The Underground Man

Casshern on DVD!

Astute readers will remember my desire to see the Japanese anime-derived film Casshern.

Well, I just found and ordered it at hkdvdstore.com. Reasonably priced, with English subtitles. The trailer, which looks exceptional is here.

Along the way, I found this total rip-off of Amazon. Is it any wonder? First products get copied wholesale, now Web sites. I bet their IIS server isn't licensed either.

Of course, the owner was stupid enough to live in the States and register it here..

Asia CD, Inc. (YESASIA2-DOM)
1192 Cherry Ave
San Bruno, CA 94066
US

Domain Name: YESASIA.COM

Administrative Contact:
Chu, Priscilla (35921125P) priscilla@yesasia.com
YesAsia.com, Inc.
1192 Cherry Ave
San Bruno, CA 94066
US
650-517-5102

Technical Contact:
(MDP-ORG) hostmaster@earthlink.net
Earthlink Inc
1430 West Peachtree St. NW, Ste. 400
Atlanta, GA 30309
US
888-932-1997 fax: 123 123 1234

Record expires on 07-Jan-2008.
Record created on 02-Dec-1997.
Database last updated on 23-Feb-2005 17:40:12 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

SPEAKEASY.EARTHLINK.NET 207.69.188.200
HEARSAY.EARTHLINK.NET 207.69.188.201
RUMOR.EARTHLINK.NET 207.69.188.202

The Digital Broadcast Flag is coming..

I had heard rumours of this sort of thing but I tracked it down yesterday.

From the EFF site:

Responding to pressure from Hollywood, the FCC has adopted a rule requiring future digital television (DTV) tuners to include "content protection" (aka DRM) technologies. Starting next year, all makers of HDTV receivers must build their devices to watch for a broadcast "flag" embedded in programs by copyright holders. When it comes to digital recording, it'll be Hollywood's DRM way or the highway. Want to burn that recording digitally to a DVD to save hard drive space? Sorry, the DRM lock-box won't allow it. How about sending it over your home network to another TV? Not unless you rip out your existing network and replace it with DRMd routers. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting a high definition digital signal, doesn't it?

There are a very few devices out there that will allow you to receive HDTV signals (terrestrial or otherwise) in your computer. I have found this card and will probably buy it before the broadcast flag deadline ('cause I'm just a rebel at heart). It's about $170. Much cheaper than a conventional HDTV receiver.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with cable/satellite signals. I get HD right now but because I don't have an HDTV-capable TV, I just get to watch in enhanced definition (a limbo between regular TV and HDTV). Basically, I get a progressive scan picture, which means that I cannot see lines on the screen as you can with regular TV broadcasts and my picture is letterboxed. It's about the resolution of DVD and so not bad. I've found a decent explanation here.

But I hanker for that HDTV standard. And I don't want to buy a new TV.

Enki Bilal and L'Immortel

I've been waiting for this film for quite a while. However, the consensus on IMDB is that it probably won't ever make it into cinematic release here in the US.

It's unfortunate. The director was Enki Bilal who has a distinguished history as an artist in les bandes desinees, wonderful French hard-bound graphic novels. (They go way beyond being comic books). He has a fascination for Egyptian imagery and that is apparently a major focal point in this film.

I'm waiting for the DVD. I can buy it from Amazon France but the site has no details on whether it has either sub-titles or voiceovers in English. While my reading of French is decent, my understanding of the spoken doesn't quite extend to a full-length feature film yet.

So I have to either wait or look around some more. And I'm not in a town with film festivals that might carry it.

Using RFID tags to track children

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would anyone object to this?

A RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chip is put in a badge and pinned on school children so that they can be tracked on school grounds. Since when do children have any expectation of privacy as to their location while on school grounds?

Can anyone explain to me why this is a bad thing and parents would object to it?

I'm completely mystified. It actually seems like a very good use of the technology to me and I would think parents would welcome it. The logical extension would be to allow parents to login to a Web site to verify their children's location during school hours.

This brings to mind an article in today's USA Today about how the me generation (kids born in the 80s and 90s) expect to receive praise for the littlest thing ("oh.. don't worry if you can't spell, at least you wrote something.."). Ridiculous.

This seems like an extension of this permissive attitude to me (coming from the same idiot parents who want little Timmy to get a medal for finishing 9th in the school track meet.

speaking of memes

These from Warren Buffet (credit to this blog):

1. Be grateful
2. Be ethical and fair
3. Be trustworthy
4. Invest in your circle of competence
5. Do what you love

I can vouch for (4). :> When I was invested in the stock market (not now, post startup) I only invested in those firms of which I had personal knowledge or knew the space very, very well. And I made a killing.. I know countless others who bought into biotech, or agribusiness who lost a lot of money 'cause they didn't know the space.

But it's an interesting set of rules to live by. Sort of narrows down one's perceptions.

chocolat a l'ancienne

So in French class last night the prof showed up with absolutely wonderful chocolat chaud. I had written a brief little essay the week before on the virtues of chocolat a l'ancienne (hot chocolate in the old way) from Angelina's (on the Rue Rivoli in Paris).

Apparently, it struck a chord. Starbucks has recently added an offering here in the Pacific Northwest (perhaps everywhere?) of chocolat chaud in the old French style. So she brought a couple of thermos cups of it. We (she included) were highly skeptical but I've got to say that Starbucks has pulled it off to my mind. It's first-rate. Perhaps not quite as good as sitting on the Grand Boulevards of Paris and having one but the taste is excellent. Starbucks calls it Chantico. I guess they figured we could not pronounce "chocolat a l'ancienne".

Here are a couple of recipes from a French cuisine site (in French, of course):

Chocolat chaud à la Française

Pour 2 personnes
100 g de chocolat noir
40 cl de lait frais entier
2 cuillère à soupe de crème fraiche

Râper le chocolat. Faire bouillir le lait et la crème. A la première ébullition, retirer du feu
Mélanger le choclat et fouettrer vigoureusement au fouet
Dès qu'il est tiédi et mousseux, servir

Chocolat Brésilien

Pour 2 tasses : faire infuser 50 g de grauns de café du Brésil mouliné dans 40 cl de lait frais entier
Filtrer
Ajouter 2 c à c de crème épaisse. Lui mélanger, hors du feu, 100 g de chocolat noir râpé. Fouetter et servir dès qu'il a tiédi

Chocolat Réunionnais

Pour 2 tasses :

2 barres de chocolat
2 dl de lait
1/2 gousse de vanille

Verser le lait dans la casserole et ajouter la vanille
Porter à ébullition
Faire fondre le chocolat à part
Mélanger et servir brûlant

iPod category..

I just added an iPod category to the site. Probably a mark of both my enthusiasm and a recognition that it might have an interest for others.

I found that the first entry in that category was Jan of 2004 when the first speculation about the mini-iPods hit the press. In the end, I found them too expensive to buy on a whim.

However, a year later I have a Shuffle, at roughly the same price point ($99-149).
While I have some issues with it (inability to stop the music loading process easily, poor headphone design, no normalization of music when loading) I think it's a great first cut at a memory based player. I expect that most of the shortcomings can be fixed via software.

Though I've got no idea what the hell Apple was thinking when they included the crap design earbuds. There wouldn't be such a huge aftermarket if they had just designed them properly.

BzzAgent

So I became aware of a new stealth marketing group this weekend. They call themselves BzzAgents. Kind of insidious.

Basically, companies sign up with BzzAgent to do marketing campaigns. They then provide products to their BzzAgents (young people it seems) who, if they like the product, are then asked to visit forums like Amazon and make positive/glowing reports on the product. Thus creating "buzz".

So the problem seems obvious to me. These people don't identify themselves as compensated endorsers and thus have a higher score on the "believability index".

Boy.. it's getting so you can't trust anyone anymore.

iPod shuffle "issue"

Another minor problem with the Shuffle. It (or iTunes more properly) doesn't appear to normalize the volume level of tracks it copies to my Shuffle. So when one incorporates tunes from many "*cough*" sources, you have a lot of different volume levels.

If I remember rightly, one can select songs and normalize the volume levels before burning a CD. I don't yet know if one can do this with the AutoFill mode of the Shuffle.

If not, you should be able to. Another thing to write Apple about.

using fire to fight fire..

Caught this today on Slashdot. I think it's fascinating that researchers
are "using fire to fight fire", such as it is.

Gene therapy may finally be living up to its promise.

stealthing along..

So given that the stock Apple earbuds just don't work worth a damn, I'm going to buy some replacements today.

It's not that they don't work per se, it's just that they absolutely, positively won't stay in one's ears. Not unless they are glued in. I actually wrote to Apple and complained. To my mind, they aren't up to their usual high standards for performance/quality. There is no way on God's green Earth that one could do the gyrations the dancers do in the iPod adds and have the buds stay in.

They lack the adapters that earbuds like the Koss Plug or Etymotic Research 6is have. So there is nothing to keep them in the ear channel at all. So while they sound superb (to my moderately educated ear) turning the head ten degrees will cause one or both to drop out (just from cord drag).

Absolutely infuriating.

So today I'm using my Sony behind-the-head earphones to listen at work. This serves the dual purpose of allowing me access to my music and not pissing off management.

moving to Windows XP2 SP2

Well courtesy of work, I've moved my home PC to Windows XP SP2. I've resisted the move for a long time because it was my perception that the steep system requirement would mean a significant drop in performance. But Windows ME has never been terriby stable and what good is performance if your machine crashes on you regularly.

Admittedly, I'm a power user and not typical. I often overclock my machines (which can increase instability greatly) and do funky things like running digital compression programs that max out the CPU time.

We'll see how XP SP2 handles this tasking of ripping movies from my DVDs and compressing them. For the most part, it recognized my devices (I built the PC in the last two years) but it does seem to have a problem with the WinTV (Hauppage) card. I may no longer be able to watch TV on my monitor if I don't sort this out. Not a huge loss, but it was convenient.

The stock drivers for Hauppage and XP don't seem to work. Either that, or I have the wrong device :>. One really unfortunate thing about Windows systems in general is that they give you very few if any clues about the devices in your Device Manager that are not working properly. So if you don't have drivers installed you cannot figure out what the device is!

With modern motherboards (mine is a Gigabyte 7N400 Pro) there ar a ton of chips on the board with extended functionality. All of them need their own drivers. Then I have Firewire, a TV card, a sophisticated video card, a 5.1 audio card (in addition to the onboard audio). Plus the motherboard has onboard gigabit Ethernet. It gets pretty complicated.

But nobody said Windows was easy to use. :>

Scientists forced to alter findings by Bush administration

I don't think we should really be surprised by this. It's been common news for the last few years that Bushco haven't met a "resource developer" that they don't like. Whether it is strip mining in Virginia, open pit mining in the West, or drilling in Anwar, if you have a business you can get both law and "science" changed to support your efforts.

It's this sort of short-sightedness that makes me despair about this country's future.

Secret evidence used to imprison US citizen

To my mind, this seems like a clear contravention of the Constitution. An American student studying in Saudi Arabia was detained in 2003 (and has been held in custody ever since) apparently at the behest of the US Government.

He has been denied due process, is rumoured to have been tortured, and remains in a Saudi jail. His parents have sued to get him returned to the US and to see the evidence against him.

The US Government refuses to provide it, saying that it is must remain "secret". Besides, they aren't holding him. The Saudis are.. Yeah, right.. that's what the federal judge reviewing the case thinks to.

Bullsh*t.

Before you say, "Oh, they must know what they are doing" and "He must be a terrorist" think about that for a second. What if you were he? Think about all the cases historically and recently when the government has been wrong: Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, invasion of Grenada, remaining in Iraq (Bush II), the deficit, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, etc, etc, etc.

They may be right, they may be wrong. But circumventing the Constitution by having a "friendly" power hold on to and possibly torture an American citizen is just wrong.

Virii in the wild

I had a customer over the weekend who needed her computer worked on. She had been given it by a fellow church member.

After a couple of hours of anti-spyware removal and anti-virus hunting I told her that the simplest solution was to "take off and nuke it from orbit" (obligatory sci-fi reference). She had 2415 virus infections. Just two virii really (one Klez and I forget the other) but they had spread all over her hard disk, infecting most of the applications.

So we "flattened" it (a newly-learned Microsoft term) and reinstalled from the original Compaq restore disks. Hey, presto! Pristine new PC. Then an install of Firefox, Spybot Search & Destroy, and ZoneAlarm Pro with Antivirus and she was good to go.

2415 infections. Sheesh.

Comment scum..

Much as I dislike it, I've had to turn off trackback pings on my site.
I hardly ever used them anyway so it's no great loss.

It's just annoying that I'm forced into this by spam scum. May the rot
where the sun never shines.

Wild teapot

I was gassing up in the rural hinterland the other day (on my way to Camano Island) when I saw this charming coffee stand.

Had to share it.

Superbowl XXXIX

Now wasn't that a heck of a Superbowl?

Ok, for the first time in years (since Steelers/Titans) that game surpassed the advertisements by a wide margin. I saw few ads that I remember (Burt Reynolds, the Budweiser donkey, and the GoDaddy.com ad). That's it.

Not so great a Superbowl for Donovan McNabb. He choked. It happens. I thought, watching the first half, that the Patriots were giving the game to the Eagles. By simply not executing as well as they normally do. There were definitely some good opportunities that fell apart because the receiver dropped the ball or wasn't in the right position.

In contrast to the Eagles play, where when they were stopped it seemed more often than not it was 'cause a Patriot got in and fouled it up. I thought the score flattered the Eagles at the end.

T.O. did his bit but I think we saw a star being born in Deion Branch. The wide receiver for the Patriots is both speedy and has good hands. Match that with a great ability to get open when he needed to and he reminded me in a lot of ways of Jerry Rice. Yeah.. he can catch the ball but it's what he does after he catches it that has you scared.

All in all, a game worth watching.

And now for all of you who like donkeys, my favorite ad from the SuperBowl:
Now Look What You've Started.

Adopt a Sniper..

Yes, folks, only in America. I'm really not sure what I think about this.

Credit to for the reference.

OS X vs. XP

I had discovered this chap's work a few months ago. Back then it was a very long PDF that was an lengthy exposition on the differences between OS X and Windows XP.

He did his best to provide an unbiased view and it was very thorough. Now it is available as a Web site. I was googling for "hibernate" and "OS X" when I came across it. A couple of my fellow PMs and I were having a discussion as to whether one actually needed the hibernate feature of XP (which saves the contents of RAM to disk and then shuts off the power). Personally, I think it isn't terribly useful in a business environment where one is moving from meeting to meeting and the laptop may only be closed for ten-twenty minutes during moves (if that).

With over a minute to start up this gets really tedious.

Faux VX ad sparks legal action

Ok, file this under the heading of Creative But Tasteless. A couple of ad wonks in the UK produced this ad for self-promotional reasons and it somehow managed to make its way out on the Internet.

The ad, to my mind, is perhaps a normal consequency of society's taking on board current world events. Some have theorized that societies can be modeled on the human behavior of its components.

Personally, I thought the ad damn funny. But there is little doubt it is tasteless and one has to realize that it could probably only be authored in some sort of vaccuum by those unaffected by world events (ad people, anyone?).

Judge for yourself. Probably not appropriate for viewing by anyone under the age of 8.