Falling Computer Prices

That comic has nothing to do with anything except that it's totally hilarious. You'd be surprised how widespread that problem is. On to a cleaner subject though: prices in technology. It turns out that an entry-level computer in today's world will only set you back $300! Of course it won't have a lot of bells and whistles, but unless you're a programmer or a hardcore gamer that won't matter to you. I'm just taken aback at how much prices have fallen from when I was little and what a luxury it was for us to get our first computer that my brother begged for. It's funny that it used to be a joke for every household to have a computer. Why is it that printer ink doesn't get any cheaper though? I know software doesn't get much cheaper out of a mix of greed and production costs, but does ink really not get any cheaper at all? Oh well, at least we also see better prices on sweet monitors. If you would've told me a few years ago that I'd be taking a 17" MAG to college for under $100 I would've called you crazy!

There's still plenty of techie news left. It would appear that some cafe owners feel that offering free WiFi is bad for business because it encourages lingerers, and I was surprised to learn that one such shop got more business by disconnecting the service on weekends. I didn't know people cared so much about conversations in a coffee shop. You don't need WiFi though to enjoy SeamlessWeb, which is a cool new service that is rather limited but runs with the idea of ordering food online conveniently. I know that students at UT in the dorms us CampusFood.com, but I hope such service spreads more to the mainstream. As if Utah wasn't backwards enough already, it now is trying to restrict children's access to the Internet. It sounds well and good except for that it means casting a wide net penalizing even innocent sites and would hence discourage free speech. I'm sure that'll get struck down though. Open sourcers can bask in this comparison of Linux to BSDs. You may also like Nokia's smartphone browser choice. I ran into this thesis technology that may appear too nerdy, except that it's a really neat concept of a monitor showing separate images to different people at the same time. It takes a careful look to understand, but it's worthwhile. Lastly, Steve Jobs is apparently convincing students to drop out because it forced him to be innovative when he did it. I think that may work for some people, but not everyone.

There's some meaty movie news today. My excitement to see Batman Begins tomorrow pushes forth with a great review from IGN and an informative interview with Christian Bale at JoBlo.com. I think the most surprising thing I learned was his insane weight fluctuations between The Machinist and Batman Begins where he had to gain 100 lbs in 5 months. Some bad news for comic book fans popped up on AICN today: X3 has a pretty bad script behind it and needs serious help. I guess the director is the least of Fox's problems with this one. There's a neat new trailer for Wes Craven's Red Eye up and it's making the movie look more and more intriguing. In contrast, two sequels to Resident Evil sounds like a little too much and I can totally see them murdering the series. If you like staring at Lindsay Lohan there are some new clips from Herbie: Fully Loaded at Yahoo! Movies. Lastly, you can check out an international poster for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over here.

The big news today was that Michael Jackson has been acquitted! I sincerely believe that the prosecution failed to uphold their burden of proof and if they couldn't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with that much time then he's gotta be innocent. Some better reactions are here. What was really shocking today was a book accusing Bill Clinton of raping his wife (while being married though) to get Chelsea! I can't see his claims as being true and I hope they do sue his pants off.

Now for some crazy Monday Madness:

Please list at least one anagram for the following words...

1. praised dip ears
2. idle lied
3. lamp palm
4. tied edit
5. lured ruled
6. sang nags
7. hoes shoe
8. rats star
9. mobbed bombed
10. rifle flier

Cinderella Man

I saw Cinderella Man last night despite all the Russell Crowe craziness. He may be a pompous actor and a jerk, but he's one Hell of an actor. I wonder if all that contraversy is what's causing the grosses to suffer, which is still less than half of the production budget. It was probably just released on a bad weekend because it is a surprisingly good movie. I wasn't even in the mood to see it, but it ended up being great. The setting is the Great Depression where James J. Braddock (Crowe) is a washed up pugilist trying to find money to cover his family's electricity and heating bills so that he can keep his kids with him. It provides an almost haunting picture of the Depression and does a great job of contrasting that with the unchanged lives of the upper class. I just liked the pretty close accuracy to that time period, especially attitudes towards the government. Anyway, the boxing scenes are just phenomenal and even better than the cinematography of the fights on The Contender. As they started getting more intense I could see the whole audience getting riled up for them and on the edge of their seats. Renee Zellweger also gives a worthwhile performance and it's hard to believe that Paul Giamatti was just in Sideways (can't wait to see him in Lady in the Water). I give it a high reccomendation with a solid A, but don't just take my word for it.



I do indeed have some news for nerds today. The biggest buzz recently has of course been regarding the incipient Macintel computers and the New York Times put up a great summarizing article of all the talk, including the concern of the Osborne Effect, which is that sales of Macs may fall in the next year because everyone is holding out for the Intel Macs. I was surprised to learn in that article that Jobs was asked by Kenichi Kutaragi to use the Cell processor (the brain of the PS3), but he felt it was as inefficient as the PowerPC. Ouch. Rival Microsoft is being a bastard and supporting the Chinese government in its censorship campaign by removing "democracy" and "freedom" in parts of its new Chinese internet portal. Way to sell out, Bill! Cambridge has added a few robotic benches and bins that respond to people and develop more personality over time. Now there's a cute way to use technology. My assistant debate coach way back when in high school was all hyped up about a Smart Board he had gotten, but we didn't use much, and apparently it's spreading throughout the nation. I think if teachers use it right, unlike him, it can be an amazing tool and save the energy of having to get TV screens and VCRs and stuff in addition to the convenience of literally saving what was written on the board. Lastly, there's an interesting editorial here about the failings of search engine with higher level search queries.

Now for some movie goodness. It was no surprise to me that the number one film this weekend was Mr. and Mrs. Smith because every time my friends and I tried to see it Friday night it was sold out! It raked in $51.1 while the other opening films lagged behind severely and there was even a large gap between it and number 2, Madagascar. If you managed to see the #1 movie you can check out a deleted scene at IGN. There's a trailer for The New World now online and it has really built up my hopes for a movie I previously hadn't heard of. Another movie I hadn't heard of until now is Hustle and Flow, which seems to be getting good early reviews and may be one to remember. AICN also has an early review of Herbie: Fully Loaded suggesting that it's actually a decent family flick. Lastly, George Lucas geeks can feast on this.

Just a couple of random things left. It would appear that the video game voice acting dispute I had previously reported on has been resolved with higher pay for now, which is good because I was worried it would get messy and cause a ripple effect in the industry. There's a new Strongbad e-mail to check out for all you fans of wacky e-mails.

This week I'm trying out the Sunday Brunch:

1) What is your favorite board game?
Cranium! I used to like Pictionary the best but Cranium is like Pictionary to the extreme! I know it sounds sad, but it's really a lot of fun to play in a medium-sized group.

2) What type of games are your favorite? (ie, board, card, participatory, dice, word games)
Probably participatory board games because they never get old. Games like Monopoly and Clue are such timeless classics. I am really into video games, but not everyone can really get into those.

3) How many games do you own, and if possible, list them.
No way I can list them. I've got PC, PS2, SNES, NES and board games. Let's just leave it at that!

4) Do you enjoy computer or video games? Which one is your favorite?
Yes, both. I probably like video games more because using a controller just feels more natural than a keyboard and mouse.

5) Describe a great childhood memory of an outside game.
Remember "Duck, Duck, Goose"? I still vaguely remember playing that game at the back of my Kindergarden school. Those were the good ol' days!

Microsoft in the News

The news today has been rather slow so the only stuff suitable for a main topic has been regarding Microsoft. They're going head-first into the mp3 arena with their own subscription service. How much will it cost? What will it cover? Good questions, but M$ is light on answers. We can expect it to try to attack iTunes and it sounds like they may want to provide songs you'd find on iTunes but in a Windows-friendly format so that it can work on other players. I think the mp3 download market is beginning to reach saturation and I wouldn't be surprised to see a key player drop out of the race. Apparently, Microsoft is launching a war on Adobe because in addition to their alternative to pdfs, they're also coming out with a graphics application to rival Photoshop. It'll have pixel-based painting and vector graphics support, but early impressions of it seem to be bleak. They seem to be unveiling a little more than they should be at this stage and it's making them look bad. It looks like Gates is getting sloppy.

There are a few others items of note for nerds. I'm sad to say that we'll likely have two new DVD formats as negotiations between Sony and Toshiba over the Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs have almost completely failed. Sony needs the Blu-ray because the PS3 supports it, but Toshiba believes that 30GB is enough and that the cheapness of producing HD-DVDs is a huge advantage. I think Sony needs to focus more on the HD capabilities of the PS3 because if it's not going to be built in they should start planning out what they'll offer to compete with the Xbox 360. Many geeks are hooked on MMORPGs and it's sad that one gamer was so into one that he killed a peer over an argument regarding a virtual sword. That's gotta be the worst reason to kill someone. Lastly, if you're curious as to where laptops come from then you should check out this terse article about just that.

The movie news today is short and sweet, which is good because I'm running out of time to write this post. I mentioned the trailer for The 40-year-old Virgin yesterday and now we have an early review from a screening suggesting that the movie is indeed funny and apparently a cross between American Pie and Revenge of the Nerds. It sounds like some of the problems he had with it, like the length, could be solved in an editing room so I guess we'll see what happens. IGN had some words with the two best Batman actors (Keaton and Bale), but it sounds like Keaton hasn't kept up with the new film at all. While I'm on superheros though there is word that very early gears are moving for a Wolverine spinoff after X3. I wonder if they'll go through with it if the script is good but X3 blows like all the fans are fearing? Microsoft got lucky and bagged Fox and Universal for their Halo script, which sounds pretty meager. I'm not expecting good things for that flick. You can check out a new trailer for Cronicas, a Mexican thriller movie, over here. It looks really good and has some great people creating it. Lastly, Wonder Years (an old favorite of mine) star Danica McKellar is trying to get back in the game and wants to prove that she still looks good in a Stuff magazine photo shoot. She has really grown up:



Just a few random things I'm going to briefly cover. I think it's hilarious that Howard Dean spoke the truth about the Republican party given his rather high place in the Democratic Party. You have to admit that the Republican party is taking a very religious right turn. The supposed housing bubble stateside is still building up with low mortgage rates causing some distress at the Fed. I'll talk more about this later. Lastly though, I'll leave you with paper voting to ponder.

And now the Friday Fiver:

From your vantage point in front of the computer, you spy, with your little eye...

1. Something that is red:
Indian tapestry on the wall

2. Something that is shiny:
The buckles on my guitar case

3: Something that is ugly:
A Warcraft Orc action figure

4. Something that is made of wood:
Another desk at the far end of the room

5. Something that is sharp:
Just a pair of scissors in a pencil jar

A Geeky Lover

I'm pretty happy to have encountered this article today detailing why girls should dig the geek more. *points to self* Unfortunately, it's not working too well for me. I guess I'm wearing some cologne that screams to girls who only want geeks as friends. Oh well, I'm sure with more articles like this my problems will melt away! I actually agree with a lot of the article. I think the reason nerds have issues are because of self-confidnece problems. I think I'm getting more and more past that, but in any case geeks aren't very self-absorbed and so it only makes sense that they'd focus a lot on a girl. What else are we gonna do?! Play World of Warcraft? I think even the nerdiest of geeks would prefer a chick over a game. I don't know if I like the way the article treats us as if we have to be put up with and stuff because I'm low maintenance and I have very few quirks but I'm definitely a nerd. Anyway, the bad boys are for the short run but remember that geeks will support you in the long run. So if you see that 5'5" Indian Computer Science major you just can't get enough of then make a move because he won't disappoint! ;)

Have no fear though, I still have plenty of technology news to report. Tiger OS may spell the end of the famous Apple finder because Spotlight makes it so easy to find files with its indexing technique. I find it fascinating how things that seem so strange (the elimination of folders in this case) become the norm in computing so quickly. If you want to hear something more extreme though, you should read this guy's opinion on Apple possibly merging with Intel to help take down Microsoft! I know they're both allies in hating M$, but would they really merge? There's another neat editorial over here about how much more superior the keyboard is to the mouse, and it's true when you think about it. Why must we continue to move our right hand away to navigate a mouse? If you're as cheap as I am and reluctant to upgrade stuff too early, you should take a look at this brief article explaining when's the right time to upgrade for certain items. It turns out that Google Map hacks are not ok as stated in this letter from Google, which is very polite and makes sense why people can't use Google Maps on their sites. While Google's legal department was working on that, their map team started on creating 3D maps of more US cities, and next on the list is San Francisco. It'd be cool if they came to Austin. Lastly, computer scientists should check out this humorous story discussing a house hypothetically built by today's software engineers.

The movie news today is alright; quite a bit of media. There's finally a trailer for The 40-year-old Virgin that reveals the basic idea of the film a little more, but I can't decide how funny it will be yet though I love Steve Carrell. There's a final trailer for Bad News Bears over here, and yet it doesn't make the movie look any better. I still don't get who the intended audience is. The last new trailer is for the screen adaptation of Rent, which could theoretically trump Chicago if it's done right. Another early review of Land of the Dead suggests that it'll be one of the best horror movies of our time and possibly a better social commentary than the previous two since it comments on the yuppyism of the 90s (like in American Psycho) and today's post-9/11 era. You can see a more explicit trailer of the movie at its site as well as a couple of TV spots. Of course another heavyweight this summer is Batman Begins (as if I haven't publicized it enough) and if you want to hear more from Lucius Fox and James Gordon you can head over here. There are a few new details about Grind House regarding the order of the two films and the trailers and such, but we're still awaiting plot details from Rodriguez and Tarantino. Lastly, there's a charming review of Howl's Moving Castle at IGN if you're into the animated movie scene. I'm actually interested in giving this one a look.



Before I end this post I have to express my distaste for the upcoming extensions of the Patriot Act. Now they can demand documents from companies without judicial approval! It makes sense in the context of terrorism, but isn't this a window into possible abuses? I'm definitely not comfortable with the added power. While I'm on randomness, I should mention that Jessica Alba looked hot at the MTV Movie Awards.

Now for the Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: I could really-- get into what or who musically this week? Have you run across anything or anyone new to share with the gang?
Definitely the Coldplay. As cool as Audioslave is, Coldplay has just been everywhere and so getting their new songs stuck in my head has been cool because it makes me happy to think of them.

Twosome: Use-- Hey, what do you use for most of your cooking? The microwave? ...or the toaster oven? Regular oven? Weber grill?
My mom uses a gas stove as I used to in Austin, but for now I'm using the toaster oven a lot for bread and Lean Pockets and such.

Threesome: A shower-- ...and the softball of the week: shower or bath? What's your preference. Okay, pool or hot tub (if you had one or both )?
I have to say shower. I don't like the idea of soaking in my skin follicles and dirt unless I take a shower afterwards and I'm surprised that so many other people like it. It's not like a hot tub where the water is nice and warm, but rather it's just room temperature water! How is that relaxing or cleanly?

Coldplay Mania

I can't understand how anyone can not love Coldplay because they're just so good at making music everyone can enjoy. I'm sure you've seen that image before adorning their site and album cover, so what does it mean? Well, the colors are meaningless but if you replace every colored block with a '1' and every empty space with a '0' (and read it in reverse like all binary code), you get a base 5 binary representation of "X & Y". This is called Baudot code. It's very creative since it ties in so well with the theme of their album: variables in life that are unexpected or unknown. I just watched Storytellers: Coldplay and I could feel the energy of the band just by watching them on VH1. You can catch some extra interviews with them over here. They'll rerun the show a lot so try to catch it. In addition to that (and the stuff that has been shown on MTV), Coldplay is also on AOL Music with a live performance of several songs. To top it off, early reports suggest that the new album is outselling the White Stripes' album three to one! It's a great week for them and with good reason. I think I like this new album the best because unlike the previous albums it leaves nothing to be desired. No wonder it took them 18 months to make!

The techie news today isn't too bad. Google is now the largest media company by stock overrunning former heavyweight Time Warner. It's a pretty big deal for them to be worth $80 billion and I salute them. Speaking of Time Warner though, AOL is launching a free web mail service featuring 2 GB of space and with tight integration into the new version of AIM. You can even delete sent messages if the recipient is an AOL/AIM user and has not yet read it! It's good to see them thinking again. A London man dubbed the world's biggest hacker has now been arrested and will soon be extradited to the States due to his extreme hacking on NASA and Pentagon servers to prove some sort of UFO cover-up. I think he'll deserve the punishment they'll dish out. Now that Apple has decided to move onto Intel some in the OS community believe that it'll knock out Longhorn and Linux with more compatibility for Intel chip-based software. Lastly, if you want to read an insight into upcoming virus trends you should check out this blogger who suggests that they'll get more complex and more widespread on P2P.

There's some pretty juicy movie news today. Mission Impossible: 3 has received a final greenlight with a small budgetary cut, which was apparently the problem in the first place, and the movie has added Seymour Hoffman to the cast as the main villain. The problem with giving this film a go is that Paramount couldn't afford Watchmen and so they dropped the comic movie. This was a huge shock as the movie was hotly anticipated and will hopefully get picked up by a smarter studio. If you need more juicy stuff you should hear what X3 director Bret Ratner told MTV about how Bryan Singer wasn't satisfied with the movie's script, which strikes concern in me. Oh, and the chair of Fox revealed that their next comic movie focus would be on the Silver Surfer, who is a total badass. I think Justin Lin is a promising director because of Better Luck Tomorrow and I'm confused as to why he signed on to direct Fast and the Furious 3, but I guess that's counterbalanced by his decision to direct the American remake of Oldboy. There's word that the upcoming teaser trailer of King Kong will be a big tease so I wouldn't get too pumped for it. Lastly, IGN got its hands on some action-packed footage of Mr. and Mrs. Smith so take a look if you're interested.

Before I conclude I wanted to bring up an issue from this Insider article that many of you might not be able to view about this:



What am I referring to? Lude material on the PSP. Apparently, the media capabilities of the PSP leaves it vulnerable to being a medium for pornographic material; in Japan at least. Such content is unacceptable stateside but I find it interesting that it's more easier to fit into Japanese culture with more couples holding off on children meaning that there are many more adult customers than children. Just a little cultural education for you guys.

I'm now pleased to present the Wednesday Mind Hump:

Scoop One: Create an ice cream, one that doesn't already exist and that contains some of your favorite things -- list the ingredients and give it a humpilicious name i.e. Banana ice cream with bits of pecans -- Nutty Monkey. Get as creative as you want with any ingredients.
I'm gonna call mine the Funkatron 2005. Why? Because I can! It'll have vanilla ice cream, oreo cookie pieces, black and white chocolate swirls, and bits of brownie. It would be horrible for your tummy but a triumph for your mouth so it all balances out. ;)

Scoop Two: We can always do with a little extra. Besides money, what could you use an extra scoop of today? Patience, smiles, memory? You name it! Also, if you could give a double scoop of something to your best friend, what would it be? Anyone else you'd like to give a double scoop to? Whom and what?
Longer penis. Just kidding; I wish I had a camera to take a picture of your face when you read that besmirchment on my otherwise clean blog! =P I could use a scoop of sensibility so that I could monitor my cluttering and start slowing down my speech more. My best friend is basically perfect but my next closest friend, who will remain nameless but knows who he is, could use a double scoop of focus. He's making a bad choice this fall and I wish he'd get his life back on track because he's quite intelligent otherwise. I think I'd also give my room mate a double scoop of cleanliness! ;)

Scoop Three: Let's play "I say, you think" with a little twist. Coming up are several phases -- read them and respond with the first thing(s) that come to your mind. Things that you lick. Things shaped like a cone. Things that melt.
Lollipop. That crazy Madonna wonder bra. Chocolate bars!

From Bell Labs to Google

I snuck out to Best Buy today after summer school (taking Government I) and got Audioslave's Out of Exile and Coldplay's X&Y, which was on sale for $10 since this is the release week. Listening to both albums tonight was a very gratifying experience and I highly reccomend both of them if you at all like those artists because this is them doing what they do best. Oh, and don't forget to watch Storytellers: Coldplay tomorrow night on VH1 at 9:00 P.M. CST. The main topic of interest for me today was this man's tale of leaving his job at Bell Labs and accepting less money over at Google. Why? For the same reason I want to work there: it's an awesome place. The whole workplace is built to satiate the kid at heart (they have a pool with an artificial current!) while the culture of the office is to get things moving quickly. Most big companies have a lot of bureaucracy and middle men, but it would seem that Google cuts out that crap and encourages employees to get their ideas online and also pushes them to give it their all. I think that's really cool and usually something you only see at small companies. Anyway, the article is a good read if anyone is interested.

There's still plenty of techie news leftover. In an attempt to salvage their desperate photo labs, CVS is unveiling disposable digital camcorders that will sell for $30 and hold 20 minutes of video. The DVDs of the footage will be $13, and the whole thing sounds a bit steep for just 20 minutes. In an ironic turn of events, it would appear that now India will have to outsource for employees that can speak European languages. Maybe now people will stop bitching about how bad and evil American outsourcing is. India's neighbor, China, is going to start policing Chinese chat rooms, blogs, and forums to keep the web clean for its citizens. Apparently, it'll be impossible for independent bloggers to get permission to blog and it's sad how controlling that government is. According to a recent study, iTunes is now more popular than most P2P programs (except WinMX) and while it looks like a victory I think a lot of that is because so many P2Pers are too scared to share. I'd use iTunes myself though if I had an iPod. Apple's next challenge now is a smooth transition for software to Intel chips since some code does rely on chipset functionality. There's an editorial here about a great failure of Apple's rival, Microsoft. The article praises how Microsoft dealt with the security problems of Windows 2000, but I kind of think it's biased. Lastly, Linux is experiencing a temporary slowdown due to the cost of hiring programmers and such for the OS, but I'm sure things will pick up again.

The movie news today is pretty good. Once again, I've gotta start with the Batman. In addition to the best Batman Begins review yet, there's an interview with Alfred (Michael Caine) and Rachel (Katie Holmes) over at IGN that reveals how much they enjoyed making the film. It seems like all the key players are willing to make a sequel eventually so let's keep our fingers crossed. There is some bad comic movie news to counter that stuff thought: the most likely candidate for X3 looks to be Brett Ratner, who I just can't see as being the right guy for the job. If you think that's a bad idea though, there's actually a Simpsons movie in the works! Given the crappiness of the recent episodes I can't imagine the writing being good. Due to acquistion complications, Sony has pushed back the release of The Pink Panther (featuring Steve Martin) to February 2006. It's making people skeptical, but they haven't shown enough of the movie to tell. We will see a teaser of Peter Jackson's King Kong by the end of the month though with War of the Worlds so that's something closer to look forward to. Lastly, Microsoft is trying to find a home for its $1 million script for Halo (written by Alex Garland) by dancing around in Master Chief uniforms and making insane demands. They're just trying to protect the integrity of the franchise, but who will buy it?

I'm not eligible for this week's Ten on Tuesday so instead I'm indulging in the Tuesday Twosome meme:

1. How many hours of sleep do you get and is it enough?
Usually about 8 hours. I'll probably get less next month due to my 10:00 A.M. Government II class, but I consider 7-8 hours to be ideal. I feel pretty refreshed every day and I usually only nap because I sit down an read for a long time (C++ and for class).

2. How many times do you get angry/upset and is it too much?
I don't get seriously angry all that often because it's just not worth it. I'll curse people on the road, but I'm not actually that pissed at them but rather I'm just critical of their poor driving skills. Why don't people use turn signals?!

3. How often do you drink caffeine and is it too much?
Very rarely. I don't drink coffee or sodas (except with alcohol). I do like Bawls Guarana, but that's about it. And I don't drink that often because that much caffeine can't be healthy.

4. How often do you use your cell phone and does it distract from your responsibilities?
I use it a few times a day but it's not really much of a distraction since I'm not popular enough to get a lot of calls. I get more calls during the school year probably, but I'm more connected to AIM.

5. How much time do you spend on the internet and is it too much?
I don't know how to gauge that. I periodically glance at my computer throughout the day. I'm usually actually sitting in front of it doing stuff or chatting for a few hours a day. If it was too much time then I wouldn't get anything else done, and yet I think I'm having a rather productive summer so far.

Mobile Computing on the Rise

That comic has nothing to do with today's topic but it's really funny because it's true. Someone should put the Gamecube out of its misery. Anyway, for the first time ever laptops have outsold desktop computers, which is crazy since desktops are always so much cheaper than portable computers. So why the change? For one thing, laptops have strangely been getting cheaper at a quicker rate than desktops have been and also the whole WiFi thing has really made using one so much more convenient. Most of UT is wireless and many business offer wireless hotspots as well. Plus, it's makes more sense to have a wireless router in a large home than a wired one. The trend of increased mobility has even spread to the airline industry where United Airlines has gotten approval for WiFi in the air. The services will roll out in the middle of next year and United will be the first domestic airline to offer the service. Of course it won't be a free thing, but it's contributing to the establishment of a wireless culture around us. It makes me wonder if wireless power could ever be possible.

There's still more news in technology to report on. There was talk recently of Apple dumping IBM and now it's confirmed that they'll be using Intel chips in Macs from now on. It'll be announced soon and it seems like the main reason is because IBM wasn't fulfilling their notebook computing goals in creating chips that generate less heat. Of course IBM can always fall back on its project to create a simulation of the human brain. Lawsuits against nerds are a continuing affair with the end of DVD Decrypter, which could circumvent copy protection on DVDs. The guy was obviously a hobbyist and I hope he doesn't get punished too harshly. The game industry is facing bad juju from voiceover actors who are demanding more money if a game sells exceptionally well, but developers are loath to give in because other key players in the development process may also ask for more money they don't have. I can't decide who's more right, but hopefully they'll reach some middleground. Lastly, the Wall Street Journal has a semi-humorous article detailing the day they lost e-mail due to some power disruptions. It really makes you think about how much we tie to our e-mail accounts.

I'd like to start out my movie news with some bat-stuff. I don't think I could be any more excited about sitting in line a week from tomorrow for a midnight showing of Batman Begins. An interview with Christopher Nolan, who also directed Memento, really shows how good he is at what he does and this review from Moriarty at AICN gives me renewed confidence that this film will make Christian Bale big at last. There's even talk that he's better than Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne, who actually seems to be interested in doing another Beetlejuice film although there's no word on that actually happening. There is word though that Eddie Murphy is likely to be in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards though he couldn't say so officially and apparently the mastermind director also wouldn't mind bringing back Beverly Hills Cop. If you'd like to know who'll be winning the MTV Movie Awards this Thursday you can spoil the surprise for yourself by peeking here, though I usually enjoy that show and will just watch it on MTV. Lastly, there are some fresh shots of Land of the Dead available including this spooky gem:



I decided to go with the Monday Music Mambo this week:

01. They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky, they're all together ooky ... no, we're not talking about The Addams Family -- we're talking about the wild, wild men and women in the music industry. Which artist(s) or band(s) come to mind when you hear the words creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky, or ooky?
Definitely Marilyn Manson. It's funny because when he speaks in interviews and stuff he sounds very smart and yet his videos are disturbing and he just looks a little creepy in general. I think we all heard the rumors that he removed a rib or two to pleasure himself and I guess that childhood whisper keeps that ooky image of him in my head.

02. Some artists or groups aren't creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky and ooky, they're downright scandalous. What artist(s) or band(s) come to mind when you hear the word scandalous?
JLo was the subject of much scandal with Ben Affleck. There's also Guns N' Roses who got famous off of songs they wrote because they were wasted so much and then failed to make a comeback because Axel Rose was stupid.

03. It happens sometimes -- really bad songs with irritating music and lousy lyrics but somehow they still get waaay too much attention. Today we offer you, for the first time ever -- the Monday Music Mambo Magic Eraser. You now have the ability to wipe those songs completely out of the music industry. What song(s) come to mind?
No question about it: "La La" by Ashlee Simpson. That's on my list of top 5 worst songs ever to be created. What does it mean and why does her voice sound like that? Ugh. Just thinking of the song makes me shudder.

04. Recently we saw Phil Spector sporting his new "do". Which other artist(s) come to mind when you think of bad or wild hair?
The lead singer from Twisted Sister always had horrible hair.

The Game Industry's Direction

I rewatched the first two Star Wars movies with my brother over the weekend and it somehow seems less horrible the second time through. They're decent, not great, films that mainly suffer from writing and acting issues. Some actors are awesome while others are just dreadful (like Hayden Christensen), but I think it's a promising story overall with stunning visual effects. Oh, and that was the worst way to tell a romance story ever. I'm glad I rewatched them because I forgot so much of what happened and now I can see Episode III at ease. Anyway, the Christian Science Monitor wrote an enlightened article about how the video game industry has been so focused on blockbuster titles and sequels to them. The reason for this is because games cost so much to make nowadays (even more in the next generation because of the extra effort and manpower needed) that studios have to see a return on their investments or they blew a considerable sum. Plus, it's hard for them to predict what new ideas their audiences will actually favor. What's clear is that online games are getting pretty big because of that sense of community, but hopefully they move in more innovative directions than that. We don't need more MMORPGs.

There's still some more nerd news to boot. This year is the birthday of the atomic clock and I can't imagine thinking of something so impacting. How do people come up with stuff that intelligent? If you decide to throw out your iPod make sure you give it back to Apple because they'll despose of it properly whereas putting it in the trashcan will ship the waste overseas. Plus, they give you a discount for a replacement iPod. In a scary turn of events, the DPRK (North Korea) apparently has a team of hackers that rival our CIA, which just shows our incompetence in intelligence gathering even more. Some good people have developed a robot that can copy itself and they plan to give it away to less advantaged countries to help them build up their indutstries. Robots building themselves sounds like something out of Star Wars. The last things I wanted to bring up were a couple of new monitors. The Perspecta 3-D monitor isn't quite ready for average consumers but it's a soccer-shaped monitor that can display objects in the 3 dimensions they were meant to be seen in! Of course for those of us living in today's world we have to settle for a heftily priced DoubleSight:



Not much movie news to talk about. Revenge of the Sith has been thrown off its box office throne into the #3 spot by Madagascar of all movies (closely followed by The Longest Yard). I think Cinderella Man fell so harshly due to a lack of publicity, but what do I know. IGN has an early review of High Tension, which was shown at Cannes, that makes the movie sound like an average thriller flick. I guess that makes it perfect for the summer. The last thing I have is just more reactions to Batman Begins suggesting that it's as awesome as we all have hoped. I haven't read a bad review of it yet. The little clip I mentioned Friday is online now by the way.

Before I end I wanted to plug this sad article reporting that job growth figures last month were suprisingly weak. Though trends are more important than individual months, things don't look good for the trend. I'll cede that it's not all Bush's fault that this is happening, but would it hurt him to do something about it? To brighten the mood though, check out this short quiz I got a 60% on.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Exhibit::The Vatican exhibit they had here a couple years ago
   
2. Evolution::Creationism (as in an antonym)
   
3. Loser::3 Doors Down (great song)
   
4. Hypnotic::The hypnotoad on Futurama
   
5. Unlikely::Me getting a girlfriend anytime soon (sorry, that was first)
   
6. Interrupt::Database request interruptions (yes, I know I'm sad)
   
7. Ambivalent::Fair
   
8. Rise and fall::The Roman Empire
   
9. Indian::Me!
   
10. Prophecy::The Matrix (it was on TBS all freakin weekend)
    

A Next Generation Sans the PC

I think I made my enthusiasm for the Xbox 360 and PS3, which is my pick to win the next battle, abundantly clear during all the E3 craziness. I totally didn't think of the war's effect on the PC, which this author apparently did carefully consider. For those of you who don't know, PC gaming has been taking severe hits in recent years due to the great games coming to consoles and the widespread piracy of PC games. Even though console games are pirated it's not nearly as accepted because it requires modding and more trouble than the average gamer can handle whereas burning a CD is easy. Piracy in general is a sad problem because this stuff takes a lot of hard work to make, but what's really going to hurt in the next generation is the fact that for the first time the consoles' power actually surpass current PCs. Not only that, but unless the consoles cost an exorbitant amount (highly unlikely) they'll be much cheaper than building a souped up gaming PC rig. It used to be that the advantage of the PC was that games look better on them, but now you probably won't even be able to tell the difference. The only way to save the PC, in my opinion, is to have someone like Microsoft come in and regulate the industry since there are currently no standards or licenses like there are for consoles. That's unlikely, but I hope the age of LAN parties doesn't die out.

Not a whole lot of remaining techie news. Bluetooth has been the subject of many security concerns recently and it turns out that connections via the protocol can be hacked even when security is turned on via some sneaky pre-pairing work. I guess Bluetooth isn't as ideal as previously thought. If you have privacy concerns even when checking out materials from a library you may be pleased to know that efforts are underway to create anonymous library cards. I'm not that concerned about the library but I guess people take their rights really seriously. Google has unveiled a new service called Google Sitemaps that allows webmasters to generate sitemaps for the sites and keep Google's search engine more informed about their site. The Napster case has generated another standard: it turns out that you cannot get in trouble for offering copyrighted materials but only for distributing them with direct proof of the transfer. It's funny that the RIAA didn't have evidence ahead of time, but it's only a small victory after all. Lastly, I thought it was also funny that morse code can actually be faster than SMS text messaging.

I'm sorry to say that the movie news is also less than thrilling. However, there's a rumor that Harrison Ford gave away the title of the next Indiana Jones flick as Indiana Jones and the Opal of the Mer-man Prince. It could've easily been a joke and I think many people would hope so given the fact that it has 'mer-man' in it. If you've read the Chronicles of Narnia you may be able to make sense out of these few new picture from the upcoming fantasy movie. I think everyone is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan so it's exciting to have even the slightest bit of news on the cg film. All the blurb that we have hints at though is that it's likely going to try to be truer to its comic roots and will definitely be completely computer animated. AICN got its hands on another early review of The Island (this time an early version of the enire film) and it does not sound like a good step for Michael Bay. I think we all dreaded it having a hard-to-swallow storyline but I was hoping it would be told in a neat way. Yahoo! Movies has an exclusive clip from Batman Begins but it doesn't appear to be working as of my writing this post so hopefully it'll go back to normal soon. Lastly, the sexy Rosario Dawson has signed on to an indie-thriller in which she plays a vengeful seductress in college, which isn't a huge stretch given where we last saw her:



It's Friday so it's time for a Feast:

Appetizer
What comes to mind when you hear the word bizarre?
Well the first thing that comes to mind is that dude from the rap group D-12 named 'Bizzare' because he's really extreme in his style. Another bizzare thing is that I saw an old dude at the beach Sunday in a speedo! It was quite a scary sight.

Soup
Using just a few words, describe your childhood.
Not very fun. Glad to be..err..not a child!

Salad
Name one thing you do each day that you feel improves your appearance.
Work out! I feel tired when I come home from the gym and like I did something to really help myself. Plus I can usually feel the pain the next morning.

Main Course
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how would you rate your self-confidence?
Probably a 6. I wish it was higher than that but my loser factor and my cluttering hurts it. If I had a girlfriend it would probably change, but it's not like I hate myself or anything so it's not really a big deal. I don't try to let people know day-to-day of that, but that number truthfully reflects how I feel in my head.

Dessert
Where did you last find a bargain?
The last night I spent with my room mate in Austin last month we got two styrofoam boxes of fried rice delivered to us for $5! It was a delicious (and really really filling) meal not only because of the taste but also the insanely low price.

The Electric Dream

Today's news is a little lackluster, but the best article is probably about the possibility of an electric car. Gas-powered cars are getting so annoying nowadays with gas prices. When I was small it didn't matter, but now every time I go somewhere I'm estimating how much that trip is costing me. Well it's costing my parents the money, but it's not like they're rich or anything. Apparently, these cars could be really fast with insane torque. So what are we waiting for? More effficient batteries for one thing because that takes up a lot of juice. Even then though, I'm sure that's cheaper than gasoline power. If I get that internship I applied for at ConocoPhillips I'd like to work on hydrogen or electric powered cars rather than gasoline. I'd only be on the software side of things, but every little bit counts I guess. I'm not a hardcore environmentalist or anything, but our dependence on foreign oil in this day and age is shameful.

There's not too much technology news out there today and it's all pretty random. There's an interesting commentary at TechNewsWorld suggesting that Linux supporters have a lot more untapped union power than proprietary firms, but I'm not sure how much I agree because of how spread out they seem to be. In today's era of television the buzz word seems to be on-demand, and Akimbo may have the foundations of a solution to the problem of acquiring old episodes of shows legally. Unfortunately, it's only available for random stuff and is a little pricey but it shows that such a thing could be possible and should be in the near future. You may soon see sites ending in .xxx as the suffix has been approved and could generate some interesting porno site domains. Yahoo has released the demo for a new search service called Yahoo! Mindset that allows for you to search for informational sites rather than commercial ones and is trying to prove an example of computer learning and text classification. It's a neat thing to play around with. Lastly, there's a great article here about how Google can turn up some less than desirable results about ourselves.

Not a terrible amount of movie news either. There are some more stellar reviews of Batman Begins from abroad and they coaxed me into buying an early ticket to the IMAX midnight showing of the flick on the 15th over at Fandango. It turns out that Mission Impossible: 3 may be a no go because of Tom Cruise's recent behavior with Katie Holmes and Scientology. Also there are budget concerns, but all of them seem meager compared to the amount that the film could rake in. There's a lot of buzz today concerning who will helm X3, and it sounds like a major contender will be Zach Snyder (of Dawn of the Dead remake fame). Unfortunately, AICN seems to think it could be overrated director Brett Ratner or equally meh director John Moore. We'll have to wait and see for the truth I suppose. Lastly, there's a new entry in the Superman Returns video blog showing Clark's super strength, but still no footage showcasing this shot:



Now for the Thursday Threesome meme:

Onesome - I - Tell us something about yourself that you haven't posted about before and wouldn't mind stating on the record.
Hmmm. Err, I like girls? Have I mentioned that? I haven't mentioned that Red Dragon is my favorite of the Hannibal Lecter movies (they've been all showing on USA this week).

Twosome - Need - Is there anything you need at the moment? What is it? Or, are you not in need of anything but want something?
Besides a life? I could really use a scholarship! I could also use a new car because my 1990 Maxima just isn't cutting it. The rack and pinion is permanently screwed up.

Threesome - a Laptop - Do you have a laptop? If so, what type is it? Any recommendations for someone looking into getting a laptop?
I don't and unfortunately I don't know a whole lot about them. I do know that you should not bang your fist on them because you may screw up the hard drive. A friend of mine did that once on accident in the heat of a video game.

Homework Contraversy

Before I begin I've gotta ask: why do roaches exist? How is it that after billions of years they've managed to survive? We've started getting the big ones now and they're disgusting. I'm only afraid of them because they're so ugly and fast and I don't want them on my body. I mention this because I just saw one a fot away from me about ten minutes ago. Anyway, it appears that some study has found that too much homework can hurt students in lower class families because their parents may not have a degree and/or there may be a language barrier. They claim to have found a correlation between increased homework and worse test scores on average, but I think their assumptions are too wide to be validated. I went to a high school that dished out the work like crazy and I'm doing very well in college. As much as I hate to admit it, all that toil molded me into a good student and I'll admit that the effects don't hold for everyone but if I was pushed less like some of my cousins were I don't think I'd be very ambitious. Also, I'm from a middle class family and haven't gotten help from my parents since elementary school. I think it's more about schools and teachers than it is about homework.

I hope you're primed for some techie news. Another recent survey has discovered that many Americans have an addiction to e-mail with the average user checking several times a day. What's funny is how the article treats it as if its a serious problem, but I get important stuff in my e-mail sometimes and I think checking it is prudent. Microsoft has decided to drop the 'My' prefix in stuff for its new iteration of Windows because the whole idea of it was to erase the stigma of a computer being forboding back in the day. It's a good idea because 20 folders prefixed with 'My' was getting a little annoying. The MPAA is unlikely to keep pushing for a broadcast flag anytime soon because the bill's author defected to our side. A Congressional research committee was concerned that the flag would hinder normally harmless activities, and that's what the major concern with the flag is. It turns out that Google has a secret lab site where they have people from around the world to check the validity of search results. You can't get to the site but the mysteriousness of it is cool. An EU official has asserted that some big software firms are exploiting open source contributors as subcontractors for their projects. I expected this from IBM and Sun, but not you HP! Tsk tsk. Carnegie Mellon (a top 5 CS school) researchers are developing technology that would allow you to stream audio from nearby cars and is currently being dubbed, "roadcasting." It's an interesting concept but how long will you spend next to that person on the road? A Japanese cell phone carrier is investigating the possibilities of using your cell phone as a credit card and it has many advantages to combat security concerns including convenience. Now that would be a pretty futuristic kind of thing to have. Lastly, Java freaks can bask in Rodi, which is a P2P program totally written in Java using similar concepts to torrents.

There's a lot of movie multimedia up today. A preliminary trailer for the horror movie Cry Wolf is now available and it looks good and creepy. If you're more interested in fantasy though there are some pictures from E3 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe over here and it looks like they had a pretty fancy display. Everyone should be interested in Domino, and at least we have a few new pictures to stare at while we wait for the delayed release. There are some fun clips from Mr. and Mrs. Smith over here and we also have some early reviews that suggest it being a great summer flick to check out. The last bit of multimedia is some artwork from a cg animated film that supposedly features Tony Jaa, which would be pretty sweet because he's awesome at Thai boxing (a lethal art by the way). Oh, and we now know that the reason Matthew Vaughn left X3 was because he didn't want to uproot his family. I can't believe he passed up such an insanely good opportunity just for that because as important as family is this could've made him huge.

A few quick things before I end this. It'd be a cool job for me to do this for a living (blog) since I do it anyway and apparently some companies will hire people to do just that! I just thought it's funny that people are taking blogging so seriously. Gamers may want to check out this article knocking out big myths about patents in the gaming industry. It's an especially good read if you ever want to make video games. I finally found a good article about The Contender finale and it features a picture that accurately depicts the last few rounds of the fight:



Now to get busy with a more verbose than usual Wednesday Mind Hump:

01. It's been said that 'Life is just a bowl of cherries.' Tell us what you think life might be a bowl of and tell us why you think that? Also, can you think of another saying or cliché that references food?
I suppose it couldn't be chocolates since that's too trite as well. How about a bowl of onions? Life has a lot of layers and has stages just like an onion looks different over time (trust me, I know sadly). A really annoying saying is, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Where the Hell are these magical apples that serve as panaceas? I'd like to taste one!

02. Yes, it's true. You're too sexy for this Hump, too sex-ay! Go ahead. Toot your own horn. Which of your personality characteristics or physical traits do you think is hot, hot, hot? On a sizzle scale of 1 to 10 (one being only warm enough to barely wilt lettus and ten being so hot bacon would sizzle just being in you presence) what's your Sizzle Factor?
Oh I'm too sexy for every mind hump! ;) I only have a couple of commendable physical traits. I think I have a great light brown eye color whereas most Indians have a bland brown eye color and also I think I have good skin. I like my color and I've been blessed with very little acne. My best personality traits are my quest to be nice to people in general (life's too short to be pissy all the time) and my sense of humor. Some friends find me funnier than others, but all agree that I know what's funny and I'm not afraid to laugh a lot. My sizzle factor is a 55! Ok we all know that's not true so I guess I'd say a 6. Maybe I'm a 7 *shrugs*. My cluttering hurts the sizzle factor.

03. If you were to dish the dirt with a cartoon character, whom would you dish with and whom do you think you would gossip about? How about if you could dish the dirt with any famous person, dead or alive, which celebrity would you chose and what would you want to gossip about?
I'd probably dish it out with Scooby Doo and find out what romantic minglings are going on in "the gang". That Mystery Machine must be mysterious for a reason! As for human celebrities I'd have to gossip with Jessica Alba about her and me getting our hump on. Mind hump that is of course ;) Seriously though, I guess I'd gossip with Nicole Kidman about Tom Cruise and what he's doing with my Katie! I do think he's a great actor though, but he's going all goofy now. Find someone your own age, Tom!

Too Much Google

It turns out that a lot of the nerd news I have for today is related to Google. And I mean a lot. For the first time ever they decided to try out doing a factory tour, which is basically a tour of their office and a big press conference replete with progress in various fields and future possibilities. You can see the whole thing there including all 100+ slides and it's actually pretty interesting from what I've seen. What's really cool is they actually got everyone tickets to see Episode III that night since it was the opening day of the movie and they paid for all their own employees to go! Now that's a company with personality. One thing they showed off was the incipient Google Translator, which was created with researchers not knowing the languages they were programming for! How? You guessed it: by searching. They've just created algorithms to analyze previous translations of texts in those languages and it's amazing how accurate they can get. There are a couple of things they didn't mention though. One thing is the Summer of Code program where they will give $4500 to students who successfully complete an open source project. If I didn't already have my sights set on a project I'd jump on that bandwagon. The last piece of news for the company is the beta of Google Earth, which is competing with the similar product from Microsoft and is an enormous atlas of the earth that integrates features in Google Maps as well as 3D models in 39 cities. If I had a job I'd probably get it just to play around with it. See for yourself:



Just a few more techie items leftover. Sony BMG already has efforts underway to engineer CD-Rs that cannot be copied once burned. This is to combat copying copies of music CDs and while this is a valid concern I'm skeptical about how reliable such a technology would be and how compatibility would work out. If you have an account on Wikipedia then beware of your password because apparently the way that people are hashed by their passwords in the database someone with a certain password could find others of that password as well and access their accounts. There's a list of victims here and it's sad that Wikimedia could be so irresponsible. If you feel enamored with the Mac Mini but you're a PC fanboy then you're of a strange breed and will be pleased with a Wintel mini prototype called "Pandora". There are concerns that it can't touch Apple's $500 price tag due to Pentium M costs and Windows XP, but I guess we'll see what happens.

Onto the movie news. The big item for today is that director Matthew Vaughn has been confirmed to have left the X-men 3 project. It was a sad loss to the film and was apparently a personal decision on Vaughn's part, but now the pressure is on for Fox to meet their ambitiously planned release date of Memorial Day Weekend 2006. While I'm on superheros I should mention that there are mounting rumors of a Supergirl starring Miss Universe 2004 Jennifer Hawkins, who is very hot. I think I'd watch that movie just to see her. While I'm on hotties, there's word that Michelle Yeoh has been offered a part in Mission Impossible: 3, which is cool because I saw Tomorrow Never Dies a month ago and wondered about her and now I know that she'll also be in Geisha and possibly even Young Hannibal. There are a couple of videos today also. You can see a trailer for Pride and Prejudice over here if you're really a Jane Austen fan, but I'm afraid the dialogue will stick a little too closely to the novel and become as boring as Sense and Sensibility. The last thing is a random clip from Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. I'm surprised that Disney has lent a hand to its production since it seems a little dark for their taste, but I guess it must be good if they took it in.

Before I conclude I just had to plug this article I ran into about a confessional blog. It's called Post Secret and you can snail mail the owner your secret for it to be anonymously put on the blog. It's rather addicting to read and I like that the author of that article points out that it's almost as if submittors to the blog are more proud of their work rather than venting shame. My favorite is: "I had gay sex at church camp 3 times." If you want more humor you can check out this site.

At last there is a Ten on Tuesday I can participate in:

Ten Favorite Things to Snack On
10. Oatmeal cookies (my mom gets the really big, soft ones and I eat them in pieces)
9. Various cereals (mainly Corn Pops and Oreo O's for snacking though)
8. Jalepeno potato chips
7. Starburst
6. Jelly Beans (Jelly Belly is the best)
5. Teddy Grahams (preferably the chocolate flavor)
4. Strawberries
3. Grapes
2. Honey roasted peanuts (choc-ful of protein)
1. Wheatables / Wheat Thins

Definitive Gamers' Wishlist

Before I start I've gotta ask this: am I the only person who feels saddened by compliments on their looks by relatives? It's not that I need people to comment on my looks, in fact I'd prefer they don't because I don't like lies or exaggerations, but rather that I know it's not true. It's not that I think I'm ugly, because I know I'm in the 'meh' range. When your aunt has to tell you that you look good though, something has to be wrong. On that note, I'm just geeky enough about video games to appreciate this list of items gamers worldwide would like to see in the next generation since consoles will likely not cost so much (though that PS3 price couldn't be more unofficial). I agree with the vast majority of those items because you could almost do a comedy routine on some of the ridiculous things you see in video games even today. Like why is it that people get all worked up about screenshots of cg sequences when the game looks and plays like crap? And how am I supposed to know not to walk into a certain part of the land because there's an invisible wall there? I think he takes it a bit far with the nipple thing and his distaste for consoles that do more than just play games. The more stuff it can do the more my purchase is justified. One of the best points he makes is with difficulty. What happened to the olden days of when games actually took time to beat and warranted my hard-earned cash? Some great observations there if you enjoy video games like I do.

For the first time in a little while there isn't too much news for nerds to feast on. A man with a harsh experience with his son with regard to drunk driving has invented a sensor that can be built into your steering wheel to check your BAC. If you're above the legal limit it won't start, and I think it's an awesome idea because drunk driving is a bigger problem than many people think. The Bush administration is trying to further violate our privacy rights by trying to push through the power to strongarm the identities of an ISP's customers from the company. The problem with that power is that it's not going to be used just for terrorism and it's just more than the government really needs at this point. We already have noise-cancelling headphones and microphones, but now you can get an electronic silencer for open spaces such as office cubicles. I think that technology is so neat because I've tried on those headphones and they really work. Lastly, one man is trying to come up with a Chuck E. Cheese for adults that would have computer terminals at tables (Linux-based) that would serve as waiters and entertainments as they would be loaded with video games and trivia games and such. I think it's a great concept given the amount of younger adults who are pretty childish in that respect.

The movie news isn't too shabby today. I apologize for how off my predictions yesterday were because apparently this was a very strong weekend for the box office with Star Wars bringing in over $70 million. If you though that was crazy, it turns out that Madagascar and The Longest Yard both got over $60 million each despite lackluster reviews. In good news, Indiana Jones 4 has met the approval of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg so it's now just awaiting Harrison Ford, who I doubt would be inclined to dislike it. That same article mentions that Chris Tucker did not end up signing a fast track deal for Rush Hour 3 as was previously speculated so things may move a little slower for the comedy flick. Godzilla fans may be saddened to discover that there will only be one more Godzilla film, which was only noteworthy given the number of Godzilla movies that have been made. All I have left now are pictures. There's a really crappy teaer poster online for The Ring 3 in case you wish to face even more disappointment. There are some new shots from the amazing art style of A Scanner Darkly for your viewing pleasure. And last but not least, there are some new pictures from War of the Worlds including this stunning one of Tom Cruise (who is way too in love with my Katie):



It's time for some Monday Madness:

This week I'm asking you to choose a letter of the alphabet. Now list the ten items below that begin with the letter you chose....

I choose 'S'.

1. a family member
Shawn (my brother)
2. a movie
Se7en
3. a game
Silent Hill
4. an automobile
Santa Fe (my mom's new vehicle actually)
5. a fictional character
Silas (in Da Vinci Code)
6. a famous person
Salma Hayek
7. a food
Samosa (click here if you're a noob to Indian food)
8. a household item
Spatula (very handy for making college-style quesadillas)
9. a book
Survivor: A Novel by Church Palahniuk (of Fight Club fame)
10. a song
"Speed of Sound" by Coldplay (new single)

At Last a Beach Visit

After quite a long time since my last visit to the beach I went to Quintana Beach at Freeport with my parents. I think I can best show how good a time I had with the following picture:



That's what we call a "chapal tan" as I was in the sun all day with my sandals on. Freeport is only about 70 miles outside of Houston and it's less crowded and much cleaner than Galveston so all my dad's side of the family (here in America) managed to make the trip out. It was cool to have everyone together because usually my brother can't go, and I got to drive one of the cars (13 of us, 8 in another van). It was nice to get the experience of driving for so long on the highway since I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep in the backseat anyway. What's great about the beach is being able to act like a kid, which is always fun for me since I don't think my childhood was as carefree as I would've liked it to have been. It was funny to be collected shells to decorate our huge sand castle because I probably looked weird but it was all in good fun so the Hell with it. On my last visit to Freeport I got sunburnt (for the first time ever) but thankfully I did not this time and instead am an even healthier brown than before. A little cultural education for you all: in India the darker you are the less respected you typically are and so it's always a joke among us that our parents warn us about getting darker. It's strange how old stereotypes like that stick around though they should mean nothing in today's modern world.

The technology news isn't too bad with a strange flux of good articles from the New York Times. When my room mates last year started playing World of Warcraft, they were planning on selling their accounts when they reached max level but predictably couldn't let go. However, it's much more common to sell rare items for real money. I think it's funny how something created by a bunch of programmers and artists generates so much money (both for the company and for players). Speaking of programmers, there's an interesting article here about people who have been made millionaires by Microsoft investing their money in great ways, and that's kind of something I'd like to do someday (except not working for M$). Advertisers are starting to take a liking to the television revolution on the web by investigating ways to put video on their sites to showcase products. This means that change is on the way. It makes more sense anyway than that broadcast flag. It would appear that Yahoo! has finally one-upped Google with the introduction of Photo Mail (currently in beta), which makes it easy to send lots of pictures in an e-mail from quite a few different source. I'm glad that they're finally using their noodles! Lastly, I wanted to plug this article discussing the browser wars since all the talk of new versions and market share and such leave most people in the dark on how to proceed.

You know that the movie news is slow when I'm mentioning a JoBlo article about Did You Know? movie facts. It makes sense given the long weekend, and at least I learned from that article that the original Amityville Horror house still exists. Box office numbers aren't in yet, but estimates seem to suggest that Revenge of the Sith will remain at the top but with a much weaker gross. It's no suprise how much the drop was given the fan reaction. There's a strangely violent King Kong action figure made for the movie that you can see here, but we're still lacking real footage/images from the movie.

Before I conclude with a meme I wanted to exhibition this hilarious comic that's truer than you think in some cases:



This week I'm going to try the Sunday Brunch:

1) Do you enjoy eating out and why?
I do, but not too often. It's mainly because of the monetary factor. Once I start interning I'll like it more, but in any case I think eating out only a couple times a month makes it a better experience. After all, I also enjoy cooking.

2) Where is your favorite restaurant?
That's a pretty hard choice to make. When it comes to quick, cheap food I'd have to say Pho on the drag in Austin. If price isn't so big a problem though I'd prefer Saltgrass Steakhouse because I love meat, especially steak.

3) What are your standards for tipping?
Unless I'm in a big group or the service was kickass, I keep it at 10%. I think below that is impolite. The most I'll tip is usually 15%. I'll round up or down depending on if he service was actually good or not.

4) Do you have one entree, appetizer or dessert that you specifically go out to get at a restaurant from time to time?
Not really. I like to try different things upon repeated visits to the same restaurant, but sometimes I like to stick to old favorites. It all depends, so in general not really.

5) Describe a horrific experience that you had while dining out.
I haven't really had any. In New York I'll admit that it was quite odd to have my friends urging me to not eat the juicy, sumptuous steak in front of me at Delmonico's, which they were coaxing because it was before quizbowl in an economics competition and they believed the digestion would slow down our brains. Other than that I guess the Prom dinner thing wasn't that great because we had to pay mainly for the environment at a restaurant where the food was only alright and in any case my date was off center for the whole night (not blogging those details here).

Hacker Heros

First of all, I passed my road test! I got 25 points taken off in all, but very few "bad" marks and so I consider it to have been a great test. I drove on my own for the first time today to go to 24 Hour Fitness for my first hearty workout in a while. It's cool to finally have that privelage and I can't wait to bring a car to Austin. It would appear that not all hackers out there are bad. There are groups of vigilantes out there who are frustrated with the unchecked evil of phishing scams and other fraudulent sites, and so they've decided to take matters into their own hands. They deface the sites and try to provide warnings so that those who click-through know that the site is ill-omened. Do they get the praise they deserve though? Law enforcement is slow to act, and yet they disagree with the methodology of these so-called "heroes" of the internet. I think it's great that there are people willing to do this because it's hard to shut down people in other countries and its great practice for these hackers who are no doubt computer scientists or aspiring programmers with a strong interest in security and/or networks.

There much more techie news today. While I'm on security, airport screeners may get a whole lot sexier as they may be able to see through clothing! This is far from being accepted and implemented yet, but it's being fought for and I can both sides of the argument so it's hard for me to decide myself. I finally found an article stating the obvious: all browsers are unsafe. Exploits are inevitable, and all we have to do is be careful where we go on the internet. Oh, and in case you're still curious about the tabs in IE 7 there are some more details up on the IE blog. And while we're on Microsoft, it turns out that Longhorn is not written in .Net, a framework invented by Microsoft, because 2.0 isn't due out for a while and so it will instead only be used for the Avalon file system and Indigo communications system. That's the problem with big companies; too much going on. If you're tired of all this M$ talk then you'll be pleased to know that HP is coming around to support Linux for its new laptop computers, which is great because I know my friend Sid couldn't put Linux on his laptop and he wanted to try it out. Good job HP! With Google's introduction of a Q&A service to read your mind and answer your questions, those geniuses at Stanford have been taking an even closer look at semantical web searching. It's stuff like this that fuels my desire to go there for grad school.

The movie news today is pretty cool. There's an unusually long clip from The Honeymooners at Yahoo! Movies, and unfortunately it's not too impressive. It's nice to see John Leguizamo in another comedy, but this is a straight up family flick. If you missed the 10-minute Batman Begins preview last week then take solace in checking it out over here, and you definitely want to see it. Oh, and apparently the voice pitch change in the batsuit is a result of his bat ears, which is a nice touch. In worse news, a Ring 3 has been confirmed and they've officially beaten a dead horse. On the bright side, reviews are in for Serenity and it sounds like a delight for Firefly fans so I presume the rest of us will enjoy it as well. Silas in Da Vinci Code has finally been cast as Paul Bettany, which is probably a good decision given how he looks. This interview with Mark Steven Johnson has renewed my faith in the direction of Ghost Rider and so now all we can do is hope that all goes well. I thought it was notable that Lucy Liu is doing a thriller called Rise with Michael Chiklis because I think her acting ability is underrated and I'd like to see it really shine. Lastly, there are some character posters for Fantastic Four now available, but there's so predictable that I thought the poster for The Brothers Grimm would be better to showcase:



I'm pleased to finally be able to embark on the Friday's Feast meme:

Appetizer
What job would you definitely not want to have?
Trashman. I thought of that because I saw the tv show Dilbert last night for the first time in a while and the trashman character just reminded me of how much that job would suck. You would smell bad for most of your weekdays!

Soup
Oprah calls and wants you to appear on her show. What would that day's show be about?
Hot, genius Indian kids are taking over the country! That would be an interesting topic, but I'd rather it be about some successful company I'd have started up or some crazy product I'd have engineered at least.

Salad
Name 3 vegetables that you eat on a regular basis.
I love salad, I think black-eyed peas are the bomb, and I can't get enough of corn-on-the-cob. Sometimes I have to eat it from the can, but I season it up nice to hide the out-of-the-can taste.

Main Course
If you were commissioned to rename your hometown, what would you call it?
Pintosville! Actually, this place sucks so maybe I'd call it Crapstown! Or I guess Houston is good enough. That name already evokes enough dread from people as it is so there's no point in changing it.

Dessert
If you had a personal assistant, what kind of tasks would you have them to do?
Trim my nails and shave my face! Those are two of my more tedious habits, and the former is for classical guitar for those of you who don't know me well enough (my left hand is totally nail-less whereas my right hand is all grown out). Laundry is kind of boring, too, so he could do that as well. I enjoy typing though, so I certainly wouldn't want him to do secretarial stuff in that respect.

Have a great weekend everyone! My Sunday post will either be really late or really early but I'll get it up here somehow.