The Movie Timeline is a nice little project which attempts to assign a film to each event since the beginning of time. To get the general idea, here is an arbitrary snippet:

1973 Bobby Darin dies (Beyond The Sea)
New York – Penny Lane becomes a regular on the tour bus (Almost Famous)
Las Vegas – Sam “Ace” Rothstein begins running a casino (Casino)
…

Although many of the entries are humorous, Hollywood has made it possible to watch a series of films which document Earth’s history.

Feed readers are merely everywhere nowadays. They are especially popular among bloggers and sufferers of the information overload age. To some, feed readers have become an application whose importance is on par with that of the E-mail client and the Web browser.

In a new review of on-line feed readers (as opposed to native desktop applications) Feedlounge, which I am/was somewhat involved in, was probably one among two winners, Google being the other contender. I once mentioned Google as the primarily threat to Feedlounge — a fact that Feedlounge founder were quick to grasp. Will all readers prevail or will only a few survive?

Other reviews: A decent overview involving 10 prominent Linux distributions, even a comical review of Windows Vista

The front page of Slashdot on April 1^st, 2006

Y title is probably misleading, but Slashdot have published some rumours as news, on several occasions in the past. Their editors improve in terms of how selective they are, yet I lost some interest in Slashdot due to a fine alternative. I find more of the latest on technology over at Digg. With Digg, content tends to be more succinct, more broad and more frequently updated (albeit frauds due to slow moderation have become commonplace). Subscription to the Digg feeds is something which I strongly recommend to those who can cope with more load and want to keep abreast of the latest.

VERY once in a while I pause and ponder. This time, I ponder financial issues, which rarely do I bother with. All I have is a wealth of files (about a quarter of a million of them), a wealth of free applications, and an excellent free operating system too. Wealth cannot be measured in physical terms alone or in numbers which correspond to bank accounts. We live in a less materialistic world nowadays.

I do not have state-of-the-art hardware. I regret this not. In fact, my hardware is clearly outdates, yet it’s sufficient for everything one does under Linux. I have never ever (in my entire life) had up-to-the-minute specs approached. Not in telephony; not in entertainment; not in computing. I was happy enough with yesterday’s technology, speed-wise, albeit not software-wise. Free software can make significant differences, whereas the engine it runs on, provided the system is not overtly greedy, will cope.

As I digress, I haven’t a great wealth of gadgets, either. I have what I seek for pragmatic needs, e.g. a backup unit and an old Palm handheld. As for anything else in life, I rarely ever buy anything luxurious, let alone buy something other than groceries. No pricey clothes and nothing whose value is temporary — something that erodes or dissolves through the years. Nothing that takes too much space seems necessary!

I seem to get my best of kicks from the health clubs and computers (Internet), admittedly so. Social stuff too, but I impose a limit on this. Overall, I convey a simple and trite message, which I wish to pass on: who said money and possession bring happiness? My living expenses are overall quite low. This enables me to pursue what I enjoy rather than worry about making ends or plan that ‘next expensive vacation’. I no longer enjoy vacations, as a matter of fact. I have no urge to escape from anything, ever. Life is about your passions; your hobbies. Worry less about finance and discover your mind’s vocation.

HE Epoch Times reports that the world’s tallest woman comes from Asia. The photos are truly astounding and one of them (the one I saw first) had me question the genuineness.

Thirty-four-year-old Yao Defen is known as Asia’s tallest woman. At 7 feet 7 inches, 396 pounds, and a shoe size (EUR) of 78, Yao attracts a lot of attention. This “woman giant” makes her living as a circus performer. Her boss forces her to perform despite her physical ailments, and he even mistreated and bullied her when she requested to go to the hospital for a physical examination.

Related item: Big fish

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

T has been previouly mentioned that Windows Vista will give people many compelling reasons to switch to Linux. This was mentioned in the context of hardware requirements. Owing to plenty of trouble at Microsoft, as well as delays, the Investor’s Business Daily predicts that the very release of Windows Vista will give a boost to Linux.

The looming release of the next major upgrade to Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, Windows Vista, is encouraging an unlikely group of users — fans of rival software Linux.

The Eclipse Foundation, a tech consortium pushing open-source software to develop new software programs, is betting that the transition to Vista will boost the appeal of its so-called rich-client platform. The platform is designed to make it easier to write software that runs equally well on Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

I choose Firefox primarily because of its
extensions. Some site continue to snub it.

ROWSER discrimination, as it is frequently referred to, is always a bad idea. Sadly, many sites still use deprecated JavaScript code to distinguish between Netscape and Internet Explorer. In reality, most of today’s Web sites can be rendered almost ‘pixel perfect’ by Camino, Safari, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Firefox, Internet Explorer and several more obscure Web browsers, even Konqueror.

Vis-a-vis Konqueror, functionality in Konqueror is being extended all the time and its renderer (KHTML) improves rather quickly too. It no longer plays catch-up, but the acceptance of new browser is hindered by vain user-agent sniffing, which in itself is a terrible practice. In the case where proxies are being used, the assumptions might be wrong. In other circumstances, this promotes agent forging/spoofing, which only adds noise to Web statistics, adds bloat the applications and makes an unhealthy industrial environment for all to compete in.