The State of Internet Piracy

The Pirate Bay Ruling

I think that this whole hearing with The Pirate Bay has created the most buzz about online piracy since back when Napster got busted. It's considered by many people the largest site to get illegal torrents in terms of number of visitors. They probably have some legitimate content but let's not kid ourselves: it's a haven for illegal content. You can make all the arguments in the world about how they're only hosting the torrent files, the fact of the matter is that they host a ridiculous amount of torrents for copyrighted material.

In Sweden, copyright laws have typically been laxed, but under pressure the government eventually had to go after the Pirate Bay, and the founders were sentenced to a year in jail $3.6 million in damages. The Pirate Bay has been pretty cocky about turning down takedown notices for years now (and to the entertainment of everyone), so you can imagine that this news was probably shocking to a lot of people. The site is still up though and the founders are still adamant that what they're doing isn't illegal. The Pirate Bay is living in a gray area if I ever saw one. Google readily links to sites that host illegal content and we think nothing of it, so why not shut down Google? You could say that Google doesn't specialize in illegal content, but theoretically neither does The Pirate Bay (you have to forget their title entirely to truly believe this). People can post whatever torrents they want and having to police them would be as hard a burden on them as it would be on Google. I have to admit that the site has grown a lot since I first encountered it one fine day in high school and provides recommendations and all kinds of supplemental content with the torrents. This could either help or hurt their case. They're refusing to pay the fine and are planning to drag this on for years in appeals courts while they continue to replicate the site across the globe so that getting rid of it will be harder than quelling a fruit fly infestation.

What's really interesting is that the Pirate Party (yes, they seriously have one of those) in Sweden has swelled with supporters in the wake of the ruling. There's even been a major demonstration in Stockholm. You have to love the irony that in signing this sentence the court has essentially given rise to a movement that is far bigger than just piracy. It's not quite that these people all support piracy, but rather that they don't think their government has any clout to stand up to other nations in the interests of its people and that this could lead to a slippery slope of sites getting shut down with tons of perfectly legitimate content but a certain amount of copyrighted content that they don't own and can't afford to police. YouTube has been trying really hard to police itself and yet they're never going to succeed because there are more people uploading copyrighted content than YouTube police.

I have no idea how this is going to play out, but I can't help but be fascinated by what this means for the future of piracy and torrents. I mean there are even ISPs out there now that are trying to optimize themselves to speed up torrent downloads! Things like this would've seemed unthinkable a couple of years ago. It has brought these issues to the forefront of the attention of a much larger audience than it had been before, and that's what changes things.

The Wolverine Leak

I'm sure you've heard by now that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was leaked on the Internet recently, over a month before its theatrical release. As such, it's an unfinished cut of the film, but it's causing a lot of mixed reactions. Some are just excited to see it early while others are condemning the like and there was even a reporter who got fired for blogging his review and that he saw it illegally. What's really crazy is that there are more people condemning it than anything else. Popular blogs are agreeing with the MPAA's campaign that this costs the jobs of the crew members who aren't filthy rich and really need the money they get from these films. This is one of the biggest movie leaks ever in terms of how far in advance of the release it is and how high profile the movie is. What a crazy time to be an online pirate - some Swedish guys just got arrested and people don't want to see a leaked movie.

To add to all this: Miramax is apparently keeping an eye on Twitter and offering free movie tickets to people who are considering pirating a movie and end up not doing it. I don't think that this will accomplish anything other than boosting their PR though - though I do think it's a smart PR move if more people notice it.

Time Warner Backs Down

If you don't know about Time Warner's plan to tier their services based on bandwidth usage in select cities then just pick a post I've made in the past month and start reading it. It's kind of been a big deal.

Time Warner has received a lot of heat about it from angry customers, impassioned bloggers, and even the press at large. It got to the point that a New York congressman wanted to ban download caps entirely. Then things really came to a head when Time Warner asked the FCC to stop talking about net neutrality because (I kid you not) "now is not the time." They just wanted the government to hand them money as part of Obama's recovery plan before they're antagonized by the FCC in an issue that could choke online innovation in this country and possibly have a worse ripple effect on the rest of the world. As far as I understand what Time Warner intended to tell the FCC: they're concerned with the definition of "non-discrimination" in the FCC's advisory.

Anyway, Time Warner decided to finally put a halt to these tiering plans, at least for now. They think that the public is mis-informed about this issue, and I'm sure many are, but their prices for their caps is still unfair and needs to be tweaked. To be honest, if I could get 250 GB of bandwidth for $60 a month with a fast speed (like no less than 6 megabits per second, at its worst), I'd be fine with it, but $75 for 100 GB is really pushing it. What they probably ideally want is for everyone to meter their usage and see how little they may be using right now, but that's not going to happen because people aren't going to put forth the effort just to prove Time Warner right (potentially). In areas where Time Warner is the only game in town, this tiering is a huge issue and I hope that Time Warner reconsiders it carefully and actually improves their plan.

I don't know what they thought was going to happen though when they quietly announced the expansion of the bandwidth cap program. For an Internet Service Provider, they don't know the Internet at all.

Final Notes

Ok, it's past my bedtime and I'm exhausted. Let's wrap this up, shall we?

ReadWriteWeb has a little article with links to videos and more information about Ubiquity - a Firefox project to try to re-think how we browse the web. The demo actually kind of blew me away in how simple it was and conformed to how we actually use the Internet.

Popular Mechanics has a great article about how to cut your cable bill without giving up television. In the end, the tradeoff (as is often the case in life) is price versus the convenience of always-on TV and DVRs.

YouTube has started hosting full-length movies including Fast Food Nation, Carrie, and even Heri Pheri. Yep, it has Bollywood films, old films, and movies that people never saw, but there are some gems hidden in there. The movies seem to be in High Quality but not High Def, and they automatically start out in a big size.

Apple has bought a bunch of 16 GB NAND Flash memory chips from its main iPhone supplier indicating that they could be preparing for a 32 GB iPhone. It's a pretty strong likelihood at this point.

Function has an incredible article on how to spot good web design. It's a total joy to read and I highly recommend it for people who appreciate good visual design.

Invasion of the Privacy Snatchers

Opening Notes

I just wanted to mention a couple of things before I get started here. I got my Garmin nuvi 660 last week, and I'm pretty impressed with it. Other than the fact that it has troubles connecting to my crappy Treo 650 and there's a patch in Downtown that screws up where it thinks I am, it makes driving so much less stressful. If you've considered getting one, I highly recommend it. It will likely make you a better driver. I also picked up Veronica Mars Season 3, which makes it the only show I have all the episodes of (there are 68 of them). It got me in the mood for some web surfing and I found out that Kristen Bell spoke to Rob Thomas last week more seriously than at the end of the series about a Veronica Mars movie! Apparently, it's halfway to getting greenlit so that's very exciting news (so much so as to precede my main topic for today).

Stealing an Identity

I think that most people don't understand how identity theft works, but are probably aware of it thanks to movies and TV shows and, probably more notably, commercials. It's in the news, too, but I get the feeling that people don't read as much news anymore as they used to. Anyhow, the point I'm driving at is that it is pretty useful to understand how it can happen in protecting yourself. I really like Scientific America's article about a professor who decided to try stealing the identities of his friends, with their permission, and how easy it was. The article covers one case where he aims for a bank password, and the steps he takes aren't surprising or difficult, they just took him a little bit of creativity. With the rise of social networking in the past few years it's not hard to imagine a lot of people being susceptible to these sorts of attacks, but there are other ways to steal an identity, of course.

I think that what it really boils down to, in essence, is that you take a few minutes to think about your most important accounts (e-mail, bank, credit card, stock trader, etc.) and how easy it would be for someone to get access to that account whether by guessing your password, or tricking you into giving them access (aka "social engineering"), or by a "Forgot your Password?" screen, or by you simply making public more information than you desired. I challenge you to allocate an hour one lazy, Sunday afternoon towards this problem. I know, we're all busy, but you really don't want to deal with the consequences of someone stealing all your money right from under you.

Towards this end, the Internet Explorer team is venturing to do the smartest thing I've heard of them doing in a while and adding a "Privacy Mode" in the next version of IE that will allow you to browse more anonymously. This would protect you against more advanced identity theft attacks, but I'd call it a welcome new feature nonetheless.

Cyber-terrorism?

Did I just make up that word? Probably, but I think it fits with this next article: CNN reports that "experts" say that the U.S. is at risk of cyberattacks. I don't think you need an expert to tell you that, but I guess it sounds good for a title. To be fair, I don't imagine many countries with a technological infrastructure that's not at risk of an attack, so don't hold it against U.S. officials. In case you didn't hear about this: Russia mounted an attack on Georgian government websites before mounting a ground assault in the first example of an Internet security breach starting a battle that we know of. The online assailants used what's known as a botnet, a network of zombie machines that do whatever a remote master commands them to (usually via encrypted messages), to launch the attack. The zombies were probably victims of a worm.

The article poses some interesting questions: the openness and pervasiveness of the Internet in this country that makes it so great is what also makes it dangerous. It wouldn't take very many people at all to put together a devastating virus or Denial of Service attack to do something like cripple our technological financial infrastructure or even big American websites. I could go on, but the point is that how far would one have to go to start a war with the us? How do you demarcate something like that? I'm not saying that such an attack would be easy or necessarily possible, but if it's one thing that I've learned about technology is that there's always a way to break it, now matter how foolproof you may believe it to be. That's what really worries me. Is that kind of a threat worth the conveniences we get in modern society as a result of these technological advancements?

The HTC Dream Becoming a Reality

The FCC has approved the first phone using Google's Android open mobile platform: the HTC Dream. In case you haven't heard of it: Android was Google's answer to the iPhone Operating System (OS) very early on. It had no hardware (read: no phones) behind it, but Google promised some great features including SQLite (a great database), an optimized virtual machine, customized graphics libraries, an iPhone-like web browser experience using the open source browsing platform WebKit, a supposedly great development environment (including lots of prize money for the first great applications development for it), and support for more things than you can shake a stick at (several video and still image formats, EDGE, 3G, GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi, a camera, GPS, accelerometer, compass, etc.). Basically, it's supposed to be a magical OS. Some developers have been stubbed more recently regarding updated SDKs (given to only the privileged, apparently). In my opinion, the most exciting thing about this early on was that it would be easier to develop for more and more robust the existing mobile platforms, and unlike with the iPhone you woldn't have to have Steve Jobs approve your application you could just make it and post it on your website, if you wanted to.

Naturally, all these things are meaningless without an actual phone. In comes the HTC Dream, which supports the things all smartphones do nowadays (making calls, texting, e-mail, taking/displaying pictures, video playback) in addition to having a touch screen, supporting 3G and WiFi networks, memory card expansion, Google Street View (with a compass, because of the accelerometer), integrated access to pretty much all the Google services (Gmail, Google Talk, search, YouTube, etc.), and more. The speculation is that the phone is likely to be released as early as October, but almost certainly by Black Friday (or, if you buy into the confidentiality request on the FCC filings as being an accurate indicator, by November 10). I have to admit that this looks like a much more able competitor to the iPhone than the Samsung Instinct was. There are actually a couple of phones besides the iPhone that people seem to swear by, like the Blackberry Curve (or the Instinct, which has gotten decent reviews), but the Dream has more features than any other smartphone seems to have individually. Of course, it will never have the tight-knight iTunes integration and iPod-like interface that the iPhone has, but that could be a plus or a minus.

I think that a lot of people are downplaying the importance of the Dream when it's really quite important for HTC (whose Sprint phone was not well-received) and Google as a test for the Android platform. It wouldn't necessarily doom Android if the phone was seriously flawed, but it would definitely make the battle for Google steeper and give Apple more fodder in comparing the iPhone to rivals (God knows they do too much of that with Vista, leading to them hire Jerry Seinfeld to run defense in one of Microsoft's largest marketing campaigns). Apple fans are probably rolling their eyes that a phone could possibly come close to inspiring the kind of joy that the iPhone has a record of causing, but I definitely hear a lot of discontent about it since the iPhone 3G was released. In fact, some people are filing a class action lawsuit regarding the 3G flakiness. It's not so crazy to think that it could be dethroned in its popularity, even if not by the Dream. I really want the Dream to be a worthy competitor, and I guess that we'll hear more about it in due time.

3-D Panoramas

I love photography, and I'm a super-amateur photographer on my own (I don't think I'll ever be amazing at it, but I have a lot of fun with it as a hobby) so this NY Times article about Microsoft technology to construct 3-D panoramas easily piqued my interest. It's called Photosynth, a project of Microsoft Research, and it's totally free. One of the hardest things about being in Europe and taking pictures of some of the most amazing things I've seen in my life was figuring out how to share the views with others and hold on to the memories in a tangible way. I did my best to take pictures and even create panoramas, but this would've been even cooler. All you do is take a ton of pictures in a given area (it can be at different angles and you can move around, no problem), and it synthesizes them together into a 3-D environment! It's definitely not perfect, and has some UI kinks (plus, supposedly you don't know how good your synth is until you've uploaded all your photos), but it's free (unlike Quicktime VR) and offers as much zoom as the resolution you've uploaded for the pictures you take, which allows for incredible detail. I wonder if video games will ever take advantage of this technology? It could make real world settings look even more real and maybe your house in the Sims could really be your own house. I'm tempted to try it out on my own apartment, but I'm a bit too tired today to do it right now.

Quickies

Get your mind out of the gutter, I have a few items I wanted to touch on briefly before I wrap this puppy up. Lifehacker always plugs great little hacks to make your life easier and I almost skipped over their top YouTube hacks until I started trying them and realizing how awesome they were. It's definitely worth checking out (especially the Better YouTube plug-in).

I really wanted to talk more about this but I just had too much news to cover this time around and not enough time: Read Write Web has a great list of the top 10 web platforms to keep your eye on. So if you want to know what's hot in web development, you should definitely explore Weave, Android, Live Mesh, and the others on their list.

Do you hate captchas (the pictures you have decipher to prove that you're not a computer)? If so, then you're definitely not alone: check out some of the worst around. I love the ones that seem like brain teasers your elementary school teacher would give you as busy work "for fun".

I usually don't pay much attention to Photoshop articles, but I could not pass up this one detailing the nicest effects you can do with Photoshop. It covers some elements that I always love seeing in pictures so I was amazed to learn how easily someone could do them with the magic of Photoshop.

I like Gmail a lot and this list sums up some of the things I like most about it. It's worth a read if you're skeptical about switching.

PAX This Weekend!

The increasingly awesome Penny Arcade Expo is this weekend and I'm even more pumped for it than before after catching wind of the schedule. I will probably be glued to PAX from opening to close with all the great panels, concerts, and game-playing events planned! If you want to get the live skinny on PAX, I'll be twittering things as they happen (I have a Twitter widget somewhere on the right here). I'm sure that awesome things will be announced, like at Leipzig where cross-compatible of equipment was announced for the PS3 between Rock Band 2 and the next Guitar Hero and Rock Revolution. I will also be blogging after the convention is over, but I'm not sure how I'll handle this week's tech news. I'll highlight the top items somehow, rest assured of that. Until then, enjoy your week! I have to get some work done before hitting the sack.

Internet Freedom Preservation Lives On

Again, sorry for the massive delay of this post. I know it's long overdue, but this week was really kind of crazy. This next week should be a lot more calm so hopefully I'll be able to make another post before the end of next week.

I've been working on my Net Neutrality video for my Contemporary Issues in CS class and it's been fun. I'm trying to get various viewpoints on net neutrality and expose the truth, my personal biases aside. A few people aren't talking on camera, so that kind of sucks, but I'd rather have a video where everyone wants to speak their mind than one where I have to pull people's arms. I actually totally forgot that censorship fell under the spectrum of what neutrality is trying to fight, and I'm reeling now to cover my bases on that end. Fortunately, How Stuff Works has a really great explanation of censorship in its many forms with tangents into net neutrality if you feel like your knowledge is deficient or could use a brush-up.

There is good news though: Congress introduced a bill earlier this week called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act that I really love: it seeks to protect the neutrality of the Internet not by regulating it but rather by empowering the FCC to investigate if companies are "blocking, thwarting, or unreasonably interfering" with consumers' consumption of online content. This could be worded a little better yet because it needs to allow them to block spam and child pornography and all that stuff, but you get the picture. Would such a provision protect illegal content? Probably not, but I'd rather live with that than tiered service and censored content. The bill additionally directs the FCC to hold several broadband summits with other countries to discuss the issues of consumer choice and protection and such with regard to broadband service. It's a really interesting bill that I think could do well if people mobilized and told their representatives to support it and maybe if it was polished up just a little bit so that it doesn't become an overbearing piece of regulation.

The House of Representatives has been really busy because another interesting bill, that was introduced recently and I even brought it up here, passed easily. It's called the College Opportunity and Affordability Act and one of its very strange provisions requires universities to provide legal alternative to P2P file sharing and that it implement network filtering. Obviously, all the IT departments are pretty pissed and have been about this issue for a while now. There's a very real fear that maybe if they don't comply they'll lose federal funding even though dealing with illegal downloading isn't their priority; providing a quality education is. You think the MPAA and/or RIAA had a hand in this? I wonder. What really upsets me about this provision isn't that it discourages stealing, I'm ok with that, but rather the fact that pushes this crap onto our universities. So basically, we don't care that this country is lagging behind in math and science graduates or that other countries, like India and China, are outpacing us in churning out really smart students but rather that our universities help out greedy labels and clueless studios in their quest to stamp out piracy. Since when did our commercial society get to the point where we value this junk over securing the future of this country. I mean come on, once these kids graduate it's not like they're going to keep pirating your nonsense if they can easily afford to just buy it. It's like burning Aladdin at the stake for stealing a loaf of bread for himself and his loveable monkey.

Anonymous has come out with yet another video:



I don't know if I talked about this back when I explained my fascination with Project Chanology, but they had a flyer on their site about gatherings in various cities on February 10 at Churches of Scientology in protest of them. I'm sure it was inspired by V for Vendetta, but that's alright because it was still a good idea. What amazes me is that people still refer to them as religious bigots. I saw someone's opinion in the local paper blasting these protesters as bigots, which is crazy because they keep emphasizing that it's the Church, not the beliefs, that they're attacking. It's no wonder that we elected George W. when people are this naive. There is proof of the Church's human rights violations and there's proof that they're the bigots in that they try to silence those who speak out against them. Not only that, but they're thieves by not paying proper taxes. Christian churches get tax breaks and, lo and behold, actually give food and clothing to the poor and conduct various services for the community. Yes, they still make money, and yes they're crazy powerful, but they don't take from the community without giving back and get tax-exempt status. Oh, did I mention people who have left the Church speaking out against the Church coercing people to work for them? You can get the big picture by watching The Bridge. I'm a big supporter of this cause, and I'm glad that they sound more focused and determined now than they did before. Oh, and Tom Cruise is crazy.

Bad news for HD-DVD: Wal-mart has decided that they're not going to be stocking up on HD-DVDs after June. Is this the nail in HD-DVD's coffin? I personally think so. Not that I'm an expert or anything, but this is a pretty big blow. Wal-mart is the world's largest corporation (by revenues) and is a huge player in selling music and movies. Couple that with Best Buy pushing Blu-ray and Netflix phasing out its selection of HD-DVD movies and you have an extremely steep battle for Toshiba. Is there any hope? I honestly don't think so. It would take something pretty miraculous for everyone to all of a sudden decide to give HD-DVD another shot. Does your mom ever admit she's wrong? Probably not, so it's not like Wal-mart is going to say "Whoops, let's start carrying HD-DVDs again" and all those studios that moved away from it also changing their minds. A format war is just bad for business, I think everyone just wants it to end sooner than later.

I know I haven't talked about the iPhone much in a while (I try to not pollute the Web with more buzz about how cool it is, even though it is rather nifty), but this is big. Gear Live has very reliable sources telling them that Flash support for the iPhone is in the very near future (I assume just a software update from iTunes), which makes sense so that it would coincide with the SDK release. It seems like what was holding it back was business negotiations, not power consumption issues, but it'd really help the iPhone if it had it, regardless.

Now for some odds and ends. Google developed Google Apps Team Edition so that company employees can collaborate with Google Apps without having to go through their IT department. I don't know/understand all the details, but it seems to me like this is kind of a security breach if people use this without their IT department knowing. These guys may be part of a bureaucracy, but it shouldn't suggest that they're useless. Six Revisions has an excellent article on using the Web Developer add-on in Firefox to bolster your web development efforts. I actually didn't realize all its advantages, I only wish that I didn't have issues using it on this computer. It'll probably work on the new computer I get in May. The last thing is this bulky list of open source alternatives to popular proprietary software. Some of the alternatives aren't so exciting, but applications like Gimp, Pidgin, and Miro (I just downloaded this one because it looks so freaking cool).

Macworld Wrap-up

As usual, the focus has been on Macworld this past week rather than CES. I think that the media and even a lot of geeks have just become disenchanted with CES and have begun to care more about the words of Steve Jobs. Barely anyone really seemed to care that it's Bill Gates last CES keynote ever. By this year's end, Ray Ozzie will be the new CEO of Microsoft. Of course, there is the fact that this video from the keynote of his supposed last day at work spread pretty fast and is pretty funny. I love that he can make fun of himself and that he managed so many great cameos. Oh, and I have a lot to talk about today to make up for not writing this post like two days ago when I should've.

Anyway, back to Macworld. There are a few things I thought were worth mentioning related to that keynote. Game Daily has a great article pointing out that this was another Macworld without any focus at all on video games for Macs. I agree with them in calling this a huge oversight. I have no idea why they don't believe the power of video games. That industry has really exploded in the past 5-10 years and PC games have seen a come back with titles like Half-Life 2, Portal, World of Warcraft, The Sims, and Civilization 3. They're losing the gamer market by forcing them to run these titles on a dual-booted machine or even a VM. They should be making it easier to run them on native hardware and they could be touting the consistency of Mac computers as ensuring that any game developed for Mac could work on potentially all Macs or say right from the get-go which ones work on which. For PCs, the hardware combinations are so diverse that you lose this slight advantage, which really only hurts you when you want to get someone a game as a gift, most likely, and don't know if they can use it. They're clearly not pushing iPod/iPhone games ostensibly, though Sonic has come on board, and I just imagine that there's a bigger market there than Game Daily believes because of how many people play phone games when they're bored. I just can't figure out why Apple has no interest in supporting this market.

Joy of Tech has a pretty great comic
about the MacBook Air that kind of reflects my views also.

This isn't really related to the Apple TV even though you may see articles around with people billing this as a big blow to Apple TV, but Time Warner is trying out a new pricing scheme similar to your power bill. The more you download, the more you pay. This indirectly affects Apple TV because renting/buying those HD movies is not going to be all that attractive rather than buying/renting the hard copy from a store. In any case, the point is that they're trying to penalize you for piracy or using up the "unlimited" Internet access you pay for too much. This is like opening an all-you-can-eat buffet where you see a few fat people and decide that if you're fat then you have to pay more money. It's crazy. Unlike your power bill or your water bill, it doesn't cost them anything extra to serve up more of the Internet to you, in reality. They make so much money with their outdated networks and large base of users that they really just want more money. In some areas you may see a higher quality of service, but the quality of your Internet should be higher because they're re-investing your monthly payments into thicker pipes and not because less people are online. People are not going to like this idea in this society of rising gas prices and other things where you pay a variable cost. They claim it'll only affect 5% of users, but in this increasingly broadband world, it's going to hurt more people than that. It's frustrating, but I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Maybe it'll end up being a tiered plan, which would be slightly better but still irritating since your service won't get any better for paying more money. Somewhere at Time Warner corporate there's a guy in a tall, black leather chair laughing diabolically. Oh, and whether this is a conspiracy against Apple TV so that people buy digital cable rather than watch TV online is a little bit extreme. I honestly do not think that it has anything to do with that. I believe torrents and P2P are hurting them, and they'd rather pass the buck than adapt. They're not smart enough to think ahead to IP TV; put their execs in a room of Neanderthals and you wouldn't know the difference.

I love PicLens. I think it's the best add-on since IE Tab (or the best thing since sliced bread, if you prefer). It works in IE and Safari, too; just not the new feature I'm going to talk about. I casually updated recently only to later realize that they've upgraded the UI. You can see it in the screenshot to the left, but it doesn't do it justice. It's just so ridiculously intuitive. They've made the pictures into a wall of thumbnails rather than a filmstrip at the bottom so that you can use the fullness of your screen to navigate and use your scroll wheel to casually glance at whatever piques your interest. They've also really improved the Facebook functionality. I don't think I've ever browsed pictures so effortlessly before; not even in Picasa. I was so struck that I took the time to actually port several galleries from the NSC site to the PicLens format (really easy with PicLens Publisher tool; you just surround the code it gives you with your layout) and will be using it permanently for the NSC site. It's a great thing to try out if you're running a website where you value viewing images over comments and ratings and descriptions and all that junk, and it even has a Flash-based thing to view the images in a slideshow even if you don't have PicLens. Oh, but word to the wise: look at the CSS I have on my galleries. I had to hack it up for IE6, which doesn't support max-width.

I think I've all but declared the HD-battle over in Blu-ray's favor. Gizmodo feels the same and has shed a little more light on what has been happening in recent weeks. While it's likely true that Sony did pay some of the studios to help them decide to move exclusively to Blu-ray, the fact of the matter is that they money they paid was much less than what they stand to lose/gain in a new HD format. All the studios were pretty eager to end the format war though, and I think Fox caving to Blu-ray caused a domino effect that almost ceded the battle to Sony. I don't think we know yet what motivated Fox to do this, and the exact reasoning for Warner and Toshiba hasn't totally given up yet, but I think it's pretty clear that they're gripping at straws. Only a few loyal studios remain; I mistakenly reported Paramount's switch because they haven't jumped ship yet though they legally can. Universal is bound until 2009 or the bitter end, whichever comes first. New Line, Fox, and Warner aren't small potatoes though, and it may be enough to tempt more studios to take the leap. The battle isn't over, but I think a lot of us want it to be. After all, Blu-ray has done a poor job of future-proofing the format and, not-so-coincidentally, the PS3 is the only Blu-ray player capable of supporting the 2.0 spec because it has an Internet connection and 1GB of local storage. It looks like they're trying to use Blu-ray in 2.0 to help spread gaming to movie enthusiasts from the looks of CES demos with trivia games and the like, but these Blu-ray versions will surely cause confusion (there's a 1.1 that only a few players, including the PS3, support).

I thought it was interesting that MySpace is still dominating Facebook in traffic. If you have any insight into this, I'd love to hear it because I have to say that I'm more than a little surprised. 72% of social networking traffic goes to MySpace compared to 16% for Facebook. This is more than a small disparity. I guess I live in a bubble where only a minority of the people I know have MySpace accounts, including the adults I know who are on Facebook. To be fair, Facebook's grew 50% over last year whereas News Corp's bastard child lost 8% of its prior market share. The hype machine would make it seem like Facebook is taking over the world. Hell, I kid you not, my own mother called me last week to tell me about Facebook and this guy who started the site in college and made all this money. She thought that I should do something like that someday. I'm suddenly glad that I didn't take the Facebook interview. It's not that I believe they're failing, I just think they're in this huge bubble. I don't know if it'll pop or not, but I also don't know how stable it is. In any case, my theory is that a lot of minors are loving MySpace whereas adults and many college students who do social networking use Facbook. There's also an overlap of college students who still check their MySpace but don't actively use it. That's just my theory, and I guess that it would mean that the Facebook audience is more valuable than the MySpace audience. Anyhow, I think it's even more interesting given that MySpace has been getting bad press over privacy issues. I mean when people can see private photos of 14 year-old boys/girls, that's creepy.

I have a few quick things to lump together here. AOL (AIM/ICQ) has finally caved and moved its protocol to XMPP, more popularly known as Jabber, which is what Google Chat runs on. I can't say anything about this other than that it's ostensible very cool since XMPP is open source. If you're uninitiated into the dark art of MySQL, this is an awesome primer. Woot has put up their always funny Wootable Awards from CES of random things including Most Racist Display and Best Alien Detector. I liked the new trailer for Baby Mama and so I thought I'd share. Tina Fey wants a surrogate mother because she can't conceive and so she turns to a childlike character(Amy Poehler). I thought it was quirky and funny. And last, but not least, my first upload to YouTube from going to Copa on Friday night:



Just because I miss it, how about some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. President :: Clinton (Bill ;)


2. Stare :: Glaze


3. Embrace :: Hug


4. Movie :: Theater


5. Everything :: On sale


6. Profile :: Facebook


7. Satire :: Comedy


8. Erratic :: Errata


9. Costume :: Party


10. Secretary :: of State

The Missing Mac

There's always been this gaping hole in the Mac lineup that some people like to ignore. It's called a business Mac. A blog post from the CEO of a startup got me thinking about it. I think it was Molly Wood who asked Steve Jobs yesterday about Apple's intentions, as in where they're taking their computer business, and his response was kind of a bland "we want to build the best machines." Whoopety-doo, Steve Jobs wants to build pretty machines. It's not always about that. It's like my favorite two lines in Pirates of the Silicon Valley:

"Steve: We're better than you. Our software is better.
Bill: Don't you see? That doesn't matter!"

They're not doing their best as disseminating computers by virtue of the fact that companies aren't adopting Macs in large numbers. There's no enterprise-level Mac. My supervisor loves Macs so much that he bought a MacBook Pro for work, but he still has his trusty Dell laptop in his office, though he tries not to use it. Amazon doesn't support Macs, so if you want to use one you're pretty much on your own. They need to fill this space. They need to start making deals, and they need to start marketing more to businesses. In my opinion, it's one of the biggest reasons Apple isn't doing better at grabbing market share from PCs. Until they make this move, I can't imagine them ever coming close to taking out PCs.

Interesting news from Google: they're giving Linux patent protection from their patents in exchange for use of some patents from the Open Innovation Network. While I agree this is a good move, you have to admit that it's kind of ballsy. I mean what if the Linux camp flagrantly copies Google on something? I guess there's a lot of trust involved though, as it should be.

One of the more attractive things to me about Amazon is the opportunity to work with massive amounts of data and learn about scaling and performance. So naturally I have to plug this article about the Digg architecture and how it deals with lots of data. It's kind of amazing that a site as simple (to the eye, I mean) as Digg requires 100 servers.

I heard this on Buzz Out Loud and had to report it: this NBC reporter Michelle Madigan tried to go undercover at Def Con 15 and catch hackers admitting to illegal things and then catch Feds there doing nothing about it. The idea of the convention is to share knowledge about security to serve the greater good and let your guards down so that you can talk about things you did in the grey without having to face the consequences. I don't know how she thought she'd outsmart hackers, but they found her out and there's a clip on YouTube of them playing a prank on her of sorts in inviting her to another conference where the secret point was to expose her to all the hackers.

Now for a few one-liners. This is a pretty big, awesome list of web development resources, so check it out. This is a great guide to being smarter about using torrents. I saw this site on an ad and just thought it was too funny:



I just want to touch on a few movie news items here. Michel Gondry has come out with a new movie: Be Kind Rewind. It looks pretty cool to me, and it stars Mos Def and Jack Black. They run a video store and all their tapes turn blank, so they film their own versions of movies. Gondry is definitely pretty creative, so I want to see what he does with this one.

Jessica Alba is going to do another comedy, but this one with Mike Myers called The Love Guru. I'm skeptical, but Mike Myers is really funny so you never know. I don't know why Alba wants to get into comedy now though. I guess it's because her acting could need some help so she wants to try lighter stuff.

We have a couple of Southland Tales pictures, and they're not much but they're something. I'm still stoked to check out this movie, despite early reviews from Cannes.

Now for the Wednesday Mind Hump:

List ten random things in your refrigerator.
Too easy: Turtles (like the candy, not the animals), sparkling water, an onion, milk, chocolate syrup, lunchmeat, strawberry jelly, ketchup, bread, flour tortillas, and some potatoes.

Beautify Your Landing Page

I love talking about usability. I was talking about it today with my manager with regard to my geographical visualization tool (I'd show screenshots, but it's backed by sensitive, proprietary data, sorry) and how to best display options to mess with it, and he brought up the good point that we're dealing with an technical user (Amazon business units) rather than your average person, who would have different needs and intuitions and such. Anyway, today, I wanted to talk a little bit about this article on how to make the first page your users see of your site a lasting experience for them. When it comes down to it, the sites you get pumped to come back to or talk about are different and fresh and fast and dynamic. I recommend browsing that post, and allocate like 20 minutes for it because it has some really fun links. Basically, the core concepts are that your site is user-friendly, it's fun to navigate, it's unique, and it communicates well on a visual level. That's what that entire article boils down to. When it really comes down to it, I think all web designers should sit in the driver's seat and figure out how likely you'd be to keep visiting the site and whether you actually enjoy using it. I think sometimes people get too caught up in little things and don't realize that using technology and navigating the web should be enjoyable!

Remember how SoundExchange decided to ease up on internet radio regarding those royalty hikes? Well, there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the price internet radio has to pay is DRM. That's right, they have to actively fight against streamripping, which basically will end up limiting how users can get to the streams since they have to be clients that support DRM (like Windows Media Player). I guess it's better than losing internet radio altogether though.fees to the winner.

On the bright side, Capitol Records lost a lawsuit and had to pay like $60k in attorney fees to the winner! The is the first time someone has won money from the RIAA in one of these lawsuits, and let's hope that it starts a trend!

The Apple rumor mills are hard at work with word that we'll probably see an iPhone-like iPod as soon as next month or as late as January 2008 due to a contract for touchscreens won by a Taiwanese company. I suppose that this could be for the iPhone, but they're not having supply issues with the iPhone and so they probably wouldn't need a fresh contract for that. I think next month would be too soon for a new iPod, but I'd guess for October maybe. Speaking of the iPhone, this is probably my favorite iPhone rant. It's NSFW, but still hilarious.

Google is really pushing its Street View thing with a whole fleet of Chevy Cobalts ready to hit some big cities. Ok, that's making an assumption, but what else would they do with 30 brand new cars with vertical extensions attached to their hoods?

Speaking of cars, if you text when you drive, then you're an idiot. If you're in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I can maybe understand, but come on! If you need to see this sign to know to not text while you drive, then you don't deserve to drive:


Lastly, this thing is freaking hilarious. If you've ever been in the industry, you'll definitely appreciate it. Hell, even if you haven't, I'm sure you'll find it amusing. It's a list of ways to know your software project is doomed, and it's quite accurate.

I don't watch much anime, though I can respect it, and I like the teaser for The Five Killers, which is from the makes of Afro Samurai. The only other thing I have is the trailer for The Last Legion from The Weinstein Company and featuring Bollywood star (and the wet dream of a lot of Indian dudes, I'm sure; I only dream of my girlfriend, seriously, so I wouldn't know). The trailer isn't particularly amazing, but it's still interesting subject matter (first leader of Rome and stuff).

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

1. Two nicknames that friends and family call me:
My girlfriend calls me tiger, and some of the guys here call me Ford/Fjord.
2. Two items of clothing I would never get rid of:
The tie I wore to my brother's wedding and the kurta I wore to his Roce.
3. Two movies that I can watch over and over again:
Donnie Darko and Pulp Fiction
4. Two people that have influenced me the most:
My father and my brother
5. Two goals/dreams I hope to fulfill in my lifetime:
Marry the girl of my dreams and create software that really changes the world

Why Plaxo is Still in Beta

I'm going to put my pictures up in a post after this one, so I'll try to keep this post short to compensate. What is Plaxo? It's really cool, actually. I think it handles one of the biggest problems facing average people in technology today: integrating all your contact information and addresses and calendars together. There's a Yahoo Calendar, an Outlook calendar, a Google Calendar, etc, but you want them all to show the same stuff! Well, Plaxo will do just that for you. It cleverly will synch together all these things, plus AIM, Microsoft Live, your Mac, your phone, and more. Even better: if you manage to get all your friends on this, you'll never have outdated information for them and they'll never have outdated information for you because Plaxo will always show them your most up to date stuff and even notify them. Plus, it'll keep track of birthdays, tasks you have to do, and tell friends about changes to your Flickr account and blog. Unlike Facebook, it doesn't tell people about what you do automatically, you have to share it and you choose who it shares with. Pretty neat, huh? However, it's not without several drawbacks. It's still in beta though, mind you. None of my Google contacts were imported, and the Outlook plug-in doesn't seem to be working for me. It could just be because this is a work computer where I'm not admin, but isn't that going to be a common issue for this service since most people aren't admin on their work computer? It's a nice UI, but not everything is immediately clear. I didn't realize when setting up some synchs that creating a folder for it meant that it wouldn't synch with stuff from other services, which is not what I wanted and now it's not clear at all how to change that. Then there's the occasional graphical bug. Still, this is a great service on the right track that's only bound by the fact that you have to get everyone you know on it for it to be really helpful. Oh, and why doesn't it synch with Facebook? Doesn't that seem like a glaring deficiency? I love the idea, it just needs some refinement.

So we have our first iPhone nut jobs: they camped out this morning. That's right, a 100 hour camp out. I don't care what the device is, if you're waiting outside a store for 100 hours straight then you are a total moron. The rest of you may be interested to know how the iPhone upped its battery life numbers. I won't read the article to you, but it's a good read if you were curious like I was. Even a year of computer architecture didn't explain that kind of stuff.

Speaking of Apple, here's a cool photographic timeline of the company's history. It's just fun to flip through, to be honest.

Ever wanted to be invisible? Well, check this out:


The development of a web application is often long and sordid, and Vitamin has a cool feature about one site with an interesting lifecycle. A rather common story in this field, but still fun to look at.

Lastly, ever wanted to see a jpeg as a webpage? Yeah, I haven't either, but this is still a damn cool utility that will do that for you. Quite clever, though it seems useless.

I just wanted to bring up one piece of movie news: the trailer for Hitman. Why did they play Ave Maria in the background? I get that they wanted some kind of peaceful song, but you're talking about a holy figure while killing people in the foreground. I'm usually not one of those Christians, but this is one of my favorite hymns and they're blaspheming a classic.

The WWDC Keynote

There's really not a whole lot to talk about today besides the WWDC keynote from Apple, so I guess I'll just go right into that. Of course, if you're really hardcore then you can get the full video feed over here. I wouldn't bother watching it unless you're really excited about Leopard. The coolest additions to OS X were probably Stacks, the new menu bar thing that makes it easy to access your favorite programs quickly, and the quick look thing to preview files before you open them. His iChat demo looked pretty neat, too, where you can actually drag other movies onto your video chat and have a blue screen effect going on. Totally useless, mind you, but nifty. They rehashed old features of Leopard, too, like Spaces and Time Machine. Not a good sign for an exciting keynote, but the WWDC one rarely is. Leopard will sell for $129, and they rightfully took a jab at the many versions of Vista there are. I agree that that's a totally stupid idea. Anyhow, the next thing he menioned was that Safari would now be on Windows, which is totally meaningless to Windows users since we already use Firefox or the stupider ones use Internet Explorer. The thing he mentioned last was kind of interesting. He puts out this banner of a solution for developers to develop for the iPhone, but what he meant was web applications. If you create a cool site, that can run in Safari on the iPhone, but you can't use the touchscreen functionality to do anything cool, or anything else useful on the iPhone. Great. That's not much better than their no third party development stance from last keynote. All in all, a drab WWDC keynote, but at least he hit hard on the strengths of Leopard and I'm sure that Mac heads were happy about that.

By the way, Apple also revamped their site a bit. Same basic design theme, just rearranged a bit.

If you use Google Analytics, like me, then you probably enjoyed your recent, free upgrade to their fancy shmancy stuff. However, there is a lot to take in there, and this blog post offers a bit more guidance on how to use everything by adding stuff to your codebase here and there. I found it pretty educational and this is the kind of stuff that you usually have to employ some premium service to get.

Vitamin is running a wonderful article on the most prominent layout styles ever. I know I'm a sucker for the minimalist and the futurism. I know, they're kind of opposing concepts, but eye candy nonetheless. That whole article is actually eye candy in case you haven't seen anything pretty today (I know it's hard on college guys who can't scope out the number of foxy ladies they can during the long session in the summer; of course, I'm only missing one foxy lady).

In a very strange move, Weinstein Co. has decided to release Death Proof on DVD this September without its Planet Terror counterpart. Do they just like Tarantino better or something? My guess is that they're splitting up Grindhouse so that they can sell one in September, one a month later, and then a boxed set in time for Christmas. Supposedly, the 4-disc set Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair will also come out that month, but I just read that on a fan site and couldn't find any real evidence behind it other than my fingers being crossed.

In the world of animation, it looks like Toy Story 3 is on track for a 2010 release. They've only recently started on the script, but it's being penned by the writer of Little Miss Sunshine so I expect something worthwhile rather than a money grubbing sequel. Oh, and Quint at AICN has seen Ratatouille and really liked it. He praises the pacing and the animation, and I was always interested in it so now I'm actually looking forward to it.

Another movie getting underway is Indiana Jones 4 which is in the middle of an open casting call for extras willing to have their hair cut in true 50s style. That'd be a scary requirement for me, I think, but it'd be worth it to be in an Indiana Jones flick!

Lastly, Moviefone has a couple of decent clips from <Die Hard 4 (that's right, I said the proper title!).

Since we were a bit low on the tech news today, here's those pictures that I promised from yesterday from the recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park in Belltown:








Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Do you listen to the radio, or a CD, when you're driving in your car/truck/SUV?
I listen to the radio, but I switch to whatever is in the CD player if there's nothing good on, and then rinse and repeat when that track is over.
2. Do you have one of those GPS systems in your vehicle?
Nope. Too expensive! I'm a cheap Indian dude here!
3. About how many miles do you put on your vehicle in a month?
Not really sure about that. I'd guess about 400 miles if I make a trip to Houston each month (obviously not counting this summer).
4. Do you have your oil changed regularly?
Yeah, my dad is cool enough to handle that for me.
5. Do you take your vehicle to a car wash or do you wash it at home?
Wash it at home. I hate those automatic things because they leave spots and they're not thorough enough.
6. How often do you have the inside of your vehicle cleaned? Do you do it yourself or do you pay someone to do it?
I do it myself, once or twice a semester.
7. What is the color of your vehicle?
I'd say maroon, but it's generally referred to as red.

We Need to Fix IT

I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was overshadowed with the knowledge that I have to get back to studying, but I did get a puzzler done yesterday (woot!) and we did some grilling (though did not go shopping):


People make fun of me for taking pictures of food, but who doesn't like looking at food? Come on! The food was so good that even Fred was beached and she didn't even eat any of it:


Anyway, on to the topic at hand: IT. Oh, and when I said "we," I mean IT managers, not poor college students. I think a clear concern amongst my friends is ending up in a dead end job. No one wants to be at a company like IBM where you get assigned to some project that no one could care less about and you beg for time to pass quicker. Part of the pull to this career for me is that the work is so fun and exciting that days zoom by, and I even at TI I started to become tired of just putting the same feature on different tools. Having innovative spirit is important, and when tech guys become maintenance men you really keep new ideas from the field. I wonder how much universities can really do to excite their students. How do you explain to students what they can do one day with what they know? That kind of spirit just comes from being around other smart people and meeting CEOs of startups and such, both of which I'm thankful to have been exposed to at UT. All you can really do is come up with interesting projects for students to do and hope that it sparks further interest, which is another thing I think UT is good at, but I have no idea how things are done at other universities. Well anyway, this problem is a very hard one to fix, but it is very real. IT isn't as sexy as it once was, and I think we need to go back to that time like 6 years ago where everyone was trembling with excitement over technology and think about what we had outside of an invisible bubble.

Google, you rock. I say that mainly because I just found out about Google Transit for Austin. You just put in two locations and it'll use Google Maps to show you what bus(es) you need to take as well as the times for the next bus and how much money you save on gas. Very cool, and it's in 9 other cities as well.

Some researchers in Australia have apparently used a study to develop software that can rate a woman's looks on a scale from 1 to 10 based on a picture of them. While I appreciate the talent it must've taken to even attempt something like this, I think it's fairly flawed. First of all, using a panel of 50 "volunteers" to determine beauty is really biased and not random at all. On top of that though, even physical beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I see something like this causing immense emotional damage to lots of women, which fashion magazines already do quite well.

We have some new software versions out this weekend. The cooler one is FoxIt Reader version 1.3 with support for more stuff and more pro-version features minus the bloat you'd expect. The other new version is iTunes 7.1.1, which doesn't ostensibly change anything but I'm thinking will fix stability issues that I've noticed in recent months and I'm sure that some of you have had to deal with as well (like erasing the library metafile for no reason).

Here's a one-liner: one blogger put up a list of 10 great sites for web developers and I had to plug it because some of these sites really are awesome (a couple of them I've been checking out for a while). Not only that, but almost all of them are really easy on the eyes.

I don't think it's much of a surprise that 300 managed to keep top honors this week at the box office with $31.2 million, especially since everyone and their mom seems to have seen it now. 300 and Zodiac are probably the best movies out right now, anyway. Wild Hogs also continues to impress everyone with $18.8 million at #2, and the new releases (none of which got much critical acclaim) took the next three spots. Of course, TMNT (not "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") comes out next week, and I estimate it having a good weekend given its appeal among not only today's youth but also among college students and young adults who grew up on the original TV show and movies.

The only other movie news comes from the Russian site filmz.ru. They have some character posters from the Fantastic Four sequel that look good, albeit a little too airbrushed. Hey, I can't complain when they give us a close-up of Ms. Alba on a poster like that. They also have some pictures from Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which aren't all that exciting but I'm sure that I have some diehard fans reading and there's really no other news out there this weekend.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. San Francisco :: California


2. Sadness :: Morose


3. Spirits :: High


4. Harriet :: Tubman


5. State :: Secretary


6. John :: Q


7. Offense :: Defense


8. Timeless :: Classic


9. Account :: Bank


10. Refuse :: Reject

Evolution of a Search Engine

So I had Amazon this morning, and it was quite intense. Definitely the hardest interviews I've ever had, though the first one went much better than the second. Not to say that I bombed the second, but I just feel that I could've been sharper. The fact that they only hire people better than their average employee is just slightly intimidating, but continue to pray I shall. Oh well, the rest of my day went better, so I'm feeling just fine right now! Honestly, there's not a whole lot to talk about in technology. Since the first website I probably ever visited was Yahoo though (back in like 1996 or 1997), I just enjoyed this look at how its evolved over the years. I guess it's hard to remember when the Internet was novel and exciting to me. I haven't gotten tired of it now or anything, but I was just so stunned back then by it, despite the ridiculously slow speeds. Doing research without having to go to the library and look in a card catalog and junk? Totally awesome. Anyway, you kind of see a really neat trend in how web design has progressed across the board from that. Just comparing 1999 to 2004 is quite a large change itself. I'm tempted to say that I like their current design the best. What's nice about it is that they don't clutter it with specifics of all these categories, which I never ever looked at. Instead, it's a really brief glimpse at certain things, and it loads really fast. It dares to be different from Google (so it's not a copycat), without being bloated (ala MTV). Sometimes the journey is more important than the end result, and that's the impression I get from looking at this. I like that they evolved, because no one ever gets anything right the first time (well, I guess except maybe God).

iTunes is starting to open itself up a little more to indie producers, or I guess maybe it's the other way around. Certain indie movies that failed to strike a deal through their distributor to get in iTunes movies' section are now getting in the TV shows section on their own for the $2 price tag. I think if you can't get in the big retailers, then iTunes is the next best thing to broaden your audience.

Of course some shows still aren't on iTunes, and we need to go somewhere else for our fix. You can such options over here. That TED thing looks pretty cool to me.

The only other appealing thing in technology today is some free online storage options. So when you're on-the-go and need to store your data, or maybe you need to share it, or maybe you just want an alternate back-up, look into those sites for some relief.

It looks like the movie news is weak as well today. People have been getting really really early screenings of Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie in its unfinished form and it sounds about as entertaining as those ridiculous teaser trailers they put out. I guess Seinfeld doesn't really need the money anyway though.

We have another video from the new Fantastic Four movie, and it's not bad. It definitely intrigues me, but the real baddies are conspicuously missing.

Hollywood Reporter has some news from the production of Get Smart that definitely interests me. Not only is Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway on board, but so is Little Miss Sunshine's Alan Arkin. I love him as an actor, so now I'm officially interested in this flick.

Lastly, enjoy this international poster for the next Die Hard movie (which is apparently only Live Free or Die Hard in America):



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

What is the last book you read?
Completely? Carrie by Stephen King.
Who is your favorite character in the book?
Definitely Carrie. What a really interesting character. I don't think I've read a book before where the protagonist is the antagonist. She's so innocent but ends up so guilty. Just a tragic story.
Did you enjoy the book?
Oh yeah.
Would you recommend the book to others?
Definitely. I liked the way it jumped around in sources of the storyline, and how the end of the book was told in bits and pieces. It makes you appreciate the little things more.

I Don't Like Wal-Mart

I hope you all had a good weekend. Mine started out better than it ended (same old story, girls kicking my butt), but nonetheless I did get a good amount of stuff done (including cooking some delicious 2-alarm chili). So anyway, there are plenty of reasons to hate Wal-Mart, right? Screwing over small town businesses, reverse discrimination from employees, horrible service, etc. Funny thing is, I'm not really as concerned about those things because I don't really encounter them enough to be upset about them. Nope, my reasoning is much geekier. Remember that movie download service they announced? They opened up the site so that not only does it support Internet Explorer 7, but it only supports IE. Classy. I saw the site in Firefox a couple of days ago but didn't talk about it because I presumed it wasn't really up or was just having temporary issues. Apparently, they've pulled down the site entirely now, though I still get the unsupported message since I haven't updated my IE in forever. I kind of just take offense to them being so presumptuous. It's not that they're alone in this, or that I'm more perturbed by them doing it than anyone else, it's just horrible in general. It's always the big guys that do this. You never see a small company have an IE-only site; they invest in supporting everything. However, the big companies that bathe in money can't put more of it into a better web UI. I can't imagine that these people are really this stupid. It's pretty fundamental rule in the world of technology for consumer products: if it ain't pretty, is someone going to really want to use it?

Here's something else that's crazy: Microsoft is quite supportive of DRM. In an interview with a Microsoft exec, it was revealed that they're happy with the current state of affairs in DRM. At least they're being honest, but that doesn't mean much. I don't think they'll ever sell me on this crap. I'd be willing to formally prove that there's no way in Hell an unbreakable DRM could ever exist, and even if it could, it would still really piss off consumers.

I really like AMD; I guess because they're the underdog. The fact that they have so much to lose makes them that much more interesting to observe. They've been working on a new line of chips under the codename Barcelona that appears to do wonders for the x86 architecture. The techniques sound interesting (I didn't even know nested paging existed), but the performance figures are yet to be seen. Still, 3 levels of caching is impressive.

It looks like we have some leaked information about Firefox 3 (though it may be an authorized leak, for all I know), and it sounds like not only are they looking to have PDF exporting built-in (thought there are still plenty of ways to make PDFs for free) but also add-on installation without restart and smoother handling of the omnipresent POST forms. Plus, I presume that they'll put Places in this time.

If you don't have time like me to watch TV live and you can't afford TiVo, you may enjoy ShareTV.org for all your torrent needs. Though if that show is available online for free with ads, I encourage you to do that instead to encourage more networks to do that so that we don't have to rely on torrents to control our own television schedule.

Here are some one liners in the Web 2.0 arena. Ever need to communicate something by drawing in a hurry? Try out sketchr (I know, the name is annoying, but it's neat). If you're a pre-med then you'll love this medical dictionary.

This is pretty appalling: Norbit is the #1 movie in the nation with over $30 million, and Hannibal Rising lags behind in second with less than half. The suckage at the box office pushes on with low-quality movies getting low revenues. When do the good movies start coming out? I guess that Reno 911 flick comes out in a couple of weeks.



Yep, that's a poster for Hot Fuss. We even have a nifty little trailer to match. It doesn't tell you much, but from the new review over at AICN, it sounds like we should be interested in this movie anyway. Unfortunately, their review for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wasn't so enthusiastic. Oh well, maybe it'll at least have some campy value.

I know it's a lot of AICN stuff for one post, but everyone else actually takes a break over the weekend. AICN, however, put up a trailer for a documentary they're helping bring to the Austin Alamo Drafthouse called 8-Bit, and I'll let you guess as to what it's about. I may try organizing a band of nerds to go see it.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. The best thing :: is yet to come


2. Hold :: On


3. Rapture :: God


4. Cover :: Take


5. Restrictive :: DRM ;)


6. Baker :: man


7. Author :: Book


8. Pill :: Birth Control


9. Months :: Nine


10. Valentine’s Day :: Sucks (it's just depressing for losers like me =P; do I really need a reminder of others' comparative blissfulness)

I Met Limas Sweed!

So I was walking out of Accounting today and I saw a big Black dude walking out with a Texas backpack, which kind of caught my attention. I looked closer, and it had a tag that said "#4 Limas Sweed". I thought that was something maybe the Co-op was selling. It couldn't be him, right? But no, it freaking WAS HIM! So when he confirmed it I flipped out and blurted something like "ohmygodyou'refuckingawesomeIloveyouyou'reawesome!!". So he kind of laughs and says, "Have you met my homeboy, the QB, Colt McCoy?" And sure enough, standing right there is Colt McCoy. So I flip out again and say a much cornier line that I will not repeat here. For those of you who don't know, Colt is the Texas QB (Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year) and Sweed is not only a Texas Wide Receiver but probably one of the best in College Football. This is a guy who probably makes secondaries piss their pants and he shook my hand! He was really nice (Colt was a little quiet), and was comparing answers for the group assignment with me (don't worry, it was already turned in, no cheating!) and they let me take pictures with them! So nice of them to appease a little fanboy like myself. Here they are:



If you guys actually somehow read this, I hope I didn't scare you guys! I'm just a guy who loves his Texas Football. Oh, and today was the Career Fair. I did alright at it, but I probably should've dressed up more. Oh well, we'll see what happens. Maybe there's hope for me getting a Google interview yet? I'm going to continue with the format of yesterday's post because I kind of liked that and have wasted a little too much time tonight.

Reliable sources are claiming that Microsoft intends to release a Zune-based phone this holiday season (surprise surprise). Does this mean it'll be touch screen? Probably not. I'm sure they're going to try to compete with the iPhone with a different interface, probably one more in line with how the Zune is now (it actually does have a decent UI, I've used it). It looks like they're considering connectivity with the Xbox 360 for transferring media and such, which would be awesome, but it doesn't sound like it'll include Windows Mobile. Not like anyone would care though. Good luck, Microsoft!

Having been involved with web development so much over the past several months, I was naturally drawn to this comparison of PHP, Java, and Ruby. What's sad is that it looks like PHP is only great for scaling, and I wonder why that is. I'm still starting to learn Ruby, but I guess being interpreted really hurts it. No surprise that PHP is dead last for maintainability though, because it's a challenge for me to make the NSC site easily maintainable, despite my best efforts. Anyway, it's short and a good read. If you're interested in Ruby on Rails, you can read more here.

There's hope for the iPhone name yet: Cisco and Apple have agreed to push back the deadline for Apple to respond to the iPhone lawsuit, which means that they're probably in talks again. Should be interesting to see how it ends up.

Quentin Tarantino has picked up an ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award, which I had to mention because I admire his work way too much. I feel that he's sometimes underappreciated, but that's probably just the fanboy in me.

The next 007 movie, Bond 22, does not have a director. Martin Campbell isn't interested in coming back, which is probably a huge blow to MGM after the acclaim his Bond movies have received. Filming is supposed to start next January, so they'd better hustle on a script and director.

Lastly, there's a trailer online for Knocked Up and it's slightly funnier than I thought. I'm still skeptical, but I do like Katherine Heigl and Paul Rudd. After all, Judd Apatow has given us some classics in the past.

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

List 3 things in your life that need changing (from mode of transportation to places to live to work to anything else you can think of), tell us why, and describe how/if you're going to change it.
I need to stop cluttering, and I can change that by just focusing more on it. The reading has helped somewhat, but I need to work more at it. I need to do more outside projects so that it'll be easier for me to find a job. And I need to get out there and date more so that I don't feel like I'm just leaving a void open in my life.