"How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP"

An absolutely genuine Microsoft Support article. Bizarre.

314458 - How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP

The briQ

Super sweet. A PowerPC single-board computer that can fit in a 5.25" bay on a regular PC. Imagine clustering 7 of them in a tower PC case with a DVD writer on top and an Athlon64 controlling them. Super sweet.

"My name is Steve, and I'm a geek."

The briQ

Higgins - easy peasy publishing thing

This looks quite interesting. It's a Wiki-esque content management system that uses flat XHTML files instead of drawing its content from a database. Ironic that I've found this really because as part of my staff development training I'm looking to write something almost identical! Anyway, I might give this a bashette.

Higgins

repressed-communist-homosexual.tk

Superb URL redirection for every Sun reader's favourite BNP pamphleteer*, Richard Littlejohn.

repressed-communist-homosexual.tk

Evil Dead - The Musical

As Interweb buddy (and father of my virtual niece) cutebutwrong puts it, "Sometimes I see something that is just you..."

He's invariably right, and I'm pleased to say his batting average is at an all-time high with this beaut: Evil Dead - The Musical. Damn those Canadians for being so ace.

Why I Hate Legal Downloads (part 1)

The first reason for my hatred of things like Napster, My Coke Music, iTunes and so on is the fact that they all use proprietary file formats. The only reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that they don't trust us to not pirate them, so they go for formats caked in Digital Rights Management evilness, just so that they can control what you can do with what you've just paid for. I could pay 99p for a WMA file that I wouldn't be able to play on anything other than one PC. On a daily basis I use about five different PCs, and I spend an hour in my car. A WMA file tied to one PC is pretty lame.

Plus I have two MP3 players. They don't play WMAs. My DVD player plays MP3s, not WMAs. MP3s aren't as good as OGG Vorbis, for fidelity or for patent freedom, but they're better than WMAs because the standard is open, even if there is the patent licensing fear hanging over peoples heads for commerial use.

It's like they treat us like criminal wannabes from the start. They don't trust us not to copy the files around. If you download songs from Napster, you get to listen to them for as long as you remain a Napster subscriber - you don't make a payment, you lose your song. That's extortion, as far as I'm concerned!

This is precisely the reason I won't use music download services until they start providing what we deserve. Digital Rights Management is all about stripping your rights away and helping to line the pockets of the rich and greedy with more cash, whilst simultaneously doing as little work as possible to do it.