November 2001 was a historic month. Two major consoles were being released within three days of each other. I remember the hubbub when it was announced that Nintendo moved the release date days before the Xbox. Microsoft then responded by moving the Xbox’s release up as well.

Now we all know that history tends to repeat itself. Huge announcements like new consoles or new games are usually made at trade shows, like Nintendo’s Spaceworld in Tokyo or E3. This time around, Microsoft decided to buck this tradition and announce the existence of the new Xbox (rumored to be dubbed the Xbox 360) on MTV on May 16 at 6PM PST.

Not wanting to be outdone by this unexpected move, Sony has announced that it will be unveiling the Playstation 3 a mere three hours earlier. Surely, Microsoft is quaking in awe and fear.

Speaking of Sony, it seems that they finally released an MP3 player that actually plays MP3s! Of course, they just couldn’t get their grubby little hands off of it and had to slap on some form of DRM. Hilariously, BoingBoing has a post about how within weeks, some guy has managed to break it. Sony, get on it and make a driver for my Net MD that doesn’t need 1098572 hours to encode to ATRAC. Will you never learn?

Google Sightseeing – Why bother seeing the world for real?

This blog is a fairly ingenious (in the ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ way) way of using the new satellite feature at Google Maps. Sure, it’s not real life, but it is fairly close and it is a unique perspective of the many landmarks featured. Of course, this is limited to North America (also known as the US and Canada) since Google Maps only has their non-satellite maps extend that far. Once Google gets the whole world on here, it’ll be even more interesting than it already is.

Piercing the Peer-to-Peer Myths
An examination of the Canadian experience.

This is an excellent analysis of the Canadian Recording Industry Association’s (CRIA) claims that P2P music downloads have resulted in lost profits and that it has harmed Canadian artists. The CRIA is lobbying for stronger copyright protection in Canada, since it is legal to share music here at the moment. Using the CRIA’s sales figures, the author, Micheal Geist, demonstrates that each of the CRIA’s claims are nothing more than myths.

And here is an (unrelated) interesting little tidbit from Google.

Or not.

First, it was the muppet with AIDS. And now this. Cookie Monster not eating as many cookies. WTF? Isn’t there a reason why he’s called the bloody Cookie Monster? Does it have something to do with voraciously devouring cookies, in the fashion of a monster? Maybe it’s because he can’t fight that insatiable hunger for cookie flesh? Aren’t parents supposed to be able to control their children’s insatiable hunger for cookie flesh? Yes, so stop ruining the Cookie Monster and feed your kids some real food.

This was originally posted on Feb. 28/05 on my LiveJournal. Since I don’t like LiveJournal that much and I want to use this blog as much as possible, I thought that I should post it here since I like this post so much.

I don’t think I’m going to do well on the CCC tomorrow. Why? Unpreparedness. I’ve only had about 2-3 months of experience in C, and in class time that really means about a week or two. It’s sad, but I have so many other things to do that I can only really concentrate in a class, which is okay, other than the lack of stuff to do once I’m done in like thirty seconds.

Which brings me to the problem. West Hill’s way of teaching computer science is absolute tripe. Basically, from grade 10-12, there are three CS courses. The department’s philosophy here is that more languages = better. That is a load of BS. Basically, they’re teaching you the same basics in different languages. You’ve got your variables, loops, conditionals, functions, I/O, etc. Now then, they not only teach it over to you, which in itself is not that bad (review and stuff), but they spend the ENTIRE YEAR on it. Basically, it’s review the entire time. In effect, students become jacks of all trades, but masters of none. We aren’t spending enough time on NEW material.

Allow me to illustrate our year, in a lovely little calendar.

Even if we are doing new languages, we shouldn’t really need to be reminded what a for loop does. Everyone (if they weren’t failing) should be able to figure out syntax to new languages and use it. Hell, I don’t even know Visual Basic and I can figure VB code faster than 90% of the others can. Why? Because fundamentally, it’s all the same. It takes too long to ‘review’ so we never get to the advanced material and write stuff that we’ll actually use. That’s the problem with these courses. There is way too much theory review and not enough practical work. Programming theoretical math problems is not practical work. Practical work in CS is not trivial as in you’ll actually use it! Games are not practical unless you’re bulding something that you will want to play. Writing a program to solve roots is not practical work. Creating programs to calculate how much pizza will cost is not practical work.

This is why computer science is so garbage in its current state. Those who need to learn from it aren’t and those who aren’t interested are catered to. The expression “same sh**, different pile” describes exactly what we’re learning right now.

Oh this is going to screw up my chances for softeng at UW bigtime.