You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
Throughout our class this semester we have discussed a number of issues involving video games, some of which include: whether video game violence translates to real world violence, rather shooting people or assaulting them with the avatar you control is wrong or whether or not the line becomes blurred between video games and real life because of all the new technology making video games more realistic.I have a firm belief in the saying “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” I believe that this line of thinking goes along well with the idea of video game usage affects people’s real world decisions.People who begin to show signs of a blurred line between their video game usage and their real lives likely have some type of problem to start with, people just might not have recognized it before the person played certain games. I have played a number of video games in my life, some in which I fight people, some in which I kill people, some in which I drive really fast and run other drivers off of the road and some where I kill as many animals as possible, all for fun.I think that I have a fairly normal psyche and none of these games have affected me. If one has a sturdy mental makeup, then I don’t feel as though video games do anything with the exception of giving them something to do between classes. I believe that USUALLY, only those who are not fully clicking mentally for one reason or another have problems seeing the distinctly bold line that separates video games and real life.
It is believed by sources affiliated with www.macrumors.com that a new Macbook will be released sometime in 2008. Apple has apparently created a notebook that will have increased startup speed and will be significantly lighter and thinner, though otherwise similar in size to its current 15″ Macbook. This innovation raises a question for me. When will this phenomenon stop, or will it? It seems like notebooks are consistently getting thinner and lighter, but at some point there will be no thinner they can go. Laptops can only get so thin before they are either too fragile to use regularly or are too thin for their components.This makes me wonder if items like the new iPhone are going to forever change the landscape of this market. I wonder if laptops in the form they are in now will be non-existent in 20 years, or if they will decide to keep them a similar size, but instead try to upgrade all of their components. For example, at five pounds the weight of a 15″ MacBook Pro is entirely workable. Instead of trying to make it any lighter, wouldn’t it make more sense to instead work to upgrade processor speed, battery life and screen resolution? I personally would not want a computer that is any smaller, but I would welcome one with a 20 hour battery life and a processor speed that loads all applications in a snap. I think that this topic goes along well with what we talked about earlier in the semester regarding companies constantly trying to one-up one another rather than to sit back and think about how what we already have could be made more efficient. If the focus is always on smaller and lighter, when will we ever have the time to devote to gaining substantial jumps in performance and programming? Could the following ad be true?
Hello, my name is Matt, and I love Bluetooth. Part of the reason that it has always drawn me could be that my favorite color is blue, or it could be that I love the flexibility it gives me to transfer files, to sync my calendar or to upload my call list from my cell phone to my Bluetooth-equipped GPS. These are the three areas in which I use my GPS the most. First, I love transferring files from my computer to another bluetooth-equipped computer when no Internet access is available or when transferring a 180 MB video file is simply impossible through E-mail. Secondly, I use my bluetooth to sync my cell phone contact list and calendar to my contact list and calendar on my computer. This ensures me not only that I’ll have the same contacts and calendar entries in both location, but it also guarantees me that I have a backup if one of the two happens to be lost. Finally, I love being able to use bluetooth to sync my cell phone to my car GPS. My cell phone sends my contact list to my GPS which sends a signal to my bluetooth-equipped car. The person on the other end of the line then can be heard through my car speakers.Bluetooth just makes my life easier. If anyone actually reads this, let me know what you think about this innovative and helpful technology.
There are some things in life that we take for granted without even realizing it. These things can be the most trivial things or the most important ones. Two things that I now realize that I have taken for granted for the amount of time that I’ve owned them are my Battery and my power cord for my laptop.When things are working properly we oftentimes forget about them and think about something that we deem more pressing or worthy of our thoughts. It isn’t simply technological things that we do this with, however, we do it with our own bodies as well. For example, when is the last time that you thought to yourself, “Wow, it feels so good to not have a headache right now” or, “My throat feels so good, it isn’t sore at all.” It is a rare occasion that we think like this, but perhaps we should a little more often. It seems like the only time we appreciate something or someone is after we can no longer enjoy it or express to that person how we actually feel. I know this could seem like a strange stretch to compare physical health to the health of my technology, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Okay, now for the specifics…everything was going just fine for me with my computer, I’d finally gotten all of my software issues resolved and then my battery went dead, and stayed there. For the past two weeks or so, I’ve only been able to use my computer when it’s plugged in, which has really made me understand how much I do like the concept of a laptop.But even then all I could think was how upset I was that I didn’t have my battery working rather than thinking how grateful I was that I did have a working power cord. Well, now I don’t even have one of those.What started out like an ordinary trek across my living room, took a quick turn for the worse as my foot caught my power cord and sent my laptop to the floor. I was already mad enough that I had knocked my laptop onto the floor before I then realized that I had broken my power cord into my computer as well (If you’re wondering how I’m typing this, I’m using my wife’s MacBook).I guess what I am trying to convey in all of this is simply that we need to make an effort to be thankful for what we have while we are enjoying it and not take the small things in our lives for granted. Enjoy a sunny day while it’s here rather than wishing for one during the rain.
