Pirates of the Silicon Valley

A movie review for Pirates of the Silicon Valley.

“No empire lasts forever.” Kerry Douglas Dye

The method of using these folks to narrate the story is dynamic and fun. At one point, Ballmer leaps from the screen to explain the scene that is happening. A super use of special effects! Surprisingly, the film does a very good job of capturing the public persona both of these individuals have become known for. Steve Jobs is portrayed as a domineering visionary who always has an eye on the melding of art and science. Bill Gates is shown as a shrewd businessman who always sees the how’s of the business deal.

The primary problem with Pirates of Silicon Valley is that it paints every person and event in it like Central Park caricatures. Wyle tries too hard at being the brilliant asshole. Anthony Michael Hall plays Bill Gates like the unpopular kid trying to take over the clubhouse. It also plays lip gloss to a lot of the real reasons for the popularity of Windows (hardware interoperability, business computing needs, supply chain distribution, and developer friendliness).

Eagle Eye

A movie review of Eagle Eye.

“On the Run From Terrorists and a Disembodied Voice” A.O. Scott

From the start of the film you get a sense that something big is happening. Bigger than the people we are quickly getting to know more about. Jerry is a normal guy working at “Copy Cabana” and Rachael is a single mom working as a paralegal . With Jerry’s twin brother just dying and Rachael’s son just sent off on a school field trip, they are both very alone in their sad lives.

With a twist of fate the two each receive a phone call from a woman with very explicit instructions to follow. This is when the action becomes so intense I thought my fingers lost circulation from holding onto one another so tight.

So far, so good. The principals are a bit confused about what’s happening to them, and so is the audience, but that’s as it should be. Are Jerry and Rachel, who have been receiving menacing phone calls from a mysterious woman with an accentless, affectless voice, patsies in a terrorist conspiracy?

It seems that way, but then again, why would a terrorist organization with the capacity to hack into cellphone lines, construction cranes, city buses and security cameras need to mess with stressed-out ordinary citizens? Maybe it’s not terrorism at all but some kind of government conspiracy.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if the government could spy on me without my knowledge. This picture takes things a little farther when it injects a faulty computer capable of committing devious deeds. The battle between the computer’s mind and the human mind is fascinating. I ROBOT comes to mind. The very thought of what could happen should this fantasy become a reality is scary.

I, Robot

A movie review for I, Robot.

The year is 2035 and Will Smith is Detective Spooner with a distrust of robots. You see, robots are everywhere doing just about everything and society in general is quite happy about this. Robot cooks, maids, garbage men, just about manual labor job you can think of a robot is able to do. What the humans do to make money now isn't brought up, but you really have to wonder. Or not, it is just a movie after all.

Robots are perfect helpers. The three laws hardwired into their brains make them utterly incapable of harming a human. No robot has ever broken a single law, let alone hurt anyone. Still, Spooner doesn’t trust them. In fact he hates them, with the kind of fervent prejudice usually displayed only by more devout members of the Klan. Since he’s a cop, his hatred leads him into all sorts of bad situations. On his way to work he sees a robot running down the street with a purse and gives chase, automatically assuming the robot is a thief though no robot has ever committed a robbery. He tackles the automaton, only to discover the robot is racing to bring its owner her inhaler, a mistake which lands him in trouble with his cliché police chief (Chi McBride).

The ideas aren’t strictly fresh, some of the plot devices are a little too convenient, and yes, Will Smith is for the most part still doing the same old stuff you’d expect from Will Smith. But none of that really hurts. If there had been someone with the courage to avoid plopping in those extra “Big Willie” quips, Will could easily have made his character something special. As is, he shows enough flashes of intensity and grit to keep things on track while Proyas fills in the gaps with a robust mix of serious and fun. This isn’t the dark, heady Asimov movie we might have hoped for and this certainly isn’t Proyas at his best. But I, Robot is solid and exciting entertainment, well worth a lingering look.

Surrogates

A movie review for Surrogates.

There's one moment in Surrogates that's so completely fantastic, so face-meltingly awesome it represents everything we hold to be true as human beings, and if they just made this scene the movie it would win every award from Academy to Nobel AND it would unify nations to one global consciousness. It involves Bruce Willis emerging from a room (after drinking some scotch, naturally) and beating the holy hell out of a laughing robot with his bare hands.

The rest of Surrogates isn't nearly as awesome as that brief moment. It starts off alright, but quickly becomes a warmed over stew of missed opportunities and movies (and chases) you've seen in the past, complete with unnecessarily convoluted plotting that's more obnoxious than clever and a "twist" I literally called during the opening credits. (It should be pretty obvious to anyone who's a sci-fi nerd. Or anyone who's ever read a science fiction story). It's pretty much a slightly dumber version of I, Robot, but with far less product placement.

WALL-E

A movie review for WALL-E.

“In a world left silent, one heart beeps.” – A. O. Scott

That exactly is how I can elucidate this movie. Its first 30 minutes or so is I can say mind-numbing for there were no human figures neither any dialogues spoken nor narration that would at least explain what the character is doing. The scene is an intricately rendered city, bristling with skyscrapers but bereft of any inhabitants apart from a battered, industrious robot and his loyal cockroach sidekick. Hazy, dust-filtered sunlight illuminates a landscape of eerie, post-apocalyptic silence.

WALL-E (Waste Allocator Load Lifter - Earth Class) is the last of his kind, a robot created by the Buy-N-Large Corporation to clean up the piles of trash left on Earth by the conspicuous consumption of human beings. The humans themselves have evacuated the now-toxically trashed Earth for a Eden-like spaceship habitat called the Axiom (also created by BNL corp.), where they spend their days sipping meals out a cup and reclining on floating easy chairs. Though all his robotic compatriots have long since compacted their last, WALL-E continues plugging away at his job in an endearingly human way. He wakes up each day to the chime of a Macintosh starting up (score for the iFolks! Thanks Steve!) and heads out for another day among the trash heaps. He brings a battered coolie along with him to save the things he likes: a ping-pong paddle, a plastic dinosaur toy, a light bulb, a small seedling saved in an old boot. He ends each day in his home, watching an old video tape of Hello Dolly! - an important motif throughout the film.

WALL-E maintains a quiet, dutiful, and lonely existence. His sole companion is an indestructible cockroach, perhaps a direct descendant of Jiminy Cricket, whose presence confirms the rumor that roaches really will be the last creatures left on Earth. But WALL-E's life changes -- and our story takes off -- when a skyscraper-sized spaceship drops off a second robot, EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), and teases our hero with the potential of friendship.

Things change drastically for WALL-E the day EVE shows up. She is slick and futuristic and quite obviously a girl; WALL-E falls in love almost immediately. It turns out EVE has been sent from the Axiom to scan the earth for signs of habitable life. Their convincing courtship is done completely without dialogue, quite a feat for sound designer Ben Burtt who found a way to make ambient noise into recognizable words for WALL-E. Trying to impress the coolly modern EVE, WALL-E shows her the seedling he found, at which point EVE goes into a hibernation state and awaits the return of her spaceship. WALL-E, of course, cannot abide by his beloved EVE's status and hitches a ride into space to save her.

Though he is tiny and relegated to the dirtiest of the dirty jobs, WALL-E truly understands how to find value in sullied things and how to create magic out of useless objects. He is more human than the humans in that way and slowly, without preaching (he can't even talk), WALL-E begins to show them how to regain what they have lost through sloth and over reliance on technology. It's an environmentalist film, but also a poignant homage to simple joys in this era of iPods and digital everything.

This movie, for as hilarious and touching as it is, is at its heart a brutal indictment of corporate consumer culture. I laughed, I cried too, sometimes out of sentimentality but mostly out of sadness. A world without growing things is indeed uninhabitable and horrible, but a culture that puts comfort and money above ethics and shepherding the resources that make such comfort possible will indeed come to ruin. By the end of the movie, Wall-E's romance with Eve didn't make up for the not-so-subtle damning of our society and its misplaced values.

Why do we need to study technology/ies?

A practical question needs to be answered practically. Simple, I need to study technology because it is the field of study that I chose since I'm an Information Technology student, it is just understandable that I MUST study this. :)

Kidding aside, when we speak of technology, it is EVERYTHING AROUND ME. It is the thing that wakes me up in the morning, the thing that aids me in making my breakfast. It also helps me to have a sleep at night. Everything around me is technology. Why do I have to study this? It's just that I have to learn something from the THING that helps me go through everyday.

SAD1 - Assign 5

We were asked to know if the life cycle implemented by the university was really meant for the university and if it satisfies our needs. To start, System Life Cycle as known in the web, is a part of Software Engineering process, in which it is an examination of a system or proposed system that addresses all phases of its existence to include system design and development, production and/or construction, distribution, operation, maintenance and support, retirement, phase-out and disposal. The systems development life cycle (SDLC) is a conceptual model used in project management that describes the stages involved in an information system development project, from an initial feasibility study through maintenance of the completed application.

The life cycle of an embedded system varies dramatically, from processors embedded in disposable consumer goods to applications requiring maintenance and support for decades. Designing an embedded system often requires taking into account the complete product life cycle, from initial product concept, through its operational period, and into replacement with newer equipment. While the design phase is covered by other topics, areas of specific concern to a life cycle perspective are: an accurate life cycle economic model to guide engineering tradeoffs, taking into account requirements for logistics and support over the product operational period, and issues specific to refurbishing/retiring/discarding the system at end-of-life. While the term "life cycle" has different meanings to different technical communities, the central idea is to expand the traditional engineering emphasis on the "design cycle" to encompass optimizing utility, profits, and tradeoffs across the entire lifetime of the embedded system being designed.

The road to an institution’s establishing a niche of its own in the educational firmament is long and arduous. If the University of Southeastern Philippines wishes to gain a posi¬tion of leadership in the world of learning, we need to deploy our physical, human and financial resources in a manner which meets the needs of the future. New initiatives need to be adopted fast to provide the necessary impetus to propel USEP towards achieving its vision—that of becoming a premier university in the ASEAN Region. Having emerged and developed from a merger of small institutions of varied academic orientations twenty-nine years ago into a comprehensive regional university; it should have no time to waste. Rather than suffer obsolescence in a fast chang¬ing world that characterizes the globalization era, USEP should now reposition itself for the knowledge-based economy and sur¬mount the challenges of new knowledge evolutions. Globaliza¬tion as well as the knowledge economy has posed a new chal¬lenge for USEP not only to provide findings which can enhance the nation’s progress but also to produce graduates who are relevant, flexible, efficient and dynamic and of respectable char¬acter. Moreover, the knowledge economy demands for workers with knowledge that can be available only through lifelong learn¬ing. Hence, USEP commits itself to developing the potential of human resources to its optimum. To bring about change, the University embarked on planned change—conscious, deliberate and collaborative ac¬tions to change our self-system, social system or cultural system utilizing an understanding and utilization of its human resourc¬es.

Underlying assumptions adopted by the USEP community to manage change are: a USEP system committed to a man¬agement strategy for growth rationalized by its unique strate¬gic direction of each of the five campuses and highlighting their comparative advantage in the market; an enhanced capacity of each campus to contribute to the total system’s sustainability; a pervading culture that promotes performance, accountability and balanced with a just and humane incentive and reward sys¬tem; a data based planning system that balances internal and external growth opportunities with an internal capacity to self-organize and regulate for growth; and, a system of leadership that enables and influences the collaborative culture and growth of all campuses within the USEP system as said by the University President.

The President is actually having a 15-year plan that is to provide the University with a roadmap to reposition itself toward becoming more competitive and respon¬sive to the needs of its stakeholders. Essentially, this would mean USEP achieving academic excellence in the future and the leader in research, development and extension in Southern Philippines and the rest of the country.

As seen everywhere in the university, its VISION is to become a premier university in the ASEAN Region; the USEP shall be a center of excellence and development, responsive and adaptive to fast- changing environments. USEP shall also be known as the leading university in the country that fosters innovation and applies knowledge to create value towards social, economic, and technological developments. Its MISSION, is provide quality education for students to grow in knowledge, promote their well-rounded development, and make them globally competitive in the world of work; Engage in high impact research, not only for knowledge’s sake, but also for its practical benefits to society; and, Promote entrepreneurship and industry collaboration.

Honestly, I can’t think of anything with regards in the life cycle used in the University. Some may say that the university truly follows their so called “life cycle” yet it is not visible if you’d ask me. Though the University does follow their 15-year strategic plan but still I think it just doesn’t stop there. Since students are part of this, we should also be aware of what’s going on which means the administration must try to communicate with the students as to how their plan was going. If it satisfies our needs? I really cannot tell.