I'm having a rough week. I've worked my poor little fingers to the bone, and burned the midnight oil about as much as I can. So today I've been spending the little down time I've had reading about Microsoft's new gadget Kinect. If you haven't heard about this, I don't blame you. I've been so focused on work, family, and dirtbikes, that it took my brother Matt telling me about it. Sure, I'd heard about it, but I hadn't done the smallest amount of reading, and didn't really understand what it did.
Now I have, and I'm blown away. Basically the Kinect is a sensor that you put above or below your television, and plug into your Xbox 360. Then you play games similar to the games using your body as the controller. Nope, that wasn't a typo, your body is the controller. I never bought a Wii, and only played on one a couple of times. I've never even touched the Playstation Move. Of course I haven't played with the Kinect yet either... but I will be buying one.
"Why?" I'm glad you asked! Because even with it's current limitations, it is a giant leap into the future of user interfaces. You don't have to hold a controller, it senses your arm (and leg) movements. Depending on the distance from the controller it can also detect hand movements. It does facial recognition, and can automatically load your profile when you get on your console to play! This is a fundamental re-imagining of the way we will interact with technology in the future. This is motion capturing that is light years beyond the techniques used in creating The Matrix!
So on to part two on this post. I've read three or four different blogs, tech articles, and reviews today. In each and every case there is at least one moron in the comments section bashing Microsoft. Why? I'm no Barack Obama fan, but if he did something brilliant (like reduce federal spending, or reduce tax rates across the board), I wouldn't be the first to sing his praises. It seems that there are some people that can't put partisanship aside for anything, be it politics, or gaming consoles.
Here are some of the most ludicris complaints I've read, and my reactions to them;
"I guess it's cool, but $150! and M$ is making almost $100 per device in profit!"
Umm, were you stupid enough to think that Microsoft is a charity? According to EEtimes the Kinect costs Microsoft only $56 to produce. OK even if that was the case, I'd be completely fine with it. However the EEtimes article is completely misleading. The $56 price tag is what it would cost to buy all of the parts. It doesn't account for assembly, shipping it to the local Game Stop, or "gasp" the R&D that went into determining what combination of $56 worth of parts it would take in order to achieve the results!
The original prototype cost Microsoft $30,000 to build. They have spent an estimated $500 million in advertising to get people on the Kinect bandwagon (obviously it didn't work for me). But this is all part of the larger problem, and until we start teaching the younger generation that people deserve to get paid for their work, it's going to keep getting worse.
Mike
10.29.2010
A Note on Christopher Hitchen
It’s a strange world we live in, and from time to time we are affected by people, in ways that make no logical sense. For example I want to talk to a person that I respect in certain areas, and view as a side show freak in others. I don’t know how many people reading my blog will recognize the name Christopher Hitchens. He is an author and journalist who has a long and heady history of defying conventional norms.
Like many other people Christopher went from being an avowed socialist, to a free market capitalist, all the time staying a fan of Marx. He believes that Marx’s revolutionary ideals are a good thing, and that if Marx had truly understood the revolutionary nature of capitalism, then he would have been a fan. I’m not convinced.
Politics however is not what I want to talk about. Mr. Hitchens is an atheist, and one of the founders of the “New Atheism” movement. Feel free to read the Wiki on it, but the down and dirty sum is, New Atheism is a religion. Basically a religion, whose key precept is to reject the notion that there is any God.
His writings are not just of a questioning nature; they are a categorical denial of God. He has made statements impugning men because they have some sort of faith, saying that he believes, “All religious belief is sinister and infantile”.
Now Mr. Hitchens is fighting for his life. In June he was diagnosed with Metastatic Esophageal Cancer. The prognosis isn’t good, and Mr. Hitchens has stated that with prodigious use of alcohol and cigarettes, you “make yourself a candidate”. Many people all around the world are praying for him to recover from this dreadful disease. And that makes Mr. Hitchens mad, very mad indeed.
Well Mr. Hitchens, I am here to give you solace. If you want to reject the prayers being directed at you, then that is your prerogative. One of the things that believers like myself do is pray for those that we care about. It’s not that weird, actually it’s kind of nice. Maybe he should take the advice of fellow atheist Penn Jillette (Warning - Language, but since when did Penn say anything that didn’t have curse words in it?).
Christopher, you don’t mind if I call you Christopher do you? Has it ever occurred to you that there are many people who are as passionate about their faith as you are about your lack there of? Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and convert you, us Mormons send out young men in white shirts and blue suits to do that ;-) What I am going to do is try to talk to you on a human level.
It does not hurt you when others pray for you, and there is nothing you can do to stop the people who love you from praying for you. They are giving you the most significant gift anyone can give, bandwidth. Sorry if you don’t understand, I’m a Network Engineer, and I am putting this in terms that make sense to me. You see everything has limited bandwidth. Think about a water hose, the amount of water that can be pushed through that hose is limited by the diameter of the hose. The same goes with computer networks, and people’s lives. There is only so much that we can fit into our lives, only so many things we can think about in a day, and only so many mentions we can make in our prayers. If someone has decided to include you in one or more of those things, then they have given you the greatest gift they can give you.
As precious as that gift is, does it really matter what form it comes in? Do the prayers tear away slowly at your atheism? Some people would swear that they can feel the prayers of others strengthening them. I know you would never say that you can feel them like a burden, since that would make your stance against them null, but honestly other than fodder for your articles what does it matter to you if people are praying for you health and well being?
Mike
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