Author: Bob Beela

Enno ter Keurst, Waalre, the Netherlands, IT Consultant with Atos Origin.
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Danish embassy torched in Syria

News headline on the BBC News website ‘Danish embassy torched in Syria‘.

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It is a reaction which you could have expected. The bad thing is my first reaction is; Screw them, if they think they can burn down our ambassies and get away with it, I say; I hope they publish the fucking the cartoons everywhere!

New Zealand newspapers have also decided to publish the cartoons because they think their readers have a right to know what all the fuzz is about. South Africa newspapers are being forced by courts not to publish the cartoons.
Now you can see that the issue is political and not religious. If it were religous these kind of outbursts would have happened in November last year when the cartoons were first published.
Now that it is political; publish the cartoons and talk!

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You have got to read this!

Goto this link.

Client: We don’t want to do this full-page newspaper ad in color. It’s not about the money. We just don’t want the ad to attract too much attention.”

Customer calling book and video store where I work… Hello, I am a high school teacher here in town. I am looking for a video of the Gettysburg address. And I do NOT want a reenactment! I want the REAL Lincoln!

Below is a call I placed to a tech support line for for an issue with a piece of mission critical hardware. Me: Thanks for calling me back. Tech: No Problem. Me: We are having issues with your virtual network adapter drivers. For some reason when I enable the network adapter all the COM ports on the system lock up. Tech: Oh yea, we know about that issue. Me: Ok, is there an updated driver? Tech: Nope. But we are working on that now. Me: What is the estimated date of arrival? Tech: hold please…music…Sir? We really don’t know. Me: Ok, is there a workaround? Tech: Definately! Me: Ok, what is it? Tech (dead serious): Don’t use the network adapter if you want to use your other COM ports!

“can you guys make it more like a power-point presentation, you know, with the sliding text stuff and all?”

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Solaris (2002)

This weekend I watched George Clooney in Solaris. Good movie, slow but interesting. And I have to say Clooney is more of an actor than I expected.
Solaris

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Music swappers fined

On the BBC news website.

High Court judges ordered two men to pay the British Phonographic Industry between £1,500 and £5,000 for making thousands of songs available online.
(link)

What they did was wrong, but mabe the industry should also look at all the taxes we pay to compensate the music ‘theft’. We pay tax on cassettes, blank CD’s, blank DVD’s, recording equipment, VCR tapes, there was a proposal for a tax on mp3 players, when we walkinto a store with background music, etc. Somehow I get the feeling I’m paying more than once for my music.

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Vista features on your XP desktop

You can find some nifty new Vista tools on the web. Two of them I will mention here; sidebar and a Photo organizer/editing tool (Microsoft Max). You can find Microsoft Max at this site where you can download a version. It reminds me a bit off Picasa. The free Google tool (link). I personally use Adobe Photoshop Elements and I like it very much.
Microsoft screenedit

The other thing I would like to point you too is Sidebars. Usefull if you have a big screen, not if you work on a laptop of tablet PC (like I do). (Link)
Microsoft Sidebar

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Networked high definition DVD and media player

Is tumbled across this truly nice device; Kiss DP-600 (link here).

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On its website it says;

First release of a new generation of Networked DVD and Media Players, the DP-600 will seduce you by its quality and its ability to playback video in High Definition. Its Ethernet and Wi-Fi Network Connectivity will amaze you, giving you ability to subscribe and stream Video-On-Demand and IP-Television Services. KiSS Online will change the way you look at your television, you can now check what’s on TV today, listen to WebRadio, view the weather forecast, see the latest stock indices and play games. Connect your PC to the KiSS DP-600 and play all your Multimedia files directly to your television with KiSS PC-Link. And of course, the DP-600 will also play all your DVDs, DivX, Windows Media 9, Nero Digital, MP3 and the majority of the file format available.

The specs are really inpressive. Move over Microsoft Media player!