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. ;)

	Wednesday, March 30 ID&T Dance-Tunes.com #Posted by Dreams on 16:17 ID&T Dance-Tunes.com is the latest online music and legal downloading initiative :yawn: However, ID&T are trying to fill the gap left by most online music services: dance, techno and trance music. They are not only offering songs and albums of major dance music labels (Blackhole) or producers like Ferry Corsten, DJ Prphet and DJ Luna, but also starting to offer live recordings from major dance events. Excellent! Hope to see many more songs and artists!
	Tuesday, March 29 Gentoo Linux 2005.0 #Posted by Dreams on 15:42 Yeah! New release of Gentoo Linux.
	Monday, March 28 RUSH now in The Hague! #Posted by Dreams on 17:07 I've wanted to go to RUSH nights. Groovy, Clubby, Sexy house music... hmmm, my style! I stumbled into their tent on Mysteryland last year and immediately regretted not going there sooner... Now I can! RUSH will be located in the Paard van Troje. B)
	Autopackage for Linux #Posted by Dreams on 11:48 There is now a solid, newbie-proof way for people to automagically install new programs and its dependencies on your Linux workstation: Autopackage. I'm testing it as we speak... B) Very cool!
	Saturday, March 26 Weekend in Bern #Posted by Dreams on 15:23 Petra has posted her pictures of our little trip to Bern in Switserland. She also has a gallery with portraits of Michel, Suzanne, Caitlin and ourselves.
	Friday, March 25 List of all the beach clubs in the Netherlands #Posted by Dreams on 10:11 Well I was looking for the Mecca site and came across this list of all beach clubs in the Netherlands. Well perhaps not all, I miss a few already, but there are lots of them and I'm mailing him the missing ones. ;)
	WickedJazzSounds releases album #Posted by Dreams on 10:09 Boy, I'm in a "new music" mood or something... I first heard WickedJazzSounds laid back in a big old in beachclub Mecca on the Noorderstrand in Scheveningen, during a PINK party. Granted, the setting for WJS was ideal: 25 degrees Celsius, late summer afternoon, golden sunlight streaming down on Petra and me, a bottle of chilled rosé wine on an empty stomac and a few friendly party-people to complete the setting... However, the voice of their girl singer and the loungy, jazzy tunes have always stuck in my mind. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to read that WickedJazzSounds have released an album and will host a release party on April 10th in a new club called the SugarFactory in Amsterdam... Cool huh?!? B)
	Thursday, March 24 Vacation in Bern #Posted by Dreams on 11:41 Petra and I spent a few days visiting her sister in Bern. Although Blogger seems to have messed up my postings from there, I still have the pictures I took of Bern and the castles we visited there. And nooo, I'm not getting old that I like castles. I've always like castles. It gives me a sense of entering into the past... kinda cool, especially if they're well preserved.
	Mozilla Foundation Security Advisories #Posted by Dreams on 10:22 Firefox has been updated to fix several security issues. All users are encouraged to update. You can download a new version or use the update function by going the Tools menu, then pressing options, advanced and software update.
	Get iTunes without the DRM? #Posted by Dreams on 10:15 iTunes is great. Only $/€0.99 for the tracks you like and you get to play them on your mp3 player and all. Except the &%$@&^% copy protection (DRM)... wouldn't it be great to go online, buy the iTune and download it, but without the DRM license added to it? You can: just install Linux and use PyMusique 0.3 to get your iTunes. This guy developed it because Apple was too lazy to make a version for Linux. Accidently, it turned out that DRM licenses were not added the songs downloaded... oops. Now Apple and others want the guy to add that code. "Sure", the guy said, "it's GPL so you can add it yourself, it you really want to!" ;) Gotta love open source software!
	Skype has been updated #Posted by Dreams on 08:55 There are new versions for Skype for both Windows and Linux. For Windows, there is Skype 1.2.0.37 and for Linux they have Skype 1.0.0.20. Most prominent new feature is server-side contacts so you don't have to reenter all your contacts everytime you use a new computer. The Windows version also has VoiceMail now, so you can leave a message when people are not in or simply not answering. Hehe, you're screening your calls, aren't you! :devil:
	Wednesday, March 23 Yahoo!Mail Again Expands E-Mail Storage #Posted by Dreams on 15:24 Just read the news that Yahoo Inc. Expands E-Mail Storage to match GMail's 1 GB of space on all free Email acounts starting somewhere mid April. Cool B)
	Pixar #Posted by Dreams on 11:08 I soooo want to work at Pixar!!! Aintitcoolnews recently got a tour of the facilities... :drool: Read his report and check the pictures.... B)
	Symantec: Mac OS X Becoming a Malware Target #Posted by Dreams on 11:01 Although Apple owners may have been less targeted by virus/spyware/malware than PC owners, this may soon change. Slashdot reports that Symantec has stated that Mac OS X is increasingly becoming the target of malware, just like PCs. They go on to state, however, that while this may be true, Symantec also has a big interested in making Apple owners nervous about security to promote their own anti-virus product sales... interesting.
	Everything But The Girl #Posted by Dreams on 10:31 One of my favorite bands all-time, Everything But the Girl (no longer in existence), have released a compilation album with 10 years of best songs. They have also redesigned their website. Very flashy but kinda cool. And songs play in the background...
	Pentax 645 Digital #Posted by Dreams on 10:13 DPReview reports that Pentax has introduced a digital medium-format camera: the Pentax 645 Digital. At 18.6 megapixels and equipped with a new extra large Kodak CCD, this should be the start of a "new digital dimension for medium-format photographers". The camera will be shown at the PIE2005 in Tokyo, however all other details are to be announced. (Gotta love the vaporware phenomenon!)
	PHAZZ-A-DELIC #Posted by Dreams on 09:53 You like new music? Check out the German group De Phazz. A pleasant mix of Jazz, lounge, funk and soul... sort of. See for yourself!
	Friday, March 18 Holiday #Posted by Dreams on 19:28 Petra and I are on our way to Bern for a few days. We're going to visit her sister and niece. We're taking the night train insert tune here and get there at 7am tomorrow morning. Yawn! Got books mp3 player and laptop to keep up busy... Haha
	Elize #Posted by Dreams on 16:55 No, it's not my neice, but her name is almost the same. Elize is a girl who became known in the Netherlands through the children's group "Kinderen voor kinderen". A bunch of young kids (8-16 or so) who sang simple kids' songs. However, young girls grow into young women. And did Elize become a young woman! Wow! Lekker ding! Elize is now on the radio all the time with a new single. The single is sheit, but she herself is not...
	Thursday, March 17 Black Smokers, White Chimneys #Posted by Dreams on 15:35 There is yet another form of extremophiles out there! Marine Researcher have found White Chimneys on the ocean floor, 15 km from the Mid-Atlantic mountain range that circles the globe. We had already discovered the so-called Black Smokers of superheated volcanic water vents. These are covered with life previously thought impossible. Bacteria there live by processing CO2, H2S or perhaps SO3/SO4 molecules in the volcanic water. Now, there are also giant White Chimneys, up to 60 meters tall, on the ocean floor. Here, seawater is heated by a chemical reaction under the sea floor and emerges still hot but also as alkaline as drain cleaner! yuck! Bacteria in/on the chimneys process methane and hydrogen gases instead.
	Novell releases Open Enterprise Server #Posted by Dreams on 12:30 Novell just released Open Enterprise Server. It's basically SuSE Linux Enterprise Server v10 but the emphasis is more on being open. ;) It's also both Netware and Linux in the same box, which may make for smoother transitioning... (whatever... ;)
	Wednesday, March 16 KNOPPIX 3.8 #Posted by Dreams on 10:43 Want to try Linux on your computer with your hardware and state-of-the-art devices but don't want to harm Windows in any way? Want to see if you like it first and don't want to install all kinds of applications either? Try the LiveCD that started it all: Knoppix 3.8. It will even run from within Windows now. You don't even have to boot up with the CD in... :respect:
	Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Details Begin to Leak #Posted by Dreams on 10:38 Slashdot reports that details about Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7.0 Begin to Leak. Not really shocking, though. Better PNG support (better alternative or GIF), tabbed browsing (duuh - finally), RSS aggregator (yawn - so last year), and better privacy and security features. Details of the latter are kept secret...
	Tuesday, March 15 GPL means GPL! #Posted by Dreams on 17:10 Slashdot reported that a person from GPL-violations.org has een handing out warning letters over at the CeBIT to major vendors who are in violation of the GNU Pulic License (GPL). The license states that the source is open and you are allowed to make any changes whatsoever to it, as long as all changes also become public and any software making use of GPL pieces of code automatically become GPL licensed themselves...
	Fedora makes rapid progress, RedHat looses some #Posted by Dreams on 14:42 The Netcraft survey hs shown that Fedora makes rapid progress among the Linux distos. The community-driven RedHat spin-off has grown 120% in a year. Gentoo is also on the rise (45%). Big looser is Cobalt, probably due to providers choosing other means. Debian is still in solid 2nd place! :respect:
	Samsung launches first 7 megapixel phone #Posted by Dreams on 13:43 Samsung already announced this phone and its 5mpx little brother a while ago, but for the CeBIT they've really demonstrated a 7 megapixel phone. DPReview has a first looks! No test pics yet though. :( But it really looks like they've squeezed a cell phone and compact digicam together in a compacter! LOL Excellent!
	Monday, March 14 Billabong Beach - Strandtent Noorderstrand Scheveningen #Posted by Dreams on 12:11 The beach season is about to be opened. I know it's hard to imaging, looking outside... but both strandtent Soomers and strandtent Billabong Beach. Soomers is having a Sunday Brunch for Easter and Billabong annouced parties to come! Woohoo! Can't wait. Now let's hope NASA's prediction that this summer may the hottest ever will come true (sorry in advance to people living in warm countries, deserts and places with little rain...)
	Saturday, March 12 SPACE IS THE PLACE #Posted by Dreams on 17:47 My friend Anto called me to tell us about a cool party in the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam: Supernatural. If we wanted to come along? They had a special theme night SPACE IS THE PLACE. Cool! We wanted to go to UW-XP on Friday but we were too exhausted. So after spending the day fixing up our place, we are going to Amsterdam for dinner at Heike's new place and afterwards we meet Bas, Maaike, Anto and Jeroen for a great night of funky, cool, groovy house music. :hug: Thanks!
	Thursday, March 10 Scientists seek source of Mount St. Helens blast #Posted by Dreams on 10:58 Mount St. Helens erupted again, last Tuesday, sending ash and steam 11 km high into the atmosphere! CNN has a report.
	Wednesday, March 9 A Sneak Peek at GNOME 2.10 #Posted by Dreams on 22:04 Is it me or there just sooo much Linux news these days? I know I report more about it because I'm using it now. But the sites I read also have more... or is that just me? Anyway... GNOME 2.10 is out! KDE 3.4 is in beta so that will come soon too. (These are Linxu desktops, BTW, if you don't know, like your Windows desktop - but better.) OpenOffice 2.0 is beta... man all these source compiles will kill my poor CPU! ;)
	NdisWrapper - Using Windows' device drivers under Linux #Posted by Dreams on 16:57 When the going gets tough, the tough get a wrapper! What do you do when you're serious about using Linux everywhere, but you're precious bleeding-edge hardware thingy just won't work. The manufacturer can't be arsed about writing Linux device drivers. Windows should be enough for everyone. (Yeah, right) Anyway, the open source community recognized this problem and wrote NdisWrapper. It's a wrapper around the Windows device driver to enable it within Linux. Cool, huh?!? B) Very cool indeed. This way, you can, for instance, use your favorite WiFi adapter under Linux even though Linux is not supported. You simply wrap the Windows driver using ndiswrapper and you're off and online!
	Intel hangs mesh hopes on IEEE802.11s #Posted by Dreams on 16:23 My friend Martin pointed me towards Intel's IEEE802.11s proposal. IEEE802.11s is wireless (WiFi) protocol that utilizes a mesh network of clients and servers. Normally, clients all connect to one (or more) Access Points (APs). If a client A sends something to another client B, A talks to the AP who talks to B. In a mesh network, A could talk directly to B when both are within range of each other. To go even further, client C could talk to A using both the AP as well as B. For instance, for performance reasons, reliability, security or redundancy. "Mesh networks are self-configuring [so-called self-star] systems where each node can relay messages on behalf of others, thus increasing the range and available bandwidth."
	The SEO Firefox Extension #Posted by Dreams on 11:52 If you design webpages for a living, or are a site's webmaster or you are involved with internet marketing in some way, you may be interested in The SEO Firefox Extension. It displays SEO metrics whenever you right-click on a webpage. B) Very handy!
	Tuesday, March 8 Server Break-in Challenge #Posted by Dreams on 21:40 Server Break-in Challenge Are you security savvy? Fancy a good hack over breakfast anytime? Goto 202.88.234.250 try your luck... Excellent!
	Dippy Birds #Posted by Dreams on 16:25 I've just talked to a friend of mine for whom I had ordered some ThinkGeek T-shirts as a present. He was very happy with the Soothing Green Light and "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" shirts! LOL But he asked me if I already had a Dippy Bird... blank stare No... I didn't. :blush: So I scrambled on internet and found out what it was. LOL Right, I definitely need one of these too. B) My friend told me real nerds have these, because many offices switch over to movement sensors in the evening, to save on electricity bills. However, real nerds don't move around a lot, so lights turn off automatically all the time and they needs to get up to switch the light back on. So these clever nerds position the Dippy Bird where the sensors can easily see it... Cool, huh?!? (Truely genius nerds also add a flower to the cup that holds the - distilled - water, so that housekeeping refills the cup automagically andthe bird keeps on going.)
	The Story Behind Cell Phone Radiation Research #Posted by Dreams on 16:05 I've always wondered how and where someone researched and reported on cell phone radiation. Now Slashdot has The Story Behind Cell Phone Radiation Research. Interesting, isn't it (Ren & Stimpy voice) B)
	Monday, March 7 MS Techfest: Microsoft's festival of future #Posted by Dreams on 10:44 Every year, Microsoft Research showcases its best new projets on a techfair. Read what the Seattle Times have to say about this year's showcase!
	Review of OpenOffice 2.0 beta #Posted by Dreams on 10:17 Tectonic in South Afrika has reviewed the 2.0 beta release of OpenOffice for you. If you have no clue, OpenOffice is a free, open source, competitor to MS Office. It reads and writes Office files (.doc, .xls and .ppt) and looks very much the same. The learning curve is non-existent but for some complicated documents, the compatibility may leave something to be desired. However, in my experience, everything works like a charm! Tectonic says it "will usher in a new era of functionality, reliability, compatibility and ease of use." Many, many improvements and additions. Too many to list here, so read the review yourself!
	NSA Announces New Crypto Standards #Posted by Dreams on 10:09 After all the comotion around SHA and the rumors that it was cracked, it didn't surprise me much to read that the NSA Announces New Crypto Standards. They will now use a system called "Suite B". This suite uses Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) and Elliptic Curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) for key agreement, and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for signature generation/verification. So there... now you know. /me scrambles to read up on specs of Suite B