iDude.org

Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is being made to watch his appearance in cult cartoon South Park while he is behind bars.

The deposed leader on trial in Iraq was featured in the movie spin-off as the lover of the devil. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut featured Hussein and Satan attempting to take over the world together.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said US Marines guarding the former dictator during his trial for genocide were making him watch the movie “repeatedly”.

“I have it on pretty good information from the Marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie last year. That’s really adding insult to injury. I bet that made him really happy,” Stone said.

A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday.
No injuries were reported although both vehicles were slightly damaged, it said.

The woman, identified only be her surname, Li, said her dog “was fond of crouching on the steering wheel and often watched her drive,” according to Xinhua.

“She thought she would let the dog ‘have a try’ while she operated the accelerator and brake,” the report said. “They did not make it far before crashing into an oncoming car.”

Xinhua did not say what kind of dog or vehicles were involved but Li paid for repairs.

survivor.jpg

Fueled by critics who slammed its lack of diversity, CBS’s Survivor has unveiled a new twist for its upcoming season: Contestants will be divided by ethnicity.

When it premieres Sept. 14, Survivor: Cook Islands will feature 20 castaways divided into four tribes: black, white, Asian and Latino.

“We’re going to take some heat for it,” says creator and executive producer Mark Burnett of the twist, which was announced Wednesday morning. “But it’s a great cast.”

For a show entering its 13th season with steady ratings but ebbing buzz, the decision could be a shot in the arm if it once again generates Survivor water-cooler chatter.

I think this will probably be the best Survivor season ever!  At least the most fun to watch.  People need to chill out.  Races naturally group into groups anyway.  I’m gonna most likely group with the white people, my bubby Chico is going to go with his Amigos, etc.

What’s the big deal?!

Comments are welcome…

I have been following this for over 10 years now and progress, although slow, is being made.  I believe this will be the closet thing I see to having a flying car in my lifetime.

---

The Moller Skycar is a prototype personal VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft — a “flying car” — called a “volantor” by its inventor Paul Moller, who has been attempting to develop such vehicles for many years.1 The Skycar demonstrated limited tethered flight capability in 2003. More tethered flight tests are now scheduled for an undisclosed date sometime after mid 2006. Moller is currently upgrading the Skycar’s engines, and the improved prototype is now called the “M400X”.

Given the machine’s very protracted development and its ambitiousness, skepticism that the machine will work as claimed remains high. In 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Moller for civil fraud (Securities And Exchange Commission v. Moller International, Inc., and Paul S. Moller, Defendants) in connection with the sale of unregistered stock, and for making unsubstantiated claims about the performance of the Skycar. Moller settled this lawsuit by agreeing to a permanent injunction and paying $50,000. In the words of the SEC complaint, “As of late 2002, MI’s approximately 40 years’ of development has resulted in a prototype Skycar capable of hovering about fifteen feet above the ground.”

The craft currently under development, the M400, is intended to ultimately transport four people. It is described as a car since it is aimed at being a popular means of transport for anyone who can drive, incorporating automated flight controls. The driver should only input direction and speed, no pilot knowledge being required.

Also, it is argued that by using eight inexpensive Wankel rotary engines, its price will eventually fall close to that of a quality car, even if at the moment the price for the first units is expected to be close to US$1 million.

Its proposed features would include 350 mph (563 km/h) cruise speed, eight redundant, low-emission Wankel engines for safety, residential garage size, fuel consumption like a big car, a parachute for the whole machine and road capability for short distances (to be driven to a vertiport). Although current plans call for use of alcohol fuel, cheap, lightweight fuel, such as liquid hydrogen, could be used as an alternative to gasoline, as in the Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen RE, although the lower energy density will limit range.

Discovery Channel’s MythBusters has reported that more than $200 million US dollars have gone into the development of the Skycar.

As I type this, I am installing Windows Vista Beta 2 on my PC, via my web browser, onto a virtual machine under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 (MSVS)… Everthing seems to be going smoothly and much better and simpler than VMWare.

I am, so far, very impressed with what Microsoft has done with this software. The main thing that I think is innovative is a web browser based interface to MSVS (Make sure you have IIS installed on your PC before installing it). It creates a virtual directory off your webroot that you can log into, create and control the machines. (see screenshot).

The web interface utilizes an ActiveX control to display the Virtual Machine’s screen. So you will need need to use IE to access it. Once in the admin interface, you can click a button and display thumbnails of all running OSes, select one and it full screens it in interactive mode.

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 runs primarily on the Windows 2003 Server line, but I am using it on Windows XP Professional SP2 (for “non-production use only”, Microsoft says).

This is just a brief introduction to this software, but I will continue to test the capabilties to install other versions of windows, Linux, and I may even try Mac OSX since it is x86 based now. On the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 website, it states Mac OSX will not run, but that was probably written when OSX was PPC only.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Paramount Pictures is severing its 14-year-old ties to Tom Cruise’s production company because of his off-screen behavior, the chairman of the studio’s parent company said on Wednesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

That what you get for being a scientologist wacko! ;) hehe.

I know some will say that this opens a can of worms now that if they can cut him for his “religious” beliefs and actions, then they can do it for everyone, but Wow… Tom takes the cake…

The cut probably has something to do with him almost killing Oprah!

Check this out! :)

Anyone who frequents this site (the few of you) know that I have recently been really playing around with the design.  Most of the wordpress themes out there are customized for particular demographics and are extremely difficult to modify to your own taste or to improve them and make better.

So I went out to http://themes.wordpress.net and found some good ones that I liked.  I went through 10-12 of them, all having nice features, but some things were missing or there was too much clutter, bad spacing, etc.

I happened across a Simple Apple Mac OS X looking design that was nice looking, but ended up being extremely simple in design.  I only had to modify about 5-6 images to get my site looking the way it is.

To save some time, instead of creating the layout completely by hand, I “borrowed” some elements from other sites. 

Thanks to:

• RedHat Fedora Core website for the rounded edges of the page.
• Apple for the Blue Mac swirl image in the header, although it is constrained down to fit within my design.
• And thanks to the original developer of the design that I modified…
  R.J. Kaplan - MyWebsight

Post a comment and let me know what you think of the new look.

 

“The Caps key is an abomination,” Hintjens writes on his blog. “It’s a huge key, stuck right there where the Ctrl used to be, and as far as I know, it’s only used by 419 scammers and Fortran programmers.”

I agree, this guy should be given an award. But some might say, “Hey, what would tech support dudes do if they couldnt say: ‘Turn your caps lock off’…”?

In that case, I guess it could cut IT Help Desk personnel/budgets by at least 20-25%.

And what’s up is up with the Scroll Lock and Pause/Break screen key? Two more dinosaur keys carried over from the early console based days. And most of the silly “F” keys are useless. No one assigns function to them much anymore except übergeeks who need to keep a reminder of days past.

The way things are going these days, most of the useless keys are going to be replaced with keys that do entire sequences like, “L8r”, “CU”, “WTF”, “ROFL”, “OMG!” and other stupid abbreviations.

From the MattBlog

BAR HARBOR, Maine — A rare two-toned lobster is seen in Bar Harbor, Maine. The lobster caught by Alan Robinson in Dyer’s Bay is a typical mottled green on one side; the other side is a shade of orange that looks cooked. Robinson, of Steuben, donated the lobster to the Mount Desert Oceanarium. Staff members say the odds or finding a half-and-half lobster are 1 in 50 million to 100 million. (07/17/06 AP photo/Bangor Daily News)

If you wanna read a bit more about, google or check out it here.

---

Also from Moon’s Blog 

 

Here is a spectacular shot taken in Las Vegas…. Don’t know if the Lightning actually struck the pyramid or struck somewhere behind it. 

Although I’m sure a structure that big has a lightning rod system.