April 15, 2010
March 6, 2010
Gaming across Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 Series ans Windows 7
Today at some tech conferance in Dubai, Microsoft demoed the ability to play 1 game across the Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7 and regular Windows 7. It was the same game running on all 3 platforms and, perhaps the coolest part, when you switched between platforms, the game picked up in the exact same place. Potential beginning of cross-platform cloud gaming?
March 4, 2010
Head of Russian Olympic Committee Resigns
sounds like a “forceful resignation” to me. Naughty Putin!
March 4, 2010
Apocalypse Watch
According to my Earthquake tracking app I downloaded, Taiwan’s 6.4 magnitude quake (see here: http://bit.ly/bgIzhJ ) was not the only recent (read: within the last 12 hours or so) earthquake. Another quake hit off the coast of Taiwan registering a 4.7, Japan experienced an offshore quake registering 4.8 and a region sitting between the northern part of Indonesia and a southern section of the Philippines got nailed by 4 earthquakes ranging from 4.6-5.0 on the Richter scale.
Outside of the Eastern pacific, California and Alaska both had earthquakes in the mid-3.0’s, Chile and Argentina continue to be rocked by aftershocks registering no less than 4.6, and a region on the border between Columbia and Venezuela had a 4.7 magnitude quake.
All in all, I say the world is falling apart. Wonderful.
March 3, 2010
Why I Love Capitalism
This article from Gizmodo is precisely why I absolutely love capitalism: http://bit.ly/bw7Ogc. Apparently some poor soul lost their iPod touch and offered a $50 reward. Sensing profit to be had, some capitalistic soul posted a sign right next to it offering a $51 reward. WIN?
February 22, 2010
Another 2 British Passports Linked to Hamas Assassination
Apparently 2 more Brits have been found to be linked to the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai. I say good for them.
February 19, 2010
A Brief Statement On Xbox Live Mobile
I saw this following quote in an article today (the full article can be accessed herehttp://bit.ly/alvXxA). Speaking of the newly announced Xbox Live funcitonality that will come to Windows Phone 7 Series, Jason Chen of Gizmodo had this to say:
“Despite the potential, Microsoft’s fighting an uphill battle on roller skates. They’re two years late to a mobile games party that’s already been defined by a competitor—a competitor that has a product with a three-year headstart.”
All I want to say is this: Look at the Xbox. Like the mobile Xbox Live experience, the original Xbox arrived on the scene many years after there were already well-established industry leaders. In fact, I would argue that the Xbox itself had an even though battle than that facing the mobile experience. It came into the market in 2001, 7 years after the Playstaion 1 (1994) and 16 years after the original NES (1985), but has since become one of the most successful video game consoles out there. The fact that Apple is currently dominant in mobile gaming and has a 3 year head start is really nothing compared to this, and with the full force of the already incredibly well-developed Xbox Live network behind it, I have absolutely no doubt that this system will succeed as least as well as Apple’s mobile gaming has, if not more.
February 8, 2010
The Weak Horse, pt 1
I first invite you to read the following article, entitled “Teacher fired after complaints about Muslim students celebrating 9/11 hijackers”:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585102,00.html
The mere fact this article even had to be written shows just how far down the road of abject capitulation the Western world has become. Just think about what this article actually means. Several Muslim students in a British school were singing the praises of terrorists responsible for the death of 3000 innocent civilians. They were holding them up as heros, as people worthy of idolization. As a Christian British citizen, as one who had also experienced the fear of Muslim terrorist attacks on his country, the teacher was offended. Upon expressing his concern over their offensive comments, he was fired for being intolerant. Ignore the fact that these children were being incredibly intolerant of his or other students perspective. Ignore that several of these children 9/11 terrorists. No, the teacher was the wrong one because he was not letting these Muslim children express their offensive, intolerant and above all racist views.
This comparatively small example of just the way the Western world is headed. The Muslims can say just about whatever they want simply because the Western governments are too afraid of appearing racist. The administration of that school knows full well that if they had supported the teacher and done something as simple and non-intrusive as demanding the students apologize, they would have been hit with a lawsuit from the students parents and all manner of pro-Muslim groups functioning in Britain. The school would have been accused of limiting free speech on the poor, oppressed Muslim students. The would have been showcased as an institution harboring and encouraging anti-Muslim sentiment. The full might of these organizations would have been brought against the school system, dragging all of the involved individuals through the mud.
No, rather than risk these accusations of racism, the school quickly, and deftly acted to bow down before these terrorist supporters with the hands wide and gifts at their feet. The fired this totally innocent teacher as a way of throwing themselves in front of the political wings of the pro-Muslim factions, saying “look were not racist! We still love Muslims!”.
This school is merely a microcosim of the majority of the Western governments as a whole. They are more concerned with appearing multiculturally tolerant then they are with actually protecting the rights of their citizens. Those Muslim students could have stood up and said “Winston Churchill was horrible for defying Hitler”, and anyone who protested would have been accused of intolerance and restricting the free speech of minorities.These governments have all grown weak in the face of a strong unresting opponent. Rather than stand up and defend the rights of their citizens, the instead opt to try and encourage unity and harmony with a group whose only definition of cultural harmony means consumption of everyone elses culture into theirs.
Now, what do you think would have happened if that British teacher had gone into a Saudi school and called the Royal Family terrorist supporters? He probably would have been stoned on the spot. The Muslim defintion of tolerance is not the free and equal flow of ideas, but rather that everyone must tolerate their ideas. Or here’s a better example. What if these weren’t Muslim at all? What if an Irish student had sang the praises of the IRA? I’d be willing to bet naming rights to my first-born child that it’d be the student, not the teacher out on his ass for that one. The simple fact that these students were Muslim completely changes the rule of the game.
Now I leave you with a quote. You may recognize the great orator who said it: one Osama bin Laden. He said “When given the choice between a strong horse and a weak horse, people will choose the strong one”. Now I ask you: who here is the strong horse? Is this the way we want our society to go?
January 29, 2010
On the iPad, or, A Rebuttal to Cbanga
January 27th, 2010. A day that will live in infamy. Well, at least for those concerned with the latest and greatest technology. On this day, Apple, a company known for it’s often-revolutionary ideas, unveiled their latests product, the iPad. For weeks, the iPad, previously known as the iTablet and iSlate, was billed as “the most revolutionary device ever”, one that would “change the face of computing as we know it”. On that fateful day, however, many of those writers in the tech world were left severely disappointed. The iPad, it seemed, had not lived up to the hype by a long stretch. However, this did not stop many from writing in defense of the new device. “You simply aren’t getting it” many of them say. “The device isn’t supposed to be what you want it to be”. I invite you to read one of these such blogs written by my esteemed colleague Cameron Banga. His blog can be found at this URL: http://cameronbanga.com/post/359262430/about-the-ipad.
Mr. Banga makes several points points criticizing the criticism of many other tech writers. Over the course of this post, I wish to address many of the points Mr. Banga makes regarding just why the iPad is, in fact, the most revolutionary device ever.
The Bezel
Much professional criticism has been leveled against the sheer size of the bezel around the edges. Many writers have complained that this severely restricts screen real-estate, and the exclusion of it would lead to much more screen space on the same sized device. On this particular point, I actually agree with Mr. Banga. He points out, correctly, that the bezel is so large in order to provide an area to place your thumbs. You don’t want to rest your thumbs on the screen. That would result in inadvertant imputs, making the divce do things that you dont want it to do. Apple was perfectly right in makeing this area so large in order to make the device easy to hold and to use.
Multitasking
This issue is the precise reason why I find the iPad to be considerably less than revolutionary, and why I hold that it will not sell nearly as well as others hope and think. The OS for the deivce is based off of a slightly modified version of the iPhone OS. As most should know, this does not allow for the running of multiple apps at once. This drastically limits the device as you are really only able to do one thing at a time on it.
Mr. Banga asserts that multitasking is not really needed as there’s really only “one app that [you] could effectively use multitasking and that’s Pandora”. On this I wholly disagree. This device was billed as a replacement for the traditional netbook or laptop and indeed, possibly even the computer. If thats the case then, this device has to be as useful and productive to business people, students, and housewives all the same. Of these three demographics, the housewife is the only one who could honestly replace their other deivces with it. Imagine this scenario: Say your a new college student. Rather then invest in a laptop for school, you decide to go with the new, revolutionary, iPad. Well, you’re 3 weeks into classes and its time for your first research paper in History 235. You rush home to begin researching on your shiny new iPad. Sure, the research runs is fast. Safari runs quickly, web pages load in an instant. Suddenly you stumble upon a page that has a paragraph you think would be perfect for a direct quote. You copy that paragraph and go to paste it into the iWorks document you have op-oh, sorry, no you don’t. You close out Safari, open iWorks, and paste. But you’re still not done researching, so you save, close iWorks, re-open Safari, and lo and behold, your back at Google because you had to completely close the program. SO you have to start the research all over again. This process repeats over and over ad nauseum. Your wasting time and energy doing this. Its not nearly as efficient as being able to have 2 apps running at the same time. This could be even worse for a business person who may have to make some last minute change with updated data to a presentation. The fact that you cannot run multiple applications significantly reduces your productivity and nearly completely negates the device as a work-machine.
Mr. Banga points the the Android OS as an example of why multitasking apps is not ideal: The apps will constantly run in the background, reducing battery life and making it run slower. I personally have a Motorola Droid, which runs Android 2.0, so I can attest to this. Mr. Banga is correct. A third-party application is required to kill the apps. However, I am more than willing to have this as a trade-off in order to multitask. I can research and write blogs or even papers at the same time by being able to run a web browser and a GDocs or Tumblr app.
Sans multitasking, the iPad completely loses out on being a productive device. Is it a fun toy? Sure. Im sure theres some people out there that this is perfect for them. But for the vast majority of the population, there is no way this could ever replace a laptop, or a computer. It simply cannot do nearly as much.
As for the other points Mr. Banga makes, I am inclined to agree with him, with the exception of his point about the camera. I feel the lack of a camera is a mistake as it makes Skype significantly less useful, and most of the other tablets coming on the market have one. If the iPod nano has a camera, why can’t the iPad? Other than that though, he is largely correct about its features. Many of the complaints leveled are unfair, and miss the point. However, the lack of multitasking is such a glaring flaw when viewed alongside all of Apple’s claims that, ultimately, I must agree with the critics and say that the iPad, as a whole, is not at all revolutionary, but rather is an wholly lackluster product that is more suited to be an iPod Touch for the elderly rather than a “revolutionary, computer killing powerhouse”
January 16, 2010
On the US Relief Effort to Haiti
As everyone knows, earlier this week a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the tiny island nation of Haiti. Nearly the entire country was destroyed. Hospitals and orphanages collapsed with everyone inside. Countless people were rendered homeless. The last estimates I personally saw pegged the deathtoll at between 44000 and 50000, a number certain to rise as disease spreads and the injured succumb to their wounds. This horriffic disiaster is made even worse by the fact that Haiti is one of, if not the, porrest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Naturally, immediately following the quake, nations across the globe pledged aid to Haiti. China pledged US $1 million. Germany offered US $2.17 million. The US, however, gave 100 million, sent is a Special Ops team to secure the international airport to provide a staging ground for the relief effort, and sent in 5000 Marines to act as the security force for the devastated nation. Additionally, the USS Carl Vincent, a Marine assault carrier is serving as an emergency hospital for those that need to be evacuated.
As is typical of such catastrophies, the US is providing the single greatest monetary and aid contribution, while simultaneously providing the majority of the support and logistics network needed to distribute this aid. The relief effort would not be nearly as large, nor as effective, without US involvement.
Now, what is my point here? It is not, as I’m sure many of you readers think it is, and as many of my contemporaries argue, that the US should not be providing this much aid when we can’t afford it. I am not saying, as many Conservative pundits do, that the US government “can’t pledge support when it can’t even support its own citizens”, nor that “obama is giving away money that we don’t have” (Ross Smith, Twitter, 1/16/2010). We should be providing this aid. As the only superpower left, it is our responsibility to help out countries in these exact circumstances. Being as rich and powerful as we are, it is our duty to help the poor when such a disaster occurs. It is the responsibility that comes with the great power we do have.
My point here is two-fold. Really it is more of a complaint than anything. These other countries, while they do provide aid, they are committing nowhere near a fair share of it. China has the fastest growing economy in the world, and realistically has the second largest supply of US dollars, besides the US itself. And yet it only gives an amount that could be given individually by many in the upper class in America. Germany has the highest per capita trade surplus in the world, yet again can only spare just over 2 million. All of the countries giving aid will be using US assets to get them to the people. The US is giving well above what all of the other countries are giving. And what will happen when this crisis is over? America will be blamed for any supplies not getting out fast we “didn’t respond soon enough”. America will be blamed for any deaths caused b y a shortage of supplies because “we didn’t give enough”. When the reconstruction effort begins, any money that ends up in the hands of the warlords and criminals will be Americas fault because we “didn’t keep tight enough control on it”. Despite the fact that we are giving more and doing more, and in turn hurting ourselves more, than any other nation, anything that goes wrong will be our fault.
Regardless of what the US government does here, our global image will at best remain unchanged and at worse erode even further simply because we will be perceived as not having done enough while other government give pocket change. Why is this? Other nations have come to expect this kind of reaction from America. We are the relief agency for the world. US aid isn’t
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