What CS Really Is

I hope you all had a nice, refreshing Easter weekend! I enjoyed myself, though I wish I had slept a little more, but I'm going to try and hit the sack right after I finish this post and do a quick NSC thing for tomorrow. In fact, that's why I won't post my pictures from the weekend until tomorrow night, of which I have many (and many that like a lot). Unfortunately, I left my battery charger in Houston so I'll be taking pictures sparingly for the next four weeks unless my room mate heads home one weekend. Moving along though, I found a little article online written by a CS student about what one can expect from CS, and I would consider this a must-read if you don't know what the field of Computer Science is really about (it'll dazzle your CS friends) or if you want to pass on some information to a friend considering majoring in it (or if you are, for that matter). I'll cede that I came to UT with knowledge already of the field from people trying to intimidate me, but I still had a lot to learn even then about what it's about. I like to describe it to people as four years of training your mind how to think like a someone called a computer scientist should. I was actually asked today about how hard it must be when you graduate because all your knowledge is obsolete since things change so fast, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. We actually take a class about the basics of different programming language concepts and we learn about compilers and assemblers and such so that we can pretty much pick up a new language in a weekend. When it's all said and done. As for all the theory we learn, it gets improved, but usually never proven as horribly incorrect. Similarly with architecture: it just gets better and better, and it's always important to know roots of ideas to understand their progression. I've strayed a bit from what I wanted to say though: CS really isn't about programming all that much. One professor even told me that a computer is really the least useful thing in CS (though I disagree). I think what we come out with is much richer than a language because by understanding how computers function and how to think widely, we can do so much better for the world. It can get tough sometimes, but it's not an especially hard major if you enjoy this stuff (like I obviously do) so don't be scared of it. Alright, let me get down from my soapbox and move on with my post.

I do have another issue to get on my soapbox and preach about though: stupid ISPs who shape traffic to stifle bandwidth usage for torrenting by just targeting large chunks of data being exchanged. Of course, the software is getting smarter by encrypting packets, but what I'm really more concerned about is that ISPs are more inclined to cheap-out and penalize their users rather than improve their technology. How long have cable and DSL been around without any major improvements? It's not that I don't feel for their bandwidth getting manhandled, but I have hiccups quite often simple because Time Warner is cheap, and I think ISPs need to stop being such cheap punks. If you've ever been curious about Python but are still in the dark, then you should definitely read this article comparing it to Java (which you're likely to be more familiar with if you even care about programming). It seems biased to Python, but you should note that Java definitely has its uses (embedded systems, teaching OOP to beginners at just a semi-simplistic level). Not sure how many readers I have that work, but if you do (or are interning/co-oping soon) then you've got to read this blog post with sound advice for upping your productivity. If you're interested on whether browsers like Firefox and Camino will ever have their day, you should read this great interview with a real expert. Things don't look good from an analytical standpoint, but I think anything is possible if enough people get annoying with IE. Lastly, I know I've mentioned many freeware lists, but this may be the best one I've seen listing over 300 common problems that can be solved by freeware.

I guess I really shouldn't be surprised that Scary Movie 4 reigned supreme this weekend (with over $40 million, at that), but I guess I'm just disappointed in America for supporting a movie that looked so bad and is part of a series that has progressively gotten worse. Ice Age 2 took in less than half that much at #2 (don't worry, it's already made a ridiculous amount of that green stuff), and The Wild (the other "big" opener) bombed with only $9 million (no surprise there). On the right here, you're looking at a picture of the villain from Casino Royale, Le Chiffre, that popped up in a newspaper in Denmark. He does a pretty good job of looking creepy. There may be a delay of this Tuesday's HD-DVD launch with retailers not getting initial shipments as of Friday, which just makes it look really bad since it had already been delayed and they should've just overshot the date rather than undershoot in that delay. Yahoo! Movies has some neat interview clips with Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams for MI:3 that are worth watching if you're a Tom Cruise fan in the least. Lastly, if you liked The Incredibles but don't own the DVD, you can always settle for the ASCII version (there are more here).

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Ambition::Dreams


2. Meatloaf::Bread


3. Celebrity::Jeopardy


4. Coach::Carter


5. Slacker::Bad college movie


6. Reflection::Eternal (Talib Kweli)


7. Original::Soundtrack


8. Risk::Board games


9. Saved::Mandy Moore


10. June::Bug

Apple Employees in the Dark

I'm back in Houston for Easter, and pretty glad that I'll be able to take a couple of days off from my normal, crazy busy schedule. I have much more time this week to get my homework done, and, more importantly, no tests! I thought I'd talk about today something I've known about, but this Mac geek puts it in better terms. Apple employees typically don't know squat about what's actually going on backstage at Apple. I found this out last fall when I met with an Apple recruiter (as well as some VP) the day before the video-enabled iPod was released. I asked her about it and she had no idea about what the rumors were or what was going to be released, because she didn't know. They came back a couple months later, and their speaker changed to a guy who knew something about what I assume was the MacBook Pro but wouldn't say. However, he was actually working on the project himself, and that's why he was in the know. Don't badger your local Apple store employees, because they won't know jack either. What's funny is that as good a model this, it clearly still doesn't work. The fact that there are rumors that end up coming true means that people are talking. Why would someone intimately involved in a project want to spoil the surprise of all their hard work though? My theory is that they do it on purpose. Think about it: if they're right a few times, then they'll become "trusted sources." Then, they can spread whatever garbage they want, and Apple can get a window into people's views on a product concept for free. They can also spread false information just to throw people off the scent. These are all my personal opinions though, I have no clue if their secrecy model is really that intricate or if some people just happen to have big mouths who are in high places. One thing is for sure though, no one knows about products who doesn't absolutely need to know.

If you own an mp3 player, then you should definitely look into Rockbox, which is an open source piece of firmware for most of the best mp3 players around (including the iPod). Basically, it allows you to play all the big proprietary DRM-regulated formats, so that if you have a Zen you can still use iTunes. Not sure how well it works, but it couldn't hurt to try it out (you can revert back to the original firmware). A Firefox update has been released, and it sounds pretty sure so be sure to update your software (I would hope that you're all on Firefox). Do you hate getting porn sites when you misspell a URL? Microsoft has actually created a tool that would help you not be automatically redirected to that junk, though it's still in beta. It sounds pretty cool to me, except that it only works for IE 6. I smell a Firefox extension being thought up right now. Fox has decided to put reruns of select prime time programming online the morning after it airs. The article doesn't specify whether it will be streaming and ad-supported (like what Disney will do) or ala carte purchase-based, but I'm sure we'll find out more very soon. More on the television front: Sun's open source DReaM DRM format will be put to the test through the magic of IP TV for a Korean company called Alticast. I'm mainly thrilled with the DReaM idea, and am very anxious to know how this little experiment turns out. Lastly, Google's Summer of Code project has already begun accepting proposals, so if you're a bored programming student then this would be a great thing to do over the summer (looks especially good on your resume). (Correction: they're only signing up organizations and mentors right now, but students can start signing up on May 1. Thanks, Greg!)



I'm still quietly anticipating 300, and we now have a few new pieces of concept art to feast our eyes on (including the one above) until, well, the next production video blog entry. If you're still stuck on X3, then IGN has some TV spots you'll probably want to see, and MSN video has some on-set footage. The former looks familiar (it may have appeared online before somewhere else, but they all look similar so it's hard to tell), and the latter requires IE6 (boo). Take heart though in a new clip from Silent Hill over at Moviefone. That sort of environmental shift actually happened in the last two games, so don't think that it's just a gimmick because it's really an inspired idea. As some of you may know, Brad Pitt has been working on a western with a name so long that I'm choosing to not say it here. However, I will say that it's first trailer will be attached to United 93 prints, which I think is kind of a strange mix but I guess they just pick the film to attach it to based on the date they want the trailer released by. Lastly, Electronic Design has an article about how movie theaters may forcefully turn off your cell phone for you through nanomaterials in the walls that would effectively kill your RF signal. The thing is, this isn't why people aren't going to the movies! It can be annoying at times when someone's phone rings, but it's not like it constantly happens, and it's not a dealbreaker. The reason I haven't gone to the movies in a while is because I haven't gotten truly excited (and, hence, motivated) about a new movie in a little while.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
What movie soundtracks do you own?
Not very many, but I have the soundtracks to Lion King, Tarzan, Batman and Robin, both Kill Bills, Team America, and Space Jam. Very eccletic, but I just don't buy many soundtracks.

Soup
How much cash do you usually carry with you?
Usually around $20, because I feel uncomfortable with too much money in my back pocket. However, I tend to keep a little more at home so that I don't have to go to the bank too often.

Salad
Are you more comfortable around men or women? Why?
Around men, because I am one! I guess you could argue that women are more sensitive and less judgemental towards guys so I could feel more comfortable around them, but I don't buy it. Around a guy, I'm not wondering if they like me or not and I'm not trying to hit on him at all. Also, if I have a problem with a guy at least I know I can intimidate him into thinking I'm going to kick his butt, whereas I wouldn't hit a girl so if she was being a bitch to me I would be pretty much powerless.

Main Course
What is the most mischievous thing you remember doing as a child?
The most mischievous thing is too crazy to be shared, but I did break this big, crystal trophy once and tried hiding it from my parents (and failed miserably). It was a heavy star thing, and it was up high so I tried to reach for it and it fell and actually broke off a piece of tile.

Dessert
Who is the funniest member of your family?
In my nuclear family: my brother. In my extended family, one of my dad's brothers is really funny and always has crazy stories to tell so I'm going to go with him.

Anniversary Celebrations Just on Hold?

I promised pictures of my infestation so there they are! The left picture is what my bathroom mirror looked like (most of those flies are still alive), and the picture on the right is what my most successful vinegar trap looks like now (after just two and a half days). So if you have fruit flies, use cider vinegar traps! I think I did pretty well on my Computer Architecture test this morning, which is good because I really needed to. Moving along though, one thing has unified nerds in confusion recently: why didn't Apple do anything at all for its anniversary? ThinkSecret has word that Apple had problems with the screen for the touchscreen iPod, and that Jobs has had issues negotiating with the studios. Obviously he wouldn't come right out and say all this, and I'm sure that he didn't want to have an event without something as cool as this stuff. Their sources claim that a new iPod should be ready by Q4, but they do have to do some revamping of the display for the next generation iPod. Also, as I had previously speculated, they're not willing to roll this out without movies on iTunes. The problem is that the studios want a subscription service, not ala carte downloads (I'm sure for pirated distribution reasons). So does that mean we'll be celebrating 30 years of Apple in December when this is all sorted out? I'm sure that Jobs will have another event before then, but it looks like the new products we would've been celebrating are just on hold.

It's now common knowledge that Apple Corps (the Beatles' label) is suing Apple for use of the Apple logo in iTunes, but what's funny is that they're remastering old Beatles tracks to be distributed on iTunes. Is this not the definition of irony? Google has finally released the beta for their Calendar service, and it looks rather spiffy. You need a Google account to use it (easy to get), and it's very simple and intuitive, and I've heard that it links up with iCal. It could use more features though (like exporting and printing). CNet has a little article about how free Internet TV could threaten the cable television model, and I actually partially agree. I think it'll be a few years yet before people actually use media PCs in their living rooms, and I think this may happen because it's cheaper to get HD that way and could prove easier to record shows and such. I guess we'll just wait and see. Microsoft is going to be limiting the Aero UI in Vista to members of their Genuine Advantage program, which isn't too bad (but kind of useless), except that they have complicated system requirements (that I actually understand only because I just studied memory systems last night for my test) to use Aero, and certain versions don't even have it. This is very stupid and where Mac OS X upstages them: they're making things too complicated and alienating their users and it's going to come back to haunt them. Duke Nukem Forever may actually reach completion in the near future as Take Two pressures 3D Realms to follow up on their investment, but this time they're not going to start marketing it until they're actually done, which I think will go a long way in restoring fans' faith. Lastly, you may think that flash memory can't get any smaller, but apparently it can actually be as small as a quarter. I think that making them too small would make them too fragile, and it probably wouldn't be worth the price jump.

There's very little movie news today. JoBlo managed to dig up some new clips from Hard Candy, and they look just as good as they always did. They also discovered a real trailer for The Omen from Russia, and it's pretty damn crazy. I'm actually looking forward to this horror film now that I've seen all that footage. Lastly, the creators of the Scary Movie franchise are going to work on a superhero movies spoof, but I just can't see them doing all that much with it. They're really not nearly as campy as some of the horror movies out there, and definitely not quite as plentiful.

Now I shall try my hand at the Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: I am-- When you state "I am", what do you state that you are?
A person? An American? An Indian guy? A nerd? Not sure what you mean, but I think I qualify as all of those.

Twosome: the King-- Are you the king (or queen) of something? The remote? The household? Or is there something else you master?
I wouldn't consider myself a master of anything. I'm pretty good at studying, but that's about it. Not that I don't have hobbies. I love guitar, but I'm not quite a master of that. I'm a decent programmer, but far from mastering that (that's more of a lifetime goal). I enjoy dancing, but it's not like I can breakdance. And I don't think you can master working out.

Threesome: of Wishful Thinking-- What have you been wishful for lately?
Keeping my grades up this semester! I guess that I just want all As because I like the idea of having my choice of jobs when I graduate, and of internships next summer. If I maintain my current GPA and do well this summer at TI, I can't see why a company wouldn't want me, and that's my ultimate goal: to be able to work where I really want to work, not just whatever I can get.

ACL Tickets on Sale

I just got an e-mail about an hour ago saying that ACL 3-Day passes are now on sale. If you're interested, stop reading now to go here (in a new tab, of course) and wait in the queue. If the time doesn't change (assuming you have to wait in line) then open it in new tabs (copy and paste the URL) and the time should go down until it lets you in. My time said 15 minutes and it let me in after about 5, so don't let the wait time fool you. The server is pretty slow, too, so dedicate all your bandwidth to it. Of course, I have mine:



There's no lineup yet, but if you wait til May 11 (when it's released) to get your tickets then you may end up paying the highest price. One-day passes are sold later i n the summer for $50 apiece, which isn't near the same value as the 3-day pass. You can read rumors and confirmations of a few artists over here. With over 100 bands, you'd be hardpressed to not see a band you would like, and the wristband does allow re-entry (so you can leave in the middle of the day if you want). As I said last year during ACL (look in my September 05 archives), I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was a great experience, so $90 is a steal for a 3-day pass right now.

I'll put up a regular post later on today, this was sort of impromptu.

An Excuse to Steal TV

I believe that the war on the fruit flies is over! If I didn't have a big test tomorrow morning, I'd post pictures of how many flies just one of my traps took down, but instead I'll aim to do that tomorrow. It was pest control that finished the job for us today, and apparently we're supposed to pour bleach down our drains. So what's my topic all about today? A couple of years ago, downloading television shows was much more of a niche thing and not many people (other than geeks like me) really knew it was around. Now though, people openly talk about it. Why would someone steal what's free to them? Maybe because their cable provider's recording system blows, as is the case with this guy. I simply don't have a DVR or a VCR at my apartment, and even if I did I wouldn't use it since my room mate is in that room a lot and I prefer to keep to the bedroom. Hence, downloading shows. I'm not averse to watching ads, and that blogger had some sound advice for cable companies at the end of his post: offer pay-per-download services and ad-supported streams of shows. It's also a good practice to offer them on-demand through set-top boxes, and I would infer that supporting IPTV would also be a good idea. I feel that this new wave of technology in media is analogous to new web technologies. If your site is still based on pure HTML (and it's not a simple, personal blog like this, of course), then you're living in the past and your site sucks when compared to sites using PHP, Ruby on Rails, and/or Python. If you're a cable company purely offering content on boob tubes and possibly with archaic forms of DVR, then your service sucks and you're going to lose money just like those bad sites will lose viewership. I do feel the tide of revolution starting up though, so I think there's hope yet.

Guess what the best job in America is? That's right, it's software engineer according to CNN Money. I've said it before and I'll say it again to all those haters out there: I'm glad I didn't listen to you and drop out of CS. I agree with their description, though I don't think it's biased against older people because I've heard of people in the industry who still come in every morning excited about what new challenge they have to tackle. There are rumors floating about that Apple may be preparing to release multi-colored iBooks once again in the very near future fitted with Intel chips. I know that the initial iBooks looked a little childish, but think more professional colors, not bright pastels. For those of us not living in the future though, we have Mac Mini as the most recently released Intel-based model, and Design Technica has their own pretty good review of the Dual Core model. That little box should be even more attractive for PC users now that you can dual boot Windows. Yahoo is finally offering satellite imagery on Yahoo Maps Beta similar to Google Local, except that the images are rather consistent as opposed to the patchwork you find on Google Maps. And so the race for the best online maps rages on as we continue to benefit. No word on how Google will counter, but they have started an interesting contest based on the Da Vinci Code (still not clear on whether they're getting paid for it or not because they're just nerdy enough to want to do this on their own). It looks like the PS3 may be far from complete with rumors that Sony is just now bidding on components and still working on getting the hardware to fit in their slim little box. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this was true since they're not even ready to show it to an E3 crowd. Lastly, the reviews for IE7 Beta 2 are in, and they're not good. Nothing else to say about that since it's still in beta, but I hope they fix everything up.

What I think we're looking at here is Lex Luther (Kevin Spacey) in the Fortress of Solitude, and it sends all kinds of goosebumps up my spine to think of what potential Superman Returns has. You can see a couple of other new pictures here, and you can read about how Brandon Routh was cast as Superman over here. Speaking of casting, there's speculation from an anonymous source that Woody Harrelson may be in Tarantino's portion of Grind House, which wouldn't be unreasonable since he's known for making pet projects out of washed up actors. Will Smith is getting ready to be a part of another serious movie, and this one is called Greenbacks about an ex-military man and a counterfeiting scheme, but no details yet on who he'd portray. Lastly, I have some subpar reviews for you. The worst one came from a screening of Hollow Man 2, which I had no idea was even in production and I don't think was in my best interest to know about anyway from the sound of it. The review for Click was a little better though, and I was hoping they'd do more with the plot of having a remote control over life, but apparently they went with a lot of hit-or-miss jokes. The last review was for Miami Vice, but I feel that the reviewer was too nit-picky and that this flick is probably better than he lets on. I don't doubt that it's not a masterpiece though, but I would think it's a B+ or A- movie.

It's time for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. "And the answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind." So says Bob Dylan. What IS the answer?
The answer is that if you're hearing things in the wind then you clearly have bigger fish to fry than whatever your current problem is.

2. Ever seen/been near a tornado? Was it cool or scary? Both? Get out of it ok?
Nope, but we always get tornado watches down here in Texas. I wouldn't know what to do if I was in the middle of one though and would probably, consequently, flip out.

3. Pick a random country. If there's a message you could whisper in the wind to someone in that country, what would you say?
I'd probably whisper to someone in New Zealand that I'm sorry they always get mistaken for Australians, because clearly they're cooler than the Aussies.

4. What's your favorite thing and least favorite thing about wind?
My favorite thing is how it makes a really hot day not so hot, but my least favorite thing is how it can blow right into your eyes and make them water from being dried out. That gets real annoying real quick.

Catering to the Programmer

The fruit fly situation has improved, but the war still rages on. I can't help but feel that they've hidden away some eggs somewhere, but pest control will finally come tomorrow to give their diagnosis. More good news: I got a B+ on my CS 337 test (the average was an F), though I still have to own the last test for an A. I have something much more interesting to talk about today though: the development abstraction layer. Joel Spolsky may have put up his best post to date today about this topic, which isn't as complicated as the fancy name. As a leader in organizations, I've learned that the key is really to know how to delegate and to stay connected to your people. In a company though, things are a lot bigger, and the real world is a lot more complicated, so this doesn't cut it. What happens when you try it? You get a nasty hierarchy (*cough*IBM*cough*) where the "low-level" software developers get pretty bored with coming to work every day. So what's a manager to do? Their job is actually to abstract away everything around the programmer except for his task at hand. Essentially, what happens in the background stays in the background. If the Internet (or Intranet) goes down, that's one more pain in the butt distracting your most valuable resource. This is what makes Microsoft churn out good products (as much as you may hate them, you know that they have some good products because virile marketing alone can't sell something), and what keeps Googlers at Google. With perks like those at these companies, why ever even go home? If you have a family you'll want to see them, of course, but your bachelor will have so much fun that he'll want to stay there and he feels that what he does really drives the company. This is bigger than increasing productivity, this is pumping energy directly into the bloodstream of the company. I can definitely see a number of companies who have had company nights here who seem to subscribe to this philosophy, and I suppose I'll find out if TI does in under two months from now.

Another topic I was willing to talk to about today at length is a Boot Camp for Wintel boxes. There are a couple of popular views I've read and heard on podcasts. One is that Apple needs to start licensing Mac OS X to other manufacturers so that current Windows users will try it out since they're pretty set in their Windows ways and will be hard-pressed to plunk down the cash for a Mac all of a sudden. The other camp claims that rather than Boot Camp helping to sell Macs, its just helping sell more copies of XP since current Mac users can play games and use the applications they've longed for all these years. They also feel that Apple should sell OS X to PC users, but I respectfully disagree. That introduces all kinds of competition and will severely cut into Mac sales because a prettier box isn't enough to warrant a higher price than a clone. It'd only be a matter of time before they lose in benchmarks, but that's just what I think. I listened to TwiT talk to The Woz on April 1, and the Seattle Times has similar information in their print interview with him, so I recommend you check it out if you're interested in some personal computing history. Speaking of TwiT, they talked about this video of Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite on today's podcast, and it's hilarious. If you want to watch some fun Firefox ads and vote on them, then go here. It's a neat little contest they have going there with a few pretty great submissions. Lastly, you may soon see voice search on Google because of a patent they've filed. It could be that they're just reserving this technology so no one else does it, but I figure that it's probably more than that.

A few more pictures have sprung up from X3, and I'm just glad that they're portraying Beast as we've come to know and love him. There are also some new pictures from Nacho Libre, but they're slightly less impressive. And if that wasn't enough, Tartan Films has released the final poster for Lady Vengeance, which is the final chapter in Chan-wook Park's revenge trilogy. I'm looking forward to seeing it, but I need to see the second one first. Yahoo! Movies has another clip from The Notorious Bettie Page for us, and Gretchen Mol never ceases to amaze me in that role. This movie should be pretty good. Latino Review has reviewed a draft of the screenplay for Spy Hunter, and they seem to think that it's a pretty fun B-movie, but that poster just looks so bad that it's distracting. Lastly, I have a couple of Silent Hill items. The first is information on how Roger Avary found some of his inspiration for writing the script, which supplemented what he got out of the video games. The other item is a very dark, grainy clip from the movie that has been bootlegged, and it doesn't show much more other than people running away and what looks to be Pyramid Head. He seems to be committing one his trademark gruesome executions, but it's hard to tell.

Now for some Tuesday Twosome action:

Name...

1. Two types of music you dislike most?
Country and techno. I just feel that a lot of techno is the same 10 second beat on repeat for like ten minutes, and country music is largely just dumb (though I'm partial to Leann Rimes, Patsy Cline, and Shania Twain).


2. Two types of food you dislike most?
Nasty vegetables and Arabic food. The former mainly refers to spinach, and the latter is probably just because I haven't had good Arabic food before.


3. Two types of TV programming you dislike most (reality, sitcoms, dramas, etc.) ?
Reality and day time talk shows. Reality shows have just become ridiculously stupid and pointless (The Real World actually did more harm than good for Austin), and day time talk shows are for middle-aged housewives.

4. Two celebrities you dislike most?
Tom Green and Papa Bear (Bill O'Reily). Both try too hard to get attention and both are morons.

5. Two conversation topics you dislike most (politics, family, employment, etc.) ?
Politics and my health. Politics just gets messy real fast, and it just pisses me off when family members call my skinny because those assholes were calling me a fatass not even five years ago, so they're in no position to talk. It's also annoying when people who don't work out much or at all try to advise me on what's wrong with my work out schedule and how I could be more muscular than I am right now by following their magic plan.

SED: The Next Wave

Today was Props for Profs (students invite professors to a fancy dinner), and I'm still stuffed. Just look at that dessert! I had two slices of cheese cake because it was so good. The fruit fly situation continues, meanwhile, and one of my traps is working quite well, but there's still more than 50 of them left. Moving along, I find it fascinating that it took television sets over thirty years to reach true evolution. I guess you can call the switch from black and white to technicolor pretty big, but the addition of LCD, plasma, and DLP have totally transformed how we see the world around us (fictional and non-fictional). They all have their flaws though, but a new format called SED challenges the balance. I briefly mentioned this at CES time, but now GotFrag has a great article explaining all the other formats and why SED is so cool. Namely, it's power efficient, has a hemispheric viewing angle, and great response time (i.e. great news for picky video gamers). The specifics of how it works are probably too technical to try to understand (I've already tried and failed, but it essentially looks to reach a middle ground between CRT and LCD that results in numerous advantages. People may tout their LCDs as great, but they just jumped on a bandwagon a little too quickly (unless they have DLP, which is actually worthwhile), but in a dark room and at far viewing angles they're pretty much screwed. So do the smart thing and wait until next year for your next major television purchase.

The dude getting sued by Apple for revealing "trade secrets" (which were of products that never came about, if they were even in production) wrote an editorial for CNet about how important this case is for our First Amendment right to free speech, and he's completely correct. If Apple wins, our society will enter a slippery slope where money gives you power over what people can and can't say about you, and this would be very bad. Just keep that in mind when you read about the hearing on April 20. If you're still willing to buy an Intel Mac, then be sure to at least hold off until the summer because prices on these chips are almost assuredly going to go down in price and better chips coming out as well. Having a 4MB cache would be pretty nuts, which is what the new "Merom" processors will offer. Disney will soon be offering shows for free online the day after they air, with commercials that you have to watch though, and they're starting with Desperate Housewives and Lost. I will actually use this service if they allow me to forward through an episode (not the commercials, the show itself for split viewings), and this is what I've wanted all along so I'm excited to see how it turns out. If you want to try to relieve your memory woes with Firefox, here's a neat little fix that moves some of the memory to your hard drive. I've been too busy tonight to try it out, but it makes sense that it would substantially relieve the problem. It looks like the PS3 will not be shown off much at E3 next month, which is a pretty big disappointment since everyone is so anxious to see gameplay. This is really only helping out Microsoft more and more, but I suppose that the PS3 launch could still blow us all away (which it must to not fail miserably). Lastly, it looks like the tech industry really is holding strong with a 40% drop in job cuts from this same quarter last year, which is pretty impressive improvement. So glad I stuck with CS.

A number of pictures have popped up today. The best one is actually from X3 revealing a pretty minor spoiler, but I didn't want to post it here for fear that people would be mad at me. Instead, I'm showing you this poster from Talladega Nights, which still looks like it will be pretty hilarious. There are less thrilling posters for Cars over here, but they look better than some of the earlier ones. We also have a number of new pictures from MI:3, which were obviously provided by the studio and look very good. Again, this movie had better be pretty sweet. Lawrence Bender and Mike Farrell have optioned the rights to the Terry Schiavo story, and I have no idea why. Would people really be willing to watch a movie about that crap? I sure as Hell wouldn't. VH1 premiered a new clip from The Notorious Bettie Page, which I'm guessing will be a sleeper hit because it looks a lot better than my initial impressions of it had told me. Lastly, Kiefer "Badass" Sutherland has signed on for three more seasons of 24, and will become executive producer next season. I wouldn't be surprised if they killed the show after three more seasons, but at least it'll have been a good run.

Now for some Monday Madness:

Do you like to shop?
Oh yeah. I don't like spending too much time on it, but I do look forward to getting new things despite the regret later of having a lighter wallet.

IF YES, answer the following:

1. What is your favorite store? Why?
I'm going to go with Amazon.com just because I can see user reviews and product pictures and such. I do more research than just Amazon.com reviews when making major purchases, but they're usually rather representative of general opinions.

2. Do you only shop when there is something you specifically need or want or do you sometimes go shopping just for "something to do?"
Usually when there's something I need. Like I'll have to go shopping pretty soon for swimming trunks since my current pair sucks and I know that I'll have pool/boat parties to attend in May, and August, and probably a Schlitterbahn trip at some point in the summer.

3. Do you prefer shopping online or in stores?
It really depends. Overall though, I like going to the store because usually you can see things in person (like clothes and such) and it's easier to return things. However, shopping online is usually cheaper, so I sometimes get the best of both worlds and visit a store before buying online (like with my digital camera).

4. Do you have a shopping buddy or are you perfectly content going alone?
I'm content going alone, but I do like going with someone else because it's more fun that way. I've had a pretty good time when shopping with my girl cousins because they have better taste than me and know what looks hot =P

Explaining the CS Decline

It appears that fruit flies have overrun my apartment. On Thursday, there just a few. On Friday, there were enough to warrant calling our management. On Saturday, I had to visit them, and found out that pest control comes on Wednesday (ugh). Today, my bathroom mirror is littered with at least 30-40 of them (plus 10-20 that I murdered), and I'm pretty pissed because they're everywhere. I've set some cider vinegar traps, and boy do I hope they work. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest. IBM has an interview about an initiative to try and bring students back to Computer Science, which has been losing students almost as fast as I've been gaining flies since the dot com bust. Why is that, you may ask? Is it because of outsourcing? I was actually on the edge of cursing out an older gentleman at some "party" my parents dragged me to for saying I wouldn't have a job when I graduated because they were all going abroad. There are jobs left and right! You have to compete for the good ones, yes, but they're plentiful now. I think it's the perception that's killing the field. When I tell people I'm CS, a common reaction is that I must be smart because they can't sit at a computer all day long. However, that's not what the job is like! It's very people-oriented, and often times you have to work on a team. I would almost say it's a disadvantage if you're the aloof kind and unwilling to change. I think that people who should be geared towards CS fall victim to these perceptions, or may think that they're not smart enough. However, programmers aren't born smart, they just learn how to think, which is what I think the point is of college. When it comes down to it, I'm not going to remember five years down the line what all the semantics of Java are, but I will remember how I went about solving some pretty tough problems, and I will remember how I was able to prove things correct. I think that anyone who enjoys math and/or science is a good candidate for CS and is capable of doing it.

As you can imagine, Boot Camp is still setting the computer world ablaze. Reviews are everywhere with claims that it's not perfect, but it gets the job done and its a whole lot prettier than that hack discovered a few weeks ago. Microsoft is shedding tears of joy that they can sell Windows XP to more people, and I'm sure that they encouraged Apple to make their machines compatible with Windows. Robert Cringely weighed in on it a little, but was more focused on why Vista was delayed. His claim is that it's the OEMs needed more time for testing it out, and I think he's absolutely right. Microsoft indirectly said this, and it makes perfect sense, but M$ should've moved up their production cycle to be ready in June/July rather than November if they wanted a release before Christmas. And if you didn't have enough Apple news yet, check out this picture from the construction of their new cube in New York. All I have left for you are lists. If you have any mp3 player other than an iPod, you'll want to read this article for the skinny on all the big players in legal music downloads. If you like taking videos, then DVguru has you covered with a roundup of all the biggest online services for video storage. I've only used Ourmedia so far, but I think I'm going to switch to Videoegg because it sounds like just what I need. Lastly, all the hottest Firefox extensions are listed here, so be sure to check them out.

It wasn't a big surprise that Ice Age: The Meltdown remained at the top again with $34.5 million, but I was pretty sad with how poorly Lucky Number Slevin did because it looks so cool, but got meh reviews. Thank You For Smoking did quite well with $2.4 million, and that's just in 300 theaters. I definitely want to see that one. Starz had a little featurette recently about Silent Hill floating around the Net. I haven't watched the whole thing, but what I saw of it so far looks really awesome and this may be the best video game movie ever (or so I hope, at least). Lastly, AICN nabbed an interview with Sir Ben Kingsley, and it's just cool because he's such a great actor. He was in Lucky Number Slevin, in case you didn't know.

While writing this post, I actually decided to upload some videos of my brother's pup, Fredericka, to Videoegg. Here's my favorite one:

If the video does not display properly
click here to upgrade to Flash 8

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Buck::Dollar


2. Harry::, Dirty


3. Play::Now (Seinfeld reference)


4. Monstrosity::Frankenstein


5. Nightclub::Bar


6. Missing::Child


7. Sprout::Bean


8. Flavor::Starburst


9. Identity::Crisis


10. Saucy::Barbecue Sauce

It's All in the Presentation

If you've never seen a Steve Jobs keynote, you should watch one right now. Back? Good, now let's continue. Any other company's events or keynotes pale in comparison to what Jobs does. So what is it that's so magical about his speeches? BusinessWeek pinpointed it to five key components, and I agree with all of them. In fact, I think they're great tips for any kind of presentation, not just for billionaire tech company moguls. First thing: he tells people what they need to know, not a product's life story. What it all boils down to when you want a new computer is why it's better than some cheap Dell, and he shows it right on that stage. Second is practice, but that's a given. I've heard stories of how merciless he can be with the people creating the demos, and he's even anal about the placement of his water (only Evian) and flower vase on the stage and such. There's nothing worse than being lost when you're center stage. Third, show lots of pretty pictures. Lots of text is almost useless in a presentation since that requires reading. Instead, the slides should visually supplement what you're communicating verbally. Fourth, actually care about what you're talking about. I think part of why I hate my Physics class is because it's clear that our teacher really doesn't care about it. Compare to my difficult-to-understand Diffy Q class, where the teacher bounces around the front of the room. Lastly, keep them in suspense. If you go to a concert and hear all the best songs first, then it's not going to get much better, is it? The farther on the edge of their seats they are, the more attentive they'll be.

Tired of your proprietary Office formats? Well guess what? Microsoft is unveiling brand spanking new ones for Office 2007! Apparently, they'll be backwards compatible with most old formats, and the good news is that you can save in PDF (so all your friends don't have to buy Office 2007 just because you did). Bad news for M$: Lucent is suing them again for using an MPEG-2 decoder in the Xbox 360 that they had patented. I think that they just want money from Microsoft rather than to halt sales of the Xbox 360. There's a trailer online for Half-Life 2: Episode One, and I had to mention it because it's so awesome. It makes me want to beat Half-Life 2 again. I haven't forgotten about the Nintendo fans though: Gamespot has compiled all we know about the Revolution, including a roster of launch titles. I wonder if Donkey Kong Revolution will be like Donkey Kong Country, which I considered one of the best SNES games to be made. Have you ever wanted your music playlist on the go? Then there's yet another Web 2.0 service to help you out called Portable Playlist. I don't have much use for this, but I know that many of you do. I'm really intrigued by Ruby and Ruby on Rails, but I was saddened to read this post about why it's not sustainable. It sounds like a fun language, and I think that more support from web hosting services would really boost it. Lastly, if you want some of your stuff off of Google Cache, read this.

Thomas Hayden Christian spoke with About.com a bit about the production of Spider-man 3, and it looks like Sam Raimi is a better director than we all thought. I figured that a movie like this would have to be fairly choreographed ahead of time, but the lengths he goes to to get his actors in character is really cool. Someone sent AICN a review for Lucky Number Slevin, and it sounds like a great movie, but I share the reviewer's concern for how big of a hit it will be. Having Lucy Liu, Bruce Willis, and Morgan Freeman should really do something to bring audiences to the box office though. IGN got a new clip from Hard Candy, but I suppose you shouldn't watch it if you want to be totally off guard when you see the movie. Steven Spielberg is throwing his support behind a new TV show kind of in the footsteps of Project Greenlight where teams of people will work on short films for a chance to make their own movie. It sounds like a real neat idea, and I'd probably actually watch it (I never watch reality tv usually). It looks like Vin Diesel may still make his Hannibal movie, which he hadn't heard about in a while, but I still question anything with that guy behind it. Lastly, there may actually be a Terminator 4 movie, but no word on whether or not Arnold has even been approached yet. I think that series should be left where it is now though, and another movie may ruin it.

Today was ACM's Big Event deal where we basically chill in the park for the afternoon, and I just had to post this awesome picture of Ron's dog Flash (on the right) getting his groove on with another dog in the park.



I'm working on making my pictures sharper, but not shaking when taking a picture is harder than it may looks. If you want to see more, I put the best in my Zoto (just search for "Big Event"), or you can see the whole gallery.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Name a trait you share with your parents or your children.
I share my father's quick temper. Overall, I'm a very nice guy, but when someone pushes me over the line, I can really go pretty wild. I also share my mom's extreme sensitivity. On the better side: I definitely share their ambition.

Soup
List 3 qualities of a good leader, in your opinion.
That's easy: knowing how to delegate, always planning for the future, and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each of your sheep (I mean sheep as in a shepherd's flock, not as in mindless people).

Salad
Who is your favorite television chef?
Definitely Alton Brown! He's just so down-to-earth and witty. Second place goes to Bobby Flay for Boy Meets Grill, because he comes up with some pretty badass grilling techniques.

Main Course
Share a story about a gift you received from someone you love.
I don't think I have any great stories in this vein. My brother and his fiance got me that iPod Shuffle though, which was really nice of them because the 1 GB isn't a cheap gift (this was before the price drop, mind you) and was just what I needed. I was going to hold off and get a real iPod, but I really just need it for the gym, and if my Shuffle gets scratched I don't care because you can barely see it and I know that it's just for the gym anyway.

Dessert
How do you react under pressure?
I sweat a lot, that's for sure. It really depends. If it's like a deadline to meet, I just focus intensely. If it's a testing environment, I tend to not perform quite as well. I really need to be comfortable to do really well on a test.

How Boot Camp Will Rule the World

To whomever put my CS 352 book in the corner of the room rather than steal it this morning when I stupidly left it behind: I love you. They turned my week totally around, and I will offer special prayers in return for their kindness. Two more great things happened today: I found out that I aced my Diffy Q test, and NSC won Best Academic Organization from UT LB for Swing Out awards, which is probably the greatest honor for a UT club. Very excited about that, and here's a slightly blurred image from the back of the shirt featuring us. Anyway, moving on to what you really care about. People seem to be enjoying Boot Camp, and I haven't heard of any serious issues so far (though it's still in beta, so they would be acceptable). Now it's time to think of the side effects: could this mean the end of Windows as we know it? That's what one blogger thinks, and I agree that it'll hurt Microsoft, but not stop Windows altogether. One thing is for sure though: they're going to get more people to buy Macs now, especially administrators and programmers who need to develop/work with multiple platforms. I don't think that Linux will gain 30% of the market, but I can totally see Mac reaching 30% and a lot of computer manufacturers losing business to Apple. This may even cause them to put pressure on Microsoft to halt Boot Camp, but I think they'd prefer to spread to Mac users. That writers seems to believe that it'll ultimately hurt M$, but I think that it's a toss-up. Piracy could go up and people could leave Windows, but it's not like a lot of Windows users will totally abandon it, and it'll be hard for them to be dethroned. I don't know that Apple would then rule the world of computers, but I thought that it would be a good title because this could cause a huge spike in sales. Then again, it could just be a small bump. It's too hard to tell so early on how the market will react, but I think that as news of this stuff spreads, and if Leopard includes virtualization, that there will be more market share in store for them. Welcome back to the playing table, Steve.

Speaking of Intel-based machines, Ars Technica has a great write-up explaining the Core microarchitecture. That article is for computer nerds only, and I just thought it was good that they made the pipeline a bit cleaner and improved branch prediction. I'm curious to see figures on what kind of quantitative improvements that lead to. Google and Yahoo are teaming up to provide free WiFi to the entire city of San Francisco, and I assume that they'll be paid out of citizens' taxes. I predict a sharp increase in laptop sales in San Francisco, and I'd actually probably get a laptop myself if all of Austin was wireless-ready. Bill Gates wrote an article in Fortune about how he works, and it's a little humbler than you might expect, but I'm sure that some of it is fluff. Reading about his desk makes me wish I could afford to hook up multiple LCDs to my computer. Blockbuster responded to Netflix's lawsuit by basically pleading that this is an attempt to lock the market, which is funny since Blockbuster is the rental giant, not Netflix. This will be an interesting legal battle, indeed. Lastly, if you've ever considered making your own podcast, you should read this. It's not as hard as you might think, and you'll probably end up having a lot of fun while you're at it. The hardest part is really getting the word out about it.

We finally have a bonified trailer for Nacho Libre, and it may not be as funny as I had expected, but it still has some promise. I was actually more impressed by the lesser known trailer release for Peaceful Warrior at Yahoo Movies, which is one of those feel-good movies we've seen before, but it does have Nick Nolte. The release date for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been revealed as July 13, 2007, but I still need to get in line to see the fourth one. This will be the same week as the release of the last Harry Potter book (thought it wouldn't happen, didn't you?), and is a couple of weeks before the Simpsons movie. Lastly, the lovely Jessica Alba revealed that Dr. Doom won't be the main villain in the Fantastic Four sequel, but wouldn't say who was. She claims that they're making the "right changes," but I don't see how she could know without being a true comic fan (which I'm not myself either, in this case).

Now for the Thursday Threesome:

Onesome: Money- What's the biggest waste of money you've ever spent?
I'm sure there's been a bigger waste than this, but I bought a book for my second CS class that was horribly written and we never used in class whatsoever. It's still on my bookshelf, in pristine condition. However, no one will buy it, and it's now an "old" edition.

Twosome: Back- Have you ever said or done something that you wish you could take back?
Yes, and usually to my mom. She just knows how to push my buttons and get me riled up. It's not like I say things like, "I wish you were dead," or anything nearly that extreme, but she's as sensitive as me so the littlest things set her off. I should really just absorb her nagging, but with all my day-to-day pressures, it's hard.

Threesome: Guarantee- What do you wish would come with a guarantee?
I could go for the corny answer and say my heart, but instead I'll go with an apartment. There's never a guarantee that it'll be as good as you think it will be to live there, and both of my choices have been subpar so far despite prior excitement in moving in there.

Real World Bullies

I didn't do too well at all on my tests today, but I feel a little better in retrospect. I failed my Physics test, but at 20 points above the average, and my CS 337 test didn't go so well either, but only one of the many people I talked to didn't think they failed it miserably. Moving along though, do you ever notice how companies out there in the real world can be big bullies? Microsoft isn't a horrible company, but they're doing something pretty bad right now by pressuring UK computer retailers into selling computers loaded with Windows rather than without an OS (i.e. so they could install Linux or something else on it). I used to feel sympathetic to M$ because of all their bad PR, but not after this move where they're creating it themselves. Even worse is the RIAA, and you'll find out how bad of a bully they are when you read this college student's account of how they actually told him that he should drop out of school to raise the money to pay a settlement with them. I doubt it's that unlikely to win in court, but so few people try it because they're scared into paying the settlement. The point is that it makes me sick to my stomach to think that they'd put their own fat wallets above the future of this nation. That's like a kid harmlessly stealing a piece of candy and being imprisoned because of it. I wonder how much of that added revenue they want from raising mp3 prices would go towards taking college students' educations away from right under them? The best way to beat a bully isn't the sissy way of surrendering or just saying "I know that you're supressing deep emotions," but to gang up on them and scare them into submission. If only someone would do that in these situations.

Big news from Apple: they've released the beta of a product called Boot Camp that allows you to dual boot Windows on your Mac, and it will be included in Leopard. It seems like whenever Mac says they won't do something, they always do it (recall the video iPod). I'm guessing that they didn't wait on a full press event for this because of that hack that was released a couple of weeks ago to do the same thing, or it could mean that there will be no anniversary event. However, it may be because they're just putting finishing touches on a Bluetooth iPod, as Gear Live reports. I knew that this was coming for a while, but I'm still holding out for a WiFi iPod. There's an even better rumor floating around: Apple may be working on a framework that would allow Windows users to run Universal binaries easily on their Wintel boxes with native performance, which would put developers at an advantage who just make Universal binaries. There are also rumors of an Intel iBook and MacBook Pro, and all these fairly believable rumors could make for one great anniversary event, so don't lose heart yet! Netflix is suing Blockbuster for patent infringement with regard to online rental services, and I hope that they win since they originated it and Blockbuster just sucks in general.

One more thing in tech today, I'd like to plug a neat IPTV set top box that was recently requested of me to mention by the small company itself. It's called the IMX 1000, and what's awesome about it is that it delivers HD TV on the H.264 platform, which means that it's compressed amazingly well. This, plus their technology, would allow for uninterrupted channel service (unlike the issue I had posed in my prior IPTV post), you could easily save shows to the box, you can get hundreds of free channels, and it'll only set you back a few hundred bucks. I'm bringing it up here because it's so new and may even be the first of its exact kind, and they're rolling it out the telcos and ISPs and hotels and such, so you may see one very soon, and you heard about it here first! You've likely heard about In2TV by now, and it's has all these great shows that are no longer aired. How cool would it be to watch them on demand, in HD, and in your living room? That's the dream that MatrixStream's technology reaches for, among other things of course (including an easier pay-per-view service, especially with movies through Movie99). You can see a video of it in action over here. Much like ten years ago people looked at the Internet and said, "Yeah, this is going to be pretty big," I feel the same way about IP TV, so watch out for this neat little box soon!

Some rather disturbing movie news surfaced today: Grind House has halted production on Rodriguez's portion indefinitely, and will start on Tarantino's portion shortly. The rumor is that Rodriguez went over budget, but I doubt the validity of that because he's so careful with budgets and I feel that they may just be taking a break from his part. Fox has pumped out some good-looking TV spots for X3, which is all they're really good at (publicity, that is) for this movie. It'll actually screen very soon at Cannes though, so be prepared to see some more reviews of it in the near future. Speaking of Fox, we have a few more plot details on The Simpsons movie, and apparently a slip-up by Homer causes the town's water supply to be contaminated rather than there being a giant dome. It sounds a little better, but not very creative. AICN got a trailer description of the Snakes on a Plane official trailer that may be released soon, and it sounds as campy as it's supposed to be. Lastly, I personally think that Anna Paquin could have a decent career ahead of her, and so I was glad to see that she's signed on to a movie with some substance called Blue State about a guy moving to Canada to escape the reign of Bush and falls in love with her. At least it's an original idea for a movie.

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. What's the luckiest thing that's ever happened to you?
I almost got into a bad car accident a couple of weeks ago due to my own stupidity, and I feel like God almost saved my life there. So keeping my life is definitely the luckiest thing to happen to me.

2. Is there something that you just cannot seem to have luck with?
Women. Why do I always fall for the ones I can't have? I'm sure this cycle will stop eventually, but it's pretty crummy luck.

3. Do you do any gambling? If so, what kind?
Not usually, but every once in a while I'm conned into playing poker for money. I wouldn't be opposed to trying out a casino, but it hasn't enticed me all that much.

4. Let's see how lucky you really are. Pick a number between one and twelve (1 and 12). If you guess the lucky number, you get an extra special comment on your blog!
8. I doubt I got it, but oh well =P

Silent Surrender to Malware

Do you ever have mornings that start out well and quickly go down the drain? I had an extra 10 minutes of time this morning, so I thought I'd make it to campus early to study for my two tests tomorrow, but I spilled oatmeal on myself and had to burn that time cleaning it up! I had to spend 10 more minutes re-cleaning when I got home. How amazingly unfortunate is that? Anyway, given that I have those tests I have to finish this post by 11PM to study, so I'd better get a move on. One of the big guys at Microsoft's security department has made a statement that it's becoming nearly impossible now to recover from malware, and he's actually recommending that companies creating software to wipe their machines clean and start them anew rather than try fixing these problems as they come up! I suppose that he's right, and it's probably at least more time effective, but of course they have to come up with processes to get rid of even the viruses that can respawn themselves after a format. Does anyone else see this as a Windows failing? Don't get me wrong, no one will ever make a flawless operating system, but if they had designed it better, shouldn't these holes in the kernel that allow such bad things not happen? Couldn't a loophole like this been solved by better software design? I can't help thinking that this problem even exists because they were clumsy. Granted, most people who get malware are pretty dumb, but I've gotten it a couple of times, though both out of carelessness. However, they're only going to get smarter, much like viruses that become immune to vaccines, or roaches that survive a can of roach spray. Maybe we should be aiming to prevent such future malware?

If you're smart, then you're reading this from Firefox right now. It's a good first step, but there are some extensions you can read all about here that will further optimize your viewing experience, and they're definitely worth a try. You can always disable them later if you don't like them, and they don't take up much disk space at all. It looks like a company called Parallels is looking to beat out the rumors of Leopard including virtualization by offering a product that would alone someone to run Linux and Windows at the same time as Mac OS X. They're facing stiff competition, but if they can optimize the fact that Mac has moved to Intel better than everyone else and at a lower price, then they can do really well. I think it's almost common knowledge now that TiVo is not doing as well as it once was, and I didn't even know that they've been in a lawsuit with EchoStar (Dish TV's owner) over the DVR technology that TiVo had patented. Winning this case would give them a lot of money in damages (possibly enough to resume profits again), and then all the cable and satellite companies would have to go to TiVo, who would then finally profit off of the technology they invented, so let's hope they win! Analysts believe that Google is entering the music market amidst well-known dissatisfaction among labels with iTunes fixed pricing, and this could either be good or bad. It'll be good if Google uses DRM to support all mp3 players (like Sun's DReaM), but it'll be bad if it just raises prices for songs and kills iTunes, which would spell doom for millions of iPod users. Meanwhile, Apple has released iTunes Catalog 2, which allows you to create a site that works just like iTunes based on your iTunes library, and can do a whole bunch of stuff in addition to letting you play your music remotely (like on a computer in the library). Lastly, if you think Bose is hot stuff for audio, you need to read this. I've always been partial to Harmon Kardon and Altec Lansing myself, but I have seen many a person fall victim to the Bose phenomenon.

Maybe that poster is too scary to put up here, but I love it because that character is a recurring one in the series and has always weirded me out. I'm hoping that it'll get you guys more excited about the movie, and you can see more character posters here. We may have a plot for Spider-man 3: it was posted to IMDB, so the source isn't all that credible, but given what we already know and have seen it definitely sounds like it's very plausible. It sounds good to me, but I'm sure the hardcore fans will nitpick more. The teaser trailer for Charlotte's Web is finally online, and I didn't realize how star-studded the cast for it was. I hope that it is a good movie, because I can't imagine anyone not loving that story as a child. Sam Jackson will be in a movie called 1408 based on the book by Stephen King, and I just like seeing his books get made into movies with good actors behind them so I hope that they don't botch this one. Unfortunately, it looks like David Goyer isn't doing wonders for his career by writing The Invisible, which sounds like a pretty average teen movie, and I don't understand why he doesn't stick to just original ideas. I guess everyone has their price. There's another entry up in the 300 video diary, and this one is about the costumes. Once again, this movie looks pretty sweet. The writers for The Simpsons movie have been revealed, and it looks like the most important people are involved, but you think they'd bang out a better plot idea. Lastly, IGN has a couple of pictures from World Trade Center centered on Nicholas Cage, but they're not much.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome meme:

1. How many computers are in your home? Are they for personal or business use?
There are three in my apartment: my desktop and my room mate's two laptops (a Dell and an iBook), and all are for personal/school use.

2. How many cars does your household own? What are the colors of the cars?
I have my deep green Volvo 850 Turbo, my mom has a white Hyundai Santa Fe, my dad has a white Plymouth Grand Voyager, and then there's our old silver Nissan Maxima (over 10 years old), but we're probably going to get rid of that one.

3. When was the last time you did a thorough cleaning of your home? Did you find anything that you thought you lost?
Not since before winter break, I think. I don't recall finding anything new though.

4. Do you generally get along with your neighbors? Is there one neighbor that really gets on your nerves?
I've only met one of them, and he's a pretty cool guy (let me use his phone when I was locked out of my apartment). None of them have done anything to piss me off, really.

5. Are you basically content with your living situation? Why or why not?
Not really, mainly because it's 5 miles from campus and I wish my room mate would be a little tidier. But oh well, nothing is perfect, and I'm not that upset about it. Hopefully, my place next year will be better, and I should have that very soon.

It looks like my schedule for next fall will look like this, but do comment if you have any thoughts on it. Note that the ME class must be at 8AM on some day, and it's a blow off course anyway (it's for Business Foundations). Registration isn't until April 22, but I'm always anxious for planning out stuff like that.

Lots of Mac Stuff Sans an Announcement

There are times when I think all of us would like to shake Steve Jobs really hard and ask him what's going on with his little company up in Cuppertino. Still nothing regarding the anniversary, and my hunch is that he's holding back due to stalls in talks with movie studios, which must be holding him back for whatever big announcements he had planned for his anniversary. Jobs isn't the kind of person to leave a landmark like this untouched. To make things worse, the EFF's appeal on behalf of a blogger against Apple is April 20, and if they don't win then it could really hurt journalists' ability to report leaks and keep their sources secret. I'm really rooting for the EFF here because it's Apple's own fault if there are leaks, and I don't see how it hurts them that bad for their zealous fans to get a sneak peak at what they're doing. It's not all bad news though, as they're releasing a revision of MacBook Pro with fixes for a lot of the issues that have plagued it since its inception, and they'll likely replace yours with the new motherboard if you're having such problems so be sure to call their customer service line. And now, ironically, a juicy rumor: they're putting goodies in Mac OS X Leopard that will optimize Macs further for the multiple Intel cores and, specifically, the Yonah and Conroe architectures. This will mean that current Core Duo Macs could run significantly faster (without real numbers, I'm not going to purport to give a scale). Not sure if Vista is doing any of this stuff, but they're going to get screwed in benchmark comparisons if they don't.

Speaking of Microsoft, they've decided to make Virtual Server completely free! Of course, businesses will pay them for tech support, but this is their move against VMWare in the virtualization market, and they'll even have support for Linux. How did VMWare retaliate? They opened their virtual machine disk format, which will lead to "value-added" products, which basically means better interoperability of virtualization. This just gets better and better for the rest of us, so please keep fighting! Meanwhile, Intel is trying to fight the existence of third-world countries with the announcement of their initiative for a low-cost computer, but, unlike other efforts, their working at a community PC. This would be like a kiosk for a village, but it would be a really good computer and support high speed Internet and such, which sounds like it could be pretty cool. There's also been an advancement in HD TVs: Mitsubishi is knee-deep in developing a new digital light processing technology that, unlike TI's model, would user lasers, which could allow for thinner and potentially cheaper televisions. It still has another year to go, but the prototype looks way too cool, and I just wonder if they have to pay royalties to TI since it's building off of their patented DLP idea. Wired is reporting that Sun may have stumbled upon something rather brilliant in an open source DRM technology they're calling DReaM, which would mean that all multimedia could have DReaM on it and work on all devices supporting it. Hence, iTunes songs would work on more than just iPods. I'm really excited to see what companies invest in this because it really could change the way multimedia works in an awesome way. Lastly, a new site called Questionville has opened up to allow you to pose your own questions to the mass Internet public much in the vein of Digg, and if it gets big then it could be something really cool to take care of your nagging questions and spark some interesting debates.

The biggest movie item today seemed to be an agreement reached between major studios and Movielink and CinemaNow, which would offer movies for download the day they're released on DVD. They'll cost $20-$30, and their reasoning is that you can create a backup DVD and load it on two computers (whoopty doo). AICN has a scoop on the plot of The Simpsons movie, and it reminds me of the one where Mr. Burns tried blocking the sun. They really need to just kill this franchise because they're slowly killing it with bad writing and ideas already. Supposedly, the next Indiana Jones movie will actually be 10-12 years past the time of the events of The Last Crusade, and they may shoot next year in Australia, according to IGN. I don't care where they film it though as long as it's good. The Princess Bride is being re-released very soon in a special Collector's Edition DVD set, which I'm guessing was prompted by good DVD sales since the movie almost seems like a cult hit even after having been released so long ago. I guess its humor is timeless (like Monty Python). The schedule for QT Fest has been released, and I haven't heard of any of the movies, but I'm sure they're all really cool so you should go if you can afford to (I sure as Hell wish I could). Lastly, Empire has put up a list of their top 50 choices for the best indie flicks of all time, and I'm glad to have seen a majority of the top ten, especially since Donnie Darko made it on there. You should keep a copy of the list on hand for your next trip to the video store.

Now for some Monday Madness action:

1. Do you own any box sets of your favorite shows?
Nope, but I do plan on getting 24 and Family Guy boxed sets.

2. Are you penpals with other people?
I used to be back in elementary school, but having e-mail and, you know, constant school work has negated that need to write to someone else regularly. Plus, I have this blog here.

3. Do you still send out real, paper cards in the mail?
For someone really important, yeah. Usually though, I just call people for their birthdays or send e-cards.

4. Have you ever bought or sold anything on Ebay?
We bought an Xbox when it first came out and made $100 off of eBay, and I've bought a few games and DVDs off of it.

5. Did you have to set your clocks an hour ahead this past weekend?
Oh yes, and it killed me to have to do it :(

6. How many of your blog buddies' birthdays do you know?
Hah, none. Sorry guys, but I don't know unless you tell me :) I know Robert's, but he's more of a real life buddy than a blogging buddy so he doesn't count.

7. When is your birthday (need not include year)?
October 18, and I really wish it was earlier because I'm younger than like everyone it seems (at least in my class).

Common Opens the Basement

40 Acres Fest yesterday was pretty fun, though I only stayed at the booth portion of it for a couple of hours to help out my clubs' booths. I came back in the night to see Common though, and both people I was planning on seeing it with bailed on me, so I just went it alone because I was excited to see Common. I came a few minutes before the opening act, Brownout, where a crowd was quickly starting to gather. I managed to get to a comfortable spot maybe thirty or forty feet from the stage, and Brownout was surprisingly good. Their music was very Latin inspired, but all instrumental. I would've taken more shots of them, but I wanted to save my battery life for Common (and I'm glad I did because I ran out during his encore). I didn't want to put up all my pictures from the night here and kill your browser, so I got an account with a site called Zoto. It was a runner up for one of those Web 2.0 awards I mentioned last week, and yet it offers tons more storage than Flickr and allows you to store the originals of pictures. You can see all the pictures from 40 Acres Fest over here, but if you really want to see them up close then just go to my Zoto site and search for "Common" or "40 Acres Fest" because I have them all tagged. Anyway, after that band we only had to wait 20 minutes for Common, and they actually played some real good music on the stereo in the meantime (Kanye West, Jimmy Eats World, Weezer, Mos Def, Jay-z/Linkin Park among others). Oh, and he kept mentioning "the basement," which I took to mean underground Hip Hop, hence the title.

His keyboard player, drummer, and DJ all came on stage before him of course, and after an unrecognizable introit we hear the beginning of "Be" and then he races on stage jumping so much that you'd think he had epilepsy or something. When you see that kind of energy, you know it's going to be a fun show. From that point on, the concert really didn't lose momentum. He followed up with "Go," and then "Faithful." What was cool here was that he freestyled a little bit and then just kind of talked over the beat to the crowd about being faithful and it was funny because he started to say how sometimes girls aren't always so great and aren't faithful themselves, and he said that makes him so mad that he has to "Testify." I explained that story because it shows how much effort he put into that transition, and he did that a few other times in the night, as well. How awesome is that? He did a lot more freestyling as well, a lot of which to the tune of Vince Young and Austin and Longhorns and such. He always kept the crowd responsive to him with calls and organized hand motions and singing and every technique he could possibly have used, I think. He did some old school rap homages, too (including some hip hop), and a few collaborations ("Get 'Em High" and "My Way Home", namely). What I loved about it is that he was trying to entertain you more than just rap. For example, he brought a girl on stage from the audience and literally starting macking on her by wiping their sweat with the same towel and dancing with her to more and more seductive music (including some "Bump 'N Grind" to the audience's amusement). Then there was the crazy solo he had his DJ do, and he also tried his hand at breakdancing. Common obviously did more from Be (including "The Corner", "The Food", and "The Say") than his other albums, but he definitely hit on some of the old favorites (like "Resurrection" and "I Used to Love H.E.R."). Only someone dead inside wouldn't have been energized and inspired by this concert, especially when he did a whole extended version of "It's Your World" where he talked about how tragedy brings us closer to God and how we spread his love by helping those we don't know and that only we can change our worlds. If you haven't gotten the idea by now: I totally ripped off UT by getting this show for free because it was so awesome that I would've paid at least $40 or $50 to see the 90 minute set, plus the encore we got out of him. I can e-mail you the few videos I took if you drop me a line, but they're not a whole lot since I wasn't sure how big they'd be when I took them.

As you can tell, I had a pretty busy Saturday so I decided against doing any sort of April Fool's Joke, but wikipedians kept score of all the different pranks, and Google actually had a couple of good ones. One was a funny dating service, and another was some cleverly placed UFOs. What's not a joke is that CD sales actually dropped almost 10% last year from 2004, but digital music sales still held strong. I think that the rise of DRM awareness will hurt mp3 sales until the music industry can get its act together, but I personally still love CDs because of the high quality and hard, DRM-free (for now, at least) copy. In honor of Apple's 30th anniversary (and current lack of a press event, argh) Engadget put up a look at the good, bad, and ugly from their long line in computing. Thankfully, the ugly part is on the lower end of the spectrum, and it's a fun walk down memory lane for those of you who were old enough to remember those simpler (yeah, right) times. If you're a web designer, this article is a must-read because it goes through a lot of security tests you can put your site through to make sure that it's hack-proof on at least a basic level. One thing never changes in computers (just like in the legal system): there's always a loophole. If you're hunting for some software then stop by here first for a good roundup of some of the best freeware applications out there, several of which I personally use (including Audacity, Paint.NET, and Gaim). Lastly, Robert Cringely put up an article about Paul Allen only to end with something quite interesting: he believes that Microsoft's days are numbered, largely because of an Iowan lawyer who won't settle for any less than unconditional surrender, it would seem. I don't think that she'll be able to stop them for good, but I'm sure that she can tie them up in litigation for a good long while.

Now for some news you really won't believe: Ice Age 2 opened at #1 with an astonishing $70.5 million to clobber the March record and become the biggest opening weekend of the year. It got some alright reviews, but not enough to warrant them grossing almost their entire budget. Inside Man made less than a quarter of that at number two, and V for Vendetta sadly fell to number five. There are a couple of new trailers out there. One is an Internet exclusive for Clerks 2, complete with curse words, and it's the first time I've actually believed that this movie is going to be really funny. The other is a teaser for The Simpsons (exactly as described on Friday), but it's very short and the movie has over a year to go, so don't hold your breath. MiraJeff at AICN gave a great, detailed review of Hard Candy, but beware of spoilers four paragraphs in. I'm now really syked to see this movie because it sounds pretty crazy.

Now, as usual, some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Desire::Passion


2. Sleep::Deprivation


3. Lost::Television


4. 2006::Year


5. Pump::It (Louder)


6. Space::Jam


7. Stuck::Together


8. Reference::Memory (as in computer RAM)


9. Birth::day


10. Hand::ful