Beyonce sings in french at the Oscars

wow... to paraphrase Chris Rock: "If you can't sing in french...wait!!!"
It was a valiant effort, but if we hadn't been told that Beyonce was going to sing "Vois sur ton chemin" in french, I would never have guessed what language she was singing in... it was almost insulting to all french-speaking people all over the world.
I mean, she looks nice on stage, but this shouldn't be about a cute babe in a sparkling dress, but about the actual song nominated for an Oscar...
Speaking of stars singing badly: Antonio Banderas singing "Al Otro Lado Del Rio"...
"If you don't have a voice and can't sing...wait!!!!"
Good thing that the winner had a better voice and gave us a few notes as his acceptance speech...

World's Top Tennis Stars Practice at Burj Al Arab, Dubai

Highest tennis court in the world... (gasp!)

When I received an email from a friend with these pics, I was certain they were Photoshopped... but they really converted the helipad to a tennis court!!!
One thing's for sure: I wouldn't want to be the ballboy... ! :)
World's Top Tennis Stars Practice at Burj Al Arab, Dubai

2005 Audi RS4 - Leadership Through Passion

Niiiiiiice :)
I wasn't a big fan of the redesigned A4 that should be coming soon, but this is something else: the new RS4. Only one word for this:
WOW!!!!
100bhp / litre!!!
And a really nice interior (Chris Bangle are you looking at this?!?)
This would definitely draw me away from the BMW 3-series... if I could get me enough $$$ :)
(I just don't want to know how much this thing will go for...)
2005 Audi RS4 - Leadership Through Passion

Home of the MD5summer

For all of you who are running Windows and need to verify the integrity of downloaded files, here's an MD5 check/create utility I found useful:
Home of the MD5summer
For a definition of MD5, Google this: what is MD5

Just when you thought Spyware detection tools were getting better

You read something like this: seems Ad-Aware has *dropped* detection of some spyware from its reference file recently... you really can't trust anyone...
Don’t Drink the WhenU Kool-Aid

Alone in CyberSpace :)

Hello?!?
Anybody out there?
Is anyone even reading this?
Oh well... I guess I should start writing something *interesting* sometime soon then heh?
:)
It's funny how there's so much information drifting on the net that it will probably be pure chance that will bring one of you here on this page. We're already overloaded with information all over the place (TV, portals at work, cell phones, radio) - hey, it's even hard to go skiing over the weekend without having music and ads blasted over speakers hung from trees or lift towers going up the hill!!!
So, come on, it someone stumbles upon this page while surfing the electron wave, leave a comment - just for fun: I think the counter at the bottom of the page is more a reflection of my reloading the page to see the new posts I write than any real traffic!!!
Anything you'd like to read about in here? Tell me about it!!!
Ok, back to work... (well, have to pretend to do something every once in a while to justify the paycheck, no?)
:)

NHL season canceled

So they finally put the NHL season out of its misery...
Who cares?!!?!!
Seeing multi-millionnaire primadonnas pushing a puck down the ice and wrestling more than playing is not my idea of sport... and there's no way in hell I'll ever pay the astronomical prices they charge to go see a game at the forum. It's come to a point where only corporations can afford these ticket prices - they pay for a big private lounge, and then they set up a TV so they can watch... the football game...
Hockey is dead... long may it stay that way!!!

P2P and SpyWare

Friend came over last night. He wanted me to take a look at his laptop, telling me it was "slow, and acting weird"...
Yep. First thing I noticed when opening IE was the nice, big "Search" toolbars. And the popups that appeared all over the place without me even having entered a URL yet. Oh boy. This was going to be fun. Took a look at his hosts file: some nice entries in there as well.
Registry: yep - reminders that Kazaa and Morpheus had been installed.
- "What are you nuts?"
- "Yeah but all I wanted to do was download some stuff... but I removed everything"
Nope...
OK, so for all of you that have this problem, here are some solutions. I know, there are countless websites that tell you how to do this, but this software is *free*, and works.
I installed 4 things on his machine:

Ad-Aware se Personal

Spybot-S&D

Microsoft Anti-Spyware It's beta, but works well (so far)

Zone Labs Zone Alarm

Ran the anti-spyware programs first. There's an overlap in the things that they find. Microsoft Anti-Spyware was really good at removing resident programs that the other two programs couldn't deal with. Cleaned up the registry and put back default settings in IE as well. All in all, removed about 500 entries in the registry, as well as 21 known spyware programs on his disk (yep, it was *bad*).
The basic version of Zone Alarm is free. It does a better job than the standard firewall in Windows in that it prevents malicious code on your computer from calling back home - in other words, it doesn't just prevent stuff coming in, but stuff going out as well.

Oh, and there's another software I installed: Mozilla Firefox It's clean, it's fast, has tabbed browsing, there are tons of extensions and themes for it, and it's not the target for hackers that IE is (yet anyways). Try it, you'll like it.

BMW E90 3 Series

2006 E90

My father was curious as to what the new BMW 3-series looks like... here are some pics at germancarfans.com
BMW E90 3 Series
Chris Bangle did a number on the interior which is horrible as in all his latest cars - all those straight lines and window controls in the door handle?!? True E46 Fanatics are going to hate it!!!. The exterior is not as excentric as the 5, 6 or 7 series, but I'll have to see it on the street to judge properly.

IP Address properties of your Internet Connection --> showmyip.com <--

Interesting all the info that someone can collect on you just by looking at your browser connection to their website:

IP Address properties of your Internet Connection --> showmyip.com <--

First step to preventing someone from actually using some of the information is to hide your computer behind a firewall. Once that's done, check out ShieldsUP!! at http://www.grc.com to make sure that all your ports are in Stealth mode...

Phishing for SPAM

Got another stupid spam scam this morning from unsubscribenow.org... the worst of it is, I'm sure to get some email from a friend about it today asking me if it is legit. Here's a nice reference for you all:
Do Not Reply: Yahoo hates the spam, loves the spammer

Bottom line: if it sounds too good to be true on the net, it is!!!

Wow! Hold the presses!!! Here's another one:
Director of operations for a HK bank with an italian email address?!? Really?!?! wow, this guy must be *really* important if he's that international!!! I must be in good hands so I'll be sure to send him all my personal information now!!!
(C'mon...)
--------------------------------------------------------
FROM:MR. WANG QIN CHEUNG PUI
Hang Seng Bank Ltd
Sai Wan Ho Branch
171 Shaukiwan Road
HK
e-mail address : w.qincheungpui@virgilio.it


Let me start by introducing myself. I am Mr. Wang Qin Cheung Pui,director of operations of the Hang Seng Bank Ltd,Sai
Wan Ho Branch.I have a business proposal for you.

...
--------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, right, you'll transfer those millions to me as soon as I prove who I am with a couple of payments to you first... while I am absolutely certain of *your* identity, since you contacted me, and you're a respected banker in Asia... with an italian address... give me a break... this is too funny :)

A9.com - Interesting concept...

A spiced up Yellow Pages - only has a few cities in the US covered so far, but an interesting concept.

A9.com

This "That 70's show"-looking theme makes me think about

when I was a kid: no computers, no cell phones, no digital cameras, no XBOXes...
How is it that nowadays we have to be bombarded continuously with information? It's getting to a point where people have their opinion dictated to them by CNN, where kids can't concentrate more than 2 minutes if the stimuli doesn't change, where you're expected to answer the phone wherever you are, be it in your car or on the ski slopes.

Whatever happened to just enjoying some peace and quiet? When you're climbing a mountain, do you *have* to take a digital picture with the cell phone and immediately send it to your friends to let them know where you are? Does it make it more enjoyable when someone else knows about it *right away*? Can't you enjoy life without having your own audience? (And here I am writing this in a *Blog*...)

So I stumbled on this in Google

Went to Google, opened the "more" page, and saw all these tools that they offer. I've been looking into this blogging mania for a while now, so thought I'd finally give it a try.