Blackmoor Vituperative

On this day in 1956, Kim Cattrall was born. You may recall that Ms. Cattrall portrayed Dr. Wickings in Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode 403, City Limits. She also starred in one of Crow T. Robot’s favorite films, Mannequin, as well as one of my own personal favorites, Big Trouble In Little China.

Kim Cattrall was born on August 21, 1956 in Liverpool, England. At the age of three months, emmigrated with her father, Dennis, and mother, Shane, to Canada, where a large number of her films have been made. At the age of eleven, Kim returned to her native country and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Upon her return to Vancouver, Canada, Kim graduated high school at age sixteen and won a scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. During her final year at the academy, she won a part in Otto Preminger‘s Rosebud (1975). Following her film debut Kim returned to the theatre first in Vancouver and then played repertory in Toronto prior to winning a contract at Universal in Los Angeles.

(from The Internet Movie Database, Biography for Kim Cattrall)

Happy birthday, Kim.

Christopher Walken announces his intention to run for President of the United States:

“Our great country is in a terrible downward spiral. We’re outsourcing jobs, bankrupting social security, and losing lives at war. We need to focus on what’s important– paying attention to our children, our citizens, our future. We need to think about improving our failing educational system, making better use of our resources, and helping to promote a stable, safe, and tolerant global society. It’s time to be smart about our politics. It’s time to get America back on track.”

(from The Official Homepage of the Walken 2008 Campaign)

Amazon.com has the Palm Tungsten T5 Handheld for $332 with free shipping. Free Executive Case with code PALMFREECASE [Exp 8/29].

This is a great PDA. I’ve owned numerous PDAs, from Handspring, Palm, and even Tapwave, and this is the best I’ve ever owned. It has everything a PDA should have:

• PalmOS (5.4)
• slim form factor
• big, bright 320×480 color screen
• plenty of memory (256MB)
• Bluetooth
• SD / SDIO / MMC expansion slot

It’s simply awesome.

The list of scumbag hackers who try to break into my server just keeps growing. It’s really just too unfortunate that their failure can’t carry some sort of immediate, painful, and potentially lethal penalty. Anyway, I updated the site statistics.

Mark your calendars now to join Doctor Madblood for the next Madblood Presents film at the Naro Expanded Cinema. It’s George Pal’s “The Time Machine” on the weekend of August 19th – 21st. Go to http://www.narocinema.com or call 757-625-6276 for NARO schedule information.

Don’t Miss “Dr. Madblood Presents” at 8 PM every Saturday on WSKY-TV, SKY4 (channel 4 on Cox Cable; channel 7296 on DirecTV and Dish Network).

In tangentially-related news, on Saturday August 13, 2005, Craig T. Adams (from the Madblood Show and Fuzz and Stuffing Puppets) will be demonstrating how he makes puppets from next to nothing and conducting a character voice workshop at the Virginia (Mini) Festival of Puppet Ministry and Creative Arts, held at Calvary Assembly of God, 1380 N. Mallory Street, Hampton VA 23663. For schedule, fees and festival info, go to http://rainbowpuppets.com/festival.htm or call Rainbow Puppets at (757) 880-4784.

Here’s how to turn off Windows Genuine Advantage Validation so that you can properly maintain and update a Windows installation.

1. Go to either Windows Updates or Microsoft Updates.
2. Install KB892130 (Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool)
3. In IE, Tools > Manage Add-ons…
4. Select Show: Add-ons that have been used by Internet Explorer
5. Select Name: Windows Genuine Advantage
6. Select Settings: Disable
7. Click OK.
8. Close IE.
9. Windows Update or Microsoft Update should now work without the obnoxious and unnecessary interference of the “validation” spyware.

The point of this is not that I condone using software without a license. The point of this is that I condemn companies that treat their customers like criminals, and I will do whatever I can (within the law) to undermine their efforts.

After what seems like an eternity, someone is finally putting the smack-down on SCO.

On Friday, Novell Inc. filed its Answer in the U.S. District Court in Utah to The SCO Group Inc.‘s claims that it, and not Novell, owned Unix’s copyrights. Novell also filed counterclaims asking the court to force SCO to turn over its Unix licenses royalties to it and to attach SCO’s assets to ensure that it can pay Novell.

(from eWeek, “Novell Goes for SCO’s Throat”)

If you haven’t been paying attention to the SCO vs. Linux soap opera, there’s a pretty good summary called There’s No Business Like SCO Business on the site IT-Analysis.com. That article also has some interesting tidbits pertaining to the automobile accident in which Princess Diana of Wales and Dodi Fayed were killed.

The usual suspects on this one are, the British Royal Family (of course), MI6 (naturally), arms manufacturers (remember all those anti landmine activities of Princess Di?) and the CIA, which foolishly revealed that it must have been involved by denying that it had anything to do with it (it really did – can you believe that?). Of course there are unusual suspects too – these include the Cult of Diana (a hang over from Roman times given new life by Diana’s death), the Jews (maybe they qualify as usual suspects, but on this one, I personally think it’s a little North-By-South-East) and black magicians, who as we all know, are wont to arrange ritualistic car crashes in Parisian underpasses.

(from IT-Analysis.com, There’s No Business Like SCO Business)

I hate to say it, but it sounds like Windows Vista may actually have some useful user-interface improvements. According to an article at eWeek, Windows Vista Takes Cues From Tiger, Microsoft has refined its user interface for Vista, in some cases doing something worthwhile in the process.

At the simplest level, “My Computer” and “My Documents” are being renamed “Computer” and “Documents”. Of course, most of us have been renaming these directories like that for years, but it’ll be nice to have one less modification to do when re-installing Windows. Vista will also provide file-preview icons up to 128×128 pixels. For those of us running high-resolution screens, that will be a nice addition. The improved search also sounds like it might be useful, although to be frank I doubt I’ll use it: it would have to be pretty darned impressive to be better than Google Desktop.

I will have to reserve judgement until I see how they implement so-called “Digital Rights Management” in Vista. If Big Brother is inside, I’ll pass, thank you. Still, at least it sounds like they’re doing something useful up in Redmond, instead of bloating up the next version of a Microsoft application with useless crap like they usually do. And it’s worth remembering that no matter how badly they screw it up, the user interface of Windows Vista will almost certainly be more powerful, flexible, and intuitive than that abomination known as the Apple Macintosh.

“Apple: making easy things difficult and complicated things impossible.”

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”).