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. ;)

	Tuesday, November 30 Slashdot \| Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes #Posted by Dreams on 22:03 USA Today and Avantgarde did a study to see how long it would take for an unprotected Windows XP system with SP1 to stay clean... interestingly enough, it lasts only roughly 4 minutes before the PC is comprised and part of a botnet (a system of robot systems no longer in your control, altough they appear to be). Turns out, there is also another company keeping track of these "survival rates". "Although Macs and PC's got hit with equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks."
	Coming soon: Google TV? #Posted by Dreams on 19:38 ZDNet reports: "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers' living rooms." Google is even making deals with broadcasters and movie businesses.
	Email is for old people! #Posted by Dreams on 19:36 In Korea, no one under the age of 25 uses Email anymore. Email is still used fo official and formal messages. Instead, IM, SMS or blogs are used to communicate. More than 2/3 of 2000 people suveyed said they "rarely use or don't use Email at all". "The new generation hate agonizing and waiting and tend to express their feelings immediately." I guess I am far ahead of my time... ;)
	Monday, November 29 Another week of home improvement #Posted by Dreams on 07:20 Yet another week of work ahead. Three days in a row I have to get up at 7am and be at our new place at 8am for the construction guys to get it. I'm not idle either. There's still lots to do there. I'll paint some more windows, do the heathers (they were brown!) and finish lots of little things so that in the weekends, our friends who help out, can just steam full speed ahead and don't ned to bother with petty details... sigh I'm too good for this world (Ich bin zu Geil für diese Welt!)
	Sunday, November 28 Petra's first exhibition #Posted by Dreams on 18:23 Today, Petra had her first exhibition at the Photo Academy in Amsterdam. It was a great afternoon with pictures of all freshman students. Some of the pictures were amazing and all were good. But my biggest surprise was the turn up of 200+ people! That and me bartending all afternoon because the real barteam didn't show. ;)
	Saturday, November 27 Enschede #Posted by Dreams on 22:52 After working all day in the house, Petra and I went to Enschede to visit Roy and meet with my friends Michiel & Natalie and Imro & Roos for dinner and a night on the town. Boy, did we have a great night! Sadly, Petra had to go to bed early because of a migraine attack :( but we managed to party-harty anyway! :)
	Home Improvement - cont'd #Posted by Dreams on 17:05 Today our friend Marc lend a hand in painting the ceilings of the livingroom and other parts of the house. It is becoming more and more livable by the day. The ceilings are spotless now. Almost all the woodwork has been painted and central heating is nicely heating up the house. Next week, the bathroom and tile floors will be laid or at least started with. At the same time we still have to check all electricity because it turned out to be less good than we were led to believe. :( While that is going on, the rest will be painted as well and next weekend we have a couple of people helping with the wallpaper...
	Smart phone predicts owner's behaviour \| The Register #Posted by Dreams on 16:20 Speaking of phones... the next generation will be super smart SmartPhones. :) The Register reports: Smart phone predicts owner's behaviour. It learns your behavior, discovers friends via Bluetooth and so on. The technology comes from MIT and the system is based on software called "Context" and developed in Finland. Cool article!
	LG Plans for 6 or 7 Megapixel Camera Phone #Posted by Dreams on 16:16 It looks like LG has plans for a 6 or 7 mpx camera phone! Wow, seems like a bit of overkill with those tiny lenses, let alone putting enough storage in your phone with 1 or 2 GB SD cards... but either way, this will create some discussion, I'm sure, as having these phones around in places where there's copyrighted material will get tricky. Who's right? Those claiming copyright and creating original works, or those who need their phone to "stay in touch"? :) Interesting, isn't it?
	Thursday, November 25 Joan Miro Art #Posted by Dreams on 09:15 You may not know me as an art loving individual. Granted, I rarely go to museums, don't like most paintings, despise artists and the like or at least behave like that. However... I love Impressionalism. It fits my nickname "Dreams". Therefore, I like Van Gogh's paintings, Monet, Claude Debussy and their time-fellows. The dream-like, romantic, paintings, colors and feelings are gorgeous. I also happen to like Joan Miro. I ran into the Joan Miro museum in Barcelona, in June 2000, and was smitting my his choice of colors, scenes and images. They're pleasant, somewhat pretty and appeal to me in some way. I've always liked bright colors and light pictures, so Miro naturally fits into my taste. :) Thus, if you ever need to buy me a gift...
	Wednesday, November 24 Diana Krall's New DVD #Posted by Dreams on 21:01 Today I was a happy man! I found out Diana Krall has a new DVD out, recorded live at the Montreal Jazz Festival! If you don't know Diana Krall and like Jazz music, piano play, a gorgeous blond singing it, backed by awesome musicians... better check out Diana Krall - Live At The Montreal Jazz Festival
	Tuesday, November 23 AMICALE Ultimate Frisbee Club #Posted by Dreams on 20:25 I've fixed up the lay-out for the AMICALE Ultimate Frisbee Club page. Judging from my stats, the EPO finally upgraded all workstations from OS/2 :yawn: to WinXP. Now let's hope they've installed SP2. ;)
	BTX-based Shuttle XPC barebone #Posted by Dreams on 20:20 I say "Shuttle, barebone and BTX" and what do you think? IT RULEZ, of course! Using a BTX motherboard in a barebone makes more than sense! Buying a Shuttle barebone also makes great sense! Who needs a full size desktop PC these days? OK, well, maybe you do, but the barebone is so sexy, your girlfriend will ask to put it in the livingroom whereas she'll hide your Xmodded case between the plants or curtains. Enough talk, check out the new Shuttle SB86i barebone PC. Socket 775, 800 MHz FSB, DDR400, ATA and SATA support, RAID 0 or 1, 8.1 Realtek audio, GLAN, cardreader, Firewire, SPDIF ports. :drool: Gimme gimme gimme!
	Being a homeless #Posted by Dreams on 13:35 A couple of days ago, I was in Utopolis Almere with friends, watching Sharktale in Almere's new digital cinema center, when I borrowed Sjoerd's giant black overcoat. Everyone was all insert high pitched excited female voice "oh, you look so nice!", "it so great!" and blabla over Sjoerd's coat, that I had to prove it's the man who makes the clothes, not the clothes that make the man! :) That same coat looks ridiculous on me! LOL
	Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents #Posted by Dreams on 12:36 For the last 20 years or so, laser printer manufacturers have been embedding tiny yellow serial numbers in every page you printed. This serial number allows government to track pages (of counterfitted money or passports) back to the criminals. However, what about you and me? Read the story on Yahoo News: "...yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you"
	Monday, November 22 Sophos virus analysis: W32/Bofra-A #Posted by Dreams on 18:31 A new virus seems to have been spreading around Europe using banners displayed in IE. However, if you have XP SP2, you're not affected. Anyone with Windows 2000 or XP SP1, without the lastest security patches may have been infected by visiting certain popular websites. According to Sophos virus analysis, W32/Bofra-A, is easily removed.
	Friday, November 19 LineX USB FM Transmitter #Posted by Dreams on 11:07 Want a simple way to connect your PC's (or Apple Mac's) audio to your stereo? Check out LineX USB FM Transmitter on ThinkGeek. This USB device uses one of seven FM radio frequencies to broadcast your audio signal to your stereo. Dunno if it supports 5.1 or up, but for streaming mp3s around the room(s) , this seems a no brainer tool! :respect:
	Tiësto falling from grace? #Posted by Dreams on 09:56 TTDJ has a story about how DJ Magazine started bitching and complaining about Tiësto, after he won the 3rd title in a row for Best DJ of the World but cancelled their winners' party at the last moment. Appearantly, he wanted to practice and perfect a magic trick which he would perform the next day during the Tiësto in Concert show in Arnhem. However, DJ Mag was not amused! Read the article for new British euphemisms!
	Monday, November 15 Den Haag - Redecorating #Posted by Dreams on 23:30 Today was the first day the "stuccadoors" came and fixed all the walls with gypsum... I've got a few pictures but I'll try to get a clearer 'before-after' gallery up in a while...
	DonovanSF & the 3rd Annual Halloween Masquerade Ball #Posted by Dreams on 23:04 Damn!!! I missed this Halloween Party! :'( That looks like it was some party... :K :9
	Who needs hard disks? Solid state rulez! #Posted by Dreams on 16:52 On DPReview I learned that SanDisk created some unbelievably large compact storage cards: SanDisk doubles the capacity of CompactFlash. They now offer 4 and 8 GB CF cards as well as 8 or 16 GB PC cards (you know, the familiar PCMCIA type). Transfer is upto 20 MB/sec and MTBF is 3 million hours for the industrial grade card and 1 million for the consumer type cards. They don't mention prices anywhere...
	LED Pimp Bed #Posted by Dreams on 13:20 LED Pimp Bed is a guy's dorm room, equipped with LED lights instead of ordinary light bulbs... So cool! B) Check out the pictures...
	Sun to Roll Out Free Solaris 10 #Posted by Dreams on 13:05 Wired says Sun to Roll Out Free Solaris OS. They expect to make money on the servers and other hardware, not the OS itself. I, personally, am all for this kind of business model. It shows great confidence in your products and the OS will run on over 270 computer platforms, including Sun, Intel and AMD. This way, Solaris kan also compete with OSes like RedHat and other Linux distos.
	Saturday, November 13 Winamp dead as all programmers leave AOL #Posted by Dreams on 18:51 AOL bought NullSoft a while ago and it seemed a good idea. Good guys getting money to develop a rock solid mp3 player and then some for Windows. However, the Register reports that AOL axes Nullsoft and winamp won't receive any updates anytime soon... sigh time to start looking for alternatives. Anyone?
	Friday, November 12 Google doubles its index #Posted by Dreams on 10:13 Google has updated its index and gone from 4 billion pages to 8 billion pages indexed. :) Wow! The GoogleBlog also states that the new engine searches not only HTML and PDF files, but also PowerPoint, Word, PostScript and Flash files. The latter should a remarkable change as I don't think this was done before and should be a life saver for all those Flash-only sites (yuck!). I also learned from the tweakers discussion that there's a DeepBot that indexes sites roughly every 3 weeks and a FreshBot specifically for pages that change content often, such as news sites and blogs. You should be able to see these bots in the web server logs files (if you have access to them). Hmmm, wonder if I can...
	Thursday, November 11 Gateway uses BTX first motherboards #Posted by Dreams on 20:57 Gateway is trying to use the lastest motherboard design, BTX, to keep new PCs cool, even under heavy workload. The Pentium4 chip can consume upto 115W of power, under heavy loads. teh BTX design moves components around to create a better airflow over the motherboard and its components. "The BTX design relocates the motherboard and cooling fans so as to direct a stream of air over the hottest parts of a PC. Two fans, one at each end of the PC, direct air over the processor (which now resides at the front of the motherboard) and help remove heat given off by powerful graphics processors."
	35 megapixels Giant Screen #Posted by Dreams on 20:53 People at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have it all cut out for them... if only they could play Quake3 or Halo2 on this 35 megapixels Giant Screen! LOL Still cool, they can watch animations of giant starsystems on it, meteorological models, DNA molecule or visualize the latest chip design. The screen is 8x30 ft (2.4m x 10m) and is filled by 27 projectors... coool
	Wednesday, November 10 McAfee Stinger 2.4.4 #Posted by Dreams on 23:06 There's a new version of McAfee Stinger. This one is updated to scan and remove the 45 most abundant virusses, worms and trojans, including all known variations on them. This includes the new MyDoom variation and the BugBear and Sasser virusses. It's small, sweet and powerful. If someone suspects their PC is infected, this 900KB utility will set them straight in no time! :respect:
	Terror hits my home town, police hurt by handgranade #Posted by Dreams on 20:14 Well, I have a day off from construction and spend the day quietly at home, reading my mails, browsing my sites, filling an RFI, when police raid a house in the Laakkwartier in The Hague in search of supposed terror cell or person related to one and/or the murder of Theo van Gogh, last week. sigh Nothing happened, really. They raided the house, were shot at, retreated and got a handgrenade on their heads. So then, they were shocked and regrouped and did it all over again. That time it worked and they deported two persons, one in an ambulance. ;)
	GPRS Class Types #Posted by Dreams on 11:35 Your new mobile phone may very well do GPRS. (It's a better protocol than GSM, bringing you simultaneous voice and data connections as well as higher speeds, upto 172KB/sec.) But reading your phone's specs won't help much. Because there are GPRS classes, and each class has different capabilities. So find out which class your phone is, and then check GSM World to find out what these GPRS Class Types mean.
	Tuesday, November 9 A kinder and more gentler computer experience #Posted by Dreams on 18:52 PC desks are cold, hard lined, full of mess and clutter and not a nice thing in sight... except perhaps for a lost Furby or so. Time to change this hardcore environment with some... flowers. The MIT MediaLab (Europe) has developed the One2One IM Flower. A wireless radio link lets the flower "bloom" whenever a chosen person logs into an IM service (MSN, ICQ, etc.) and closes when they log out! LOL Cool, why? Because you can! Imagine a whole range of flowers, plants and fruits representing each of your best buddies. :D You could even mention to them: "Uhm, I just want you to know you're really special to me and I've upgraded your Friend-Ranking from Tulip to Pointsetta!" ROFL
	Pioneer ultraviolet laser promises 500GB disks #Posted by Dreams on 17:48 Pioneer ultraviolet laser promises 500GB disks, the Inquier reports. Using an UV lasers (compared to red lasers in today's CD and DVD products and blue lasers is this Xmas' BluRay DVD recorders by Sony), the average pit seperation can be reduced to 70nm. This allows Pioneer to store the massive 500 gig onto a regular disks. Coool! B)
	New Mount St. Helens lava dome grows #Posted by Dreams on 10:13 Looks like we'll get a nice eruption sometimes soon after all. For a while there I thought it had died down. But that goes to show you can never trust volcanos! The new lava dome is drooling lava at a rate of about 7-8 m3 per second...
	Spread Firefox - Igniting the web #Posted by Dreams on 10:03 Firefox has gone gold! Well soft of... v1.0 has been released today. This killer browser does all, is lightning fast, works with all plugins and is highly extendible through many extensions that anyone can write. Installation is a breeze, all your IE favorites are copied and your settings as well. So there is no reason not to browse safe anymore! Download today!
	Monday, November 8 Petra Oldengarm -- fotografie #Posted by Dreams on 17:55 Petra did a cool assignment for her classes: a sequence of something that couldn't normally happen. So I stepped onto her finger and balanced while she carried me around! :)
	Sunday, November 7 SLAX Linux Live #Posted by Dreams on 17:55 Looking to put your old Pentium PC or PII to good use? Why not turn it into a firewall, mail server and virus checker. Or maybe also backup station by reusing that old 2x or 4x CD burner to auto burn important data every night onto a CD-RW? Makes sense, huh?! Of course! SLAX Linux Live is a minimum bootable Linux installation that runs directly from CD. So no hard disk required! Cool! Based on Slackware it features most necessary things and that's all. Config a shell, mail server, firewall, ClamAV and SpamAssassin and you're set! :respect:
	Who needs a PC case? #Posted by Dreams on 17:51 We all know that real users don't use PC cases. Why bother when you open it up twice a day anyway? Besides, hard disks fill up twice a month and gaming requires you to upgrade once a month... Screws are terrible and the sharp edges around the casing can wreak havoc on your hands. And you needs those badly... That what this guy thought too: Caseless PC.
	Saturday, November 6 Evil Genius: How evil are you? #Posted by Dreams on 19:52 I'm sooo tired of girls suddenly screaming: "Oh this game is soo cool! You gotta see this! It's great, you never stop playing!", only to find out they're talking about the Sims, or Sims2. :yawn: However, guys now finally have their revenge! Mwahahahahahahahaha In Evil Genius you are an Evil Genius trying to conquer the world... Just goto the website, watch the trailer and the video and you'll see what I mean. It really cool!
	Nokia 7710 #Posted by Dreams on 19:44 The Nokia 7710 is a new wide-screen PDA/phone from Nokia. It runs the new Series 90 software from Symbian. B) Cool! The phone even runs flash6 and has handwriting recognition.
	Disney/Pixar: Cars #Posted by Dreams on 19:40 Coooooooooool new trailer for the latest Disney/Pixar movie coming out this weekend: Cars. I soo gotta see this! :bounce:
	Den Haag - Demolition #Posted by Dreams on 18:14 Today, our best friends lent a hand in "demolishing" our new house. The old ceilings had to be taken down to be replaced by new ones later this week. Isa, Sjoerd, Arjen, martin, Femke, Petra and I ripped our way through concrete, grass, birdnests, plaster and about 10 m3 of debris in a day. Long live power tools! Martin took pictures. Major, major thanks to all my friends. We couldn't have done it without you and we owe you a big one!!!
	Friday, November 5 Home Improvement #Posted by Dreams on 19:52 It's been a busy week. I negotiated with constructors about the work to be done in our new house and try to come up with a planning that will let us move in the week before Xmas. Ceilings need to be plastered freshly. Bathroom needs to be set. Kitchen will be put in, beginning of next year but all the rest needs to go before then. And the floors will be renewed. But to save cost, I wanted to try and do all the breaking and tearing and huffing and puffin' and blow your house down myself, instead of them doing that for an hourly rate (yeah right). Effect of that is, of course, that I am getting plenty of excercise, running up and down two flights of strairs with trash, debris and garbage. My arms are also put to the test in breaking concrete smear from the walls so they can plastered over nicely and cleanly. And all this in addition to the work already completed last weekend. This weekend, more friends are lending a hand and hopefully we'll rip out the ceilings (30 years old) in livingroom and kitchen... cross your fingers please...
	In-depth Canon EOS 20D review #Posted by Dreams on 18:20 DPReview posted an In-depth Canon EOS 20D review recently. Interested in techy details on the 8Mpx DSLR, the faster burst mode, the new AF system, a B&W mode, USB 2.0 support (finally!) and detailed image reviews? Read their review! B) BTW, I want one! ;)
	Thursday, November 4 Free RSS feed reader for IE #Posted by Dreams on 18:29 Looking for a way to integrate RSS and Atom feeds into IE? Of course you can use Outlook integration instead, but IE might just be better, depending on how you look at it. BlogBot may just be enough for you, if you're still unwilling to switch to FireFox or Mozilla (where extensions have been doing this for ages... hint).
	PearPC - PowerPC Emulator #Posted by Dreams on 17:48 Always wondered what Apple's OS X would look like on your PC at home? Well... you can! Just install the free open source emulator PearPC, a PowerPC Emulator and install it on top of it. Works much like VMWare on Windows or Linux as the host OS. But beware, installing OS X is rumored to take a whole day! And running on top of the emulator won't make it lightning fast... but it runs! :cool:
	Wednesday, November 3 Extremely critical Internet Explorer Vulnerability #Posted by Dreams on 18:56 Secunia informs us about a very critical IFRAME Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in Internet Explorer. Using the security bug, hackers can gain access of your system and execute arbitrary code. The bug has been confirmed on fully patched Windows 2000 and XP SP1 with IE6.0 and is already published on public mailing lists. So watch out for fixes or upgrade to XP SP2.
	Nokia's 7710 wide-screen smartphone #Posted by Dreams on 18:52 Tweakers.net told me about the Nokia 7710 smartphone, featuring a wide screen! Cool! That's much better than the weirdo N-gage design, which is also landscape instead of portrait. More on this later...
	Tuesday, November 2 SanDisk 256MB TransFlash card #Posted by Dreams on 22:18 SanDisk introduced the world's smallest 256MB TransFlash card. Roughly 1/4th the size of a similar type SD card, the 256 MB card is about the size on an adult's fingernail! :respect: However, it can be used in devices that accept regular SD cards by using the adapter. Great!
	Partyflock foto's van Tiësto in Concert #Posted by Dreams on 21:38 Pffew, PartyFlock isn't dead. That's what I get for getting up so early in the morning! All kinda things go wrong! LOL :D Anyway, good news! PartyFlock is still up and running. Even better, they have wonderful pictures of last weekend's of Tiësto in Concert
	Intelliseek's BlogPulse #Posted by Dreams on 21:31 Intelliseek's BlogPulse: "BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs." Click on 'trends', on their site, to see hot topics in several areas... Kinda cool! Soft of like Google News, but with blogs. I've subsmitted mine. Who knows what I'll start! :)
	Partyflock gone? #Posted by Dreams on 09:53 It looks like my favorite party site PartyFlock has been shut down. The message says: "Thanks for the good times but I probably won't be back soon." :'( Sad, sad, sad. Anyone know why or how this happened?
	Monday, November 1 Weekend well spent #Posted by Dreams on 23:33 Weekend well spent! First, there was Tiësto in Concert, after spending the whole day redecorating. That was fun though. Isa, Rob, Heike, Michiel, Arjen and Petra and I took a day to break away as much of the house as possible, to prepare for the workmen coming this week and the following. Around 18:00, we called it a day, went home, showered and got dressed for Tiësto. :) The concert was better than last year, much better prepared and organized! Truely amazing! And he won Best DJ of the World, for the 3rd year in a row!!!