Citizen Godden
Interesting things, all of the time!

I have a USB drive and I also use a lot of PCs. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing in a long time – a way to store some of the more useful programs on your USB drive to carry with you whenever you need them, with the added security that your data travels with you too. You will find versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, as well as ftp apps and full blown office suites! Worth a stop by if you have some free space on your USB drive you don’t know what to do with.

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Well I think in some countries it probably isn’t, but in ours it’s perfectly acceptable… No hang on, this is a game not the.. er.. [quiet noise of shuffling feet]

Just click the link and enjoy. I managed 123 balls on my first go and I bet nobody can beat that!!

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Good news for all firefox fans. The latest 2.0 beta is out, and although quite a few people have reported crashes (well it is still beta!) the over all consensus of opinion is that the new features are pretty cool.

I’ll be testing it over the next couple of days and keep you posted on developments. After first installing it there were a few compatibility issues with a few of my plugins and my themes, but apart from that it seems a bit nippier at loading web pages and apparently a lot of the inherent memory leaks with 1.5 have been addressed too. Anyway, keep dialed in and I’ll be back with a review!! Install the English version [here]

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This is probably one of the most surreal sites I’ve been to lately. It’s full of interesting flash games, that aren’t your normal run-of-the-mill puzzle or fighting or golf games. These actually have a bit of thought behind them and are really random.

The one I picked out as my favourite is growcube. You have to select things in a certain order to do well in the game (much like all of them really) and it’s a real learning experience! Anyway, check it out and lose a couple of hours of your life.

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For those of you who don’t know, ASCII is the standardised code that defines a basic character set. All PCs and (probably) all computers full stop use ASCII. Even this webpage is written in it’s purest form as ASCII – your web browser decyphers all the html garbage and creates some nice things like graphics and boxes and nice fonts (unless you use ie.. different story!)

OK tech lesson over, what’s with the website? It takes the standard ASCII characters, such as \ / _ and uses them as graphics to create a bigger version of your text, in various fonts.. If you’re not sure what I mean look at those natty email signatures you see in forum posts and the such. If you’re still not with it, follow the link and give it a go and you’ll quickly understand what I’m on about!

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Yesterday, Panasonic released info on their new HD home theatre setup, which included a blu-ray disc player. Blue-ray, for the uninitiated can store up to 5 times the capacity of a DVD drive, which equates to a massive 50Gb on a dual-layer disc. This is really important, considering the increase (and soon to be mandatory in the UK) use of HD TVs and home theatre equipment in homes, as these devices need a lot more bandwidth to display HD in all it’s glory.

Blu-ray is the standard set-forth by Sony and is directly competing with other, worthy standards such as HD-DVD, to gain the industry standard model that is held by CD and DVD. Time will tell who gains the top spot, although as we’ve seen historically with the VHS/Beta Max war, it might not be the best quality format (Blu-ray) that wins.

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Just a quick note before my big post. The antblog is running again after some new “volunteers” arrived today. Even if you’re not interested in ants, you might be interested in me making an arse of myself trying to look after them!!

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Recently on boing boing, there was post an article regarding a letter from John G. Malcolm addressed to the Swedish State Secretary regarding the closing down of the site that allows users to share illegal films, software and music. This letter is available [here]

Now it’s pretty obvious this sort of thing is frowned on by many people, and embraced by (probably) more. And to say this sort of activity hasn’t had an impact on the profits of record/movie companies would be stupid. So what is my issue with The Pirate Bay raid that this letter sparked? Well firstly, as the boing boing article points out, it’s the obvious feeling that the Swedish State Secretary was being used as a puppet by the MPA. The use of language within this letter is probably enough to make me, if I were in his position, to stick two fingers up at John G. Malcolm and the MPA.

For instance, “…it is certainly not in Sweden’s best interests to earn a reputation amongst other nations and trading partners where utter lawlessness with respect to intellectual property rights is tolerated…” WHAT? What other nations? Trading partners? “utter lawlessness.” A direct threat from somebody who doesn’t have the political push to do anything about it. Even the American Embassy apparently asked Sweden to bring the admins of The Pirate Bay to justice, which even they didn’t have the push to do (according to the letter.)

Another quote, “…attesting to how wide spread contempt for intellectual property rights appears to have grown in Sweden.” – Don’t fool yourselves, it’s not the contempt for property rights, and it’s not just Sweden, it’s the contempt by the globe as a whole for a large corporation thinking it can push the little man about. I am sure that the population at large will feel their rights infringed just hearing of such underhand bully-boy tactics.

It’s just a shame the Swedish State Secretary couldn’t see the letter for the school yard shoving it represented and the lack of physical backing it so obviously had. Also, as far as I can tell, the owners of the website are providing a place for people to exchange data. The people ACTUALLY downloading the data are the ones breaking the law. Of course, if maybe the MPA weren’t taking such a big cut to pay their lawyers for ridiculous letters to bully State Secretaries then maybe the movies would be cheaper and people would pay to watch, rather than download.

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