I’ll get shot for posting this, but I don’t care. I have tons of Top Hits, Hit Box, Dance Train etc compilation cd’s from the early 90s until 1999. Lately I’ve been listening to them a lot and I’m stunned about the quality of a lot of tracks. Back then commercial dance music was original, was diverse. When I play these tracks for a crowd, they still go nuts. Jaydee’s Plastic Dreams … Felix – Don’t you want me … Leila K – Open Sesame … early Mackenzie stuff … any hit from Snap! … These tracks still stand when compared to the loads of crap that’s in today’s hit lists. Today’s commercial dance music is cool for one or two months, after that nobody remembers it. A track like Plastic Dreams, from our very own R&S Records … they played that for weeks in the Radio 2 Top 30, imagine that today; impossible. Continue reading ‘Old school eurodance still got it’
Monthly Archive for August, 2006
My favorite, free and open source browser just got a new beta release of the upcoming 2.0! Continue reading ‘Mozilla Firefox 2.0 beta 2′
An interesting BBC article about the changing climate here in Europe. Spring was beginning on average six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, the researchers said. In regions such as Spain, which saw the greatest increases in temperatures, the season began up to two weeks earlier. The findings were based on what was described as the world’s largest study of changes in recurring natural events, such as when plants flowered. The team of researchers also found that the onset of autumn has been delayed by an average of three days over the same period. Now if only we could have some more summer this year …
I’ve rearranged the pictures on the site. They can now be found at the top right of the page. Two new albums have been added: “Friends and personal pics” (by no means friends-complete, but if you’re on it …) and “Luberon (France) July 2006″, the pics from our trip to France last month. Enjoy!
Hitman Pro is a collection of spyware removal tools, all in one automated package.
Changes in Hitman Pro 2.5.1.0
* Added Spy Sweeper 5 support. Hitman will now, when installed by user, operate Spy Sweeper 5.
* Added “Do not ask again” checkbox when removing Quarantine archives.
* Added extra report information concerning Spyware Doctor.
* Added more recognition of registry defaults to Expert (keys that should be repaired instead of removed).
* Fixed NOD32 report (was broken in Hitman Pro 2.5).
* Fixed problem restarting Spy Sweeper UI (shields) when Hitman finished scanning.
* Fixed Disk Cleanup. In Hitman Pro 2.5.0 it was cripled (it never cleaned the browsercache).
* Fixed error during Uninstall of Hitman Pro 2.5.0
* Improved exiting Spyware Doctor 4.0.
* Improved handling of registry entries in Expert.
* Updated some language strings; users, thank you for reporting them.
* Changed Cookies under Threats (in Expert). Moved them from Threats to their own category (since Cookies don’t deserve to be called a threat).
I’ve read over fifteen different articles about Plasma and or LCD-television sets over the last few weeks. I couldn’t agree with one of them. They always make the wrong comparisons. Of course a 42 inch plasma consumes more power than a 27 inch lcd screen, it’s almost twice as big! All these people talking about “wait until you’ve seen an OLED display” … Yes, well, they’re not here yet for a long time, so move on. Most lcd television sets available today on the Belgian market, with a price below 2000 euros, look like crap, even the cheapest plasma screens beat them anytime. You see the pixels, and they can’t handle fast moving images properly.
Then you have people, that know other people, who bought this or that television (lcd/plasma) … and the picture looks so horrible! Well, too bad, it’s their own fault. Did they buy the tv with their eyes closed or what?! Where I work we can show you the analog cable signal, the digital signal (Belgacrap / Telenet), a dvd picture and even a high definition picture. Just ask to see all possibilities. Get a fucking life. If you’ve never seen a plasma or lcd playing, shut up about it. Stop posting crappy comments on all the forums and newsgroups. What a total waste of bandwith and disk space. It’s 2006, nothing comes free. Nobody has a gun to your head to make you choose for digital television, or this or that tv set. Stop wanking about it, there’s far more important things in life.
K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codec is short for Compressor-Decompressor. Codecs are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video. This Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. You should be able to play all the popular movie formats and even some rare formats. Full contains even more codecs. It also has encoding support for various formats. This package is for power users and people who do their own encodings.
Latest Changes:
* Updated DivX decoder to version 6.2.5.34
* Updated x264 to rev. 558
* Added Helix I420 and YV12 codecs [version 1.2]
* Re-added Ligos MPEG filters
* Updated LAME MP3 ACM codec to version 3.97b3
* LAME CLI and DLL to version 3.97b3
* Improved file association creation
* Minor changes
The New York Times has an article looking at the social implications of technology in the home. Specifically, the problems a spouse can face when their loved one is working in bed.
The only piece of technology in our bedroom is a television, that is almost never watched for more than 30 minutes, before we fall asleep, or engage in other activities 
Oh yes, and my mobile phone is always next to me, sound on. It has to be, for work.
I really can’t imagine us both sitting straight up in bed, with laptops on our laps. That would just be too funny. For one, we don’t have laptops. And two, it’s bad as it is with two desktop computers next to each other in the living room. Let’s try to keep the bedroom sacred. For now.
>> Read the article @ The New York Times (free reg. required)
Microsoft has released Release Candidate 1 of their browser Internet Explorer.
RC1 includes some additional enhancements mainly under the hood. The new browser runs on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003.
Improvements have been made to performance, stability, security and application compatibility, says Microsoft. “We’ve made some changes that are not user noticeable but will cause IE to run more smoothly,” IE group product manager Margaret Cobb told BetaNews.
Although the initial IE7 release candidate would be available only in English, the company expects to have localized versions in Arabic, Finnish, German and Japanese by September. In addition, RC1 will bring French and Spanish versions for the first time. Cobb did not specify if the final version of IE7 would include additional localizations.
IE7 notably adds a tabbed interface and improves on browser security. Microsoft has also built into the browser an RSS platform that provides a framework for downloading, storing and accessing RSS feeds across the Windows operating system.
Other enhancements include a simpler user interface, customizable search box, reworked favorites organization, and enhanced accessibility for people with disabilities. Under the hood, CSS improvements and transparent PNG support catch the browser up to rivals such as Firefox, and native support for XMLHTTP means AJAX-based Web applications will no longer require an ActiveX control to function.
RC1’s main goal is to assist developers in ensuring that their Web sites are compatible with this impending update to Internet Explorer, Cobb said. “We’re confident code that works in RC1 will be compatible with the final version,” she explained.
On the subject of CSS, Cobb admitted that IE7 was still a work in progress. However, the IE team had worked to address two major issues, one concerning maximum/minimum height and width image issues, along with a bug that caused whitespace in list items.
To ease upgrading from previous versions of IE7, Cobb said RC1 also adds an uninstall feature, which would automatically remove any earlier beta releases of the software. In the past, testers would have to manually remove IE7 via Add/Remove programs.
Microsoft is very confident in this latest version of IE7, with Cobb saying she didn’t see a need for a second release candidate. Still, she acknowledged that, “it all depends on feedback on RC1.” Cobb would not commit to a more solid launch date other than saying that she was confident that the browser would ship in the fourth quarter.
For those using IE7 through Windows Vista, enhancements in RC1 would likely make it into the next public build of the next-generation operating system, along with under the hood improvements to Vista-specific IE7 features, Cobb revealed.
>> Download Internet Explorer 7 rc1
>> News source: BetaNews.com