Aja Lapus

Month: November 2006

  • Technological Language Barrier

    Language barrier is a figurative phrase to describe the difficulty in learning a new language. I would also use it to define a limit to the language with its current uses.

    Technological breakthroughs are being made every day. And with this, a new name would be heard throughout all the mediums of communication with news, commentaries, discussions and advertisements. I often hear words like super, ultra, enhanced, extended, advanced, high-speed, et al. incorporated in names [and usually in acronyms] of these new technologies. Two recent examples include:

    • HSDPA or High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, a 3rd Generation mobile technology for voice, data and multimedia communications.
    • HUXGA or Hexadecatuple Ultra Extended Graphics Array, a computer monitor resolution with 6400×4800-pixel area.

    Now I wonder: With the newest technologies using names composed of superlatives, how would the next inventors and innovators brand their creations?

    Even though what is considered advanced to day will be history tomorrow, I don’t think people would name what is Advanced now as Advanced tomorrow [even with the assumption that the new name would disregard what the past advanced technology was] as that would eventually ruin the evolution history of these technologies.

    Some names also use words too silly to be extended such as broadband. I don’t think there ever will be a Broaderband Internet. 😛

    It seems that the English language is insufficient for technology though it still is the most widely used medium for technical communication. Though I think the language evolves as well, it seems so slow compared to the way technology does. Would the languages we use today catch up with the pace technology has?

  • Not Worth the Ticket

    OK, OK. The fight was worth the 700-peso live moviecast ticket for them Filipino boxing fans because Manny Pacquiao won his third match against Erik Morales. But even with all the hype I encounter from them, I was a little disappointed I haven’t had to watch a longer fight. Good thing I wasn’t at all interested in watching live inside a movie house. I’d rather spend money for food and gadgetry, or a real film that costs just above a hundred pesos, than for a 10-minute movie costing almost a thousand. The trip to the movie house would even be much longer even when there’s not another car within the next kilometer!

    I am not blaming Morales for the loss. He did give Pacquiao some good punches. I just don’t like people making it such a big thing bragging all day flooding my mobile with SMS. I don’t need to hear it from you, I’ve watched the match live from cable television myself.

    OK, Pacquiao is a good boxer. And because of this, he became a good endorser. And, oh, he has fans [?] as a singer. Just don’t let him get to politics. Please. No more celebrity politicians, please.

    Pacquiao finished the match in three rounds. I’m starting to feel another wave of celebration waiting for his coming back home. But, I wouldn’t even consider him a hero. Will there be a Pacman day? Will all of this be worth it? Yes, he gives pride and unity to Filipinos. But much later after this fight, would there still be?

  • Musing #0007

    What could this day’s blog post be for? 😉

  • Giving Up on Social Bookmarking

    In many occasions, I’ve considered placing link buttons or icons to social bookmarking Web sites since many users of such services could save a couple of clicks and page loads if ever they want to share my entries to other users. Most of the time when I go scouring the Web for interesting articles, I see more or less than a dozen link icons to those sites within the blog entries. But, I ask myself: Do I really need to place all these links just for users to select which one they’d prefer to use?

    The primary concept of social bookmarking seemed better than those of search engines with Web spiders doing the hunting for articles compared to the hunting done by people, thus, the content would most likely be useful.

    But the present situation of multiple users and multiple services all acting on a single entity [i.e., a blog entry, an article] can be quite messy to deal with especially since it does not conform to the social aspect of social bookmarking.

    One major point of this is the emergence of all other bookmarking sites just after del.icio.us became popular. Since then, the aggregation of content [i.e., article bookmarks] became difficult because the proprietary nature of different social bookmarking sites prevents [e.g.] diggs and spurls from being counted together.

    For example, if there are fifty different persons with each using a different social bookmarking Web site and they all bookmarked this page once on their respective service, it will still rank lower than a page marked only twice on just a single bookmarking site by only two people.

    With all of these thoughts on how impure the social bookmarking trend came to be, I really could not come up with a decision whether or not I would be placing bookmark links on my entries. Currently, I still won’t be. But, if ever I will in the near future, I’d most probably use just one or two of the most popular services where you could:

    More info about social bookmarking on Wikipedia with a list of more than 5 dozen social bookmarking Web sites.

  • Was the Messenger Virus Controlled?

    For those using Yahoo! Messenger like I do, you could have encountered a friend sending links to some cool pics (s)he would like to show you. I wouldn’t have blogged this as my friend Nicole already did. But, it seems that those at Yahoo! have already controlled the spread by blocking the links causing them to just show up as “http://” and not the whole URI to the infected Web site.

    I happened to encounter those messages weeks before I knew it was a virus but I use Firefox, and when I went to the Web site, it didn’t infect me at all.

    I just hope other messenger programs implement a block for those infectious messages as well in one way or another if it would not be like the system Yahoo! is already using. Besides, not only Yahoo! Messenger is vulnerable to this, but also AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. If you use these two other messaging services, please tell me if they’re also properly responding to these attacks. More info about the virus can be found at the Trend Micro Virus Encyclopedia entry for WORM_SOHANAD.I

    Happy IMing to you all! 🙂

    Update: The spammers apparently knew about what Yahoo! has been doing to block the URL to their malware site as I’ve just received another spam message from a contact with the address still intact. They now encode a portion of the domain to circumvent the filters of Yahoo! Messenger servers. For example, instead of thecoolpics.com which is blocked by server filters, they now send addresses as thec%6folpics.com with %6f being a URL-encoded version of the letter o.

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