In case you didn’t know ( and like you’re intersted ) I’ve launched yet another new site. Its called Soundloads and I am posting a link to one cool new legal, free MP3 every day.
So far so good, no trouble in finding great music to post every day, of course I still gotta get february’s archive posted…
So Tamara has decided to launch a website to showcase her photography, you can check it out over at Tamaras Gallery.
Not much there yet except for the home page and the gallery itself, but she’ll flesh it out directly.
From the shadenfreud department….
Okay if taking pleasure in someone elses misfortune is a mortal sin I am doomed. More specifically, I enjoy it when people that purport to tell you how to live your life are shown to be unable to walk the walk. Bill O’Rielly is the latest contestant in the do as I say not as I do olympics.
Just like Bill the Gambler Bennett, Pill poppin’ Rush Limbaugh, and sexual sinners Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggert, Mr. Orielly finds himself in the middle of a shit storm without a bumbershoot.
While famous for wanting his guests of his TV show to shut up, and taking Ludacris to task, he is in danger of becoming famous for wanting to rub falafel over intimate parts of a suboridantes body.
Lawrense Lessig opines regarding O’Reilly’s Faux News Persona, and while dead on, it’s is not nearly as fun as this Fark photoshop contest.
My take - O’Reilly has a pattern of calling “folks” that won’t appear on his shows cowards, or chickens, etc. but what has Mr. O done? That’s right, cancelled his scheduled appearences since this scandal broke.
It seems that some believers, in some Christian circles, are not happy that the president is the de facto leader of the religious right ( Gary Bauer’s words, not mine ), going as far as to say that George W has ushered in an era of Christian Fascism.
Tim Appelo has published an outstanding article on www.seattleweekly.com that discusses the Christian right and the Christian left are engaged in a debate over who ‘owns’ Jesus—and whether Dubya is a force for good or evil.
None other than Gary Heart tackles this topic as well writing about the hypocrisy of bush and the religious right and as always Christopher Hitchens has something insightful to say. I’ve lost some respect for Mr. Hitchens since he became an apologist for the president and the right, but there is no denying his ability to present a great argument.
Even I am not willing to say that George W. Bush has become the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State, but I do think that it is interesting that a large plurality of Americans think that one type of fundamentalism is good, but other fundamentalism is bad…
So I was thinking about software the other day, free and commercial. All of our servers run Linux -but my desktop machines are Windows XP based ( with Cygwin of course ). So I was thinking that one reason that Linux was so great is that there was all of this great, free software that ran on it. This is undeniably true (sendmail, Apache, KDE, Gnucash, Emacs, etc.) but then I started thinking that in addition to the aforementioned Cygwin a lot of my favorite windows apps were freeware as well.
Now, to be sure, some of the best Windows desktop software cost big bucks - Photoshop, Sonic Foundry’s Acid, Vegas Video, etc. are all pricey and the best available app for their respective tasks, without a freebie counterpart. But for some other high profile apps there are perfectly suitable free replacements.
For example I have no idea why anyone buys Microsoft’s Office products these days. Open Office is a LGPL’d licensed office suite and will suffice for 90% of the worlds word processing and spread sheet needs. In a similar vein Zone Alarm is a firewall that is good enough for most people’s security needs - and you do have security needs whether you know it or not. Combine it with Adaware and all you need to do is add a virus app and you have the security triumvirate.
Some of my other favorite free winware: Putty, a great little ssh client, Irfanview an indispensable image viewer, Revelation from snadboy reveals passwords that you have stored and forgotten, VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility, Partition Saving, and The excellent Cryptainer LE - Free 128bit Encryption Software.
Some of these app are better then anything commercially available ( see adaware, Cryptainer… ) and some are “almost as good” like Open Office. But when the “better” commercial software costs hundreds of dollars and the vast majority of users never use the features that make it “better” is it really better? Anyway, I think one should use free software where available, and I think that one should pony up for commercial software when it is the better option.
The following is a list of one mans attempt at creatin a list of the top one hundred movies of all time.
Millers Crossing
Dr Strangelove
In Cold Blood
Unforgiven
Citizen Kane
Double Indemnity
Manchurian Candidate
The Third Man
Touch of Evil
Strangers on a Train
Rear Window
Rasing Arizona
Last Tango in Paris
The Usual Suspects
Chinatown
Fight Club
L.A. Confidential
Reservoir Dogs
Big Lebowski
Psycho
Silence of the Lambs
Vertigo
Ragin Bull
Godfather
Blood Simple
The Deer Hunter
GoodFellas
Run Lola Run
Lock Stock and Two Smokin Barrels
Apocalypse Now
Saving Private Ryan
Fargo
Godfather II
Aliens
Lawrence of Arabia
Blade Runner
French Connection
Planet of the Apes
Pulp Fiction
Giant
On The Waterfront
Taxi Driver
To Kill a Mockingbird
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
The Sting
Clockwork Orange
Space Oddesy
Cool hand Luke
Once upon a time in America
Dog Day Afternoon
Snatch
Scarface
Wizard of Oz
Gone with the Wind
Brazil
Boys of Brazil
Being John Malcovich
Army of Darkness
The Return of the King
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Fish Called Wanda
The Last Waltz
Nashville
Hard Days Night
The Fellowship of the Ring
Rock Horror Picture Show
Weekend
Bridge on the River Kwai
Bullet
The Great Escape
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Princess Bride
Deliverence
The Right Stuff
Stand by Me
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Annie Hall
The Graduate
Breathless
Midnight Cowboy
High Noon
Network
Young Frankenstien
The Shawshank Redemption
Casablanca
Schindler’s List
American Beauty
All About Eve
The Matrix
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Close Encounters
Night of the Living Dead
Rock n Roll High School
Stop Making Sense
Das Boot
Full Metal Jacket
Patton
Braveheart
Enter The Dragon
The Two Towers