Monthly Archives: July 2005

People are afraid of secret government conspiracies that plan on implanting microchips into our bodies so that the government knows where we are at all times. Too bad everyone who’s afraid of this already carries a mobile phone everywhere they go, and obviously has no idea what MIT has been up to.

“Cell phones know whom you called and which calls you dodged, but they can also record where you went, how much sleep you got and predict what you’re going to do next. At least, these are the capabilities of 100 customized phones given to students and employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — and they may be coming soon to your cell phone.”

I see good and bad things from this. People will think that I leave my phone home on Friday and Saturday nights (but I’m actually at home trying to decrease my Windows XP boot time!!) .

Why do they call Netflix, Netflix? Ok, so you go online in order to register, order, and pay but the DVD comes to you in the mail. I wonder if Mailflix.com was taken so they decided to just go with Netflix. Or maybe they were planning Video On Demand (VOD) all the while, making their name more valid. With a set top box, and a Netflix account you may be able to watch ‘Mean Girls’ the day you order it, instead of waiting for the mail to bring it to your door. Sounds like it makes sense to me, but who wants a set top box from Netflix to go with their vcr, dvd player, stereo receiver, xbox, ps2, tivo, cable box, media center pc, etc. It’s a good idea, but I think it should be just a bit refined.

I thought that my friend’s new P4 3.8Ghz with hyperthreading was a pretty fast computer. Seems that the fastest computer in the world is owned by Americans and sits in Livermore, CA doing 136.8 trillion calculations per second. Japan told that they’re going to build a computer that runs 73times faster (10 quadrillion calcs/sec). This venture will blow about $7-9million dollars over the course of this project. Now that’s a computer. Expect to see this one finished around 2011, I wonder what version of Doom will be out then?

When I think of Alaska, I think of cold and rugged. Mt McKinley is the tallest mountain in the USA. While MP3’s don’t come to mind, a player did make the journey to the summit. How’s that for durability testing?

In a sport that requires 60-pound backpacks, climbers need to be highly selective in the gear they take. For Mousseau’s 14-day odyssey last month to the 20,320-foot summit of the mountain, he brought the SanDisk 512-megabyte (MB)* player, which weighs just over 1 ounce, and three AAA batteries. Now, based on reactions from his teammates, the solid-state, flash-based player is likely to become standard equipment for their future climbs.

Who knew that an MP3 player would become standard climbing gear?

Yesterday, at midnight, Harry Potter’s newest adventure was on the shelves, available for the masses. Eleven hours later, Harry Potter’s newest adventure was on BitTorrent, available for the masses.

For the cost of $5-$10 for a legal download of the e-book, I’m pretty confident that the organized pirates who committed this act of pure evil would have skipped the 600 page scanning and piecing together process. But people for some reason resist change and technology. I guess that’s the way the microchip crumbles.

Looks like that new Microsoft operating system that we’ve been talking about for so long(horn), has been named. I was under the impression that we would just keep calling it Longhorn, although I did read that “Longhorn” was just a cover opps prerelease name. Windows Vista is the new Longhorn, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing about Vista for a long(horn) time. I mean, I remember upgrading to windows 98 in the year 2000.

(and don’t these guys look excited, this is what happens when geeks drink too much coffee and rename operating systems)

The atom bomb of podcasting was dropped by Apple when they incorporated podcasting support in iTunes 4.9. Wired.com interviews ‘self-proclaimed tech geek Brian Reid” who hosted “Sex Talk”, a podcast. “Apple counted more than 1 million podcast subscriptions through iTunes in the first two days alone, according to a company press release.” “Paul Saurini, whose Denver-based Barefoot Radio podcast focuses largely on news items with some white-trash element to them, had to suddenly upgrade his server bandwidth package from $25 a month for 100 GB to a $300-a-month package for 1,200 GB after the new traffic exceeded his limit.”

And I admit, I’m also huge on podcasting. I added Rocketboom.com (my favorite vlog) first, and then worked on some more music, news, and entertainment. Podcasting is new new black.

There comes a time in a grown man’s life when he realizes that it’s time to throw away the 8-track player and move on to something a bit more up to date. That time has come for most adults if we’re talking phone lines. Mobile phones seem to be the way to go (duh). As a young adult, I ditched my landline in the year 2000. IM’s, emails, and night/weekend minutes were the only means of communication I needed. Fast-forward 5 years and it’s only gotten easier to rely on just one phone. With $50.00/month, with any carrier, you are going to have enough minutes to do all of your necessary calling. If you have a significant other that like to chat all the time, unlimited in-network calling is you way to go. It’s not rocket science that land lines are becoming obsolete. Heck I’d cancel mine if the DSL didn’t need it.

I’m a self proclaimed uber geek. Carrying 3-4 battery operated devices at a time is not unusual. Getting goose bumps on the way to Fry’s, Best Buy, or the local computer show is a normality. But Star Trek is where I draw the line. I’ve never been a “Trekkie” if that’s even how it’s spelled. All I know of the 55 season long television series is as follows: Starship Enterprise, Captain Kirk, Spock –pointy ears, and “Beam me up Scotty”!

Scotty, James Doohan, passed away at the age of 85. Leaving behind a 53 year old wife and a 5-year-old daughter. His ashes are headed out to space along with the other Star Trek stars. I would have pictured their ashes been spread over a television studio, as I don’t imagine these actors ever went to the real outer space.

What happens when you mix a tax attorney with a Dutch composer? Give up? A website devoted to Beethoven’s b-sides and bootlegs. The duo of Mark Zimmer and Willem Holsbergen came up with the idea to kick start a classical revolution, of classical music. They have scoured the earth in search of anything written or played by the mastermind composer, and posted it on their site. Even some of the crudest works are put up. I don’t know how excited I am to listen to some MIDI produced Beethoven reject song. He’s good, just as all famous composers are, but all famous composers also have crappy songs and these maybe shouldn’t be resurfaced? I guess real loyal fans want the good, bad, ugly, and MIDI produced of their favorite artist.

Back in the 90’s Netscape Navigator was the browser king of the hill. I used to watch those stars fly by the blue ‘N’ for hours while waiting for web pages to load on my mom’s dial up connection. Then our buddies at Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows and blew Netscape to pieces. Today, Firefox is making a steady gain on Internet Explorer’s given ground. I read somewhere in a forum that browsing the web with IE is like having sex with a third world ‘sex worker’ with no condom, you’re going to get a virus. This person was pro-Firefox. I don’t know if I’d take it that far, but then again, I think I just did.