December 2003 Archives

I have been working at my place of employment for about a year and a third now, and early on Dizz told me after finding out I am a country fan that one day he would get me to a rave, and I would like it. Well, in about 5 minutes I walk out the door to have him proven right on at least one thing, though I am working, not attending. I meant to blog about this earlier, but a review of my access logs show very very Winnipeg readers, so I though no one would care. The rave, Back 2 the Future, is at Kelvin Community Club on Henderson Hwy, and goes from 9 PM to a grueling 7 AM, 10 straight hours of listening to techno, house and all the other stuff. I am not sure I will be conscious at the end, or able to walk, nor hear, but I will do my best to come out of it wiser, as I do with all things. See ya in 2004.

I have just finished reading the Epilogue to Barb Purdom's Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent Trilogy, while I have mentioned a couple time before, and I must say that it was amazing. I found myself enthralled in the fact Barb was willing to go places, to have characters act like real teenagers, not good little boys and girls. The author faced things that I doubt JK Rowling will go near even in the last book of the true series, and I have enjoyed the honesty given to the characters. Yes, Ms. Rowling does have Harry with a crush in book 5, but if anything life has taught me means much, there is no doubt that most kids do not have simple crushes in the real worls by 15, they are kissing and worse. I will simply thank Barb here, and reprint what I posted to the Yahoo Group.

I will not spoil the epilogue, but only say that it has been an honor and a joy to read this series, and that I have to say that of all the writers I have read, and there have been many, I am now proud to list Barb as one of the best. Thank you, Barb, for forcing me to do something that written words rarely do, feel the need to suppress a tear. You are an excellent writer, and if ever I hear of you publishing a work, I will be among the first to endorse it and buy several copies. Thank you again for many happy nights of reading.

2003, in many technology areas, will be known for a long time as the year the Linux war began. No one quite knows why SCO all of a sudden decided to taken on Linux in a clear effort to kill the OS that threatened it's business model so clearly, but the speculation is rampant and vivid. As the end of this year draws near, we see several critical battles in the war decided, the one over SCO showing the code, though only to a judge and IBM lawyers, and a few other things that have been repeated, like the second Linux letter sent to large corporations that laughed off the claims of ownership or at least licensing over Linux. In this round they are sending about 3,000 letters and this time it is asking the licensees of Unix to verify they have not been the source of code leaks.

Novell, who was a player in the war for a few days before going quiet, has recently become a voice again and asserting copyright ownership of the code that SCO is threatening lawsuits over. The question is, though, whether the copyright is over the code SCO says it sold to them, then Caldera, or if the copyrights are ones that Novell recently revealed they had applied for and received. This could be Novell's last big charge, though, as the next one would not likely be paid much attention to if they went quiet again. Recently there has been stories that point to two distinct sets of letters, though, the aforementioned ones to Unix licensees, and then another set sent to Linux using Fortune 1000 companies that supposedly points to verbatim copying of code.

As 2004 dawns a new day, there is no doubt that the war with SCO will go on, and while the two sides have differing views on the chances SCO has, most people will admit this is the final grasp of a dying company. In programming, as with web pages, there are only a small number of ways that something could be done, and this could account for the fact some of the code appears the same. I can hope some definitive decision is reached by the end of the year, but there is little doubt this was the story of 2003.

Wow, I hardly saw this one coming. This post is the 3500th post for me on my blog, though I have mentioned before that this has been over several iterations. First, it was, as my very first post tells, a place to easily post to my site during the day from school. I then lost Geekworld.ca, and moved to Geeksworld.net for a short time. I stopped blogging for awhile, as I had moved to a host that did not like FTP, not Movable Type, but that changed when I got my current home, and moved to Blogomania. This site had changed much over it's history, and I know a few people who have read through the archives can see it. I note that this comes as I verge on a new year, thoughts on which I will delve as the end of the year is much closer at hand, for now, I want to thank you all for inspiring me, and joining me on this ride.

The irony I am seeing, that makes me laugh loudly right now, is how different the US reaction is to their case of Mad Cow, and the fact that on Wednesday my mother and I both predicted that the US cattle industry would blame Canada, as we are the closest country to them that has had a case of Mad Cow. Today I see that the US government has indeed traced the cow back to a cow from Canada, though the details about the cow differ greatly which makes me wonder if this is just using Canada as a scapegoat. On CNN for their coverage there was a couple of back to back emails from Canada, and between the two, you easily see the POV of Canadians. The first was showing sympathy that the US will now go through what we did. The second was pointing out how different the media is taking it now that the case is from the US. How true, both of them.

Ok, well, as of now, any non personal draft posts on Geek Blog will likely not get posted, due to a monumental screw up on my part last night. I have lost all mail(only Gnome lists were unread) and about 20 GB of other data. The problem is one of not backing up as I should have, and I, in an effort to make my 3 partitions one, have screwed up the one holding my OS, and the data from the second partition which I had already merged with the first. I lost my MP3's, though those were backed up when I burned disks for the Sony walkman. Sadly, all of my pictures taken with any camera are gone, as they were also on the same partitions. I am sure I lost more, but I am unable to think clearly enough right now to list them all. Devastation is an understatement.

While I have ranted already about the problems from Christmas Eve, the camera, the shopping, all that crap. Well, thankfully, today at least some of it is solved, while other questions have simply changed. Ok, explanation time? Thought so. Shoes: I have now two pairs of shoes, one pair runners, and one pair of new dress shoes. Memory Card: This is bad for now, though another avenue may be available to me. Staples has a 10 day return policy on computer stuff, unless you buy the extra buyer protection. That said, I did check the SanDisk site, and it seems that they have a 5 year warranty on the card, so I have emailed them to find out what would be required for a replacement. Slowly but surely things may look up.

Due to mass data loss, there will be no post here. My apologies.

Let me take a moment of your time to a little about a not so technological topic. This is the tale of my Christmas Eve. I woke up at 9, after about 4 hours sleep, left the house at 10:30, and walked to meet up with my mother to solidify Christmas plans. Had I stopped here, I would have had a great day, a relaxing one for the most part. Sadly, I did not just go home and wait for my parents to pick me up to go to my sisters. Nope, instead I spent the better part of 3 hours at Portage Place, the larger of the downtown malls, and got only gift bags of candy for my sisters kids and a black printer cartridge to show for it. I hit Payless Shoes for what I had been told was a buy one get one free sale, that turned out to be a buy one get the other half off. They only had one show of the style I wear. The other was misplaced somehow.

That was strike one on my day. The second has two parts. I am trying to get back into frequently posted photography, and I decided to take some pictures. The towers at Portage and Main shrouded in fog. The less than expected crowd at the mall. There was also some I took of the trees. Trees that were the epitome of winter shots, no leaves, covered in a light but clearly visible layer of frost, and they looked beautiful. I also got a few of the current status of the upcoming MTS Center. Well, when I was about done at the mall out of frustration, I went to take one or two more pictures, and I got a message no digital photographer ever wants to see from a card with files on it. 'This card needs formatting'.

I came home, tried in vain to get the pictures off, and realized that the only explainable source is Black's Photography, who could find no pictures were they did previously exist. I then gave up, not having a real card reader, only the camera itself, and formatted. This was followed by some disconcerting green colouring with vertical lines on the LCD display and the inability to take pictures while the card is in the camera. In other words the card is toast. It cannot, I suspect, be revived. Not happy at all. Then, after going over to my parents, their CD drive would not open, and a trip to Polo Park's Payless showed not a single pair of dress shoes in my size under $75. The style I wear is $35. This made me and my mother quite pissed off, though we will try the last Payless on boxing day.

I then did go with my parents and grandparents(they brought their own car) to my sisters to have turkey, goodies, and to swap presents. The night was fun, the kids were as usual brats, and loved their candy for the most part. Ont he way out, though, the voltage light popped on in my parent's car, which meant the entire 1 hour drive was using the car's battery, I am told. Well, about 10 minutes into the hour long trip home, the car's headlights had become noticeably weaker. The radio was turned off to try to spare the power to make it as far as possible, but about 5 minutes later it was obvious that with no street lights on the highway it was unlikely that we would be able to make it back to the city at all, and a minute later the car died. We all piled into my grandparents car, and drove back to the city, and I then got a ride home. Thus ending my Christmas Eve. Bah Humbug.

Merry Christmas
Ok, so it is Christmas Eve, I have hit the mall for the one and only time I plan to today, and all the gifts I could get, are bought. So why do I suspect there is something I am missing? :( I am off to my sister's soon with my parent's, and I hope to arrive back here with a much fuller stomach, and more cheerful memories. I don't know what all of you are doing this evening and/or tomorrow, but do have a good night, travel safely if that is your plan, and try to have a good Christmas. If you are of a different faith, do have a good holidays, whenever you celebrate. See you back on this blog tomorrow.

Wow. That took about 2 hours longer than I had planned for, or wanted it to. The board is one made by some place called the Elite Group, and while the upgrade was to a Duron 1.4 GHz and 256 MB of 333 MHz DDR, the board was lack luster. The board had two different sections for the front panel stuff, which forced me to do some online research and downloading a manual, then there appeared to be a second drive that was recognized when the boot froze, then never showed up again, though noticeably loud clicking appeared to originate from it, possibly explaining it's demise. I left the install at CD key, as he only got the install CD, not the CD key from the giftee. I can only say that from a 400 PII, to a Duron 1.4 GHz will be a major leap for this person, and opens a ton more areas for upgrade without system-wide replacements like this one.

Well, I was planning until about 3 hours ago to come home and game and blog to begin my 5 day weekend, but I got an urgent call to come help a buddy from work put together a PC that is a Christmas gift for his mother in law, so I am in and out of the house quicker than you can say happy Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanzaa/holidays. I know the system was a P2, and I know he found a good deal on a trade in upgrade, but I am not sure what all has to be done, and what all I will be doing. All I know is in exchange for the labour, I am getting dinner. It should be interesting to see if I can build a PC from scratch(or close to scratch) with a proper boot the first time. I have rarely had to completely assemble a PC, most of them have come at least partially together.

In an email that both heralded the best of the season, and let the users of Movable Type know what is up with out favourite blog tool, Ben Trott has also warned us that there is a bad bug in the XML-RPC implementation, and those who use the tool should immediately get up to date. The ways to do this are wither by a full upgrade to 2.65, which includes the mt-send-entry.cgi fix
released about one month ago, and an Atom syndication template(no, no idea what this is). The other option is to just download a zip with a fixed XMLRPCServer.pm and upload this to the server housing the tool. Either way, please, fix your MT installs. As for the next version of MT, the word on 3.0 is "we plan to have a beta release in Q1 of 2004." Yes! Finally!

Due to mass data loss, there will be no post here. My apologies.

A conversation at work yesterday has led me to create a new Café Press store. The artwork is rough, not very polished at all, but the title says a lot. Anti SCO store is a place to get a new line of merchandise, from t-shirts to boxers, mouse pads to coffee mugs. The current theme is FSCK SCO, and the wearer is given the chance to pronounce their support of the GPL licensed Linux Operating System. If anyone else has thoughts on how one can easily, on a shirt, denounce the SCO lawsuits, please so let me know. I know a few readers are avid SCO haters, and Linux fans, so I have no doubt some will find this line of merchandise fun. I am keeping the profit off these very low, and while it may not be as low cost as others, it is a worthwhile cause to promote.

The sky is falling. Hell hath frozen over. The world is at it's end. The reason I know this? John C. Dvorak is getting a blog. That is right. The eternal doubter, the official naysayer of technology, the one who can be counted on to doubt everything, the grumpy old man of tech, is getting a blog, and one hosted by none other than the Lockergnome himself, Chris Pirillo. I have no doubt we will soon see Michael Jackson admit he is a pedophile, Rush Limbaugh decide to leave media, and CNN will go to one hour a day. Microsoft will soon, I am sure, open source Windows and start being a fair and just company. The predictions right now are that the first post he makes, though, will be how bogus this whole blog thing is. Any bets? Thanks to Aine for the tip.

Until Tuesday the only practical version of Winamp for net connected people to use was the 2.x version, and even AOL said as much. Rarely will a company take a step backwards with a product and promote the previous version of their lead product in the market. Well, that is what AOL was forced to do after Winamp 3 was a major flop, being to bloated and slow, not to mention taking every ounce of resources a computer could give it. It looks nice, but that was about all you could run on a PC, if you could at all. Well, on Tuesday the company released the much expected version 5(the reasoning behind no 4 being "Winamp 5 combines the best aspects of Winamp 2 and Winamp 3 into one player. Hence Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5!" and from the limited time with the free version, it rocks. I will, of course, review it later.

As I mentioned in my last post in regards the clarification, the allowance is for downloading, not uploading, and thus the pronouncements all week that the CRIA, the Canadian arm of the RIAA, have not surprised me. What does surprise me is the coverage this is getting by media sources who themselves clarified that the clarification is that downloading only is legal. The National Post and the Globe and Mail both had stories that covered the announcement, but yet the Globe has had at least 3 pieces since then that say that the CRIA is planning to go after those who upload music. As I said before, this is not a hard thing for them to enforce at all, the RIAA has all but patented the methods tried and true, but the CRIA would have had no hope with downloaders in the end. The National Post, as only they can, have the story totally wrong.

Due to mass data loss, there will be no post here. My apologies.

Orbitz likely thought it a good omen, a flight booking service doing it's IPO on the 100th anniversary date of the first flight, that of the Wright Brothers in the Kitty Hawk. Well, the site's IPO on the stock markets turned out pretty much the same as the other attempt to play off the 100th anniversary, the reenactment of the first flight of men, both of which failed miserably. The IPO looked at first to have some wind beneath its wings, climbing to just over $30, but then it returned to earth, settling on a resting on wheels $26.05, just 5 cents above it's opening. The reenactment of the Kitty Hawk is described as "When the muslin-winged flyer attempted take off, it dropped off the end of a wooden track and stopped dead in a mud puddle. The pilot dropped his head in chagrin, but later laughed." by KSL News.

So, the series is over, except for the extended edition of ROTK, unless New Line and/or Peter Jackson get the rights to The Hobbit, as their failure to do so will cause any attempt to be less than worthwhile in fans eyes. Aragorn got the sword, Minas Tirith was spared, just as he promised Boromir in the first movie a gruelling and painstaking 2 years ago. Frodo, of course, is unable to release the ring, and thus the tale of Samwise the Brave and the 9 fingered Hobbit ends. I cannot say I am surprised that all showings for the next several days are sold out, as was mine, but I am upset that as of the Fellowship showing there was no midnight showing, but the next day Dizz says he was told there was. I guess I can live without another exit from movie at 3:30AM or so, but still.

I know this is not a proper review, though I promise one will be forthcoming. Right not I am in a pensive mood, thinking on the memories these have brought out in me, the memories they have caused. I recall sitting in the now defunct Garrick theatre trying to explain to my Nephew, then 8, how Hobbits were fair creatures, and what the Balrog was exactly. I fondly remember going with a coworker to The Two Towers at Silver City for the midnight showing last year, and meeting her ex's daughter in her cast, and how all the women had their own favourite guy, but not one of them chose Gimli. Legolas for some, Aragorn for one, and Frodo for Dodi herself. I laugh still at a question of choice, if one was forced, between Arwen and Eowyn. Of course, I could not do such.

I went from faint recall of the tale at the launch of the first movie, through picking apart The Two Towers for all the mistakes and that which should not have been, both in theatre and afterwards for the discussion. Sadly, such discussion this time was not possible due to my lack of voice. I will, though, fondly recall this movie, and know that Peter Jackson's kids are likely the most famous kids in New Zealand, having been in Hobbiton, Helm's Deep, and Minas Tirith. For all the mistakes, for all the exclusion and changes, bads or good, Peter Jackson took the theatrical challenge of a lifetime and did all he could to make it the best movies possible, and he has, I think, succeeded. Sure, the purists will complain, and so will Tolkiens family, but Peter, you did good.

So, today is the day I have waited for for a year. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Two years of movies and reading have led to this movie, where the story finally closes, that the ending is known to those not fortunate or book loving as to have read them. The trailers look awesome, and early reviews have me salivating over the thought. Sadly, my day will start off with a visit to my doctors to find out what truly ails me, and to find a possible solution that will allow me to return to work tomorrow. As I posted, I suspect Bronchitis, and will be less than surprised if I hear I am right, though medications in the past have had little effect. Either way, I expect the earliest I will return will be in about 10 or so hours, but I will review the movie as soon as I can.

Optima Technology, which recently offered $1 million to anyone reporting incidents of people or companies infringing on it's patent on 'Recordable CD-ROM Accessing System,' has found it's first target, Roxio. I really need to get that patent filed for 'Automatic input and output of molecules,' or better known as breathing. I think the US patent office really needs to have someone who knows, well, anything beyond basic reading and math to actually read the patent applications before approving these things. Too many patent applications are being approved for a basic description something that may be possible one day, but for which the company has not actually found yet. I am sick of reading about lawsuits for wrongly assigned patents based on basic explanations of tech.

I reported that IBM did win their request for SCO to show the alleged infringing code behind the lawsuit that SCO filed over accused infringement of Unix source code that was inserted maliciously into the Linux kernel by IBM. Sadly, SCO is bragging around that they have won an injunction to have the code that they do show be restricted in viewing to lawyers from IBM and the judge. While this will, of course, change the possibilities for ruining the SCO case, which is likely the reason for the ruling, as no Linux maintainers cannot remove the code that SCO says is infringing on it's patents. Either way, SCO still does need to show the code it says is wrongly stolen, and this could be a very strong test for their case, and could be the end to the case itself.

George W. Bush signed the CAN-SPAM act into law Today, and while it is a good day for net users, there is some heavy questions being asked about how much impact it will have on the flood of Spam. While Brightmail, a site that actually filters emails, has said that spam is a little over half the mails sent on the net(56% to be exact), Forrester Research in a commentary on CNet says it is 3/4 of the emails sent. I do not believe they can back up this claim, and are only inflating the Brightmail number. Also on CNet, CAN-SPAM's authors U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Conrad Burns, justify why they proposed this law. I will be the first to say, and I will only repeat myself again, that this is not the best law, nor the spam killer. It is, though, a beginning after 6 years of failure.

I am sitting here, barely able to speak, and I am in a significant amount of pain. I think I am coming down with bronchitis, and because of this I have been slowly losing my voice over the last few days. Today it is, I hope, at it's peak, because all efforts to form a coherent and understandable sentence have failed, causing me to just call in sick. This is the worst thing that can happen to someone in my business, losing your voice, because without an ability to speak you are pretty damned useless. I have tried lots of fluids, I have tried a lot of halls, and nothing has saved my voice because every morning when I wake up it has become worse than the day before. Thankfully I have tomorrow off and perhaps lots of rest over these two days will help me recover quickly.

Let me see. Tell me if you can pinpoint who said the following words, and who were they spoken of? "He's a deceiver, he's a liar, he's a murderer. I can't imagine why he would change his attitude." If you read CNN, or use a few key brain cells, you'll know this was George Bush's reaction to Saddam Hussein's assertion that the alleged weapons of mass destruction, the linchpin in the whole Iraq invasion deal, were invented by Bush and his regime. The funny thing is that as the US Commander in Chief, the same could easily be said about Bush. He deceived the world over the reason for the Iraq invasion, he lied about proof of attempts by Hussein to get Nuke material, and he has the blood of hundreds of dead Iraqis and Americans alike on his hand. If anything his three years in power have shown, it is that he is too power hungry to admit error.

The attacks, if there are any, on the SCO company web site appears to be either continuing, or back on, one of the two. Confusing? Yeah, I think so too. this is all added to the fact that SCO, as vnunet.com reports, is having trouble with the Royal Bank of Canada changing the terms of their investment, and auditors looking at the investment deal itself are not yet done, and need more time from their estimated time. SCO's site, which was attacked last week though doubt was raised on this allegation, has now apparently been brought down again, making the net wonder if they have finally pissed off enough people to have the site brought down for a long time, or if one person is this fearless. Either way, vnunet's article says it all. "Now is the winter of SCO discontent". Darl. Meet Karma.

Check Point Software Technologies, a network security firm, has agreed to buy Zone Labs, the maker of the popular Zone Alarm Personal Firewall, which is installed in either free or Pro versions on about 25 million computers(including my own). Zone Labs also retails Instant Messaging security products after it's previous purchase from IMSecure. While Check Point seems to have been focusing primarily on the enterprise side, with firewalls at the entrances to very large and high throughput networks, the purchase of the leader in desktop and notebook intrusion prevention software makes it seem that Check Point is going for products across the board. Check Point will pay $113 million in cash and $92 million in stock for San Francisco-based Zone Labs.

Well, now that Saddam Hussein is caught, though DNA has not confirmed this the person in custody has admitted as much, and the Iraqi leadership(AKA the Bush Regime) have declared he will be tried before a war crimes tribunal. There is no word on where this will be held, but it is obvious to me there is only one place it would be safe to try him, and that is the Hague. The problem is one my mother commented on while I was visiting, that since he is captured alive, there is little doubt some or many groups will do everything they can to ensure his release. That is to say his arrest and detention has ensured a serious upswing in terrorist activities and retribution. I have to see the logic that there will be some who will capture and hold high value targets until he is released. It makes sense.

This is not to say, of course, that it is right, but if Saddam was this great ally to terrorists, then they will undoubtedly word very diligently to arrange for him to be set free as soon as they can see to it. Can you think of some large, highly attended events in the next few weeks or months? I am sure that across the world there will be, and now those who engineered Saddam's removal, and their citizens, will have to be a great deal more wary of any and all potential threats. The terrorist organizations in the world will undoubtedly try to exploit every hole in security established by governments, and they will surely succeed because it is not possible to stop them all. You send 100, one or two will get through without a doubt. This is, of course, all in the assumption Saddam was in with Al Queda.

• A Royal Pain in the Internet
• Anti-spam law will tie up UK firms up in red tape
• Disney heir launches anti-Eisner site
• EDS loses out on big Brit bid
• Greenpeace We're No Mongerers!
• How Mac OS X Can Shed Its Skin
• HP email abuse dismissals unfair, says tribunal
• IBM cuddles up to Red Hat
• Linux in the Crosshairs
• Loss of contract may hit EDS earnings
• Microsoft wants non-standard media for Xbox 2
• The Taming of the Internet
• U.N. Summit Calls for Wired World
• Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems
• We're All Nerds Now
• Windows Longhaul Longhorn could be 2008, says Gartner
• World Summit is wholesale triumph
• AT&T to offer Internet calling
• Can-Spam Act is a start
• Dothan debut due 15 February
• Flextronics demos open source chips
• For Sale The American Voter
• HP taps the taxman to knock IBM and Dell
• Iranian Bloggers Rally Against Censorship
• Microsoft takes Lindows fight to Sweden
• My sysadmin is a special constable
• PC shipments on the upswing
• Penn State President loves Microsoft, Napster, the RIAA and Al Gore (true)
• Record PC shipments in '03
• Sacked-by-text staff win compensation
• Tech Transformation Not All Good
• The Death Star storms into consumer Net phones
• Typosquatter pleads guilty to luring kids to porn sites
• United Online makes dial-up Linux-friendly
• Wanna complain about spam You must be joking
• Yahoo! fixes Web mail vuln

So, the world, and especially CNN, are abuzz with news that Saddam Hussein has been captured, is alive, and will stand trial for his crimes. This is the man who was declared a tyrant, a man who when found was in a virtual prison in a hole already, haggard and dirty. He had a limo at his disposal and several thousand in American currency on hand, but there is no doubt he was a man who was still running, still in exile. The news channels are of course discussing how this will impact George Bush, and his opponents in the upcoming Presidential election are falling all over themselves to declare what a great day this is, but only one so far has said the truth, that the war was unnecessary, useless, and that while it removed Hussein, he was not an imminent threat to the US. That person is General Clark.

Three times in a week now the SCO site has been unavailable. 3 times. There have been several times when SCO said the site was down due to attackers, which has been refuted in the media. Well, I have to agree with GeekNewsCentral that the company needs either better admins, better security measures, or a better OS, since clearly they are not running a properly configured Linux box, or they would not be undergoing a 3rd accused DDoS attack. I was trying to research an article I am trying to write about how SCO really needs to learn to live by the letter and the heart of the law, because their delivery of 1 million pages of printed code is just fucking ridiculous.

I am on a major LOTR high. I have my Return of the King ticket in front of me, a gift from the friend I went to the movie with. While there was nothing that I could point to and say 'that was not in the DVD version', the experience was completely different with the movie on the big screen. This is, of course, and understatement, but this felt like watching it on a 10" TV, then going to Imax. I am also very excited because it is possible a coworker may be able to get me a set of tickets to the premiere on Monday of ROTK, so I might be seeing it twice in the upcoming week. This would rock. I look forward to the final movie, for all that it will answer, for the end it should show. The series has been long, drawn out, and torturous, but should be overall more than worthwhile.

Well, in about 5 minutes I am going to be off to see the Lord of the Rings Two Towers Extended Edition at Famous Players Silver City Polo Park, and I am very excited to see it. It has been about a week since I saw it on DVD, but my TV is a little messed up, so I fully expect to see stuff this time that I missed on DVD. I will also have a fresh idea as to what was on the DVD, so I can know if the first was my imagination about them adding stuff to the first movie in extended theatre release to make it more exciting. I will be going with a friend from work, and hopefully she will not insult me as she did last time, though I am not holding out much hope. Of course, it might have helped if she knew I was insulted. I will be sure to try to do some form of review when I get home.

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore has filed what are the first, and could be the last felony charges under that state's anti spam laws, due to the apparently weaker CAN-SPAM law recently passed, and the charges are filed against North Carolina resident Jeremy Jaynes, also known under the pseudonym "Gaven Stubberfield," and his associate Richard Rutowski. They are charged with allegedly using fraudulent means to transmit unsolicited bulk e-mail. While this is the first criminal charge against a spammer, this is likely to be a growing trend as states take action on behalf of their residents as the problem of Spam on the net has grown to frustrating and costly proportions. Sadly, while CAN-SPAM is a beginning, it will allow for much shrewder tactics to send spam.

Microsoft has ordered that Lindows.com change the name of it's or it will bankrupt the company and many of it's vendors. The threat comes after Judges in Finland and Sweden have granted Microsoft preliminary motions to force Lindows to stop using the name due to it's similarity to Windows, the OS by Microsoft, though the US case is still in the preliminary stages and an injunction was denied. the threat and legal decisions have followed Michael Robertson as he travelled across Europe, and Microsoft says that it will not stop with those two countries, that France and the Netherlands are next on it's list. Microsoft claims the suits and injunctions are not meant to kill competition, and that Lindows is infringing on their intellectual property rights. Century old object names are IP now?

Microsoft says that it had no ill intent when 2 swastika's made their way into the company's Bookshelf Symbol 7 font that shipped with Office 2003, but that it would have them removed as soon as possible. "The Redmond, Washington-based software maker said that it had contacted various Jewish organizations about the font and said a utility would be immediately available on its website that would remove the characters from the system. Microsoft said it will release other tools at a later date to remove only the offending characters. A form of the swastika has been used in the Buddhist religion to symbolize the feet or footprints of the Buddha. The symbol, which was also used widely in the ancient world including Mesopotamia, Scandinavia, India and the Americas, became common in China and Japan with the spread of Buddhism."(Wired)

In what has to be a clear loss for the recording industry association here in Canada, the long pondered question of P2P in Canada has now been answered. The answer is yes to import, but no to export. this means I can download all the songs I want in Canada, but I cannot offer songs to others. this has been long questioned in Canada, and while the CRIA can still sue those offering up music, they cannot touch downloaders. This is really no different, as they could not track those who are downloading without significant work, thus the RIAA lawsuits on uploaders. Sadly, this clarification came at the same time as new levies on "recording mediums", such as MP3 players, were added, though no increases were granted, and DVD recorders and Hard Drives are still exempt.

Ok, so a few friends doing mods, and my new year mod plans have led me to have modding on the brain, as my ever broadening wishlist will soon attest, and thus I have desired to have a less hectic and more localized area to discuss modding. As I do when such things occur, I thought of creating a mail list. Is there any readers who would be interested? Or would this be better left to the Forums, whenever they work right? I am eager to hear modding tales, tips, and warnings. I also want to see what you all have done to beautify your beige boxes, to make them worthy of us Geeks. Please do comment here, and I will definitely work something out for us all to have somewhere that is not hostile or crowded to talk shop and swap ideas and reviews.

The appeal of the acquittal of Jon Johansen, which began just over a week ago, has now ended and is awaiting the verdict of the judge, expected on or by the 22nd of December. Johansen, AKA DVD Jon, cracked the CSS encryption code that protects all DVD's, and opened the market for a multitude of programs meant to crack DVD's for copying, as well as allowing Linux users to watch their DVD's on their PC's, as the MPAA has not licensed anyone to make a Linux viewer with CSS. "Prosecutors from Norway's Economic Crime Unit, which pursued the case on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America, (MPAA) argued that Johansen's copying of DVDs was unauthorized and therefore illegal. Prosecutors are demanding a suspended 90-day jail term."(CNet)

Perhaps in response to the recent tricks SCO played when ordered to show IBM the code, if you believe SCO, or perhaps due to the loss in court itself, if you believe others, but the SCO site is now down, and the cause, obviously, is not as clear as some would think. SCO, for their part, says the attack is a SYN flood, and is causing their site to be entirely out of contact, and their site inaccessible to whatever clients they still have. There seems much doubt the problem is an attack from outside their company, and some people have significant proof. You see a site called Groklaw has posted it's doubt as to the cause, and if there was an attack at all. The evidence against a SYN flood is great, while SCO's proof is somewhat lacking, other than 'it really happened'.

This link, courtesy of Obsessive Blog, Linus's Top Ten SCO Barbs (LinuxWorld), is a hilarious roundup of some of Linus' top quotes when it comes to SCO's 'blathering' about their so called Intellectual Property and the infringement by, in no specific order, Linus, FSF, IBM, the Open Source community, Eric S Raymond, Bruce Perens, Novell, Red Hat and so many others I cannot name, not excluding those still using Linux in ignorance of Darl McBride's many erro