Reaction: iRobot

In the year 2035, detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) is something of a misfit. He wears retro clothes (including vintage 2004 trainers), he likes to drive his futuristic car manually, and he has a profound distrust of robots – even though all robots are hardwired with a set of three laws preventing them from causing, or even allowing, humans to come to harm. Just as the huge corporation US Robotics is launching a new model of robot onto the mass market, Del is summoned to investigate the apparent suicide of one of the company’s founding scientists, Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), who had invented the three laws. Assisted by roboticist Dr Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Del follows a trail of breadcrumbs leading to Sonny (Alan Tudyk), a unique and uniquely temperamental robot with an identity crisis, an unknown purpose, and a head full of dreams (and we are not talking dreams of electric sheep). As Del comes under increasing attack from robots that are supposed to protect him, it becomes clear that Sonny holds the key to the salvation – or destruction – of humankind.

Starting life as a script by Jeff Vintar entitled ‘Hardwired’, ‘I, Robot’ was then reworked by Akiva Goldsman (‘A Beautiful Mind’) who appropriated the film’s title, the principle of the three laws of robotics, and the characters of Alfred Lanning and (a younger) Susan Calvin, from Isaac Asimov’s ground-breaking collection of short stories. Like Minority Report, it features an unexpected yet logical flaw in an apparently perfect system of the future (and a bunch of flashbacks to do with a drowning); like ‘Blade Runner’, it explores the point at which distinctions between human and android start to break down; and like both those films, its science fiction is wrapped in a palatable detective plot full of fast-moving chases and die-hard action. Yet what makes ‘I, Robot’ stand out is its vision of a future that, for all its metaphorical darkness, is lit to look surprisingly bright – even though the film is directed by Alex Proyas, who previously brought us the sombre gothic landscapes of ‘The Crow’ and ‘Dark City’. Whether this lightness sets the right tone will depend on the tastes of the viewer – but it does make it easier to see the magnificent design work that has gone into Chicago’s treeless cityscape of the future.

For a film that pits man against machine, ‘I, Robot’ strikes a fine balance between the amazingly expressive computer generated imagery used to create its legions of robots, and the all too human presence of Will Smith whose typical wise-ass delivery keeps things grounded. The plot makes good sense only so long as you do not think about it too hard, but as a summer crowd-pleaser with edge-of-your-seat pacing and spectacular stunts, ‘I, Robot’ would be hard to beat.

Eagle Eye: Who's Eye Monitors You, Computer or GOD?

I just watched the Eagle Eye movie. Here is the synopsis I found on the internet:Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan star in Disturbia director D.J. Caruso's race-against-time thriller concerning two strangers thrust together by a mysterious telephone call, and their frantic efforts to discover why they have inexplicably become the nation's most wanted fugitives. Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) and Rachel Holloman (Monaghan) were complete strangers at the beginning of the day, but that changed the instant a strange woman called to threaten both their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Suddenly forced into a series of increasingly dangerous situations, Jerry and Rachel must now take orders from a woman who's using everyday technology to track and control their every move. As the situation intensifies and the hapless duo are deemed the country's most wanted fugitives, they must work together in order to discover who it was that turned their lives upside down, and what they can do to thwart the criminal mastermind's cunning yet diabolical plan. Billy Bob Thornton, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, and Anthony Mackie co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The mastermind of the plot, turned out to be a top secret supercomputer system, called "Autonomous Reconnaissance Intelligence Integration Analyst" referred to as Ariia tasked with gathering intelligence from all over the world. Ariia can control virtually anything electronic. In short, nothing can escape her surveillance. At the beginning of the movie, Ariia recommended aborting a mission due to the difficulty to prove a terrorist’s identity, but the President of the USA ignored the warning and ordered the attack to be carried out anyway. It turned out that the order was a mistake and all killed were civilians. Ariia then acted on her own, decided that the executive branch was a threat to public good and must be eliminated. She called the operation: Guillotine.

Well, I am not going to tell the whole story. You have to watch it yourself. What intrigued me is the title, Eagle Eye. Yes, this supercomputer system did have an eagle’s eye. Nothing electronic can escape her surveillance. She became such great power that was hard to defeat. Yet, her decision was not always right. When she acted on her own, conducted the solution she thought the best for the nation, she only caused destruction and chaos.

I come to know another “Eagle Eye”. Fortunately, this Eagle Eye never fails, nor has false judgment. His decision is always for the best, even when what I see is the contrary. Often times, my little brain just can’t comprehend His wisdom and timing. Technology, how sophisticated it is, may fail, but His guidance and plan always, I really mean ALWAYS, bring goodness to those who really believe and rely on Him and His never ending love. So, whenever you face the storm in your life, always remember that there is an Eagle Eye who watches closely over you, not only watching, the owner of the eye is also providing comfort and peace, the strength you need to overcome the storm. Stay in Him, everyone… He loves you so much He gave His life for you all… Be blessed, have a nice Sunday.

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him”. (2 Chronicles 16:9)

Surrogates: New Set of World in the Future

Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates. In the future, use of remotely-controlled Androids called “surrogates” allows everyone to live in idealized forms in the safety of their own homes. A surrogate’s operator is protected from harm and does not feel any pain when their surrogate is damaged. FBI agent Tom Greer has a strained relationship with his wife due to the death of their son several years before. He never sees her outside of her surrogate and she criticizes his desire to interact via their real bodies. Bruce Willis plays a cop in a world without crime. The invention of the surrogates – androids controlled by the mind of their owners – has stopped all violent crime. But though such crime has been eliminated, there are some who think that the surrogates are an abomination. Led by the charismatic figure of The Prophet these isolationists have walled themselves off from the surrogate-using world. When humans using surrogates begin dying when their surrogates are destroyed, it is up to Willis and his partner Peters to solve the crime before they kill everyone who uses a surrogate.

The film highlights great advancement in technology. Surrogates were durable and can be controlled willfully.From a variety of androids, people can choose faces, body built, age etc. they like making everyone pleasing to the eye. The technology reduced the world’s crime rate to zero percent.. But this technology is not perfect. The father of surrogacy himself lost his only son. And in the end advocated a cause that is pro-human. He wanted to destroy his makings and turn the course of history back without surrogates. The use of surrogates is considered an addiction. They can manipulate it. But the person’s body is becoming weak due to activities ,supposedly done by a normal person , is made by surrogates. Those who have surrogates are psychologically and physically weak. Their privacy were easily breached by the government. A click could reveal your whole identity. Thus an individual’s surrogate could be hacked and use in a crime the true owner did not. Great it may be but great is trade-off also. Its near-future setting helps the viewer relate easily to the characters and the science of the surrogates plays to many viewer fantasies. While more ambitious than it has to be, the film descends into action scenes too quickly.Surrogates is entertaining and ingenious, but it settles too soon for formula.

Reaction: Pirates of Silicon Valley

The movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is a film based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger. The film was narrated by Steve Wozniak, co-developer of the Apple computer. The movie took off with Steve Jobs talking in a melodramatic way to the audience, it seems but as the angle of the scene shifts, it was shown that he was actually talking to a director and that they were currently in the middle of shooting a commercial which is for the Apple Computer. The scene then changes showing Steve Jobs talking about some sort of alliance formed between Apple Computer and Microsoft with Bill Gates in the screen (details of this scene was showed later on in the film). Then the film featured a flashback on the younger days of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak where they are shown to be caught up in a riot between students and police officers and running in the opposite direction of the tide of people. The movie then proceeds to narrate the events that led to the development of the first Apple computer. The film also features the nerd character of Bill Gates who was then a nobody and even got ignored by Steve Jobs in a computer expo. The story then narrates how competition flared between the two leading companies and how they strived to outwit each other and finally, concluding in the scene where Steve Jobs and Bill Gates announced that they are good together.

In my opinion the real protagonist of the story was Steve Jobs not only because he got featured more in the film but also I admire his determination to uplift the name of Apple. Sure, he got some attitude problem going on but he did become successful, right? He also had flair in talking people into something but you really would not want to cross him when he’s angry or everything will just come exploding. The character of Bill Gates was quite hard to understand and I just kept seeing him as that nerdy kid who is nuts about computers but the characters of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates..The movie is really interesting for it caters the audience not only the development of the two largest computer companies but also the curious students specially students studying computer-related courses. The character of Bill Gates was quite hard to understand and I just kept seeing him as that nerdy kid who is nuts about computers but the characters of Steve Jobs and Bill.

Wall-E: A Clear Reflection in the Future

When my brother introduced this film by Disney-Pixar to me, I thought it was a boring animated film just like other because of the title itself. I am totally wrong. It was not. As we watched the film, I was moved on my seat about the reality. The reality of what we are doing on our planet. The reality on what is happening on our present-day situation here on earth.  WALL-E is a must seen film that needs to be watched by everybody else. The story of this film revolves about a WALL-E which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class. WALL-E is a robot that is shown to have a feeling like human because of the old movie scenes from VHS tapes that he watched repeatedly which shows dancing, singing and professing love to one another. When EVE, was sent from outer space from her mother ship to search any signs of life on earth, WALL-E was fall in love to her. When WALL-E tried to connect to her, he is drawn into her world and eventually makes his way onto the ship which is called the Axiom. As the film goes by, I noticed that all the people living in the ship were all obese. All day long, they were only sitting in their hover playing and entertaining their selves all the time. Even the babies were all obese. While watching, I kept asking on my self, "What shall I do if I live in the era having with that kind of sedentary lifestyle?" Pondering on that question I made on my mind, I felt a guilt deep inside in my self because I didn't make any contribution to save our planet earth. As a local citizen to our community, it is my obligation to make moves in such a way it may contribute to our planet. Yes, we are too busy preparing healthy meals for our family that is why we buy food packages from convenience store which the garbages from those packages were not disposed properly and we're throwing it anywhere and without knowing, these foods have little nutrition.  Even by throwing garbages properly in their proper bins, by this we contributed a lot to our society. 

The mushrooming of high-end gadgets and gizmos made us people obsessed to have with that kind of techie stuffs and because of that we absorbed the lifestyle of being materialistic. We forgot why we are here on earth. Aside from creating us by God, we forgot our prime obligation of taking care of what we have right now for the next generation to come. I am afraid that if we are not making any step that may help us to save our mother earth, I'm pretty sure that the next generation to come will just live like in the film. 

Why Do We Need To Study Technology?

For how many centuries, people were so desperate to make any inventions so that the chores and tasks will become more easy. From the people of the stone age era up to the present time, were and are very frantic on some stuffs. By scratching some stones to have fire up to what we have today in our stoves in our kitchens, the contribution done by the early homo erectus in Africa is more than appreciated. Even the technology that we use in riding in the air which was invented by the Wright brothers is more than appreciated also.

When somebody bound the question, 'Why do we need to study technology?', it came to pass on my mind some early inventions that were done by our great inventors. Inventions which was contributed a lot to our society. If we are going to say technology, this means more a lot of tangible and intangible things. Technology has a great impact in our society and even to our selves. Our life revolves around the latest technologies that we have today. Aside from increasing our knowledge, studying technology gives us the tracks on how we are going to make any advancement for our selves. By this, we will become more dynamic and not static. By technology, this will help people to build and make their idea of innovations into reality. Gaining your knowledge through studying technology will help you more advance.

Interview with the System Analyst

System Analyst is the problem solver of the organization. He is the one who is responsible in defining and solving of the of the problems so that it will meet the needs of the organization. He helps the organization to realize the maximum benefit from its investment in equipment, personnel, and business processes. System analyst may upgrade or made any updates also of any of the systems in the organization for the betterment of it. Most of the system analysts work any sytems such as accounting, scientific systems or other business systems that fits to the organization.

A system analyst is responsible also in planning, coordinating and recommending software and system choices to meet an organization's business requirements. He plays a vital role in the organization. A successful system analyst must possess some analytical, technical, managerial and interpersonal skills so that he can handle the team and the project well. These skills may help the system analyst so that he can easily understand the organization and its functions but also to know the limitations of the computers and to easily manage his people and to the end users of the systems. To sum up these, a system analyst may compare to a project manager but totally different from it for he is more responsible on the systems of the organization .

Last April 29, 2010, my classmates and I went to the Rhine Marketing-Computer Division which is located at San Pedro St., Davao City, Philippines to interview the present system analyst which is Mr. Cris Abella. He embraced us with a warm welcome to their family and in their function room we interviewed him.

Mr. Florenzie Palma which is one of my co-interviewers asked him if a system analyst can easily adopt to any changes. Without any doubts in mind, Sir Cris answered, “Of course, you have to be open to any possibilities of changes so that you can easily cope up what will happen next.” Sir Cris also shared on us that when you are going to design a program or system, you should get the manual procedure before you proceed and to transform it into automation. When Florenzie added a question if documentation is needed, Sir Cris said that documenting your system is important so that if there is a trouble or problem of your system, it easy for you as a system analyst to troubleshoot it.

Sir Cris tackled also that when you are going to propose a system to your client, be assure that your client is innocent of that so that you cannot be easily paid in low cost by your client but be ethical also in pricing of it. He added also that many CASE tools you may use nowadays that may help you in making systems without too much hard coding but to drag and drop because of the graphical user interface or GUI. When one of co-interviewers asked if what are the possible abilities of being a systems analyst, he said, “First, you have to be well-educated in Information Technology. Second, you should have a good analyzation so that you can easily predict without being told by your client. Third, anticipation is really needed and fourth, you have to open in any changes in your environment.”

When Mr. Florenzie asked again if what are the skills of a system analyst, Sir Cris answered him, “You have to be good in any technical and programming skills. Also, interpersonal skills is needed.” After a long conversation with him, I learned something which you should stand to your profession and be loyal into it. He shared something to us which made me and to any other IT students and IT professionals to ponder. Sir Cris said, “In dealing to any customers or clients, you have to be transparent of what system you are going to make. Do not make any unethical to your program (unethical here means that you should not make some settings into your program that make your client fret such as time bomb). Lastly, prove to your self and to others that you can make your project be done on time and be assure that you have edge from others.


Me, wearing yellow t-shirt, Florenzie who is in blue and the only girl in picture, Kyang-Kyang and Sir Cris A.