FireFox 1.5 released

FireFox 1.5 has been released. Use it, embrace it, love it. FireFox and ThunderBird has a new home too. It's now mozilla.com instead of mozilla.org. It's all grown up, ready to be a commercial entity.

New iMac is here

The new toys have arrived. Two 20 inch 2.1ghz G5 500gb SATA iMac arrived this morning. Here is me opening them. Had to get two, because otherwise fight might break out in the house. Here is a picture of the iMac next to my 24 inch LCD. The only problem is, I think I'm running out of desk space. My office now looks like Lain's room.

Quake 2 ported to Java

Jake2 is a port of the GPL’d Quake2 game engine from id Software to Java. It uses jogl for 3d, joal for audio. Runs on Windows, Linux, and OSX. It performs at about 85% to 105% of the original C code with current released JDK 1.5. Yes, Java is slow, I can tell. Here is a local hosted screenshot.

Hello Kitty everywhere!

My friend A just got This. I so want one! It's a mp3 player that can also record sound into wav format. It comes in 256 mb, 512 mb, and 1 gig version. The feet are for both volume adjustment, as well as skip forward and backward on play list. The right hand is power on and play button. The left hand is hold button. The connector below the left ear is both for head phone as well as USB syncing.

Top 10 reasons Intel won't accept AMD's dual-core duel

AMD challenged Intel to a dual-core duel last year. As expected Intel won't do it. So AMD came up with the top 10 reasons why. Top 10 Reasons Intel will not Participate in the Dual-Core Duel 10. Tried to follow their own roadmap to get to the duel 9. Decided to take the "front-side bus" to the duel; got stuck in a bottleneck 8. The "Intel Inside" stickers they used to package the cores together keep melting 7. Too busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Itanic 6. "Hey, we don't expect anyone to actually buy these things!" 5. Didn't want to compete when they realized that the duel would involve actual "rules" of fair competition 4. They couldn't get a permit from the fire department to emit that much heat 3. No systems available yet - protective clothing used by manufacturers only safe for up to 149 watts 2. Dell told them they weren't allowed to participate And the number one reason Intel won't accept the dual core duel: 1. Moore's Law has been replaced by "Paul's Paradox": the number of canceled products per year at Intel will double every year after the introduction of the AMD Opteron processor.

Rootkit, or what they pass off as DRM

This is by far the best summary of the entire event. It's rather sad really, so many users were harmed in the process all in the name of a large company doing what they figure they can get away with. And doing it with support of the companies we are all suppose to trust and depend on. I think I'm done buying Sony music.

Flash security problem

This is bad. You will want to update your Flash player ASAP. I wish I can get away not using Flash player. In fact, I purposely don't install it on my Linux Desktop. Problem like this tend to be cross platform. Not to mention Flash is the #1 way to get around Popup blocking. AJAX is rapidly becoming the tool of choice for dynamic website anyway. Just look at Gmail, Google Earth and the new Yahoo Mail Beta. No doubt that makes Macromedia very happy, NOT.

Yay for due process

The UK's new anti-terrorism legislation failed. The bill allow suspects to be held without due process for 90 days. Glad to see that civil rights fend off legal attacks.

Pay more, get less

CBS and NBC jumped into the game, not wanting to be left behind by Apple and ABC. On the surface, it seems cheaper, after all it's only 99 cents instead of $1.99. Here is the problem. You buy it, download it, and it self destruct after 1 week. Great, basically I'm paying to record the show, watch it, then it's gone. Instead of either recording it myself, or buy it from Apple, and keep it forever. Why do companies keep coming up with products that cost more, give you less, and control how you view it at all times?