Kerio Carries On

Some hopefully good news. Sunbelt has agreed to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall from Kerio Technologies and will continue to have a free version available for home users.

With Zone Alarm suffering from stability problems, and Sygate getting discontinued, this could be great news.

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Very Disappointing, Symantec

Looks like Sygate Personal Firewall will be no more. Knew this was going to happen, after Symantec took over Sygate a few months ago. I was a pretty loyal user of Symantec back in the late 90s but now I avoid their products like avian flu. While Norton Antivirus is just bloated, the Internet Security suite is bloated and under-performing. Killing Sygate PF is not going to increase sales of your Internet Security suite, Symantec.

Sygate PF was probably the best of the free software firewalls available. I’ll probably be taking a look at Jetico.

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BEST BT CLIENT EVAR!

Introducing µTorrent. It is a pretty young client, and already it is gaining a groundswell of rabid users. I have been using it for a while and, barring an unfortunate tracker stat incident with an earlier version, am very pleased with it.

Why?

  • The size of the executable is under 100 KB
  • CPU and memory utilisation are minimal, as in just about insignificant
  • Very fast iterations for bug fixes/new features (though this means users are all essentially beta testers)
  • Enough features for most users

The only negative I can think of is that it is not open source, but probably a moot point given the amazing work done so far.

Respect…

…to John Densmore.

Ex-Door Lighting Their Ire

“People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music,” Densmore said. “I’ve had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn’t commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That’s not for rent.”

Oh yes. It definitely takes me back to the time I…well, moving on.

Here are some words from the man himself:

Riders on the Storm

So buy a album by the Doors today. I recommend their self-titled debut or the follow up Strange Days.

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Old Guys

Its impressive how some veteran musicians like David Bowie, Jeff Beck and John Paul Jones are still creating relevant or even downright cutting edge works at ages when most mere mortals would be contemplating retirement, or are already running through tomato plants with their grandchildren. Of course there are more just rehashing old material or are content keeping to the middle of the road.

Neil Young is unique in that he belongs to neither side. Not cutting edge, but always relevant, he has just released his latest studio work “Prairie Wind”. Influenced by surgery for a brain aneurysm and the death of his father, the album reflects on mortality, loss, life and family. Intimate, haunting, and possessed of an incredible grace, it is yet another inspiring work in his trove of stories.

Review later, maybe.

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so, so you think you can tell heaven from hell

My friend kp told me about the losing finalist Marty Casey of Rock Star: INXS, which is a travesty by the way, and his performance of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and sent the audio clip too. I wanted to dislike it but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. A good performance by Marty and only let down by the house band; especially the guitarist, but trying to emulate David Gilmour is a lost cause anyway. Also the arrangement was a little too rich towards the end which I thought was uncalled for.

So I told him, “Well, listen to THIS.” THIS being the reunited Pink Floyd at Live 8.

A little background:
Roger Waters has not been on speaking terms with the rest of the band for more than two decades, but the band agreed to put their differences aside for the event. Wish You Were Here and the album it came on was dedicated to founding member Syd Barrett who suffered a mental breakdown due to both drugs and pressure from life on the road. Roger mentioned Syd during the introduction, making it clear that this performance was for him, and it was an incredible performance. The first time I saw this clip I wanted to cry.

One could only hope that these men mellowed by the years could find the joy in creating beautiful music together again.

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printf(“Hello World!”);

This is my blog.

I am:

  • much too serious about music, a matter of life and death; or, as a friend puts it, the characters in High Fidelity reminds him of me
  • a geek. I tweak my PCs till they run just so, and spend time keeping my MAME collection up to date
  • somewhat socially dysfunctional
  • single

Ladies, the line starts to the left, no shoving.