Build a Better Bush

We were having a lot of fun with this link at my office yesterday - Build a Better Bush . Thanks to my wife for emailing it to me (love ya!)

Athens Olympics - most secure Olympic Games ever, or most invasive?

Read this story from CNN about the enormous effort several companies have made to provide the security for the Summer Olympics in Athens (opening ceremonies are this Friday.) It's a huge - and expensive - undertaking, and involves lots of electronic surveillance from over 1,000 high-resolution and infrared cameras, 12 patrol boats, 4,000 vehicles, nine helicopters, a sensor-laden blimp and four mobile command centers. But there are questions of invasion of privacy to consider, since the system can pickup spoken words and analyze e-mail and phone traffic (cell and standard) and has the ability to understand Greek, English, Arabic, Farsi, and several other languages as well. Groups in Greece have protested against the system, and some have even gone as far as going around spray-painting security cameras. It's a tough line to straddle, the line between providing security for an international event and respecting privacy of thousands of individuals both native and visiting the country. Hopefully this huge system will do only it's intended job, and won't be used in a more invasive manner to pry into people's private lives.

RIP - Rick James dead at 56

Rick James was found dead yesterday morning at his home near Universal City, CA. Very sad news indeed. First Ray Charles, and now Rick James. Maybe this will stop all the idiot kids running around going "I'm Rick James, bitch!!" We can only hope.

The new Batmobile - in action!!

Check this amateur video of the Batmobile from Batman Begins - SWEET!!!

Updated versions of Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird released

Mozilla.org released updated versions of Firefox (now on version 0.9.3) and Thunderbird (now on version 0.7.3) yesterday. This new release is to correct 4 bugs in the earlier versions. Read the MozillaZine article for more info.

The Village - WARNING!!!!! (Slight) Spoilers!!!!!

I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Village on Monday night. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be. I liked The Sixth Sense alot, and I just love Unbreakable - it's one of my favorite films. But The Village - wasn't what it had been hyped up to be. I don't want to give away the whole film, but this is DEFINITELY not a movie about mysterious monsters in the woods. It's basically a treatise on the evil of modern society, and how a group of people hoped returning to a more innocent time would rid them of those evils. I did like the performances in the movie, Joaquin Phoenix was very good, as was Bryce Dallas Howard and Adrien Brody. William Hurt gave a particularly good performance - very good indeed. Again - I don't want to ruin the entire movie, so I won't get into to many specifics on the performances. There were funny scenes, and scary scenes, and very touching or emotionally moving scenes - but the movie as a whole just seemed weird, kind of insincere. Because all the trailers and commercials make it seem like a "scary monster-in-the-woods what do we do?" action movie - and it isn't. It wasn't horrible or unwatchable - just not what I expected, I guess. Don't think I'll be recommending it to anyone, maybe telling them to wait till it's out on video or something.

HP to ship notebooks with Linux pre-installed

This is a great thing - HP to launch Linux notebook. Since Linux is already installed and configured, you shouldn't have weird problems with drivers and stuff. Plus, you've got support from HP if you do have a problem. Nice!

A bit of fun

Try this game - HomeRun. Yeah, I know it's not written in english, but it's pretty easy actually. Click the sign that says "Start", then keep the drunk guy from falling over by moving the mouse left or right. You won't see a mouse pointer, so it's tough to gage how far left and right you are moving.

For some funny reading, try The White House (it's a parody site - the REAL White House URL is whitehouse.gov). Some pretty funny stuff on there, but may not be appropriate for all - viewer discretion is advised.

Go me!!!

I made my post about the Batman Begins trailer way, way, WAY before it was posted over on Slashdot. I rule.

If you are a Blade fan, you may want to check out the website for Blade Trinity, the final movie in the series. Watch the trailer, check out the downloads (desktops, AIM icons, etc.), and hope (like I am) that Jessica Biel doesn't suck up the place. Hee - the spellchecker wants to replace "Biel" with "bile". That's kinda funny!

Batman Begins trailer!!

Go to http://batmanbegins.warnerbros.com/ - click Trailer - Enjoy!!

Slight change to the site

You'll probably notice that Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added back in, I finally got around to setting it up in the new template I'm using. So - comment away!!

Hope is on the way!

Watched some of the Democratic National Convention last night, and caught all of John Edwards speech accepting the Vice Presidential nomination. He's quite the public speaker, isn't he? Very charismatic, very engaging. I first noticed it during the primary, whenever he spoke in public he was projecting this sort of "down home" vibe - kind of an appeal to the everyday people to connect with him because he has been where they are and stands for what they stand for. Don't personally know if I buy all of what he's selling, since I don't ever really trust malpractice attorneys, but he's damn good at selling it. Cute little kids too. We'll see if his vision of the One America he wants to help us reach holds out once he and John Kerry get elected in November (boy, am I optimistic or what?)

The problem for the Democrats is the divisiveness within the party - a case in point was Al Sharpton's speech at the convention last night. He strayed from his "approved" speech - which I don't have a problem with at all, he made some great points and had some valid observations and calls to African Americans across the country to make their vote count, and to slam the Republicans who seem to thing those same votes are for sale - "Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn't gained because of our age - Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of (civil rights activists) Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us. This vote can't be bargained away. This vote can't be given away. In all due respect, Mr. President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale." He received a few standing ovations during his 24 minute speech (he was scheduled for only 6 minutes), and got great responses from the conventioneers for statements like the preceding and this comment, "The issue of government is not to determine who may sleep together in the bedroom, it's to help those that might not be eating in the kitchen." Fiery stuff indeed, but here's the problem. The Democrats can't afford to even have the hint of division - the margin of support between Kerry/Edwards and Bush/Cheney is so close right now, and we can't afford to have another Presidential election like the last. Hopefully the Democrats can pull together the different elements developing within their party, like the delegates who still stuck with Dennis Kucinich during the roll call. A lot is riding on their ability to show the public what Kerry and Edwards are all about - and convince people to get out and vote. Not much time left till November guys - you had better really get on it.

Some people have no sense of humor...

Well, that didn't take long. The Richmond Organization, which owns the copyright on Woody Guthrie's tune "This Land Is Your Land" (on which JibJab's "This Land" is based (See post below)) is suing the creators of the site. Read the article here. No sense of humor, I tell ya...

Hee hee!!

Got the link to this from my sister - This Land starring George Bush and John Kerry. Very funny stuff!!!

Short post today, feeling sort of out of it. If anything else strikes my fancy I may post it up, otherwise I'll update again tomorrow.

Hey, this tastes a little funny...

Ewww. Read this. I'd rather starve, personally.

The CRN Test Center recently evaluated Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate (RC) 2 - and 3 of their 5 test machines no longer worked, blue-screens of death appearing after the install completed. Whoopsie. Sounds like SP2 RC2 is still not ready for prime time, hopefully this gets corrected soon - because that service pack is desperately needed.

Or maybe she WILL come back some day - update on the Linda Ronstadt/Aladdin controversy

The chairman of the prospective new owners of the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, Planet Hollywood Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Earl (a partner in the group that won the right to buy the Aladdin in bankruptcy court) has responded to the controversy - read the article here. He's also offering to take Michael Moore up on his offer to join Ronstadt onstage. It's also noted in the article that the Raelians, "a group whose religion revolves around beliefs about extraterrestrials and cloning, named Ronstadt an honorary priest or guide, a title that previously has been bestowed upon celebrities such as Moore, Madonna, Sinead O'Connor and George Michael." So she's got THAT going for her.

On a more personal note - this is my 100th post! A small milestone to be sure, but worth noting I think. It's quite a bit of fun to write this blog, and I think it won't be long till I've written my 500th post and beyond. That's all for now, more to come later maybe. 

NASA releases pictures from the Apollo 11 mission

A large number of pictures taken from space and from the surface of the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts have been digitized and are available online here. This was just linked on Slashdot, so site response may be lousy right now. You can view the thumbnails, but I haven't been able to pull down a full-size image yet.

New Look

The page IS different - you aren't seeing things. I changed templates, decided I liked this one better than the old one (with some help from my wife - thanks honey.) I've added most of the little extras I had on the page into the new template, but haven't added the Haloscan comment/trackback scripts in. Blogger hosts commenting now - and I may just stay with that instead. The drawback would be that any comments added thru Haloscan under the old page would be gone. Haven't decided for sure yet - and I'm sure I will change other things - so leave comments for me and let me know what you think of the new layout. Your input is appreciated!

Well, I guess she won't be coming back some day...

Singer Linda Ronstadt removed for the Aladdin Hotel & Casino following a concert Saturday night after expressing support for controversial documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. Whoa. Sounds like someone touched a nerve, eh? This really shouldn't have surprised them as she's been making the same dedication at EVERY show. Since her recent summer tour began.  And here's a great response from Michael Moore via his website - an Open Letter to Bill Timmins, President Aladdin Casino and Hotel. God, that's a great response.

Fallout of the Download.Ject/Scob worm

The writer of this article raises a valid point. Now that the problem is (hopefully) fixed, why can't we know which sites had a problem? Sure, they are afraid of lawsuits - but isn't hiding the truth from the world just as bad? I guess the watch word for Net users these days is "suspicion" - be very cautious of what websites you visit and what they might be doing "behind the scenes" while you are there. As always, be sure you are updating Windows, running anti-virus scans at LEAST once a month, running a firewall or behind a router, and using spyware/adware/malware detection and removal utilities like Spybot and Ad Aware.