King of the World more than just a sports book

Hand me a sports themed book and I'm sold. I love pretty much every sports book I have ever read and I was ecstatic when I was assigned to read King of the World by David Remnick, a book that chronicles the life of boxing god Muhammad Ali.

King of the World surely didn't disappoint. In fact, it far exceeded my expectations. As the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. I went into the book expecting a history of Ali; instead I got so much more.

Sure, the book covers boxing history. It covers the heavyweights that came before Ali and the situations surrounding them. Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, it's all there. The first half of the book is more dedicated to them than it is to Ali.

Ali's prestigious career is covered as well. However, what I was impressed with was the amount of Ali's background that was provided.

Muhammad Ali was a person you either loved or hated. He had an extremely controversial attitude and his conversion to Islam was even more so. What I really enjoyed about the book was the depictions of Ali's relationships: first with Malcolm X and then with Elijah Muhammed.

I may have learned more about Islam from this book than any where else. Not only that, I got to enjoy reading about the early history of Cassius Clay (Ali's birth name) and his road to heavyweight supremacy.

I recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun and informative read.

The future of SpeakGood

Hello everyone!

If anyone has been keeping track, SpeakGood just crossed the 100 post mark last week. I'm proud to say that we've reached 100 posts because this blog is something that I value very much. Even writing four times a week, it still takes takes almost 6 months to end up at 100 posts.

With that said, I'm going to discuss the future of SpeakGood.

I'll be completely honest and say I'm not terribly happy with my writing as of late. It's just lacking something in my opinion. With that in mind I'm going to make a couple changes to how things are done around here.

For starters, I'm going to drop the amount of posts that I do a week. Four posts a week is tough, especially doing them back to back to back to back like I do. From now I'm I think I'm going to cut it down to two posts half a week apart.

It is my goal that reducing the amount of posts will allow me to put out some better, more interesting work. In addition, I will probably try to secure some other writers as well.

I'm done writing for this week. But, look for something to come out early next week. I'm excited about SpeakGood's new direction and I hope you are too.

XP on low cost laptops will hurt Microsoft in long run

Fans of Windows XP got a boost this week as Microsoft announced that the elder statesmen of their operating systems will live on as a part of low cost ultra mobile PCs.

I've read some places that Asus expects to sell more of their popular EeePC's with XP than with the Linux operating system that they originally offered with. Obviously, customers will still have a choice between both models.

Keeping Windows XP around can only hurt Microsoft. Basically, they've proven to the world that Vista is too resource needy to compete in the low end market. Instead, they want to push their "old" software onto new hardware just to compete with cheap Linux based computers.

Furthermore, eventually consumers are going to realize that Linux offers as much, if not more, functionality than what XP does. XP itself is pretty basic, especially considering Microsoft will probably strip it down even more to meet the space demands that the small storage drives of these laptops require. And Linux's price of $0 fits the budget of almost everyone.

Linux is very resource friendly and is extremely functional out of the box. Many specialized distros have emerged to fit the needs of people who use laptops like the EeePC. Mark my words, once people see that it can be functional they will be willing to switch.

Until Microsoft acknowledges Vista as a flop (which will probably never happen) they will continue to lose ground to Linux and other alternative operating systems. Once they release Windows 7, I may have to eat my words, but until then the new computer fad will be to switch to Linux.

Microsoft's domination of the computer industry is on weak legs to say the least.