harry Potter to me? (UPDATE: Whoops, The Dark is Rising actually came out long before J.K. Rowling even started writing, so she actually stole from Susan Cooper. Thanks to Charles for the info!)

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

1. Do you treat people you're extremely close to (S.O's, ex's, best friends, family, etc) the same as you would regular friends and people off the street? How so/how not?
Well of course. I think everyone does. I don't mean I treat strangers like crap, but there are certain things I wouldn't say to certain people because they could be easily misunderstood, like when some of my friends and I make jokes that are intentionally mean to point out how mean people who say things like that are. Anyway, it's a longer story for a short answer: yes =P

2. What is it about knowing someone fairly well, or very well even, that seems to give us a license to say and do whatever we want/think/feel sometimes? Do you think it's right? Why do you think we do things like that?
I don't think it's ever whatever you want, I just think you trust those people more. I think this is natural and totally understandable. We do it because we all have our zone of comfort.

3. Do you tolerate being treated a certain way by someone (good or bad)? How so/how not? Why/why not?
All I ask for is a little respect. I don't tolerate people treating me like crap, and I'm not at all afraid to show it. My brother and I are both a bit headstrong in that respect, I guess. We get it from our father =P I guess we're just overly confident at times.

Recapping Some Apple News

Because I've missed so many days, I'd rather just brute force the big Apple news items since that's like half of what I have today rather than big one topic to write a whole lot about. First and foremost, AT&T claims to have activated over 600,000 iPhones as of Monday night! I don't know about you guys, but I'd call than a fairly successful launch from strictly a sales standpoint. Others claim that over 1 million are sold by now, and apparently a European deal will be announced soon as well. Still, the European thing is just a rumor. The reaction to the iPhone's released has been mixed with naysayers still naysaying and fans playing up its good points. It's no secret that it's not perfect though, and Macenstein has compiled a great list of what Apple can, and should, add to the iPhone. I think that if all these things were in the 2G iPhone, it would be a killer app of its own, and it's not altogether unlikely for Apple to listen up here. Apparently, they actually are working on getting Flash on there, to be released in a free update. Meanwhile, in the world of iTunes, Apple has started to drop prices on some albums. I don't have iTunes on my work computer so I can't see which, but it seems like it's mostly indie label stuff. Still, a pretty cool move, Apple. Unfortunately for them, UMG did end up killing their long-term contract and instead will be selling Apple music 'at will' to, as I had predicted, gain more bargaining power for variable pricing and also to give exclusivity deals to other music providers (ha, who else has the kind of share for that to help? Maybe Amazon, though their service still isn't out yet).

While we're on the topic of music, check out this list of over 90 great music sites. Aside from tablature, it has everything an audiophile could need to get his or her groove on. I literally spent like an hour playing around at some of those sites. I had no idea there were karaoke sites out there and was especially impressed by that since you could just get a media center PC rather than a karaoke machine.

With iPhone abuzz the past few months it's hard to imagine that other cell phones have actually been released. More recently, T-Mobile has announced unlimited VoIP calls from special phones for only $10 more a month. It defaults to WiFi when available and only relies on T-Mobile's network when you're not near a hot spot. I picture this being huge for international travelers, but I think that this could totally be T-Mobile's savior. It's infamous for poor coverage, so having hot spots at over 8,500 Starbucks and Borders and such for T-Mobile users should help out their cause.

Meanwhile, Sprint is dealing with the iPhone release by forcibly ending contracts with users who call customer service too much. Is it just me, or does this sound stupid and ridiculously misguided? What an awesome PR stunt to deter potential customers. It's bad enough that their site is butt ugly, but now they're going around ending contracts if you have service issues. I use Sprint and I don't even like their service much to begin with.

The Consumerist has staged a stunt that will hopefully go down in Internet history as brilliant: they rigged a computer with porn and monitoring mechanisms and sent it to their local Geek Squad to install iTunes. Of course, the Best Buy boneheads took the bait and were caught stealing personal photographs as well as porn. It got insane viewership from Digg, and I hope caused a shake up within Best Buy. More importantly, I hope people will be more prudent with protecting their more sensitive files.

For those of you who fear that your computers aren't secure enough. Computer World has a great round up of some of the best free security programs the interweb has to offer. I would call it a must-read and may be a much needed eye-opener for some of you more passive users.

I only have one piece of movie news because the rest is just video content (mostly trailers): Christian Bale has revealed that The Dark Knight ends in a way that's very amiable towards a sequel. I guess it's no surprise that they would want to make more movies, but it does make one wonder what he knows that would infer something like that so clearly.

Yahoo Movies has a number of exclusive new clips from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (that title never gets any shorter), and they're taking a while to load for me but they're pretty neat, nonetheless. Harry is definitely coming off as much more mature in this one from what the clips are revealing.

Since my girlfriend is a Jane Austen fan, I thought I'd mention the trailer for The Jane Austen Book Club about women in a book club who loves the books and end up living them out. Unfortunately, my girlfriend is none too happy with me right now, so hopefully that trailer makes her more likely to forgive me?

Apple Trailers has another high-def trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum and it looks just as good as the other one did.

Yahoo has a couple of trailers. One is for Gone Baby Gone, which doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense. There's a kidnapping case and some corrupt cops and that's all I got from it. The trailer for El Cantante is more coherent, but doesn't make me want to see it all.

Lastly, there's a red-band trailer for Good Luck Chuck that doesn't seem to have any new content other than a couple of curse words, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's Jessica Alba half-naked, so I'm sure that guys will line up in hordes to see this movie anyhow.

No meme tonight...I'm kind of hurting right now and would rather focus on that right now. Take care, everyone!

iPhone PR Machine at Work

The trip to Vancouver was fun, but it sucked not being able to talk to my girlfriend the whole time at exactly the wrong time! Oh well, I'll put up pictures tomorrow, but I should probably get to some news today. Unfortunately, almost all of it is Apple news. I'll start with the iPhone, since Apple is hard at work at hyping it up. They put up a 20 minute video tour of the iPhone, and that was definitely a great idea. If you don't have 20 minutes to spare, then you can get a recap of some of the cooler stuff over here including being able to view excel documents, the interaction with stock quotes, and some of the more prominent settings (like the variety of ringtones). It's funny how I listen to pundits trash the iPhone every day, but I still actually want this thing. Apple is freaking brilliant. They know just how to make you want this thing: simplicity. They cut out a glitzy image or celebrities and show you exactly what it is. Recognize the dude in that tour video? No? Exactly! The focus is all on the iPhone, and they show you exactly how much its features make sense. The most impressive stuff I saw that I didn't really see before was visual voicemail, handling images, and navigating Google Maps. People can say all they want about how it's lacking this or that and it's overpriced, but you can't say that it's not a pretty, intuitive-looking device. The biggest question is how good the multi-touch feels. If that feels right, then Apple is golden, and any naysayers aren't naysaying because they're inherently biased. It's not a matter of whether it's overpriced or whether you personally would get one, but rather a question of how good a piece of technology is it? It's obviously far from perfect, but you have to compare it to the cell phone market and realize how shitty most phones are already, and take it from there. No matter what the pundits say, Apple PR is still hard at work, and doing quite well.

Another reason why I don't think it'll be the failure that the experts want it to be is because it has been beta tested for a while now. Not to say that beta testing is perfect (it never is), or that the iPhone won't still have many issues, but at least they're not likely to be glaring bugs. It may be their first entry in the cell phone market, but they're trying to play it smart. Remember, everyone thought the iPod was going to be a huge flop when it came out (search newspaper and website archives in 2001 for this). Oh, and it will be sold online also, so people won't even have to wait in lines outside. I'm sure the site will collapse in on itself on June 29, but it can be purchased online, at least.

Bad news for my bread and butter: Amazon was overtaken in music retail by iTunes, which is now #3 in the world while Amazon is #4. It seems like at each freaking special event Steve Jobs announces leapfrogging another competitor on this chart, so I guess it was bound to happen. I wonder if Amazon's selling digital music downloads will help it get its place back?

Slate has a great opinion piece about how Facebook could surpass the other social networking sites by simpling incorporating features that everyone wants rather than the bloat of Facebook applications. An IM client and an RSS reader and e-mail checking all these things would help keep people on the site and probably attract more people than their platform thing. Not that it was a bad idea, just bad timing, in my opinion.

Since I blogged an article last week about why starting a start-up sucks. I thought I'd follow it up with how to do it right. There's definitely some sound advice there. It's not as easy as it sounds, but those are some of the basic principles I've heard from entrepreneurs over and over again.

Evan Almighty topped the box office with little over $30 million, and Rise of the Silver Surfer saw a steep, 65% drop to #3. Quite impressively though, Knocked Up has surpassed $100 million, which more than triples their production costs. That's what happens when you try to make a truly enjoyable film.


That is one of several new pictures that IGN snagged from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I like the blue hue it has to it and just that it almost looks like it could exist as a poster.

Speaking of posters, we have the final one sheet for Transformers, but I don't think I like it as much as some of the other posters that came out for it.

It looks like a Shrek spinoff movie is in the works revolving around Puss in Boots starting from his childhood as a kitten and how he group it. Supposedly, it's intended to be a good mix between emotion and humor that people are likely to enjoy. I'm skeptical until I see at least a trailer though.

Lastly, Yahoo Movies has the trailer for The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, and it looks like an alright kiddie movie. It's about the lochness monster, but it doesn't seem to appeal to a very wide audience.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Compulsion :: Obsessive


2. Spiritual :: Church


3. Spray :: Bug


4. Compatibility :: Test


5. Pursuit :: "Happyness"


6. Fake :: People


7. Mobile :: Phone


8. Ceremony :: Graduation


9. Ribbons :: Bow


10. Mozart :: Music

The Case Against a Startup

Today was a very full news day, and so I actually had my pick of what to start out with here. I decided to go with this provocative blog post from Pmarca, a well-respected tech blogger, about why to not start your own startup. I wanted to talk about it because the startup route is one that I've considered for a while, and I only thought about a subset of the disadvantages he brings up. This is probably one of the best breakdowns of the situation that you'll find out there. The pros are what have always stood out to me: the chance to directly make a difference, not having to take nonsensical orders, being your own boss, the shot at a lot of fun, and an overall fulfilling career, on top of the power rush. I always knew there was great risk and lots of work, but I didn't think about the massive rejection you face (something I'm personally tired of), the difficulty of getting enough good talent, or the extent of the emotional rollercoaster, or the amount of time it'd take away from being with family. Still, I think I'd someday be interested in joining a well-calculated startup. If the people running the thing did their research, had their stuff together, had done enough research to know that it'll be profit, and all that jazz, I feel like I'd definitely be willing to take that sort of a jump. Of course, this is no indication of what I'll do after I graduate, because even I don't know quite yet. At least now I know I don't want to start a startup! I just don't think I'm built to be that kind of a leader, though I do want to rise to leadership positions in my career.

AMD is an underdog who I've been rooting for since I took Computer Architecture and learned the ills of the Intel-created x85 design. Unfortunately, they're in deep financial trouble and are looking at the very real possibility of contracting out most, if not all, of their chip fabrication and just focusing on chip design. That really complicates the decisions they have to make, and it's quite risky. I wish them 'good luck', because they're going to need it.

Remember how Blockbuster decided to only rent out Blu-ray in the vast majority of their stores? Well, an anonymous worker at a large retailer claims that many people have been canceling their HD-DVD player orders based solely off of this. That must be pretty scary for the folks at Toshiba who had already been seeing slow sales of HD-DVD players. Well, at least someone is on the verge of finally losing this insipid format war (where the consumers are the real losers).

Also, remember YouTube's little video editor? I had no idea that there are already several web applications out there that will do even more with your videos for free. Check them out here. I know I'm tagging it for future usage. Personally, I think that eyespot looks the cleanest.

Speaking of video online, it turns out that Google Video is no longer a repository for videos and is now just a search engine for videos on the Internet as a whole. Well, actually, you can right now, but supposedly that will be changing very very soon, and the searching itself has already been ugpraded. This definitely makes sense given that they already have YouTube, I just wonder how they'll handle the content that they've already accumulated. By the way, Google Blogscoped has a full report of their press day if you're interested, but it doesn't sound like anything useful was revealed.

Microsoft is rebranding their IPTV platform as Microsoft Mediroom and including richer PC-to-TV capabilities. If it's anything like Windows Media Center, then I hope that we start to see a lot more of it.

A new web 2.0 application based out of Austin (*sniff* home) called Thoof aims to bring forth yet another nonsensical name but incorporate fancy algorithms to provide users with personalized news content as determined by the community at large. It's going to face the infamous bias that Digg has though, in my opinion, in that it'll get overrun by young geeks (high schoolers to guys in their early 20s) and not provide the intelligent news that they intend on. More power to them if it does work, because it sounds cool, but I just think they're being a bit too idealistic.

Lastly, Yahoo CEO and co-fouder Terry Semel has stepped down as CEO and given full control to Jeffrey Yang, which has to make you wonder what exactly is going on at Yahoo that he feels he can no longer effectively lead it. Their stock only took a slight tumble today though, we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Massawyrm over at AICN has seen Evan Almighty and, true to his style, totally ripped it a new one. It killed a lot of my interest, but if you still want to see it then Yahoo has the 8 minutes of it for your viewing displeasure.

We actually have a couple of better shots of the Batpod now, but since I already showed you guys a picture of it yesterday (and a video), I thought I'd put up a new picture of the Mach 5 instead. I like it! It's very true to the series.


I didn't report on this because I didn't think that it was important at the time, but the controversial Michael Moore film Sicko (this time controversial for illegal footage shot in Cuba), was leaked to online movie pirates, and so Lionsgate and Weinstein Co. have decided to move up the movie's release in Manhattan one week to this weekend. A mildly smart and risky move since a flood of bad reviews could mean disaster, but I guess they figure that's better than people getting it online? People are going to get it online anyway though, so I really wonder how much this will help them.

The director of Bond 22 (only a codename, don't worry) has been decided: it's Marc Forster of Monster's Ball and Stranger Than Fiction fame. He's definitely a diverse director, so I look forward to seeing what he does with 007.

Indiana Jones 4 has begun shooting! Nothing else to say, it's just very exciting.

Legendary Pictures has picked up the rights to make a movie out of famed Blizzard third-person action franchise Diablo. I used to play the game so I know that it's not exactly heavy on plot, which makes me wonder what the Hell (no pun intended) they're going to do with this one. It's a battle between Heaven and Hell with nondescript characters. Then again, they were behind 300.

FilmForce has some great brand new clips (new as far as I know) from Transformers over here. I personally like the "Ladies Man" clip. Optimus is so cool! IGN also has a 3-D view of a set from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix if anyone is interested.

Lastly, I have a couple of trailers. One is for Michael Clayton, but I don't understand what's going on in the trailer at all. It's definitely a drama, and it involves lawyers, but that's about it. The other trailer is more my style and is for The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. It's a documentary about a guy who always loses but is trying to beat the reigning champion of the original Donkey Kong. It may sound stupid, but I've heard good things from SXSW.

I'm going for the TMI Tuesday this week since it's less racy than usual:

1. If you were to face the Wizard of Oz, would you want more courage, more brains, or more heart?
Definitely courage. I'm not concerned with the other two, but I do wish I was braver.
2. Have you ever gone to court for anything? What for?
Nope!
3. What was the last thing you did that you previously told yourself you wouldn't do?
Have extended fantasies about my girlfriend while at work.
4. Did you ever have a summer fling while on vacation?
NO!
5. Have you ever done anything sexual with someone who's name you never knew?
Ummm, ew. No.

On Passing Judgement

Sorry to have missed so many, but this week has been a wild and crazy ride. On the bright side, I got my Sansa today! I'll give full impressions soon enough, just not today. Today I'm going to cover a topic I've wanted to discuss for a couple of weeks and now Paul Graham has given me reason to do so: judging people. I like his view of there being two types of judgement: judging for the sake of judgement (as in for a contest or for a court case) where impartiality is vital and expected, and judgement as means to some other end, as in judging who's best to date or who should get into a university. What's interesting is that we often expect the first time when we're really getting the second not realizing that the second type doesn't have a concept of being fair. Just because a girl is at a club and chooses to dance with one guy over another doesn't mean that the other guy should take it personally, because she's not investigating his abilities or character to judge him in particular, she just wants to see who she'd have the most fun dancing with.

I even have a personal case to relay, where obviously no names will be revealed (so don't try guessing). There's an individual in my department who I knew of but didn't really interact with much because, well, I usually interact with friends I already have in my CS classes (as we all do when we know people in certain classes). However, this person judged me as being arrogant, unbeknown to be until a few weeks ago where it started influencing people who I had never met before. Understandably, I was offended by this and yet, this person didn't really mean any harm (at least I don't think). They didn't care to get the full story on me because they had no interest in this, they were just trying to make a prima facie analysis of whether I was a worthwhile person to know, which clearly came out as negative. In fact, we do this all the time. When the bus is full and you need to decide who to sit next to, who do you pick? Often, guys sit near guys and girls sit near girls, and it's weird to be offended if someone decides to not sit next to you because they're not trying to knock you as a person, judging you just wasn't their end goal. However, there is hope yet: make more of an effort to sell yourself, as Paul puts it. There's something I hate doing, but I hope that spending more time with certain people will replace false impressions with the real thing. We've actually been having judgement problems in ACM as well where a gender/sexuality workshop at meeting failed horribly because the moderator was close-minded. I took one thing from it though: we sometimes make subconscious judgements of people based on gender not because we mean to judge them a certain way, but it's that second type of judgement and it's become ingrained in us. Anyone who's not a jerk tries to treat women equally, I just feel like sometimes women mistake that second type of judgement for the first type and get offended, especially in this department. Anyway, I'm not going to get offended by the second type of judgement anymore. It's important to not be so self-centered, and to think of the bigger picture (just like in software design; what do you know, a nerdy parallel?!).

Speaking of design, Joel Splosky has a quick read that I just thought was cute: a new elevator technology that's really fancy and efficient, but it wasn't designed quite well enough. Don't cheat like I did, actually try to figure out what the problem is before you highlight the answer.

Usually, I pass on social networking sites nowadays because it's just done to death. It's a nice little trend, but it's headed right for the toilet at this rate. Anyway, I yielded a bit to Wakoopa, which is a really neat site that uses your software usage to suggest other products you may like and list updates and even show reviews of your software. It only takes 5MB of RAM while running, so give it a shot. It also provides usage stats and, lo and behold, tags (bet you didn't see that coming).

Joost has gone "live", which means that they now have premium content supported by ads (haven't run into this yet) and have given all beta testers unlimited invites. So leave me a comment with your e-mail address and name if you want an invite! There is a ridiculous amount of channels now, but my computer is running low on RAM so I'd better not try looking through it for you (Firefox is eating memory like no other and I don't want to restart until after this is done).

Speaking of new software, Gaim is now Pidgin and Ars Technica has a full review of Pidgin 2.0. The review is very positive, which is a big compliment coming from Ars Technica. Plus, I'm using it right now and I feel cool just using it because of how nice the interface changes are and the welcome bug fixes. If you're on Linux or Windows and use IM, you're really missing out if you don't try out Pidgin.

Yahoo has finally decided closed down Yahoo Photos. I speculated on this very early on because it didn't make sense for them to have two competing services once they acquired Flickr, and their justifications for keeping Yahoo Photos were pretty stupid. I didn't think it'd take this long for them to realize what was necessary, but I'm pleased that they're actually being quite graceful about it.

This post wouldn't be complete if I didn't briefly mention the Digg scandal about Digg taking down dugg stories referencing an HD-DVD processing key after receiving a cease-and-desist order. Using this key literally circumvents the DRM used on all HD-DVD discs released. Yes, they're just that stupid. I think the community backlash for doing this was a bit harsh given that releasing such a key can't possibly be legal and it violates Digg's TOS, but I respect them for decided that freedom of speech reigns over corporate control of the Internet. Personally, I agree with distributing the key as a sign of rebellion for how inane the HD-DVD schema is.


We have a poster for The Golden Compass, but I felt it was too ugly to post here (despite my love for the original book, mind you). So instead, I thought I'd show off one of a few new posters for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I like much better. There are also some new ones for The Simpsons if you're interested, but they're nothing special.

Now onto the trailers. Apple has an HD trailer for Rush Hour 3, and I felt very underwhelmed by it. My friend disagrees because he's afraid that fanboys are just going to hate on Brett Ratner, but my issue is with the trailer and not with him as a director as I enjoyed the first two Rush Hour movies very much. Moviefone has another trailer for Shrek the Third, and I think that I like this one even more than the last one! It's very funny and I think it'll end up making for a cute, family movie that adults will actually enjoy (like the first two). Yahoo has the teaser for Hot Rod, featuring SNL's Pete Sampers (of "Lazy Sunday" fame), and it's mildly amusing. I'm holding out on judgement (heh, funny to use that word now in this post) until I see at trailer.

Disney, in a strange display of openness, is showing off 9 minutes of Ratatouille on their website. I really like the animation style in this movie, and it's executed quite well. I didn't laugh out loud or anything, but it was still fun in its own respect, and I guess more of a visual feast.

According to Joe Carnahan, of Smokin' Aces infamy, he's seen the teaser trailer for Sin City 2 and it's supposed to be phenomenal. Now I'm really really excited to see some footage from this movie!

Lastly, given that people aren't saying the best things about Spider-man 3, you may want to try giving Lucky You a shot instead. It sounds like a worthwhile drama from some people I respect, but critics are butchering it.

Now, before I go eat myself, for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Name something you would not want to own.
A motorcycle. I'd be so scared to ride the bloody thing!

Soup
Describe your hair (texture, color, length, etc.).
It's black, very thick right now (in a fro when I don't gel it, almost), and very curly. It really is way too thick (like 2-3 in. above my head), but I'm too lazy to get a haircut here in Austin.

Salad
Finish this sentence: I’ll never forget ___________.
the girl next door. Just kidding, there was no girl next door, but I assume that comes from a comedy I love, The Girl Next Door. Anyway, I'll never forget how my luck changed on March 1, 2007 with a job offer followed by a night of Sandy's and dancing.

Main Course
Which famous person would you like to be for one day? Why?
John Frusciante, so I can learn his mad guitar skills (or at least a day's worth).

Dessert
Write one sentence about yourself that includes one thing that is true and another thing that is not.
I enjoy smiling wide and polishing my gun collection.

Free Apple TV and iPhone Updates

Before I get started here, I wanted to make one more comment on yesterday's main topic (the Jobs vs. Gates thing). I finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley today and I realized that I neglected to point out the irony in how people perceive these two guys. Bill Gates is seen as evil and Steve Jobs as a hero, when in reality it's Gates who's the awesome philanthropist and Jobs who's often just a jerk (the illegitimate child, the anecdote of not hiring the virgin job applicant, etc). Just goes to show, being judgmental is often the wrong way to go. Anyway, the most interesting topic for today was honestly just that Apple is planning on releasing free software updates for the Apple TV and for the iPhone after its release. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time they've done something like this. These aren't just firmware updates or bug patches or something, they're actual feature add-ons. I'm curious as to why they decided to do this. Is it because of Internet chatter that both products were lacking? Is it just a new trend within the company? Or did they always know that they wouldn't have enough time to squeeze out the software they wanted? Anyway, I don't really have anything bad to say about it, I think it's a great idea. I'd rather have to get an update for a product then get a rushed, crappy version.

Another thing from Cuppertino: Apple is working on a deal with Gracenote (a byproduct of a huge "illegal" lyrical database from back in the day) to distribute lyrics with iTunes music. Yahoo Music actually recently brokered a similar deal, but I didn't comment on it because I figure that no one cares about Yahoo Music (sorry, Yahoo, the truth hurts). Could this mean that iPods would start showing lyrics, as well? Would iTunes retroactively fetch lyrics for you? This shall be interesting.

Samsung is projecting that Solid State Drives (SSD) won't overtake conventional hard disk drives anytime soon in pricing. Even its latest price drop makes it 5 times as expensive, but I think people will still be willing to pay a premium when they start to realize that iPods break so easily partially because they're backed by a dinky hard disk drive, which is subject to shock damage quite readily as opposed to the durability of Flash memory.

Google has offered code improvements to the popular open source database MySQL completely free of charge, and now the company is considering additions, which is impressive since they've been closed off about it in recent years. Still, when Google is giving you free code, I think you should probably take it.

I want to talk about a couple of fun products here. The first is a portable grill, which is largely useless but still cool. I guess if you live in an apartment and can't grill on your patio then this may actually make sense. Regardless, it looks damn cool. Also, at the risk of looking like a boozehound, I just think that this booze belt is too cool. So now you can take Jager, Tequila, and shot glasses with you to all your Saturday night party excursions and be the object of all the ladies' desires (for alcohol, that is; not for you).



Lastly, Nissan is working on a car that would cost under $3000, which I think is an awesome idea. What a great thing for low-income families and college students who really need a car (for cities like Houston and San Antonio and such) but can't afford even a decent used car. I think this race to build cheaper cars is a great idea, and will help take back some of the used car market for them.

Grindhouse appears to be on hold for the UK while the Weinsteins figure out how to best sell it to British audiences. The movie bombing stateside was a huge shock, and I'm sure that now they're just scrambling to make back at least their budget. I still have no idea what went wrong, unless it was just the length of the movie and its inside-joke campiness value.

We have strong rumors that Eric Roberts, of "Heroes" fame, was cast as the mob boss villain this time around in The Dark Knight. Not much else to say about that, but he really is a good actor who is just not appreciated much.

AICN got another 28 Weeks Later review, and it sounds like it's a worthwhile watch. It's no 28 Days Later, but sounds better than the average horror flick.

Lastly, we have a final one-sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I think is a bit early. The movie doesn't come out until mid-June, do we need the final poster right now? Anyway, it looks very much in the style of the previous movie posters, so it's pretty good, but nothing especially amazing (unlike the trailer, which was badass as I had remarked last night).

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

Today's topic isn't very useable, so we'll just do some word association:

Blue
Green
Gritty
Grits (oatmeal)
Star
Power
Girl
Friend
My
Girl
Let's
Party
Hey
Ya

World's Most Powerful Computer Mogul

I got my address for my place this summer and looked into the place a little, and it looks awesome (it's in Downtown Seattle!). Amazon really takes care of its interns; we even get maid service! Anyway, sorry to have missed so many posts. Things have finally calmed down a bit for me. I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of videos I checked out on Vodpod and really liked. The first is an episode of the BBC show "World's Most Powerful," where a really annoying host compares the most powerful men/women in various fields. The information in the video is worth enduring the host for though, because it's a great synopsis of the rise of Apple and of Microsoft. An even more thorough look is Pirates of Silicon Valley, which is a mix between a documentary and a re-enactment of various events from the early years of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The acting isn't especially good, but the accuracy of the information is hauntingly accurate, despite being exaggerated at times. The main point is that anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a totally different place without these men is a lunatic. Someone else may have come along and done what they did, but it wouldn't have been the same. These two men did amazing things, and they're definitely one of my idols. You can say what you want about the cult of Apple or the evils of Microsoft, but there's no doubt that these men embody the heart of the beginnings of modern-day computing, despite their many weakpoints. Yes, Steve Jobs really is quite temperamental, but Bill Gates isn't quite as weasly as they portray him (though he isn't very charismatic, either). It's really fascinating how different they are, and how totally polar their succeses were. Steve Jobs enjoyed huge success as this hero figure, especially given that he popularized the personal computer, while Bill Gates is really just known as this incredibly talented businessman more than a visionary. What you get out of these videos is this drive within them (I know, the second one really exaggerates this) that has become more common nowadays (at least among people I've known). What's important to understand is that they became passionate about something where there was literally nothing there to be excited about and created something out of it. It's easy to believe in Jesus if you shake his hand after you see him crucified, and it's easy to get excited about computers once you see what they can do. Anyway, the videos are fun to watch if you're bored or need a break from whatever you may be working on. By the way, they concluded the most powerful mogul to be Bill Gates, but I don't know if I'd be able to decide because Steve Jobs has a lot of power over telling people what they want whereas Bill Gates just has ridiculous market share.

What's the difference between all these majors related to computers? I love this rundown of the six major ones, and it's fairly accurate. I do think it almost makes it sound like you can get software engineering without computer science. On the contrary, I think that the former just grows out of the latter. The reason that the top recruits in software engineering come from the top 10 CS schools is because these companies want people who know their stuff really well and love to think, not people who can just code. I'd feel really weird to get paid to program without having taken a course like Automata Theory, even though I wouldn't use that knowledge on a day-to-day basis, necessarily.

Google has rolled out a very interesting new service called Web History that logs all your web surfing habits so that you never forget what you did online that day way back when. Obviously, they're not going to give this information away, but I still see a major privacy issue. If their system is compromised, or your information is subpoenaed (no idea if that would be possible, but with all this Patriot Act crap I wouldn't be surprised), would it be possible? I think that the Search History thing is intrusive enough. How many people really want this kind of history to be logged?

A couple of one-liners: a new site is letting you buy your friends drinks over the phone. So if you're going to have to miss your friend's big 21st bash, just send him a gift card in the amount of a free drink over the phone and let the good times roll. I think it's a pretty fun idea. The other one is this site that lets you fill out PDF forms online. Very cool and useful; I've been wanting something like this for a very long time.

I know it's not technical, but I just have to remark at how freaky and ridiculous this AIDS poster is. We already have flyers around campus that literally say "FACE AIDS", which I think is funny because I definitely don't want AIDS on my face, but this is bad in a more serious way. It's kind of graphic in the sex positions it shows, and I think the turn of events is rather drastic. Maybe I'm just crazy, I just don't like this poster. I think there are better ways to communicate the importance of safe sex, like the fact that you can't test for certain STDs, which is really scary.



I just feel like talking about trailers, so that's what I'm going to do. AICN is raving about the movie Once, and I like the trailer. It definitely sounds like a heartfelt romance, which is a nice change of pace from so many contrived romance movies. I'm definitely a softie, but I hate movies that try to force you into feeling something for the main characters as so many romance movies tend to do.

You'll probably have more fun watching the trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum, but I don't know that it'll necessarily be a good movie. Still, I did like the first two a lot as action flicks, so if they really are stopping the series here, which would make sense, then maybe they really did put effort into making it worthwhile rather than just making it a cash cow.

I don't think there are words in this language to explain the awesomeness that is the trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. These Harry Potter trailers never cease to amaze me, and I love how it ends with the line from the first one-sheet. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan and I can't wait to see this movie! I love how this series gets darker and darker, I really do.

Now for a Tuesday Twosome:

1. Mail-in rebates: A pain to deal with or worth the wait to get money back?
Worth the wait =P You can't argue with an Indian person about saving money: they're always going try to do it.
2. Warranties: Take a chance without them or a must have when buying high-priced items?
I usually just take a chance. Probably not smart, but I don't buy expensive stuff very often anyway, and I usually make well-educated choices.
3. Product knowledge: Research before you buy or rely on salesperson?
As I hinted at in #2, I always do extensive research. I don't spend money unless something is worth it to me.
4. Word of mouth: Base purchases on what your friends say or disregard because you know what you are doing?
I wouldn't say I base it off what they say, but I definitely take my friends' opinions highly because I respect most of my close friends highly.
5. New Versions: Must buy the latest version right away or wait for a while?
I usually tend to wait a while, but free upgrades I do immediately (like for Firefox and Gaim and such).

The Wii's Peaceful Release

Man, getting back to real life after a wedding sucks! I spent half the day thinking about the weekend, and I'm just glad that I only have 4.5 hours of class left before I go home to a barbecue tomorrow. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like I missed a whole lot over the weekend. The news I felt drawn to the most today was about the Wii, so let's start with that. It sold out handily over the weekend in North America without any reported violence, and Nintendo made a promise I have an easy time believing: four million units before the year is up. It'd be a miracle if we saw very many more PS3s before 2007, so don't get your hopes up. The Wii doesn't seem to be reselling quite as well on eBay (at least not with the same sex appeal), but I can definitely see the Wii going into the new year with a more positive buzz. Not all the first impressions are quite so rosy though, I've seen several complaints about the speed of the internet service, lacking component cables, and just overall problems with the virtual console (for playing older Nintendo titles). I wouldn't be too concerned though because I don't know of a console launch that has gone off without a hitch. The important thing is that they address these shortcomings sooner than later so that they can really get a leg up on the competition. Also, good to know that they haven't been indirectly responsible for people getting physically hurt yet.

Bill Gates is being quoted as praising the iPod still and claiming that the Zune really isn't so much a rival as a catalyst to get people to subscribe to the whole "sharing is caring" after school special. I could believe that given how much they push the WiFi feature over everything else, but they still handled the Zune release inexcusably sloppily. Meanwhile, Apple is preparing for their Black Friday sale and have assembled a handy holiday guide. I'm only plugging this because I didn't realize that the Apple store actually did a Black Friday sale with some pretty decent discounts. If you're a computer scientist (or one in training), or even a general math nerd, you'll love this pdf cheat sheet detailing stuff that I've spent many a time digging through old notes for or Googling for. I'm going to have to snuggle with this puppy late at night before big tests. Lastly, as an avid DRM hater, I like to plug articles like this criticizing the stupidity of DRM. I totally understand that piracy is wrong and all that, and I don't endorse it at all, but to alienate your customers to make a few more bucks (it really is just a few, in the end, when you think about it) is annoying.



Harry is just a little excited about the release of the teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was a pretty good teaser, though I personally preferred the last movie's teaser. Anyway, it has some pretty good scenes in it, so it's worth checking out. In a surprising turn of events, the winner of the box office this past weekend was Happy Feet edging out Casino Royale, which I've heard was the better movie, by just a couple million bucks. Oh, and Borat managed to hang on to the number 3 spot. Not much new this coming weekend though that's notable except for the low-key movie The Fountain, so I'm curious to see what happens. Peter Jackson is officially off the project to bring The Hobbit to the big screen. I wasn't the biggest fan of the LOTR movies, but I don't see how anyone but him could make this one. Lastly, a pretty good trailer for Curse of the Golden Flower is online (featuring Gong Li and Chow-Yun Fat), but I was a little insulted by the obviously westernized background music they chose (you may recall it from Spider-man promotional materials).

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. In order to protect my computer from viruses, I use _______.
Zone Alarm and Claim-Free
2. I also use _______ for protection from spyware.
Spybot SnD
3. I don't spend nearly enough time _______.
playing guitar
4. The first person I usually talk to in the morning is _______.
myself (I don't talk to someone consistently in the morning)
5. It takes me about _______ to get ready in the morning.
30-40 minutes (including eating)
6. I keep all my appointments in/on _______.
my school planner
7. It takes me about _______ to fall asleep at night.
5-10 minutes

The Zune Flops, For Now

It's funny, the only news I had leftover when I closed the articles in technology that I didn't really care to talk about were related to the Zune! So I guess you're going to get a couple of paragraphs about that today. It was released today and guess what? Maybe about ten people cared. Anecdotal reports were rather dismal, and people generally didn't seem to know about it. In fact, I just told a friend that it flopped and she asked me what a Zune was. So first step when trying to take on the iPod, kids, is to actually tell people about it! To be honest, I don't think I would've known about it had it not been for me finding articles on it while blogging. I go to one of the biggest universities in the country, so why wasn't news of the Zune plastered all over the walls? And yet, the Vista team is taking out whole page ads about events they're sponsoring in the Austin area. Does Microsoft just not care if this product fails? I just don't get it. They price it right at the iPod, give it WiFi for the stupidest of reasons, and don't even try to show it as better than the iPod. It has a fresh UI and different colors and FM functionality and all that jazz, but if they don't capitalize on it then why wouldn't it flop? It hasn't failed quite yet, mind you, but without any momentum at its release how will it magically pick up the pace unless it gets a next generation model?

As I hinted at in the title though, not all is lost. Microsoft execs have confirmed that they plan on developing a way to reward people for sharing their music over WiFi with Microsoft Marketplace points, which I believe can go towards buying more stuff. I think it's a cool idea since it could help spread interest in off-beat artists, but isn't there any concern of this being abused purely for the points? Maybe they should institute reward point caps within a certain time period or something. And apparently, they're working on adding video sharing to the Zune as well, intended to share user-created content (though not sure how they'd enforce this just as YouTube can't easily enforce copyright infringement issues). I'm not sure that this would be an easy software upgrade and I'm guessing would be a new model of the Zune. They also decided that they'll release a model of the Zune that doubles as a phone, which is surprisingly straightforward compared to Apple shying away from publicly talking about the possibility of an iPhone. Why would they be so open so early? I just don't get it; they're announcing to their competitors what they're about to do. Lastly, the Zune software sounds pretty decent, and you can get the lowdown on it as compared with iTunes over here.

The brothers Weinstein have struck a deal with the devil, as the saying goes. They're only going to be distributing their movies as rentals to Blockbuster in exchange for preferential advertising of their new releases. I'm sorry but that's stupid and shady. Shame on you, Weinstein Co.! Better news though: AICN has a review of Death of a President and it sounds like a pretty solid fake documentary. He clearly states that not everyone will like it, but that it is handled well and tastefully. Yahoo Movies has the trailer for Rocky Balboa, and it's not very good. The dialogue is so flat and stupid, and I hate that it harps so much on creating the underdog character as even more of an underdog. Oh, and just one more thing, the freaking sweet Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix poster:



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

Tell me what each word makes you think of.

Star Party
Dumb Blonde (I'm so sorry, I love blondes and have several blonde friends, that word honestly stimulates that association on first look though)
Blue Christmas
Stop Sign
Give Get
Hey Ya
Just a Little Bit
Let's Party

Can you tell that I'm ready for the wedding? ;)