21

I'm finally 21! Thanks to all those friends who made the day awesome-- Jessica for calling right at midnight (and sending frequent updates on the 14th about how many minutes there were left to my birthday); Natasha, Catherine, Susan for appearing at my room at 12:04 with my first legal drinks and lots of friendly peer pressure; Ari, Patrick, Brandon, Ben, and others at Palantir; my CS106 sectionees that noticed it was my birthday during IGs today at the LaIR; my parents for the amusing gifts as well as money for a new fridge; the friends who wished me a happy birthday over Facebook or over the phone; the people coming to dinner tomorrow; and of course, Wilbur summer staff (Larissa, Jiahui, Marian, Victoria, Sawyer, Mattie, Isaac, and Tim) for the rich, chocolaty Prolific Oven cake decorated with 21 candles at staff bonding.

I'm past the last hurdle before turning 30...

Mercedes To Ditch Gas Cars

Hot off the presses, and slashdotted, Mercedes to stop producing petroleum-burning vehicles by 2015. This would be quite something if they succeed, and perhaps a much-needed shock to the automotive industry as a whole if they do publicly commit more money to the effort.

Why I Don't Have a Text Message Plan

Whoever was the original brainchild behind marketing SMS as a premium "feature" is both a genius and a idiot. Genius because it is now an $80 billion plus industry. Idiot because transferring text should really not cost that much. According to a Techcrunch article, it costs $1310 per MB of text messaging. This assuming 160 byte messages and the 20 cent charge on the 3G iPhones if you don't have a plan. According to AT&T's own 3G specs, the network can provide up to 128kbps in a moving vehicle. So that's 160*8=1.28kbits for 20 cents, while you can download 10 times that amount in a single second. There's something terribly wrong. I believe it will only be time before SMS becomes free after a killer phone messaging web app comes along with free messaging that will dethrone the large networks and their monopoly on SMS.