Seen on the Register, MS opens Hotmail to bulk mailers. With all the furor over Google's foray into webmail, this shows that all the large free webmail providers are still trying to squeeze revenue out of their services.

The downside is that what users think of as spam and what marketeers think of as spam are sometimes two different things. Excluding the get-rich-quick scams and penis pills it's not too long before we get into areas of potential dispute.

Vivendi Universal released Starsiege TRIBES, making the download available for free. Seen on Blues News, and here is a copy of the press release

I recently had to look for a decent, and hopefully free (as in beer), firewall for my sister's Windows machine. Given all the threats - apyware, worms, viruses - out there that any personal computer hooked up to the wide wide web, you definitely do not want to be running naked. I mean sans firewall.

I tried out ZoneAlarm, since its one of the software firewalls I hear the most about. Its a good product but the free version does not let Internet Connection Sharing (aka NAT) through. You have to purchase the full product for that feature.

Extremetech has a somewhat speculative article about expanding digital video recorder capacity through external, possible USB, hard drives. Let's disregard the fact that your typical Tivo, or wannabe DVR you use, probably has more TV recorded each day than you can possibly wathc and still have a normal life. Why would I want to add another peripheral, and power plug, to the mess of cables near my TV?

Dennis Bergkampf scored one of the finest goals of the 98 World Cup against Argentina. In this Guardian Interview, he talks about Arsenal's season as it closes in on the English Premier League Championship. Seen on The Sports Economist.

A nine-point lead means they require only four points from their last five matches to make the championship a mathematical certainty.

This page on digital camera support should be of interest to anyone who dabbles in the more alternative operating systems. By looking for a digital camera that support the USB Mass Storage standard and/or Picture Transfer Protocol, you can avoid the doubts and problems associated in getting it to work with Linux. You also get to reward manufacturers who support those standards instead of implementing their own.

Noticed somewhere that now their arr RSS feeds for the Washington Post

I read a post over at PHPKitchen that echo's the same experiences I've had at work in pushing us to use a Wiki to collect knowledge and document processes. Some quick lessons:

If you're looking to learn C++, looks like some good CS tutorials for C++ are available here.

I purchashed a PNY 256MB USB Flash Drive. Partially to get a gadget hit but also to have something convenient to shuttle files in between home and work. There are a number of files on my work pc that I need to bring home. Other time, I need to work on a file at home and emailing it myself, downloading it over dialup is a big pain. So that's how I justified the purchase to myself and bank account.