The Unfortunate Integration and Merger of Technology

As most of society is googlely-eyed and awestruck by the advances in technology, there are a few people out there who were perfectly content with the current standard.

As a standard, the technology industry re invents something every 3 months. This being said it is widely understood that you by a computer and by the time you get it home out of the box it is already out of date. The side that most people do not see as an advancement in is the developer side of the technology. This is the little things that happen in the changing of 2 lines of code to make something run more efficiently.

I came across a quite infuriating problem over the weekend with a web based company that I am a very loyal customer and supporter of.

Many months ago my University decided that it would like to move all student email accounts over to a Gmail (Google Mail) based system. Being a loyal supporter I was freaking ecstatic at the opportunity that my email can now be moved out of the University's fossilized computer technology. 

I was basically a kid in a online candy store:

Me when I saw that the migration happened

They even came up with a clever name. "Catmail" University of Arizona Wildcats and Gmail put together. Now I could get both my Gmail and Catmail on my phone, it was much user friendly and basically all around made the entire student body happy. Having two tabs open so I could multi task the emails was a very very nice way to keep life organized and keep work and personal life separated.

Over the weekend the some developer changed around 4 lines of HTML Code and now I cry at night. The exact lines of ode that were changed I could not tell you, but you can now no longer log onto both emails simultaneously. Gmail will realize that you are "cheating their system" and make you log out of one to log into the other. 

Many people do not see a problem with this. well when everything is tied to a certain Gmail account, such as Youtube, Blogger, Google Labs, Stumble, Facebook, Autofill...it makes it extremely painful to work on School email in one tab and do absolutely nothing else in the other tabs. My frustration meter was almost instantly pegged.

Needless to say of the possible fixes none of them are conducive to a productive work environment. There were many new Facebook Status posts about the lack of care the the developers at Google expressed for their loyal following.

Back to using a computer to do one thing at a time...Because Multi tasking is clearly for not anyone who has two or more Google accounts.

Why is Technology Changing my Soda Machine?

Going for a late night snack in the Student Union yesterday I was shocked and appalled at the new form of soda dispensary station. This is in no way shape or form the standard, what I was used to my entire life, soda machine.

This is what the common person thinks of when they imagine enjoying a ice cold caffeinated beverage.

But instead there was this box thing, with only one port for one cup at a time. Touch Screen LCD where you got to select a variety of options.

Surprisingly this picture is widely disproportional. the thing is maybe 6 feet tall, foot and half wide at the face and possibly 3 feet deep. No hoses or water supply or anything, just one power cable running out the back.

At first I am taken back for a second. In 20 years of life I have never had to deal with such a futuristic machine for such a simple task!

Ok, so somewhere in the back of me head I am thinking I have to take pictures and send them to everyone I know. Throwing the cup at my girlfriend and trying to whip out my phone to take pictures like a madman, people start staring. She is now pretending that she has no idea who this lunatic guy is (me) and I'm snapping pictures and holding up the line.

After a short photoshoot I tell her to attempt to get a drink.

The ice thing is a common push bar type of thing where you push it with the cup and the ice falls down into your cup. future technology is going to be hard to get to because it shot out ice at an alarming rate. Full cup of ice is a big NO GO for soda so I have to dump some of it out (more angry people in line).

No that we have ice, I focus my attention on the LCD screen. Looking at options it has all the standard drink options, Root Beer, Coke, Dr. Pepper, Water, Juice yada yada yada. Paging through options I find the Coke Classic. Select it. More options. They have the plain Coke, but now you can also choose Coke Cherry, Coke Lime, Vanilla Coke, and some options I can't even remember (I was to flustered). I choose Vanilla Coke.

After selecting those options I push the big ass button that say SODA on it to fill the cup. Looks very delicious. Walk to the table and take a sip...Sad to report, it tastes funny. Not Vanilla Coke, but Coke with a flavor shot of Vanilla. Big difference for hard core coke drinking people like myself. Whatever food is on the way so I will deal with it's somewhat "Off" flavor.

Upon further consideration of my funny tasting drink I came to the conclusion that it is a soda machine with the syrup bags inside it, but if you choose a flavored soda it adds a few drops of Vanilla concentrate, in my case. This is a very very sad day.

Go home and avoid doing homework by looking it up online and it appears this is a great new scheme to make money by Coke. It is called the Coca-Cola Freestyle.

Here is the official press release

Either way it is conceptually a good idea. In my simple math I came to the idea that it has combinations to make over 100 different types of drinks.

I am sadly disappointed in you Coke.

Stock Market for the College Student

Every one has heard of the Stock Market. Mainly how people either win big or loose it all. In my ever-wandering ways to make a extra buck so I canafford a pizza on those all-nighters I pull, I looked into the Stock Market as a way to make extra income.

In therory, it is not a hard concept. By stock when prices are low and sell stock when prices are high. But upon further analysis of this simple therory I have learned a few things that people should consider and make the desicion about playing the makrt very easy. I will explain how to make money on this game in 3 easy to follow steps.

1. Start-Up
In order to buy and sell stock you must have an account with a online website like TD AmeriTrade, E*Trade, USAA, or any other company. Many of these companies required a "start-up fee" or "deposite." On average this fee starts at 500 dollars and climbs. The most expensive fee I saw was anything overthe 1,000,000,000(billion) mark. This is a very large sum of money for the average college student. The fee corrisponds to a level on whatever website you are using. Basic Bronze, Silve, Gold Platinum. Right away many people turn their heads at the large number and give up on their dreams of being a stock market trader right there. But wait it gets better (and much more expensive)

2. Trading
Once you throw that lump sum of money into this game, You can start buying Stock. Every company has them so pick a few and buy away. Buying and Selling is called "Trading." The website charges you a fee for every trade you make. This is how the wesite makes money. Based on your level of buy in at start up, your Trade fee goes up or down. At the Bronze level you will be charged 9.99 everytime you buy or sell. Platinum people are much lower at around 5.25 a trade. So not only must you pay for the price of the stock, you must also tack on this trade fee.

3. Money Making
Buy Stock, Wait until Stock prices go up, Sell Stock. That is how you make the money.
In more detail: buy the stock and wait for the price to rise, you must factor in the two trade fee's that will be charged to your account, then sell the stock.

Example:
Lets take a single share of google stock. Ticker Symbol GOOG

Single share of GOOG opened the market today at a price of $610.05

-

Trade Fee to buy Stock  (Rounding) $10.00

-

Trade Fee to sell Stock  (Rounding) $10.00

+

Single share of GOOG closed the makret today at $ 618.43

=

Net Profit $-11.62

In order to make money off this stock you would have to buy more then one share. at that price no one can afford. No Matter how many shares you buy the Trade Fee is always 9.99. This is were the money comes in. Lets say you bought 100 Shares of GOOG, Here is the sample equation:

100 shares of GOOG opened the market today at a price of $61,005.00

-

Trade Fee to buy Stock  (Rounding) $10.00

-

Trade Fee to sell Stock  (Rounding) $10.00

+

100 shares of GOOG closed the makret today at $ 61,843.00

=

Net Profit $818.00

Now there is a Number we like.

Of course this example is done with a fairly high priced stock. There are stocks on the market that trade a under $1.00 dollar a share. You can use the same equation to figure out your net income on that type of stock to. Just remember a stock that trades at under a dollar a share will not have as much price change as the GOOG stock. therefore in order to make money you will need to buy in the 100's of shares. And with a stock that has a price change of .25 cents, you will not make over 800 dollars at a time, instead your profit may only be in the single digits.

FAILURE

All the aboe is of course the happy and lucky side of the market. It could very easily (and more commonly) go the exact opposite of the examples above. You buy a stock at a certain price, and instead of going up, the Stock crashes. buy the time you get to click "Sell" on the computer you could have lost your 61,000 dollar investment.

World Influence in Stock

Lets play two examples here:

1) You Buy a stock in an airplane company. The stock is trading at 10 dollars a share. That day the airline company comes out with a media release that says they made an airplane that can fly farther, use less gas, and carry more people then any other airplane in the world. The stock prices skyrocket. You sell your shares for 1,000 dollars a share. You have just made a huge profit.

2) You buy stock in an airplane company. The stock is trading at 10 dollars a share. That day an airplane from that company crashes. They company comes out to the media and says that a certain part failed and caused the crash, the company must not fly any of their airplanes until the art has been replaced in all their airplanes. The stock price plummits. You have to sell your share at .10 cents a share. You have lost it all.

If you stay on your game and can afford the initial start up cost, there is alot of money to be made in the stock market. But the second you fall behind or trip up, you will loose almost all your money in a heartbeat. I read recently that almost 90% of people who try to play the stock market will loose all the money they put into it. Of that 90% over 30% of the people will have to go into bankruptcy because of the ammount of money they lost.

it would be a great learning experience to try to buy a few stocks and see how it all works first hand, but no college student has the moey to go and try this.

Still better off working at McDonalds then playing the Stock Market.

The 3 Phases of new Technology

When a new technology is introduced to the public, three kinds of stories are written in "The Media." Here they are, in order:

1. "Hey, look at this New Thing!"
2. "You can have sex with this New Thing!"
3. "The New Thing can hurt you."

Motion Sensing additions to 3rd gen Video game consoles:
1) The Wii came out and everyone was drooled over how cool it was with its motion senor num-chucks. Not long after that everyone heard the lawsuit going around about how some lady let go of her num-chucks and they went flying across the room and hit someone else standing nearby watching her Mario Kung Fu action. Crazy lady, who is obviously mentally impaired, looses lawsuit and now all following technological inventions have to have some sort of goofy warning.

2) The Kinect comes out for the Xbox. The world is amazed with the notion that you no longer need to use your hands to play video games, it is now more realistic than ever. Within a month the game developer ThriXXX comes out with a sex game for the Kinect. Microsoft shut ThriXXX down within a matter of hours after their Media Release about their "Hands Free sex game" came out. After a few months now I still read stories of people hurting themselves, their surround furniture, and the TV itself.


3) The PS3 Move. Lacking in all departments. You stole the Num-chuck controllers from the Wii and after the Kinect came out, no one was to impressed. Sorry.


Web Cams:
At the first sign of video chatting through a computer the world was up in flames to acquire this new technology. Soon I'm sure people were video chatting naked. That is basically like watching porn online BUT the porn star can see you too. Next thing you know the person you thought you trusted took pictures of you naked and has now posted them all over the image boards. Now that your naked pictures are all over the internet, good luck explaining that to anyone who questions you about it.

Yes, that is a picture of yourself nude,
 that you just found online.

On to what every one wants. Pictures display things way better then words, so here are some of them to help put my point across:

Next time something technological comes out, watch these steps occur.

These are only two examples, If you have more put them in a comment on this post and I'll put them up to a case study!