Dreams Unlimited©

Diary

archives

A list of recent thoughts, things I saw or things I spotted on the Net, things that excite me (Uuh, baby!) or upset me, stuff I hate or love or in any other way find worth the trouble of blogging right here for your entertainment or interest and my archive. ;)

	Thursday, July 31 Underworld #Posted by Dreams on 18:19 Underworld I'm sooo going to see this movie! At least twice! :K :D
	Varend Corso Westland #Posted by Dreams on 14:23 If you're in the area of Den Haag this weekend and find yourself with nothing to do but you do not want stay indoor with the nice weather that we will have... You could go to the Varend Corso Westland. A string of ships with flowers, going from town to town. They get to Delft on Sundays and make their way through Rijswijk on the way to Wateringen (end stop).
	Wednesday, July 30 Sony PSP - portable playstation specs #Posted by Dreams on 18:33 ZDNET in Japan has specs of the new and upcoming portable game console from Sony, the Sony PSP. Teh Register has an English version. Especially the hardware 3D graphics support is impressive, morphing and clipping support, a 256 bit bus with a whopping 5.3 GB/sec throughput!!! Amazing! I can't wait to see this little machine!
	Software Patents - That's fighting talk #Posted by Dreams on 18:05 The Guarding reports on an article Richard Stallman (GNU founder) wrote where he fights against the upcoming Software Patents in Europe. A decision on them is expected on September 1st, 2003... "The European commission says its proposed directive on computer-implemented inventions will disallow software patents. But the text was actually written by the Business Software Alliance... The vague words drafted by the mega-corporations must be replaced with clear, decisive wording. Wording that will ensure that our information future will not be hijacked by the interests of a few rich organisations."
	Paintball! #Posted by Dreams on 14:04 Haven't done this in aaaaages!!! Perhaps I should organise a trip with friends or people from work... :devil: hehehe Woop some ass! :) Anyway, paintball.pagina.nl is a really good directory for paintball related info in the Netherlands and also outside of it. Places, accessories, guns, supplies, you name it.
	Tuesday, July 29 What a Girl Wants #Posted by Dreams on 16:00 Saw this movie the other day... It was rainy and I needed to get inside. The Hulk was playing too, but I won't torment non-gfx and non-cg buffs with it. So I went to What a Girl Wants instead. What can I say...? It's a nice feelgood movie. Amanda Bynes is a babe, Colin Firth is an ace actor and the young-US-teenager-goes-to-london-and-wreaks-havoc is always a funny theme albeit a bit overdone... I give it a 6/10, which seems inline with what IMDB user think. Wait for the DVD/video.
	Kroupware Project #Posted by Dreams on 09:56 "Kolab Server 1.0 is designed to be very scalable benefitting from already matured Free Software components like Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, Apache and OpenLDAP. 'Our design is completely based on open standards and compatibility', says Martin Konold, whose company Erfrakon developed the Kolab architecture. 'This is why we can even interact with Outlook, using the iCalender formats to invite people crossplatform and exchange contacts using vCard files.' Security aspects have been included from the beginning."
	IBM makes play for 'next-generation Pixar' #Posted by Dreams on 09:51 USATODAYreports that IBM and Threshold have teamed up together to make a run for Pixar's throne of digital computer animation. "If successful, the IBM-Threshold partnership could change the way CG films are created, allowing studios to churn out more high-quality CG movies at as little as half the cost... Threshold and IBM already have a CG movie in the works: Food Fight, about what happens in a grocery store after closing time. Trade publication Millimeter calls Food Fight "one of the most complex digitally animated feature films ever produced," with 138 main characters, 6,254 secondary characters and 174 sets. Kasanoff says it is 14 to 18 months from completion." Can't WAIT to see this!!! :D
	Search for Life in the Universe #Posted by Dreams on 09:40 "After an equivalent to a million years of computation aided by more than 4 million computers worldwide, the researchers have highlighted where in the sky to find some of the most promising choices. " 3 people from the SETO@home team are going down to the worlds largest radio telescoop to check 150 most promising spots that the volunteers have identified. They only have access to the 'scoop for 24 hrs. Nice article to read: Stellar Countdown Yields Skymap
	Saturday, July 26 FOSSIL's Wrist PDA #Posted by Dreams on 20:49 FOSSIL Online has pictures of their new PDA watch combination... This could also be one of the first Microsoft SPOT watches I mentioned earlier... :cool:
	European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics #Posted by Dreams on 20:41 These guys are doing serious Research and their July issue is crammed with coool stuff for the mobile phone/PDA user: "Special Theme: Applications and Service Platforms for the Mobile User" A MUST READ if you're doing anthing in Telecom, IT or just a curious nerd. (I'm the latter.)
	ICQ - I chatted with a qtie #Posted by Dreams on 20:32 Gotta love IM and ICQ! I was just online for a minute to check my mail and upload pics, when an ICQ authorize request hit me. I checked who it was, didn't know her, but she was 35 and nicknamed Daisy. Figured it couldn't hurt and OKed it. About an hour later (she even spoke some Dutch!), I tried to get offline because I really needed to do shopping before everything closed and I had some errands left to run... :D LOL Anyway, Daisy is a nice young Turkish/Polish/UK woman from Liverpool who lived in Arnhem for while (looong story...) and now single again and bored out of her mind this weekend! :) hihi So I invited her over, if she likes, for the weekend of the Dance Parade in Rotterdam... we'll see what happens. But at least she'll have a good weekend again with me, Ajren, Sjoerd, Marisca and other friends!
	The ACX100 wireless network driver project (Linux, BSD) #Posted by Dreams on 20:16 The ACX100 wireless network driver project (Linux, BSD): "Due to the poor support for Open Source operating systems of Texas Instruments' ACX100 wireless network chip, we decided to group together to build an Open Source driver for Linux and similar systems." These guys are going to reverse engineer their WiFi network drivers to get support for them under Linux... :respect: I have my new personal Gods for the week! Jeez...
	Friday, July 25 Reviews of the new Palm PDA Tungsten T2 #Posted by Dreams on 10:55 Brighthand Reviews the Palm Tungsten T2 New screen, new OS and support for >16MB on-board. many new BlueTooth applications as well as J2ME support for games and downloadable apps. :) Cool! And only $399... nice! (y)
	Thursday, July 24 Microsoft's Patent Problem #Posted by Dreams on 14:32 ROFL :D Fortune.com - Technology - Microsoft's Patent Problem: "A tiny company called InterTrust Technologies claims that 85% of Microsoft's entire product line infringes its digital security patents. InterTrust's engineers developed and patented what they say are key inventions in two areas: so-called digital-rights management and trusted systems. The technologies are essential to the digital distribution of copyrighted music and movies, and to maintaining the security of e-commerce in general."
	Advanced Instant NT Password Cracker #Posted by Dreams on 14:29 LASEC in Switserland has come up with a way to (almost) instantly crack winNT passwords. They use an exploit (weakness) in MS's encoding of passwords. Using 1.4 GB of data, they can crack 99.9% of all alphanumarical hashes in 13.6 seconds. Wanna try? Go to the link above and see for yourself. It's a web form, you submit one and see the result. Better change your servers soon or change passwords to more complicated combinations.
	AAC@128kbps public listening test #Posted by Dreams on 14:23 "In the last few months/weeks, AAC has been receiving some media coverage thanks to the efforts of companies like Apple and AOL to push the format forward. Since there are several available AAC encoders, both free and commercial ones, interest for a comparision was raised by concerned users. Then this test was created." I reported on AAC before, saying it may be the next encoding format used in all popular digital audio files. AAC@128kbps public listening test. Note that it will still be an mp3, but encoded using AAC not LAME, Ogg or anything else.
	ActiveState's Field Guide to Spam #Posted by Dreams on 14:18 Here something worth reading... ActiveState 's Field Guide to Spam: "Compiled by Dr. John Graham-Cumming, a leading anti-spam researcher and member of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the ActiveState Field Guide to Spam is a selection of the tricks spammers use to hide their messages from filters, providing examples taken from real-world spam messages."
	Hard-disk drive industry braces for technology changes #Posted by Dreams on 14:16 And here I thought that it really had to stop soon... "Isn't that cuute? BUT IT'S WRONG!" EE Times reports: "Perpendicular recording [of bits] will be required at the point when products reach capacities of about 100- to 200Gbits per sq. in., compared to approximately 50Gbits today, industry observers said. 'Once we master perpendicular recording, it will be the foundation for the industry up to the point of approaching 1Tbit per sq. in.,' said Seagate's Gentry. What's holding back the deployment? Reliability." The area of a 2.5" laptop harddisk is roughly 19.5 square inches. 100 Gbit means that one platter would hold 1950 Gbit or about 250 GB. That's about 3 times what laptop drives today store on 2 or 3 platters! And it would just be the beginning... Duuuh!
	BBC - Science: The Human Body - Senses Challenge #Posted by Dreams on 13:11 Here is a cool test that my friend Sjoerd sent to me. Take it, I dare you. I only got 10 out of 20 right! It's not easy at all! Lemme know what you got! :) BBC - Science Human Body - Body - Senses Challenge
	Internet advertising #Posted by Dreams on 13:02 So just how many ads were displayed on users' screens in 2002? And remember, it wasn't a good time for Internet advertising...! Things were slow compared to 1999-2000. Well, according to a lawsuit against Doubleclick filed in the US (where else?): "In 2002, Doubleclick served more than 630 billion ads on the Internet for thousands of customers." :shock:
	CDR Info tests recordable DVD compatibility issues #Posted by Dreams on 12:51 From Slashdot: "CDR-Info tested eight types of media (two examples of each media type) using five different recorders, then tested compatibility in twenty-seven standalone DVD players and twenty DVD-ROM drives. They determined that DVD-R is clearly the most compatible DVD recording format on the market."
	Yahoo! News - French Government Bans Term 'E-Mail' #Posted by Dreams on 12:48 Sigh... everybody is travelling all over the world to see the sites first hand. We want to be able to buy French cheese in the local supermarket, and Italian Parma ham, eat Spanish oranges and Greek grapes, roast American marshmellows over the bon fire and drive a German car... But low and behold when someone wants us to use a foreign word in our native language. Then we go all out and stop it. "Why use foreign words? Aren't ours good enough?" Sigh... The French and Belgian seem to be the worst of 'em all... Check this article on Yahoo News about the French who are banning the word "E-Mail"... deep sigh Whatever...
	Monday, July 21 Nikon develops new image sensor #Posted by Dreams on 15:52 Digital Photography Review reports that Nikon developed a new image sensor: "Because the sensors are able to read image data at a higher speed, they enable high-speed photography and higher-resolution imaging. An SLR camera with the LBCAST sensor will be capable of consecutive shooting at the best level for CMOS cameras made by other companies, or 8 shots per second, which is also more than twice that of ordinary compact digital cameras with CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors." Looks liek Nikon will once again become a solid favorite, after Canon released its vastly popular Canon EOS 10D which is rivaled only by its own 1Ds or the professional DSLR cameras from Nikon or Kodak. Can't wait to see this in a nice new 6Mpx DSLR! Xmas here I come!
	Is It Just My Imagination? #Posted by Dreams on 14:02 Microsoft Research has developed a new way of generating passwords that are long, secure, hard to guess but easy to remember. Is It Just My Imagination? ""We show you a bunch of computer generated inkblots," said Simon. "We ask you to look at the inkblot, see whatever you see in the inkblot, and type a short abbreviation of what you see. The first and last letter works well. We do that for a sequence of inkblots...Basically, you're typing in twenty characters by looking at ten inkblots. The idea is that eventually you just type in the twenty characters, because by the umpteenth time you've logged in, you've remembered these twenty characters," said Simon.
	Warp Pipe Project: getting the Nintendo GameCube Online #Posted by Dreams on 12:36 There is a bunch of people outthere working on getting the GameCube online. Currently, the Xbox's biggest advantage is that you can join some multiplayer games online. PS2 also has an extension kit for this, but Nintendo has been quiet. So it seems real fans out there are doing it for them... SourceForge.net: Project Info - Warp Pipe Project: GameCube Online It is only in the planning stage so far, but detailed specs of the network protocol have already been documented. SourceForge is now calling for volunteers...
	Sony CLIE PEG-UX50 Now in USA - Mobilemag.com #Posted by Dreams on 12:31 On Slashdot, I read that Sony will develop and has developed their own CPU for the CLié line of PDA handhelds. They are optimized for the things that really matter, in the eyes of Sony. Sony CLIE PEG-UX50 Now in USA - Handhelds - Mobilemag.com: "For the first time, Sony has designed, engineered and manufactured a new processor for the handheld that has been optimized with three key benefits in mind: multimedia processing, battery life and miniaturization, which are essential factors for a premiere mobile device." The page also has more pictures of the new UX50 as well as some technical specs... B)
	Friday, July 18 Mobiel Gaming market is booming #Posted by Dreams on 15:38 Heise, again, says that The Research Room reports that world-wide mobile gaming is booming. In 2002, the market was 561 million US dollars, but for 2007 they predict 41 billion dollars!!! That's a 100x increase. Seems a bit steep! J2ME is said to take the lion stake out of this with BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) as a competitor. BREW is made by Qualcomm.
	Heise News-Ticker: Sony Cliés with digicam, Bluetooth and WiFi #Posted by Dreams on 15:32 Heise's News Ticker reports (German) that Sony introduced the Clié UX50 in Japan. It returns to the old Psion form-factor again, wider than high, has a VGA camera on-board, WiFi and Bleutooth, 16 bit color display @320x480 resolution and PalmOS 5.2. It sounds all very good, but it runs on an ARM 926 processor instead of the fast Intel XScale Sony usually uses. Weird. Maybe power issues or stability, coz I think the Intel's are faster than the ARMs.
	Which digital camera? #Posted by Dreams on 15:12 Just wanted to say something about digicams. I seem to keep getting the same questions from different people every so often. Here are my opinions. Which digicam is largely dependent on personal taste and background. Sites you can use to form an opinion or check for reviews/tests: www.dpreview.com www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20030709/ pricewatch.tweakers.net (check cheapest prices) If you have never had any camera, it doesn't really matter which brand you start with (Canon, Sony, Kodak, etc). If you did/do own an analog instant/35mm camera then you may want to stick to the same brand. If you will only rarely make prints from digital images, 2 or 3 Mpx (MegaPixels) is enough. Save money and buy extra accessories instead. If you want to make prints often and also make A4 prints (at home or in the shop), get as many Mpx as you can afford! 4 Mpx minimum. If you have other digital gadgets, like mp3 players, that use some kind of memory cards like SD, xD, CompactFlash (CF), MicroDrives, MemorySticks (MS) and so on, get a camera that uses the same type so you can exchange cards easily. For instance, Sony laptops use MemorySticks so getting a Sony digicam will make tranferring the images really easy. If you have an mp3 player that uses CF cards, a digicam that also uses CF cards will make sense because you already have 256MB+ cards for the player. All (semi) professional digicams (called DSLR) use or accept CF cards! All cameras come with USB connectors and can be connected without too much trouble to any PC running win98 and higher or Apple OS X (iMacs and iBooks). Contrary to popular believe you DO NOT HAVE TO install any special software for using the digital images!!! Connecting your digicam by USB will add an extra, removable harddisk to the Windows Explorer and you can drag&drop files from that. The only thing you may need, are special USB drivers if you run win95, win98, winNT. Win2000 and winXP are ready to go. Movies can be viewed in the Media player and TIFF/JPG images with PhotoEditor or Internet Explorer. If and only if you want to edit the images or movies, you may decide to install the software that comes with your digicam. Ulead is especially good! Most included software sucks and is limited in some way compared to what you can get or buy (shareware is great). Which cameras do I recommend (I have a DSC-U20)? Ultra small: Sony DSC-U30 (2Mpx), Pentax Optio S (3Mpx) Small: Canon IXUS V2 (2Mpx) and V3 (3Mpx), Canon EXILIM EX Z3 (3Mpx) Compact: Canon Powershot A70 (3Mpx), Canon Powershot S50 (5Mpx), Sony DSC-P8 (3Mpx), P10 (5Mpx), P52 (3Mpx), Fuji F401Zoom (2Mpx), Fuji F402 (2Mpx), Fuji F601 (3Mpx) Normal/DSLR: Sony DSC-F717 (5Mpx), Minolta Dimage 7i (5Mpx), Fuji S2 Pro (6Mpx), Canon Powershot G3 (4Mpx), Canon EOS 10D (6Mpx), Nikon D100 (6Mpx) Price ranges of what you should pay: 2Mpx 250-350 3Mpx 300-400 A good idea is to check ebay.com or local version ebay.nl, ricardo.nl and marktplaats.nl. many people want to upgrade and sell their (unused) camera cheap! Checking MediaMarkt regular is also a good idea. And the summer clearance sale is starting end of July, so wait until August! I love Sony because of its user friendlyness, excellent lenses and cool, sexy designs. I love Canon for its outstanding built-in software, CompactFlash and manual overrides. I like Fuji because they perform well under low-light conditions.
	Thursday, July 17 20six - MMS blogging #Posted by Dreams on 18:50 With 20six you can create an MMS blog in 2 minutes, they claim. I've posted this before, but a recent conversation with an old co-worker from venuslab.com brought it up again... Excellent stuff this! If you have an MMS mobile phone, set up and enable MMS, get a mblog or mlog and be up and running in no time. Cool to impress friend with! ;)
	Linux took on Microsoft, and won big in Munich Victory could be a huge step in climb by up-and-comer #Posted by Dreams on 18:15 Want to know what Microsoft went thru to try and get the Munich gov't to use MS instead of (SuSE) Linux? Read this article by the USA Today:Linux took on Microsoft, and won big in Munich Victory could be a huge step in climb by up-and-comer: "The German city of Munich was balking at a $36.6 million proposal from Microsoft to upgrade 14,000 desktop PCs to the latest versions of Windows and Office. Instead, Munich -- Germany's third-largest city and a technology hub for Central Europe -- was leaning toward a switch to Linux, the upstart computer operating system whose open-source code is continually improved by volunteer programmers worldwide."
	Japan: 12Mb/s for $21/month on DSL #Posted by Dreams on 18:13 Wired 11.08: Fat Pipe Dream: "...Softbank has spent close to $2 billion building out a gigabit Ethernet network and leasing copper wire from Japanese telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. The result is a service, offered under the Yahoo! BB brand, that provides Internet access to Japanese homes at 12 megabits per second - eight times faster than what Americans are used to - for about $21 a month. Every day, as many as 7,000 new subscribers fire up their plug-and-play DSL modems, making Yahoo! BB the world's fastest-growing broadband service..."
	BugTraq: Serious Microsoft Security Flaw Discoverd! #Posted by Dreams on 17:58 SecurityFocus HOME Mailing List: BugTraq: "We have discovered a critical security vulnerability in all recent versions of Microsoft operating systems. The vulnerability affects default installations of Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP as well as Windows 2003 Server." Read about it and the patch from Microsoft.
	Anonymous Music Sharing with Freenet, for instance #Posted by Dreams on 17:53 New Scientist: "Freenet, by contrast, provides completely untraceable sharing by dividing files up and distributing them at random across different computers. Requests for files are also designed not to reveal where they originally came from." LOL, eat your heart out RIAA and BUMA/STEMRA! :)
	Telly: The Entertainment Computer #Posted by Dreams on 17:51 I don't understand why these things still don't exist in the Netherlands. Telly: The Entertainment Computer. I mean UK has Tivo and other DVR solutions (Digital Video Recorder). They have EPGs to select programs, you point and click with a remote and voila, never miss a program anymore. You can even record over something, in case you forgot to watch it but don't want to miss the next program... Really handy!
	Wednesday, July 16 University of Twente introduces Europe's largest WiFi hotspot #Posted by Dreams on 14:30 I also found an English version of the article for you... University of Twente introduces Europe's largest WiFi hotspot
	Europe's Largest WiFi hotspot is on a University campus #Posted by Dreams on 14:21 The University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, has the largest WiFi hotspot of Europe (Article in Dutch, sorry). It is where I went to college after getting my Bachelors in the USA (Pittsburgh). Great, now they get all innovative and all... That does me a lot of good! ;) A total of 650 hotspots covering 140 hectare has been covered with help of IBM and Cisco and a grant from the Dutch Dept of Economics. It Not only allows people of surf anywhere, but also enables a whole range of new ways to teach classes. The Industrial Design students, for instance, all work with (required) laptops with a fast 54Mb/s WiFi link (802.11g) so they always the information they need with them. It also means rooms are more flexible because less material is needed to create on, with most materials being available on-line.
	Tuesday, July 15 AOL to launch blogging for its users #Posted by Dreams on 16:31 The Internet was fine in the early 90s. Just real people were on it, sharing stuff, discussing real matters and doing research in between downloading a few small images with girls in them. ;) Then AOL came along and put Internet in the reach of everyone... the Net/web crumbled and became what it is today. :( Blogs are fine now and provide realy useful information. Let's hope AOL's introduction of blogging to its users, this summers, won't be the beginning of the end for blogs as well... "AOL Journals (named as such, since a survey showed the average user found the word 'blog' to be confusing) will allow users to post text, pictures, and voice entries."
	How Do Disk Drives Work? #Posted by Dreams on 16:17 Always wondered how a disk drives actually works? I used to know way back when I had an 80 MB RLL harddisk. Platters, sectors, cylinders and so on. But how todays 180GB+ drives work, I don't know. they're much faster, smaller, denser and can sometimes heal themselves from small defects that occur over time... Read the extensive but enlightning ACM review...
	Tulip to revive old Commodore 64 brand #Posted by Dreams on 16:14 Tulip said it will revive the good ol' Commodore 64 brand! LOL, that brings back memories too. They claim there are about 6 million people actively using the brand in some or another. It's too good to let get by. "Ironstone and Tulip invite the Commodore community to join the official Commodore C64 web-portal. Currently there are about 300 commercial websites that use the name Commodore or Commodore 64 without having a license from Tulip. Tulip will not allow unauthorised use of the Commodore brand."
	Fortress Evolution #Posted by Dreams on 16:09 Fortress Evolution: "Fortress Evolution, in a nutshell, is a strict port of the QuakeWorld physics engine into the Quake 3 environment. This isn't nearly an attempt at emulation, it's a direct remake. Everything that has managed to keep QuakeWorld players playing on a near-decade aged engine, to this day, is being brought over in the strictest sense possible. Anything you can think of concerning what we might miss, we assure you, we didn't and won't. Highly defined air control, accelerated bunnyhop, advanced water physics; these are just a few of the features included in Fortress Evolution. When playtesting our already made versions it's damn scary how this mod feels; you'd swear you were playing QuakeWorld itself." Ooooh this brings back memories... :) snif snif getting mushy here. I must get the old skool Quakers back for a LAN game of this stuff when it's playable!!! Time to dust off the old 4 button mouse for some exercise! Woohoo! L00t!
	OpenGroupware.org: finally we can deintall MS Exchange! #Posted by Dreams on 15:47 I've always liked using Outlook as a user and hated it as an admin. It's a pain to configure, make backups of, rescue inboxes and so on, but once you do, using it is nice. Now there finally is an alternative to MS Exchange: OpenGroupware.org. their mission was "To create, as a community, the leading open source groupware server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products and all the leading groupware clients running across all major platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through open XML-based interfaces and APIs." Hear, hear! They're my heros for the next few weeks! (y)
	The Organizational Model for Open Source #Posted by Dreams on 15:43 Slashdot reports that Harvard has done a study on The Organizational Model for Open Source: "Programmers contribute to free software and open source projects for many reasons—some for the fun of it, some to improve their skills, others for a paycheck. Many people have wondered why these people give their work away. The truth is that many projects have incorporated in order to protect themselves from individual liability. Since the Free Software Foundation was founded in 1985, a number of new nonprofit foundations have formed, often around specific technologies, to serve the interests of programmers."
	Levitation like a UFO #Posted by Dreams on 15:39 OK, I really thought this was not possible. That it really was Sci-Fi. Hovering UFOs, invisible rays lifting up a disc and whizzing off at warp speed... But it's true! :) Doh! Check out American Antigravity, a US site that contains hundreds of home videos of people who are building these things in their backyards... B) Sooo cool! :nerd: Or read an in-depth article by Wired on the subject and get caught-up in 15 min. ;)
	Thursday, July 10 ZANDindestad on August 3rd! #Posted by Dreams on 11:35 ZANDhap reads that the next ZANDindestad will take place on Sunday August 3rd, not July 27th, as they first said. Thanks for letting me know... NOT! Oh well, no harm done! I'll just inform everyone. May even be better this way. Some friends were on vacation (nice going Sjoerdski). :) hihi just kidding...
	Wednesday, July 9 Why we can't patent business methods #Posted by Dreams on 17:51 The New Yorker: "For most of American history, it was next to impossible to get a patent on what the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called “a mere method of doing business.” A business method was considered to be an idea—selling newspapers in the streets, delivering packages overnight—and ideas of this sort were not patentable. But in July, 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit did away with that principle. The case, State Street v. Signature Financial, involved software that Signature had written to enable it to administer mutual funds more efficiently. But the court’s language was broad enough to embrace any business process (as long as it was new and “nonobvious” and had a “useful, concrete, and tangible result”). The gates opened, and in the past five years thousands of business-method patents have been granted. One inventive soul won a patent for a system of using pictures to train janitors. Another got one for describing a way to cut hair with both hands." Read the rest of the article and you'll understand why the Internet and Telecom boom has caused the USPTO to request 5000 new examiners to be hired and we in Europe are facing the same patent tidal wave...
	Dissertation Could Be Security Threat #Posted by Dreams on 17:45 Washington Post: "Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them." You have to read the artcle to believe it! It sounds like a movie but isn't! This guy did an amazing feat and can't show nor tell anyone about it. He built a system that could represent a threat to US national security, because any terrorist could use it or its information to find out exactly where to strike with what explosives.... Scary but neat! :)
	Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas #Posted by Dreams on 11:11 Dreamworks (my heros) latest Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is coming to the Netherlands reeeeally soon! Haha! I'm thrilled! Haven't seen a good cgi movie in a looong time. And Nemo is too far off. :( hopefully I can see it with my buddy Martin, who's as crazy about cgi as I am, perhaps even more so... nah! ;)
	Monday, July 7 Hubble Catches Some Cosmic Fireworks #Posted by Dreams on 12:05 Hubble Catches Some Cosmic Fireworks: "the Hubble Space Telescope peers into a neighboring galaxy to capture a gorgeous view of a supernova remnant called LMC N 49. Also known as DEM L 190, the nebula lies within the Large Magellanic Cloud approximately 160,000 light-years away. It is the product of a supernova explosion that would have been witnessed thousands of years ago by any skyward-looking creatures on Earth."
	ZANDindestad #Posted by Dreams on 11:32 zandhap: "27 juli ZANDindestad, Mallemolen, Den Haag. Genoeg gelounged! Zandhap laat je op informele wijze kennis maken met lekker eten en goede rosé. Deze keer met de inventiviteit van Watertanden. Rosé uiteraard van Vinodor en Pink." There's another coming! Great idea and initiative of some people. Get together in a nice restaurant in town, make an all-in fee, put on music and let people mingle while serving them a constant flow of small bites and appetizers while pouring good rosés! :) (y) I'll be there...
	Friday, July 4 What Blender can do with another renderer #Posted by Dreams on 17:37 Look at this image of an old mini... Then slowly realise that it is NOT a picture or a scan! It's an computer model made in Blender and then rendered with a new kind of render engine YAFRAY!!! :shock: :respect: I'm baffled...!
	MP3 Player Jukebox Module for IDE drives #Posted by Dreams on 14:17 You gotta read this to believe it! Brilliant! MP3 Player Jukebox Module for IDE drives
	Digitally Imported #Posted by Dreams on 10:51 Once again Digitally Imported makes my day! I love these guys. So much that I have to make a donation to them! DI.FM is an Internet radio station with (almost) entirely dance music. And not any dance, really REALLY good, hip, trendy, current, new dance music of all popular kinds. They stream about 5000-8000 users per day, every day. However, at work I use OS/2 and I couldn't listen to the streams. :( Boohoo! Thanks to someone in te forums, however, I now found an mp3 player for OS/2 that also plays shoutcast streams! Woohoo! :respect:
	Thursday, July 3 Ed and Annette have a new home! #Posted by Dreams on 23:55 Chatted with my good ol' buddy Ed just now. He and his wife Annette have recently moved from the city of Denver to the mountains... He sent me some pictures and I uploaded one of them. So nice... you have to see it! What a view... man, I wish...
	Back in Greve with former Not a Number aka Blender people #Posted by Dreams on 23:52 Had a drink tonight in Greve, with former Not a Number colleagues. You know, creators of Blender the coolest, free, cross platform 3D graphics and animation packahe out there...
	Nanotubes for clothing #Posted by Dreams on 17:39 I've heard of nanotubes that could be used for super small conduits for chips, but appearantly you can also make clothes from them. Cool! B) Slashdot has more links and info.
	Linux used exclusively for Dreamworks' Sinbad #Posted by Dreams on 17:11 Wired has story that tells abouthow Dreamsworks used more than 250 Linux workstations (RedHat) to create and render the latest computer graphics movie "Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas".
	Wednesday, July 2 Double Feature: 2Fast and 2Furious & Phone Booth #Posted by Dreams on 23:33 Was bored and beat. Could choose between hanging behind my PC all night, vegetate behind the tube or at least go out and watch a screen. I chose the latter. So I had a quick bite and then saw 2Fast and 2Furious and Phone Booth! :) Both great. Action Jackson in 2Fast of course, and mind chilling suspense in Phone Booth. Too bad you know that US films always end well... so there's no need to get yourself too excited. In the end, the poor little troubled children of the US need a happy ending or they'll feel all small and tiny and scared of life... Suckers! ;)
	O2 introduces lastest XDA: XDA II #Posted by Dreams on 17:19 Mobile telecom provider O2 introduced the successor to the relatively smash PDA, the XDA. The XDA II has a VGA camera built-in, MMS, BlueTooth, tri-band, color display with 64000 colors and the lastest MS PcoketPC 2003 standard. WLAN aka WiFi is optional. It also uses the new Intel XScale CPU @400MHz. This sounds to me like a real killer PDA! Biggest bad point is the PocketPC OS, but oh well... guess I could think about it, at least! :) The thingy will set you back about 499 Euro in O2 shops...
	Tuesday, July 1 eArchivarius #Posted by Dreams on 23:38 eArchivarius! Excellent! Brilliant! I want it and I want it NOW, goddammit! Somebody make this for me...! :)
	Microsoft SPOT WristWatch Mock-up Designs #Posted by Dreams on 23:36 MS latest gimmick is the SPOT wrist watch. It's a small CPU in your watch that gives you interesting info piggy-backed on the FM radio band. Sort of, I haven't studied the full details yet either... too busy bloggin'... Just read the stories out there and take a look at this thread on Pocket PC Thought with a link to some artists' impressions too... Cool! :nerd: B)
	SpamBayes Outlook Addin #Posted by Dreams on 23:32 Tired of tons of SPAM in Outlook but you can't get rid of Outl$$k just yet?! You lucky bastard, coz now the SpamBayes Outlook Addin saves your sorry ass! ;)
	PYR A MAC #Posted by Dreams on 23:30 Are you sooo fed up with plain, grey square PC cases? Want something different? LEDs and water cooling not enough for you...? Hehehe, take a look at PYR A MAC. :shock: :respect:
	SecurityFocus: RFID Chips Are Here #Posted by Dreams on 23:21 SecurityFocus made a column summarizing about a year's worth of stories about RFID. So if you haven't been keeping up the cough recent cough events, here's some RFID education in one easy-to-digest article. BTW, SecurityFocus is also the maintainer of some of the best security and virus (threat) information out there! :respect:
	Symantec Security Response - W32.Sobig.E@mm #Posted by Dreams on 23:17 There's another virus on the loose... sorry I didn't blog this sooner... But I have been in a course for the last week and a half. Symantec Security Response - W32.Sobig.E@mm. Be careful and update you're virus scanners!
	Running OfficeXP under Linux on SuSE #Posted by Dreams on 23:14 Well, OK. If you tried Debian and you really didn't like it because you're just too plain simple for it and you've been on the MS bandwagon for so long that you can't even remember how to spell DOS... at least try another Linux disto then. ZDnet has a review of SuSE that's running Office XP for you... It's like a whore among the Linux distos, IMHO, but oh well, whores have to make a living too! :D LOL
	Really, really cheap CDs #Posted by Dreams on 23:09 BTW, if you're in Europe, you can get really good and cheap CDs and DVDs from cdon.com. Really! Highly recommended!!!
	D'Sound #Posted by Dreams on 23:05 $d\'sound$ One of my favorite bands in the world, D'Sound has released a new album and they didn't bother to tell me! Why the-%$%@!#%$@ am I subscribed to the $#%@!%$ mailing list for...??? Ya think? Duuh! Anyways, CD and DVD are on their way. :) Woohoo!
	Setting off with Debian #Posted by Dreams on 22:54 Just wrote that Debian is the best disto out there but is sometimes a bit in the deep end when it comes to installtion it for newbies. Well, Sitepoint may just have the answer to that for you! :) Guidelines on installing Debian Linux, rated 7.2 by users... not bad... not bad...
	LinuxTag 2003 #Posted by Dreams on 22:50 LinuxTag 2003, a Linux conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, is getting near. July 10th marks the occasion. If you still don't know anything about it, you shoudl really give it a go... really!
	linmagau.org #Posted by Dreams on 22:39 An Australian OpenSource magazine writes about what Debian Linux must do to survive the rat race. Linux is on te move. It has been for about 2 years, I'd say. Perhaps longer, but not much. Suddenly it's in the picture. Microsoft's new EULA did most of te work, actually, ironically! :D LOL RedHat and SuSE are distos (distributions) that are getting there. Spoil stupid windoze users with plug&play, easy configs, good presets and tools to get up and running as fast as possible... Hmm, makes sense doesn't it?! Read the article why Debian is having problems even though it still is the best disto...
	ZDNet: How viruses (and your PC) are used to send spam #Posted by Dreams on 22:33 Here's one reeeally didn't see coming... How viruses (and your PC) are used to send spam Duuuh! Hello, anybody home?!?! Suckers!
	Software patents in EU #Posted by Dreams on 22:31 Oh FUCK! Please, don't let it be true! :( Major booboo if this happens. First of all, the EPO is already swamped with patent applications and we're severly backlogged due to the Internet hype. Now that we're finally catching up, this damn thing happens... No way!!! It won't solve anything, it won't give any edges and it'll onyl do more harm than good. :(