Blackmoor Vituperative

Susan and I are buying some property just outside Richmond, with the intention of building our dream house on it. If you have Google Earth installed, you can open this file and it will fly you to the location. If not, you will need to install Google Earth first (available at http://earth.google.com/).

We are currently considering a nifty name for our future castle and grounds. The name currently in the lead is “Mirkwood”, but we are open to suggestions.

Update: Alas, that property fell through. According to our soil scientists, the ground there is too wet to build on. I think the exact term they used was “marshland”. The search continues….

Here’s a galaxy that bears a strong resemblance to the evil spectre Timmy, from Mystery Science Theater 300 episode 416, Fire Maidens From Outer Space.

The “fertile constellation of Orion” better stay away from those “hot, young stars”… (buckawow-chicka-wowow).

I’ve been saying that things will get worse before they get better. They just got worse.

On Monday, October 31, alert users discovered that Sony BMG is using copy-protected CDs to surreptitiously install its digital rights management technology onto PCs. You don’t have to be ripping the CD, either–just playing it from your CD-ROM drive triggers the installation. The software installs itself as a root kit, which is a set of tools commonly used to make certain files and processes undetectable, and they’re the favored tool of crackers who are, as Wikipedia puts it, attempting to “maintain access to a system for malicious purposes.” In fact, root kits are often classified alongside Trojan horses. And Mark Russinovich, who created a root-kit detection utility and was one of the first to blog about the Sony intrusion, discovered another little gem when he tried to remove the DRM drivers. It broke his computer — disabling his CD drive.

(from CNet, DRM this, Sony!)

Folks, this is illegal (and I’m reporting it to the FBI). But will anyone at Sony be prosecuted for this crime? Don’t hold your breath.

Here’s a tip from me to Sony, RIAA, and the rest of the media robber barons: if you want to compete with services like AllOfMP3.com, do what they do, do it better, and do it cheaper. If you continue to pin your hopes on DRM, you will fail, you will be reviled, and your stockholders will suffer.

SomethingAwful reviews and critiques some truly awful Halloween costumes. You have to read this.

More fun with pumpkins.

All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced.

Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as “fingerprints or iris scans.”

Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns.

But the Bush administration chose to go ahead with embedding 64KB chips in future passports, citing a desire to abide by “globally interoperable” standards devised by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. Other nations, including the United Kingdom and Germany, have announced similar plans.

(from ZDNet Government Blog, Passports to get RFID chip implants)

By 2015, every US citizen will have a government identity card with an RFID chip (or similar technology), and having your identification card with you will be required for most activities which involve leaving your house — and many which don’t. Mark my words.

After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn’t published a book since 2003’s “Blood Chronicle,” the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she’d left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she’d moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there—and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as “Interview With the Vampire.” What’s up with her? “For the last six months,” she says, “people have been sending e-mails saying, ‘What are you doing next?’ And I’ve told them, ‘You may not want what I’m doing next’.” We’ll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. “I promised,” she says, “that from now on I would write only for the Lord.”

(from Newsweek/MSNBC.com, The Gospel According To Anne)

It’s just as well. Her books have been horrible since she got so powerful that editors don’t dare to touch them. I don’t have the time to read 1000 pages of filler to get 200 pages of story.

Friday, 2005-11-04 – 19:30 – Chesapeake Central Library

Hey Fantasmo fans!

This month Team Fantasmo has selected the two best New York-based cult films ever (at least in our humble opinion) for your viewing enjoyment:

19:30 – The Warriors (1979) – Michael Beck (Xanadu, Megaforce), stars in one of the best action films of all-time, inspired Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” the tale of a band of Greeks caught behind Persian lines that had to battle their way back home. When a powerful gang leader is shot at a conference attended by all the gangs in New York, the blame is wrongfully pinned on The Warriors. Stranded 100 miles from their turf in Coney Island, they will have to make it past 60,000 gang members to find their way home. This edition is a brand new director’s cut, reconstructed as director Walter Hill (Streets of Fire, Southern Comfort) originally intended! Rated R.

21:30 – Escape From New York (1981) – From the mind of director John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) comes the ultimate futuristic action film. In the year 1997, Manhattan Island has been turned into a maximum security prison. When the President’s plane crashes within its boundaries, new convict Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) agrees to undertake a rescue mission for a full pardon. Unfortunately, he will have to get past the Duke of New York (soul singer Isaac Hayes) and a horde of his crazy followers. This edition features an amazing new transfer and long lost opening sequence! Rated R.

For more info, check out our Web site at www.chesapeake.lib.va.us.

Coming in December – Fantasmo Episode 8: Hammer House of Horror

Why OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Your Best Choice

It’s free and it works. Next question?

A fun Flash tutorial on how to carve a pumpkin like a professional.