Books schmooks

This article about a National Endowment for the Arts survey released Thursday states that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; and that the pace of lost readers is quickening, especially among younger readers. So, go read a book already!

A view into the future of computing-on-the-go?

This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette talks about a project in development at Intel Research Pittsburgh called Internet Suspend/Resume. If it actually works the way they say it will, that would be really useful. Perhaps someday we won't need to lug laptops around to do work or stay connected to the internet when away from home!

News of an exploit that affects Mozilla/Firefox - seems they are susceptible to the shell: scheme. The newest version of Firefox (version 0.9.2) includes the patch mentioned in this link. The only thing that changed between the 0.9.1 release and 0.9.2 is the inclusion of the patch. You can check if you are vulnerable by opening Firefox and then - 1) Type about:config in the location bar. 2) In the textbox labeled 'Filter' type shell 3) network.protocol-handler.external.shell should be listed and set to "false" If it's not listed or set to true, you need to apply the patch. The patch will fix older versions of Firefox and of Mozilla and Netscape 6.x or 7.x.

[Singing] But how do you know she is a witch? [/Singing]

In (Awesome!) news from Broadway, Monty Python's Spamalot (The Musical) announces that David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, and Tim Curry will star as Sir Robin, Lancelot and King Arthur. And there was much rejoicing (Yay!).

Finally!! A new post!!

Greetings. I'm back from my trip, and not really happy to be back at work, but oh well. Had a good time visiting my Dad and stepmom, and my brother and his family. I've got some pictures, and I'll be linking a few of them into the blog - but I haven't had a chance to do it yet. The Amazing Race was on last night. Gotta have your priorities :)

In other news, Microsoft released a "patch" to fix the exploit in Internet Explorer that allowed compromised sites to download the trojan known as either Download.Ject or JS.Scob.Trojan. I say "patch" cause it's really just a workaround right now. A more comprehensive fix is said to be in the works.

Google is cracking down on people making a buck or two off of Gmail accounts. Google has added to it's user agreement, stating that Gmail users may not "sell, trade, resell, or otherwise exploit for any unauthorized commercial purpose or transfer any Gmail account." Darn, there go my dreams of financial independence.

Money money money money...MONEY!!

So the Big Game/Powerball jackpot is up to like $290 million. Now if I could only win...

MGM is now being courted by two suitors - Sony and Time Warner. Sony bid $5 billion for MGM back in April, and Time Warner just entered a bid recently. $5 BILLION. With a "b". Billion, like your own island with giraffes and stuff running around.

Apple is apparently making a new iMac - but it won't be shipping till sometime in September. They aren't taking orders for the current iMac any longer, and the current stock of iMacs won't last till September. Whoops.

Well, another weekend is upon us, and once again the wife and I are going out of town. So I will once again be incommunicado - possibly till Wednesday. We will be in Chicago, visiting my Dad and stepmom, and my brother and his family. My brother and his wife just had another baby last week, so we get to go and visit with my NEW niece, Isabella.

Here's a picture of baby Isabella with her mom, my sister-in-law Errin -



So cute!! Now, my brother has three daughters. In about ten years, he'll never get to use the bathroom or the phone. The poor guy is just hopelessly outnumbered. It'll be nice to visit with all of them, and I'll have some new pictures to post once I return, I'm sure.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man... Part 2

Whoops - teenager trying to bootleg Spider-Man 2 caught by theatre employee with night vision goggles. Hee - bet his parents were PISSED.

In other news, the Las Vegas Monorail will finally open starting July 15th. Since it was supposed to open in March, it's about time. This is really cool news for me and my wife - cause we love The Vegas!

Spider-Man, Spider-Man...

Went to see Spider-Man 2 last night - it was great! The Spider-Man movies have become the best movie adaptations of a comic book series as far as I am concerned. It all starts with the director - and Sam Raimi is a hell of a good director. His Evil Dead movies are brilliant, but since not everyone likes horror movies they didn't have huge mass-market appeal. Raimi was the perfect pick to direct the Spider-Man movies, and he's proven that with this movie. He really understands the subject, and it's so evident in the special touches he put in and in the performances he gets from his cast. And what a great cast - I always thought Tobey Maguire was the perfect choice for Peter/Spider-Man (Here's a link to an interview with Tobey Maguire (also has a interview with Alfred Molina)) and Kirsten Dunst was a great choice to be Mary Jane. I wasn't sure about James Franco as Harry Osborn, but he was good in the first movie and was even better in Spider-Man 2. He won me over with the great job he did in his big scene near the end of the film with (MAJOR HUGE SPOILER WARNING) Willem Dafoe reprising his role as Norman Osborn, encouraging his son to get revenge for him. By far my favorite single performance would have to be J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of The Daily Bugle. He had some great scenes in the original, and practically steals the second movie.
The film was great - I highly recommend it to one and all, and will be seeing it again myself as soon as possible!

Fahrenheit 9/11

If you haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet, go see it. See Spider-Man 2 of course - but don't neglect to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It's a very important movie, and was also very entertaining. Well worth the price of admission, I thought. You can also read some of Michael Moore's interview in the most recent Playboy Magazine here (WARNING : This link will take you to a snippet of the interview in the July Playboy magazine. It's hosted on playboy.com, which is DEFINITELY not a safe-for-work website).

Pavitr Prabhakar, The Amazing Spider Man...wait, WTF???

Yeah, this is kinda weird. Spider-Man India – Spider-Man comic book "re-interpreted" for Indian audience. Man - first our JOBS get outsourced to India, now our superheroes too??

In other news, Jack Ryan is an idiot. If you have a wife as hot as Jeri Ryan is -



you shouldn't be doing stupid stuff like trying to get her to go to sex clubs and boink you while other people watch. Not very smart, huh?

I'll be gone the rest of the weekend, and through Tuesday probably. Not sure if I'll be able to post while away (being as the only access I'd have would be dial-up (bleah!)), so I might not post for a few days. To my reader(s?), I apologize for the downtime. Be back soon!

Gorramn good news

For fans of the FOX show Firefly, the shows early cancellation was hard to take. The release of the episodes made things a little better - we could finally see the episodes never shown on FOX, like the original pilot episode. Then came word of the movie adaptation of Firefly - and the word is good. The title of the movie is Serenity - and there is a newly created official movie website here. Not a lot of stuff on there yet, but does have a little info in the blog. The release date for Serenity is April 22, 2005.

Another upcoming movie, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is running a contest where the winner will appear in the movie. Only one problem - you must be a resident of the UK, no overseas entries will be accepted. Darn.

You've Got Spam!

Hee. Hee hee. Hee hee HA! HA HA HA!!! Software engineer at AOL charged with stealing AOL's subscriber list and selling it to spammer. Oh man - what an idiot!

So - first Google announces Gmail, with 1 gigabyte (1 GB) of free storage. Then recently Yahoo announces it will increase it's free storage to 100 megabytes (100 MB), and if you pay for Yahoo's premium service you get 2 GB. Now Hotmail is offering 250 MB free, and 2 GB for their paid service. Well, if nothing else, Gmail has forced other free mail providers to make their services a little better. Although it is odd that Yahoo and Hotmail have "trouble" with Gmail - blocking invitations or sending them straight to the bulk mail folder. Weird, isn't it?

Prepare to be assimilated...

This is just creepy - Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power and data conduit. Sounds like the Microsoft wants to Borgify us all. The article talks of "virtual keyboards on a patch of skin", and "(It) need not be limited to the skin of a human being". I've got chills over here people!

And in other tech news - Comdex 2004 is cancelled. They say it'll be back, better than before even, in 2005. Well, if they can really revitalize Comdex like they discuss in the article - it would be worth the year off. We shall see in 2005, I suppose.

Lack of update problem? SOLVED!

Been a while since I posted something - but here I am!

Cool news for those of us who use portable devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, etc.) fuel cell technology. Battery life extended 2.5 times greater than current lithium-ion rechargeables - and this is just the first generation of these Mobion fuel cells. Sounds pretty good so far!

The first privately funded manned space flight happened Monday. The pilot, Mike Melvill, reached a height of 62.21 miles above the surface of the Earth. The craft, called SpaceShipOne, and the exotic booster plane White Knight that carried it into the atmosphere were built by Scaled Composites, the company of aircraft designer Burt Rutan. The project was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen - to the tune of more than $20 million.

I've got some pictures I took last night that I'll be posting up here - once I can get them onto a site I can hot-link them from. Gonna try and do that later tonight, so I will post again if I can get that working.

Blogging ain't easy, yo

Well, today I decided to look on the lighter side and not get all heavy and serious like. So here's a quick movie review-

Went to see The Terminal with the wife last night. We both enjoyed it a lot. I thought Stanley Tucci did a great job as the uptight stickler-for-the-rules bureaucrat, and I liked Tom Hanks performance - I thought he really brought a lot of heart to the character. But the show, she was stolen by one of the supporting characters - by Kumar Pallana, who plays Gupta, a janitor at the airport. He's also been in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums. Gupta loves to mop an area of the floor, surround it with "Wet Floor" signs, and sit back and watch as harried travelers in a hurry ignore the signs and end up slipping on the wet spot. Like this time, when he got Catherine Zeta Jones -



He also has some great bits during the dinner between Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones (hee - plate-spinning!!). Here's a pic of him juggling rings -



Overall a good movie, I thought. Definitely worth the price of admission.

In other news - check this Slashdot article about Gmail. I might have to try some of those utilities...

9/11 Commission report - communication failures and chaotic decision-making

I don't really have anything witty to say about this, but I'm sure you've all heard the findings released yesterday by the bi-partisan commission investigating 9/11. Here's an article summing it up. It's shocking, it's disturbing, and it's troublesome to hear that so many things went wrong. But - with just a bit of perspective - it's not impossible to understand. I remember hearing of the initial crash into the north tower, and thinking "That's horrible, a plane accidentally crashed into the World Trade Center". Of course, that supposition was very quickly dashed - the terrible images captured of the second plane flying purposely into the south tower made it all too apparent what was really happening. I know I wasn't alone in my initial thought, because when the attack began I was in a doctor's office - everyone around me was talking about the "accident". Yet it's still troubling, understandably so, to hear of the problems our government and others were having during the crisis. Even President Bush had communications difficulties - he had trouble reaching top officials in Washington from the elementary school in Florida he was at - he couldn't get a secure line, and had to use a cell phone! The hijackers (at least once that I've heard of) pressed the wrong button, and instead of addressing the passengers in the plane - they transmitted to air traffic control the message "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be OK." followed seconds later with "Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane." Some reports are attributing these statements to Mohammed Atta, the hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11, the plane which crashed into the north tower. Once the controller who heard this contacted his supervisor, the Boston air traffic center contacted the Northeast unit of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), with a frantic message: "We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something". The response from NORAD was - "Is this real-world or exercise?". Fighters were scrambled from Otis Air Force base (153 miles from New York City) at 8:53am - 7 minutes after Flight 11 crashed into the north tower. This all happened within 29 minutes - the hijackers transmission was at 8:24am, the call to NORAD at 8:37am, the crash at 8:46am, and finally the F-16's scrambled from Otis AFB at 8:53am. Even if the fighters had scrambled a little earlier, it would not have prevented that crash. But what of United Airlines Flight 175, which crashed into the south tower, and American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon? Could they have been stopped? Doubtful, at best they would have been shot down over populated areas - not a option I think the military would have taken. Besides - pilots didn't have a clear authority to shoot down civilian aircraft, even though VP Cheney did issue the order with approval of the president. So it's impossible to tell.

Is any one person/agency/administration to blame? No. Too much went wrong, too many people didn't have the right info at the right time. I'm sure we will be debating this for years to come, and we actually don't have the final commission report yet, so there will be much more discussion very shortly. The only hope we have is that all the discussion and investigation leads to lasting changes that, we can only hope, prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

Sorry for such a downer post - I just needed to get that out there, I suppose.

Hmmm...

This just seems like a bad idea to me - Microsoft plans to offer anti-virus software. I guess when your OS is the number one target of every virus writer out there, it seems to make sense. And I suppose as long as it isn't bundled in with the OS it won't be perceived as the de facto standard. I guess the worrisome part for me is that I don't know if people will actually ever properly use anti-virus software - I talk to people all the time who think that they have no virus problem, and yet they are running a 4 year old copy of Norton Anti-Virus that was never updated. Or the swear that they do anti-virus scans "every day" - and when you ask some more questions you find that means that the scanner does a quick boot-sector scan at startup, and they think that is good enough. Well, one can hope that at the very least Micro$oft maybe will train people to use anti-virus software.

WTF??? Panda Porn??

And, in news very close to my heart (because I just LOVE The Vegas...) - the MGM Mirage Group's offer to purchase the Mandalay Resort Group was approved by the Mandalay board. MGM is assuming $2.5 BILLION in debt from Mandalay. Damn, that's a lot of debt!! The deal is expected to close sometime first quarter of 2005.

Random acts of blogitude

So, the new release of Mozilla Firefox (version 0.9) is now the current preview release. You can download it here, but beware - if you use version 0.8 now you will need to uninstall it BEFORE you install 0.9. Your current Firefox profile SHOULD be imported into 0.9 automatically - but any Extensions or Themes you had for version 0.8 will be gone. There are new versions of most of the useful Extensions available, hopefully more will be coming soon.

The first virus that infects cell phones has been discovered - it's called Cabir. It infects phones using the Symbian operating system, and propagates via bluetooth. Fun!

In other news - my wife and I went to the BIA Parade of Homes, which is a yearly event where local home builders all build homes in a new development and totally trick them out - landscaping, decks and patios, decorating - the whole nine yards. I always see at least one home theatre system in these homes that I want to install in my house. It was a lot of fun, the weather wasn't great - but at least it wasn't pouring down rain on us whenever we were outside. We must have walked up and down 9,000 staircases though - quite the workout. There were a few very nice houses though. Here is a picture where you can kinda see the house I liked the best - it's on the left -



I know it's hard to really see anything in the picture - but it's the best I've got since I didn't have my camera with me. I found this pic on the Parade of Homes website. You've got to do the best you can with what you've got, or something. I don't know - I've got nothing.

Sad passings and a new beginning

Hey - did you hear that Ronald Reagan died? No fooling! He's getting some big state funeral today, and people have been going to view him at the Capitol rotunda. Yeah, I was surprised too - it's like no one at all in the media is talking about it.

And now another sad passing (sans the sarcasm) - Ray Charles passed away yesterday. He shall be missed.

In much brighter news - Leo LaPorte has announced that he has accepted a job to host a daily show for G4/TechTV Canada!!! This is good news - Leo's regular presence on our TV screens has been missed. I'm just hoping that this will be carried on G4/TechTV here in the States...

OMG - Is J. Lo PREGNANT??

Yeah right - like I even care ;) What really disturbs me about the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony "marriage" is that he divorced his wife Dayanara Torres ONE WEEK before marrying J. Lo. That's cold man.
He left this -



For this -


I don't know - but I'd have stayed with the woman I have TWO KIDS with. Maybe I'm weird...

Emergency post - The Amazing Race 5

I'm in trouble - I didn't post about The Amazing Race 5, premiering July 6th on CBS. So, here's a post about it.

Starting Tuesday July 6th - 11 teams of two, all with pre-existing relationships, will start off on a race around the world. For the last team standing - 1 million dollars. For everyone else - Philimination!!! (Heh, I just had to throw that in there. The Television Without Pity folks will get that. If you don't read TWoP - click the link and start! What's wrong with you?). Check the CBS website for more info - including the hot off the internet presses list of Racers!

There you go sweetie, I kept my promise to post about TAR. (Love you!)