It looks as though the entire series of Futurama and the recent direct to DVD movies are getting the series boxset treatment. The entire set is available for pre-order on Amazon for $120.00. The series is packaged in a case meant to resemble Bender’s head. Inside are 20 DVDs with the 4 aired season and the movies. Personally, I think the box-set is almost worth it if only for the packaging. The use of Bender’s head to hold all the discs is brilliant. Hopefully they saved some space for the DVD copies of the new season that will be on Comedy Central. Anyway, the packaging is shown below.
Futurama Series Box-Set
EDIT: After writing this post the link on Amazon went down. Searching Amazon doesn’t even show this product anymore. I wonder if it accidentally got put online too early or if the Complete Collection has been shelved since Futurama is coming back to TV with new episodes on Comedy Central.
As you all probably know Stan ‘The Man’ Lee has had a cameo in most Marvel movies that have hit the big screen. The notable exceptions are bombs like Elektra. That movie was bad and maybe Stan Lee was smart to avoid appearing in it. Anyway, it has hit the internet what role Stan will have in the new Iron Man movie.
If you’ve seen the first Iron Man movie you probably saw Stan Lee in his role playing a Hugh Hefner like character. In face Tony Stark even refers to him as ‘Hef’ in the film. Before getting into Stan Lee’s role in the film I must warn you this could be considered a minor spoiler so reader beware.
In Iron Man 2 Stan Less is set to play the role of CNN’s Larry King. Lee as ‘King’ will be hosting an episode of Larry King Live where he is interviewing Tony Stark. Over the course of the interview ‘King’ will be questioning Stark about his new, modified “black” Iron Man suit. Now I can honestly saw I really want to know more about the black armor. Is this the beginning of War Machine maybe? Or even a stealth suit of armor? Only another year to wait to find out it seems.
Finally, if you haven’t caught most of Stan Lee’s movie cameos check out the YouTube video below.
I’ll be honest, I was a big fan of Discovery Channel’s show Pitchmen. It was always pretty cool to see what crazy product was going to be sold each week. Honestly, its one of those shows I just happened upon while on travel for work and then I got pretty hooked.
I was checking my RSS feeds when I saw that Ctrl-Alt-Del had posted a good tribute comic to Billy Mays. Its worth checking out on the CAD homepage. The small picture below links to the fullsize comic that was posted on CAD today.
Everyone has to deal with unwanted email messages. Often called SPAM, these messages can come from anyone and do nothing but pollute the internet communication system. At the time of writing this, I have about 500 SPAM messages in my work email and almost 300 in my personal account. And those numbers account for approximately two weeks. If you use that as an average across the whole year, I alone receive about 21,000 or more SPAM emails per year. Then you can begin adding in the things I get from misinformed people that I don’t move to my SPAM folders, Instant Messages, Twitter Messages, Facebook Messages, etc.
So the first thing you should know is how to spot SPAM. And the first thing to know about spotting SPAM is that is comes from all internet source. There are SPAM emails, SPAM websites, SPAM instant messages, SPAM Facebook/My Space/Twitter messages. Anything that can be used for person to person or person to group communications may be used to send SPAM. There are many different flavors of SPAM, here are the most common:
To good to be true (free money, give away for forwarding a message, etc)
Recycled Events (solar eclipse with the right day but wrong year)
Missing Person / Stranger Emergency (missing children and accident notifications)
Phishing Scams (I will send you money if you let me use your bank account to move funds from Nigeria to America).
Now, I know I have made some grievous accusations about give aways, fund raisers, events, and criminal investigations. A few of them are real, but many of them are SPAM. How can you tell the difference?
Verify:
Search the internet for others saying that it is true or not. If you are dealing with something like lost child Jim Smith, you can search for the words lost child Jim Smith spam
Source:
An alternative form of verification, you can go back to the source. For example, if you get an email about a metior shower in August of this year, you might double check it on nasa.gov
Origin:
Look at the person or group who sent it to you. If you have signed up for something like Amber Alerts via text message, you can be sure messages from them are not SPAM. However, if Jamie ForwardsALot sends you a message or it comes from a stranger, then you have pretty good odds that you are looking at SPAM.
Finally, if you have a message, but you don’t have time to verify or source it, DO NOT FORWARD IT. I cannot emphasize that enough. The message, assuming it is SPAM, has polluted the internet enough, so don’t contribute to the problem. And do not worry about it being an emergency. The authorities at all levels have many ways of broadcasting information, so email forwards do not often lead to valuable tips or assistance. And authorities may have to dedicate valuable resources to responding to people trying to be helpful in providing tips on a case that doesn’t exist!
I wanted to check in with you the readers to see how many of you have pre-ordered Windows 7. I did it early Friday morning, mostly because I feared them running out of preorders. So far it seems as though Amazon and other retailers have plenty of copies available for pre-order. Vote below and feel free to leave comments!
I don’t know how much any readers might have been following the recent Batman Comics from DC. After the Batman R.I.P. arc and the Battle for the Cowl arc things have been shaken up to say to least. Bruce Wayne, as many might know, was killed in Final Crisis and upon his death Gotham City was left without the Batman. Gotham remained without Batman until the end of the Battle for the Cowl arc where Dick Grayson assumed the role of Batman. That wasn’t the only major shift though, Damien Wayne (Bruce’s biological son) has assumed the mantle of Robin and Tim Drake/Wayne is now the Red Robin. Simply put, there is a new Dynamic Duo in Gotham City.
Batman and Robin #1
Batman and Robin #1 reunites the team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. This is the same duo that relaunched the X-Men in the early 2000s. Needless to say, I think they are up to the task of showcasing the new Batman and Robin. Keep in mind, however, that Quitely is only penciling the first 3 issues before taking a 6 issue hiatus. Its been mentioned by others online, but I think this part bears repeating. It will be very interesting to see Batman and Robin in opposite roles. When Bruce Wayne was the Batman he was always serious while the Robins acted in a much more laid back manor and interjected humor into situations. This is going to be a role reversal now with Damien Wayne’s Robin playing the straightman to Dick Grayson’s Batman. As a Dick Grayson fan I’m excited to see how things turn out.
One of the chief problems that everyone has is working with passwords. I can’t make you have fewer passwords, but I do have a system for remembering them better. As long as you like something with words, you can remember any complex password. My favorite source of password are songs. I prefer the choruses of popular songs.
So how do I go from music to passwords? Well, you need to start with taking a line from a song. As an example, lets look at a song every American should know, the US National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.
Password Source: Oh, say can you see; by the dawn’s early light!
Now, that line alone is about 47 characters from the ‘O’ to the ‘!’. Way too many for your average password system, but it has the right number of words: 10. So lets shorten that lyric down to password length. Just take the first letter of each word, keep the capitalization, and take out the spaces and punctuation.
Basic Password Option: Oscysbtdel
Now many secure systems insist on 4 things: upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and symbols (!$+). So lets add a few of these things. You can add them, by substituting the numbers and symbols for similar letters. For example, replace an ‘O’ with a ‘0′ or replace ‘t’ with ‘+’. Don’t forget to add punctuation from your source to the result. Add capitals were it makes sense to you, since there is a pause in the line before the word “by”, I will capitalize that letter.
Secure Password Option: 0$cy$B+d3l!
Now, remember to pick your own songs, poems, or other works of literature for sources. Being very original helps. And now you have some very secure passwords that at least make sense in your head.
On Wednesday night, the Academy of Science-Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films held their 35th annual award show in Burbank, California. More importantly they realized the greatness that is BSG as it won 3 awards in the TV category.
Best Cable Series – Battlestar Galactica
Best Actor – Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama, Battlestar Galactica)
Best Actress – Mary McDonnell (President Roslin, Battlestar Galactica)
Well deserved awards for what is was arguably the best show on television. Both Olmos and McDonnell deserved these award as they carried Battlestar Galactica in the last season. Their characters were portrayed amazingly. If anyone saw their last scene together in BSG they know the award was well deserved. Too bad the Emmys haven’t given BSG any love in the past. Keep your fingers crossed that this year might be different.
If anyone is interested in the overall results of the Saturn Awards they are after the jump.
I know it’s a change of pace, but I’m not going to be writing about one of my normal topics I’ve been covering lately. I was browsing Google News today when I saw that the pricing information for Windows 7 had been released. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but in this case early upgraders are in for a pleasant surprise.
Windows 7 is currently targeted for an October 22nd release date, so its coming up quicker than a lot of people have thought. With that in mind its important to realize what it will cost you to update so that your Windows PC can be temporarilycutting edge.
On October 22nd, the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade with cost you $199.99 and for the full package $199.99. The Windows 7 Pro upgrade will cost $199.99 with the full version costing $299.99. Finally, for those of you out that have to have Windows 7 with all the bells and whistles there is the Windows 7 Ultimate version. The upgrade retails for $219.99 and the full version will be a wallet killer at $319.99.
But, here’s the good news for early adopters. Starting tomorrow, Microsoft is running a short time promotion for early adopters that want to preorder Windows 7. If you go to your favorite retail site, like Amazon.com for example, you can preorder the Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional for $49.99 or $99.99 respectively. Not a bad deal if you want to jump on the Windows 7 train early. Keep in mind, Microsoft has stated this deal only runs from June 26 to July 11 of this year. At these upgrade prices I’m pretty sure I’ll be leaving Vista behind.
My buddy sent me an e-mail I saw at work. The Dallas Cowboys just built a brand new stadium. Currently, it is being used for concerts until Football season starts. It seems that during the work setting up a concert someone decided to hook their Xbox 360 into the 72 x 160 ft. LED HD screen. Personally, I’m jealous as all hell. I want to play Gears or Halo on a screen that big. Just imagine how cool it would have been for them to hook the 360 into the sound system. That would have been one hell of an experience. Pictures of the gamplay are shown below and so’s a video from youtube.
Posted by Chris 
