Year: 2003

Diego has a more detailed writeup of The Animatrix.  There are probably some spoliers in there, so you have been warned.  The connections between “The Kid” and Reloaded, as subtle as they are, are pure evil genius.

Slashdot notes that Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is out and is free.  Someone at idsoftware has a .torrent for it.  I’m currently downloading at 35k and uploading at 22k.  It’ll be up while I’m at work, leech away.

Update: I played it a bit last night, but I will probably stick to other games to get my fix.  I can’t put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel “just right” about it.

This just in:

The PHP developers are proud to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.2. This release contains a huge number of bug fixes and is a strongly recommended update for all users of PHP. Full list of fixes can be found in the NEWS file.

Via Slashdot: Waste, released by the guys that do Winamp, is “a secure, distributed mesh-like networking protocal and platform.”  What can it do?  “This v1.0 beta release uses RSA (key based) and Blowfish encryption for security, and features Instant Messanging and group chat, along with file browsing, searching, and transfer.”

It’s GPL, it’s out there.  I wasn’t able to get a network connection, but the installation process and key generation process was painless.  We love you, Nullsoft!

Joi Ito:

I wrote a script that gets your technorati cosmos and creates a sidebar file of inbound blogs like the one on my blog and sends you email and jabber chats when there are new inbound links. It’s written in python. It’s ugly and totally amateur, but Dave Sifry said that making it available now was more “in the spirit of things” than trying to clean it up before I made it available. It’s a bit embarrasing, but like with my Emergent Democracy Paper, I hope the releasing it early and getting feedback will be a good learning experience. Anyway, feedback is greatly appreciated and I hope to continue working on it. It is available on the TechnoBot Wiki Page. Please feel free to add feature requests or make comments about the way I am doing this.

GPL license of course.

Very cool, thanks for getting it out there.

Jeremy Zawodny:

This is interesting. According to Bruce Perens, SCO’s 10-K filing indicates that Novell is right.

Kerneltrap:

With the latest release of the 2.5 development kernel, Linux creator Linus Torvalds noted that he’s planning to work with Andrew Morton [interview] soon to start the pre-2.6 series, moving toward “more of a code slush“, at least a little closer toward a stabalizing code freeze.

From the Creative Commons blog:

We’ve updated our list of O’Reilly book titles, adding 33 more titles that are set to be released under the Founders’ Copyright.

My friend Mike pointed me to this article at CNN, which gives some details on the PSX:

The revamped PS2 comes with a built-in DVD recorder, a TV tuner, a 120 GB hard drive and will let owners download movies and music from the Internet.

Most importantly, the PSX comes with ALL KINDS of connectors in the back:

I’ll take 2.  It looks like we’ll see these in the states sometime in 2004.  Hopefully someone will port Samba to the PSX platform and we’ll be able to stream our music and video over the network.

Runtime Revolution has released Revolution 2.0.  I downloaded the demo and all I can think of is HyperCard on steroids!  It looks really easy to get things done, the scripting language seems simple enough (think AppleScriptish), and there’s even a great SOAP demo.

PCWorld/IDG:

Oversupply and low-cost entrants to the market for wireless Internet chips are causing prices to plummet as volumes grow, according to a study released by market researcher TechKnowledge Strategies Tuesday.

The average price for a chip that enables connections for an 802.11b wireless LAN (WLAN), also known as Wi-Fi, was $16.06 in 2002, but that price will drop to $6.61 by the end of 2003, said Mike Feibus, principal analyst for TechKnowledge in Scottsdale, Arizona. Revenue from the sales of all wireless chips is expected to decline to $340.2 million in 2003, from $368.7 million in revenue last year, even as volumes soar from 22.5 million to 41.3 million chips sold.

I hope that this is correct and that 802.11b prices drop even further.

Frank Koehntopp at Mobitopia:

Sony Ericsson has now finally released certain attractive and important Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) for the P800 – the Camera and Vibrator API’s.

Also from DPReview this morning:

Sony has today announce two new U-series ultra-compact digital cameras. The DSC-U30 (available in three colors) is essentially an update to the DSC-U20, it has a two megapixel CCD sensor and fixed lens. The ‘new feature’ for the DSC-U30 is a convex mirror on the front of the camera so that you (or your friends) can see yourselves before taking a shot. The DSC-U60 is Sony’s first ruggedized and waterproofed model, it has a rubber body and is waterproof in up to 1.5 m (5 ft) of water. Both cameras should be available in July at $200 and $250.

Luckily there’s nothing really new with the U30 except for the mirror on the front.  It’s still 2 megapixels.  I was worried that I was going to have to replace my DSC-U20 already.

RSS-IM:

The RSS-IM Gateway allows you to let visitors read your RSS feed through an instant messgaing network such as AIM, MSN, ICQ, YIM, or Jabber. It is very easy to set up and can easily handle hundreds of users.

It’s written in Perl.  Very cool.

DPReview:

Nikon has today announced the new five megapixel four times optical zoom Coolpix 5400 (the Coolpix 5000’s sucessor). The Coolpix 5400 is especially interesting because it offers a wide angle 28 mm equiv. four times zoom compared to the typical 35 or 38 mm equiv. Other noteworthy specifications include 1/1.8″ sensor (the Coolpix 5000 used a 2/3″), ISO 50 – 400 sensitivity, up to 10 minute Bulb exposures and front or rear flash sync. I can’t however see RAW format support, which is a pity. Available “Summer 2003” with a list price of $799.

I was telling someone yesterday that with $200 in rebates, the Coolpix 5000’s days were limited.

Darik’s Boot and Nuke:

Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

Here’s what 1.0.0 features:

This release features a graphical user interface which lets users interactively choose the devices they wish to wipe. Also included are the DoD 5220-22.M standard wipe, the RCMP TSSIT OPS-II standard wipe, the PRNG Stream wipe, additional verification modes, and a rounds option.

Use with extreme caution.  Don’t blame me.

CNet:

AMD lowered the prices of its desktop and mobile Athlon XP processors as much as 35 percent Monday, while Intel cut the cost of its desktop Celeron chips up to 18 percent Sunday night.

Yesterday I pointed my browser to Amazon to look for something.  On the page that popped up, above the fold, was a note about a Gap sale (t-shirts and shorts 25% off).  It featured a particular orange t-shirt that I happened to have purchased in the store the day before.

Amazon, you’re too good!

TheServerSide:

Eclipse has released a plan for version 3.0, skipping on from its 2.2 branch. Version 3.0 requires J2SE 1.4, and is breaking some compatibility with its 2.x counterpart. The Eclipse consortium also elected a new supporting member, INNOOPRACT, a German company that creates Eclipse plugins.

The full details are on the Eclipse site.

CNet lets the cat out of the bag:

Going by names like eDonkey and BitTorrent, many of the latest generation of file-swapping tools have been designed specifically to increase the efficiency and speed of transfer for large files such as movie files. Some of these tools have been in development for several years, but are just now reaching the critical mass needed to make a dent in the file-trading world.

Let’s hope the script kiddies and kazaa-heads aren’t paying any attention.  The geeks have a good thing going here.