This started off by a post by Mike Masnick, of TechDirt, on Why the Segway failed. Clearly the Segway and it’s ability to maintain balance through computer programming was a step forward in innovative history. But what happened? The Segway didn’t move forward due to innovation.

I posted Masnick’s article on Twitter (what can I say? I liked it). It spread, like any tweet, and Brandon Kelley picked it up, pointing me to an interview he did with Dean Kamen. The interview, I think, was about innovation…about half way through, they went into a spew how Kamen’s company is innovating, which I feel is slightly off, but on track. They touched briefly on the Segway and Kamen’s feeling on it. Kamen’s point was simple – society needs to change. This simply is incorrect.

The point of innovation is actually adapting technology to the market needs. Insulin pumps clearly had a medical need. However, judging from this description a “big blue brick” clearly did not have a market need. Kamen mistook the insulin pump as a need that people needed to adapt to.  But what actually happened was innovation: the pump changed. It became more practical to use. Today, it’s as simple as a quick shot, which you can hide in your pocket until the time of need. The original need, an insulin pump, never changed. If you attempted to release it again, as a “big blue brick” it would, again, be rejected by society. The market didn’t change. The invention didn’t change. It was innovation that changed the way the invention worked to make it more market savvy.

Innovation isn’t about changing society. It’s about the invention changing to society’s needs. It’s about the invention adapting to become something society will accept, often by becoming more compact/portable or simple more affordable.

Back to the Segway — it was clearly an inventive step forward, but it didn’t meet any market needs. Who needs to pay five grand to stop walking? Who needs to pay five grand to walk 12mph? Motorcycles cost less than the Segway.

The invention — the ability for a computer to self collaborate equilibrium and maintain balance — was an amazing step forward. But the innovation, a wanna-be scooter (?) … an alternate method of walking (?), clearly did not meet any market needs. And so, this is why it didn’t make any headway.

photo credit: freezelight

If you’re here due to spam, it most definitely was not me. I hate when people use my email address and my domain for spam. Unfortunately, There’s nothing I can do about it. /cry

I do not support spam in any way. These spammers just happen to locate some email address that has worked on some mailing list and use that as their “From:” email address with some random name. Due to the design of the SMTP protocol, there isn’t anything I can do about it. So, just delete the email and please, don’t black list me.

photo credit: mr.bologna

I decided to change the theme up a bit. I found this one; not too bad, although I’m not 100% satisfied. I plan to make a few updates here and there to get it just the way I like it.

My biggest peeve is only one post is shown on the front page. I really would like to have at least two, maybe three. I do like the sidebar posts, tagged with my Twitter updates. It makes a perfect spot for those. Not to mention the solid empty bar at top.

I’ve went through so many themes … it was a pain. To be honest, this was the best of them but yet … it’s still not working right. Ugh!

Update: Okay, I think I’ll stick with this one for now. It’s cleaner and easier to grasp. I might, however, change the header mountains graphic one of these days.

photo credit: sindändùne

I’ll be the first to admit, my blog was pretty bland without any pictures or images. I did intentionally build the blog like that to keep the load down, and easier on the browsers, but lets face it: it’s just a page full of text. And like most people, you hate just a page full of text.

To rectify that, I’ve installed a new plugin called Photo Dropper which allows me to pull in photos from Flickr and drop (duh?) them right into me posts. Now, you have something to look at while reading me posts. Yay! I know you’re excited; don’t try to hide it!

A2 Hosting, like many, has a blog as well. They recently posted a list 8 reasons why PHP is better than ASP. This list got my attention purely because this is an actual list from the perspective of a webhosting company, not a developer like myself. And I have to say, I agree with everything on it. I can also validate point 7 from the perspective of a PHP developer. However, since I’ve never done ASP (it’s Windows point – point 4), I cannot comment on the ease of learning ASP.

Summary:

1. PHP is cheaper.
2. PHP is faster.
3. PHP is more compatible (they mean by working on all operating systems).
4. There are no hidden costs (this is soley an web host perspective).
5. PHP is more flexible.
6. Easier to fix bugs in PHP.
7. PHP is easier to learn.
8. PHP is more secure.

I found point 8 pretty interesting. I never ran an IIS server (for ASP): I couldn’t come to that conclusion myself.

( source )

PS: I highly recommend A2 Hosting for anybody that’s looking for a new webhost. And please, tell them gpcentre sent you.

AV is currently designed in a way that gives the Horde an advantage right off the bat. We all know this — I’ve always wondered why we always seem to be behind in resources all the time.

However, the alliance does seem to win a lot. It turns out that Alliance, even across other battlegroups, are using the same strat: take the relief hut immediately. Well, it turns out, talking to some horde people, it’s really fucking up the horde. I mean, they are completely caught off guard, so much so, some of them are starting to boycott AV.  *shocked*

This got me surprised, I got to wondering why they are caught so off guard. The horde has an initial advantage, but yet they can’t cope with the Alliance taking Relief Hut.

So, I look at the AV map, I noticed we have two GYs within Stormpike. Okay, alliance has an advantage there. We are literally a skip away from aid station (our equiv of Relief Hut). When alliance dies, they always res at Stormpike GY because Horde always immediate takes Stoneherth. Then I realized, wait a min: the Horde have the advantage here if played right. I mean, the horde can effectively take out TWO GYs back to back, effectively locking out Alliance from Stormpike — but why aren’t they?

Then I realized, the Horde is always turtling up to the top. They take out the first alliance GY and …. oh …. effectively locks the alliance into Stomepike, IF they don’t get another GY outside of Stormpike soon. Very very interesting …. The horde are actually hurting themselves here. See, by not allowing Alliance outside of Stormpike, they are unable to get into Stormpike…. oh, how the tides are turning here.

Now, the Alliance knows getting a GY outside of Stormpike is key. If they can’t get past Stoneherth, they are effectively dead locked and Horde will eventually win due their initial advantage. Alliance initially kept trying for Stonewall GY (an initially uncontested graveyard), which is the very next gy right outside of the “block”, but have failed as Horde always seems to get that dropped pretty quickly.  So now the Alliance decided to go for the farthest GY, effectively getting around the Horde’s attempt to lock Alliance into Stormpike. Now the Horde is baffled!

Does the Horde not see they are actually hurting themselves now? You have to hand it to Alliance with their ability to kill Drek w/out capping out any towers. That shows some serious strength on the Alliance’s part. Now, if we can learn to communicate!!

Why can’t the Horde figure out they are hurting themselves? Why can’t the horde figure out “if the Alliance is rushing to Relief Hut, why don’t we rush to Aid Station?” Nor do they realize: “Hey, look — Aid Station and Stormpike GY are right next to each other. We can take them BOTH out AT ONCE and effectively locking OUT the Alliance from Stormpike!”

Are the Horde the “unintelligent” ones? This is an interesting thought. We effectively now have a BG that is actually about strategy (although, admittedly some strat negated by zerg), but neither side actually realizes this. I say neither side because eventually the Horde will realize they can lock out the Alliance from Stormpike and the Alliance will start QQ’ing about the proximity of the graveyards. But until then, Alliance — eat up your honor while you can!

You can view the movie trailer on their site: http://www.hazethemovie.com/

First off, can we show that in public schools? Probably not. The government or ESRB would dub it rated R for graphic images and adult content and thus not permitting public schools from showing it. /sigh

Now, the video, I feel, does over dramatize things. Coming from a viewpoint of a parent, you have to expect that. However, it does have some valid points, non-hazing specific.

Kids aren’t being taught well enough, in general, because parents aren’t educated enough. Everybody looks to outside sources to “teach you” when you should be taught to teach yourself. Laws isn’t the answer here. I hope nobody is thinking this. More laws == more abuse. Kids abuse what they cannot have. While living under the rule of the house, they must secretly drink or listen to the law. However, once they leave the eyes of “responsible adults” … lets just say “the mice play.”

I think the real answer here isn’t “stop hazing” but stop the reason why it’s become so popular: kids are having fun doing things they couldn’t otherwise while under the eyes of authority. We shouldn’t add more authority; that only causes more problems. We needs to remove the things that makes these activities to lustful, enjoying. The leading one, they brought up many times, is alcohol abuse. Well, it’s abused because kids learn (*cough* first hand experiences *cough*) how to properly use alcohol. How can they? It’s illegal to drink under the age of 21.

Lets learn from history here. The Prohibition: the government made liquor illegal, even for adults. As Wikipedia says, “Many social problems have been attributed to the Prohibition era” ( source ). To put it frankly, from articles online, things went to hell in a hand basket from alcohol abuse.

This is the same thing is happening with the kids, today. Because they cannot have it, they are unable to learn how to drink responsibly. So, they go to college where they are out side the eyes of the law and authority: they test things out themselves, legal or not. In alcohol’s case, the inhibiting effects often causes misjudgments which can lead to abuse. (I’m trying to be as straight forward here without using misleading statements as “often leads to”).

Lets fix Hazing by fixing what leads into it: drinking. Teach kids to respect alcohol by not making it illegal (*remember*prohibition). Remove the taboo affects. Let kids learn, as they grow up, too much of a good thing == a bad thing. (and yes, drinking is healthy, but only ~one glass a wine a day).

And before anybody brings up “too much drinking can kill you,” too much drinking of water can kill you, too ( more info ). Too much of anything can kill you. Everybody needs that *engraved* into their brains: especially kids.

Please don’t take any of this the wrong way. I’m trying to be as objective as possible, trying to view this from all sides: the kids, authority and parents. You cannot come at this any other way. If you feel I’ve misrepresented anything, leave a comment, let me know. I love a good discussion.

My step-mother forwarded me this video. It looks to be a commercial to educate the people the dangers of putting water on a grease fire and what to do / not to do in the event of a grease fire. The email also gives a nice story of an example giving at the Charleston Navy base:

 At Charleston Navy base at the Fire Fighting Training school they demonstrate this with a deep fat fryer set on the fire field.  An instructor would don a fire suit and using an 8 oz cup at the end of a 10-foot pole toss water onto the grease fire.  The results got the attention of the students.  The water, being heavier than the oil, sinks to the bottom where it instantly becomes superheated.  The explosive force of the steam blows the burning oil up and out.  On the open field, it became a thirty-foot high fireball that resembles a nuclear blast.

This is definitely common knowledge, or at least I hope it is! However, I do think it’s worth repeating: Do not use water on a grease fire!

The email also gave another interesting note, which I personally didn’t know:

Also do not throw sugar or flour on a grease fire.  One cup creates the explosive force of two sticks of dynamite.

And the commercial, of course:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBDqwOQiZn4[/youtube]