Here is something to think about next time you say: "Just my luck!"

According to the Fox News website a plane crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York. There were forty-nine people on the plane and one person on the ground who died, there were no survivors, bringing the total to an even fifty. I mean this not in an attempt at any kind of humor, but it just goes to show you can never be too safe, or have an assurance of your next breath. My next point is that New York seems to be having trouble with planes here lately. This just goes to show that life while at times seems completely random, and at other times it sneaks up on you and slaps you in the face as if to say, "There is something more here. Wake up!" One thing I am for sure on life is strange.

More about Apple.

In my last post I went a little over the edge against Apple, for which I apologize. In truth I'm primarily neutral when it comes to Apple, since I have limited experience with Apple products. My primary problem with Apple is simple I prefer people to be humble and Steve Jobs is far from that, I could go more in depth and persuade you to realize the why of my dislike of some the things Steve Jobs has said and done; however my primary reason for this blog is objectivity so i will try and leave that off.
Steve Jobs, I can safely say, is a genius, who has been involved in many of the technological advancements in the past twenty-five to thirty-five years, give or take. The man has come up with so many ingenuous designs that it is unbelievable, however a lot of the the technologies he has not invented himself. One of Steve Jobs' talents is taking technology that exists and merely inventing a new product which combines different technologies that already exists, i.e. the I-Phone, and the I-Pod. The truth is technology today would not exist in the way we have it if Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, and others like them had not done what they had done so many years ago.
As for my problems with Apple technology I only have one, and that problem has to do with I-Tunes. My problem with I-Tunes is a personal problem to me Windows Media Player works better looks better and it puts the labels, names, and artists from my Cd's if i connect to the internet.

What is a patent worth?

I had heard the other day that Apple had gotten a patent on the I-Phone which i have no problem with, seeing how if I invented something I would wanted to be protected too; but what I heard chilled me to the bone. According to the first reports I heard Apple owned ALL touchscreen tech, this is not true and could not be, but I did decide to research it, this is what took me so long to do this post, after all goverment runs about as well as a car trying to fly, one fresh from the junkyard at that. What I have found is confusing, at best, on one side of the Internet you have the priests of Apple, who come daily to the shrine, and on the other you have those which would rather smash the Mac then look at it. Their is a great divide between these two parties as you can tell, and I fall nearly on the line of the smashers. I will try to be objective and professional in my assesment of what might possibly be one the greatest lawsuits of the decade.
The reason I believe this may become a debacle is because even before the I-Phone was patented their were patent lawsuits flying. One such reason I found comes from http://excelusergroup.orgwww.techdirt.com/articles/20071203/191306.shtml in this article it is discussing how even though the I-Phone was filing for at least 200 patents; it's greatest innovation was that it combines multiple technologies, many of which were patented and being used without permission. Another issue I take with this patent is from http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/07/03.9.shtml here it is discuusing human movement being patented, this is a new breed of Ego-centric thinking for even Steve Jobs, perhaps next it will be us that he patents, or more likely the English language. This sound like a joke to me, for like when the Australian patent lawyer managed to patent the wheel in order to test the new patent laws.
In all fairness I have no problem with the I-Phone at all, but based on what I've heard so far the patent is questionable; my personal dislike of Steve Jobs aside, due to his ego, the true problem with the patent is as according to one analyst the true patent may not even belong to Apple in the end. What did I just say, all of my unprofessional attitude was for naught, it seems that the man who had a major hand in invent the patented technology, who is not on the patent by the way, was awarded many of his patents during the development of many of these technologies while at the University of Delaware; this may mean that the University may actually own the technology.
This post as primarily been a rant over the rumors and speculation on the web about the I-Phone patent, but i would like to wrap it up with what all of this junk is most likely really about. I agree with the analyst mentioned earlier, Apple is trying to slow Windows development of touchscreen use in their Windows products, namely the upcoming Windows 7. Apple knows that patents only last so long and that if they have any real chance at retaking the PC market they will have to develop something which Windows does not have, like a highly advanced touchscreen interface. The answer to the title of this post is one word, time; and if Steve Jobs health continues to decline, which I personally hope it does not, may be very little time left for him to see Apple retake the PC market.

This will make you think twice......

This will make you think twice the next time you use your cellphone or put it in your pocket. A man in China died January 30th of this year from an apparent cellphone explosion, that is still under investigation. According to reports the man had just put a battery, he had been charging, into his cellphone and placed into his pocket. You can read the rest of the story at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487135,00.html.
I am in no way suggesting that cellphones are dangerous; what I am saying is that you never know whats gonna happen. I will tell you that I do not subscribe to the idea that cellphones cause cancer; so please do not write much into this. I am talking about this because it is something you do not hear everyday, as well as tragedy, and I wanted to discuss what may have caused this tragedy. I personally think that it is due to substandard construction of the battery resulting in a battery that was literally a bomb. Anyone have any ideas or comments?

Proof that Hebert is right.......

Proof that Hebert is right is in this email I received today:

Mr. Jones—

Your post regarding a bug on the homepage at http://www.swtor.com/ was brought to my attention the other day, and I wanted to see if I could get some more information about this problem. In truth, this is the only report of the issue happening that I’ve seen and I’d like to determine if there is a specific cause for the problem that may be specific to your setup. Can you provide your browser/OS/Flash version configuration?

For what it’s worth, we’ve recently updated the homepage to scale back on some of the heavier Flash and I’d be surprised if the problem you were encountering is still occurring as of this morning… but I would like to have our Flash dev go back and determine what was going wrong in your case so that we can ensure we’re testing appropriately in the future. As we’re preparing for the launch of a AAA online game, our publishing pipeline and QA routines need to be top-notch… and while we’ve got a good deal of process and safeguards in place, issues like the one you experienced show that we may have a few kinks to work out. Any info you can provide on this issue would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your help!

-eric

____________________________

Eric Moser

Web Producer | BioWare, Austin

I have removed the email address, out of common courtesy, but it is clear proof that Hebert was right about being careful what you put on the Internet. I guess this was in response to my post on January 30th; either somebody reported this or these guys are extremely good at what they do.

This to me is an example of the professionalism which must be adopted in order to better improve our websites. This is proof that you never know who is watching, so be wary what you do online as you never know who is watching.

By the way for those of you who do not know Hebert is the teacher for who's class I started this blog for.