dontsaynothing.com

It’s once again time to say good bye to one of the pioneers in the technology industry.  While there are some goodbyes that need to happen, there are others that don’t.  Polaroid has just announced that after nearly 60 years of instant photography, it will be closing its factories around the world and hanging up the hat of instant photography.  

Apparently the company thought it was time for Polaroid to close, because Lord knows that nobody wants it too.  Even people who don’t normally use Polaroids enjoy seeing them used when they happen to see them.  But the people that this decision is really are obviously the people who still use them on a regular basis.  

Polaroid cameras have, over the years, come to be used in many different fields of work.  While some of these professions have discontinued use of the cameras, replacing them with digital, there are others that still very much rely on the swift return of the Polaroid camera.  Medicine is once such profession that is still able to find a use for the cameras, stating that there are no alternatives.  Doctors often use the film with a grid on it to measure scars and track the shrinkage over time.  

Despite the fact that Polaroid is closing down, there are many customers that don’t intend to stop shooting with their cameras.  Stock piles of film have been bought around the country with one man spending as much as $800, leaving him enough film for 800 pictures.  While not an endless supply, he won’t be running out any time soon.

While the age of the Polaroid is over, many of us will never forget the impact that those cameras had on our lives.  Most of us have memories of taking pictures and then the minute of shaking afterwards.  The excitement of seeing your picture immediately after taking it was overwhelming.   Polaroid, your instant photograph cameras will be missed.

Today, the UK discussed enforcing a ban on illegal music and video downloading from the internet.  As it stands right now, there is no real law in place to prevent such actions; this allows some 6 million people to continue downloading from sites that end in “.uk” without fear of prosecution.  

One of the many issues that has come about because of the internet is the illegal downloading of both music and then later movies.  People don’t seem to think that when they download from the internet, they are stealing.  When in actuality, taking a movie from a store without paying for it is really no different.  It is all stealing.  

And while I said originally that it was movies and music, I really actually mean anything that can be put on the internet for other people to download.  Computer programs are becoming a major download on the internet, and most of them are illegal.  In some cases, this is worse.  While movies and music usually don’t cost more than $10-20, some computer programs cost upwards of $1,000. 

I know that if the UK passes the anti-illegal downloading laws, there will be a massive sigh of disappointment,  heard probably around the world.  But I really don’t understand why.  Why do people feel they have the right to steal from other people?  That logic just doesn’t make sense to me.

The awesomeness that is Google has just taken itself to a whole new level.  The once simple search engine has made some serious improvements over the past years, but now the people at Google are taking another giant leap.  Apparently the confines of the internet has come to bore Google; there are so many other avenues that have not even been traversed, and Google intends to stake claim to them.  

Currently, Google has recently announced its release of its new operating system for cell phones.  While this feature will not be released to all types of phones, there is a decent selection of them to choose from.  Google really is trying to broaden its horizons and take a step out of the box.  But something about the way they do it doesn’t bother me like the way Microsoft does it…Oh wait, they don’t try to monopolize every industry they enter.

Can we, for a moment, just take a step back in time…back to a time before the ps2 and before the xbox, gamecube, and the wii.  As I sit here at my desk in my dorm room I notice something in the corner.  It is neither big nor flashy, hi definition or hi speed, but rather, it is a Gameboy.  Now the one sitting in my room is a Gameboy Advance, but it sparks the memories of a time before the games of today.  There was once a time when it was cool to have the limited edition Ice Blue Gameboy Pocket.  But there mere lack of advanced graphics and sound did not cause a lack of excellent gaming.  

Don’t misinterpret what my point is here, I am not at all against the new games that have hit the market.  In fact, I love most of them.  I am merely having a nostalgic moment in which I remember how even the simplest of games which, when compared to games of today were just moving pixels, could entertain for hours, making even the longest of trips seem like mere seconds.  

Gaming really has taken giant leaps in just about every aspect of the industry, and I applaud them for that.  It’s just fun to compare what once was to what currently is every once in a while.

In an article from the BBC, the online community Myspace.com is talking about making some serious changes.  And if they ever want my business again, these changes better come fast.  However, the types of changes that are taking place might make people who could be quoted as saying “Facebook is a Myspace wannabe” really want to eat their words.  

Myspace has announced that it is going to make a special platform for programmers.  By doing this, Myspace hopes to be able to add applications to the profiles of its members.  Sound familiar?  Oh right, Facebook already has that.  Facebook enacted the same plan about a year ago with impressive success.  A whopping 15,000 programmers have signed up for their program and introduced applications into the Facebook community.  It will be interesting to see where Myspace takes this program, and one would hope that they take it in a different direction instead of just copying line for line what has already been done.

Even so, I’m not quite sure if this step is enough to save Myspace from the wiles of the idiotic and perverted people that one can find lurking around the website.  I feel like Myspace has run its course.  The BBC mentioned the fact that Facebook’s 60 million members has yet to match the 200 million members that Myspace has accumulated.  While this statistic is impressive at first glance, it brings up the question of active members.  There are plenty of profiles on both Myspace and Facebook that have not be logged into since their day of creation.  And while both sides do in fact have inactive members, Myspace most definitely has a greater percentage of them.

What Myspace really needs is more security.  This once booming online community has become just another means for computers with web security programs to access porn.  Instead of spending millions on petty programs, if Myspace once again wants to be taken seriously, a basic reform needs to take place.

Despite all of the other necessities that a college student may require, a knowledge of the latest and greatest is probably the most important.  This knowledge can span from technology to international relations, but students need to be able to keep up with the world.  College seems like a bubble at times; some students no longer have TVs in their rooms for easy access to the nightly news.  However, this is no reason for students to fall behind, especially in the technology department.  College students are the next generation of employees and bosses, and they need to keep up with the latest technology in order to stay ahead of the competition.  Thus the age of techno-news blogging here at dontsaynothing.com has begun.

The Achilles heel of college students is most definitely money.  Or rather, it would be the lack there of.  Money is definitely a necessity, and yet, one still finds it to be the rarest of the college resources.  But there have been reports in which people attest to finding reserves of this rare resource.  And after much investigation, it seems that these store of money usually begin to appear soon after students go off to college.  These money mines are located in the student’s home and are often referred to as “parents.”  While these resources seem to be present from the very beginning of the student’s life, it is only after one truly experiences the feeling of being completely broke that one truly is able to attempt to tap into this seemingly endless resource.  Apparently, parents cannot supply an endless stream of money, which was a devastating blow when this discovery was made.  

One extra security measure that has been put in place to prevent the over-mining of money from the wallet is the University Bucks that almost every college offers.  Parents put money into an account for their students, and it suddenly becomes completely worthless outside a mile of the school.  While this is all fine and dandy for the parents, it kind of leaves the students high and dry.  

This injustice must be stopped.  There needs to be a law against making money worthless.

Probably one of the biggest lessons that a freshman needs to learn before even his second semester is how absolutely awful the campus book store is.  First let’s break down the name…Book-store.  So based on this it would seem that this is where one would go to purchase books for class.  And considering that this is the campus book store, one could also assume that this would guarantee the availability of all the books for all the classes.  This assumption, while justified, couldn’t be more wrong.  

Now, as a first semester freshmen, most students probably don’t know about all the pre-ordering possibilities offered through not only the campus bookstore, but also several online sources and the used bookstore down the street.  This information is withheld on purpose.  The bookstore actually enjoys watching new freshmen scramble for their books the day before school starts.  

And to make the game even more enjoyable for them, the employees at the bookstore play dumb every time a student asks them about some needed books.   Sometimes they don’t even bother to look up when asked questions, as they are probably just tying to finish their game of solitaire.  It also seems as if more information could be gathered about shipments by asking the books themselves rather than ask an employee.  

“Excuse me, do you know when the next shipment of you is coming in?”

Now, these books don’t actually give an answer, but at least they don’t lie either.  

Another great thing about the campus book store-and this is especially true of the smaller schools-is that since it is probably the only place that carries any kind of school merchandise, they really want to utilize that position.  Adding the name of the school to any kind of item at least doubles the price right then and there.  How the people who work at the bookstore are able to sleep at night knowing that they are basically just taking money from poor college students is a mystery.  One theory is that they don’t sleep, but because they are an elite group of money loving insomniacs that run on the smell of money.  Considering how much it costs to get just a simple sweatshirt, it would seem that these people could be energized for the rest of the day by the profits that they get from one such sweatshirt.  

The campus bookstore truly is a necessary evil… which is probably what makes them evil in the first place.  They know that students can’t survive on campus with out them.  And since it’s not enough to see the smiling faces of these poor college students who are already paying ridiculous tuition, more money can obviously be squeezed from either them or their parents.  And thus, the vicious cycle continues: Student gives bookstore money enough for two shirts, bookstore gives them back one.

Freshman Move-In Day: This day can be one of the most exciting, awkward, fun, scary, and possibly humiliating days of a young man’s life.  But how does one prepare for this milestone event?  What goes in to making a high school senior ready for his first steps as a college student?  The answer…boxes; the most crucial of all the items on the list for move-in day.  Not only are they the building block for the rest of the college packing, but anyone who undervalues their importance clearly has never helped a girl carry a car-load of junk up to the sixth floor of the biggest dorm on campus.  Needless to say, it’s not the most enjoyable experience.  

Now, with the university goods packed into hopefully no more than four boxes (any less, you probably forgot something; anymore, and the extras are going to remain packed for the entirety of the year), it’s time to take the long awaited journey to the campus of choice.  As the car pulls up in front of the dorm, feelings of excitement are quickly overwhelmed by awkwardness as the car is flooded by upperclassmen who, for some strange reason, volunteered to end their summer two days early to help the freshmen move-in.  The initial shock usually comes very close to knocking people off their feet; there is no way that people should be this nice with school this close to starting.  Anyway, this is the point where packing with no more than four boxes really comes in handy.  Not only does it speed the process along, but you don’t become the jerk that made these nice people make twenty trips to your car to empty it.  This also means that they will be less likely to mumble obscenities behind your back.  

The parents are probably going to remain with their child for the remainder of the day, probably mostly due to the mother’s severe case of separation anxiety, which is intensified if the child is her first-born.  And where the separation anxiety begins, humiliation begins.  Memories of the first day of every school year come flooding back, and this year there’s no coming back at 3:00 p.m.  Oddly enough, the mother, between spurts of tears, still has the power to inflict more embarrassment on her child.  The dreaded “go introduce yourself” comment quickly comes into play.  It’s understandable though; it’s a natural occurrence for a mother to push her child to new levels of embarrassment.  But simply by being present, the mother has helped along this meeting of new people much more than she intended…both students now have something in common and conversation will quickly move from dealing with embarrassing mothers to the new episode of LOST that was on the night before.  

Life as a college student is going to be sweet.  No more parents, no more annoying siblings, no more chores, and no more high school.  Who could possibly ask for anything more than that?  Oh wait, classes start in 2 days.