Scrap the Internet?

I'm so sorry to have missed so many posts, everyone. I'll admit right now that I'm not going to be able to keep up with a 6 day a week schedule until my summer starts, but this blog is far from dead. I just have something greater than this blog in my life, so I've just been re-balancing out my life, so obviously this will take a lower priority. I'll make up for it with some pictures. We played Broomball on Thursday night, followed by IHOP, and that was fun:



Friday was ACM Big Event (big bbq thing at Eastwood Park), and I got to mount Jack. It was everything I thought it would be, and more:


Last night, we saw Kung Fu Mahjong at Bethany's, and she made some awesome stir fry:

Ok, everyone happy? See, I have just been busy. Back to the real stuff now: the Interweb. It sounds pretty nutso to just scrap the Internet, but there's actually more to it than that. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the Internet has serious issues because everyone is afraid of spam, hackers, viruses, identity theft, etc. What's the solution? Researchers believe that it's to start fresh with a new protocol, and Vinton Cerf (credited with the invention of TCP/IP) agrees, as well. The fact of the matter is that the Internet was just a DARPA experiment that enjoyed a ridiculous amount of unexpected commercial success when it was really meant to be a trusted network of sorts. Not only does the current architecture stifle performance, but it burdens everyone to invest so much in security that it causes further complications and slowdowns, and we're pushing it past its original intention. To stay with the status quo would be like establishing a country's constitution and saying that it can never be amended. Change will take time, and be difficult, but I think it's important to recognize the need to explore solutions.

Bloomberg has an interesting little blurb about Google: that Google is looking for "crazy ideas." Obviously, they're taking that out of context in the headline. What their director of corporate development says is still important though: it's the crazy ideas that bring the most success. I think we often get so lost in being comfortable that we forget how crazy risks can yield great things for us and for others. It's always fun when business concepts transfer so nicely to our personal lives. A lot of startups do fail, but I think many of them just kind of have middle-of-the-way ideas. If you're not bringing something really fresh that fulfills a need, why should anyone care?

The rumors about Apple have returned: now they're apparently going to turn to a subscription-based model for iTunes. It's hard to swallow that, especially given that the per-song model is working so well for them, but I don't think that Apple's denials should ever be taken especially seriously. I wonder if a two-tiered approach would work to have both per-song and subscription? Probably not, I guess, but my simple mind just figures that that'd please everyone, whether or not it's feasible.

One more thing about Apple: they've been crippling the Apple TV's HD capabilities. I know, sounds crazy, huh? But Engadget hacked it up and managed to get it to play HD content quite well on the weak hardware it's packing, it's just not available right out of the box. Is Apple just being a video snob about supporting other formats? Were there royalty issues? The world may never know.

Here's a one-liner: Google Earth has added hiking trails. I think that's awesome because in this modern day of coffee shops and MMORPGs, people forget that many places have great things to do outdoors (including Austin).

One more one-liner: this is an interesting little read about how European P2P users are getting found out. It's quite a sneaky, almost scary approach. I personally find it a little ridiculous.

I'm going to keep the movie news brief. The box office shocked me again this week when Disturbia took the top spot at $23 million. I guess all those preteen girls in love with Shia Labeouf came out in herds because it made Perfect Stranger open in 4th place! To add insult to injury, Grind House dropped to the bottom with less than $5 million. Ouch. Meanwhile, 300 passed the $200 million mark, and people continue to quote it way too much. No, this is not, in fact, Sparta. Just deal with it.

The ShoWest trailer for Hairspray actually turned me off from seeing the movie anymore. It has a pretty good cast (including Christopher Walken), but I just have no desire whatsoever to see it.

Yahoo Movies also got a clip from Rush Hour 3, but it's not very impressive either, to be honest. Is this supposed to entice us into anticipating the movie? Because if so, they need to fire their marketing staff.

I like the new poster for 28 Weeks Later, though still no idea how this movie will be. It could go either way, in my opinion.

And now, for some Unconscious Mutterings:

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

1. Freeze :: Mr. Freeze


2. Naturally :: Blonde


3. Painting :: That painter from The Simpsons


4. Merits :: Honor


5. Ironic :: Dramatic


6. Survival :: of the Fittest


7. Cow :: Beef


8. Anchor :: Man


9. Sisters :: Brothers


10. 70 :: 80s

300

Hey gang, I'm back! So my Thursday did not end the way I was hoping it would, and today was even stranger. I don't even know how I should be doing right now, but I have some very loving and awesome friends and family, and I appreciate them, and so I think I'll be just fine. My sister-in-law and I cooked up some good Thai Chicken Curry last night, check it out:


I finally did see 300 today in IMAX (for a whopping $12, sheesh) and I really enjoyed it. In case you're totally clueless, the movie tells the tale leading up to the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartan men stood up to the Persian army to try to push the rest of Sparta to fight for freedom. The action was really amazing. Every scene was meticulously planned, the special effects were spectacular, and the battle scenes were as gratuitous as you want. So, by all means, a true action movie. The acting was pretty good, too. British actor Gerard Butler really shined as Leonidas, and I really liked what they did with Xerxes. However, what you have to understand is that everything is going to be cartoonish. So obviously, things aren't going to be realistic. Not only that, but scenes are going to be exaggerated to make it more entertaining. Did the Persians really have superhuman monsters? Probably not. This movie isn't going to be historically accurate, and so it's going to have really random stuff in it to impress the eye. What it was really missing though was more of a plot. There wasn't a sense of why the Persians were at this stage other than pure evil, not much of a backstory on the Persians, and the character development was pretty hollow. All we had to go off of were these overarching values of valor and camaraderie and patriotism. I give this movie a solid B. I loved it, and I'd see it again, and I'd recommend it to people who enjoy war movies, but it did feel like it was missing a certain something.

So this is totally going to offend people, but I don't care because I think it's hilarious. 1up just has an editorial comparing consoles to women, and it's pretty freaking brilliant. I probably agree the most with his little blurb about the Sega Saturn, which I had always felt was underestimated.

Once again, the music industry has gone bat crazy. They've actually pushed to increase royalty rates for Internet radio, and it may kill such beloved services as Pandora. I don't think I have comments left on this topic that I haven't voiced in the past week: they need to smarten up and embrace these new ways to spread music, not restrict them.

I'm surprised that I didn't notice before that Grind House still doesn't have a rating. Anyway, apparently, there's significant concern that it won't get an R rating. Yeah, when you combine nudity with Nazism and sadomasochism all in the same scene, it's not going to go well with the MPAA. Given that it's Quentin Tarantino though, I'm curious as to how it'll all play out.

It looks like the starlet to be featured in Indiana Jones 4 is Cate Blanchett. I personally don't think she's really that great looking, but she is a good actress.

Comic book geeks unite: Watchmen is, in fact, Zach Snyder's next project. I think the success of 300 has given him a good enough reputation for a greenlight this time, and so I hope he does well with it.

One of the Russian sites has a trailer for Stardust, and I have no idea what it's about but it just jumped out at me. Neil Gaiman is well known for visual appeal though, so no telling whether this one will have much substance, but I hope it'll be a fun flick.

Not that we need another Spider-man 3 poster, but there is another international one. Not very different, but still a good poster.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Name two things that made you smile this week.
I don't know about specific things, but I know two Hispanic women who did, and I think they both know who they are because they made me smile multiple times =)

Soup
Fill in the blank: Don't you hate it when ________?
you fall behind schedule

Salad
When you can't go to sleep, what is your personal remedy to help yourself drift into Lullabyland?
Thinking about all the work I have to do. That gets me pretty tired because I'm never short on crap to do.

Main Course
What is something about which you've always wondered but have not yet found a good answer?
Why bad things happen to good people. There probably is no explanation, but I just don't like seeing horrible people prosper.

Dessert
What is your favorite pasta dish?
Not sure, maybe Fettuccine Alfredo. My eyes always seem drawn to that on pasta menus.

I'm going to the mall tomorrow with the sis-in-law to get some more business casual stuff (i.e. clubbing and work clothes), and we're going to be grilling! Perfect food for the soul, I'd say, so I hope you all have a very exciting weekend. Mine will be filled with that, getting to Austin, doing a crazy puzzler for Object Oriented Programming, and a very long meeting on Sunday.

Gabbin' About Unbox

The amount of news today was really weak, and I have to delay my trip to see 300 because the weather here blows. Oh well, the sun will definitely come up tomorrow, of that I am certain! Anyway, let's go back to the topic of Amazon Unbox, a subject I don't think I've touched on since I criticized its initial release. I did not know that Unbox will now let you download shows/movies to your TiVo until now, and SmugBlog has some nice, concise impressions of it. In my mind, this drastically increases the viability of Unbox compared with Netflix and iTunes and the like since TiVo is far more pervasive than a home theater PC (ala the Apple TV). Now it makes sense to rent movies online from Amazon because it sounds like it's pretty easy to watch it on your TV if you have TiVo. I know, that's kind of a catch-22, but I think it's enough to give them a competitive edge. Even cooler is that you can re-download the content. However, why do they not have HD offerings? Also, it sounds like they're still working out kinks in the UI, and they definitely need to figure out how to let you download stuff directly from your living room (though I'm not sure how feasible this would be, it would give them an even bigger edge). I think they're doing much better now than when they first released this thing, but they still have a ways to go. The only thing that they absolutely need now to succeed (the things I listed above are just things to give them an edge) is to massively expand their selection. If you make it convenient, the people will come. And as Wal-mart tells us, if you have a ridiculous amount of stuff, people will also come.

Analysts believe that the multi-touch technology that Apple had showcased for the iPhone will spread to more products within the next few years, dubbing it a "Mega-Platform". For some reason, I just don't buy into this. For one thing, if it's going to happen, it'll happen now. If they wait as long as 3 years, this technology won't be as fresh and they won't be able to capitalize on it very well. After all, would people really care about a touchscreen iMac?

In other Apple news, this guy is ranting about how iTunes can't re-download all of your music in the case that you somehow lose it. Songs that are removed from the store obviously cannot be re-downloaded, and I guess it's debatable as to whether or not this is fair. Apple never promises that your music is safe should your hard drive get fried, but on the other hand, what if your place burns down and you even lose your backups? I don't think it's unfair that they don't provide an easy way to re-download right now, but I think it would be a good idea and would make people much more secure about buying their music online.

Google stated today that they're going to start making server logs that have been around for more than 18-24 months anonymous in an effort to help improve privacy. While I appreciate their sentiment, I just don't think it's enough. 2 years is a long time to keep that kind of information available on demand, and I think it's reasonable to feel uncomfortable about it, but I wonder how much they could really appease privacy concerns before the government starts getting pissed? Or are they not as "not evil" as they claim?



Isn't that a really pretty hotel pool area? It's one of HotelChatter's best geek hotels in the world, and the wait staff will bring you the gear to charge your tech toys when you're chilling out pool side. Another one of the hotels is fashioned like a hobbit hole in the Lord of the Rings, and another has rooms outfitted with tons of Apple gear. It's a fun read, if you have a few minutes.

This is interesting, in a sad way. Iran is actually banning 300 because it paints Persians in a bad light. Guess what, Iran? The Battle of Thermopylae actually freaking happened! This movie depicts, albeit in a cartoonish manner (for entertainment value), an extremely important event in the history of the world, and Iran doesn't want to acknowledge it? Not only that, but it doesn't even directly attack Iranians.

Lo and behold, we have some good trailers today. The first is for a movie called Waitress, of which I'm not entirely sure of the plot, but it does have Andy Griffith and Keri Russell. I know, that's not saying much, but the trailer kind of caught my attention for whatever reason. The trailer for the Highlander: The Anime is also interesting, but only for those of you who like anime. Even though I'm not a big fan of anime, I still kind of appreciate the art style. Oh, and Yahoo Movies has the Shrek the Third one in HD.

The creators of the classic movie The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie) are teaming up for the first time since, well, The Usual Suspects! Details are scarce, but the movie will be a WWII thriller along the lines of The Usual Suspects. No idea what that means, but I am excited to see what these two heads cook up together.

Lastly, JoBlo dug up some pretty good Spider-man 3 shots, but there aren't very many of them. Most notable is just seeing Gwen Stacy in them.

This week's Wednesday Mind Hump is a bit more challenging than usual:

Tell me who you think is a genius . . .

Movie director
Quentin Tarantino, no contest. I just love his taste, for some reason.

Author
Stephen King, just because his books are so amazingly entertaining (which is as good a reason as any).

Musician
Tough, but I'll go with Tom Morello. He's just come up with such great riffs over so many albums with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, and he's managed to adapt to these different styles of music.

Historical figure
Again, very hard. I feel obligated to say Jesus, because he's a pretty freaking amazing historical figure, after all. I don't know why, but that seems like an unfair answer. I'll stick with Jesus, because of the insane amount of influence his presence had on history, but for a less religious second historical figure: I'll go with FDR. I think the way he stuck to his guns was pretty genius, and he didn't single-handedly bring us out of the Great Depression, but he sure did a Hell of a lot for this country.

Oh, I won't be posting tomorrow night. I have plans =D Have a great Thursday though and I should be back on Friday!

Yay and Nay for Religions

Copa was a ton of fun last night! It was slightly less crowded than usual, and two of my friends bailing on me ended up leaving Adam and myself with five girls. However, it got me thinking about religion. And nothing else that interesting has happened in the past couple of days, so I might as well spew my thoughts here and get a discourse going. For those of you who don't know, I am Catholic (By the way, why is it still called "Roman Catholic"? What is it being distinguished from?), and despite my beef with the Church's stance on abortion and homosexuality, I'm pretty content with it. I think it's given me a lot of hope and a lot of explanations as I've grown up, and I think that's what religion does best. It explains what we can't explain, and what we fear, and what we feel. I think that people who were not raised in a particular religion misunderstand me, perhaps lumping me in a category with Christian fundamentalists. Faith, to me, is believing what you believe for no reason other than that you know in your heart that it's right. No evidence, no real reason to believe, you just do. So doesn't it suck that we have all these religions based on faith that are opposed to one another? I guess this bring me to difficult female situation #953: what do you do when you want to get closer to someone of another religion? For me: nothing. And it just frustrates me so much. It makes me want to scream and kick and cry like my two-year-old cousin once removed when he gets upset. It's just not fair.

Why can't we all just accept that we're not going to believe the same thing? Why stick to rigid guidelines? Yes, I'm Catholic, which I realize is a very conservative religion, and I do follow their schedule of "days of obligation" and all that junk, but I do it out of choice. I enjoy going to mass, and it helps me meditate for an hour a week. The structure, to me, is no more than a guide, if you will, to finding some answers on my own. Why can't everyone just believe in that? Why is it that my parents would disown me if I didn't marry a Christian, but if they converted to Catholicism for me it'd be alright? Why are they upset with my brother for not going to Catholic mass anymore? He's more enlightened at where he goes to church now, so what if he doesn't think Mother Mary should be a tenet of a belief system? It upsets me that we get caught up in these semantics without regard for how we should be behaving or the consequences of our actions. In my case, they've led me to be forlorn. Worse yet, people who are hypocrites and merely complete the motions. I love what my religion has done for me, and I God for what he's done for me, but I hate that it's holding me back where I need the most help. I guess this is what they call a test of faith, huh? I think I can pass it...I hope. I hope my frustration will subside, and I really hope that things will be better soon. This isn't to say I'm miserable right now, or ungrateful for what I have, but it doesn't mean I can't be frustrated!

Alright, enough blubbering, on to the tech news. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to print without having to invest in ink or toner? A company called Zink Imaging is looking to make that a reality with heat-based printing. I don't get exactly how it works, but it could translate into printers being built-in to cameras and phones and such! This would spell disaster for the ink industry (which makes a lot from ripping us off), so I wonder what the catch will be? The price?

There seem to be pretty good odds that Steve Jobs will be announcing the return of an Apple line of sub-notebooks at WWDC this year, which is a class of notebook computing that's smaller than your normal laptop but also with slightly weaker specs. Apparently, these models may not even have CD-ROM drives! However, they will boost Flash memory, a first for Apple. I'll let you know when we have more details, though I think that CD-ROM drive is an absolute necessity.

In local news, a Texas judge has ruled against deep linking, which is linking to pages on a copyright-protected site other than the home page without express permission. They're appealing the decision, but this would definitely affect bloggers like me who are simply referring to articles on sites like the New York Times. I think it's a stupid ruling. If you're not directly stealing the content, it shouldn't be illegal.

This is a great list of useful applications for college students. I use about half of them, and with good reason. My favorite is Meebo, because I just love the effort they put into that interface.

Barack Obama is trying to attract younger voters by spreading his message on the Interweb, and I think it's working. The Facebook groups in support of him are getting bigger and bigger, and he's even coming here to UT to speak next Friday! If I didn't have an important class at that time, I'd totally go.

Google's Summer of Code is back! I strongly recommend this for Freshman and Sophomores (or even college students) who can't find a summer internship but want to have some experience for their resumes. Companies are always very happy to see open source software development.

The big news today is that Aaron Eckhart is now in final negotiations to portray Two Face, Mr. Harvey Dent, in The Dark Knight. This is pretty big news because this character is so complex and interesting, and I'm so glad that he's going with an actor who's relatively unknown. Not that Thank You for Smoking wasn't big, but it wasn't a mainstream blockbuster or anything, and so the audience won't have any predisposed notions of the character.

Now for some crazy trailers. The international teaser for Live Free or Die Hard is much more awesome than the one we saw stateside, though it carries the old title with it. I hate the title, but this movie still looks pretty cool. We also have the full theatrical trailer for Grind House, and it's also pretty freaking sweet. I still have high hopes for having fun while watching this movie.

Yahoo Movies also put up a couple of great clips from 300, which only fuels my anticipation more. I may explode when I finally get to see this movie.

AICN has another positive review about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which helps keep my doubts at bay about it. I was always hoping that it would be a fun movie to watch, though I can accept that it'll be a B movie at best.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
What sound, other than the normal ringing, would you like your telephone to make?
I'd like it to play "La Cucaracha", OR the intro to "Oye Mami".

Soup
Describe your usual disposition in meteorological terms (partly cloudy, sunny, stormy, etc.).
Probably partly cloudy. Usually pretty nice/happy, though not bubbly, and occasionally a little weathered and forlorn (such as tonight).

Salad
What specific subject do you feel you know better than any other subjects?
Computer science =P

Main Course
Imagine you were given the ability to remember everything you read for one entire day. Which books/magazines/newspapers would you choose to read?
Probably the textbook for OS and maybe a few programming manuals (Ruby, Python, C++). I don't need to remember everything in a novel, just academic texts.

Dessert
If a popular candy maker contacted you to create their next confection, what would it be like and what would you name it?
Well it would have to be low-fat so that you can eat a lot of them and not feel bad, so I'm thinking something fruity. Maybe a shock tart lollipop? I don't know, there's a reason that I'm a programmer and not a candy designer =P

Good Old Fashioned Apple Mind Game

Exciting news everyone: I have an offer for a summer internship with Deutsche Bank! I have to call in the morning to get details (obviously, I won't be able to share said details here), and it'd be fun to spend a summer in New York City! Anyway, moving right along: remember that open letter from Steve Jobs last week about DRM? I, like many other geeks, took the bait. We were excited about what he was saying without giving it much thought. Well, much thought has been exposed on the issue in the past few days, but I support this perspective the most. All things considered, Apple is selling a lifestyle. Face it fanboys, you pony up the big bucks for Macs not because OS X is the best OS (I don't think there is a best, for the record), but because you're an Apple user for life. It's ok, you can come out of your closet. Many of us are Microsoft users for life, sadly. Anyway, the point is, they're rallying their legions of followers under the easy banner of hating DRM and vilifying the music industry. In fact, people are even suggesting what Jobs can do to fix things. I must say, it's quite brilliant. Now if the industry wants to raise prices on iTunes music again, or stay the course of DRM (which, duh, they're going to do), Apple can wash their hands clean of it and claim to be on our side. How big of them. In reality, they could care less about us, they just want to look good so they can get away with questionable practices (like FairPlay) and maintain their loyal army of consumers in the face of a hot button issue like DRM (i.e., they want our wallets). This isn't to say that Jobs doesn't believe what he said, he may very well personally be opposed to DRM. That's immaterial though; what's at issue is the stage he's set for the future of digital music distribution, and the control he's solidified in his hands. Nice.

Before you head to Cupertino and hug their front door, you may want to consider the fact that they've decided that no one is to virtualize OS X, not even heavyweight VMWare. I really don't like that. Why do they like keeping their kernel so closed off? Do they think it'll make them that much more secure? They can't possibly be that disillusioned. Good news for Apple though: they've added Lionsgate to their library of movie selections on iTunes to bring the count up to more than 400 titles this month. Not too shabby.

YouTube is going to be providing over 4,000 hours of classic television very soon, all totally legal and free. This is a phenomenal deal, mainly because it provides a stepping stone into more modern, popular shows to become available on YouTube. Hey, it beats the return of rabbit ears, which I think is a funny development. I didn't know that technology followed the same retro rules that fashion did.

Circuit City is shutting down 70 stores across the continent due to shrinking flat-panel TV sales apparently (plasma TVs provide awesome profit margins, so don't let one of those retail store sales reps push you into buying one before you do your homework). They've always seemed to have better customer service than Best Buy, but I always perceive their prices as higher.

Couple of quick things. Intel is showing off a processor with 80 cores, which is so freaking stupid. I know it's just research and all, but what the Hell will 80 cores help us with?! We can't even optimize for two! Other quick thing are these fun geek gifts for Valentine's day. That Laser Star Project looks pretty sweet to me:



IGN has a full review of 300 and they gave it a perfect score! Of course, they broke the rules by giving it 5 stars since 4 is the highest you're supposed to give a movie before it comes out on DVD (that's why I do letter grades), but who cares. The idea is the same: add them to the list of critics enthused by the Frank Miller graphic novel adaptation.

I hadn't heard of Shane Acker's 9 before today, but apparently a lot of people are loving this movie as well purely based on its animation. Sound-wise, so far they have Elijah Woods, Martin Landau, John Reily, and Jonathan Plummer (yeah, not sure who he is). Not too shabby, and it's even being produced by Tim Burton! Keep an eye on this film.

Movie posters haven't advanced much in quite a while, but apparently there's now a company that's developed 3-D hologram printing that can produce a ton of different images for a full motion effect as you walk by a poster at your local movie theater. Not much to look at for it right now (their servers got hammered today), but the one I saw earlier looked pretty sweet.

Lastly, the director for the adaptation of another Frank Miller novel, Ronin, is one who is not very respected for such films as Stomp the Yard, but maybe he has raw talent hidden somewhere? No? Oh well, at least we'll have 300 to look forward to!

To spite Valentine's Day, I'm doing the Monday Music Mambo this week instead:

1. Of all the albums that won a Grammy this year, which is your favorite (or what you think would be your favorite if you heard it)?
Definitely Stadium Arcadium! I don't care what Robert says, I think it's freaking awesome (except for that Hump de Bump song; it's dumb)! That Mana album looked interesting though (I have "Rayando el Sol" stuck in my head now!).

2. Of all the songs that won a Grammy, which is your favorite?
I have to say Dani California given the selection, though maybe that Flaming Lips song (I haven't heard it).


3. Of all the artists that won a Grammy, which is your favorite.
Red Hot Chili Peppers =P

We have found a witch. May we burn her?

Oh Monty Python, you slay me. Anyway, I had a lot of fun at Copa last night (despite my big blister)! (This isn't even half the of us who went, though)


Unfortunately, I found out today that my backup plan for the summer has kind of fallen through, which leaves me in a bad situation. Still, I suppose there are plenty of interview opportunities still available. If you're a cool company reading this, please contact me! Anyway, moving right along. Aside from the Holy Grail reference, my title did have a point. A Connecticut substitute teacher's computer was infested with spyware and adware, and so a few of her 7th grade kids gathered around a computer when she was away from it only for her to find out that they were faced with hardcore pornography ads. She was arrested for risking injury to a minor and faces FORTY years in prison, if convicted. That's practically the rest of her life (or at least the part worth living). And why? Because some 13 year-old kids were curious enough to look at a screwed up computer without her permission. First of all, how many 13 year-olds don't already know about this stuff? My friends made me well aware of it, and that was well before society became so inundated with sex and the Internet was such a glowing resource for that kind of stuff. Secondly, how is she responsible? It's hard to keep track of every kid in a classroom, especially in the middle school age group. And how does seeing a little nudity warrant 40 years in prison? Anyway, it's pretty bogus, and it looks like they just want to burn someone to make themselves feel more superior. Just like in Monty Python, they're nimrods bent on screwing someone over, despite what faulty logic it may entail to do so.

You know how everyone thought that iPhone was ridiculously expensive since their price for it was with a phone plan? Well, it turns out that Apple isn't taking any sort of subsidy from AT&T because they don't want to lose pricing control (especially should they release an iPod-only version of the iPhone). So you'd think that they'd give you a break for switching to them, right? Not so, the rumor I divulged yesterday has been confirmed as false. It was a pretty weak rumor to begin with, but it doesn't really help the financial case for the iPhone. Just to reiterate, by the way, the iPhone profit margin is not as high as Gizmodo would have you believe because there are so many costs that they haven't taken into account. If you're away from home a lot and miss your music then you may want to look into Avvenu for streaming music from your iTunes library. I'd use it if I didn't spend most of time away from home busy on campus as it is. I'd use it if I had a job, I think. If you use Firefox, this is a cool add-on to fix your URLs for you automatically when you make a common mistake. I tested it out a bit and it works pretty well. Lastly, if you're a web development fiend, then you'll appreciate this well-compiled list of tutorials for various technologies (minus Ruby, curiously).

Allow me to start off here with the worst trailer I've seen in a good while for a movie called Delta Farce. Not only does this movie look horrible, but I think I'm stupider for having actually watched the trailer. The Rush Hour 3 teaser trailer was slightly better, but doesn't really instill confidence in me regarding the movie being funny. What really blew me away though was the trailer for 1408, a movie based on a Stephen King novel about a haunted room in a hotel. This may be the first Stephen King-based movie to go right in a long while, I just think that they gave away way too much information in the trailer (I think I know how it ends now). Watch the trailer at your own risk. The trailer for Angel-A is probably better because it looks like a real interesting movie from a director lots of people love, but I'm still more interested in 1408. Maybe because the movie is in French? If you're dying for more multimedia, I just discovered some cool 18+ scenes at the Smokin Aces site that's worth watching (I think, at least). It looks like 300 will be the first movie of the year to be released in IMAX theaters across the nation, but I'm not sure if I'll be around an IMAX theater when it's released. I may drive to Houston just to see it in IMAX though because it looks so awesome. Lastly, IGN dug up some Bridge to Terabithia that make it look a little more kiddie than I would've preferred. That doesn't mean it can't be a really good movie though.

Now for the Friday's Feast meme:

Appetizer
If you could take lessons to learn any musical instrument, which would you want to learn?
Probably electric guitar at this point.

Soup
Have you ever mistaken a person for someone else?
At least once every couple of months. I'm usually pretty good about identifying people from their backs, but not always.

Salad
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how well do you keep secrets?
Probably an 8 or 9. I'm pretty loath to reveal a secret, no matter how much I may want to.

Main Course
What's the closest you've ever been to a dangerous animal?
Just a really creepy stray dog in India many years ago, I believe.

Dessert
When was the last time you lost your patience?
I'm not actually sure. Probably with my mom back in Houston though towards the end of the break when she was starting to drive me nuts.

Star Treatment to Bloggers

I must admit, classes are definitely not bad this semester, content-wise. I though the Business courses would be stupid but I think I'll end up learning a lot from them. Anyway, I just had fun reading this so I figured that I might as well talk about it a little more. As you may have noticed on the right sidebar, I read Delicious Days occasionally because food just fascinates me (hence my regular viewing of the Food Network while in Houston), and that article comes from a blog that reviews restaurants. Anyway, people like reading about stuff like food and technology online because I think we just get a kick out of hearing from people who don't get edited by some important person or who isn't some elitist in their field. Hence, we turn to blogs. What's funny is that companies have started to notice this, and really targeted bloggers. Last month, as I mentioned, Microsoft sent Acer laptops to bloggers loaded with Vista. A while ago, I was actually offered a review unit for an IP TV product! Talking to my cousin's husband (another techie), he told me that companies are trying to find a better way to get to the consumer than standard advertising, and what better way than through people they trust: bloggers. It's an interesting thought, because I had never really seen it that way. I received a hat and a pat on the back from Cranium from praising them, but I don't think it necessarily affected my opinion of Pop 5 (though a friend of mine was sad I didn't bring it to her place last week because she really liked it), I still think it's a pretty fun game. That article I plugged was about that blogger's experience at a restaurant that gave her star treatment because she posted an unfavorable review. Funnily enough, it didn't change her opinion of the food, but she praised the owner for being so cool to them. I just think it's really funny for common people to become celebrities and get noticed within their fields, even though they're not really certifiably famous. It's kind of cool, in a way; that the web has become the platform for people to have intelligent discussions and get noticed, not just pre-teen girls talking about their drama on their Xanga.

In the vein of user-generated content, just wanted to briefly mention this list of YouTube mashups, several of which are fairly entertaining. I personally love the "I Love Music Videos" one for its integration with Last.fm, which I still use and enjoy. According to a tipster, Apple will be holding a special event on February 20, presumably to talk more about Leopard, iLife 07, iWork 07, and new Mac Pros. They may talk about more stuff, but I doubt that we'll see anything really shocking. The music industry is finally acknowledging that they have an issue, and maybe DRM is the problem. I agreed with one great quote in the article that basically said that you can't get rid of all piracy, but if you try then you'll get rid of the whole industry. Stop with the DRM so people don't have to do so much damn research to buy an mp3 player and be happy with their music. The easier you make it for everyone, the more money you'll make. Meanwhile, someone has cracked the Blu-ray DRM. They managed to decrypt a Blu-ray media, and I'm happy for it. I hope that it's made very public so that Sony realizes how stupid their DRM is. Sun has decided to partner with Intel and have them provide the chips for some of their servers, and in return Intel will make sure that Solaris runs well on their chips. An interesting deal since Sun was a competitor and is now in financial troubles, let's see if Sun's situation changes anytime soon. Lastly, Windows Genuine Advantage has supposedly determined that 22% of Windows installations are illegal. Why do I feel that the real figure is much higher than that?

The Oscar nominees are up, and you can see the whole list over here. Not a whole lot of surprises, but I feel unqualified to comment much on it since I missed some of they year's best movies. If you didn't catch Prison Break or Heroes last night, first of all, shame on you. However, the 300 sneak peak you missed can be found here. Not a whole lot of new footage, but still fun to watch. It looks like Speed Racer may be a G rated movie, which doesn't bother me since it's based off a fairly light-hearted cartoon, but I'm sure it'll bother some people. It's not like the Wachowskis are experienced at family films. A random Russian site has a few shots from Transformers (including some impressive cleavage, sorry ladies), but the real money shots are for Spider-man 3 over at IGN. I kind of like the new Smokin Aces poster better than all those pics though:



Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

List the last two…

1. Movies you watched:
I guess Pan's Labyrinth and MI:3 (repeat viewing). I should've re-watched Spider-man 1 and 2, just didn't get around to it.
2. TV shows you saw:
Heroes and The Colbert Report
3. Items you purchased:
A textbook for Programming Languages and my water bill for the past couple of months.
4. Beverages you drank:
Water and milk
5. Internet sites you surfed (before coming here):
JoBlo and The Daily Meme

The Crossplayer Genre

So I was watching the 1up Show, something I haven't done in a good long while, and they were talking about this game called "The Crossing" from Arkane that's so interesting that it almost create its own genre. So I explored and found an interview that was just put up today and sure enough, it's a pretty sweet idea. The reason it's called crossplayer is that it brings together singe player and multi player. They call the people playing the single player story mode "Elites", and the people who are online playing multi player the "Skirmishers". Basically, if there are Elites playing with spots available, Skirmishers can join in and take over the bodies of the A.I. units and their mission becomes to stop the Elites from completing their mission. If there aren't any Elites around though, the Skirmishers will just play deathmatch amongst themselves, but when they play with the Elites though, the Skirmishers form a team. This makes the game much harder, I imagine, and should make the experience quite interesting. I think one of the complaints of video games since the consoles with 3-D graphics came out are that the A.I. is just too stupid (before then, the games were so ridiculously hard that everyone kept their mouth shut). A.I. can only advance so fast, and here's a company that solves the problem by bringing you in the game to see if you can do a better job. It sounds pretty cool to me, just thought I'd mention it because it sounds like something that will be accruing a lot of press very soon.

My beloved Gaim has come out with a new beta that claims to fix some more bugs, including issues with crashing (which I myself have had, as well). They claim that it'll be the last beta before final release of 2.0. If you do use Gaim, you may want to check out this plug-in that allows you to encrypt your messages. In today's age of threats to our privacy, I think it's awesome to be able to encrypt your online speech. More than that though, I'm just fascinated by computer security (especially how RSA works). Microsoft has decided to also sell Vista online for download, which is interesting but I don't know who's going to go for that. Why wouldn't you want a physical copy of something that costs so much money? What if your computer crashes? It's possible that they'll allow you to re-download it in that case, but with their recent stint of anti-piracy measures, I somehow doubt it. Lastly, it turns out that both iPhone models cost less than $300 to produce, according to iSuppli's estimates.. The estimates do look reasonable, but do not account for R&D costs. 30 months of development is a long time, and I'm sure requires paying the salary of many expensive employees. Apple is clearly going to want to recoup those losses before reducing the price a bit closer to what each unit costs them to manufacture.

I have a few movie items to share. The 300 video production diary has a new entry, and this one is for Xerxes, the megalomaniac Persian king. He sounds like a pretty cool character, and makes me want to see the movie, once again, even more. Pixar has decided that its next movie (after Ratatouille) is going to be called Wall-E about a young robot looking for love. Doesn't sound quite as promising as Ratatouille, but you never know. Since The Departed received so much praise and attention, there are now talks in motion for a sequel and pre-quel to be made, since the original was based off of one part of a Hong Kong trilogy. Nothing is official yet, but the actors sound interested if Scorcese came back for it. Salvador Dali is my favorite artist, and I think it's awesome that Al Pacino will be portraying him in a movie called Dali & I: The Surreal Story and has the team behind the much critically acclaimed Thank You For Smoking working on it. The director could be better, but I'm not going to let that dampen my hopes. The cast of the movie 21 is being built up quite nicely with Lawrence Fishburne now joining in as well to be the security chief trying to bust the group of MIT students counting cards in Vegas casinos. That's the third great actor to join this cast (after Kevin Spacey and Masi Oka), so I hope the movie turns out to be good. Lastly, if you want a good horror trailer, check out the one for Dead Silence. The restricted version, by the way, has very very little extra in it.

Now for Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Which television shows do you just refuse to miss?
All the ones I watch since I don't watch them live because of my intense schedule and just download them.

Soup
Who did you last speak to on the telephone?
My friend Adam because I'm getting ready to go out tonight to party with him and some of our friends.

Salad
How many pillows do you keep on your bed?
Just my head pillow.

Main Course
Name one addition to your computer (software, hardware, etc.) that you'd love to have.
I don't really know that I need anything else for my computer at this point. I pretty much have everything I need, I'd just prefer a laptop for portability.

Dessert
What is your favorite foreign food?
Probably Indian food. Within the realm of Indian food though, no idea. Maybe tandoori chicken?

Sony Sucks at Shipping PS3s

Sorry for missing my post last night guys, but I went to Copa and had a ton of fun! I think I'm definitely getting better at the salsa gig. Anyway, what's a four letter word for disaster? I'll give you a hint, it starts with an 'S' and ends with a 'y' and the middle is the opposite of 'off'. That's right, it's Sony! Their goal was to have shipped 400,000 units by now and didn't even make half of that! There's no way they'll even hit 1 million (as the had predicted) before the end of the year, while Nintendo sold nearly half a million Wiis at its debut. They're still idealistically sticking to their goal of 6 million units by March (the same goal as Nintendo, except that they can actually reach it), but I'd be impressed to even see 4 million. Even the Xbox 360 is clobbering the PS3. What went wrong? Planning! Whoever was running logistics for the PS3 release needs some sense. I don't know how Sony lets itself get in these precarious situations. I mean remember when they had their own proprietary format to compete with the mp3?! Once upon a time, they had a product called the PSP, which is funny because for every PSP I've seen in my life I've seen at least 20 different DSs around campus. I know I sound biased, but I speak the truth here: Sony is caught in a downward spiral. Can they be saved? Maybe. People buy consoles for the games. The GameCube was nice and small and cheap, but it just didn't have enough games to back it up whereas the PS2 had some real popular exclusives (*cough*GTA). If Sony can secure some high-profile franchises just for the PS3, or create some new ones, they pull their butts out of the fire. Until then, things are looking grim for them.

BitTorrent has acquired uTorrent, arguably the most efficient implementation of the bit torrent protocol. I found this a sort of surprising move, and the commmunity is pretty pissed because they believe that uTorrent will go from a nice lightweight torrent client to the studios' bitch, and that BitTorrent will decide to bloat it up. I think it's too early to complain, and I can only hope everything works out because I love uTorrent as a program in general. Anyway, Microsoft has released Live Search Books to rival Google's Book Search, which is funny considering how ironic Google's service was. It allows you to search full texts of non-copyrighted materials so far, and I don't see how this isn't just a blatant knock-off of a Google idea. Given the whole James Kim incident, one blogger has taken it upon himself to suggest a survival kit to hide away in your car, but I think he has too many items on there to make it reasonable. Granted, those would ideally all be nice to have when you may need them, but still quite a bit of stuff. Anyway, if you're responsible and smart enough you should definitely invest in that stuff. Lastly, because so few developers have a solid handle on how to design an attractive UI (*cough* like half the Google engineers *cough*), I just had to plug this neat article on color theory. Definitely a worthwhile read, and not even that long.

I have a couple of cool trailers for you guys today. One is for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I think looks cool despite how bad the quality is on that trailer. What's much cooler though is the new trailer for 300, which I recommend watching in glorious HD because it's just that cool. I definitely want to see this movie at least as much as I wanted to see Sin City, which is saying a lot! Oh, and if you're really interested, there's a Hannibal Rising teaser trailer out there in another language. It's not much, mind you, but still a flash of really cool looking scenes. We have a poster for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and a couple of pictures, which isn't too exciting, but we have so little news about that movie that I thought it was worth mentioning. Lastly, we have a few new posters for Hot Fuzz. They're clearly supposed to be humorous, but they're really not all that funny. I like the promotional images for like Reno 911 better.

The wedding photographer finally put up the pictures from the wedding, and they're stellar. Technically, they're all copyrighted him, but my brother paid big bucks for them so I'm going to take the liberty of posting one of my favorites (sorry, Michael =P):



He got a freaking awesome one of my brother and I (see my Facebook profile) that I'm definitely going to have blown up and framed, but I also kind of want the one framed that you see as my profile pic here on Blogger. Anyway, to counteract the copyright infringement thing, definitely use Michael for your special event because he's a-mazing and unobtrusive.

And now, for your favorite meme and mine, Friday's Feast:

Appetizer
Which language would you like to learn and why?
Probably Hindi because I feel weird to have Indian parents and not know any Indian language! All my friends did in high school (at least their local language). Spanish also, mainly to understand salsa though ;)

Soup
What's the funniest thing you've heard or read so far this week?
I'm not really sure, to be honest. Maybe a debate between Nirav and Nate about where Nirav put "it."

Salad
Which movie was so bad you couldn't watch the whole thing?
I don't think that's happened to me. I like to see the ending of crappy movies to see just how bad they get.

Main Course
If there were a holiday in your honor that didn't use your actual name, what would the day be called?
Tech Day? Day of Dancing? Hell if I know =P

Dessert
Name one movie which is coming out soon that you would like to see.
I'll go with 300.