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Steve Hooker's Radio: kids, war, blogs, gadgets: A Welsh man in the wrong country, going home

29 March 2004   

 

Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P

Senators introduce legislation to impose jail time for sharing as little as one file, while the House may consider a bill lowering the bar for taking people to court. Entertainment lobbyists appear to be winning their war against peer-to-peer networks.

While this is in the US, and the British version of the RIAA the British Phonographic Industry are beginning to think of chasing file sharers, be aware that there is not very long left of the 'Golden Years' of music sharing. Get them now, while you can, and make sure you block your ports so they can't find you anyway.

 Source: Wired News; 29/03/2004; 11:45:22.
1673 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 2:28:09 PM  . .
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28 March 2004   

 

Hamas Plots Knockout Blow with 800 Suicide Bombers

Radio message from Hamas Damascus to Hamas everywhere else: "The lone suicide martyr method has scored great achievements, but now, as we stand at the threshold of a decisive stage, we must resort to a tactic that brings us the desired results. Ideally, we would round up 70,000 to 80,000 martyrs and have them blow themselves up simultaneously in the enemy's urban centers and so finally vanquish him. But that is not realistic. One tenth or even one hundredth part of that number should suffice to inflict a shock on a strategic scale. I therefore tell you not to hurry to exact revenge. We have to be sure our assault is concerted and perfectly orchestrated. Don't waste resources and manpower on small operations. No one is pushing you. Take all the time you need and then pick a date and hour that are most advantageous to our project."

Will it be true?


1672 Also posted to: cyberSaps , warBlog . At: 2:12:06 PM  . .
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Blur hit out over court threat for illegal downloaders

Blur have hit back at the British Phonographic Industry's (BPI) warnings to online song swappers that they may face court action if they continue to download music.

So, they'll pop up warnings on my machine first. Then sue my arse off? And try and get me jailed. Sounds like war.


1671 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 2:07:22 PM  . .
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The Passivator

"A passive verb and adverb flagger for Mozilla-derived browsers"

Bookmarklet to better my writing. Could it improve yours?


1670 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 2:04:11 PM  . .
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27 March 2004   

 

Wap is crap with modern news items

Taunted by our French blogger I tried out my site, after reading Mac's warning I now see I need to fix this. My Manila site shows the very first message, which is a vanilla Manila message. Not, as I would expect new news items.

I should add, your wap page is at astonvilla.blogfootball.com/mySite/wap/ and don't forget the emulator.

wapIsGreenasis
 


1669 Also posted to: serviceBF . At: 9:46:43 PM  . .
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Microsoft Readies News, Blog Services

gorilla Expanding its push into the Internet search space, Microsoft says it plans to launch Internet search services for news and Web logs later this year.

Here comes the 400lb gorrila.


1668 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 7:03:51 PM  . .
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26 March 2004   

 

Manila User's Guide PDF

"An updated version of the Manila User's Guide PDF has been posted on the UserLand website. The updated version includes the most recent changes in Manila."

This maybe good bed time reading if you want to become a Manila swot ";->"


1667 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 11:41:56 AM  . .
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25 March 2004   

 

How to fit a full size browser into a phone screen: use Picsel

"The killer is that the application can be anything. I've watched a Picsel equipped iPaq displaying four windows. One had a Word document in it; another had a game of Doom playing in it, another showed live video, and the last had a .PDF Acrobat file in it. And incredibly, it was possible not just to view these files, but to cut and paste one to the other. You could cut the video, and paste it into the Acrobat."

I'm just looking into this... Sounds ever so good. You don't even need broadband (rather 3G) apparently. And it's supposed to be shipping for Windows as well as Symbian. See more details about ePage.


1666 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:39:20 PM  . .
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Gates Promotes Speech Server

Microsoft Speech Server 2004, released Wednesday, will sell for $18,000 per CPU; a version limited to a smaller number of callers will sell for $8,000. That's a hefty discount over competing products, Microsoft says.

Ouch. Interesting that MS are getting into this market, but still very expensive. Mobile phones, now, are more able to look up internet sites where multiple choices are easier to 'mind map' perhaps more would be done there than trying to talk to a computer.


1665 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 10:55:40 AM  . .
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Can the music business compete with free?

"Lawsuits are not imminent in the UK, industry officials insist. But they are threatened."

Detailed overview telling the true state of dirty illegal and suffocatingly legal P2P. Frankly, with 6 million file sharers in the UK, the game is lost. Their carrot and stick game is years away from competing with free, use anywhere downloads.

With BitTorrent, I've downloaded over 4 gigs of music in 5 days. If I had the space I'd try and get an 8 gig DVD of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, but I just don't have that kind of disk space.

Be careful out there though, make sure your firewalls are up and your open ports protected. Read my first day with BT.


1664 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 10:38:26 AM  . .
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24 March 2004   

 

Wired: Why RSS Is Everywhere.

 Source: Scripting News; 23/03/2004; 19:45:29.
1663 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 1:19:29 PM  . .
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More Lawsuits Filed in Effort to Thwart File Sharing. The music industry announced a new round of lawsuits against 532 people accused of illegal file sharing, including people at 21 universities.

 Source: New York Times: Technology; 24/03/2004; 11:11:55.
1662 Also posted to: cyberSaps , serviceBF . At: 1:12:52 PM  . .
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Google Threatened with 'Clicker' Extortion. The FBI arrested man for attempting to extort $100,000 from Google, threatening to release to the Internet a program that would click on paid links, costing Google millions.

 Source: MarketingWonk - The single source for no-nonsense Internet marketing news; 24/03/2004; 11:12:16.
1661 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 1:07:14 PM  . .
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18 March 2004   

 

Nokia blogs

Nokia has a new phone 7610... Nothing new in that, you say. But this one has some new software, LifeBlog.
From quick reading, all it does is collect your video and pictures from your phone, via a cable. Then, puts it into a webpage that's local on your machine. Sure, the webpage looks nice, but apart from the ease in moving vids, pix and text and organising it, so the web page can make it work... Is that all it does?
Here's some geezer who worked on LifeBlog at Nokia. And the BBC describe it.
7610asis
 


1660 Also posted to: cybersaps . At: 4:31:44 PM  . .
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In a land far, far away, long, long ago

in a land far far away

From APOD What's the farthest galaxy known? The answer keeps changing as astronomers compete to find galaxies that top the list. The new claimed record holder is now the faint smudge indicated in the above images by an 8.2-meter Very Large Telescope (VLT) operating in Chile. Detected light left this galaxy 13.2 billion of years ago, well before the Earth formed, when the universe was younger than 3 percent of its present age. Astronomers have estimated a redshift of 10 for this galaxy, the first double-digit claim for any galaxy. Young galaxies are of much interest to astronomers because many unanswered questions exist on when and how galaxies formed in the early universe.

in a land far, far away, long, long ago...

From Hubble's PR site Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today [March 9th 2004] unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. The new image should offer new insights into what types of objects reheated the universe long ago.

history of the universe through the looking glass

From Hubble's PR site Ever wondered what came after the big bang? Me neither, did know 'we' knew. Fascinating!

 


1659 Also posted to: space . At: 10:29:45 AM  . .
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15 March 2004   

 

Wired News: Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool

"A radio tool merges two of this season's hottest tech fads -- RSS news syndication and BitTorrent file sharing -- to create a cheap publishing system for what its author calls "big media objects." The hybrid system is meant to eliminate both the publisher's need for fat bandwidth, and the consumer's need to wait through a grueling download."

I've started to use this, and this morning I've a load of new songs to play in my mp3 player, but just as easily I could have had (assuming they were available ;-) a ripped DVD of Lord of the Flies. Or, I could have sent videos of my kids to their grandparents, without them having to click and wait, perhaps days to download. This way, they just subscribe to a feed, and (depending on how they've set up their preferences) they could be watching them the next morning.


1658 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 3:23:41 PM  . .
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08 March 2004   

 

Back up after hosting cock up

I use Host Europe, AKA Web Fusion. One of the biggest, I believe, and certainly not the cheapest. Paid £100 for 12 months with 600Mb and 3Gb transfer a month. Thursday last week My site went off air. I didn't notice till someone told me, too busy working hard. Saturday I found out and called to complain, only to be told by tech support that it was something to do with accounts, and thus, I'd have to await Monday when some one would next be there to answer the phone.

Today, I was apologised to, the explanation didn't make sense to me, and bumped up to 1500Mb and 10Gb/mo. So I guess, I'm pretty happy.

Photos of my kids fill up disk space PDQ I'm already up to 500Mb here, as it is, and I'm about to transfer 500Mb of images from my Manila server to lighten the load on that machine.


1657 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 2:36:53 PM  . .
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Amanda's late birthday meal

context to watching TV in restaurant

google eyed at the google box with headphones

yucky hands after ribs

Yes, Bradley, you like bones don't you?

esme likes bones too

Yes, Esme, you like bones too, don't you.

Amanda very patiently waited for her birthday meal, which really wasn't that nice, dry, and dull. We went to the Red House near Newport, good monkey climbing place for the kids, but crap food.

Esme and Bradley enjoyed theirs, only because they were picking, then dashing off to watch the TV (Shrek) with their own headphones, which made them look like teeVee potatoes.

BTW: my camera had some greasy stuff on the lens, so some pix are a bit blurry ";->"

 


1656 Also posted to: personal . At: 2:14:36 PM  . .
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A bus ride to Telford

Instead of taking the car, we sometimes take the bus. Far more exciting than being belted up nice and safe in the car, swinging aroundtight corners as we whizz around the council estate on our way to the Telford Library.

BTW: my camera had some greasy stuff on the lens, so some pix are a bit blurry ";->"

foggy day at the bus stop in Dawley

Awaiting the bus is a trip in itself.

down in the supermarket at midnight

shopping in boots

They feel important with their own shopping trollies.

Bradley eating icecream

We each have one, some make more mess than others.

eating icecream in Telford

New icecream bar in Telford.

Bradley does weight lifting

you've made a pig's ear of that

I don't think he realised they were real pigs ears in the pet shop.

dougnuts for Bradley

bookish Bradley in the library

And the point of our little trip out, the library.

Esme and Brad at the library

 


1655 Also posted to: personal . At: 2:10:59 PM  . .
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03 March 2004   

 

L - Grand Canyon Monitors Features

"6400 x 1200 pixels or 2560 by 2048 combined resolution";

four more screens
fourscreens

Wouldn't it be wonderful? Two makers of quad screens.


1654 Also posted to: cyberSaps . At: 6:10:33 PM  . .
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