Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is the craziest shopping day of the year. People get up (or stay up) very, very early on Friday morning and wait in line only to make it into the store and fight crowds for the greatest sales of the season. As the internet market grows, there are also large groups getting up to shop online.
For instance, I got this in an email from Kohl's Department Store:
Shop early and take advantage of over 300 Early Bird Specials
Available in our stores 4AM-1PM (local time) & online 12AM-3PM (CST)
Friday, November 27.
Shop Friday. Build your list.
Build your list, then shop in-store at 4AM (local time)
or online at midnight (CST) this Friday!
On TechCrunch.com, they placed a report on the top websites' population of visitors this past week and how the websites held up to the high traffic. The top websites were: Amazon.com, Apple.com, barnesandnoble.com, dell.com, target.com, toysrus.com, and walmart.com.
They found the statistics within the report by checking the websites every minute for the entire week. They found that Toys 'R Us' website was down for about five minutes, which in the entire scheme of things may have been .01%. All of the others had no shutdowns at all, although they had slower processing times. Dell.com had the slowest processing time by quite a bit.
The greatness of the internet never seems to amaze me! I never would have even thought to avoid Black Friday in the stores by getting online, and be able to still get the deals!!! Crazy!!!
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Cyborgs...More than Fiction
The other day in class, we started talking about Cyborgs and all of things that come along with that kind of technology: especially ethics.
My friend and I started talking about all the Cyborgs that you see in popular media. The first one and of course, most awesome one would have to be Wolverine from Marvel's The X-Men. As you may or may not know, Wolverine has a super healing power which made him a prime subject for the injection of the alloy adamantium. They injected adamantium into his skeleton. He is most known for the claws that come out of his hands at his knuckles (which were originally just bone).
Other cyborgs in popular media include Iron Man, Wolverine's female clone- X 23, and of course, The Bionic Man.
I can't say that I had given a lot of thought to what a Cyborg would be in reality, but after watching a video in class, I realized the definition that applies to Cyborgs. It is any person who has had a piece of machine or electronics put with their body to improve their human abilities. This includes people that own prosthetic limbs, or as our Professor does, an electric cochlea. So, then I began to wonder about people with heart monitors...are they cyborgs?
Where will the human race be as technology continues to evolve and the quality of life improves?
And will there be an appreciation for the strides we have made, or will it all be taken for granted?
My friend and I started talking about all the Cyborgs that you see in popular media. The first one and of course, most awesome one would have to be Wolverine from Marvel's The X-Men. As you may or may not know, Wolverine has a super healing power which made him a prime subject for the injection of the alloy adamantium. They injected adamantium into his skeleton. He is most known for the claws that come out of his hands at his knuckles (which were originally just bone).
Other cyborgs in popular media include Iron Man, Wolverine's female clone- X 23, and of course, The Bionic Man.
I can't say that I had given a lot of thought to what a Cyborg would be in reality, but after watching a video in class, I realized the definition that applies to Cyborgs. It is any person who has had a piece of machine or electronics put with their body to improve their human abilities. This includes people that own prosthetic limbs, or as our Professor does, an electric cochlea. So, then I began to wonder about people with heart monitors...are they cyborgs?
Where will the human race be as technology continues to evolve and the quality of life improves?
And will there be an appreciation for the strides we have made, or will it all be taken for granted?
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