Blackmoor Vituperative

When the law does not protect people, people will protect themselves.

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

(from MosNews, Russia’s Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered in Apartment)

All I can say is that it’s about damned time. I’ve been wanting to bludgeon spammers, virus writers, and phishers to death for years.

There’s a Heineken commercial making the rounds where Darren, the newest member of The League, demonstrates his power: turning sneakers into bottles of ice-cold Heineken. The superheroes are suitably impressed, but I have to point out something: a bottle of beer is much cheaper than a new sneaker. Oh, well.

Incidentally, they did some neat work on the costumes of the superheroes in this commercial. I kind of wish they’d gave the heroine in the red and black outfit some screen time: that is a fetching outfit (although I hate those ridiculous pointy-toed shoes — someone’s been watching too much “What not to wear“, or as I prefer to call it, “The blind dressing the blind”).

Inkscape Announces 0.42 Release :: http://www.inkscape.org :: Draw Freely.

The Inkscape community today announced the release of Inkscape 0.42, a cross-platform Open Source Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) drawing tool.

Inkscape 0.42 is the most feature-filled release to date, with an exceptional number of major and minor new features, usability improvements, and bug fixes. While some of the new features simply fill long-standing functionality gaps, others are truly revolutionary. Inkscape 0.42 is one step closer to full SVG compliance. This release adds:

• Flowed Text: Text objects that automatically re-flow to any shape (and not just a rectangle).
• Text Selection: One can now select part of a text and apply any style to the selection, just like in a word processing application.
• Gradient Tool: A completely redesigned and much easier to use on-canvas gradient interface with handles displayed directly in the drawing.
• Effects: These are now usable from within Inkscape on all platforms. This version ships with a collection of effects including path interpolation, randomization, and various fractal algorithms.
• Color Swatches: This standard facility of most graphics software is now a part of Inkscape.
• Colored Clones: Clones may now be painted differently from their original.
• Tile Tracing: The Tile Clones dialog can trace an existing image with tiling, producing a multitude of exciting effects.
• Grid Arrange, Baseline Align, Unclumping: There are new, powerful ways to arrange objects.
• Better PS/EPS Export: PostScript level 3 gradient support, better text handling, and a command line option for batch export are in this release.
• Command Line SVG Analysis: Inkscape may now be used from the command line to query coordinates and dimensions of objects in an SVG file.
• Better SVG/CSS Compliance: Notably, internal CSS stylesheets are now supported (read-only).
• Mac OS X Support: In addition to Linux and Windows, Inkscape 0.42 is now available as a fully self-contained dmg package for Mac OS X.

There are also dozens of smaller features and usability enhancements (especially in the Fill & Stroke dialog, Node tool, and drawing tools). In this version the development community closed 404 bugs, some quite serious, and 165 feature requests. Overall, the Inkscape developers are very excited about this release and heartily recommend upgrading.

Kiki loves orange. Capri loves strawberry. Lola loves pineapple. Sophia loves grape. Who doesn’t “wanta Fanta” when the Fantanas wiggle and jiggle onto the screen, bringing cool, fruit-flavored refreshment to accident victims and sweaty bell-hops? The Fantanas, singing and dancing and sporting mod, colorful beach gear, are difficult to resist, but is there more to The Fantanas than their cool fruitiness and Fanta-tastical flavors? There are many questions which yet remain unanswered.

Where is Fantana Island?

According to the official Fanta web site, Fantana Island is in the Caribbean: a small, lush island in the Archipelago of Fant. However, neither Fantana Island nor the Archipelago of Fant appear on any map!

What happened to Tonya?

According to the Fanta Help page, The Fantanas are four girls: Tonya, Sofia, Capri, and Lola. However, on the main Fanta page under the heading “Fantanas Uncovered”, you will not find the Fantanas without their tropical-colored beachwear (which is what I was expecting). Instead, you will discover that the current roster of The Fantanas includes Kiki, Capri, Lola, and Sophia. When did Sofia change her name to Sophia? Was the change is spelling meant to make her more appealing to American audiences, by reminding us of the great Italian actress Sophia Loren? More importantly, what happened to Tonya? Did the puppet-masters behind The Fantanas think they could replace Tonya with Kiki, and no one would notice? What terrible secret did Tonya discover which made her “retirement” necessary? Is Kiki, the new leader of the group, aware of the spectre that lingers over her ascension to power? Why was she chosen over the current members? Is Kiki a tool of the puppet-masters, placed in power to keep the rest of The Fantanas in line? We may never know the truth behind Tonya’s disappearance, but we do know that her example has had a chilling effect on the rest of the girls: since Kiki replaced Tonya, none of The Fantanas has dared to even mention their former leader.

Does Fanta cause mutation?

When The Fantanas first appeared, they appeared to be a healthy, ethnically diverse group of girls bringing fun and refreshment. However, photos of Capri have recently begun circulating, in which her right arm is clearly misshapen, stunted and warped in a manner not unlike the birth defects caused by thalidomide. Is this evidence of an unknown toxin in the Fanta formula? Is this degenerative mutation behind the unexplained disappearance of Tonya? If so, will the rest of The Fantanas also succumb to its sinister effects? And if they do, will Capri, Sofia/Sophia, and Lola be replaced in the same mysterious manner? Only time will tell.

Just remember: you heard it here first.

There are several recent software updates you should be aware of. Most of the changes are security fixes, so you should install these right away.

• 7-Zip 4.23
• Avast! Antivirus 4.6.691
• Firefox 1.0.6
• Gaim 1.4.0
• SystemSuite 6

WinRAR and OpenOffice should have new versions soon, as well, so keep an eye on those projects. OpenOffice 2.0, in particular, is going to be a significant improvement (and OpenOffice is already superior to Microsoft Office, in my opinion, so that’s really saying something).

An amusing exchange between David Berlind and on-line help specialists who are trying to explain to him why one would want to pay $59 extra for the “Centrino” sticker:

On HP’s web site, I can configure two notebooks exactly the same way except for the WiFi radio that’s installed. If I use the standard 802.11b/g radio, I save $59. If I use Intel’s Pro 802.11b/g radio, I pay extra and the system gets the Centrino sticker on it. Why should I pay $59 more to get the Intel radio and the Centrino sticker?

(from HP’s Threadlogs: How to Mess with a Buyer’s Head 101, ZDNet)

By all accounts, Half-Life 2 is a good game. Unfortunately, you can’t play it until you “activate” it over the Internet, using the publisher’s “Steam” server. “Steam” is why I will not buy this game, even though the first Half-Life is one of my all-time favorite computer games. I will not support companies that treat their customers like criminals. Just say no to “product activation”.

Besides, game companies go out of business all the time. What if “Steam” isn’t available a year from now? The game would be unplayable. I will not buy a game that is held hostage to a server that may not even be there a year from now. Whoever thought that was a good idea is a paper-pushing idiot.

At last! Unearthed Films has released a 2-DVD collector’s edition of Rock & Rule, the cult classic Canadian animation feature from 1983. Rock & Rule features great music and cutting-edge animation that, to my mind, has never been matched for sheer inventiveness. In addition ot the main feature, the 2-DVD collector’s edition includes the director’s commentary, a “making of” featurette, an alternate Canadian version, an additional short feature “The Devil And Daniel Mouse”, and a stills gallery.

There’s an interesting interview of the cast and crew of Rock & Rule over at frames per second magazine. Check it out.

Mmmmm… laboratory meat:

Laboratories using new tissue engineering technology might be able to produce meat that is healthier for consumers and cut down on pollution produced by factory farming, researchers said. While NASA engineers have grown fish tissue in lab dishes, no one has seriously proposed a way to grow meat on commercial levels.

But a new study conducted by University of Maryland doctoral student Jason Matheny and his colleagues describe two possible ways to do it.

Writing in the journal Tissue Engineering, Matheny said scientists could grow cells from the muscle tissue of cattle, pigs, poultry or fish in large flat sheets on thin membranes. These sheets of cells would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked to increase thickness and resemble meat.

Using another method, scientists could grow muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The resulting tissue could be used to make processed meat such as chicken nuggets or hamburgers.

…

The demand for meat is increasing worldwide, Matheny said. “China’s meat demand is doubling every ten years,” he said. “Poultry consumption in India has doubled in the last five years.”

(from News.com.au, New hamburgers ‘grown in laboratory’

It appears that the elusive dream of legal cannibalism is almost within reach! I can almost taste it….

Dr. Madblood has been getting pre-empted a lot lately, but a new show is on the horizon:

Doctor Madblood Presents A Tale of Two Satires, July 9, 2005

Madblood: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Star Wars”

Dorothy (Jerry F. Harrell), sucked into a scary twister, is dropped into a colorful non-suable parodyland, where she meets a Scarecrow (Carter Perry), a Tin Man (Craig T. Adams) and a Cowardly Loon (Mike Arlo). Oops, no, that would be *three* satires. There was only budget for two. Max Madblood gets a kick out of his trusty Ethermorphic Deceiver and is hurled, along with Tinker Grant, onto the improbable Starship, “Heart of Darkness.” There they meet strange beings from a popular blockbuster film adaptation of a revered cult radio/TV/book classic. As if things aren’t confusing enough, these creatures seem to be moonlighting from their day jobs as characters in another blockbuster summer film. We don’t want to give too much away, but, trust us, this is a Madblood episode you don’t want to hear about secondhand, since it won’t likely be rerun anytime soon. “Help me, Okee Bum Muskogee, help me!”

(from Dr. Madblood’s Web Site)