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Via the Internet ‘Klangspiel’, I found out that WinZip Computing (formerly Nico Mak Software) has been taken over by Corel Company. Yes, it’s that Corel, the one that creates CorelDraw and that, and oh, yes, the Corel that was supposed to take over (or ‘merge’) with Borland.

So hey, who cares? Winzip is just the fancy stuff behind ordinary compressed files, as specified by the guys that created the zip format, PKWare! You may remember the tragic story behind Phil Katz, the programmer who was sued by the original makers of ARC and….well… his format for compression sparked various “Very Useful Technologies” that were even incorporated into DOS. Stacker, I’m looking at you!¹

So, who cares about ‘WinZip’: it’s just another frontend for a fileformat that has dozens of good open-source alternatives. And hey, you can always use the command-line (multi-platform)!

1. Back in the days, I never cared about using DoubleSpace/Stacker, because it didn’t make sense when hard-drive space became cheaper with the month.
2. Earlier I also read an e-mail of someone instructing someone to ‘winzip’ a file, which struck me as ‘weird’. Imagine telling a unix person to ‘winzip’ a file. In about 20 years, nobody will actually associate ‘winzipping files’ with ‘compressing files’.

There’s this totally dry McDonalds (company site) commercial about their latest product, the Junior McChicken¹. For some kind of reason, it’s funny but, not really. On the other side, Apple released some other funny ads (online!) that appear to convince people to switch to Apple. Not on my watch, but, yes, those ads, are brilliant.

Hear, hear! The Conservatives tabled their first budget: the most remarkable thing of the presentation was that I honestly thought that the Finance Minister had the perfect radio voice. Yes! This message was brought to you by McDonalds.

Having followed the Toronto Airbus crash (no victims), I wonder if this is the first time since ages that an Airbus, well, crashed.

¹. Since it’s lobster season, I wouldn’t doubt that their McLobster is soon to be available too.

Thanks to CBC Radio One host Carmen Klassen of Main Street I was reminded of ‘May Day’, or what Europeans know as ‘International Labour Day’. The first thing that sprung in mind was the question if May 1st is an official Dutch holiday or not. I can’t remember. I think I agree with this NRC Dutch holiday list:

Labour Day (1 May) has mostly lost its significance in the Netherlands.

There are plenty of other countries that do celebrate this particular day. In the US May Day coincided with the big Pro Immigrant rallies held all over the country. Ironic sidenote: The US State Department’s criticism on Canada’s immigration (evil liberal) policies.

Oh: and the Tax deadline is by midnight, I read. And ‘The Scream’ (as prominently shown on that last link) does have nothing to do with tax day.

A piece linked from Instapundit to an American Digest, where the author of the latter commented the following after seeing the movie ‘Flight 93’:

is that heroism is a virtue that most often appears among us not descending from some mythic pantheon, but rising up out of the ordinary earth and ordinary hearts when the moment calls for actions extraordinary.

In my terminology, people are made into heroes only when something is to gain from them, either politically, morally or financially. Take for example the Flight 93 event: passengers trying to take over the plane (that’s the current explanation of events) with the result that the plane crashes. I call that a human tragedy, a tragedy caused by the human instinct to try to survive at all times. If the Flight 93 passengers were heroes, that would make my parents heroes too: after all, living under extreme stress for 3 years in the Japanese camps, surviving the chaos afterwards and then, trying to make a life out of it. Wouldn’t they qualify for a ‘Flight 93’-like movie, country songs praising their life (uh) and, yes, a wall of flowers errected in honour of them, preferably in a crescent shape? Obviously, back in those days ‘life just went on’ and people went on about, while in this day and age, everything needs to be labelled and “Hollywoodized”. Oh. You say, heroes die?

Murder she said! Alfons read Donna Tartt’s latest book (fansite). She reminds me of the girl of Twin Peaks. Anyhow: Having read Tartt’s very first novel (which happens to be a murder-mystery too), how come American authors are so obsessed with murder? Would that tell something about American culture?

With the official ‘name release’ of the next Nintendo console (‘Wii’, formerly codename ‘Revolution’), the Internets have become a safe haven for rumours and more speculation. And more of that, just for an ‘extra digg’. It is this bad that there’s a WordPress plugin to ‘redirect’ hits when your lous article is linked from Digg: You know who you are! Note that at this stage, Slashdot only has 2 postings about the new controller. Digg has well, too many. You’d almost think Slashdot has credibility! (Wii at Wikipedia)

What is Mozilla up to nowadays? Foxies. While some of the videos (note, site appears to be down) (‘flicks’) are good, I’m not sure what the point of this all is. I mean, seriously, this ad is great, but then?

I read that Microsoft is extending its anti-piracy efforts and for some kind of reason it reminded me of the storm of criticism in the “Windows 95 Checks Your Software During Upgrade And Wants To Connect Online”-debacle. You won’t find it around on the Internet, but I guess, people forget.

What’s that? Is it Rocketboom vs. Ze Frank? The big question is: who pays for the bandwidth. Next up, right-wing bloggers in videos showing that they’re actually funny too!