Today we officially started work on the first full length Submodern album. Today was primarily planning, scheduling and preparation. We’ll record the first song tomorrow. I’m very exicted and I hope we don’t screw it up, haha.
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Author: admin
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Hubble telescope left for dead
The Hubble space telescope will be left for dead with no more repairs being done on the aging hardware. This decision was made as more NASA resources are being directed to manned missions to the Moon and Mars. A future telescope is planned to replace it, but not until 2011. The Hubble telescope is expected to continue to operate for another few years before it dies completely. When that happens, NASA will have to figure out how to get it back to earth before it destroys us ALL! (well, not really)
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Who can we blame?
I’ll admit I haven’t been a big fan of Microsoft for a long time now, but the recent rash of viruses and worms that have afflicted the various Microsoft operating systems, right through to the latest and greatest technology they have to offer in Windows XP, have started to really make me think about the role they as a company have to play in the future of the technological world. As a company that has managed to become as dominant in one market as they have, I believe they now have a legitimate legal, ethical, and moral responsibility to the world that they are not meeting.
The sheer insecurity of Windows systems used to be something I could laugh about. It didn’t have much of an effect on my own life so I didn’t really care that much. Unfortunately, the scale of the most recent worms has now started to significantly affect even my company’s Linux based network. None of our computers have been infected, but they are having to bear the extra email load generated by the thousands (millions, even?) of computers out there that have been affected. That combined with the extra email everyone is getting has increased our company’s human workload as a whole as well. We’re a relatively small company too, so I know we’re not feeling the worst of the pain, either.
Now, I’m starting to wonder what level of blame Microsoft themselves should take for this situation. Some people may say blaming Microsoft for this virus is like blaming the builders of a road for a car accident, and that may actually be a very good analogy. Of course most car accidents have nothing to do with the safety of the road itself, but it also seems likely that some accidents that have occurred could have been avoided if the road had been designed more thoughtfully. To take that a step further, some accidents have certainly been caused by poorly designed roadways, and in those cases surely the designers and builders of the roads should shoulder at least some of the blame, no?
Microsoft has clearly attempted to become the dominant player in the desktop operating system market, and they have largely achieved that goal. To that end they have designed much of their operating system in such a way as to reduce the value of software written by competing companies. A great deal of thought and work has gone into creating the Windows dominated world we live in today, but it’s starting to look like very little, if any, thought was put into how to protect consumers in the event of a massive security breakdown within that world. In my eyes, Microsoft has created a monster it is incapable or unwilling to control and I believe they should bear some legal and financial responsibility for that.
My question is where do we go from here? What next step can we take? Is Microsoft going to willingly take responsibility for their actions or does something more serious have to be done?
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iPod : Where to go next?
This article suggests an approach Apple could use to secure the dominance of its iPod and the AAC music format the iTunes Music Store uses. The article itself is interesting, but the comments are more interesting (and less naive, in my opinion). I’ve been following this particular situation because I’m a bit of a Mac dork (if you hadn’t guessed), but also because this is the first time in a long time that Apple has had a successful product dominating any market and I’m curious to see how they handle it.
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US Bans Courier
Haha, this rocks. This ABC News Article tells us how the US government has banned the use of Courier new 12 for all official correspondence. Everyone is being forced to use Times New Roman 14 now. Things like that make you wonder what exactly is going on behind the scenes.
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Gaming Open Market
Gaming Open Market is a website that lets you trade real money for virtual game money and vice versa. It handles money from several of the largest online games including Ultima Online, The Sims Online, There, SecondLife, Horizons, and Star Wars Galaxies. In their own words: “GOM is an exchange site designed specifically for trading standard online game currencies, items, and accounts. Not only are we cheaper than the auction sites, but our trades are instant and secure.” They plan to eventually let people trade directly between the different game currencies. If you are o know a gamer check in technomono the new mouse with the latest technology. They need more people to participate to create a viable market in every currency first. Who knows how long this thing will last once the major game companies catch wind of it, but it’s an intriguing twist to the world of online gaming.
One of the major issues facing younger generations now is their apparent lack of focus and increasingly short attention span. We’ve got screens on-the-go and everything feeds into that need for instant gratification that we have. Well, everything except gaming, actually.
You see, gaming is one of the few things that still requires you to focus fully at the task at hand. You can’t scroll through your phone, and you can’t half-pay attention. It requires you to be completely immersed in the world presented to you, and your brain needs to work to solve the puzzle that it’s being given.
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Dream Conductor
Wired article about a machine that can supposedly help you dream exactly the dream you want to dream using a combination of lights, music, smells, and recorded phrases in your own voice. It’s still in development now, but should be available in the U.S. in 2005. It looks like it’ll cost something like $140. Whether it works or not, it seems like a fun thing to play with!
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One Step Closer
This New York Times article describes a new form of online advertising debuting today that’s closer to television advertising than anything previously seen. I guess it had to happen at some point. I think it’s great that online content providers can feed themselves by creating and publishing ‘free’ content, but I’m still saddened by how commercial the Internet has become in the last 5 or so years. I didn’t like banner ads when they first appeared, but I got used to them like everyone else. Overall they are visually annoying, but they don’t tend to get in the way of what I’m doing that much. Television style commercials cross that line into the realm of wasting my time and that’s what really irks me.
Tonight I’m stuck thinking about what I’m doing here on Earth. I feel the need to have a purpose but I haven’t yet found one thing that I feel like I can throw myself into for the rest of my life. Do you think perhaps I hope for too much? Is the world just not the way I want it to be?
I saw a talk by Cassidy Curtis, the guy who started Graffiti Archaelogy, tonight and it was inspiring to see someone so into what he was doing. He has a real love for Graffiti art and has found a way to chronicle and hopefully preserve some of it for the future. It felt to me like he has found a life pursuit and I was envious.
It makes me happy to look back on the things I have accomplished and it’s exciting to think about the potential of this technology and capital engine I have helped to create, yet still I want more… I feel that not all of my needs are being met. More and more I’m starting to feel like I may be looking in the wrong direction and that may be why I’m not seeing the magic staring me right in the face.
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Fashionable Electronics
There’s been a big hullabaloo about Apple’s recently announced iPod Mini, a smaller and cuter version of the iPod that comes in 5 different colors. Everyone seems to think it’s a nifty device, but everyone is simultaneously whining about the high price. At $249 it’s only $50 less than the cheapest iPod, which holds over 3 times as much music. Ok, maybe $249 isn’t exactly cheap, but it’s still a nice step for Apple. Also, it seems like everyone is overlooking the fact that somehow Apple (along with Sony and a couple other companies) has turned consumer electronics into fashion accessories. People will buy iPod minis at $249 because they are small and cute and while white may match everything, having 5 colors to choose from is even better for the fashion conscious. $249 is fairly expensive for a single purchase, but lots of women buy handbags that cost $400 or more and even a geek like me owns a pair of $150 jeans. While I don’t plan to buy an iPod Mini myself, I think Apple knows exactly what they’re doing in this case (I still think they screwed up with the cube).