I Was A Registered Alien!

Leopards Changing Their Spots?

Are Apple having a laugh at us? Like a lot of other folk I'm excited about the introduction of BootCamp and it's ability to add dual booting to Intel Macs.

BootCamp will somehow be a part of Leopard, the next version of Mac OS, rumour has it that there might even be virtualisation in there too.

Apple for some time have used the names of large cats for the various version of OS X: Tiger, Panther etc.

As I've already stated the next version will be Leopard, and if it could also run Windows applications, or allow a Mac computer to dual boot into a Windows OS.... Well don't we have a Leopard that can change it's spots!!

Surely I'm not the only person to see this?

Australian High Court Rules Mod-Chips Legal

In a court case that was brought on by Sony Computer Entertainment back in 2001, a bench of six judges of the Australian High Court held that mod-chips were legal and not, as Sony argued, among devices outlawed by the copyright act.

The interesting thing about this court case is that one of the arguments used was that region-coding was detrimental to consumer choice, and that "Sony's protection technology created artificial trade barriers between Australian and overseas games and DVD markets".

This ruling could be short lived due to changes to copyright being brought about by the Free Trade Agreement with the United States due to take effect in 2007.

The full news article makes an interesting read.

Link:
Mod-chips ruled legal (AustralianIT)

What has 90 Fibreglass Rods and Makes Kids Happy?

Those who know me well know that I'm a would be gadget freak, and with my mum offering to buy the kids something special as a combined birthday present this year I discovered an interesting solution to an old problem.

If you've got active kids you're probably on the lookout for something that'll get them away from the tv/computer screen and outside exercising - problem is that the little buggers can sometimes hurt themselves if they get too carried away.

Digital Bliss: Revenge of the Sith

Julianne and I finally got around to seeing Revenge of the Sith on the weekend in gob smacking awesome digital cinema, and if you have the chance to do this yourself I recommend the experience. Maybe I've had my head down to notice this one, but I can't remember reading anything about the fact that Hoyts here in Australia have currently the only one with a digital projector (a three million dollar Texas Instruments DLP), hidden away here in Sydney in Cinema 2 at Fox Studios.

The first thing that you notice is the absence of grain and the occasional surface mark that you would normally associate with going to the movies. The next thing is the level of detail. While not always obvious in some of the all digital sequences of the film some of the close ups of faces where amazing - you could see the texture of the foundation on Natalie Portman's chin in a particular scene.

Oh, and I really loved the movie too...

OT: Useful Free OS X Apps for Managing PVR Files

I've recently purchased a digital set top box with multiple tuners and a hard drive with the ability to transfer the recordings to computer via USB and have been hunting around for applications for my PowerBook that would help me to edit, compress and store MPEG2 files.

I thought that I'd share my findings for those interested in what's around for OS X, particularly since there's some good free apps available.

Where's the Queen's Baton Relay: Interactive Flash Map

According to MobileWeblog the baton for this year's Commonwealth Games took off yesterday from London after being handed over to Elle MacPherson by the Queen containing both a GPS device for tracking and two cameras for vision.

Having just watched some of the BatonCam video from yesterday's start of the relay I'm reminded of old footage my dad had taken with the Super 8 when he'd forgotten to push the stop button and managed to get all sorts of wonky vision.

OT: PVR Technology for Australia Delayed by Big Business

As recently as Friday lunch I was musing over how much I'd love to have a TiVo like device and that the only way that I could have such a thing would be to build my own, it would have to be named a "Blair-A-Tron" after a local Macromedian's famous technological masterpiece.

So it was with great interest that I read Alan Kholer's article in today's Sydney Morning Herald about how the Australian commercial television networks have for some time conspired to deny Australian's access to personal video recorders (PVRs) by locking out all comers to electronic versions of their scheduling (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/23/1093246443594.html).