The End of an Era

I brainstormed several titles for this post and nothing I come up with seems to be substantial enough. I have to admit that when I heard the news a couple of days ago that Steve Jobs was stepping down from being CEO, I got a little emotional. Part of it was the way he worded it:

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."

Given his medical complications in recent years, there's something really haunting about those words. What really got to me though was the sudden thought that two of my childhood idols were no longer sitting in the seats of power they once held: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are now both down for the count. Even typing those words scares me a bit - aside from the fact that it makes me feel old, it's really the end of an era.

I think my posts make it pretty clear that I'm not a fan of Apple products - I believe that they're high quality, I just don't agree with their some of their key philosophies and I think most Apple products are overpriced. As a person, I don't care much for Steve Jobs either. There are plenty of good stories about him but I'm more familiar with the ones where he manages his employees with praise and fear (moreso than sounds healthy). However, as Elle Driver would say, that shouldn't suggest that I don't respect him. His impact on technology is incontrovertible - he really made making technology beautiful stick. When you look at the history of gadgetry, Apple was the first major player to successfully focus on external design just as much as internal design. Even Mac OS was known for being one of the first pieces of a software with a usable GUI. I even first learned how to type in grade school on Apple Macintosh IIs (and fondly remember playing the Oregon Trail - if I was lucky I got to play on the one computer with a CD-ROM drive). A world without the innovations and risks taken by Apple with Steve Jobs at its helm would be a scary place (much like the one depicted in their 1984 ad). A lot of moves that Jobs has made over the years have been really ballsy, and while I know a lot of people make that possible past just the CEO, I would not underestimate the importance of a CEO with strong vision.

With someone like Steve Jobs, you take the good with the bad. His biggest flaw, in my opinion, is his hubris. You don't have to watch Pirates of the Silicon Valley to observe this (fair warning: that movie is very much a caricature of all its characters). His 2005 Stanford commencement address is pretty famous and definitely an incredible speech, and yet it still reflects that he can really be a jerk sometimes. He lets loose a bit at a few points in his speech and leaves out pivotal details in his speech that paint him out to be a hero in situations that weren't so black and white. He's green lit ads that have held no punches in obviously attacking competitors, a practice that I remember not being so common once upon a time. He runs press events that extol the virtues of perfectly mundane evolutions to existing products. However, it's for all these things that people love Steve Jobs. All these things have made him a fascinating CEO and a generational icon.

The era I'm referring to as ending is not that of Apple - the Board is leaving the company in good hands with Tim Cook, now former COO, at the helm. Plus, Steve Jobs has set things in motion for at least a year or two, so we won't see Cook's direct impact for a while yet. The era I'm referring to also involves Bill Gates. I find it tremendously ironic that Gates is often marred for the antitrust issues with Microsoft and forgotten for his philanthropic efforts whereas Jobs is lauded for his sometimes questionable tactics with Apple and forgotten for his lack of philanthropy. At the end of the day, both men have done some incredible things and basically built personal computing. Gates had just as much vision as Jobs, but he handled it totally differently. He's not the pretty face of a company, he's the understated nerd that turns wheels in the background. Maybe the things he's led at Microsoft aren't as sexy as what Apple has done, but definitely equally important. I mean come on, the man invented bold text! Let's face it, the world would be a very strange place without Office and Windows. Apple would have you believe that Windows is a complete knock off of what they've produced over the years, but the truth is that Windows has made significant innovations, as well. If you need a more recent, obvious example: how about the Kinect?

I feel like with Gates and Jobs out of the picture, the model of technology that's worked for decades really is dead. Shrink wrap software has been gradually losing ground to digital distribution and web applications. The most talked about tech companies these days are now Google and Facebook. The world is a very different place. People don't care about the next Windows or the next OS X - they care about the next smartphone they can get. The era that Gates and Jobs eschewed is over, and I feel like we're now fully underway in a whole new phase in the history of technology. Needless to say, I'm excited to be at a company that's a big part of that timeline, as well, but we can never forget our roots. For all the above reasons and more, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates, I salute you. We'll do our best to take good care of what you started.

Jobs Takes a Sabbatical

Steve Jobs Out Until Summer

It's kind of hard to believe this headline, and it's really the biggest thing that happened last week. As much as I don't like playing into the cult of Apple, the implications are too enormous for me to not take a bit to talk about it.

The day before Macworld, Steve Jobs publicly stated that he had lost some weight (a fact that reporters were pointing to as a possible reason for why he wasn't giving the keynote) because of some therapy for a hormone imbalance and was clear that he didn't want to say any more on the matter. Early last week, he dropped the bomb that he was going to have to take 6 months off because his health situation is worse than they had previously thought. Other than cancer (a relapse?), I can't think of what would cause him to have to take 6 months off. While I don't respect him as much as I do Bill Gates because his personality bothers me, there's no doubt that he has already made history as a pioneer in technology and I definitely hope that he does recover (for his own health, I mean). He will remain CEO, but COO Tim Cook will take over day-to-day operations.

The Woz (Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple) has stated that what's going to be released over at least the next 6 months will have been under Jobs's supervision as Apple's pipeline is typically 1-2 years out (the size of the production pipeline for a technology company is not nearly as standard as it is in other industries, despite what the Woz says, but I would believe that Apple's is that long). You have to take what he says with a grain of salt because he's totally downplaying the presence that Jobs has in the company. In addition to being the company's visionary he's definitely one to micro-manage, although the extent of this in recent years isn't clear. Not too long ago though, he literally picked the manufacturers of their shirts and the magazines that carried their advertisements.

Some analysts have gone so far as to say that Jobs won't return, but I find this unlikely. I'm not saying that it's not a possibility, but he won't step down unless he absolutely has to. Obviously, his health is first so he won't endanger the company by being an unreliable CEO due to medical treatments and such, but if he gets better at all by June you can bet he will want to come back full-time. He's a passionate guy who I don't think is ready to retire yet. Some are saying that he could come back better than ever. In any case, I think that if he doesn't come back that Apple won't be the same company. It'll still be a great company, but it's future won't be signed, sealed, and delivered. If Jobs is truly a great manager, he's already groomed his successors to run the company competently, and I think he's learned a lot about that since he was overthrown way back when. The only thing you can't learn is the vision he's always had for the company, and I feel like it's been the secret sauce in the company. There are others who think that he's laid all his golden eggs already, but I don't know about that. I think that Apple will do well long after he leaves, but I would worry about their expanding into new territory or getting much bigger, in general. You have to give credit to the great minds they have working there though - their talent means that Apple won't be doomed without Jobs.

I have one last story to bring up on this topic: Dan Lyons (also known as "Fake Steve Jobs" for the blog he started) told off Jim Goldman live on CNBC for withholding that he knew a week before it was announced that Jobs was not in good health and yet he told his viewers that everything was just fine and went so far as to criticize sites like Gizmodo for reporting otherwise. I think Lyons was being kind of a jerk on the show, but it was right to call out Goldman: I don't think that's right. If you can't report on a story then you shouldn't lie and say that the exact opposite is true to cover your ass. I would call that unethical journalism.

Slightly More on Windows 7

If you haven't downloaded the Windows 7 beta yet and have a computer to spare for it, then you have a week yet to download it. Their servers cracked under the pressure of downloaders initially, so they've opened it up to an unlimited number of downloads for a limited time.

Ars Technica has been playing around with the beta and I like their rundown of the features because it's concise and informative. Some of the features are no surprises, like the large icons on the taskbar and the jump lists on these programs so that you can quickly access common features. They sound pretty impressed with how these things are implemented, but a new thing that I think is cool is that they've finally taken a stab at revamping the notification area next to the clock so that it's not a mass of irritating icons. Also cool, but something we knew about already, is how well it lets you focus on using two windows at a time. Anyway, you can read the article for more details, but it sounds like the biggest problem is that IE8 is unstable, which isn't that much of a problem if you just don't use IE (you shouldn't be, anyway). The fact that they even improved annoyances with User Account Control (UAC) tells me that they really did look at what users hate, which is something that I (and any Amazonian, actually) value highly: being customer-centric. Oh, by the way, it performs well, too. Some say even well enough to run on your old hardware you thought was junk in this Vista era.

I'm going to sneak in one last thing in this section: leaked screenshots from the next version of Office (I can't figure out why they're calling it Office 14 though - that math doesn't add up for me).



They're not terribly revolutionary, but I do like the improved feedback UI. I wonder if it'll run on Vista and/or XP? It'll likely be released alongside Windows 7, which means probably not before Q4 2009, at the earliest.

Belkin-gate

When will companies who make inferior products learn that being unethical doesn't pay? A blogger discovered that a Belkin Business Development Representative had been taking advantage of Mechanical Turk (an Amazon Web Service where you can pay trivial amounts of money to have people solve simple problems that are just too difficult for computers to handle but easy for people) to generate falsely positive feedback for their products, like their second-rate routers (which you shouldn't buy regardless of this scandal - they suck, Linksys routers are almost always better). The president of Belkin responded by condemning these acts and claiming that this representative was not actually acting on behalf of the company. They took down the postings (HITs) and fake reviews and he was even nice enough to say that the sites in question (Amazon and Buy.com, among them) were not responsible so they shouldn't be held responsible for them. I'm kind of surprised that there was no talk of reprimand for the cheating jerk that did all this or an investigation as to whether his superiors did, in fact, tell him to do this.

I ordinarily wouldn't talk about a story like this, but there are a few reasons why I wanted to. The main one is that I find it amazing that a blogger discovered this. Not an investigative journalist, but just some dude. And it spread fast enough to warrant people to actually take action and scar Belkin's image. That just speaks to the fact that we really are seeing a revolution in the media in that things are shifting more and more online. There are people with day jobs that are better journalists that some working at major newspapers, and I haven't see the newspapers take any aggressive actions to compete much better in this regard. Also funny, I think, is how ingrained the Amazon brand is in people's minds that they're outraged that someone would tamper with Amazon's customer reviews. They're really trusting Amazon to be responsible and the people who write these reviews and it demonstrates that retail has changed drastically. The bar has been raising by not only Amazon but several different retailers and it has really enriched the customer experience online and offline to the extent that people really care about what their peers have to say about a product as opposed to just some guy in a store. Anyway, I'm glad that this story has a mostly happy ending.

Google Cuts Back

I think that before the economy really went south a few months ago (marked by banks defaulting), the technology industry decided that they were going to weather this recession with just some minor bumps and bruises. I'd probably have even said to someone that we're not in trouble until Google starts laying off people. Guess what Google has started doing? They've cut about 100 people from HR. They've also cut contractors and temporary workers before this, but this is their first round of layoffs for full-time employees. Of course, I don't want to exaggerate the situation: this was probably just an indication that they're being responsible and not hiring as much as they have been in the past several years. This probably is not a sign of more layoffs for them, but it does show that they're being smart.

In the same day, they also decided to shut down several services including the Firefox extension Google Notebook for web clippings, Jaiku for social networking, and video uploads to Google Video, which I don't think anyone cares about anyway. Like I said before a while ago: the best way to get through tough economic times is to innovate. Part of innovating is taking a step back and focusing. For a very long time now, Google has been releasing more and more random products resulting in a dizzying array of hits and misses, but they did manage to stay ahead of the curve in a few instances. Initially, I was shocked that they felt that these products were really affecting their bottom line, but now I realize that this is simply a re-organization. They're re-doubling their efforts in the products they believe they'll be most successful in, and this is very smart. Neither of these things is about the money, it's about using their talent effectively.

I'm going to sneak in one more thing real quick into this section: Yahoo is still not really improving. They decided to hire 60-year-old Carol Bartz as their new CEO (to replace Jerry Yang) and investors were not happy dropping the stock to $11 a share.

Facebook Sacrifices Burger King Ad Revenues

This story just boggles my mind so much that I have to talk about it a bit. Burger King started an ad campaign on Facebook the week before last that I didn't talk about last week because I didn't think it was all that important, but it was very creative. If you deleted 10 of your friends you'd get a coupon for a free Whopper and they'd do the honor of telling your friends that you sacrificed these people for a burger. So the strangest thing happened: people thought this was hilarious and it seemed to almost endear people to the Whopper brand.

Facebook decided that advertising your sacrifices violated their privacy policy and they couldn't allow it. Is that not the picture of irony? The company that has exposed more and more information about their users to other users and to advertisers since its climb to fame first began over 4 years ago has decided that a creative advertising campaign has gone too far in publicizing information that's clearly a part of the tradeoff for a free burger. I didn't see a public outcry over this, especially since it was voluntary and there was no secret that people would know about these friend removals. I just can't believe how stupid they are. I'm sorry, but that's what they are. They've now sent the message that despite all the cool things you can do with their platform that they're the gatekeeper for any ideas that come close to pushing any of their policies with regard to advertising. Ordinarily, I would respect this resolve but I felt like this was the wrong situation to demonstrate it in since it wasn't a flagrant offense. Now they've endangered their business model: congratulations, Mr. Zuckerberg.

More on the Palm Pre

I didn't really have a whole lot of details on the Palm Pre last time, which was definitely the talk of CES and of my heart (I really want a phone I can love), but Engadget has been kind enough to condense most of the knowledge that's publicly available on the device now. Unlike the G1: the keyboard's keys are not flat (the keyboard is the only thing Palm ever consistently gets right in its phones) and there is a standard headphone jack. The charger for it is inductive, so no need to plug it in (there was quite a bit of this inductive charging shown off at CES, and it's just a platform for you to place a device on that charges it efficiently), which I think is a great feature for a phone (I knock mine off the nightstand quite often when it's plugged in because of on call issues). Unfortunately, there's no expandable storage, but you do get a removable battery, WiFi, and EV/DO Rev. A or 3G (depending on your carrier)!

They didn't talk a lot about the software, but they did mention that the contact syncing would work seamlessly across several sources (e.g. Gmail, Facebook, and Outlook) and there would be several touch gestures involved in navigating around. Oh, and applications for the phone will be developed in CSS, XML, and Javascript on top of system calls to Web OS specific features. I wish we had a price and a release date other than the first 6 months of 2009, but hopefully we'll get more details in the coming weeks.

Final Tidbits

It has taken me two nights already to put together this post because I've been distracted with reading new news and watching the inauguration coverage (very exciting stuff), but it was so hard to reduce the stories for this post into the bare minimum. I've been trying to keep my story count low, but some weeks it just seems impossible. Anyway, here's a quick rundown of the other stories I tagged.

While iTunes is now DRM-free you should note that you still pay a price in your privacy. Aside from being .aac and not .mp3, your e-mail address is encoded with every song. I assure you that Amazon MP3 doesn't do this.

The NSA has released their list of the top 25 most dangerous programming mistakes in 2008, which includes improper input validation (a concept I hammer on all the time), race conditions (multi-threading is hard), downloading code without integrity checks, hard-coded passwords, and many more. It's pretty much a must-read for any software engineers out there.

Obama's president-elect site (which I think is still going to be used going forward) has a list of issues that you can vote on based on the ones you care the most about, and net neutrality is one of them. Please be sure to vote this up, and if you don't know why then you must be new to my blog :) You can start by watching this short documentary presenting both sides of the issue. I feel that it's still one of the most important issues facing the future of this country and has farther implications for the whole world.

Brussels (aka Bruxelles) will be banning the sale of plasma TVs in the country due to how terrible they are about power consumption. This makes me glad that I bought an LCD - my power bill really is extremely low.

Apple has started allowing 3rd party web browsers into the iPhone app store! Will we see Firefox on the iPhone soon?

YouTube has started muting videos that violate copyright only in their background audio, which is kind of a strange approach.

I got my TiVo HD last week and I wish I could tell you guys all about how awesome it is, but that wouldn't quite be right until I get TV on it. Broadstripe blows and won't install the Cable CARD for it until February 18, so until then I can only use TiVoCast and other applications on there, which are very cool. The features in the manual and the few I can use right now on these videos are pretty ridiculously awesome. Anyway, the point is that they've released a beta version of their search that is optimized for HD TVs, auto-completes like the Firefox awesome bar, and simply offers smarter results. I may try it out myself...once Broadstripe gets its act together.

Ok, time for bed (and possibly more playing around with my wonderful new TiVo). Enjoy all the TV premieres (Lost, Burn Notice, United States of Tara, Family Guy, etc.)!

Tsk Tsk, OU

No, this time it's not about the Sooners. It's the other OU. That's right, Ohio University: you're on notice. They decided to ban all P2P activity on their network. This may sound reasonable, but note that it also encompasses legal P2P, as in for buying stuff from BitTorrent. It's a freaking university, since when did it become the RIAA's stooge? What happened to the rights and freedoms of your students? The solution to helping stop piracy is not to hit it with a gigantic mallet, despite popular belief nowadays. I don't know what pisses me off, the fact that a place of education and supposed open-mindedness is doing this, or that the RIAA so readily exploits college students, who are already dirt poor and obviously can't usually afford the appropriate legal advice. I much prefer the idea of ads in P2P clients like Limewire that would gain you legal copies of the music you were trying to pirate. Now there's a positive solution, and I think we're screwed if we don't explore more of those. If more universities follow this policy, it could spell doom for further research into the legit uses of such technologies and for students to make use of it, and that would truly be the travesty. Still, I don't think that'll happen, because P2P is too big already to be squashed like that.

YouTube is looking to start making itself more worthwhile to Google: they're going to try ads after certain videos this summer. I imagine that they'll start this out with content professionally produced by companies (television networks, movie studios, etc) and then propagate to more premium contributors if that works. Should be interesting to see how the community reacts.

Once again, Steve Jobs is insisting that they will not turn to the subscription-based model despite rumors and pressure from the industry. I actually agree with him that people would prefer to own their music, but he often does stuff like this to throw us off the scent (like for the iPhone). If you look at their profit margins, they'd likely be able to afford a subscription-based model, but the problem is that I presume it would mean doing away with the current pay-to-own model, which would suck. Unless they could get them to work side-by-side, I'd prefer them to not allow subscriptions, either.

Do you hate calling tech support? Well, then you may sympathize with this phone call recorded by a firm researching people's opinions on tech support. This call was to HP, and I humorously (or sadly) enough had almost an exact scenario a couple of weeks ago when my Internet was acting up. I literally dealt with them for 30 minutes, largely because I was being redirected in loops to people who couldn't solve my problem and kept asking me for the same information. Do companies not realize that people are getting pissed off about this? People remember bad tech support, and tend to talk about it with friends. Outsourcing really doesn't work for this stuff either.

People are starting to see a recent Google facelift adding news hits to searches, as well. You can see shots of this here.



Doesn't that look cool? I think it should be the future of keys. It's dubbed Keyport and would hold several keys in that one rectangular box there. Plus, it may include RFID capabilities and alarm remote functionality, as well as a flashlight. How nify would all that be? I hate dealing with my keychain, especially since two of my keys look the damn same!

Jack Valenti, creator of the MPAA, has passed away at the ripe age of 85. Yeah, he was definitely pretty old, and a lot of people definitely don't like the MPAA, but he definitely did a huge thing to help the film industry in creating the MPAA. It may not be perfect, but I don't think it was a flawed idea. Anyway, I'm sure his name will live on forever for his political fame and status in entertainment.

Quentin Tarantino spoke to a British magazine about the financial failure of Grindhouse but that he's still proud of it. Apprently, he'll tack on 30 minutes to his movie, Death Proof, for its individual release in the UK, and that version will also be shown at Cannes. I feel ashamed that I've heard all these great things and still haven't seen it! I just don't want go alone for it. Anyone want to come with, this weekend?

Lastly, I just think it's funny that Lucy Liu has subjected herself to the lead role in a vampire movie, one named Rise: Blood Hunter no less. Honestly, what was she thinking?

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

What are your 3 favorite types of music? Why?
Rock/Alternative, Hip Hop, and Salsa. I just love the energy in Hip Hop, Salsa is ridiculously fun to dance to, and Rock/Alternative is great when you're just chilling out.

Free Apple TV and iPhone Updates

Before I get started here, I wanted to make one more comment on yesterday's main topic (the Jobs vs. Gates thing). I finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley today and I realized that I neglected to point out the irony in how people perceive these two guys. Bill Gates is seen as evil and Steve Jobs as a hero, when in reality it's Gates who's the awesome philanthropist and Jobs who's often just a jerk (the illegitimate child, the anecdote of not hiring the virgin job applicant, etc). Just goes to show, being judgmental is often the wrong way to go. Anyway, the most interesting topic for today was honestly just that Apple is planning on releasing free software updates for the Apple TV and for the iPhone after its release. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time they've done something like this. These aren't just firmware updates or bug patches or something, they're actual feature add-ons. I'm curious as to why they decided to do this. Is it because of Internet chatter that both products were lacking? Is it just a new trend within the company? Or did they always know that they wouldn't have enough time to squeeze out the software they wanted? Anyway, I don't really have anything bad to say about it, I think it's a great idea. I'd rather have to get an update for a product then get a rushed, crappy version.

Another thing from Cuppertino: Apple is working on a deal with Gracenote (a byproduct of a huge "illegal" lyrical database from back in the day) to distribute lyrics with iTunes music. Yahoo Music actually recently brokered a similar deal, but I didn't comment on it because I figure that no one cares about Yahoo Music (sorry, Yahoo, the truth hurts). Could this mean that iPods would start showing lyrics, as well? Would iTunes retroactively fetch lyrics for you? This shall be interesting.

Samsung is projecting that Solid State Drives (SSD) won't overtake conventional hard disk drives anytime soon in pricing. Even its latest price drop makes it 5 times as expensive, but I think people will still be willing to pay a premium when they start to realize that iPods break so easily partially because they're backed by a dinky hard disk drive, which is subject to shock damage quite readily as opposed to the durability of Flash memory.

Google has offered code improvements to the popular open source database MySQL completely free of charge, and now the company is considering additions, which is impressive since they've been closed off about it in recent years. Still, when Google is giving you free code, I think you should probably take it.

I want to talk about a couple of fun products here. The first is a portable grill, which is largely useless but still cool. I guess if you live in an apartment and can't grill on your patio then this may actually make sense. Regardless, it looks damn cool. Also, at the risk of looking like a boozehound, I just think that this booze belt is too cool. So now you can take Jager, Tequila, and shot glasses with you to all your Saturday night party excursions and be the object of all the ladies' desires (for alcohol, that is; not for you).



Lastly, Nissan is working on a car that would cost under $3000, which I think is an awesome idea. What a great thing for low-income families and college students who really need a car (for cities like Houston and San Antonio and such) but can't afford even a decent used car. I think this race to build cheaper cars is a great idea, and will help take back some of the used car market for them.

Grindhouse appears to be on hold for the UK while the Weinsteins figure out how to best sell it to British audiences. The movie bombing stateside was a huge shock, and I'm sure that now they're just scrambling to make back at least their budget. I still have no idea what went wrong, unless it was just the length of the movie and its inside-joke campiness value.

We have strong rumors that Eric Roberts, of "Heroes" fame, was cast as the mob boss villain this time around in The Dark Knight. Not much else to say about that, but he really is a good actor who is just not appreciated much.

AICN got another 28 Weeks Later review, and it sounds like it's a worthwhile watch. It's no 28 Days Later, but sounds better than the average horror flick.

Lastly, we have a final one-sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I think is a bit early. The movie doesn't come out until mid-June, do we need the final poster right now? Anyway, it looks very much in the style of the previous movie posters, so it's pretty good, but nothing especially amazing (unlike the trailer, which was badass as I had remarked last night).

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

Today's topic isn't very useable, so we'll just do some word association:

Blue
Green
Gritty
Grits (oatmeal)
Star
Power
Girl
Friend
My
Girl
Let's
Party
Hey
Ya

World's Most Powerful Computer Mogul

I got my address for my place this summer and looked into the place a little, and it looks awesome (it's in Downtown Seattle!). Amazon really takes care of its interns; we even get maid service! Anyway, sorry to have missed so many posts. Things have finally calmed down a bit for me. I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of videos I checked out on Vodpod and really liked. The first is an episode of the BBC show "World's Most Powerful," where a really annoying host compares the most powerful men/women in various fields. The information in the video is worth enduring the host for though, because it's a great synopsis of the rise of Apple and of Microsoft. An even more thorough look is Pirates of Silicon Valley, which is a mix between a documentary and a re-enactment of various events from the early years of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The acting isn't especially good, but the accuracy of the information is hauntingly accurate, despite being exaggerated at times. The main point is that anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a totally different place without these men is a lunatic. Someone else may have come along and done what they did, but it wouldn't have been the same. These two men did amazing things, and they're definitely one of my idols. You can say what you want about the cult of Apple or the evils of Microsoft, but there's no doubt that these men embody the heart of the beginnings of modern-day computing, despite their many weakpoints. Yes, Steve Jobs really is quite temperamental, but Bill Gates isn't quite as weasly as they portray him (though he isn't very charismatic, either). It's really fascinating how different they are, and how totally polar their succeses were. Steve Jobs enjoyed huge success as this hero figure, especially given that he popularized the personal computer, while Bill Gates is really just known as this incredibly talented businessman more than a visionary. What you get out of these videos is this drive within them (I know, the second one really exaggerates this) that has become more common nowadays (at least among people I've known). What's important to understand is that they became passionate about something where there was literally nothing there to be excited about and created something out of it. It's easy to believe in Jesus if you shake his hand after you see him crucified, and it's easy to get excited about computers once you see what they can do. Anyway, the videos are fun to watch if you're bored or need a break from whatever you may be working on. By the way, they concluded the most powerful mogul to be Bill Gates, but I don't know if I'd be able to decide because Steve Jobs has a lot of power over telling people what they want whereas Bill Gates just has ridiculous market share.

What's the difference between all these majors related to computers? I love this rundown of the six major ones, and it's fairly accurate. I do think it almost makes it sound like you can get software engineering without computer science. On the contrary, I think that the former just grows out of the latter. The reason that the top recruits in software engineering come from the top 10 CS schools is because these companies want people who know their stuff really well and love to think, not people who can just code. I'd feel really weird to get paid to program without having taken a course like Automata Theory, even though I wouldn't use that knowledge on a day-to-day basis, necessarily.

Google has rolled out a very interesting new service called Web History that logs all your web surfing habits so that you never forget what you did online that day way back when. Obviously, they're not going to give this information away, but I still see a major privacy issue. If their system is compromised, or your information is subpoenaed (no idea if that would be possible, but with all this Patriot Act crap I wouldn't be surprised), would it be possible? I think that the Search History thing is intrusive enough. How many people really want this kind of history to be logged?

A couple of one-liners: a new site is letting you buy your friends drinks over the phone. So if you're going to have to miss your friend's big 21st bash, just send him a gift card in the amount of a free drink over the phone and let the good times roll. I think it's a pretty fun idea. The other one is this site that lets you fill out PDF forms online. Very cool and useful; I've been wanting something like this for a very long time.

I know it's not technical, but I just have to remark at how freaky and ridiculous this AIDS poster is. We already have flyers around campus that literally say "FACE AIDS", which I think is funny because I definitely don't want AIDS on my face, but this is bad in a more serious way. It's kind of graphic in the sex positions it shows, and I think the turn of events is rather drastic. Maybe I'm just crazy, I just don't like this poster. I think there are better ways to communicate the importance of safe sex, like the fact that you can't test for certain STDs, which is really scary.



I just feel like talking about trailers, so that's what I'm going to do. AICN is raving about the movie Once, and I like the trailer. It definitely sounds like a heartfelt romance, which is a nice change of pace from so many contrived romance movies. I'm definitely a softie, but I hate movies that try to force you into feeling something for the main characters as so many romance movies tend to do.

You'll probably have more fun watching the trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum, but I don't know that it'll necessarily be a good movie. Still, I did like the first two a lot as action flicks, so if they really are stopping the series here, which would make sense, then maybe they really did put effort into making it worthwhile rather than just making it a cash cow.

I don't think there are words in this language to explain the awesomeness that is the trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. These Harry Potter trailers never cease to amaze me, and I love how it ends with the line from the first one-sheet. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan and I can't wait to see this movie! I love how this series gets darker and darker, I really do.

Now for a Tuesday Twosome:

1. Mail-in rebates: A pain to deal with or worth the wait to get money back?
Worth the wait =P You can't argue with an Indian person about saving money: they're always going try to do it.
2. Warranties: Take a chance without them or a must have when buying high-priced items?
I usually just take a chance. Probably not smart, but I don't buy expensive stuff very often anyway, and I usually make well-educated choices.
3. Product knowledge: Research before you buy or rely on salesperson?
As I hinted at in #2, I always do extensive research. I don't spend money unless something is worth it to me.
4. Word of mouth: Base purchases on what your friends say or disregard because you know what you are doing?
I wouldn't say I base it off what they say, but I definitely take my friends' opinions highly because I respect most of my close friends highly.
5. New Versions: Must buy the latest version right away or wait for a while?
I usually tend to wait a while, but free upgrades I do immediately (like for Firefox and Gaim and such).

Just Say "No"...to Pretext

I'd like to get to bed in the next 30 minutes so that maybe my mind can wrap itself around the 15-Puzzle tomorrow. Clearly, however IDA* is supposed to work here is lost on me (drop me a line if you have tips). I don't know if anyone will get my topic, but I meant it to plan on the old campaigns to get kids to say no to drugs. No? No takers? Hey, it's been a long Tuesday! Anyway, the MPAA and RIAA are fighting to amend a bill in California that strengthens federal regulations again pretexting, or lying to obtain information about someone, from phone records to all kinds of personal information, including stuff vital to your identity and your financial records. I know we're not in California, but this is still an important topic. What you have to wonder now is how many piracy cases have been won by these guys through information obtained by dishonesty. Even if it wasn't illegal at the time, I'd still call that pretty despicable. It's not like you're lying to catch a killer or a child molester or anything like that, but rather you're lying to appease your own greed. They should be forced to go through lawful channels to honestly get the information they need, otherwise they kind of get an unfair advantage. Not only that, but if their amendment is tacked on there it would give any copyright holder complete access to all your information since they could say they're Jesus Christ or something and that'd be ok, even if it's something like your Social Security number. Doesn't this scare anyone else? Maybe if they narrow their amendment a bit, it would be something we can reasonably debate because they could argue that there's certain information that they may have a right to get to much like an undercover cop would (not that I agree with that logic, but just playing devil's advocate), but they should not get a free pass to our identities. Again, it's California, not national, but that doesn't mean that this shouldn't be a concern because it just means that we're already vulnerable in the other 49 states. Kind of creepy, no?

Apple has now sold 100 million iPods in 5 and a half years, which is right up there with the PS2 and Walkman. It's a pretty big feat, and it makes you wonder when the iPod will lose steam. This streak can't possibly last forever, so what will be the nail in the coffin? I guess it'll stop being a hot item when their new generations become expensive and/or burdensome in features. It just seems like every iteration of any product has more junk you can do with it, and people eventually get tired of that. Or maybe people will get tired of having to replace the whole damn thing when the battery or hard drive fails. Maybe they should just quit while they're ahead and design an insulin pump instead. I must say, that's kind of an interesting concept. What if Apple stopped being selfish (no, product [Red] doesn't count as being altruistic, sorry) and tried putting its powers to good to help with a product that benefits the good of humanity, like a better insulin pump? Who knows, maybe Steve Jobs will eventually grow the heart Bill Gates has.

We have an actual insider rumor regarding the next Zune, or rather several small bits of information. There's to be a new Zune and a Flash Zune, both with the doubleshot design, video functionality, and WiFi capabilities. If the price is right, Microsoft could end up giving the Nano a run for its money. It's not that special, after all. It's just a cutesy, expensive iPod.

Back to Apple real quick: their first Apple TV television spot is out, and it's slightly less creative than what I would've expected. It's very literal, which is nice, but does it really make anyone want an Apple TV? It's like they're saying, "Yes, we now have a product that will let you watch movies on your television! Isn't that stellar?!"

Wired interviewed Eric Schmidt about Google and the whole "Internet operating system" gossip that has gone around for the past several months, and I like his thoughts on everything. He sounds very genuine. I like that referring to server-based computing has having information "stored in the clouds" has now become technical jargon; it sounds like something a tech blogger inadvertently invented.

One-liner: there's an awesome list of online converters here. Some of them are random and kind of useless, but there's a lot of awesome ones, like for PDFs and images.

If the visual effects in Grindhouse look cool to you, you'll enjoy this article on the pre-viz process. A lot goes into making the film so clean and yet so vintage grainy at the same time, so it's fun to see concept art become reality and how.

The UK trailer for Live Free or Die Hard (again, it's called Die Hard 4.0 there like is in every freaking country except here) is a lot better than ours in that it actually tells you what the premise is. Obviously, I have to criticize that premise as being totally far-fetched because it makes it sound way too easy to bring down the country's technological infrastructure. Granted, things like RSA encryption can technically be compromised, but that doesn't mean that all Hell breaks lose all at once. With action movies though, suspended disbelief is a necessity, so I'll forgive them.

Lastly, basically the same team that brought you Da Vinci Code (including Tom Hanks) is coming back together again for Angels and Demons, that other Dan Brown book that every other person has read. I can't say much because I haven't read it myself, but it sounds like they just want another cash cow, in my opinion. Let's hope the movie quality doesn't suffer (I personally enjoyed Da Vinci Code, actually).

I'm going to do Ten on Tuesday this week:

10 Highschool Memories
10. The pep rallies that never got anyone pepped up, just happy get out of class.
9. Going to Bellaire Broiler Burger for awesome milkshakes.
8. Being in a ton of clubs, most of which did nothing.
7. Worrying about AP exams and college like constantly!
6. Stupid crushes.
5. Playing guitar nearly every night.
4. Being accused of cheating and burned at the stake for it.
3. Sleeping about 5 hours a night.
2. Prom sucking, like hardcore.
1. GRADUATING! Thank God it's over!

Goodbye, Live?

Happy Ash Wednesday, everyone! I wonder if you're supposed to happy or mournful on Ash Wednesday. It's not a solemn day like Good Friday, but it's not like you have anything to really be excited about like with Easter. Oh well, I'll stick with my greeting. Anyway, you may recall that Microsoft unveiled a whole Live brand a long time ago to help them market their web OS of sorts. I mean it wasn't a fully functional OS per se, but it brought all of your most important applications online so that you could store your information online as part of a movement towards an informal online OS. Well, they're starting to cut that moniker from some of its services, including shopping and e-mail. Are they shifting company interests, or is this a simple marketing change? It has me curious, and I can't help but think that they didn't market it well enough. I never really felt compelled to use any of the services other than Live Image Search, and I'm a total tech geek! I think that if they had just appealed to the masses that they could've gotten wider acceptance. I know they're fighting hardships with the Microsoft name being associated with evil, but surely it can't be that hard with all the money they've got. Anyway, I wonder if they'll end up phasing out these services altogether or just the names? Very curious, and I'm sure we'll know more soon enough.

While I'm on the Microsoft topic, the guy that they had hired to take pictures for the backgrounds that come built-in to the OS posted the photos that didn't make the cut, and they're quite stellar. They'd all make amazing backgrounds, in my opinion. Oh, and in other Microsoft news, it turns out that Bill Gates actually restricts his children's computer usage as any good parent should. I think that parental control software is totally reasonable through maybe 12 years old, because then they'll get smart enough to crack it.

Cisco and Apple finally reached an agrement on the "iPhone" trademark and can both use the name now. The only catch that we know of is that they have to explore interoperability with each other (I don't think that's restricted to the iPhone or anything). There's probably other stuff they're not telling us, but so ends that feud finally.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spoke unrehearsed at the All Things Digital conference, and some pictures have sprouted up on line of them seemingly having a good time with each other. It's nice to see them getting along, if they weren't just faking it for the cameras, because they're so similar in a lot of ways. I guess it's where the differ that makes Apple and Microsoft so successful in different areas.

I know I'm not the only person who watches TV online because they don't get certain channels or their TV blows (or they're just too lazy to leave their bedroom). Anyway, for all you weirdos like me, here's an awesome list of good places to get your visual fix.

Not really a whole lot going on in movies. We have a clip from Zodiac that doesn't really tell us much, but it does help set the tone for what we should expect a little more. I found it slightly haunting though we don't know that anything bad will really happen (though, of course, it's about a serial killer so you naturally assume the worst).

AICN got its hands on a review for Reno 911: Miami and it sounds like a really funny movie. I wanted to see it when I first saw the teaser for it because the show was so damn funny (is it still on?). It comes out this weekend, though I don't know if I'll get a chance to see it before Spring Break.

Lastly, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise may all be in a movie together called Lions for Lambs, which is only noteworthy because of how phenomenal those actors are (I know Cruise is crazy, but he's damn talented anyway).

Oh, and IMDB tweaked its layout a bit if anyone cares. I don't think its any better or worse than before.

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. What is your favorite place for delivered pizza?
Definitely Papa John's. The sauce is really good, as is the crust. And the prices are also reasonable!

2. How often do you have pizza delivered at your house?
Almost never, because I get so much pizza on campus for free as it is that I'd rather cook food at home.

3. What toppings do you want on that pizza?
I love pepperoni, mushrooms, pineapple, and Candian bacon. Probably not all on the same pizza, but awesome individually.

4. Thick crust or thin?
Definitely thick. Thin crust makes the pizza slightly less filling, and the crust doesn't taste as good either.