For everything from family to computers…
Now we are talking!! Innovative and (relatively) inexpensive way to increase fuel efficiency and cut CO2 emissions?! Sign me up!!
According to this startup company called Transonic Combustion, they created a way to make conventional engines at least 50% more fuel efficient!! Sign me up!!
No, I am not talking about cars… though it is something I can easily talk about. I am referring to the “Gifted & Talented” program. One of our kids, I won’t mention who, has been nominated and admitted into the GT program. I for one am not so sure about it though… especially in regards to long-term perspective.
Sure it allows advanced or fast-learning kids to not get bored by giving them more stuff… but I see more drawbacks than anything else… Let me explain. First of all, smart people are easily anti-social and tend to not work well with people… especially those that they don’t consider as intelligent. Second of all, smart people don’t understand how the world turns. On the daily level. Intelligent people tend to get isolated from what normal average people feel and experience.
Ok, so you may think that I am exaggerating things and stereotyping people a bit. And that is true but so far, I haven’t been proved wrong. I worry that GT program would isolate the child even further than necessary from regular people and how things turn around daily… If you recall, I have said over and over that I’d trade smart kids for sociable ones on any given day! Smart kids tend to think better of themselves. My wife’s friend’s child is showing such symptoms, as well as co-worker’s son. I am not saying that all smart people are evil. But it sure seems easy to become so…
If this world is to become a better place, we need people who can tolerate others and work with others. Together. Not a bunch of smart self-reliant people. Take that as my 2 cents… If humility can be in co-existence though… then it can save the intelligent.
I spoke with a friend from the past couple of weeks ago. Won and I go back some 15 years but he’s not your typical sociable person or does he keep in touch even though we are great friends. In our conversation, we spoke about some deep stuff. You see, if you know Won, you know that he doesn’t like to deali-dally in the conversations. He likes to get down to the important stuff.
In our conversation, he complained about how he felt so fake at a church’s small group asking about what he does for a living and what school he graduated from, only to have them change from “oh” to “oooh” after learning his school credentials (you see, my friend graduated from Harvard MBA program). As proud as I am of him for being so smart, it does irritate me when he complained that it’s hard to “go beyond the surface”. He wants to be able to develop relationships on a deper level beyond the tip of the iceberg.
I think we all want that. However, as I had told my friend, unless you have the teleporting capability, we all have to go through the tip of the iceberg or the surface (the 10% of the iceberg) if we are to see the iceberg in its entirety. Quanity must come if we are to seek quality. As dull and annoying as it is, we all must go through the “10% of the iceberg” (aka. the tip), if we are to establish anything signficant in terms of relationships.
Of course, he was annoyed because he knew that I was right. After this conversation, I realized how important that point is, and how I must keep at it, even if it means asking the dreadful questions like “how is your week?” or “anything new?”
Taking that one step even further, if we are to develop meaningful relationship with God, we must spend much time with Him in the Bible reading and praying, even if it seems repetitious and boring a lot of times. While qaulity is superior to quantity, you cannot obtain quality without quantity.
It’s not common to see myself in a magazine, let alone a work related one! So I was very happy and nervous to hear that our group would be featured in the Boeing Frontiers Magazine! Here’s our direct link to the page, third story on IDS page. If you want the entire magazine, we are on page 38! 😀 Yours truly is on the right side and my manager is on the left side.
If you haven’t been watching news lately, Toyota has announced the biggest, if not one of the biggest, recalls on vehicles… EVER! Evidently it’s a pedal that seems to get stuck. It has already claimed lives… and its luxury sibling, Lexus isn’t immune to this defect either.
Picture courtesy of NY Times
According to the NY Times article, four people died in a tragic accident that shouldn’t have happened in last August in a Lexus ES 350! How the hell does this kind of stuff happen?! Well, from my sociology class from yonder years in college at WPI, I am reminded of the ethics falling behind the curtains of schedules and costs. Ford & GM had similar safety issues but with gas fuel tanks in the ’60s and the ’70s.
Back then, I thought Ford and GM had made one of the worst choices by choosing not to recall the cars and leave it to statistics and chance and paying out lawsuits rather than spending millions in repairing the dangerous defects. I still hesitate because such an inherently terrible oversight makes a consumer think twice and buying such product. Only recently (since 2005) have I actually thought that Ford has come a long way and made the cars actually decent and safe. So in essence, it has taken about 30 to 40 years to erase the reputation damage that were burned into the minds of the consumers.
So I was rather shocked and disappointed to find out that Toyota has been so slow in doing something about this recall and dealing with its defects! It applies to millions of cars including the best-selling Camry! When you choose money over people, you are telling the consumers that you don’t care about us and only care about money. Well, that will always be true to certain degree because of the nature of for-profit companies. However, if you look at things in long-term perspective, you think Toyota would have learned from the lessons of Ford and GM. Come on! Toyota is repeating history!
Today’s headline in Business Weekly shows that their decision to recall and repair was too slow. Trying to hide it or ignore it (or whatever they call it) is definitely the worst business AND ethical decision they have made EVER!!!
I will say this… Toyota, welcome to my black list. I will buy your cars in maybe 30 years or so… when that terrible stigma of poor decision making process wears off from me, your typical consumer. Sheesh… Just the picture of this Pinto makes me shriek and reminds me of some of the terrible decisions made from the past…
Courtesy of Motherjones.com
UPDATE: Now, though fixed somewhat more or less, 2010 Prius have had some brake issues as Toyota admits its problems. Like I said in the last comment, Toyota is at best becoming like Sony, just big in its head and riding on its popularity.
UPDATE 2: This lady was driving a ’07 Tundra pickup….
Anyone that follows computer and tech industry should’ve heard about Broadcom’s mini-PCI-E based HD decoder called Crystal HD last year. I decided to try it out. I mean, how can you say no to HD hardware-decoding for $20?! My Acer Aspire One netbook has been great except in that department. If I threw anything 720p or higher, it played like a slow slideshow! Currently, only HP offers this Crystal HD decoder as an option in a netbook, HP Mini 110 as a $35 option.
So I got one off eBay for $24 or so and decided to find out for myself if this really does wonders! Before you proceed, since you won’t have Internet for a bit, download latest Crystal HD drivers (ver. 3.1.0 as of this writing) and drivers for your WLAN USB adapter (for Airlink AWLL607, get it from here)
1. First thing first, I had to take the netbook apart. Youtube is awesome for that.
This Youtube video above shows you how to take apart the Acer Aspire One to upgrade memory. You don’t have to go through all the way to the end, but just to get to the WLAN mini-PCIE adapter.
2. Remove power connectors to WLAN adapter and replace it with the Broadcom’s Crystal HD decoder. This means that you won’t have WLAN. I got a mini-WLAN USB adapter for $16 (Airlink101 Wireless 11N) from Meritline. Close it up.
3. Upon closing it up and booting, once you are in Windows (I have XP Home on the netbook), it will ask to install drivers for the Crystal HD. Click Cancel! Install the drivers via the setup msi file.
4. (Optional) Install WLAN USB adapter like I did with Airlink 101.
5. I have been using CCCP codec pack so it uses Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition and Crystal HD supports that! Also GOM player, KM Player, Windows Media Player 12, Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre, Cyberlink PowerDVD, and Adobe Flash 10.1 are supported! Also, on that Broacom’s driver page, Linux drivers are listed and supported.
Performance
Did it work?!! Heck yeah! For 95+% of the time, it played things just fine. That 5% of slight delay/skip may be due to the fact that I was playing the HD files off another PC on my network (and not on the netbook itself). Airlink101 did drop signals couple of times over the past two days so you get what you paid for but I am happy with it overall. I didn’t have any 1080p source files to play but all my 720p videos played just fine. Just don’t forget that you do have to configure your softwares to use hardware-decoding.
Summary
For any video watcher out there that wants portability at its best, this is a no brainer! Sure you may lose your PCI-E WLAN card (some like Samsung has second available mini PCI-E slot), but for video enthusiasts like myself, it’s all worth it! Note however, that the palm rest area on the right side (where the Crystal HD lies underneath) gets really hot when it is working… but I won’t be typing when I am watching HD video so I don’t see this as an issue…
EDIT: It seems that newer Media Player has to be installed and/or re-configure it as instructed here.