Apparently Microsoft's new operating system, codenamed "Longhorn", is taking a few pages from Apple's OSX.
Microsoft's demonstrations were interesting and somehow familiar. After looking at some images and icons that grew bigger or flipped when chosen, I couldn't help but think of the dock on Apple's OS X.
The good news for Apple is that Longhorn is still probably 2 years away from being released, so they have lots of time to implement something new. :)
Micah Dubinko has posted a response to the Ian Hickson's comments about the future of XForms. Micah says Ian "swings and misses", but I think that's more accurate of Micah's post than of Ians.
Dubinko has done a ton of great work and I admire what he's put together with XForms, but I just don't think his response does anything to discredit what Ian had to say. Until there's a large outcry from developers to support XForms, there's going to be no effort made to integrate within the browsers. I know there's a few diehard XForms fan, but we're a long ways away from the mass of developers being ready to use and understand XForms.
One point I really disagree with Micah on is the trusting of XForms to do server-side validation. There's no way using HTTP that I place any trust in an response received from the client. It's way to easy for someone to arbitrarily change the rules of the XForm when they submit the document back to the client. You really still need to do something on the server end of things to verify the "signature" of the XForms. After verifying the signature of the document, you'd still need to re-validate the data in the form. So, it's not as simple as he stated in his response.
This piece of news seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the community—so thanks to Colin Moock for pointing it out. ECMA has announced, that a new extension for the 4th generation of ECMAScript has been agreed upon. The new standard, E4X (or ECMAScript for XML) will standardarized, vendor-neutral programming syntax for adding native XML support to the ECMAScript language.
I was pretty excited when I first read this news, but after reading the article by John Schneider, I'm not so sure I'm found of the idea. I think I like the idea of a generic DOM model much better. The new syntax looks clunky to me and doesn't feel like a natural extension to ECMAScript (which what JavaScript has become.) John claims the code is "simpler, more compact, and more familiar to the average programmer..." I don't know that I agree with that. It looks like a pretty strange, foreign syntax to me. However, that example may not be good example. I look forward to seeing more on this. Lord know I'd love the browsers to come up w/a standardized XML DOM API.
NEW YORK (AP) — All of the NFL's 65 exhibition games this season will be available on television for the first time.
The league's four network partners - ABC, CBS, ESPN and Fox - will show 11 games, and NFL Network will broadcast the other 54. Some NFL Network games will be shown on tape delay during the four weeks of exhibition play.
NFL Network, which is carried on various services, is shown seven days a week, around the clock.
- AP Wire
I'm sitting here watching Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on DVD—it's one of those movies I love, even though it is completely campy. I remember seeing this as small child and loved it then too. Anyway, I figured I'd read some of the user reviews on the Amazon's web site—which is where I purchased the DVD. After reading through the reviews, I noticed a link the another flick from the past I loved, The Pirate Movie starring Kristy McNichol and Christopher Atkins. Realize, I was under the age of 10 when I saw all these movies for the first time. I think these movies both struck home with me as a kid because of my love of music—and the fact that I thought Kristy McNichol was hot.
Anyway, I was prompted to google the net for the phrase "'the pirate movie' dvd" and came across a really cool site The 80's Movie Rewind which is a site completely geared towards movies released in the 80s. There's lost of really indepth information on each site and it includes a search engine to try to find the films on DVD. Just figured I'd share the link. Here are some of my favorite more obscure flicks from the 80s:
SharingTheGroove.org is site dedicated to sharing bootleg music and video. I found this site after reading through the Spock's Beard Forums. Someone pointed out a 2 VCD set available of Spock's Beards performance at ProgFest '97. You need to register to get access to the forums.
Ernie Ball has a cool little section on their website dedicated for John Petrucci and Dream Theater. They've got a couple of audio clips and a cool video clip of Petrucci talking about Ernie Ball's new line of strings "Not Even Slinky."
Budokan, Japan setlist (Filmed for DVD release)
Budokan, Japan 4/26/04 (Filmed for DVD release)
band history video (intro tape)
As I Am
This Dying Soul
Beyond This Life
Hollow Years
War Inside My Head/
The Test That Stumped Them All
Endless Sacrifice
Instrumedley
Trial Of Tears
~~~intermission~~~
New Millennium
piano solo
Only A Matter Of Time
Goodnight Kiss/
Solitary Shell
Stream of Consciousness
Disappear
Pull Me Under
~~~encore~~~
In The Name Of God
"Live In Tokyo / 5 Years In A LIVEtime" DVD release!
Finally, after years of waiting, the first two Dream Theater Home Videos will be re-issued together on DVD. "Dream Theater - Images And Words: Live In Tokyo / 5 Years In A LIVEtime" will be released on June 22nd, 2004. More details coming soon.
Nick D'Virgilio gave an update over at the Spock's Beard website. They're optimistic that the new album will be ready for an October/November release! Also, it appears Dave Meros will not be playing French Horn on the new album—instead their bringing in a studio musician. Make sure to read his update on why they decided to hire a "real" French Hornist. :)
Ugh! Beatallica makes me forever happy that Metallica has never tried to cover The Beatles. It's pretty funny to listen to though, the guy defintely has the "Hetfield" vocal sound down.
Gibson Guitar has announced The Gibson Digital Guitar—a guitar based upon a technology called MaGIC, which delievers the digital signal across standard ethernet. Ethernet can delivery at speeds 30 to 30,000 times faster than MIDI—the standard most digital-based guitars have been based upon the past.
I've just recently started trying to catch Penn & Teller: Bullshit! which airs on Thursday nights at 10pm on Showtime. It's Penn & Teller's version of Dateline or 20/20. To quote the show's website, "Penn & Teller's mission is to expose the truth to an otherwise desperate and gullible public."
The episode that Showtime just aired was their episode on Recycling. They brought up some very interesting points. The thing I like best about the site is that they do provide experts from both sides of the story—of course their object is to reveal the "truth" behind the "myths."
Check this show out if you get a chance, or at least check out Topics Archive for video previews and clips of the shows.
Jason, over at Terminal Fusion, has blogged some comments about qForms. Always keeping an eye out for what people have to say about qForms—good or bad.
The Ben Roethlisberger, the first round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has created a blog over TypePad.com.
It'll be interesting to see how often he updates his blog. It would be great if he updated at least once or twice until the season starts (or at least until he takes over starting duties.) Of course, I don't always blog that often, so I don't expect him to either. :)
Ricky Williams, RB for the Miami Dolphins, typically stays pretty active on his online journal. I believe he even creates and maintains the site himself (if not, Ricky let me know—I'll help you clean things up a bit—or if you just want help, let me know.) It's pretty interesting when a player wants to stay in touch w/the fans and blogs/online journals are a pretty easy way to do it.