Apple licensing iPod and iTMS to HP

25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments 

According to Apple's press release, to HP's press release and to this article at Forbes, HP and Apple have signed an agreement that will allow HP to distribute portable MP3 players based on Apple's highly successful iPod technology. At the same time, HP's new computers and laptops will come with the iTunes softare preinstalled.

Mandatory links to the Slashdot discussion about the topic and to Francesc's post on the same (when it comes to Apple, he's always the first carrying the news )

Blog spam. How long until...?

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Blogging | 0 Comments 

In the previous incarnation of this blog, I already mentioned a few times the issue of blog spam (sorry, I'd offer permalinks but they were all sadly lost) Today I found about what to do to prevent spam, but I'd say the solution is rather extreme: switch off the commenting feature in your site... That's like saying, since the streets are dangerous, don't ever leave your place and in my opinion, that's not the right attitude.

The poster also recommends to leave the trackback feature enabled and I decided to leave a comment with a rather nasty idea... Trackback spam and how long it will take before spammers notice that it's way easier to automate trackback spam than comment spam. I am not a spammer and haven't even considered becoming one but the sooner we can become aware of our weak and vulnerable points, the better. The funny thing is that there are not so many solutions to prevent trackback spam either! I'll have to think about it

IT'S COMING!!

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: General | 5 Comments 

I promised myself I wasn't going to say anything until I have it here, but... IT'S COMING!!!

Frank Herbert's Children of Dune

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Movies | 0 Comments 

Last weekend I finally got my hands on the 3 episodes that make up Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. This mini-series is the continuation to Dune, based on the 2nd and 3rd books of the saga: "Dune Messiah" and "Children of Dune" (the saga has 6 books, being "God Emperor of Dune" the 4th, "Heretics of Dune" the 5th and "Chapterhouse: Dune" the 6th and last for the time being) The second book follows the life of Paul Muad'Dib after he has destroyed the Sardaukar forces of the former emperor Shaddam IV, his new status of messiah and his life as a living God, showing how much he despises the religion and myths created around him (not by him!), including a bloody jihad by his Fremen troops that reached the farthest corners of the known universe. The book also tells about his enemies and all the plots to destroy Muad'Dib, who is as much worshipped as hated... The third book (episodes two and three) tells the story of Muad'Dib's twins, Leto and Ghanima and the demise of Muad'Dib's sister, Alia.

Warning: Spoilers in here!!

The first I would advise everybody who's interested in watching this is that to first read the books and then watch the series. I didn't have any problem following the events in the series but I had the feeling a few times that, I hadn't read the books', I'd have absolutely no clue what is going on at some moments... While the series stay quite true to the book, some things just went too fast and some others were changed a little.

I really liked the way they represented the capital city of the empire and the most important city of Dune: Arrakeen. I didn't like, though, the way they represented the desert, or the sietchs (more on the 3D effects later) About the desert shots, they were always sets! I mean, you could always tell that it wasn't a desert but a closed set! It felt really annoying to me because the whole planet of Dune spins around the maginificent presence of the desert, the sandworms and of course, Shai-Hulud, and they gave such a crappy view of it.

About the special effects, they just look soooo lame and childish! It's not that they're bad, it's that if you compare them to stunning work like the effects in The Lord of The Rings trilogy, they simply look like crap. They never look real, they always look synthetic and it was really annoying because there were plenty of them! Also, they designed the desert sietchs to look more like the ancient rock-carved city of Petra than a real sietch, as described in Herbert's books. And speaking of the things that were changed in the series, some of them didn't annoy me much (for example, in the series Stilgar is never captured when he revolts against Alia, while in the book he's keep in the dungeons of the keep, with Jessica, until Leto frees them) but I didn't really like some other litlle details: Leto's transformation into a sandworm is simply awful. In the book, his whole body is covered by sandtrout while in the series only part of his shoulder is covered... More things, the Bene Gesserit reverend mothers are supposed to wear a black aba and in the series they're dressed as if they had come from the latest fashion catwalk from Paris (and the same goes for Jessica, when he returns to Arrakis) The Bene Gesserit are supposed to look powerful, mystical (like in David Lynch's version of Dune) while in the movie they look like a joke. I noticed a few more like those mistakes but I think you get the idea...

Don't get me wrong, the series was fine but I wouldn't rate it with anything higher than a 6 out of 10. It had too many mistakes and the effects were so bad that those things really substract from the final score... And about the acting, it was also quite believable but just bearable. I couldn't really see any outstanding performance so my final veredict is that this series will be interesting for the legions of Dune fans and for some people interested in sci-fi.

One of those little games...

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Fun | 13 Comments 

...that will make you spend the whole morning trying to break your own record

Smack the pingu!

My own record is a crappy 501.3m, but record here at the moment is 593.5! Can you break it?

It is finally here!

25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Apple | 1 Comments 

If a few days ago I said that it was coming, it finally arrived yesterday: my new Apple PowerBook G4 15" It's the version with a PowerPC G4 running at 1.25Ghz, 512mb of RAM, 80Gb hard disk, DVD-R/CD-RW drive, etc. It simply is one of the best machines I've ever seen: thin, beautifully designed and silent. There is no way you could tell that there is a laptop running in a room where a PB is.

I'll write more about it in the coming days, as I am still getting used to it. You know, I find it strange that after all these years, now there is an "Apple" key, a "Command" key plus the control key. The system is fantastic and it is unbelievably easy to use... I mean, I had never before used Mac OS X but it didn't take me very long to start using all its shortcuts, drag-n-drop operations, etc. Not to mention that it looks fantastic and it's full of eye-candy (I'll post some screenshots soon )