Top IT News Stories of 2007

1.) The iPhone
2.) Halo 3
3.) Commercial Quad-Core Processors
4.) Jack Thompson
5.) Lady getting sued by the RIAA for $220,000
6.) Darpa Challenge
7.) New iPod's
8.) New Zune's

Theremin and Military Robot

The Theremin is a very cool device. I like how it seems like you don't really need to know how to play it in order to play it. Another cool thing about it is how it doesn't have any speakers. At least no visible speakers. The suite the military is designing and plan on using seems like it could possibly be one of the best things they have worked on to keep our soldiers safer. It's cool how it can make the soldier not tired when he/she is using the suite while lifting heavy objects. It would be cool for when they can offer these suites to the public and when they perfect them for military use.

The Age of Spiratual Machines

I think that what Ray Kurzweil said in his book about the upcoming years with machines and their intelligence is true. I believe that the day that there is no keyboard or mouse is very likely and possible. SOme of the things he talked about may not happen for a while though. Such as microscopic war-fare. But he did say that this would probably happen near the year 2029 so I guess it could be possible by then, give or take a few more years. But I do think that we will see huge advancedments in micro or nano warfare .

How Much Does Music Cost?

Music probably shouldn't be completely free because music artists do put a lot of time and effort into it. They also have to spend their money to get their music recorded and produced. That's why I think music shouldn't be completely free. But I do think that you can make music cheaper than what it is right now. Music could be free based on what the artist thinks but music is defiantly not worth .99 cents a song on iTunes. They should cut the prices at least in half, that way the companies could make more money because more people would be willing to pay that much money for a song or a CD.

Pole Shift

A pole shift is probably possible but it sounds kinda unlikely to happen anytime soon. From what I learned it sounds like it will not be happening for another few hundred years. But I still don't really understand this subject yet so I don't know if I'm right. If it happens when I'm still alive I'd be very surprised.

November 6th/7th

Network neutrality (equivalently "net neutrality", "Internet neutrality" or "NN") refers to a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. Precise definitions vary, but a broadband network free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached and the modes of communication allowed, and where communication was not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams would be considered neutral by most advocates.

- Wikipedia

We should be concerned about Net Neutrality because companies, such as Comcast and AT&T, are planning on making it so that if the owners and operators of websites want to make their websites even faster, they have to pay the Internet Providers a huge sum of money. But the only way for consumers to get access to these faster versions of the websites is to pay a lot more money for these sites. By doing this, it breaks Net Neutrality and makes it so that not everyone is equal on the internet.

November 5th Blog

DARPA Urban Challenge winners

1st Place - Tartan Racing, Pittsburgh, PA

2nd Place - Stanford Racing Team, Stanford, CA

3rd Place - Victor Tango, Blacksburg, VA

The winning vehicle was a GM and some of the sponsors were technology base companies such as Google and Intel.

Glam vs. Geek?

This article was interesting on how they compared the two websites and how myspace.com was more of a Hollywood or Glam, as they call it, type of website compared to facebook.com being more silicon valley, or more Geek oriented.

Facebook-ing Philanthropy

I liked this article because it talked more about how Facebook has grown as a company and how the sites "Causes" application has helped out many foundations such as Support the Campaign for Breast Cancer Research