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Adobe announced Thursday that they are making their data access technology BlazeDS open source in an effort to stimulate the use of enterprise rich Internet applications.

BlazeDS comes from a server-based Java technology that allows the connection data to Adobe’s Flex and AIR applications. It had been available as part of Adobe LiveCycle Data Services in the past. It has been released under the LGPL v3 license with the enterprise version scheduled for an early 2008 release.

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A court in Naples Italy sent a summons to the animated characters Tweety bird, Mickey Mouse and Donald and Daisy Duck. They were named as damaged parties in a trial of a Chinese man accused of producing counterfeit Disney and Warner Bros. merchandise.

Lawyers believe the clerical error was caused when the clerks named the cartoon characters on the witness lists instead of only naming the companies and their legal representatives. The trial will most likely be delayed now so the clerks can rewrite the summons.

“Let’s hope the characters will not be prosecuted for failing to appear,” Ravelli quipped.

At least there weren’t any toons on the jury. He would end up sentenced to death by anvil.
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This video of Mr T singing “Treat your Mother Right” goes out to all the muthas on Mother’s day.

It’s important today to remember Martin Luther King and all he means to this countries history.

If you haven’t heard of VoIP or Skype it is a technology that allows people to make phone calls over the internet. Yesterday Skype announced they were doing a promotion allowing free phone calls from your PC or Mac to any phone or cell phone in the US or Canada.

Free SkypeOut for calls to US and Canada until the end of year

I found the news yesterday, but they were still working out the kinks. The program was insisting that I needed to buy credits. Many people were complaining about it on the forums, and now a day later it looks like they fixed it. I just tested it out and it will dial without buying any credits.
So, the free promotion runs until the end of the year, and then they will decide if they want to continue. All you need is a decent soundcard with a microphone input, a mic and speakers and you can call anyone in the US or Canada for free. This includes landlines as well as cellphones.

I checked my page today and had 532 messages in the shoutbox, pretty much all spam. The same strange generic spammer messages, “Hey, great site blah blah blah random stuff that doesn’t make sense blah blah blah hey a bunch of links to crappy sites.”

So, I got rid of it. If you’d like to leave a comment you can do so at the end of the post you are commenting on. I think that’s better anyway.

Using Myspace can be incredibly frustrating at times. If you’re like me, you’re getting sick of the banner ads, “Cool New People” who are neither cool or new, vomitus custom profiles and awful tastes in music. While nothing I can show you will get rid of the crappy bands, strippers and emo kids who friend-whore constantly, if you follow these three steps you get rid of the annoyances that are fixable so you can spend more time dealing with those that aren’t.

Step one: Use Firefox

If you’re already using Firefox, good for you. If not, you’ll need it. Not only is it a better browser all around but the ability to add plug-ins and user scripts is what will make the rest of this work. So, if you don’t already have it go install Firefox now and come back when you’re ready.

Step two: Install Greasemonkey

No, Greasemonkey isn’t dirty. Get your mind out of the gutter. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows to you to add custom scripts to change the behavior of all your favorite sites. Once it’s installed you can find TONS of useful scripts for most popular websites, including Myspace. You’ll find it here.

http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/

You’ll have to close you’re browser and re-open it before Greasemonkey takes effect. So, do that and come right back.

Step three: Grease the Monkey

You’re almost there. Now I’ll show you where you can find Greasemonkey scripts for Myspace that will yank the crappy music right off the page, kick those “Cool New People” to the curb and chuck the banner adverts in the trash where they belong.

Head on over to http://www.userscripts.org/tag/myspace

You’ll find a big list of scripts with descriptions on what they do. When you find one you like click the name and it’ll take you to the page. You’ll see in the corner “Install this Script or click here to find out how.” If you click the link to find out how, it’ll give you quick and easy instructions on installing the script. You can choose the scripts you want, but I recommend the Myspace Annoyance Removal one to start. When you’re done, restart your browser head over to Myspace and check out the difference.

Then come back here and leave a comment!

Let them sing it for you

This is fun, you type something and it searches for song clips to sing it out for you. A fun diversion and good for a couple of laughs.

I’m glad I found this site again. They have a database of user review for DVD players. You can search by model name to find out what types of media you can watch.

http://www.videohelp.com/dvdplayers.php

Since mine hardly plays anything I’m using their database to find a player that can handle Xvids on CDRW. That would come in handy.

A few weeks ago I was thumbing through a horror magazine (I forget if it was Fangoria or the far superior Rue Morgue) when I saw a full page ad for Gary Busey starring as the Gingerdead Man. I laughed out, “Wow! That is absolutely retarded. I must see it as soon as possible.”

Flash forward to last night, when thanks to Netflix I was able to get my hands on that little stinker with a quickness. I must admit, I’m a long time fan of horror movies especially bad ones. I don’t mind low budget, if anything I like them better that way. But, let me tell you, this movie sucked far past the point of redemption.

God, where to start? **spoilers down below**
Gary Busey, who probably snorted up the films entire budget along with that white powder on his nose that I’m hoping is flour, is in the film for all of 5 minutes in the beginning engaging in the most boring “killing-spree” in film history.

After being captured (a scene not included in the film) convicted, thanks to generic “testimony” we learn from later newspaper headlines. (also not shown) and executed (again, unseen) his role in the film is reduced to poorly dubbed one-liners once the titular menace makes it’s presence.

The Ginderdead Man itself is basically a half-baked Chucky from Child’s Play. It runs around in the shadows, pops up every once and awhile to hurt someone a spew out bad one-liners and then disappears again. What’s worse, most shots are just of it’s face (looking suprising like a more doughy verson of Busey).

99.9% of the movie takes place in a Bake Shop, at night. Yet, despite the fact that the cast of characters (how busy is this night shift) never attempt to leave (”He can get us outside to, right?”… yeah, right… morons) there are establishing shots of the bake shop over and over. Because the 60 minutes of film they actually had needed to be padded out showing the wonderful junior highschool drama production quality set design.

Then, the plot. The plot was so bad I won’t even inflict it on you but if you go to a bakeshop make sure they don’t accept Gingerbread Seasoning deliveries from hooded figures or BLEED INTO THE MIX. WTF was that? “Oh my god your bleeding. Here, lets hold it over the mixture.”

There were enough unbelievable inconsistant moments in the film that at one point Kate turned to me and said: “You know those commercials where kids get high and end up shooting someone or running someone over? They need to make one showing them making this movie because this is just tragic.”

At one point the power was out, so the characters (fully lit) ran around, managing to see everything just fine, one of them spotting a tiny trail of blood all the way on the other side of the room. And, even though their lives were in danger, there’s always enough time for pointless unconvincing flirtation. Or talking about the big storm going on after we’ve just seen a shot of the sky where nothings happening! Don’t even get me started about counting bullets, I lost track after 15 fired from a revolver without reloading. Most in the same scene.

Still, there were a couple of good lines and funny visuals. The script would’ve been better off as a series of six or seven 3-panel comics than a movie. All that, and there wasn’t even any decent gore. **Sigh**