Toyota Announces Largest Recall in Their History

Early Wednesday morning, Toyota Motor Corporation announced that it would repair or replace 4 million faulty accelerator pedals.  The models affected include basically every top selling car or truck from the Toyota over the last four years; 2007-10 Camry sedan and Tundra pickup, 2005-10 Avalon sedan and Tacoma pickup, 2004-9 Prius hybrid sedan, and three Lexus sedans: the 2007-10 ES350 and 2006-10 IS250 and IS350.

This massive recall is in the aftermath of an August crash which killed four people, including an off duty Highway Patrol Officer who was driving a loner 2009 Lexus ES350.  The car he was driving reached a speed of 120mph before tragically colliding with a Ford Explorer, flipped, rolled, and then burst into flames.

It’s good that Toyota is taking this precautionary measure, as they have received several reports of Toyota owners finding the accelerator sticking, and it shows that they are taking responsibility for the incident.  An otherwise reliable manufacturer, Toyota’s stock on the NYSE hasn’t slid at all since the announcement.  Recalls like this have resulted from cars being created around a functioning, master computer.  We end up trusting the computers with our lives with little hesitation, until something like this happens.  Apparently the problem with the August accident was that the computer that was supposed to shut down the car, didn’t.  What will happen when we’re all driving around electric cars and a fuse breaks?

Blue

It Pays to Know How to Program

Then again that is assuming that your idea of getting paid is actually quitting your job with no notice via a Mac OS X application.  The man who left this on his computer was in a position that he thought was going to be temp-to-hire, turns out he was just going to continue being a temp.  Sure this guy knows what he’s doing on a computer, but he could learn a thing or two about communication.  Three months as a temp and he never once had a discussion about his future with the company?  Seems like it’s partly his fault for being treated like shit.

I’m envious of his computer skills, but not of his social skills.  Is this a growing trend?  People becoming so attached to their computers for work that they don’t have meaningful interactions with their co-workers around them?

Blue

I Wish Obama Introduced This Campaign When I Was A Kid

Yesterday Obama kicked off the Federal Government’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign, which will provide $4.35 billion in Federal grants to schools that innovate in STEM (science, engineering, technology, and mathematics) learning intitiatives. This campaign will also be helped along by $260 million in private sector funding. This campaign will allow government funding for much more innovative and exciting initiatives than would have been approved under the test-score-centered “No Child Left Behind”. Instead of simply trying to stop the bad, this will help to flourish the good.

This is a great way to get kids interested at a young age in exciting and in demand fields. From my experience it’s very hard to get most kids interested in anything that resembles learning. But introducing them new things on the cutting edge would be something exciting that they would jump at. When I left for high school in 2001, my elementary school was still running Macintosh Classics, circa 1990. Especially showing kids that they can make real contributions at such a young age can be very inspiring, like what Obama recently did with his White House held Astronomy Night.

Bunyan

AT&T Is Now Offering Pay-As-You-Go Internet

Too bad they have it capped out at 500MB for 30 days. 500MB in 30 days? Please, even the iPhone offers 3GB packages on a monthly basis.  I guess the point of this is for people who only need the internet for a certain amount of time.  For example, say I’m going on holidays for a week or so and I don’t think I’ll be able to live off of a wi-fi connection, I would probably purchase a 500MB package to keep me going for the week.  500MB just isn’t practical for anything else, if someone sends you a picture over email, thats a handful of MB’s right there.

Pay as you go data coverage for notebook computers is a pretty rare feature.  Nowadays in Canada, the major mobile carriers seem to be really pushing to sell their mobile internet keys on three year contracts.  But I’m unable to find any pay as you go options.  Internet keys make sense.  Heck, I’d love to be able to browse the web on my laptop while on the go as opposed to my stupid HTC Touch.  It seems that with all the talk of cloud-computing and now the push for mobile internet keys, the companies that matter have recognized that data on the go is a necessity, which makes our lives better.

 

Blue

Is Google Pre-Maturely Introducing a Cloud OS?

It’s been a couple of days now since Google shared their new Chrome OS with the world, and I’m still unsure with how I feel about it.  Google confirmed all the gossip prior to the release about Chrome OS being a cloud based operating system.  In fact, the whole OS is set up right inside their Chrome web browser.  This means everything from your documents and videos to your web apps and games will operate from inside the browser.  I don’t know how I feel about this.  The Chrome browser is basic and lightweight, and so it’s appearance.  Sure they’ve recently added support for skins, but the overall feel of the browser isn’t complete.  Doing everything inside of something as blah as Chrome kind of frightens me.  Yeah I know Chrome OS will be heading to netbooks, and the whole point of netbooks are to be light weight and fast, but seriously, I don’t know if I’d be able to handle being trapped inside a browser the entire time I was on my computer.

The projected launch date for Chrome OS is sometime towards the end of 2010, so there are still a ton of details that Google is trying to work out, but one thing I’m curious about is how much online space you will be given with the purchase of the OS.  I imagine it will come with a flat rate of say 10gb’s of online storage, with options to upgrade to anything higher.  It’s true that by keeping files off of the hard drive, it will create a faster computer experience, but this could start to stress our cable and DSL systems.  If everyone is saving massive files onto the web, the cloud could clog the bandwidth and make it counter-productive by actually slowing the computer down.  This is my main concern about the shift to cloud-based computing.

I read an article in the Economist last month following the release of Windows 7 that talked about the future of operating systems.  They project that all operating systems will be cloud base, and the concept of a personal computer will vanish.  Any computer at any time will be able to access all of your information, from anywhere in the world.  This is the beauty of the cloud.  For accessibility and practicality’s sake it makes sense, but before these changes can be implemented, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Linux all need to come together and work out and arrangement with the cable and DSL providers in order to ensure that the proper infrastructure is in place to deal with this new thought.  This includes not only faster connections capable of instantly saving massive files to the cloud, but also a Wi-Fi or 4G network allowing anyone to access the internet from anywhere.  Until that happens, I don’t think cloud only computing is a practical idea.

Blue