Brand New Look

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Today, in my boredom, I have completely re-vamped the templates and style sheets of my 'blog. It now includes some embedded fonts and other neato web stuff. Clicking the topic categories will take you to the category archive, and clicking the entry title will take you to the individual entry archive. Leave comments if any of you non-Internet Exploder users have trouble with the site-- the embedded fonts are supposed to be part of an Open architecture, but Micro$oft has their hand in it, so ya never know... Also, for the legions of friends and relatives who's help I've enlisted in finding a job, there is a link to my resume right under the Unemployment Countdown timer. It's in Adobe PDF format so it's very portable, and you can save it locally by clicking the little diskie icon in Acrobat. Feel free to give it to anyone you want-- yes, even night manager at Krispy Kreme.
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Let Freedom Ring

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Today a Federal appeals court ruled that the RIAA can't force internet service providers to reveal the names of people using filesharing apps or swapping files on thier networks. This constitutes a huge blow to the RIAAs witch hunt for file sharers. Read a mirror of the AP story here. It's good to know that the large ISPs will go to bat (and probably at great expense) for their users rather than just rolling over for unconstitutional subpoenas. Perhaps we will finally see a downward trend in CD prices to counteract file sharing. If CDs topped out at $10, it certainly wouldn't be worth it to me to find music on the internet.
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Some Thoughts On Emerging Nations

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It's interesting to me, that following our deposition of the current regime in Iraq, a Linux User Group (LUG) has sprung up. Currently they only have two members, but I think that's a fantastic leap forward in both cultural and business thinking. Today, Slashdot broke a story on LinuxJournal from a tech-savvy American reporter in Baghdad as a follow-up to this event. The thing that interests me about this is that Linux and the open source movement appear to be the first to grow, almost like a scab over a wound, in situations where a people are suddenly exposed to freedom of information and thought. I wonder if Microsoft sees this trend and is lobbying our current administration to not help bring oppressive and culturally strict nations into the realm of free thinking. Considering such events as Peru going open source and MS bullying the Lindows operating system into not using the name "Lindows"; I think that open-source software is well on it's way to being the bootstrap technology for developing nations. Imagine if you lived in a country that strictly mandated what you could do, see, read and say. Then suddenly, those bans were lifted and you became exposed to open-source software, collaborative developing, and the vast untamed internet. Then, when you started to take advantage of these things, big American business steps in and wants to impose it's will on you. Wouldn't that remind you of your earlier oppression by your government? Anyway, it's my hope that Microsoft continues to embarrass itself lumbering through the china-closet of the newly-emergent tech world like a 800 pound Brahma bull. Of course as a bespoke software developer, without Microsoft (and it's never-ending security patches and eclectic development environment), I'd be out of a job... at least until I could learn PHP/Python/PERL.
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The New Matrix

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I have yet to see it, but the reviewers are giving it a sound thrashing. Some quotes found on Fark today: "So disappointing they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion." -- Christopher Null, FILMCRITIC.COM "Too bad the Wachowski brothers marry their mind-blowing visuals to some of the worst war movie clichs ever written." -- Sean O'Connell, ECLIPSE MAGAZINE "Though visually spectacular, 'The Matrix Revolutions' is a disappointing climax to what had previously been one of the great movie series of recent years." - Peter Sobczynski, CRITIC DOCTOR "The Wachowskis... lean so heavily on concepts and designs from Aliens... that you half-expect to hear Bill Paxton wailing 'Game over, maaaaan!' in the background." -- James Sanford, KALAMAZOO GAZETTE "It's actually at its best when it's the most pretentious. Its loud and repetitive action sequences are impressive enough, but we've seen them all before." -- Steve Rhodes, STEVE RHODES' INTERNET REVIEWS "For all the ponderous philosophizing found in Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions is surprisingly straightforward and more than a little cheesy." -- Bill Pearis, CITYSEARCH "Theres a warmed-over feeling that permeates what should have been the defining film of the trilogy." -- Rebecca Murray, ABOUT.COM "Please someone, get me the blue pill. I want to forget that this ambitious and noteworthy series is ending so weakly." -- Nell Minow, MOVIE MOM AT YAHOO! MOVIES "A mixture of frantic but empty action and solemn, even more vacuous philosophizing that ends up simultaneously pretentious and puerile." -- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION "While superior to Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions still can't quite justify turning a stand-alone classic into a misguided trilogy." -- Alex Sandell, JUICY CEREBELLUM "The final chapter in the Wachowski brothers' trilogy about stylish sunglasses, leather trenchcoats, freshly baked cookies and Wire Fu." -- Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY "After all is said and done, I wish they would have left the trilogy to one." -- Danny Minton, KBTV-NBC (BEAUMONT, TX) "Seems like Matrix Reloaded with a little tweaking." -- Harvey S. Karten, COMPUSERVE "With The Matrix Revolutions, the Wachowski brothers have managed to pull off something nearly impossible. They've made a movie about the end of the world that leaves us entirely indifferent to the outcome." -- Chris Vognar, DALLAS MORNING NEWS "The Matrix Revolutions sucks." -- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE "Reloaded was certainly a lumpy, gaseous treatise of a movie, but viewers of Revolutions may find themselves looking back on it fondly." -- A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES "There's relatively less of the clunky alternation of big action and static speechifying that stalled Reloaded. But there's also less storytelling fervor from the Wachowskis." -- Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY "Better than Reloaded, but the thrill is gone." -- Michael Rechtshaffen, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER "How did something that started out so cool get so dorky?" -- Manohla Dargis, LOS ANGELES TIMES "Louder, longer, more expensive and dumber than its predecessors, Revolutions is a mediocrity that will provide escapism only to those who head for the theater exits." -- Colin Covert, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE the emotional impact of this movie is zilch." -- Paul Clinton, CNN "The Matrix trilogy is so named for a reason: The most compelling aspect of the movies is that way-cool space. Revolutions spends too little time there." -- Leigh Johnson, HOLLYWOOD.COM "The Wachowskis have served up passable entertainment... but they fail to deliver on their own mythology." -- Laura Clifford, REELING REVIEWS "Visually stunning but a huge disappointment. The resolution sucked! " -- Victoria Alexander, FILMSINREVIEW.COM
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Die Spammers

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I've recently been getting a bit of spam on my home email account, and I think it has been from having a link to an email up on this site. I've looked at the spider traffic and none ever seems to get past the front page, and that's probably because everything else is dynamically created. Well, I had an insight into how to fix the spammers' wagon this morning. Instead of using some bogus email address or not having a link to email me at all, I thought a picture of the email address would work. You'll notice in the boilerplate of my page, my email address is right next to the title. However, if you try to select it as text for copying, you can't. That's because it's a jpeg image of text. I figure no spammer has a spider that's advanced enough to process images. And if they do, I'll change it to some wacky font only a human could understand. Ha! Who's laughing now, you miserable waster of the world's bandwidth? I blow my nose at you!
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