Boston's Transportation problems

I decided to post one more time today to complete this posting blitz. For those who are outside of Boston right now, I thought it would be beneficial to see a few pictures to really comprehend what is going on traffic wise. Today was especially bad not just because of the tunnels collapsing and shutting down, but there was also a water main break in South Boston last night and a tractor trailer that flipped over on the pike across from Fenway (no word yet on if the driver was listening to the game).

The first picture is pretty obvious. In many parts of Boston the situation is ridiculous to the point where it probably is faster to walk then to drive.

Another image shows the giant gaping hole in Mass Ave from the main break.

And finally, this picture I find to be most important. I find it incredible that such a basic thing like transportation infrastructure can be botched so badly to actually endanger people. View this picture, and realize someone's car (and someone, sadly) was under the large slabs of concrete.

Browser Wars

For any moderate techies out there, this is a very good review of the three most popular web browsers (IE, Firefox, and Opera) newest versions. It sounds like once Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 are fully released, the IE security features will probably stop most casual browsers from switching. But I will disagree with the author in that I don't think anyone will switch back to IE from Firefox unless users find more pages that don't work in Firefox.

Basically, Microsoft had their chance to maintain their stranglehold on the browser industry, and I think they lost it.

YouTube at it's finest

CNET recently posted a list of the top ten YouTube tech related videos, and I found most of them to be quite good. My personal favorite is embedded below. The daily show evidently caught wind of the same Ted Stevens "The Internet is a Series of Tubes" speech I commented on two weeks ago, and Jon Stewart did an excellent tearing the Alaskan Senator apart.

Tech Jobs in Israel

First off, it's been a while since I've posted because I was on vacation. It was great, thanks for asking!

I planned on not commenting a lot on the current situation in Israel/Lebanon, however I found this article and found it very interesting. According to the article, Intel and other companies in Israel have their employees working from inside bomb shelters. My first reaction is of course anger and frustration. What kind of whip yielding taskmaster forces people to work while their families are home dodging rockets?

I still lean mostly that way, but I feel slightly less extreme about for a few reasons. For one, by keeping employees in bomb shelters they are keeping them safe. No, I don't think they are putting up the families in bomb shelters, nor do I think they are keeping them in shelters overnight.

After 9/11, there was a lot of talk about not letting terrorism change our lives; that if we fear day to day life, we are in some ways allowing the terrorists to win. Given that Israel is so often the target of terrorism, maybe they should attempt to maintain their daily lives as much as possible.

Despite those last two paragraphs, if bombs ever started going off where I worked, I wouldn't work in a bomb shelter.

Not a good day to be Trot Nixon...

In today's Sox vs. Sox marathon 19 inning game, Trot Nixon went 0-9 with 4 strikeouts. That HAS to be some kind of record, right? Not to be forgotten, Jason Varitek went 0-8 with 3 strikeouts (1 walk). I'm a big fan of both these guys, love them as every day players. And I don't know a thing about the pitching matchups or who bats from what side of the plate (though I think Varitek is a switch-hitter from what I remember). But when these guys get up in the umpteenth inning without a hit, don't you have to consider putting in Kapler or Mirabelli for a pinch hit?

0-9!!!!!

Is biofuel bad for the less priviledged?

I will preface this post with the fact that I know very little about biofuels; I understand that it is fuel made from natural sources like corn and that it supposedly is better for the environment. I will also say that the article I am about to mention quotes someone that has arguably profited more from the oil industry than any other person.

That being said, I saw an interesting article recently claiming that using food as a fuel for vehicles is "morally inappropriate." The argument on the surface seems to make sense: millions of people in third world countries are starving and we would be using a potential food source as fuel. Both ethanol and biodiesel use corn, wheat, coconut, or beets. Rather than using these foods to feed the needy, we would be using them to fuel our culture of consumption.

As a total side note, the term "biodiesel" was recently added to Websters Dictionary.

New Northeastern Dorm Plan

I don't have a lot of comments on this, but Northeastern recently proposed plans for new dorms, including three 22 story towers in two different locations. One of these locations is Cullinane, the former CS building. I won't exactly be sad to see the building go, however. It was always ugly and cramped, to be perfectly honest.

Anyway, this enforces my belief that NU is going to continue to build dorms south of Huntington, until they have almost enough space for the entire school, at which point they will either sell all the space north of Huntington or revamp it into a new beautiful section of campus. Either way, I like what they're doing.

I do have one concern though: it seems as though they are continuing to eliminate parking, which is already at a bit of a crunch. Hopefully when they build these new dorms they will put a few levels of parking below them as they did in West Village E.

Ted Stevens is a moron

This may be the beginning of a posting extravaganza, as I have seen many articles recently that I wanted to write about. First, Ted Stevens recently weighed in on the net neutrality debate. Before I discuss Senator Stevens comments, allow me to first discuss my feelings on net neutrality.

If you don't know, the idea of net neutrality means that Internet providers, hosters, and pretty much anyone involved does not discriminate against a site based on finances. For example, when a person requests data from a web site, that request is processed with the same priority as a request to ESPN.com, World of Warcraft web servers, Joe's Fishing site, whatever. Whoever your internet service provider is, be it Comcast, a university, or whatever, everything basically goes across bandwidth untouched. If there is no net neutrality, an internet service provider can decide that requests to one server are more important than another. For example, gaming is more time sensitive so gaming servers are given higher priority and more bandwidth than say ESPN.com.

For more information on the net neutrality debate, CNET has an entire page devoted to all articles regarding both sides of the debate and the progress of the congressional bill.

So I believe that is a good neutral description of net neutrality. Now for the pros, cons, and my stance. First of all, despite having no governing laws, net neutrality is currently in existence. It is the way that the internet has always been provided. A bill is currently being thought about in the Senate (I believe) that would force ISP's into net neutrality. Many content providers, or people who run websites, say that net neutrality is good because it allows everyone a fair piece of the internet. Your request to my awesome blog would get the same priority as a request to Amazon.com. But without net neutrality, an ISP can say "If you pay me, I'll let your traffic through faster." So EBay or someone with lots of money pays to get their sites loaded within seconds, while poor independent bloggers like myself get loaded after everything else is done.

There are of course pros to getting rid of net neutrality as well, however. If an ISP is making more revenue by charging large sites for access and speed, theoretically ISP's can lower their prices to the average cable modem user. Large sites that get higher traffic than small sites would also load faster, which most users would benefit from.

Personally, I am pro net neutrality for one main reason: I'm not an expert on the subject. I understand that I'm not an expert (unlike Senator Stevens; remember him from the beginning of this post? More on him in a moment...). As a moderately educated person, I defer to those educated people whom I trust. So, people who support net neutrality include the makers of EBay (whom I trust with my credit card information), Google (whom myself and others trust with personal information), and Craigslist (whom I don't trust with any information but I am a big fan of what Craig Newmark has done and I enjoy the fact that the site remains true to it's form without ads). On the other side of the debate are large ISP's like AT&T and Comcast, who decided to continue sending me bills 8 months after I cancelled service despite numerous phone calls and complaints.

So clearly, I'm for net neutrality. But I will say this: I don't think it's the most pressing issue in our world. If I had to choose to lose one battle between net neutrality, gay marriage, abortion, death penalty, or gun control, it would be net neutrality hands down.

Back to our friend Senator Ted Stevens. If you forgot what I talked about 5 paragraphs ago, please read the article again. A few of my favorite quotes:

• "I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff..."
• "[the Internet is] a series of tubes."
• "Ten [movies] streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?"

Now, in case there is any confusion, neither you nor your staff can send an internet (most are assuming Senator Stevens was referring to an email). There is no such thing as a "personal internet," and if there was NetFlix streaming 10 movies to someone else would not affect it.

And the internet is most certainly not a series of tubes.

So it's clear this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And yet I'm simply amazed by some of his arguments, not just because they do not apply, but because they wouldn't make sense even if they did apply. For one, he basically says net neutrality is bad because it allows anyone to connect vast amounts of data to the internet. Access to data is evidently a bad thing. He is also concerned that while Jonny is downloading movies to his home computer, he wont' receive his staff's internets, err, emails. That's like saying increased shipping trucks along I-95 are going to affect his his morning commute in Alaska. Not that he has to worry about that, as he gets millions of dollars for random bridges anyway.

Arg, I can't even argue with his speech anymore, it doesn't make any sense. Please stick to what you know Senator Stevens, whatever that is.

Book Review: Bad Twin

If you aren't a die hard Lost fan, you probably haven't heard about Bad Twin. Basically, the book jacket claims that this book was written by Gary Troup, who tragically died on Oceanic flight 815 before his book was published. Flight 815 of course is the flight that all the Lost characters were on. The book is supposed to give us some insight into the Hanso Foundation, as well as one of the minor yet recurring characters; the stewardess who appears on plane flashbacks in season one and briefly as a tallie in season two. According to information disseminated about the book, the stewardess was the author's girlfriend, and she would become a character in the book.

So die hard Lost fans were totally ready for this book. Not to mention it was a good idea by the writers, because it gives everyone something to do between seasons two and three. Just one problem: this book sucked.

I'm not one to usually give bad reviews, but I sincerely believe this was one of the worst books I've read in a long time. First of all, they really didn't reveal anything of interest that has to do with Lost. At the end of the book, the mention off hand where three of the numbers came from. That was interesting. For those keeping track at home, that's 1 interesting page to 200+ not interesting. When I first started reading and found that some of the characters were wealthy because of business, I assumed that business would be the Hanso Foundation and we would maybe find out something about Alvar Hanso. Nope. The main characters run some other company that is loosely connected to the Hanso foundation, and Alvar Hanso is mentioned offhand a few times. Information about the Hanso foundation in general was pretty limited. Of course, the biggest mystery of Lost is the island, and almost nothing was revealed about any island that might possibly be THE island.

So first of all, the book didn't really do it for me as far as revealing Lost secrets. However, I wouldn't mind if the book were a good read. It wasn't. The characters were generic at best, and incredibly boring at worst. Just about anyone writing a book about polar opposite twins could have come up with their personal traits. The main character was as generic as private detectives come, with the slight twist that he has a 70 year old friend. But the entire point of the old friend was so the author could prove he was knowledgeable in areas of classic literature. I felt I knew the secrets of the main characters love interest before she was even introduced.

Then there was the writing style. Now, I will grant that whoever wrote this book is either a famous writer paid to write this book anonymously, or some no name who may not be a terribly good writer. Either way, the book probably had to be done very quickly to get out on time, and the writer couldn't do his or her do diligence with the book. All that being said, I'm not sure the book was written by someone who's first language was English. Misplaced or misused words, grammatical issues, sentences that don't seem quite be complete or correctly formed (like this one). The style was bad enough that I really think there is a code in the book of some sort. Like, take every 4th, 8th, 15th, 16th, 23rd, and 42nd word and you get some crazy revealed secret about how Claire is Jack's long lost sister from his father's first marriage to Rose before she gave birth to Michael at age 14 and gave him up for adoption where he was going to be placed in a foster home with Sawyer until his father killed his mother. That's really about the only thing that would redeem this book for me right now.

So if you haven't figured it out already, on a scale of "blech" to "wow", I'm calling this one "blech." If you don't watch Lost, you have no reason to read this book. If you do watch Lost, go on to a fan message board, they will tell you everything you need to know and probably more than you will discover by reading the book on your own in the first place.

Book I am reading now: State of Fear.