Awesome Screensaver

I listened to the latest 'This Week in Tech' podcast today. They mentioned a screensaver called FlickrFan. This screensaver can connect to flickr account and images to use in the screensaver. But it also downloads current Associated Press images in high quality and more. This results in awesome pictures from around the world covering the news in HIGH-RES. B.t.w. it's much more than just a screensaver, but I liked the screensaver-part best.

Click to read more ...

History Repeating

About 4 years ago (to this date), I went to the west coast of the US for a 3 week holiday. At the time there were also several forest fires. It almost seemed that the fires were following us. Everywhere we had been, things started to burn. Now, exactly 4 years later, the same thing is happening. Only difference is that I'm not in the US. So don't blame me ;-)

Click to read more ...

Speed Photography in New York

And again a ridiculous law in the United States. The land of opportunities, and lame laws. Starting in August 2007, you can't be in one place for more than a half hour to make (scenic) photographs or shoot some video. This includes the setting up of your tripod etc. So no more waiting for that special sunset, or waiting for the sky to clear for that one special shot of/for your sweetheart. To make it even more ridiculous, you also need an insurance of 1 million USD if you need more time (which means you need a special permit). No doubt that this is initially intended for the professional movie makers or photographers, but there's the fear that this will be abused to harass the common man/woman/tourist. It must be very handy to have very general laws/rules, which the government can interpret as they see fit. Why don't they just pass a law which is states "It's illegal to....". In this case they can fill in the blanks whenever they want... Oh wait, they already did... The Patriot Act.

Click to read more ...

Reality Donor Show Was a HOAX

A couple of weeks ago, a non-commercial TV station BNN announced that they would air a live kidney donor show. The idea was that a terminal ill patient got to decide which kidney patient could get her kidney. Lot's, and lot's of people (from all over the world) thought that this was an outrage. Yesterday the show aired (even though lot's of government officials were against it). At the end of the show, it seemed that it was just a hoax. The terminally ill patient was an actrice, but the needy kidney patients were real. Reason for airing this show was to make people see that organ donation is needed (a lot). It seems that Holland has to lowest rate of organ donors in Europe. Well, they surely succeeded in raising attention to the subject. The news travelled all over the world. Personally, I've been a registered donor since 1998. They may harvest my body, when I'm dead of course, for the good of mankind. After which they may burn what's left behind. My opinion on organ donation is that someone who is a donor should have a much higher priority for receiving a donor organ. Live isn't just about taking/consuming. It's also about giving. If you're not registered as a donor... click here, and make sure you become one as soon as possible.

Click to read more ...

Free Hotspot Access

You're in luck, if you have a XS4ALL Internet account. Normally, you have an hour a week free Hotspot access, and this summer you are even more lucky. XS4ALL provides over 900 free Hotspots throughout the land this summer (June, Juli, and August).

Click to read more ...

More on the HD-DVD Key

The MPAA will have serious problems removing the key from the Internet. Even Google has received a letter to remove the links from their databases. Somehow, these retards have the idea that you can copyright a number. As the word spread yesterday the articles started showing up on Digg.com. Digg.com is a popular website where you can submit 'news', and others may rate it and comment on it. Within minutes the stories about this key got thousands of 'diggs'. This resulted in the fact that the moderators on Digg removed the posts. Result: Mass uproar. Kevin Rose (the Digg founder) wrote the following on his Digg blog:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

I think that's the right attitude towards this. Hopefully, the MPAA will come to its senses (not likely), and stops harrassing the consumers with their lame-ass copy-protection. It would even be better to abandon the 'turn every consumer into a criminal' DMCA bill completely, but that's another story.... Just to be sure you got the right key:

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Click to read more ...

Illegal HEX codes

As some of you might know, the protection of Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD movies is based on a 'secret' key. You need the key to watch protected movies. The (software)players for these movies are able to 'decrypt' these keys from the disc containing the movie. So you already have these keys on the disc. They (the movie companies) just try to hide them from the user (security through obscurity). This is not strange that they use this scheme. It's just the way DRM works on these discs. Due to the lame-ass DMCA law in the United States, it's ILLEGAL to try to find the key on the disc :???: . Somehow a HD-DVD key got discovered (or leaked), and it's going around the great Internet. Several websites have been approached by lawfirms to take the pages down. This key is represented by a hexidecimal code. How the hell is it possible to declare a hexidecimal string illegal?? The same string can also be represented by a different format (e.g. BASE64). Is this also illegal? Since we dont know other hex keys for decrypting copy protected content, every other string of hex codes might also be illegal. Image this; what if the 'next' key might represent the number pi (03 14 15 92 6.....)? Does that mean that all math books need to be burned? Just another example of the fucked up DMCA law in the US. B.t.w. wondering what the last part is of the key... just use Google to search for "09 F9 11 02 9D".... Google knows he rest.

Click to read more ...

New iPod rumors

The rumor engines are buzzing with 'news' about a new Wi-Fi iPod. The estimated release would be the holiday season (X-mas). This means an even more expensive X-mas... iPhone, Wi-Fi iPod, OSX Leopard.... all due in the second half of this year. Better start saving some money :-) B.t.w. I have some doubts on the delay announcements of Leopard. The announcement was only a small article on their (hot)news page. Apple stock didn't suffer that much with the announcement. What would happen to the apple stock if they will ship it during the WWDC? During the WWCD keynote, Steve would tell us about all the great features in Leopard (some of them were kept secret to prevent the copiers at Microsoft :-) ). And at the end of the keynote:

Oh yeah, there is one more thing..... We're shipping Leopard as scheduled starting TODAY! .... [crowd goes absolutely, and totally berserk] Together with iLife 2007, and the new iWork.... [crowd goes mental....] [Steve checks his Apple stock options on his iPhone]

Click to read more ...

100 Million iPods and Counting

Apple announced yesterday that they shipped 100 Million iPod since its introduction in November 2001. Leaving the competion far, far behind :-)

Click to read more ...

Finally, No More DRM

EMI has discovered that DRM is hater by most of the consumer market, and therefor will release their music with the hated DRM. Now it's waiting for the other big players in the music industry (Sony, and Universal). Apple's iTunes will be the first to offer these unrestricted downloads. Note that the new downloads are a bit more expensive, but this includes much better quality (256kbps AAC versus 128kbps AAC). The older versions (with DRM) will still be available, but are also 30 cents cheaper (99 cents versus 1.29). If you have purchased DRM protected songs (released by EMI),you can 'upgrade' them for a lousy 30 cents a song.

Click to read more ...