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A list of the best products of 2005 by PC World.
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Bye bye IBM, Hello Intel.
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Human version of Pacman in Singapore.
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Find Your IP Address.
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A place for reasoned, lively interaction on all matters skeptical.
Year: 2005
Hostage
Last night we went to another movie, this time in Le Royal’s cinema.
The movie was “Hostage” featuring Bruce Willis and Kevin Pollack.
It’s about a failed police negotiator who turns into a small town cop, and then is faced with a situation where he must save the lives of a family held hostage. This draws him into a much more dangerous situation where his own family are also in danger.
The movie starts out pretty slow and a bit boring, but then the pace picks up a bit and the story gets together better making it a pretty decent movie.
It’s not one of Bruce’s best movies, but it’s still ok.
Maybe I had higher expectations, that’s why I didn’t enjoy it fully, but it’s pretty good.
Some people likened it to Bruce’s work on the Die Hard series, but I honestly find those movies a lot better than this one.
My score for it would be: 6.5/10.
Tunisian Blogger Meetup 3
With a number of Tunisian bloggers abroad coming to Tunisia towards the end of June, I think it’ll a great time for the third Tunisian blogger meetup.
I suggest we have it on Sunday, June 26th at 7:00 PM.
As for the place, according to the feedback from the last meetup, the suggestion is somewhere in El Menzah.
Please send me all your suggestions for the place you think would be best.
I hope everyone can fit the meetup into their schedule and make it.
I can’t wait to meet you all 🙂
Tori Amos – The Beekeeper
An album I’ve been listening to a lot these past couple of days is Tori Amos’ “The Beekeeper”.
I’ve never been a fan of Tori Amos, and other than her song “Crucify” I’ve never really heard something else by her that I liked, except maybe for a remix of “Professional Widow”.
Anyway, while reading a book, I needed some calm music in the background, and the only thing I found on my laptop or mp3 player was Tori’s album.
The thing is that the album stole me away from the book.
I really like it. The music, the lyrics, the whole spirit and style of it are really laid back and nice with a touch of weirdness.
My favourite songs off the album are: Parasol, Sweet The Sting, Jamaica Inn, Sleeps With Butterflies…
I never thought I’d be saying this about a Tori Amos album, but it’s really worth checking out.
Saddam Hussein Trial Within Two Months
Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein is expected to go on trial within two months.
The Iraqi prime minister’s spokesman said on Sunday that Saddam could face up to 500 charges, but he will be tried on only 12 because prosecuting all would be a “waste of time”.
Plus, the 12 chosen charges should be quite enough to get him executed.
[More: Al Jazeera]
Apple Overstocked on iPods
Sources report that Apple Inc. is overstocked on most of its iPod models.
In fact, for the first time in over a year, there is enough stock of all of Apple’s major products — both Mac and iPod — that even the company’s often-neglected value added retailers can get most products on demand. The only exceptions appear to be the new iMac G5 and the Special Edition U-2 iPod, both of which appear to be lingering just below a supply and demand balance.
I think this is very stupid of Apple.
They create good products, market them well, but suck in selling and distributing them.
For example, I’ve been wanting to get an iPod for some time now, not the iPod mini, not the iPod shuffle, I wanted a 20GB iPod, but they’re nowhere to be found neither in Tunisia nor in Jordan.
All I can find are 4GB iPod minis at very high prices.
I ended up buying another 20GB MP3 player, that I’m really happy with. That’s one customer lost for Apple. And I know a lot of people who are just like me, and I’m sure there are even more that I don’t know.
This doesn’t just happen in the Middle East, even in other places like Asia and Europe and even online, distribution just isn’t handled well enough.
People can’t buy your products if you’re sitting on a pile of them and not making them available for them at good local prices.
Kingdom Of Heaven
Last night we went to Century Cinema again and we saw Kingdom Of Heaven, a Ridley Scott movie featuring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, Ghassan Massoud, Jeremy Irons…etc.
I heard and read a lot of positive reviews about this movie before seeing it, and I was really looking forward to it.
I was not dissapointed at all. It was a great movie.
The movie tells the story of Balian, a former blacksmith turned knight, and how he ended up defending Jerusalem during the Muslim siege of the city in the late 12th century.
Even though there are some small historical inaccuracies here and there, it was a pretty good movie all in all.
Plus, it’s good to see a hollywood movie giving a positive perspective of muslims.
Orlando Bloom does a really good job. After his roles in Lord Of The Rings, Troy and Kingdom Of Heaven, he seems set to becoming one of Hollywood’s A-class actors.
My score for this movie would be: 8.5/10.
Red Hat Lets Fedora Loose?
Fedora is loose or is it?
Red Hat is changing course again with its free Fedora version of Linux, announcing Friday that it will turn over copyrights and development work to an outside entity called the Fedora Foundation.
Red Hat once had just one version of Linux, but beginning in 2002 it split the product into the commercially supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the free and fast-moving Fedora. But the company struggled to meet the original Fedora goal of attracting widespread outside involvement.
A vibrant Fedora project is important to Red Hat, and not just as a way to build improvements fed into RHEL. It also stands to boost Red Hat’s image as a company that cooperates with others in open-source programming, fill the pipeline of new RHEL customers, and keep Red Hat at the center of open-source operating system work in the face of rivals such as Gentoo and OpenSolaris.
[Source: ZDNet]
The way I see it is that RedHat’s plan to stop support for the free version of linux, yet get developers to add features to it for free so that it can use them in the paid Enterprise version didn’t work, and so now they want to mask their involvement with Fedora in an attempt to fool developers into getting involved.
I thought the move they took by discontinuing support for the free version of Redhat Linux was dumb and hurt linux, and all this stuff they’re trying with Fedora is just stupid and meaningless.
The Interpreter
Last night we watched The Interpreter (at Century Cinema), a Sydney Pollack movie featuring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.
The movie is a drama / thriller about a UN interpreter who overhears an assassination plot and all the political intrigue and deception that follows that.
The story got me hooked from the beginning, the acting was great and the whole movie turned out really good.
If you’re into these types of movies, I do recommend it.
My score for it would be: 8.5/10.
.XXX Addresses For Porn Sites
Pornographers and their customers soon will have a virtual red light district reserved just for them.
ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved a plan yesterday to create “.xxx” domain names.
ICANN said it’s working with the ICM Registry to finalize remaining details, meaning the porn-friendly set of .xxx domains should be available by the end of the year.
ICM contends the “xxx” Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will protect children from online smut if adult sites voluntarily adopt the suffix so filtering software used by families can more effectively block access to those sites.