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I tried to use my cell phone today to send some text messages, but I've been having trouble with text messaging ever since the AT&T/Cingular merger.
Should I switch to Verizon or T-Mobile?
Update: Phone fixed, have full reception again.
How you can help:
U.N. World Food Programme, choose Korea, DDR
International Federation of Red Cross
Every little bit helps.
The original silk road came out of military and politial purposes: a court official named Zhang Qian was sent by Emperor Wudi to try and find allies against the Xiongnu (the Huns). But the Xiongnu captured Zhang Qian and held him for 10 years. Zhang escaped and continued his mission, but failed in finding allies. However, in his travels the information that Zhang Qian brought with him also made them desire the goods of each other.
In 200 AD, this trade route connected the Roman Empire in the west with the Imperial court of China. This was the most important trade route between East and West until the sea routes to Asia opened up in the 15th century.
It's important to note that it wasn't just goods that were being transported across the Silk Road, but also culture, art, philosophies and beliefs.
With this new silk road, even if the primary purpose is to transport goods, I think that just like the old trade route, much more will be transported than just goods.
Part of the reason I find this interesting is that after brunch on Sunday, our discussion was centered on 20th century U.S. history, and how many students never get to that point in their studies, we segued from this into a discussion on how textbooks, because the state of Texas buys so many of them, are written with Texas schoolchildren being the target audience. Is this the future of textbooks? Instead of buying books, buying CDs/DVDs of our texts? On one hand, having them on the computer is good (I think a laptop often takes up less space on the desk than a text book) but I worry about copyrights and duplication. In time, we might find that copies of the books on CD/DVD to be more expensive than the paper versions we have now.
The other thing is whether or not you really want 5th and 6th graders carrying around $1,400 worth of computer equipment with them. We already have problems in this country with theft and robbery -- do we really want to lower the age bracket to 5th and 6th graders?
Today: Free Cone Day at Ben and Jerry's
Tomorrow: Free Scoop Night at Baskin Robbins
The weather reminds me of the heat wave last summer.
I have AC now in my apartment, but it's pretty ineffective again the oven-like atmosphere which this temperature creates. My summer vacation from school doesn't start until May 19th, but it's really not much of a summer vacation if I still have to work.
I've always enjoyed the illustrations from Da Vinci's notebooks. I do have to wonder sometimes if we humans, in our modern day environment create anachronistic counterparts of modern devices in his sketches, or their intended functions really were the same as what we would use them for in modern times.
This particular story looks to be of the Steampunk (Victorians with steam-based technology) variety, an sf genre that has not been totally exploited in America (yet). I suspect that this movie might be a good intro to Steampunk in American sf (Both England and Japan has had Steampunk for quite some time now), although Bruce Sterling and William Gibson did write a mildly received book on it about 10 years back (The Difference Engine).
If I had some potting soil and I didn't mind destroying the flower, I could probably try and breed the rose, but it't a bit of work to do so, but it does remind me how nice it is to have a plant to bring some color to the sterile office environment.
Since the passing of the Endangered Species Act, 114 species have gone extinct.
Highlights of the study:
Environmental Groups Plan to protest against Schwartzenegger's Hummers at Hummer dealerships
Schwartzenegger was the first U.S. citizen to own a Humvee. For him, I think the attraction was (as it is in most of Hollywood) that no one else had one. This is why Gov. Arnold wants to have his Hummer run on Hydrogen-Fuel Cells -- because no one else will have one like it. A mass-produced hybrid auto won't be enough for his ego, nor satisfy his need for public image. Thinking about it now, it may be in fact Schwartzenegger who started the SUV fad.
Earlier this year, SFSU decided that one way of dealing with the California budget cuts in education was to cut the college of engineering from their campus. Now we have the UC handing out rainchecks for free transfers into the UC.
I remember my first semester at Cal, they had overbooked the dormitories. While they didn't offer apartment vouchers, they did cram every available space in the residence halls with as many students as they could into a room. The floor lounges were converted into rooms, housing 3 or 4 students.
I think it's awful, and I hope those who were given the raincheck can hopefully attend another university (where budgetary issues wouldn't be as big a concern)
One of the stories about San Francisco schools and segregation .
Fuel Cells vs. Hybrid - Environmental Impact?
Fewer Students Enrolling in Computer Science classes
My commentary on these stories reside in the extended entry.
Commentary on: San Francisco schools and segregation
I've lived in California all my life -- I'm a product of the California public education system, from elementary all the way to university. I never really thought about which school I was being sent to, or what politics were involved. I didn't think deeply about the indirect racial segregation that existed. When I was going to public school, we were just sent to the school that was defined by our boundary lines. Choosing to go to a different school wasn't really an option until after I had graduated. I think one of the reasons I still look at the issues surrounding education is that I'm able to see how education can make a difference in one's life.
The story is about how in San Francisco, Chinese children are sent away from their neighborhood schools to attend other schools miles away for the interests of "desegregation". I grew up in the public school system where your school was determined by your distance from the school. (There was one public jr. high/ high school in the system which existed outside of those rules, but that's a topic for another time). The schools I attended had a diverse mix of students, which was achieved without bringing in students from other other parts of the city, but rather by determining the school by the location of your home. I would say distance, but that's not quite accurate -- they basically "zoned" the city for schools. In contrast to my hometown, San Francisco appears to first do a zoning, then based on race redistributes some ethnic students to other schools. While I think it does promote ethnic diversity, there are better ways that do not create racial discrimination. One thing people have to realize is that there are always going to be concentrations of ethnic groups in the big cities -- even in little cities, it's going to happen -- you can't control communities.
One of the arguments that one of the school administrators presents is that of classroom overpopulation. Classroom overpopulation has existed for sometime now, and honestly, the only way to solve it is by hiring more teachers and building more classrooms -- either that or start packing the classrooms like sardines.
I know that if I was a taxpayer in S.F., and I had children going to school miles away when there is a school 5 blocks away, I would be majorly angry. Not just because my family is being discriminated against, but that my tax money is essentially funding a school my children cannot attend.
Commentary on: Fuel Cells vs. Hybrids
I like the idea of a Fuel Cell vehicle, but there's no technology there yet for mass market consumption. Maybe in 20 to 30 years. On the plus side, at least if I purchase a hybrid, I don't need to worry about fast obsolescence.
Commentary on: Fewer Students enrolling in Computer Science classes
A couple of points:
"Fortunately, we can go a long way toward dissipating urban heat islands with modest measures. One solution is to use lighter colors for roofs and pavement. The other is to plant lots of trees, which have a two-fold benefit. First, they provide cooling shade. Second, trees, like most plants, soak up groundwater. The water then "evapotranspires" from the leaves, thus cooling the leaves and, indirectly, the surrounding air. A single properly watered tree can "evapotranspirate" 40 gallons of water in a day-offsetting the heat equivalent to that produced by one hundred 100-watt lamps, burning eight hours per day."
"Not all trees are equally beneficial. It is better to plant deciduous trees, for example, which give shade in summer but do not block the warmth in winter. Also, some types of trees emit large amounts of the volatile organic hydrocarbons (VOCs) that combine with oxides of nitrogen to form smog. Ash and maple are among the more VOC-free trees, emitting only about 1 VOC unit (defined as one microgram per hour per gram of dry leaf). Eucalyptus trees, on the other hand, are a problem. They were introduced a century ago, are thriving, and emit 32 units; perhaps they should be replaced with more suitable native trees. Weeping willows top the emissions list, releasing a whopping 230 VOC units. "
Whenever I read an article in which environmentalism and architecture intersect, I always end up getting really excited about it. I guess part of me still wants to be an architect. I think part of it is the awareness for the environmental conditions that architects sometimes don't think of -- how things like hundred-year flood levels should affect the design of a place, or giving thought to how the materials used will have an effect the surrounding conditions.
I remember being told in one of my classes how a new skyscraper had been built in Dallas, and how the adjacent building's air conditioning bills went up threefold due to the reflectivity of light across the new building's surface. I think that in a lot of fields, we're so focused on short-term results that we don't take the time to consider the long-term effects of our actions.
One of the major environmental problems facing California is eucalyptus trees. I won't go into the nitty-gritty details, but they are evil for a variety of reasons, amongst which are fire hazards, and the ability to make the surrounding land barren. No species in California feeds on eucalyptus either, which makes it one less potential food supply for wildlife.
Coincidentally, I received a new Sony catalog in the mail today. They've never sent me a catalog before, even though in the recent past, a good percentage of my consumer electronics in my house was manufactured by Sony. Right now, it's much more evenly distributed. Maybe it's because I just filed my taxes a few days ago, but I've been thinking about the value of money, and the ephermeral nature of technology and gadgetry. As long as the technology works, does it matter if you've got the latest, greatest, or most expensive? I say no, of course, but that's the way I've always felt about tech toys and gadgets. For me, a gadget must have utility and purpose. I honestly think this new product line by Sony will ultimately fail.
I have the same model of cellphone as the victim. It's a Nokia 3390. It's one of the older models with a black and white screen. If confronted with a gun, I think I'd give it up in a heartbeat. I'd much rather lose a $20 piece of plastic and circuitry than get shot. I'll also go through the trouble of finding the numbers to input too.
I finally finished filing my taxes yesterday -- I actually started last weekend, but I needed to find some records to file them accurately. I always seem to owe on the California state taxes, but I always manage to get a refund from the government.
Lately it has been feeling like there's more things to do than I have time for.
Maybe it's the gamer in me, but I really feel that comparing online console games with MMOGs on the PC is like comparing apples and oranges. There are some similarities, but aside from having the common feature of "playing them over the internet" (which is a lot like saying apples and oranges are both edible), they are quite different.
The writer of the article makes a major mistake in the telling of this tale, in that he never compares similar things -- the PS2 game he quotes: "SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs", is about as massively multiplayer as "Warcraft 3". The similarity between SOCOM II and Warcraft 3's online experiences mirror each other in that they both:
Persistent world games are games in which the game goes on even when the game player is not present. These are a different variation of massively multiplayer -- instead of one server running multiple copies of the game environment, in a persistent world, usually the game environment spans several servers, and only a small part of the total game 'world' is run on any individual server. The game player's data is stored on a database server for the game. All players are actually in only one game instance. EverQuest, Dark Ages of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies are all examples of persistent world massively multiplayer games.
SOCOM II is clearly not persistent-world, yet persistent-world is what the article compares the console market with. Why didn't the article compare Everquest Online Adventures or Final Fantasy XI, which are two persistent world MMOGs available for the PS2.
In SOCOM II, I can't call up 100 of my closest ingame aquaintences, have them all meet in a in-game location and charge the gates. For most peristent world games, you can do this. The lag will be horrendous, and the game server may crash, but it can be done. It has been, and is done on a regular basis in games like EverQuest and Dark Ages of Camelot.
The article also fails to mention that as of this writing, the Nintendo Gamecube does not have any online capability whatsoever, nor is any planned. The Xbox was the first console to come to market with a network adapter built into the console, but it was the third to try online console gaming (Sega tried two previous attempts, one on the Genesis, and again with a built-in modem on the Dreamcast).
The article also has a nice attempt at armchair game design:
Alan Cates, a 55-year-old Internet marketing consultant and gamer from San Marcos, California, thinks online PC games are better if they appeal to both hardcore and casual players.
"It seems to be a problem for the game designer. What do they do with those that spend 100 hours a week playing the game and those that spend four hours a month?" Cates said.
This is actually not the problem, but rather one of the symptoms of the problem. Appealing to hardcore and casual players is easy -- good game play will do that. The complaint I hear most from casual players is "there's too much to do, and I don't have enough time to play". Casual players still play MMORPGs despite the fact they know that others are spending much more time per week, because they get something out of the game experience in the time that they do spend in the game. People will spend different amounts of time on the game -- it's a given the game designer has to accept. The problem is creating enough to keep players paying (and playing) month after month.
As for appealing to a wider audience, the MMOG market is still young. A game production cycle for these games is anywhere from 3 to 5 years, and the market has been dominated by only a few games (mainly due to cost of production). Until game companies are willing to take the risk of trying non-EQ approaches to MMOG, we will be stuck with a never ending level treadmill as the paradigm for persistent world massively multiplayer.
The also announced some Copernicus Center job positions at their lunar surface research base. Last year they claimed that the reason google worked so well was because of their Pigeon rank technology.
