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.