Babylon 5 movie deal dead

According to the series creator J. Michael Straczynski, the dream of a Babylon 5 movie is over - a post to the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (reprinted at this link to JMSNews.com) lays out just how close it was to becoming reality, and that now it seems like a movie version of the series will not come to be. Sad news indeed - I for one had been really hoping that this movie would get made.

Sin City the movie!

This movie looks like it's going to be really really cool - go here to watch the trailer and here to check out the official site.

You want some cheese with that whine, Michael?

Apparently Michael Gorman, President of the American Library Association, is not fond of bloggers. He also smacks Google around in that article, talking about an op-ed piece he wrote for the Los Angeles Times called "Google and God's Mind (December 17th, 2004)" in which he "question(s) the usefulness of Google digitizing millions of books and making bits of them available via its notoriously inefficient search engine." Well, I'm rather surprised that the Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University doesn't like Google, or blogs. Because if I can read blogs (some of which have actual good information and/or valid points on world affairs) and search Google for information and for books - why would I even need to step inside a library again? So yeah, I'm not at all surprised. But to call Google "notoriously inefficient" seems just a little harsh. Maybe he's just bad at it, and has to take it out on those of us who can actually use Google to find what we are looking for more quickly and efficiently than we could by going to the library. Now don't get me wrong - I'm not against libraries, and I think supporting and funding libraries is important. Maybe a better way to approach the "Blog People" as he calls them would be to start a discussion of ways their worlds can merge - libraries and Google and blogs all working together. I can think of one of the "Blog People" who helps libraries all the time, Pamela Ribon. She runs Pamie.com, and she's spent tons of her time organizing book drives for libraries. It's very cool how they do it, the library creates a wish list on Amazon.com of books they'd like to have, and people go to those wish lists, buy a book or two, and have them shipped to the library that needs them. Now how's that for integrating libraries and "Blog People"?

Second season of Battlestar Galactica to premiere this summer

SciFi announced yesterday that the second season of Battlestar Galactica, which has been getting good ratings for them, will begin airing this summer. Good news - and it's also confirmed that the entire cast will be returning. They're scheduled to shoot 20 new episodes, and production will begin next month. A quote from the story states that "The series, which premiered on Jan. 14, has been averaging over 3 million viewers per episode and has quickly become SCI FI's highest-rated original series and has received unprecedented critical acclaim." That's also good news - I really like it, and I hate it when good shows that I like get screwed over. The show is also apparently very popular among file sharing folks, ranking 9th on the list of top 10 most downloaded shows. Even if you don't get into the whole file sharing thing, you can go to the Galactica part of the SciFi site and watch the first episode legally - and commercial free!

So... tired...

Wow am I tired right now - stayed up too late last night I guess. Don't you hate it when you are really tired, and it seems like every question someone asks you is just the most insipid, most inane, just plain DUMBEST thing anyone has ever asked? Now imagine that situation magnified a thousand fold - and you've got an idea how bad a mood I'm in right now. When you feel wiped out, tired, and really crabby? Yeah, that's not the best time to be talking to a bunch of mouth breathing morons. It reminds me of an old saying "Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience." So true, so very true. Bah, this sucks. Maybe I just need some more coffee...

UPDATE : SPOILER ALERT : Episode III screenshots

Here's a link to a mirror site where the pics are still viewable - for now...

A FINAL(?) UPDATE : 2/25 @ 8:04am At last check, this site was down, and the one linked below was back up. And the working one has some GIF images of a couple of the lightsaber battles - very cool!!

SPOILER ALERT : Website with screenshots from Episode III

Not sure if this site is still up, or if it's just getting crushed because it was linked on Slashdot this morning, but here's a link to site reporting to have 80 screenshots from Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith. Apparently they say there are more screenshots to come - if the site is ever reachable.

Star Wars : Episode III slated to open the Cannes Film Festival

After months of negotiations, a deal was struck between George Lucas and festival administrators to have Episode III : Revenge of the Sith as the opening film of the 58th Cannes Film Festival, which starts on May 11th. Rumors are that Ewan McGregor will attend. But if you don't already have an invite - you'll have to wait till the movie opens on May 19th like the rest of the world. Maybe we'll get some reports from people who saw it at Cannes - let's hope they say it's worth seeing!

C'mon America - we can do better!!

Apparently we aren't downloading enough pirated TV shows - the UK leads the world in TV piracy, at 38.4% of the world's TV downloads. It seems people in the UK love their peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, ans love using BitTorrent in particular. America comes in 3rd, with a paltry 7.3%. America strives to be #1 in so many other avenues - why not this one, right?

Where has the time gone?

It's been one year (and change) since I wrote the first post on this blog, and in that time I've had 2,596 hits on the site and written almost 170 posts. The only thing I'd like to see change is the amount of people browsing to the blog using Firefox - only 12% of the hits were Firefox, and 83% were Internet Explorer (Mozilla, Netscape, and Safari account for the other 5%). But hey, Firefox 1.0 has been downloaded 25 million times, so the more people using it the better - and that percentage will just continue to move the right way. Here's to another year - thanks to all of my readers (yes, both of you) for making the first one a great one!

NapsterToGo copy protection defeated

The new Napster and it's NapsterToGo unlimited download for a monthly fee service have been dealt a blow by their users - they've figured out a way around the copy protection built into the song files. I suppose it was just a matter of time before a crack was found, but that was surprisingly quick!

Not that it's a surprise, but...

The NHL has announced that it has officially cancelled the 2004-2005 hockey season. And in the process becomes the FIRST major North American professional sports league to lose an entire season due to a labor dispute. Sad news, but the way the talks were going (or rather, not going) it was not really going to end any other way. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was quoted as saying "I have no choice but to cancel the 2004-05 season," adding "This is a sad, regrettable day that all of us wish could have been avoided." Agreed. But when you've got the owners demanding a salary cap, the players saying "No way" and then when they finally bandied about offers on a actual cap - couldn't come to an agreement. Players say "We'll agree to $49 million per team" and owners come back with "Nope. $42.5 million". And they'd both come down already - the players were saying $52 million and the owners wanted $40 million. Darn it, they were so close. And even if they had come to an agreement, this season would have been pretty much over - what would they have done, go straight to the playoffs? I guess hockey fans will have to hope something happens in the interim before next season is supposed to begin - or the whole NHL might just fold and cease to exist.

New trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

There is a new longer trailer for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy available online - if you go to Amazon's page, it's viewable right within their main page. It shows actual footage from the film, and it's a pretty good look at what the movie will be like. I'm getting excited for this - can't wait till April 29th!!

Yahoo! Toolbar now available for Firefox

In case you care - a beta version of the Yahoo! Toolbar is now available that is compatible with Mozilla Firefox. I'm personally ambivalent to this, I didn't use the toolbar in Internet Explorer, and I won't use it with Firefox. But, if you found it useful before you made the switch to Firefox (You have switched, right? If not, click the Firefox banner on the sidebar) - now you can have it back.

Good news for fans of the new Battlestar Galactica

Look like SciFi Channel has renewed Battlestar Galactica for a second season. They've aired 5 episodes of their original 13 episode order, and the last episode earned good ratings - 3.2 million viewers. Which is more people than watched the last episode of the soon-to-be-gone Star Trek Enterprise. I really like the new Galactica, so I happy to see it's doing well and SciFi is keeping it around. The series creator, Ronald Moore, has a blog space you can go to on SciFi's Battlestar Galactica page - it's worth checking out. Lots of cool info about the series and the direction he wants to take it in, some behind the scenes info too.

I just love free songs!

It's time for the Apple/Pepsi iTunes Music Store promotion again - get a free song on one out of three bottles of 20 oz. Pepsi products. And yes, you can check the bottle to see if it's a winner same as last year.

Oh well, at least it wasn't Jonathan and Victoria...

It's official - Freddy Holliday and Kendra Bentley are the winners of The Amazing Race. I was really really hoping that Jon and Kris would win - but it just didn't happen. Oh well - at least the next Race is only 3 weeks away!!

If you use Windows, be sure to go to Windows Update on Tuesday...

13 security vulnerabilities in Windows will get Security patches on February 8th. Or be prepared to get hit by whatever viruses are out now (or are currently being created) to take advantage of these latest security holes in Windows. As a wise man once said - "To be forewarned is to be fore-armed"...

Napster's plan to take on iTunes

Yes, you read that right - Napster. They're still alive and have just announced their plan to take the iTunes Music Store on. It's called NapsterToGo - basically unlimited song downloads to a compatible portable MP3 player for a monthly fee of $15. But - the Apple iPod is not compatible. So I guess we'll have to see how this works for them, since they don't directly support the most popular MP3 player out there.

Not quite sure if this is brilliance or stupidity...

A sixteen year old kid has been charged with a misdemeanor for hooking up a keystroke logging device to his teacher's computer. He's a student at Clements High in Sugar Land, TX. The dumb thing he did that got him caught was offering answers for sale to other students. School district police (who knew there was such a thing?) referred the case to the Fort Bend County District Attorney's Office, which has charged the teen with breach of computer information, a Class B misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in jail. Oopsie! I'd say the teacher isn't really observant, but these things are really small and unobtrusive - apparently the one he used is about the size of a pen cap and connects between the keyboard port on the PC and the cord leading to the keyboard. Who'd think to go rooting around back there looking for something like that...hmmm, maybe I should check MY work computer!