2003 March

E! Online is reporting that the producers of Chicago have signed a deal to remake Kevin Bacon’s classic 1984 movie Footloose as a full-blown movie musical with three new songs. Looks like I’m going to have to practice kicking off my Sunday shoes again.

According To The Inquirer, “An American congressman Darrell Issa of California wants to introduce a bill that will give preference to a cdmaOne based mobile network in Iraq, after the US has finished conquering that country. “
What’s next? Are they planning on selling naming rights for the country?

Neowin.net has got its hands on a leaked beta of the forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2, and has a handful of screenshots on offer. It’s lacking the likes of Windows Media Player 9, the forthcoming Windows Messenger 5 (MSN Messenger 6) or DirectX 9.0.
The Register also has news about Service Pack 1b, which will [...]

Also on The Register. The TechNet security bulletin (MS03-010) does suggest that NT 4.0 users block port 135 on their firewalls to prevent attacks in the abscence of a patch. But I imagine any company that takes IT seriously will have already upgraded to 2000 or XP, and have a firewall installed; after all, support [...]

This is rather amusing. I kept hitting the refresh button, as it loads a new set every time. Now we really know how the military names their operations!

Toms Hardware, has a nice article about bluetooth technology, where they talk about how the technology works, some of the devices currently available to the public, and the strengths and weaknesses of this technology we have all heard so much about.

“… Its performance is the envy of executives and engineers around the world … For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance …” - Ever wonder about the story behind Google? Why the interface is so elegant in its simplicity, yet so powerful in its operation? This is an interesting read into workings of [...]

In a recent update that Blizzard did on the World of Warcraft website is worthy of notice that they have added some of the playable races of the game in an area called town hall.
Just in case you are wondering about what the World of Warcraft is, it is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing [...]

“Now I talk to tons of folks in the games industry, and they tell me this isn’t really what they want, that they want people who are highly creative, capable of independent thought, and that are highly motivated to make games and that are a part of the ‘gaming culture,’ that are making games for [...]

“AIDA32 is a professional system information, diagnostics and benchmarking program running on Win32 platforms. It extracts details of all components of the PC. It can display information on the screen, print it, or save it to file in various formats like HTML, CSV or XML.”

I have a friend on a budget who needs some video editing software. Since that isn’t my thing, I don’t know what to make of an offer for free downloadable video editing software. Is it laden with spyware? Is it worth the time to download? For free, I don’t expect it [...]

This list is quite extensive and sums up the most common cliches you may find in RPG games, novels and other fantasy related works.

“The NVIDIA nForce2 platform is the only core-logic solution available today to include the real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 encoder technology in silicon, allowing end users to enjoy a rich, vibrant audio experience for games, DVD movies and digital music.”

“Iraqi television is rebroadcast onto the Net by the Dutch service DSL-TV, in both Real and Windows Media formats. The catch is that unlike ish.com’s Al Jazeera stream from Germany, DSL-TV tries to limit its service to computers inside the Netherlands as part of its terms of service.”

“Citizen involvement in any war on crime is not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a long tradition of people helping cops, especially where cops are hard to find or fund. But somehow, the Internet always seems to use vigilantism in the worst possible way. Berman’s idea is an extreme example, but it shares important features [...]

“Starting Monday, AOL Time Warner Inc. will end free online access to some of its highest-profile magazines as part of a previously announced effort to help its troubled America Online unit. The restrictions initially apply to People and Entertainment Weekly magazines…”

Via NSLog Via 911: “By far the most complicated favelet I’ve attempted, this one fails in MacIE, but works fine in Camino/Chimera & Mozilla, so it’ll presumably be okay in other Gecko-based browsers. It shows the mouse’s current position in the browser window, and allows you to measure distances via a draggable marquee.”

“We don’t want separate IDs everywhere, whether singly or in arbitrary affinity groupings. We want a single sign-on, preferably encrypted in our browser, Java ring or biometrics, that works everywhere. But we don’t want our data centralized, which would leave us hostage to an identity czar.”

“Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday showed off its next generation of software for high-tech in-vehicle entertainment, navigation and safety systems. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant unveiled Microsoft Windows Automotive 4.2 during its first-ever Automotive Executive Summit in this Detroit suburb.”

“The states of Massachusetts and Texas are preparing to consider bills that apparently are intended to extend the national Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (TX bill; MA bill) The bills are obviously related to each other somehow, since they are textually similar.”