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Feeding Time at the Zoo
Tracks Rockin' The Monkey House
Recent Tracks Rockin' The Monkey House
View Article  thank God for US postal addresses

Microsoft's Zune music player and online content store combo is "way off launch" in Europe and the UK, the company has admitted. The "earliest date" it might appear here? The end of 2007, or possibly even 2008, a Microsoft executive has revealed.

"The earliest date it will be in the UK is towards the end of 2007. However, it could easily be 2008," Microsoft media and entertainment alliance manager Dene Schonknecht said, according to UK trade paper New Media Age.

----

I'm so glad I ordered mine from the US I'll have it by the 20th :-)

View Article  Quicktime freezing on SATA Raid

In the office we've been building dual Xeon systems on the SuperMicro X6DH8-XG2 motherboard with 2 Seagate Momentus SATA RAID Hard Disks Mirror (RAID 1) for the operating system. Two weeks ago while at a client site we spotted a problem in that, Quicktime would not play .mov files from the C: Drive, it would just lock the system out. Quicktime .mov's would play from all other drives but not the main windows OS drive. Strange I thought, everything else will play on the c: fine.

After much install of Quicktime, Operating System images and video drivers I got to the point that I was just banging my head against a brick wall. Nothing would get QuickTime to play the files.

Until this morning when a colleague had the bright idea to have a look at the version number of the Raid Controller. I'm using the onboard Adaptec IC5HR SATA Raid controller, a quick search of the SuperMicro site and I found version 4.0.36.2 of the driver when what comes on the motherboard CD is 2.x.x.x. A quick rev of the driver and guess what Quicktimes now play on the raid.

How strange.


Driver: SATA-RAID-DRIVER-4-0-36-2.zip

View Article  The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a "private right to copy".

UK copyright law should be changed to include a ‘private right to copy’ that protects users of ipod and other MP3 players, according to a new report published today (Sunday) by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). The UK’s current copyright laws mean that millions of Brits break the law each year when they copy their CDs onto their computers.

ippr says that the forthcoming review of Intellectual Property, set up by Chancellor Gordon Brown and chaired by Andrew Gowers, should update the 300-year-old copyright laws to take account of the changes in the way people want to listen to music, watch films and read books.

ippr recommends a legal ‘private right to copy’ that would allow people to make copies of CDs, or DVDs for personal us. The report says a new right would legalise the actions of millions of Britons without any significant harm to the copyright holders.

The report, Public Innovation: Intellectual property in a digital age, also recommends that:

The Government should reject calls from the UK music industry to extend copyright term for sound recordings beyond the current 50 years. The report argues that there is no evidence to suggest that current protections provided in law are insufficient.

The Government should act to ensure that Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology does not continue to affect the preservation of electronic content by libraries. The British Library should be given a DRM-free copy of any new digital work and libraries should be able to take more than one copy of digital work. It also recommends that circumvention of DRM technology should stop being illegal once copyright has expired.

View Article  Techie vs Machine
Mark Lloyd  has been making some test renders for a film he's making based around a world in which the border between computer VR and the real world are some what blurred, below is a test of the first composites.

View Article  Deflation on the BBC
So which is it? 60k or 20k.... BBC classic journalism
-------------
3 days ago.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6077464.stm

Train defecator hunted by police

Police have released a CCTV image of the suspect
A man has been defecating in trains across south-east England, causing damage costing £60,000 to repair.

British Transport Police have released CCTV images of the man, who has struck on at least 30 trains since August.

He waits until he is alone before committing the offence, smearing excrement inside carriages.

Today.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6089042.stm

Man on trains defecating charge

A man has been charged with causing more than £20,000 worth of criminal damage by defecating in train carriages across the south-east of England.

Bonney Eberndu, 36, of no fixed address, was arrested at Camberwell Green bus garage, in south-east London.

He is due to appear before Westminster magistrates on Friday.
View Article  What shall we call it this week?
Adobe have released yet another new technology( excuse me but it looks a lot like Audition, Sorry I mean Cool Edit Pro , Whoops don't you mean Sound Edit 16  on Adobe Labs. So yes you've guessed its a sound editing tool at heart, Adobe Soundbooth is a rebranding exercise for yet another on of their products.

View the Introducing Adobe Soundbooth getting started guide for more information and download Soundbooth.
View Article  If your print ain't down, you ain't coming in
Global Big Brother, we get closer to 1984 every day, Stop the ID fraud - stop the government stealing your identity
---
US, EU sketch plans for global immigration database by By Mark Ballard

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/25/global_immigration_db/

The US is to corral "like-minded" nations behind a global immigration database after proving with a trial link to British computers that such an ambitious, global plan is technically feasible. Allies of the US have joined it in talks to formulate an international policy framework that would allow the sharing of immigration databases, effectively creating a global border control.

Their aim is to stop criminals and other undesirable migrants at a vast, biometric border that is likely to include, at the very least, the EU countries, Australia, and Canada. Troy Potter, biometrics programme manager for the US Department of Homeland Security's biometric border control programme, told The Register only those countries "of like mind" would be allowed to join the scheme: "People with similar goals, aspirations, laws and ability to implement such a scheme.

"It's about keeping out folks from countries, to have more of a global border per se," he said. "Shouldn't like-minded countries be told when someone's been kept out of the US? That's a necessary next step [because] immigration has become a worldwide issue.

Frank Paul, head of large scale IT systems at the European Commission, hinted to an audience at the Biometrics 2006 conference last week about EU support for such a scheme. "We trust everyone enrolled in the US and they trust everyone in the EU system. Then I don't see why the systems shouldn't be linked in the future," he said.

Terrorists would be the prime target of the system. Terrorism had been the reason the US government gave for setting up US-VISIT, the immigration database for which Potter is biometric manager. The US database had yet to snare a terrorist, and the Department of Homeland Security has since been advertising it as a means of keeping foreign murderers out of the country. An international agreement for sharing immigration data would also target criminals and "habitual immigration violators", Potter said.

"If there's a murderer in another country we would rather not have that murderer in the US, especially if they are on the run," he said.

But he stressed the system would not finger normal people, or "Joe Public". People's privacy would have to be respected, he said.

"We would violate the privacy laws of individual countries if we shared data as we wanted to," said Potter, but added: "The last thing we want is for someone who has changed their ways and then we keep harassing them."

It could take years for the US and its allies to form an agreement that deals with all the emerging privacy and legal concerns about sharing immigration data. Other developments at the Department for Homeland Security could complicate matters further. It is developing a permanent link between immigration and criminal databases, while US law enforcers also want links to civil databases so they can get a full biographical history of people who catch their interest.

"There are fine lines and that's where these agreements are not going to be easy. But this is not routine data sharing on everyone. This is not big brother," said Potter. Similar concerns have slowed the progress of the European Visa Immigration System (VIS). A continent-wide version of the US plan, legislation to allow the VIS is stuck between the European Parliament and member states in the Council of Ministers. The concern is that European efforts to share information for immigration are being subsumed into a broader security effort that has no legal obligation to Europe's proud data protection authorities. This has created tension between member states and the European Parliament over other controversial data sharing arrangements - the US trawling of passenger name records and secret snooping on banking data handled by SWIFT being two recent examples. In neither case is the EU's authority to impose data protection laws that would protect citizens from being caught up in the zealous hunt for terrorists being conducted by the security agencies. The European VIS is being built by European Commission civil servants anyway, and will be completed in 2007. There will simply not be any legal basis for the system to be switched on. The US faces the same problem, said Potter: "

The policy and legal framework is not in place to do routine data sharing between countries. but that's something we were discussing." The UK's Home Office and US Department of Homeland Security have already trialled a link between their immigration databases, which Potter said was successful. "It was a technical trial. It showed we could share data between countries if agreements were there so we could do it," he said. "Our biometrics were compatible...when the legal and policy framework catches up, we can do it." ®
View Article  Not a good week for Sony
While looking at Technorati I saw this "Sony claims Xbox 360 requires HD DVD, etc., thus costs $700"

Sony telling porkie pies in their marketing....tut tut tut
View Article  Lik-Sang has to close its doors
"Thanks to Sony's heavy handed tactics, popular game importer Lik-Sang is closing its doors. All Lik-Sang customers are having their orders cancelled and refunded. Any attempt to place a new order redirects your web browser to the news of Lik-Sang's demise."

From the announcement: "'Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe's ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don't see fit. It's the beginning of the end... of the World as we know it', stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com. 'Blame it on Sony. That's the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally won, a few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.'"

Many thanks to Sony for ruining it for the rest of us. I hope that your business model makes up for the customer goodwill you're setting on fire today. Now where am I going to put my down payment on a Wii
View Article  Media Centre Editing
Now that I been running Media Centre Edition for a few months I have got a good collection of recorded programmes on my hard drive, so I turned on the google-fu and looked for a program to convert the Media Centre dvr-ms file format (MPEG2 with metadata) into something more manageable like a Wmv or Divx. Whiule divx doesn't support the dvr-ms format there are a number of bits of source code out there for converting dvr-ms to wmv. But before i got to the source I came across a utility DCUT for Media Centre Edition. The utilty intergates into the MCE and appers under 'More Programes' which is what you would expect as it has been written as a side project by a Microsoft Developer.It allows you not only to edit the dvr-ms files but also compress them to wmv format. Result I have got lots of lovely edited files and saved a shed load of space. Plus Dcut's conversion process runs with low priority, and doesn't adversely affect other MCE functions. So you can go one watching and recording while to slowly converts in the background.

Daniel Giambalvo you rock


Download Dcut for Media Centre Edition

Screenshoots of Dcut 0.95.1

View Article  Blog reaches article 100
Well it seems I've reached the 100 articles milestone and it looks like I'm not going to stop blogging any time soon. Due to Sunday being a bit of a boring day and that I'm still getting over my man-flu. I thought I'd test out the Google-fu and google'd my name and I was suprised to find my site at the top the of the google listings.




but what intrested me was "Who are all the other Kevin King's listed in the search results?" Well i went a clicking and have come up with

Kevin King the Phoenix Arizona based wedding and reception photographer

Kevin King the MagicalComedian
Kevin King the Standup Comedian
Kevin King the Public Speaker
Kevin King the Breakfast DJ
Kevin King the Rugby Player
Kevin King the Artist
Kevin King the Photographer
Kevin King the Author

What a bunch of Kev's!



View Article  it would have been nice to be told first

Wot NO Outlook Mail....till next week eeek

Well I've got to say at least they did seem to response 24hours after they said they would "next working day" which would have been Friday. But it would nice of Microsoft to have told there paying customers that they were going to have "maintenance" and not an outage.  If it was a outage i wouldn't mind 'shit happens' but "maintenance" is normally planned and there is no excuse for not telling the customer there are not going to have Outlook services till next week, ok I can log into the web interface but it not as easy when your in a hotel room on expensive wifi, you want to be able to sync and go.

I like the bit about the refund of the support call...

Below is the email I recieved.

---

My name is (BLANK). I am from the Microsoft Office technical support team. This is regarding the case number (NOT TELL). I have taken the ownership of this case and I will be working with you on this case.

The msn server is undergoing server maintenance that is the reason for this issue on your computer. The servers are updated one by one.

Due to this reason you will not be able to use msn accounts in outlook. However you would be able to use the web-mail service of MSN.

So please bear with us till next week. We would send you a mail and communicate to you when the maintenance is done. Sorry for this inconvenience caused to you.

If you have used your free incident for this support it will be returned back to you and if you have charged for this issue it will be refunded. We will keep this case open for next week and keep you updated on the status of the issue.

Thanks for using Microsoft Product Support Services!

-----

 

 


 

View Article  Its Monday it must be Finland
Flew to Finland this morning, not as cold as I thought it would be, nevermind. I'm told they don't get proper winters here anymore there is no moreicehockey on the lakes etc all due to global warming. Apparently they have just had the hotest summer in 100 year this summmer and it looks like its continuing. Anyway must sign off as the freebroadband @ freebroadband.radissonsas.com
doesn't seem to be working and i'm using Sonera HomeRun at silly money for 60minutes. i've contacted them and hopefully they sort it if not as part of the Radisson 100% Guest Satisfaction Guarantee, i get to stay free.
View Article  Things I learned this week
1) You can house a company anywhere even in a Massachusetts Town house, just don't go how to the basement as there is a Trapdoor down there.

2) Six minutes is the average duration that someone watches a movie in a hotel room, you may ask how I found this out, well it was from a Sheraton Hotel rep in a Boston Logan Airport Bar. I wonder what they were watching and I wonder if they were male?

3) You can have your cake and eat it, There was a 2 for 1 deal on Jaffa Cakes at Tescos.

4) Exchange is the only way to go. After my Hotmail Plus account packed up again on Wednesday night and no response from Hotmail support for 48 hours.. There seems no more reason to keep it when your playing £14.99 for something that isn't supported. So I've moved all email over to my domain with Fasthosts.
 
5) In the highway code it says reflective road studs  may be used with white lines.
  • White studs mark the lanes or the middle of the road.
  • Red studs mark the left edge of the road.
  • Amber studs mark the central reservation of a dual carriageway or motorway.
  • Green studs mark the edge of the main carriageway at lay-bys, side roads and slip roads.
View Article  Adobe Lightroom Public Beta 4
Yesterday I decided to take the plunge and try Abobe Lightroom.. Thanks Gee  It's avalible in two flavours PC and Mac.

The advertising says that its been built from the ground up by photographers for photographers, helping solve your unique workflow problems. Well I've got to say that it really does take the effort out of coverting, touching up, add metadata, archiving etc. These are all jobs that I had to do is different packages and it brings them all under one roof in a interface that isn't just easy to understand its logical too with the library, develop and print tabs these are all features that are understandable as people have been using them for years in photography.and with the addition of the web tab getting your pictures online couldn't be easier. Example of the added metadata. This was metadata I put in for the copyright for my Flickr account


This is a screen grab of the interface taken while I was touching up some images of AutoClav 1.1  from Infest 06 in Bradford. Click on the image to expand it.


Unless someone can point out another bit of software that does all this I think I may just be buying a copy when it's release.
View Article  My photos published in Schmap Las Vegas
Below are the two photographs that have been published in the Las Vegas travel guide made by Schmap.. A link to the guides are on the right. I'm quite chuffed that they chose my pictures. Schmap make searchable maps, playable tours and reviews for hundreds of sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums. Check them out
.                 Lion at the MGM GrandExcalibur Las Vegas Resort Hotel and Casino
View Article  Working at Root6 starts to suck


While I was walking around Homebase I saw this and thought I'd better blog it from www.dyson.com and not from www.root6.com.

Dyson's product is here
and if you like a bit of Rock root 6 is here
View Article  Mark Thomas and SOCPA
There is a great article in the Guardian about Mark Thomas and SOCPA today it even has a special apperance of Fisheye, link below

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/commons/comment/0,,1920277,00.html#article_continue

past articles on the subject
http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/9/3/2291786.html
http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/7/17/2132097.html
http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/8/25/2263061.html

View Article  Been tripping again
Maine OCT 2006New York Oct 2006INew York Oct 2006

I've been away for the last week in Boston, MA and New York, I've got to recommend Boston in fall the colours of the trees were amazing and you just know that the snow is coming in a few weeks. While we were in Boston I we went to see see MTI Films in Providence, you guys Rock!.[1] They make a product called Control Dallies hopefully we'll be able to do some crazy things with this great product.

[1] (c) James Clarke.
View Article  RAW effort
from http://www.rushkoff.com/2006/10/raw-efforts-succeeded.php


Thanks to your spontaneous generosity, we raised over $80.000 on behalf of Robert Anton Wilson in less than a week. This means he can be taken care of by family at home or, if need be, in a managed care facility for over six months.

If at the end of six or eight months all of this money has been spent on care - and Bob has chosen to carry on living - we'll see about what other financial solutions might be possible, including another plea to his reading public.

But for the time being, save your pennies and pence, give yourselves and each other a hearty "job well done," and get back to the good work of helping people think smarter and act kinder.
View Article  Crossbow seen on the web

Another web leak of Microsoft's next version of Windows Mobile - codenamed 'Crossbow' - pictures have popped up on the web to show the upcoming operating system's vista style graphics.

Crossbow is due to ship to OEMs in Q4 to allow them plenty of time to get devices ready for the OS' introduction in late Q1/early Q2 2007. Crossbow is expected to give gadgets more a better telephony experience and to improve its messaging technology.

Then in Q4 2007, and Microsoft will release 'Photon', the follow up to Crossbow, to developers.

article and screenshots on MSMobile News http://www.msmobilenews.com/page/1489/
View Article  Cubase SX4


Early/leaked images from Cubase SX4, now its looking like Ableton Live and as ever the loyal fanbase at cubase.net already has tens of pages of people saying how much it's going to suck...good boys.....control room patching is here and channel strip is here,
View Article  Chimps are human too
Most people know how much I feel that our chimp/ape/monkey cousins are closer to human than some people classed as human well someone Danny Wallace with the help of the Horizon team has made a programme about the subject here's the blurb off the bbc website

Tuesday 10 October 2006, 9pm on BBC Two

Danny Wallace  is on a mission to convince the world that chimps are people too. He believes the time has come to make our hairy relatives part of the family. Our primate brethren share 99.4% of our crucial DNA and are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas. This being so, should they be afforded the same rights as people?

The reason for this scientific showdown is simple. If chimps can communicate, cook and reason, then how different are they to humans? Armed with the latest scientific evidence, Danny travels the globe to quiz primatologists, philosophers and animal rights lawyers to investigate whether or not chimps should be classed as people

View Article  Avid Speed Bump

Avid Speed Bump
Originally uploaded by akira_kev.
I went to Avid in Tweksbury yesterday and came across a great bit of Corporate branding .... I wondering if you can upgrade to Speed Bump HD
View Article  Nvidia to launch DirectX 10 chip in mid-November
Nvidia is have announced the world's first DirectX 10-compliant graphics chip, the GeForce 8800 (codenamed G80), shipping in the middle of November. However, despite the advantage of early launch, demand for GPU will depend on penetration rate of the Windows Vista OS and availability of new PC games supporting DirectX 10.

Updates include the Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 10 will improve visualization and rendering capabilities utilised in PC games, it also see a reduction in CPU overhead,. It means that content developers will get additional space to write bad code and waste cycles.

Nvidia expressed the doubt that ATI's next-generation R600 chip, which is also expected to support DirectX 10, may appear in the market before 2007. Nevertheless, ATI will continue benefit from its close relationships with Microsoft around the Xbox 360.

Since DirectX 10 is positioned as a Vista-only solution, with presumably no ability to work with previous Windows versions, Nvidia's move to launch the GeForce 8800 in November should rather be considered as a symbolic step.

So far, Microsoft only promised that Windows Vista will run DirectX 9.0, allowing to later upgrade it to DirectX 10 via Windows Update. When Microsoft releases a DirectX 10-capable OS, ATI will perhaps catch up.
View Article  Need to phone a 0870 but don't want to empty your pockets
Calls to 0870 numbers and infomation lines at an outlandish 9p per minute for telephone calls that are usually answered by a computer, 0870 might be best described as the international dialling code for rip-off Britain.

A web designer has complied a list to circumvent that national-rate numbers and is sharing the numbers. On his website www.saynoto0870.com currently it lists 5,000 firms that publicise expensive numbers that often cost three times the cost of a call to a landline number. All you have to do is enter a company name and the website reveals a local geographical number and sometimes even details of a free phone line for a business. So enjoy the cheap 0870 calls.
View Article  Mark Thomas in Two arrested in internet arms sales investigation
From: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/04/guns_for_sale_online/

Two men have been arrested after more than 40 police officers raided two addresses in Kent early this morning. Police were supported by officials from the Ministry of Defence. Both are suspected of having weapons prohibited under the Firearms Act.

The officers were investigating the alleged sale of weapons over the internet. Both addresses are still being searched.

Detective Eddie Fox of Kent's organised crime unit said: "Today's action was part of an ongoing enquiry. A number of items are being ceased and removed from the two locations for analysis and examination but we can't specify what they are at this stage."

Earlier this summer the government was criticised by the splendidly-named Quadripartite Committee which oversees government export strategy. The Times reports MPs were influenced by comedian Mark Thomas who helped a group of school children set themselves up as arms dealers.

But it appears this investigation involves historic weapons and the MOD officials were on hand to advise on safety.

UK arms exports average about £5bn a year, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade researchers using government figures.

The UK government publishes some information on licenses granted for arms exports, but not enough to work out the value of the trade. There's government information on exports available here (pdf)
View Article  Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help
from http://www.rushkoff.com/2006/10/robert-anton-wilson-needs-our-help.php

by - Douglas Rushkoff


I hope people I've inspired with my work would band together to help me ...   more »