RinkWorks.com | Dialectize Any Web Site

The Dialectizer takes text or other web pages and instantly creates parodies of them! Try it out by selecting a dialect, then entering a URL or English text.  Choose from Redneck, Moron, Hacker, Swedish Chef and more.  Click HERE . 

Malevole.com | Serial killer, or programmer? :-)
Thanx to Victor for this one

A test of skill?? Not really... ok, not at all but it is still amusing:  10 pictures with sound... is the person a famous programmer or serial killer.   FYI, I got 80%. 

Click HERE to start and note that it is extremely busy as of early October 2003.

Reuters.com | Bubble Bursts for e-Books
By Paul Majendie

At the height of the Internet boom, e-books were hailed as the shining new tomorrow for publishers and paper books were heading for the scrap heap. But the bubble has burst and electronic books are still the poor relation to the printed word with consumers preferring to turn the pages themselves when they curl up by the fire with a good book.

...Last month, top U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble Inc announced it was halting e-book sales. "We did not see sales take off as we and many others had anticipated," a spokesman said.

...if Penguin sold 40,000 copies of a printed book, it would typically shift 4,000 audio books of the same title and 400 e-books.

...But the reader's love affair with the printed word is far from over because, as Chris Barnard, technology analyst at IDC consultancy, concluded, "One problem is that e-books are up against a very established technology, namely books. And most people are very happy with that technology."

CRN.com | Judge Keeps Internet Phone Service Vonage Unregulated
By Ashley Grant, AP

A federal judge has barred state officials in Minnesota from regulating a company that provides cheap telephone service over the Internet as a traditional telephone company.

..The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will now likely stay an order it issued in August that required Vonage of Edison, N.J., to submit an official phone company application with a list of prices and a 911 emergency phone plan, a commission official, Stuart Mitchell, said Wednesday...

Yahoo.com | Next Windows Service Pack Will Beef Up & Turn on Firewall
By TED BRIDIS, AP

...The company promised to improve its built-in firewall feature, which has drawn criticism in the past because it was not especially strong and was routinely turned off in new copies of Windows. The update will automatically turn on the updated firewall and enable companies to centrally manage each computer's protective settings.

..."Microsoft treats security problems like public-relations problems," said Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer for Counterpane Internet Security Inc. and a frequent critic of the company. "I hate to be cynical about this but every time Microsoft announces these things, it never gets better."

Newsfactor.com | Microsoft Defiant in Shadow of Eolas Injunction

BetaNews.com | Microsoft to Open Windows Media Video
By David Worthington

ed: It looks occurs to me that this would be the first phase of Microsoft's killing .MPG and QTime.  WMV 8 and 9 are produce stellar quality audio and video under very high compression.  If .WMV becomes standard, in time, it will no doubt over take the other standards.  Then Microsoft can simply yank it back in house or make some bizarre modification that they do not make 'open' and bingo, MS rules another industry.

In a surprise move, Microsoft will submit the video compression technology in Windows Media 9 to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for review.

The society will mull over the standard when its meet next week, initiating a month-long appraisal of the format's drawbacks and merits. If accepted, the WMV 9 codec will become an international standard.

A company spokesperson informed BetaNews that Microsoft's rationale for embracing standards -- in a nutshell -- is to provide the industry with better access to high-quality compression technology. This move would for allow easier adoption of Windows Media, as companies would no longer be forced to contact Microsoft directly.

Devices such as home video cameras or set top boxes could soon natively support Windows Media technologies, without Redmond's direct approval.

In any event, a licensing fee will have to be honored. According to Erin Cullen, Product Manager for the Windows Digital Media Division, "Licensing would be available per SMPTE requirements on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Microsoft will offer a simple and low cost license for our patents included in a SMPTE Standard."

PCMag.com | DVD Formats: The Burning Question
By Don Labriola

The rewritable DVD—and the different recipes for baking one—has been troubled from the start by battles among powerful corporations, culminating in a schism that has split the industry. Consumers are now faced with five recording technologies: the DVD Forum's DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM (the "dash" formats), and the DVD+RW Alliance's DVD+R and DVD+ RW (the "plus" formats)...

...Rest assured, however, that almost any new DVD player you buy will read both "plus" and "dash" discs. And most hardware manufacturers have announced recorders that support both "plus" and "dash" media (both our Editors' Choice winners are dual-format drives).

...Laden with more than half a dozen copy protection technologies, DVD could be the most heavily secured storage medium devised. But despite massive efforts to develop foolproof copy protection, crackers have circumvented most of the measures already. It doesn't take long to discover the wealth of freeware and commercial applications that make duplicating copy-protected DVDs (read: movies) easy. Ironically, this may be the best thing to happen to the rewritable-DVD industry. The ability to back up movies has become the technology's killer application. If there were a sure way to prevent unauthorized copying, rewriters might never have succeeded.

...DVD recorders emerged in the late 1990s, when Pioneer Electronics introduced a line of write-once DVD-R drives aimed at professional video authors. The drives had five-figure price tags and recorded onto 3.67GB organic-dye media that couldn't hold as much content as a standard 4.37GB (commonly and incorrectly called 4.7GB—it's really 4.7 billion bytes), single-sided, single-layer DVD-Video disc. Despite these limitations, they quickly became a mainstay of DVD-authoring professionals, because burning small jobs in-house was faster, more convenient, and cheaper than using service bureaus. In April 1997, the DVD Forum incorporated Pioneer's work into the first official DVD-R specification.

DVD-R changed radically in 2000, when the Forum split the spec into two inelegantly named 4.37GB formats: DVD-R for Authoring and DVD-R for General. The intent had been to introduce an easy-to-use, general-purpose version of DVD-R for consumers, but the technology ended up becoming even less consumer-friendly. The formats spawned confusing compatibility issues: Each required hardware with different wavelength lasers as well as different media. Aside from offering greater capacity, the two-headed spec didn't have many advantages over the original format.

Over the past three years, such issues have been ironed out. Current consumer 4X DVD-R drives record on the same easy-to-find discs, which cost about $1 each and can read every past or present DVD-R format. Despite competition from the rival DVD+R spec, DVD-R remains one of the fastest and most compatible DVD-recording formats on the market.

First published in 1997, the DVD Forum's random-access DVD-RAM format was originally designed for backing up data files. Based on phase-change technology, DVD-RAM has more in common with computer storage devices than with DVD-Video drives. Early versions called for odd-size media (single-side discs held 2.4GB, dual-side stored 4.8GB), and because the discs require a different laser wavelength than most other types of DVD media, they're incompatible with most set-top players and DVD-ROM drives.

Nonetheless, DVD-RAM is exceedingly attractive for critical data applications. Today's DVD-RAM discs last 30 years, can be rewritten 100,000 times, and are available with or without protective cartridges in capacities up to 4.37GB per side...

...The DVD Forum may give the format a boost with its new DVD-Multi logo program, which guarantees that Multi-compliant burners (there are two in our story) can read and write DVD-RAM, -R, and -RW media. But it's too soon to tell whether this will help DVD-RAM gain ground. Nonetheless, the format is here to stay. In addition to being used as a real-time video-recording medium in several Hitachi and Panasonic camcorders, DVD-RAM is firmly entrenched in businesses that require secure, rewritable mass storage, such as libraries and hospitals.

...In late 1998, irreconcilable differences compelled seven key Forum members—including Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi, Philips, and Sony—to form the breakaway DVD+RW Alliance. Within a year, the new organization had published the first DVD+RW specification, and products were rumored to be imminent.

This effort collapsed, however, amid criticism that the initial 2.8GB DVD+RW proposal fell short of the Alliance's goal of a unified solution that could replace all existing Forum formats. It took another year for an overhauled 4.37GB specification to appear, and DVD+RW drives didn't enter the market until 2001.

Despite its late start, the new version of DVD+RW was a compelling technology, combining many strengths of DVD-RW and DVD-RAM...

...The first DVD+RW drives were crippled by a lack of write-once recording capabilities, a problem the Alliance addressed last year with a write-once version of the format called DVD+R. But manufacturers have not shipped models that implement data-oriented features like CAV recording and are unlikely to offer hardware defect management or Mt. Rainier support on the PC platform until Longhorn ships. The result has been feature parity between DVD+RW/R and -RW/R drives, which has caused consumers even more difficulty in distinguishing between the two camps.

The "plus" formats do have a small edge in performance. Our tests showed that DVD+R is slightly faster than DVD-R, and the latest DVD+RW drives support 4X rewritable media, a speed that DVD-RW models won't match until next year. But in most other ways, neither "plus" nor "dash" has a clear advantage in compatibility, stability, or function.

...So should you buy DVD-R or DVD+R? That issue is slowly becoming irrelevant. Dual-format drives take out some of the worry, but beyond that, both formats are equally compatible with third-party players. More important, make sure that the drive supports the highest media speeds: 4X DVD-R and DVD+R, 4X DVD+RW, 2X DVD-RW, and (approximately) 3X DVD-RAM.

Remember that read and write speeds are different for the same format, and that ripping speeds often vary among drives that have the same playback and recording specs. Because virtually all DVD rewriters also burn CD media, check CD playback, ripping, recording, and rewriting speeds...

Click HERE for PCMag's comparison of 23 DVD Burners.

Microsoft.com | Microsoft Releases New Share Point Web Server Content Management Software

Get the Windows® SharePoint™ Services download today. Windows SharePoint Services is the Windows Server 2003 component that helps organizations increase individual and team productivity by enabling them to create Web sites for information sharing and document collaboration.

Sites based on Windows SharePoint Services, called SharePoint sites, take file storage to a new level, providing communities for team collaboration that make it possible for users to collaborate on documents, tasks, and events, and make it easier for them to share contacts and other information. Windows SharePoint Services enables managers of teams and sites to manage site content and user activity easily. The environment is designed for easier and more flexible deployment, administration, and application development.

New and Improved Features
New features in Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services include: