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Tinsel Town Club: Stop Disney and the entertainment industry from trampling your rights!

Quote of the Day

Apple has made the noises of being the 'Java Platform', but has yet to deliver. But as Steve stated,in their defense, they're trying.

That many applications can't be delivered on the Mac OS, is no failing on the developers part. I have been delivering applications to thousands of users ( Win, Linux, Solaris, Mac), but it's been a battle to maintain the Apple implementation. The applications always work 100% uniformly across Win, Linux, and Solaris in JRE 1.3.1 (same bugs and functionality), but 80% of the problems are always in the Mac implimentation.

Since the Mac Java delivery has ALWAYS been 8 months to a year behind the rest of the Java community, our deliveries have gone from 60% Mac to 12% Mac. The 12% have been retained through significant professional risk and detriment. Most converts to the Linux/Win side have been a result of 'enough is a enough' and the desire to stop wasting money and resources.

--Peter Zaharkiv on the java-dev mailing list, Sat, 25 May 2002

World Cup 2002

One billion people and a blog.

France 0 : 1 Senegal

What do you do when there's nothing on TV? Watch the last hour of the Miss Universe 2002 pageant. Oxana Fedorova of Russia won, although she wasn't my favorite by a long shot. Out of the last 15 contestants I would have voted for Miss Cyprus.

Attack of the Clowns

We went to see Episode II yesterday. We both hated it.

I though the plot was poorly piecemealed together. The acting was about as bad as I've seen, with the exception of Natalie Portman. Whomever had the brilliant idea to cast Samuel Jackson, aka Jedi Shaft from the Bronx, should be shot on sight.

We didn't expect much from the movie to start with, but hoped the CGI scenes would be worth the trip. They truly weren't. If this is to be the future of computer animations, please go back to the old ways.

It really didn't help that Christopher Lee's big fight scene was comical, at best.

Hibachi

We bought a little Hibachi grill at Fred Meyer's on Sunday. We got rid of our big smoker last summer as it was badly rusted.

We cooked a couple big Costco steaks on it. They turned out perfect. Definitely the best $9.99 we've ever spent.

Diet

Vicki and I are doing a modified version of the Atkins induction diet for the next 14 days. We also started to go workout together, 3 times a week.

Since I pretty much decided to move back to Europe in a not so distant future, I thought it would be a good idea to slowly re-familiarize myself with the EU mentality by regularly watching the BBC World News on BBC America.

20 years ago, while in France, I used to religiously watch the Evening News with Dan Rather. I'm sure I didn't grasp any of the subtle nuances as my command of the English language was pretty basic at the time. Nevertheless, I was in awe of American news programs. Nowadays, I pretty much can't stand watching the news. Although I have to admit that the BBC show is a breath of fresh air.

The first thing I noticed is that we pretty much don't get world news in the US, just the big headlines. That's sad. We really have no clues on what is going on in the world. Heck, we don't even know what's really happening in Afghanistan. I heard statements from a couple US and UK allied forces representatives that frankly raised the hair on the back of my neck.

I also realized that the US media favors reporting (and editorializing) on what people said instead of actually showing or quoting them. On the other hand the BBC always seems to directly quote or show people making statements. For example, the day Bush left for his trip to Europe, they showed one of the White House press secretary assistant answering questions about the President's itinerary, etc. Which, of course, reminded me of C.J. on The West Wing. But I also came to the realization they never show that kind of stuff on the evening news. We almost never get to witness White House press briefings, we get a bunch of selective he said/she said or sound bites, at best.

I think it all comes down to the BBC news format. I would describe it as being like CNN's Headline News with more depth, interviews and less propaganda. Works for me.

I canceled my NetFlix membership yesterday. In the last 4 months we managed to rent the following movies:

1. The Fast and the Furious
2. Summer Catch
3. Rock Star
4. Josie and the Pussycats
5. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
6. AntiTrust
7. Shrek
8. U-571
9. The Glass House
10. Valentine
11. Saving Silverman
12. Dracula 2000
13. The Musketeer
14. Save the Last Dance
15. Joy Ride
16. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
17. Druids
18. Angel Eyes
19. The Forsaken
20. Baise Moi
21. Rules Of Engagement
22. Evolution
23. Driven
24. Along Came a Spider
25. Finding Forrester
26. Primary Colors
27. Training Day
28. Legally Blonde
29. Iron Monkey
30. The Gift
31. Texas Rangers
32. Behind Enemy Lines
33. Heist
34. The Others
35. Zoolander

The shipping/return delays have seriously improved (1-2 days) since they opened a warehouse in Tacoma, but even though, 20 bucks a month hardly seems worth it.