Dorky Mood

It's gotten all cold outside again. We were kind of spoiled earlier this week, I suppose. Now it's back to Old Man Winter for a spell.

Nothing blatantly exciting to report - just the normal crap. I signed-up with Sony to see if they'll let me tryout for Jeopary. They'll be here in April or May to conduct the search. Imagine me on Jeopardy. Up there in front of millions proudly flying my geek flag. Would it be best to wear my Periodic Table of the Elements shirt? Or perhaps a Jethro Tull tie-dye? Decisions, decisions.

While I'm waxing geek, I see that Firefox has surpassed 25 million downloads.



I read that one can now get around Napter's copy protection. Last week sometime I took advantage of their free trial offer and downloaded 3 tunes for free. Of course they're DRM protected so I can't convert them to WAV files for burning or port them to other PCs. But now the cat has gotten out of the bag that a Wimamp plug-in called Output Stacker will convert files downloaded from Napster to WAV so you can burn them onto CD. Of course they've removed the plug-in so look for individuals to post it themselves.

The inventors of TCP/IP, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, were given the Turing Award for their protocol. For those that don't know, TCP/IP is the series of rules that define how data is transmitted on the Internet. Like Firefox but in sharp contrast to Microsoft's policy of keeping technology proprietary, Cerf and Kuhn made their invention open-source and gave it away:

"Dr. Cerf said part of the reason their protocols took hold quickly and widely was that he and Dr. Kahn made no intellectual property claims to their invention. They made no money from it, though it did help their careers. 'It was an open standard that we would allow anyone to have access to without any constraints,' he said.

In other tech news, the technical/scientific Oscars™ were awarded this week. OK, so there's no glamour involved with it and the recipients are a bunch of geeky old duffs, but the event was hosted by Scarlett Johansson - a lass I'd like to schtup. While you may have no interest in funky cranes and node-graph compositing systems, you see what filmmakers can do with them. These folks create new lenses and cranes so directors can have cool shots in their films. They invent new types of silicone materials so actors' faces can be manipulated in the grossest ways yet still look like real flesh. They invent new CGI technology so you can see the neatest SFX on the big screen. Give them all a hand.

OK. I've got time to build me a funkadelic surround stereo system. The release of the SACD of Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway has been delayed once again and is not expected until the last part of this year.