Kodak had its moments

Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

It certainly had its moment. It is a 132-year-old company who pioneered the film. Alas no one is buying films these days. Just about everyone is using digital camera. Perhaps even the digital camera is getting out dated, replaced by fancy phones instead.

Is it Kodak not keeping up with technology? Well they had their own digital cameras too. Although you probably have a Canon or Nikon instead. My first bulky digital camera (10 years ago!) was a Kodak. It appeared to cost less than the Japanese models but it required that base (which actually costed me more money). It makes fairly dcent pictures. Sorry, the Canon was just sleaker and cooler and I didn't buy a Kodak ever since.

A giant for decades can swirl down to bankruptcy.

Microsoft, are you afraid, very afraid to get the same fate?

On SOPA

You have seen and heard about SOPA because you use the Internet. Google (and other sites) urge you to take action to tell Congress to stop it.

Before you follow the millions to sign it. Perhaps we should see why someone would propose such laws... oh to protect intellectual property. Here, you can take a look at the case for it here.

Ok, let's say Piscasso is alive and he makes some great art. Someone decides to photocopy them and post all over the walls to share with his friends. Do we need a law to let the government strike down any walls hosting this?

That is certainly the wrong way to stop piracy, and it won't stop them really all that much.

The internet is free and ought to stay free.

Look Congress, there are much more other important work to be done... like reducing that huge deficit, do something about failing school system, and dealing with other world crisis.

Outrageous teenage brutality

OMG, a teenage boy is bullied and on Youtube!

This is absolutely outrageous, a bunch of kids gang up on one poor kid and beat him, kick him, punch him for minutes.

Such brutality is recorded and posted on the web? How crazy (and stupid) are these criminals. No charge has been filed? There better be some soon. If this is not crime I don't know what else can be. I want these kids to be very very very sorry for what they have done.

IF this poor kid is gunned down but not on Youtube, even that is more violent, but people will just shrugged as this is happening in Chicago way too often.

The only thing positive thing out of this is that the victim have survived this horrible beating.

Kids: never have a lot of cash on you or have real shiny shoes. Stay away from trouble.

Ditch these 10 devices in 2012?

Someone wrote about 10 devices to ditch in 2012, see here.

Basically the writer has an iphone and everything else is not important anymore.

1. The flip camcorder Unfortunately Cisco aren't making them anymore. This is a way cool device that the iPhone CANNOT easily replace. First this is inexpensive. Second this is so easy to use that a kid can use, do you want a 5 year old to crack your iPhone?
2. Portable DVD player Yes newer movies now can be downloaded and stuff. What about your older ones. Are you going to bother copying them to other media to play with your newer machines?
3. Flash Drive Cloud replaces it? I'll bet to differ. What if cloud services decide to crash on you, or you got connection issues. you will lose EVERYTHING. It is handy backup device.
4. GPS Yes if you have smartphone and have expensive data plan yes you can ditch this.
5. Small digital camera Yes if your smartphone can do high quality pictures with flashes and all that
6. Fax You should have thrown it out a few years ago.
7. Netbooks But it is cheaper than your iPads
8. CD player But your computer should still have one to reinstall some stuff in case you need
9. Voice recorder You should have ditched them years ago
10. Palm The modern android is just a beautified colorful version of this. You should give your respect to it like give respect to the Wright brothers each time you fly.

Don't really need to toss most of that list away (except that fax and Palm). The Iphone cannot replace EVERYTHING yet. It is great but remember you pay a lot of $ for it (and continue to do so monthly).

HTML5 Revisited

Besides canvas, video and audio tags, HTML5 can find out where you are with Geolocation and you can start a thread to do background computation with a Worker.

This codediesel site is VERY nice.

• Geolocation
• Web Worker

It can even do Sockets, check this out: http://websocket.org/echo.html.

Now HTML and Javascript is not so separable.

Modern web developers should at least heard of most of the HTML5 elements. Oh my, that's also an excellent page.

But the problem of HTML5 is still not all browsers support everything.

Gender Gap in Math

The verdict is this: There isn't a gender gap in math learning. See details here.

This means boys as well as girls can do well in math. Absolutely! What does gender has to do with it?

Female students can take any math class they like. No one is restricting them in American universities. Alas, look around the math classroom beyond the required basic classes. You will find mostly guys, especially foreign student guys. If math majors want to find a Miss Right in the classroom, probably should consider taking classes in nursing or elementary education and secure your Miss Right first then switch back to math.

Americans need not to worry too much about gender gap of advanced mathematics... work on the basics first! Ranking 25th in the world isn't something to be proud of. Come on America, yes we can.

There is no gender gap. Mom and Dad both learn that easy elementary school and high school math please! Mom and dad teach your kids please. Don't rely on the teachers alone.

2012

Happy Holidays, Happy 2012.

MANY people are killed over the holidays. See here and here for violence in Chicago alone.

As people party over celebrating the earth returning to an rather arbituary position relative to the sun, violence sometimes result. Every year we see sad story like this: a kid got shot by a new year celebration bullet shot in the air. See here.

There should be legislation BANNING shots firing in the air! These equations are deadly!

Instead of needed legislations, we have the following:

1. Already Expensive Parking Meter Increase!
Details here

2. Seat belt in back seat required
Details here.

Ticket them for talking while driving! Ticket them for texting while driving! For that endangers other cars and pedestrians. Car makers to provide seat belts, sure, and they have done so. Cops ought to have better things to do than checking rather people have seat belts on.