I've been in a rather long debate with my co-worker, Igor, about the American public education system. 

Igor, being the father of a 9 year old and me, being the husband of a fourth grade school teacher.  This is not to mention the fact that I'm only 6 years removed from high school.  So we both have very strong feelings on this subject and justifications for what we believe.

While Igor and I agree that the American public educational system is not working the way it should and that the American public, in general, undervalues the importance of education ("it is not a first class occupation"), we have a few disagreements on certain areas.  One contention that Igor has is that he sees the trend of integration of all levels of students into one classroom as being a negative one.  He offers that kids should be broken out into different classes based on their proven academic performance.  In other words, they should be tested, prodded, and sorted until we have a clear representation of who's the smartest and who has no hope. 

He proposed the idea that what we are really dealing with is a linear programming problem.  Given that you only have n amount of resources and given a model (a set of equations) for the amount of returns you would get by investing in given class (x₁, x₂, x₃,...x_n), you should obviously invest the most in the students that give the highest returns.  Certainly, as a public educational system, we can't deny the lower level students.  But in Igor's view, new books should go to the best students.  The best teachers should be allotted to the highest level students.  To the rest, we hold their hands and help them through high school and just hand them a piece of paper if they should make it.

A parallel debate that we've had is whether it is okay to sacrifice a few for the greater good of the whole.  In discussing the Three Gorges Dam in China, Igor said that it was unacceptable to force the farmers and villagers at the site of dam (and upstream of the dam) to move from their homes.  According to Wikipedia, up to as many as 1.9 million people will eventually be displaced.  Igor is one of those guys that invoke's Hitler any time you try to have a discussion with him His argument being that Hitler had convinced the German people that the sacrifice of the Jews was acceptable for the greater good of the Aryan race (or something like that).  His view is that you can never accept sacrificing the rights of the few for the whole.

In the case of China, I don't think Igor's analogy is very good.  To begin with, to my knowledge, people are not being killed by the millions if they refuse to evacuate.  In addition, there is a tangible benefit to everyone, mainly better flood control (which causes billions of dollars of damage to property and crops, thousands of lost lives, and millions of displaced people anyways), an abundant source of clean, cheap electricity (necessary for a developing nation),  and you can even consider tourism to the region to be a source of income for the otherwise rural population.  All this for the sacrifice of displacing (not murdering or exterminating) a mere .01% of the population.  But to me, this is a necessary sacrifice for a population that is nearly 800 times (1.5 billion) the displaced population.  China needs the cheap, clean electricity.  China needs to have control over that fertile land around the river for the sake of improving industry and agriculture.  Certainly, there are unanswered questions regarding the long term viability of the dam including the effects of soot build up, but to me, the benefits far outweigh the negatives and justifies the government's right of the displacement of those people.

(I could spend forever writing on the topic of above, including how emminent domain helped build our transportation network that was essential to the growth of the United States as a nation.  However, that is a post for another day.)

So you see, Igor counters that integration, in the hopes of giving all students a chance to succeed in the same environment, sacrifices the good of a few, the brightest students, for the better of the whole, all of the other students.  He feels that the best teachers and the best materials should go to the smartest kids, namely his.

Of course it's a totally ridiculous statement.  It's like saying that, given 10 obese children, eight of which are dangerously so, a weight loss counselor should focus most of her efforts on the two that are not dangerously obese.  Instead of working with them simultaneously so that the somewhat obese children can help the dangerously obese children in coping and developing good eating habits, we should seperate them and create a counseling group for the somewhat obese kids and one for the dangerously obese kids.  Then we assign our best diet and weight loss counselor to the somewhat obese kids.  Since these kids have the best chance of attaining a normal weight, we'll also put our best chefs on their meal staff so they get the best tasting, low fat, ultra-healthy meals.  In addition, we'll apportion most of the time in the exercise room, of which we only have one, to these kids since if they get enough exercise, they'll have a better chance of attaining a normal weight.  On the other hand, since most of our finite resources are going towards the slightly obese children, there aren't enough for the majority of the kids, the dangerously obese kids, the kids that need the most help.  Instead, we assign a mediocre counselor to the dangerously obese kids and underfund her as well.  Since our best/most skilled chefs are preparing courses for the slightly obese children, our most obese children end up with a menu that's not so appetizing, which in turn, causes them to regress and try to sneak in Twinkies.  Since the exercise room is scheduled for the slighly obese kids most of the time, the dangerously obese kids don't get to spend enough time exercising.  Of course this is an absolutely ludicrous idea; it's clear that the most help should go into the dangerously obese kids in this situation and that having both types of kids in the same group can have a positive effect.  Why should it be any different with our school system?

What Igor doesn't see is how this is, in reality, the sacrifice of many for the good of a few, which, in my opinion, is even more unacceptable than sacrificing a few for the greater good of the whole.

To further aggrevate the situation, the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment showed that people are easily absorbed into the roles and labels with which they are assigned.  After the experiment was ended abruptly, as both "prisoners" and "gaurds" groups were falling too deeply into their assigned roles, it was concluded that:

"the results of the experiment are said to support situational attributions of behavior rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed to entail that the situation caused the participants' behavior rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities"

In addition to this, it is important to note that:

"The group was divided in half at random into an equal group of 'prisoners' and 'guards'.  Interestingly, prisoners later said they thought the guards had been chosen for their larger physical size, but in reality they had been picked by a fair coin toss and there was no objective difference in stature between the two groups."

What does this mean?  If you segregate kids into honors and regular course levels, you are inherently and implicitly labeling them as being either "smart" or "stupid".  I bolded the last sentence because it shows that people have the tendency, then, to develop an inferiority complex (or rather project superiority upon another group), even if the decision on who goes to the "smart" and "stupid" groups is a completely arbitrary one.

I've been following a program on one of the public broadcasting channels in our area titled The College Track.  You can see it right on in the subtitle of this series: "America's Sorting Machine"; this is what our current educational system is.  Whether Igor likes it or not, this country is made of people of all walks of life, all races, all different types of cultural backgrounds, and all types of values.   As we move forward, to succeed as a country, we need to improve the educational level of everyone.  The proposal that we dedicate our best resources to the few that we think can acheive great academic feats is a proposal to essentially sacrifice the chances of those we think are inferior, academically.

In looking back at my own life, I can see how this panned out.  Igor likes to rag on me about my 1400 SAT score (650v/750m; 90^th and 98^th percentile, respectively) whereas his "hopeless" daughter got a 1460.  He rags on me because, according to my demographics, I should have gotten much higher.  I like to inform him that my sister did indeed get a 1580 (combined highest) and attended Wharton (not that I seriously place a lot of value in this school as it was academically worthless in my opinion, but Igor is one of those guys that believes in names and prestige).

This morning, as I was discussing this with my wife, I finally realized one major factor in why, given that both my sister and I are of roughly equal intelligence levels, I would do so "poorly" on the SATs.  At this point, I need to preface this with the fact that I think the SAT is worthless as a method of measuring a student's capabilities, but that's a matter for another post.

In any case, when we first moved to East Brunswick from Bogota (New Jersey, not Colombia), I was in the 8^th grade and she was in the 6^th.  Because the East Brunswick school system had no idea how I would perform in their curriculum, even though my grades from Bogota were all excellent, I was placed in average level courses as a process of the sorting system.  At the grade school level, where my sister started, this has less of an effect as the kids are essentially all in the same class anyways.  Essentially, she had a chance to use the sorting machine to her advantage by virtue of a longer sorting process.

On the other hand, I can recall my first day of high school chem.  Regular chem.  By all accounts, I did not feel that I belonged in regular chem.  I looked at our textbooks and at the stack of brand new books that were being allotted to the honors chem class and a fire just burned inside of me.  I felt that I deserved those books as much as those other kids.  (Eventually, I did convince the administration to put me into chem. honors).

When you first sign up at Amazon, Amazon has no idea of what type of music you're interested in.  But as time passes and you buy more CDs, their software analyzes your purchases and the purchases of others that purchased the same items that you did and uses this data to build a prediction model of what you'll probably like.  It takes time for this process to work.  If your first CD is a Britney Spears CD for your 12 y/o sister (fictional), then Amazon's algorithm assumes that you'll have similar tastes to other 12 y/o females and recommend music along the lines of Mrs. Spears-Federline (luckily, you can uncheck what you don't want to use for generating recommendations ).  However, given enough time and purchases, the model becomes increasingly more accurate and actually mirrors your taste in music.  You'll log on and find that Amazon will recommend many of the CDs that you already own and artists that you're interested in.  The key is that it takes time for the process of sorting to work.  And the pivotal time in the process, in regards to education, is the time before high school as students become more annonymous and harder to sort properly in a large population.

Whereas my sister had a window of three years, I only had a window of one.  Thus I initially ended up in the "normal" classes for a few years and had to have my mom intervene with my guidance counselors to get me to the higher level classes (at the beginning at least).  I had a shorter window to claw my way through the machinery and prove to the system that I was capable (by the time I graduated, I had taken three AP courses and received a total of 12 college credits for successfully passing the exams and I was A/B+ student).

In the Han Fei Tzu, the Prince of Han writes:

"There is not one naturally straight arrow or naturally round piece of wood in a hundred generations, and yet in every generation, people ride carriages and shoot birds.  Why?  Because of the application of the methods of straightening and bending.  Although there is a naturally straight arrow or a naturally round piece of wood [once in a hundred generations] which does not depend on any straightening or bending, the skilled workman does not value it.  Why?  Because it is not just one person who wishes to ride and not just one shot that the archer wishes to shoot.  Similarly, the enlightened ruler does not value people who are naturally good and who do not depend on reward and punishment.  Why?  Because the laws of the state must not be neglected and the government is not for only one man.  Therefore, the ruler who has the technique does not follow the good that happens by chance, but practices the way of necessity."^*

As we move towards a future that will increasingly depend on a skilled, highly educated population, it is becoming more and more unacceptable to create this type of class rift and leave behind the many for the few.  Why?  Because it is not only a few jobs that will require highly skilled, highly educated workers; most jobs in the coming decades will require education beyond the high school level as we see our manufacturing jobs offshored.  There are only a few students that are naturally talented and require little assistance to succeed.  But to allot more of the public's resources to the few while relegating the rest to an "average" experience, we are placing value on the naturally round piece of wood instead of honing our ability to shape wood so that all may benefit.

^* Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, 1963, p.253

"Kojima: - I'm not a game producer because I want to make money - I just want to MAKE something. There weren't any good producers at the time I was looking for one, so I did it myself. I live and breathe for gaming, and if my job was just to lead a company meeting or something, I would never ever do it."

I am often asked, when I go in for interviews, what my goals are for the next 5, next 10 years. I think what these interviewers are really looking for is a reply like:

"Well, I hope to work on some certifications, continue my education as a developer, and work on project management at some point, blah, blah..."

Oddly, working as a project manager has never crossed my mind as a serious possibility. I can't even fathom the idea (at least at this point in my career) that I'd move away from the code, away from the act of creation.

My mother always asks why I'm crazy and don't go to/stick with big companies like JPMorganChase or Merrill Lynch, where I can make almost double what I'm making now. I think part of that is because I like to create things. When you go to companies like that, you don't create so much as do things. Yeah, I guess I could always satisfy my Lego-maniac side on my own time, but when you work in NYC, the commute really eats into your free time.

As Robin James Adams once wrote in his excellent blog post/essay:

"Programming is, above all, a creation act. In this sense, writing a good program is not so very different from designing a usable interface, or producing an aesthetic work of art, or writing a clearly articulated essay, or any of the other myriad creation acts humans delight in...For the programmer essentially works with concepts alone, he builds abstractions that have no real basis in reality."

And that is truly what I enjoy about programming and software development: the idea that I am creating some piece of code that someone finds useful. It is for this reason that I find that it is not nearly as satsifying working in the product space (i.e. working with SharePoint, Plumtree Portal, etc.).

"Kojima: - The technological development is also going so fast now. If you keep away from the development team for a period of time, you can't just pop back in. You just don't know what they're talking about. That's why I can never leave the development phase of games."

When I first arrived here at Immedient, I had a talk with one of my then co-workers, Kent Brown, about his design philosophy and his approach to software. It had arisen out of a discussion about Rockford Lhotka's CSLA framework, which he chose to build upon for a project that I was shadowing on. Kent explained to me that he had chosen this framework to build from because Rocky seemed like he was very close to the code; Rocky had an understanding of the real problems and challenges that developers face when building applications. I had just come from my horrible experience at Factiva where I had to deal with a so-called "architect" who was, to me, no more than a one time developer who now focused more on the business than on the technology, essentially, a manager. It was refreshing to hear Kent's perspective, though, on the subject of being an architect.

His sentiment mirrored the words of Mr. Kojima: you must always be deep in the code and the technologies with which you choose to build your creations with. Otherwise, you risk losing touch with the act of building, the act of creation and all of the difficulties and joy that go along with it. Kent also emphasized that he felt that one could not be a successful architect without knowing the technology inside and out since then there would be no base from which to design; any design born of such circumstances is doomed to failure. Such was the case with John, the self proclaimed "architect" at Factiva who had never in his days developed a single ASP.Net application and somehow ended up as our architect on this project, responsible for making technical design decisions regarding a technology with which he had no foundation in apart from a few introductory classes.

In The Pragmatic Programmer, Hunt and Thomas offer this as tip #8:

"Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio"

Extrapolating on this, they add that, as developers, we should always try to:

• Learn at least one new language every year.
• Read a technical book each quarter.
• Read nontechnical books, too.
• Take classes.
• ...
• Stay current.
• Get wired.

ASP.Net is not even 4 years old yet and we are on the verge of an entirely new paradigm in developing web based applications with ASP.Net 2.0 (re:Atlas; okay, not entirely new, but just incredibly painstaking and difficult before). Just as Kojima points out in the game development space, in the web/desktop applications space, the technologies change so rapidly nowadays that, as developers, we really have to keep our nose to the grindestones and hold close to ourselves the passion for creation and self improvement.

I think Kojima's words and my recent work with the beta bits of .Net 2.0 and VS2005 have helped reinforce in my mind that it's okay to not want to head towards a management career path

Via Gaming-Age Forums:

"What non-gimmick games would benefit from the Revolution controller?"

Classic reply:

"Baseball - you'll get to see how much you suck at baseball

First person quarterback - you'll get to see how much you suck at football

Fighting game - you'll get to see how much you suck at fighting

Grand Theft Auto... now you can actually perform the shanking motion when you kill people before jacking their cars

Pancake/skillet/burger flipping simulation - a job training sim for many gamers

Sweeping/farming/window washing simulation - it becomes a job training game for other gamers

(mature) shuffle board

casino games

(mature) sex trainer"

I'm not a big fan of what I would call mainstream music (top 40's, stuff on the radio or MTV). The last mainstream CD that I purchased was probably Life for Rent by Dido (she's got a great voice). And perhaps my least favorite music genre is mainstream rap/hip-hop. I mean, how many times can you rap about shooting people, bling-bling, dubs, hos, and your homeboys before it just gets tiring?

The scary thing is that when I try to apply any logic to this, it seems like the current fad will never die. I mean, how long have people been writing songs and poetry about love?

Anyways, so as I was flipping through the channels this morning while eating my oatmeal (yeah, I know, I sound like such an old man), I came across the video for Gold Digger by Kanye West (the site keeps talking to me, which is kinda annoying). I must say, the song and the lyrics are very catchy and, while it is still on the topic of bling-bling and hos, it takes a seemingly different angle than what I typically try to tune out. Besides that, who knew that Jamie Foxx could actually sing? Hard to believe but he has this deep, scratchy voice that adds a very nice blues flavor to the mix.

But perhaps what intrigued me more was the video itself. It was a visually stunning video. Stunning in it's simplicity and the way it brought out the beauty of the female subjects. It was sexual, but I didn't find it overtly so. Yeah, yeah, some of you will say that it was just a bunch of women scantily clad in lingerie dancing around and posing, but it was very tastefully done, at least in my opinion. Director Hype Williams does a great job of recalling the pinups of decades past with the excellent set and costume designs.

So for those of you who don't normally listen to rap/hip-hop, this is one video that might be worth checking out (it's linked off of the front page of Kanye's site).

Stumbling across news of JetBlue flight 292, I found it difficult to contain my emotions. It's simply mindboggling to imagine what those passenger were going through in those moments. I started tearing up just reading the article.

Luckily, everyone made it out unscathed thanks in part to the excellent skills of the pilot who makes a beautiful and otherwise uneventful landing (if you can ignore the sparks and flames shooting out from the front wheel landig gear).

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole ordeal was that many (if not all) of the passengers aboard were watching their own fate via DirectTV satellite feeds (which they shut off 10 minutes before touchdown).

It's quite interesting as it underscores the pervasiveness of information that exists today; not only were they watching their own potential demise, the passengers were texting their relatives and calling their friends. Much like with the firsthand cameraphone accounts of the London tube bombings, we move ever closer to the collective mind of the Borg

Amazing times that we live in.

I came across a link this morning (via Ars) to a forum where Chris Kohler of Wired News does an impromptu Q&A on his exeprience with the Revolution controller at TGS.

Kohler echoes some of the same sentiments that I had when I first read about this.

"The Revolution controller, much like the DS touch screen, takes away a barrier between people and machines. People loved to post that Minority Report screen as a joke, but that's pretty damn close to at least the thought pattern behind the controller -- you just reach out with your hand and start manipulating things on-screen.

For some people, a DualShock controller is just that sort of extension of their person. But it takes a lot -- some would say a lifetime -- of practice to get there."

There are some memorable posts in this thread; this one being perhaps one of the top 10 funniest I've read all year:

"Let me say this again.

I took the controller and pointed it at the screen. This moved a cursor around wherever I pointed my hand.

AND FUCK ALL IF I KNOW HOW IT WORKS.

Nintendo could have engineered a little tiny hamster that runs inside a ball that tilts around when you spin the thing, for all I know. When you press the A button he gets an electric shock and pees."

I also like this one from Ars:

"A friend of mine told me a few years ago that he didn't expect video games to get any better in the future. Everything's been done, and only the graphics improve now. I told him then that the reason for this was the level of precision in control. You simply cannot control a ninja with 10 buttons and feel like you're *really* a ninja.

The revolution controller, if it is precise and fast, provides a quantum leap in the level of control you can have over games. In my book, Nintendo will win the next-gen console wars, because the Revolution is the only next-gen console being made."

On a related note, I just got my copy of We (Love) Katamari last night (via the bestest wife in the whole wide world) and I can't help but think how awesome this type of controller would be with a game like Katamari. When my wife first started playing it, it was quite humorous watching her shift her whole body around as if it would help her roll the Katamari in a different direction.

While the game doesn't break any new ground like it's predecessor, it is, nonetheless, a cute, quirky, and entertaining game.

I only have a few gripes about this version:

• The new soundtrack isn't as solid as the one from the first. It seems more electronic...not really my style.
• There are now, somewhat craftily disguised, loading screens during the middle of a level as a new area is opened up. This was somewhat annoying as this was non-existent in the first version.
• The "storyline" isn't quite as quirky and WTF-inducing as the first one. Although it's cute that you bump into some of the characters from the first one once in a while.
• Royal Rainbow is not nearly as badass as the original.

On the plus side:

• You can now select your background music for each level, which is cool.
• I haven't tried, but I think you can play as any of the cousins.
• You can accessorize the Prince with multiple presents now.
• There's tons more new stuff to pick up and new environments.
• The gameplay mechanics are improved slightly, especially the camera.

For $30, it's not a bad pickup. The original gets a 9.5/10. This one gets an 8/10. This one just doesn't quite floor you like the first one did, but it's still a fun and enjoyable way to kick back and unwind at the end of the day.

Katamari only serves to reinforce the point that games need not be graphically/visually extravagent or realistic to be enjoyable. In fact, part of the charm of Katamari is the quirky, colorful, blocky character design. To this end, I think Nintendo has chosen the right path. Of course, the Revolution will offer superior graphics to say Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube, but the point is that this won't be it's only selling point.

A couple of weeks back, I stumbled upon a transcript of a conversation between Roger Ebert and Werner Herzog.

To this point, I've read several of Ebert's reviews on Herzog's work (several of his movies are on my to-watch list).

But after reading this transcript, I'm more fascinated by the man and what he's trying to accomplish through film. 

I think what really intrigues me about Herzog is the great extent he is willing to sacrifice himself to create imagery that no other filmmaker today is willing to attempt; his drive and purpose are not monetary.

"It was disgusting actually because at that time 20th Century Fox was interested to produce a film and we had a very brief conversation of about five sentences because it was clear their position was, “You have to do it with a miniature boat.” From there on it was clear no one in the industry would ever support something like that. It was really risky, and I knew, at that moment, I was alone with it."

Ebert makes a very interesting observation about Herzog in his review of The White Diamond:

"In 'La Soufriere,' a 1977 documentary released on DVD last month, he journeys to an island evacuated because of an impending volcanic eruption, to ask the only man who stayed behind why he did not leave. What he is really asking, what he is always asking, is why he had to go there to ask the question."

I finished watching Spellbound this past weekend with the wife.

It's quite amazing watching some of these kids, as young as 9, prepare for the Scripps Natiaonal Spelling Bee with such intensity and focus.

However, I'm mixed on the significance of memorizing large numbers of words.  On one hand, it does excercise the capacity of the still maturing brain, it does help kids understand the process of memorizing information, it does help develop a strong work ethic.  On the other hand, I don't know if it has any intellectual value.  To memorize formulas for physics is one thing.  To understand the formulas is a different story. 

Despite all that spekticism, I really liked the point that Rajesh Kadakia, one of the speller's father makes:

"I'll be the first to admit that it's hard.  But what is valuable in life that is easy to achieve?"

But in any case, perhaps the more important aspect of the film that I took away from my viewing is what America symbolizes to the rest of the world.  Now don't get the wrong idea, I'm not some chest thumping, flag waving, patriot.  In fact, I'm probably middle of the road in what I think of this country as a whole (or at least where we are currently), but I was really re-awakened to the fact that America is land of dreams by two segments in the film (it's one of those things that you probably think about once in a while, but when you hear it again, you're reaction is always along the lines of "Wow, that's soooo true", even though you've come to the same conclusion at some previous point in time).

As the spellers are introduced to us, one by one, we are also introduced to the different cultural backgrounds of each family.  It's truly amazing to see how the parents, family, and teachers in each vignette run the gamut of skin color, attitudes towards education, and their approach to supporting their kids.

Perhaps the best soundbites to come out of these subjects is from Mr. Kadakia.

"I'm so indebeted...to this country, which will accept a stranger [to] come in and give them this opportunity.  America is just great."

A little later, as Rajesh is showing us around his second home, he says:

"There is no way that you can fail in this country.  That is one guarantee in this country: if you work hard, you will make it.  And that's not existent in the rest of the world."

This struck me again the other night as I was talking to my wife about how badass my mom is when I think about it.  When we first moved here from Taiwan, she was a single mother, taking care of two kids, attending grad school full time, and working part-time to pay for it!  We used to live in a tiny little 1 bedroom apartment and literally posessed only junk (my mom loved garage sales).  Thinking back, it's truly amazing how determined my mother is.  You would never be able to tell by the packaging (my mom is a somewhat tiny woman), but my mother is just exploding with determination to do whatever she sets her mind to.

I'm tempted to think that this is a largely immigrant way of thinking.  Of her second trip to the spelling bee after being eliminated in an early round the previous year, one of the young spellers, Nupur Lala, says:

"You don't get any second chances in India the way you do in America."

It's true.  And I think that most people take this for granted.  The immigrant mind feeds off of this second chance in life and utilizes it to excel.  Perhaps Angela Arenivar's story (the first speller we are introduced to) symbolizes this more so than any of the other spellers in the documentary (her father being an illegal Mexican immigrant who doesn't speak English).

At this point, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this but there was one other statement that caught my attention:

"I'm always thrilled to see any child come in who is from India because I know they are gonna have a good work ethic and the are gonna be good students."

Being the spouse of a teacher, I can tell you that this is a general attitude (be it good or bad) that teachers have towards Asian students in general.  My wife expects Asian kids to do well without the goading and prodding that most kids require; she's excited when she sees an Asian name on her class list in the summer.  Now, being Asian myself, and having met Asians of all walks, I can tell you that there are stupid Asians as well (maybe I'm one of them ), and I consistently point this out to people who make the point to me that Asians are statistically smarter than other races.

Seeing as how I can't seem to string my thoughts together today, I think I'll just end this post here.  It is the immigrant working class, driven by The American Dream, that has built America to what it is today.  As we move forward, we need to keep sight of this ideal and realize that The American Dream is not a right owed to any of us, but a privilege for which we must continually strive to attain.

If nothing else, this movie serves as a reminder that our situations are never as dire as we think them to be. America is truly the land of opportunity, be it financial or academic; however, one must always be prepared to work hard to achieve success.

Sidenote: If you search around the web, you can find various tid-bits about the spellers.  Some of them even have blogs. It's intersting to see their perspective and find out how the film affected their lives.

A couple of weeks back, my machine at home started to crash randomly when I was playing Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat, of course). It was quite annoying since I thought it might have been a software issue and ended up rebuilding the machine only to find that the same funk was persisting.

It turns out that one of my twin, 512MB Corsair XMS memory modules was bad. Really bad. When I ran Memtest86 against the RAM, I consistently ended up with metric ass-loads of errors in the 512MB+ range. Battlefield 1942, being the memory hog that it is, would crash the whole system after ~1-5 minutes of play.

In any case, I started looking around for new memory to replace the module. As I was looking, I noticed that Corsair offers a lifetime warranty on their products! Awesome! So I navigated to their site only to be confounded by the stupid-as-Jessica-Simpson method of obtaining an RMA number.

In any case, after trudging through the process, I got an email on Tuesday (I think I sent it out on Saturday of Labor Day weekend) confirming my RMA.

I packed up the memory and sent it out via UPS Ground the next day. Meanwhile, I'd been playing Battlefield 1942 with only 512MB of RAM...oh the horror! It was laaaaaaag city.

So today, I finally got my replacement modules. To my surprise, they were new modules (I was half expecting refurb?). Not only that, they sent back double the amount of RAM that I sent them. Yup. I got back a full gig of RAM. Oh wait, it gets better! It was DDR400! I only sent them DDR333.

Needless to say, I am a happy customer. Not that I've been using other brands of memory in the last few years (I've put together/upgraded ~6 computers? Used Corsair each time). The only downside is that they sent back registered memory. Unfortunately, my Asus P4S533 doesn't support registered memory. Doh! You'd figure they'd look this stuff up first. Luckily, I have another machine that is currently using a 512MB stick that matches the one I have at home and this machine supports registered memory.

So, all-in-all, a good experience! Corsair gets a 9/10 on this one. -3 points for sending me incompatible memory. +2 points for sending me double my original amount.

(Random) It has a similar consonance to The Constant Gardner.

Anyways, after watching Mr. Iwata's keynote speech, I'm more convinced than ever that Nintendo is going in the right direction and is going to change the way we, as a society, view gaming.

The key point that Mr. Iwata makes is that the human-machine interface for consoles, the controller, has never been fully accepted.  In fact, non-gamers probably find them daunting and quite alien.  Truth be told, one of the most tedious parts of starting any new game is learning the control scheme.  Memorizing button combos and what not has never been a strength of mine, even after years of gaming.

Mr. Iwata states that while even your grandmother would pick up a remote control to interact with a television, many parents that grew up before the video game generation are turned off to the games before even playing them because they're intimidated and/or confused by the interface. 

Making games more complex and more difficult (the route that Microsoft and Sony are taking), simply alienates more users by making the barrier of entry more difficult to surmount.  A big part of that barrier is the modern controller and the fact that as games become more complex, the only way to add new control schemes is to add new buttons or utilize more combinations of buttons.  Neither of those options is optimal nor are they intuitive/easy to use.

On the other hand, as I was explaining to my wife how utterly badass it would be to play Katamari Damacy with this new controller, even she was getting excited about it (and she's as anti-gamer as they come).

Mr. Iwata emphasizes an important point that I find myself agreeing with more and more: games today fail to stimulate me.  You can only go so far with graphics and immersion before it becomes the same-old, same-old.  We can clearly see how this has failed the movie industry as CG is so common nowadays, that even the definition of what is visually inconceivable is radically different from what it was only a decade ago (or even half a decade ago for that matter); at some bifurcation point, people just don't care about how pretty or how realistic it looks.  Badass CG just doesn't cut it nowadays.  The studios that "get it" smartly allot small budgets to promising stories while the others throw big money to create a grand visual experience (some studios are just dumb and continue to build stupid rehashes).  The latter works increasingly rarely nowadays.

I only own four games for the PlayStation 2: Dance Dance Revolution, Metal Gear Solid 3 (I wrote a nice Amazon.com review for it), Katamari Damacy, and We (Love) Katamari.  Part of the problem is the time commitment.  As I've grown up, I find myself with an ever increasing number of primary responsibilities and gaming is becoming a hobby that I enjoy when I have free time.  As such, I don't want to invest a huge amount of time playing long games (MGS3 being an exception).  As great as Resident Evil 4 is, I still haven't finished it, months after I purchased it.  The other part is that there aren't games that I want to play.  I mean, how different can MGS4 be from MGS3?  What new gaming experiences can I expect?  None.
 
That's the most disappointing part of this: game developers have resigned themselves to rehashing proven formulas rather than innovate and create new expriences.  As we will see with the introduction of Atlas and WPF/E, innovation in the UI can change the way we build and think about software.  Similarly, Nintendo has proven, with the success of the DS, that changing the way we interact with game devices can spur innovation in developing new gaming experiences.  Most importantly, and Mr. Iwata repeatedly emphasizes this, Nintendo is aiming to generalize the definition of a "gamer" by making the human-machine interface intuitive to everyone.

Without question, of all of the next-gen consoles that are coming out, the only one that I'm even remotely excited about is the Nintendo Revolution.  And perhaps more importantly, even my wife is excited to try it out.