The Null Device
2000/8/3
Something alleged to be William Gibson's screenplay for Neuromancer, written in 1990. Wonder whether the planned film, to be directed by Chris Cunningham (of Aphex Twin video fame), will bear any resemblance. (via Found)
Film Festival update: I went to see High Fidelity tonight. It was great; quite faithful to the spirit of the book, loaded with acute observations about life, relationships and music, and a good dose of irony, humour and pop-culture references. As in the novel, I could identify with it a lot. I definitely don't rule out seeing it again.
(I also saw Janice Beard, 45WPM, an uncharacteristically weak British comedy, tonight, though the less said about that the better.)
One film I didn't see during the festival (due to having underestimated demand and not having booked a ticket) is The Virgin Suicides, though it will go on general release in a week or two, and I intend to see it then.
While German lawyers are arguing that the Bible is dangerous to children, General Mills, a large US cereal company distributed CD-ROM bibles with boxes of Cheerios. After some controversy, they stopped the promotion and issued an apology, but not before 12 million Bible-laden packets of Cheerios made it out the door.
The sunny news release says "What's the surprise attached to cereal boxes these days? This summer the bonus included is Bibles.... Just as taking care of your body is synonymous with eating a good breakfast -- taking care of your spirit can be a simple part of your daily routine."
Two German lawyers say that the Bible is dangerous for children, and are petitioning the government to put it on its not-for-children list:
Sailer and Hertzel said: "It preaches genocide, racism, enmity towards Jews, gruesome executions for adulterers and homosexuals, the murder of one's own children and many other perversities."
Contrary to popular belief, you can actually do things with WinModems under Linux. Whether the things include using them as modems, though, is another question altogether...
It is believed that an elderly amnesiac patient in a Russian mental hospital is a Hungarian prisoner of war, who has been incarcerated since 1945. As one can imagine, his recollection of events outside the hospital is very dim, and now he barely speaks Hungarian (his only language), as the last other Hungarian patient left in 1980. (via FollowMeHere)
Penguinhead news: Open-source VMWare-alike Plex86 now runs MS-DOS in a virtual machine. Which brings it up to DosEMU's level of functionality, only by a more complex route. Eventually, it will run stuff like Windenburg 98 and Linux, or so it's hoped. Then again, GNUStep was also said to eventually be a megadoovy object-oriented environment reminiscent of NeXTSTEP. And I won't even mention open-source whipping-boy Mozilla. (For my money, I'd probably buy the personal edition of VMWare if I had a faster Intel machine; it works quite well already and it's not like it's expensive; though good luck to Plex86 anyway. If they pull it off, it'll be pretty cool.)
An amusing (and insightful) taxonomy of rock critics. (Another link stolen from Found; btw, there are some other good bits there today, but I've filched enough of them, so you'll just have to read it yourself.)
No-one can be quite as casually morbid as the Canadians. First they make films like Kissed and The Sweet Hereafter, and now a 10-year-old Canadian girl has adopted the hobby of mummifying dead animals, Egyptian-style. (via Found)
The girl, who has memorized the hierglyphic alphabet, has a real interest in Egyptian religion and was a little awed by what she had done.