The End of the World
Recently there were
talks that August 22nd Marked the end of the world in some Islamic cultures. August 22nd is regarded in the Islamic calendar as a day of reckoning for Shiites.
Rumors by intelligence experts marked the date as a possibility that the London plotters would blow-up passenger planes headed towards the United States, though it is not known if the suspects were Shiite extremists.
August 22nd became known as doomsday, though no doomed in this planet happened as I'm still writing this days after. However, it makes me wonder if the reference was more now towards the doom of a planet. Today, it was confirmed that a planet ceased to exist.
Due to the new definition of a planet, as stated by the
International Astronomical Union, Pluto now ceases to be a planet.
Definition of a planet:
A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Farewell Planet Puto, hello celestial body Pluto.
Planes, Trains, and Hijacks
With all the talks of hijacking and terrorist threats made to airports, airlines, and travel, it occurred to me that it would be really easy with today's technology to stop the madness.
Since what terrorist have done in the past is hijack airplanes, I think it would be extremely easy to stop them from doing this in the future, simply use today's biometric technology in combination with speech technology to authenticate the pilot of a plane. Even a simple pin base technology can stop terrorists from taking over a plane. Simply require that pilots enable the auto-pilot systems of a plane to take over at the moment they fear that a plane might be in jeopardy and it would simply require that a pin, fingerprint, or voice activation or combination thereof be entered to take over the auto-pilot.
The bottom line is that governments alarm the public way too much by raising and/or lowering the security alert system when in reality the general public has no idea what all these levels really mean. If they need to make any changes then they really need to only notified the people maintaining the ordered. With some
simple technology and common sense we can start actually fighting terrorism and stop wasting taxpayer dollars.
Is Hollywood Giving Up
It seems that the Hollywood community is releasing, and making it easier, for people to burn downloaded movies to DVDs. The Hollywood Community comprised of many of Hollywood Movie Studios had created a Content Scramble System known as CSS which provided the technology to secure DVDs.
CSS is currently licenses to manufacturers of DVD players and other electronics companies and it is widely applied to movies on DVDs thereby restricting illegal copying of the movies.
Since Hollywood started testing and experimenting with digital downloadable versions of the movies, they have stated that they will soon expand the CSS licensing to movies that are digitally distributed via cable systems on demand. Hollywood will also in turn start working with disc makers to produce CSS-compatible blank DVDs.
The bottom line is that Hollywood has seen the light and reached into their crystal ball to predict the future of the industry. With current movie theater prices reaching well above $10 a ticket, they are seeing the death of the theater, and reaching out to those with home theaters in place. Some speculate kiosk appearing, similar to those seeing in supermarkets today that allow video rental for a small price, where the same or similar nominal fee will allow the general public to burn a CSS encoded DVD on the spot. It seems that hackers have prevail!
Misuses of the Internet
When the government first created an Internet, they created it with communications and sharing of information in mind. The Internet refers to a group of networks interconnected together, while the Web is defined as a collection of interconnected documents linked by URLs and Hyperlinks. The Web is reachable by connecting your computer to the Internet.
Today's youth has lost track of what the Internet and the Web were created for, they have given it a different meaning, it seems that today's youth is only interested in fun and entertainment. It is no wonder that the Web is currently 98% pornography, 1% games, and 1% informational.
With that in mind, today I
read a story about a group of teenagers who have decided it will be fun to jump in front of moving cars to record drivers reactions as they desperately seek to evade smashing this morons to pieces. When did people become so dumb that they have seem to run out of ideas for entertainment. When I was growing we dedicated ourselves to playing sports and going down to the local Arcade playroom to see the new innovation, Pacman and Space Invaders. Soon after Nintendo jumped into the consumer market and well with that came a generation of couch potatoes, but that's a topic for another time.
The bottom line is that if we don't take care of the Web, pretty soon, we will end up back to square one, playing soccer, football, baseball, or simply practicing your favorite past time, as we will run of room and the Web will become but a source of junk and garbage which we will ignore. After all, you wouldn't allow Playboy, Penthouse, or any other Adult Entertainment publication into a Library, so why are we cluttering this free source of information with it, along with all this nonsense and ignorant behavior?
New Kid in Town
This weekend my sister brought yet another addition to our family. I'm very happy for her. Kids are great, as long as they are not yours that is. I had a great time playing with my older nephew who is now two and not very excited to get a brother as he looses all the attention. However, I suspect he will be extremely happy in a year or two when he has someone to play with.
All this reminds me that Microsoft is gearing up to add another member to its Windows family. Vista is currently undergoing hacking test as Microsoft seems to finally have gotten their security down sinc eit opened Vista up to hackers to test. This is a bold move on Microsoft as previous versions of Windows have been so easily hacked.
The bottom line is that Microsoft seems to have finally taken their time instead of jumping the release gun and is actually running a lot of test to ensure the security and privacy of the Operating Sytem. You can read more about this story by
clicking here
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