Archive for the ‘society’ Category
Male home fertility test – Future of technology?
I have just read a piece from Engadget, about fertility screening for men.
It is quite interesting about the trend where technology is going these days: more intelligent devices are being invented, more human synthesizing devices are being produced. In the recent Singularity Summit in Stanford University, the topic of Singularity is being widely discussed.
Ray Kurzweil put the meaning of Singularity in this way:
What, then, is the singularity? It’s a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.
I am not sure if we are in the era where human life will be irreversibly transformed by the rapid change of technologies, but I am quite certain in the Internet technology area, the concepts of Rich Internet Application and Web 2.0 have brought forth many technological changes that irreversibly changed the Internet life. AJAX, Flash and Apollo, Silverlight, Shockwave, Blog, Social Media Applications.
Since the announcement of Microsoft Surface, the company has advanced to produce a Smart Kitchen, which I think will gradually change people’ perception from “what technology could not do” to “do I want this place be equipped with technology as such and such?”
To end this post, let’s watch a keynote from Microsoft TechEd 07.
Bill Gates dating with Macintosh
(Update:Done!)
At the D5 conference by Wall Street Journal, Steve Jobs met Bill Gates again, talking about their business of past, now and future.
Bill Gates’ dating with Macintosh over the years (A Must Watch) = [Prologue]
[First Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
I found it very interesting how these two great minds cooperated in the business in the past, e.g. Microsoft bet on Apple II computer to sell off software like BASIC. How $31,000 was spent in the earlier year of Apple Inc. to get Bill and his team down to write a floating point enabled BASIC system.
Apple is like a ship, with a hole in the bottom, leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed at right direction. – Steve Jobs
That’s okay.- Bill Gates, doing a gesture that points downwards to the ground.
[Second Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
Steve Jobs mentioned at the early stage, in his customer base, most people still believed that for Apple to win, Microsoft had to lose. Microsoft was at at time the biggest software developer for Apple outside Apple.
Kara Swisher said she loved the PC guy totally for he was enduring.
The art of those commercials is not to be mean, but for the guys to like each other. PC guys are great. – Steve Jobs
They love the fact that Apple has created a gigantic market, and they are trying to come in and contribute something to that. – Bill Gates
Software for XBOX 360 was actually written on Macs. I now realize why the graphics on XBOX360 are so wonderful. When Microsoft switched to PowerPC chip, Apple switched away.
Steve Jobs said “Apple views itself as a software company. iPod is about software – iTunes, Mac is about software, OSX and iPhone is hope to be about software”
Bill mentioned that partnership was important, he exemplified that by the robot software that was running in each tiny robots (built by Microsoft)
[Third Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
“…we tend to look forward… let’s stop looking backwards here, it’s all about what happens tomorrow…let’s go and invent tomorrow”
“There are … young people … building companies, who want to build companies, … not just selling it out to … big guys”
Google Maps on iPhone is far superior than that on the desktop client, a rich client.
“… The marriage of some great client apps with some great cloud services in incredible powerful…”
- Steve Jobs
Bill would carry a tablet PC, Steve would carry an iPhone and a Mac Book Pro in 5 years. to rely the most.
[Fourth Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
“Isn’t it funny that ship leaks from the top?” -Steve Jobs on the description of his 20s
Steve believes that the most interesting things on the Internet are services “that make people’s life better.”
Bill Gates has a different view of a ecosystem that builds on each to make things happen.
Both agrees on partnership is important, but they have different approaches. Partnering with people do things better than you, like Google is Apple’s approach. Building a ecosystem so that people can partner with Microsoft is Bill’s thinking.
[Fifth Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
In the current Hollywood business, people are watching how the music industry is doing. Apple created iTunes to meet the need of “Legal Business of Internet Music”. While Bill stresses on the fact of educational communities through XBOX Live is the trend, where people could navigate easily on the platform. (?)
Steve Jobs believes the radical change of the user interface from the time of Xerox will happen more on the Post-PC devices like iPhones. Bill thinks people are so getting used to the current interface, it is hard for them to change.
[Sixth Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
“…I actually kind of miss some of the people that are not around any more. People come and go in this industry. It’s nice for someone to stick around…Take the risk to bring something new – Bill Gates on Steve Jobs”
“You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches ahead, that’s clearly true here. Steve Jobs on Bill Gates”
They got a standing ovation!
[Seventh Part of The Video, Click to Watch]
Q1. What to say to the next President?
Education, Energy, Stability
Q2. Diversity or Convergence?
Min: Apple and Microsoft. Market lets the company come and go and come back again.
Q3. Legacies?
Bill: Personal Computer. The magic software.
Steve: We found we loved to do,..and do we love doing.
Q4. Internet Media Business
The ones are successful love what they do when the environment gets really tough, those who weren’t quit, for they are sane.
An intelligent team, you need great people!
Q5. What to learn from each other:
Bill: Taste
Steve: Partnership
Q6. Any generation concern?
Steve: Seniors buying Mac with video camera to communicate, Apple is training the seniors to learn
Bill: Surface computing makes more sense to the CEOs
Q7. Any new communication tool?
Transporter? Can’t imagine.
NEXUS 2007 Video is OUT!
Nexus 2007 is one of the biggest event held by The Digital Movement so far. There are many interesting talks by people like Nathan Torkington, James Seng, Kelvin Lim. Yon hear them talking form the link above if prefer not seeing these people’s faces.
So here we brings you a series of video archives of what happened on that day, hope you enjoy it! (I spent 3 weeks’ time working on the videos: capturing the videos from the poor DVDs and DV tapes, editing them in Edius Pro and Avisynth. Editing video is really a tough job especially if you aim for higher video quality and smaller file size.)
I have several other tape that have not been edited and compressed yet, for example, the GeekOut recoding, and some interviews done by TDM crew members (**REALLY REALLY bad audio quality** Any suggestions?). How many of you out there are interested in them?
New Female Presidents in NUS
- Tay E Teng NUSSU President
- Cynthia D/O Mark R Mohan Computing Club President
More to Count? This is really something surprising to me. Girls work better together, don’t they? 
A New Semester
After struggling for such a long time, pursuing the goal of our hall play – Romeo loves Juliet, involving in the junior orientation program, participating in the hall activities, I could finally have some peace and time to settle down in front of my computer to write down my thoughts and ideas.
When I was in hall, talking with my friend about running 4X400 rely, I had wanted to say that “I am longing to run for hall!”. But I gulped the words back, lying that “I had some problem with my ankle. I sometimes find myself quite abnormal, I would rather not to put in effort than spending some time doing a hard task. I would say something totally out of my mind’s will.
In the afternoon I had a good time with juniors, holding an English corner for them.
