InfoWorld - Enhanced software development capabilities and system availability are key focuses in an improved version of BEA Systems' WebLogic Server application server, which is available on Monday.

AP - The shareholder uprising that threw out nearly the entire board of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. was a victory for investors who are fighting for new leadership at troubled companies, corporate governance experts said Friday.

Open-source rival to Microsoft Exchange names Gerald Labie its new top exec and hires former top techie for Novell’s Suse Linux.

Federal judge gives final approval to antitrust settlements, saying they went far enough to resolve competition concerns.

TechWeb - Security pros say the Mac platform isn't a high-risk operating system and is more secure than Microsoft's Windows XP.

NewsFactor - "You can even run Windows software." That's the provocative promise that Apple has been making ever since June 2005, when it shocked its diehard supporters with the news that future Macs would run on Intel processors.

R u rdy 4 wrlds fastest txt msg? Contest to determine quickest thumbs in the West, but no shorthand allowed.

TechWeb - New advances in IP-based digital video surveillance cameras, recorders, and analysis software promise to help retailers and other businesses put the kibosh on theft.

TechWeb - Red Hat, the biggest distributor of Linux software, is forecasting annual cash-flow growth that would top market expectations, sending its shares up almost 6%.

From the box to the code, Redmond is clamping down, forcing pirates to go to greater lengths to create “Frankenbuilds” that can evade detection.
Photo: Staying ahead of pirates

Reuters - Dissident shareholders won control of
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and ousted Chief
Executive Paul Eibeler, the company behind blockbuster "Grand
Theft Auto" video game series said on Thursday.

Rising expenses–including the JBoss acquisition–cut into Linux seller’s revenue; net income drops 25 percent.

Wikipedia-like tool aims to help people automate repetitive tasks performed on the Web, such as filling out forms or paying bills.

AFP - US software colossus Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a prototype of a mobile Internet browser designed to mirror the ease of going online via a desktop computer.

Scholastic has released the art for the cover of the zealously anticipated final book from the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It’s cool, it’s gorgeous to look at, and like a frustratingly well-written episode of Lost, it begs more questions than answers. Why is Harry in a Coliseum with shadowy people watching him (is this a knock off of Best of the Best 2?)? Where is his wand? Is the arms spread pose an homage to Daniel Radcliffe’s now infamous onstage nude work? What is the necklace around his neck? Where are Ron and Hermione? If they cast only British actors in the movies, when are they going to get to uber-hot septuagenarian Queen, Helen Mirren?

Those questions all have intriguing answers, to be sure, but none of them concern me. What I want to know is what he’s reaching for. It would seem from the context of the picture that Harry is in the middle of a fight. And if you’ve seen the full wraparound cover (available HERE, and here’s the UK version), you’ll know he’s facing off against Voldemort (holla, Ralph Fiennes, you aeronautical pervert!). So is this a snapshot from the final battle between the two? Are they fighting to the pain, instead of to the death? Are the “Deathly Hallows” merely the name of the place where wizards bear out their final, murderous duel? Or is it just the pet name for Paris Hilton’s vagina? Hopefully, the answers to these questions will be revealed on July 21st when the book hits stores. But until then we can only prognosticate.

I’m going to assume that Harry and Voldemort are both reaching for a wand and that this moment is the crucial turning point in their climactic battle. But for the sake of argument and good fun, I came up with some other possibilities for what Harry might be reaching for. J.K. Rowling is a fine novelist and shrewd intellect, but I bet she’s not clever or daring enough to put a few of these things in ole Harry’s hands.

Things Harry Might Be Reaching For on the Cover of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”…

• He’s reaching for a calendar to double check when pre-approved hottie Emma Watson FINALLY turns eighteen (4/15/2008, for all those interested).

• He’s actually checking to see if it’s raining. His hair goes frizzy like Monica Gellar in Jamaica when it rains.

• It’s a boomerang. Ron put on Crocodile Dundee the other day and Harry can’t get Australian culture out of his head. That’s not a wand, THAT’S a wand!

• He’s clearly practicing holding a server tray for his future career. Harry Potter is destined to be a waiter. Probably at Shenanigans, or some such other Office Space-like place that requires their servers to wear 26 pieces of flair.

“Hi, I’m Harry, I’ll be your server tonight. Would you like some water? Accio! There you go.”

“Let me clear these plates for you. Evanesco!”

“A five dollar tip on a $60 dollar bill? Are you kidding me? Avada Kedavra! Dammit, not again…”

• Harry’s doing his best Darth Vader from Empire imitation. “You will never know the power of the Dark Arts!”

• He’s in a Coliseum, so obviously he’s busting out some Shakespeare in the Hogwarts school play. “To be in the sequel, or not to be. That is the question… for my agent.”

• What reaching? He’s just trying to get Lotus Pose on! (This all started because Harry is a rapid Madonna fan (fav song: “Live To Tell”); ever since the Brit-con Material Girl started taking up yoga, HP’s been doing all he can to look trendy.)

• He’s just showing his frustration over Sanjaya not getting kicked off American Idol. Harry’s a closet Phil Stacey fan (I know!).

• Harry is secretly obsessive compulsive and can’t stand to see the two “T’s” in the title look different. He’s reaching out to try and fix it. Related note: Harry’s favorite muggle TV show: Monk (he secretly prefers Sharona over Natalie. What can you do, he’s British?).

• VOLDEMOOOOORT! (Think Star Trek 2.)

• He’s holding his hand up as a perch for his owl, Hedwig, natch. Side question: If J.K. Rowling had called the owl Hootie, do you think it would have prevented Hootie and the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker from making a horrible second album? Because I was really waiting for him to write another great song about how the Miami Dolphins always suck.

P.S. Screw you, Darius! I get enough headaches trying to root for Ricky Williams to accidentally lose the number of his pot dealer and remember he’s good at football. Not mention the atrocity that is Daunte Culpepper. So I don’t need you making it any worse with your easy listening light rock and affable Southern demeanor.

• He’s reaching for his customized platinum snitch, which is emblazoned with the words “Seeker 4 Life” on it. Harry is nothing if not a big baller.

• Again, not reaching for anything, Harry just can’t stand negative space on book covers, so he put his arm up to create a proper special relationship.

• He’s holding up his invisible cell phone, trying to get reception. Unfortunately, there’s no spell powerful enough to overcome Cingular’s shoddy service.

• He’s recreating his favorite moment from Gladiator “My name is Harry James Potter, commander of Dumbledore’s Army, Student of Hogwarts, loyal servant to the true grand wizard, Albus Dumbledore. Son to a murdered Father, pupil to a murdered Principal. And I will have my vengeance, in this book or the next.”

Bangarang!

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InfoWorld - A man from Anderson, Indiana, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for selling more than $700,000 worth of counterfeit computer software on eBay.com, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

PC World - Vlip is a new video sharing community with a twist. What makes Vlip different from services like YouTube or Google Video, according to its creators, is interactivity. Powered by Internet video service software SightSpeed, Vlip is designed to provide users with threaded video messaging capabities.

PC World - A man from Anderson, Indiana, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for selling more than US$700,000 worth of counterfeit computer software on eBay.com, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

I can remember countless times during my college years when my roommates and I would sit around our apartment and complain about how there was never anything good to do (like Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, except with Detroit Red Wing jerseys). Sure we lived two blocks from the beach, had easy access to certain parentally frowned up “activities”, and went to a nationally ranked party school. Not to mention Downtown Santa Barbara having a slew of nice movie theatres, fantastic restaurants and a great club scene.
But for the most part, life was boring. And this video brings back those memories.

Stuff like this happened all the time. This probably went down on some random Tuesday in February. I can’t tell you how many parties I went to that ended the same way. Some drunk guy spills another drunk guy’s half filled cup of Natty Ice and suddenly it’s Order 66 time. And let me tell you, nobody ever let the Wookie win. You’d think a campus half-filled with potsmokers would be more laidback with their lightsaber draw, but no. There was always a couple of idiots who let their fear turn into anger. And their anger into hate. But their hate always turned into our suffering when they knocked over the freaking keg during their duel. It’s like, can I just one time chill at a friend’s house and do some late night drinking without some yahoo trying to Strike Back? Please? I was lucky if just once a week I got drunk and made inappropriate phone calls into my ex-girlfriends. That’s no way to live!

On Fridays the local Stormtrooper Patrols rode around on dewbacks but we weren’t intimidated. All they ever did was give out lame parking tickets to podracers who went five minutes over on their parking meters. And don’t get me started on their racial Jedi profiling. If you were wearing a brown cloak you couldn’t even force throw a guy five feet without getting hassled. I thought college was about freedom and higher education? Not cloaking your Dark Jedi powers to avoid getting put in the campus paddywagon.

Life at UCSB, sigh…

Bangarang!

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American Idol gave me exactly what I deserved. I railed against them for bringing in mentors that today’s viewers (and Idols) could not relate to. So what do the Idol producers do? They give me Gwen Stefani Week, and not surprisingly (cause my karma is for “S”; I could be Earl’s stand-in, truly), the show was decidedly awful. The palette of songs to choose from is probably the culprit here. Seacrest claimed the Idols were singing either No Doubt songs, songs from the 90’s, or songs that inspired Gwen. O…k. So you brought Gwen on to rope the moderns but don’t require the Idols to only sing No Doubt or Gwen-solo songs? Why bother then? I wanna hear Haley try to gam here way through “Spiderwebs”. Or LaKisha bring it big on “Ex-Boyfriend”. “New” would have been a perfect choice for beat boxer Blake. And I would have paid green cash money to hear Sanjaya sing “Just A Girl”, even with the hair-saster.

The show had no rhyme, reason or rhythm. Songs came from out of nowhere, and the performances reflected that lack of connection. I never got a sense that the songs really mattered this week, which is surprising considering Idol shilled out for a hit-making superduperstar to mentor them in the ways of pop success. And on the Gwen Stefani tip, she was cute as hell, but seemed to be in way over her head. Her tips to the Idols were limited to “watch out for the melody” (Lulu was better at this), she rarely had a good word to say (other than for Melinda, natch), and she’s a terrible actress, because it was beyond obvious when she hated someone (Chris Sligh). Furthermore, how can someone so successful be so “deer in the headlights” just because she’s pulling studio time with Sanjaya? Is he THAT detrimental to the health of modern music? Should Gavin Rossdale put on his machinehead and destroy the kid? Can we get Sanjaya a time machine to 1996 so he can wander into Orange County and kill the evil Ska trend before it gets invasive and nearly deafens a nation of grunge recovery victims?

I thought the show needed an injection of 2007, but I was wrong. Maybe Idol is better off staying an old-school karaoke contest, than it is trying to artificially paint some Top 40 on kids who aren’t ready yet (and those who never will be).

As stated before, I’ve decided to recap the show week-to-week and grade the singers on a sliding scale of how much I wanted to, or did, TiVo-bloop through the song. At the end of each recap I’ll make my pick for who should (and hopefully will) get the axe on the Wednesday night results show.

Let’s break it down, bloop bloop style!

1. Melinda Doolittle – When they opened with the wide shot of the lights going crazy and Mindy waving her hands in the air I knew there was no chance she was getting the bloop tonight. Match that awesomeness with the kickin flippy bob, the daring six inch heels and the under the boob beltage, and this was a package I would mail first class with insurance. No plebian ground delivery for this girl. She rocked, as per usual. And I - and the nation - loved it, as per double usual.

Gwen was right, who needs luck when you got the Doolittle? And let me add how scary this performance must have been for the rest of the Idol-wannabes. The only hope they had was that Melinda would falter on the up-tempo songs, but as she proved tonight, that ain’t happening. It’s scary how over this contest already is and there’s still eight more weeks to go.

2. Gina Glocksen – A calculated song choice error on Gina’s part. She cannot go up against Melinda and LaKisha with a ballad. She needs to toe the rocker line and get threw the herd thinning with as little collision as possible. Gina does not do stand-still singing well. The arm movement was clumsy, she seemed stiff and unsure of her talent and I was not a fan of the haircut. I like her a lot, I like her voice, but I would not advise her going down this route for too much longer. A half bloop at best.

3. Chris Richardson – I grew up listening to the radio in the Valley, which for a period of time in the mid-90’s could have been called No Doubt FM, so I’ve been over Don’t Speak about fifteen different times. But I knew if it was No Doubt night someone had to sing Don’t Speak, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it was Chris R (when Gina was the obvious choice). I was even more surprised to find I really enjoyed it. This should have been a double bloop purely on principle, but I upgraded to a one bloop because I dug the R & B twinge, the ornamentation, the passion and the fact that he didn’t have the damn Hindu dot on his forehead like a certain platinum mentor who looked stupid when the song first broke and who will remain nameless (Gwen!). I think he botched the words near the end, and he didn’t have nearly as big a finish as the anchor spot requires, but that’s secondary to how flat out nice it was to hear him sing this song and not want to gouge my ears out with a dooce-stained Q tip. I will never forgive KROQ for slobbing on the No Doubt knob so voraciously (and they don’t even play her new music, fucking hypocrites! Go spin the new Panic song again, asses).

4. Blake Lewis – Is Blake a Cylon now? Is he hearing All Along The Watchtower in his dressing room? Because I’ve never seen him so boring, dreary or stalkerish (check the eyes, they had “Giggity Giggity” written all over them). The only explanation for this lapse was that he was too busy watching the BSG finale to put his usual spin on things. I don’t dig Blake bringing it tender. And I really don’t like him saying he’s covering The Cure when he so obviously sung the 311 version from the Sandler in Hawaii flick. That’s twice with the substandard 90’s crap rock band. Let it go Blake. You go or we go. Double bloop this unfortunate Blake bullshit.

5. Haley Scarnato – I see someone got the “Your gams are great” memo, cause Haley unleashed them on a sick world and instantly healed the populace. Her KaBAM was so good it’s almost an afterthought that her voice was so thin and pitchy (not to mention she nailed exactly zero of the big applause notes). For those who are watching the show for reasons that have nothing to do with the singing, you can put your TiVmote down. For those who are purists, you might be dipping into double-bloop territory. Good thing I’m of the former group. Idol needs her for the eye candy so she’s not going anywhere, despite having the second worst voice on the show (hi there Sanjaya, we’ll deal with you and your epic vertical follicle trainwreck in just a minute).

6. Phil Stacey – I see the aliens took the Phil Cylon back to the baseship and replaced him with an upgraded model; one that doesn’t suck so terribly, and has heightened suck up powers. I want to triple bloop his obnoxious audience pandering arm movement and head bops, but his voice only merits a bloop and a half. Though I did notice that the background singers stepped all over him and sounded off-key. They took away from the great mid-section of the performance and completely ruined the close. But factor in the hat, the decreased alien-ness, the “everyone loves this song so much you get points just for reminding us how much it rocks” angle, and sympathy vote for the regrettable background ornamentation mishap, and it all spells a chance for Phil to finally break out of his weekly bottom three purgatory.

7. LaKisha Jones – One-bloop for the dress she sported that looked like the downside of a melted pack of Original Fruit Skittles; one bloop and a half for her tired vocal. Is it me, or did she seem out of breath for most of the middle of the song? Finally smiling rid her of most of the “bitch” vibe, and I liked the up tempo song, but she still didn’t do enough to get me to consider buying a ticket on her bandwagon. A good first step, though.

8. Jordin Sparks – A disaster of near Malakar-ian proportions. Bad song choice (the vocal was way too low in the opening verse), horrible wardrobe choice (that skirt wasn’t just doing nothing for her, it was running all over town messing up her credit), and frustrating tempo (either speed it the hell up in true No Doubt style, or flip the script and go super slow in true Blake Lewis style, but don’t wish wash the speed). I hated hated HATED this performance. Double bloop. And she’s lucky I like her or it would be worse.

9. Chris Sligh – Aside from him being a total fucking abominable monster of arrogance and prickitude, I dig the guy. But his performance tonight sounded like Pee Wee Herman doing an above average Sting imitation (how scary is the thought of Paul Reubens mastering tantra? He’d be a pervert force of nature.). A forceful double-bloop for the Sligh Creature From the Idol Lagoon. When even the performer admits he botched the job, I can’t abide by anything less. I guess I was wrong about him turning a corner, last week. I could very easily see him hitting the bricks tonight.

10. Sanjaya Malakar – He’s an automatic triple bloop, let’s get that out of the way. Now, to the performance… WHAT? THE? FUCK? IS? WITH? THE? HAIR? It made him look like the soulless villain in a late 80’s Jean Claude Van Damme movie (and not Bloodsport). He forgot the words like Gwen said he would, he was timid and quiet even when he was on point and again, the hair? Really? REALLY? Gwen should have sacked the Harijuku Girls on this poor child. Randy and Paula are right, the only chance this kid has is to go balls out every time and appall the viewers so much that they have to vote for him as out of sheer shock that someone had the balls to be so humiliating on purpose. He’s like a cast member of The Office wandered out of the Scranton branch and somehow made their way into CBS Television City.

Bottom Three: Chris Sligh, Haley Scarnato, Phil Stacey

My prediction for who gets the axe this week: FrankenSligh

The Jay’s Prediction Record So Far: 1 for 2 (50%)

Bangarang!

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Helio’s new Ocean phone may be stylish and cool, but it’s also functional–which just might attract more mainstream users.

InfoWorld - For at least the third time this month, Google is grappling with performance and availability problems in the Gmail service of Google Apps, the suite of hosted services that many consider a potential threat to Microsoft's Office suite of desktop software.

PC World - Developers have released a major update to the Metasploit security testing tool designed to run more smoothly on the Windows operating system.

InfoWorld - Developers have released a major update to the Metasploit security testing tool designed to run more smoothly on the Windows operating system.

AP - A new version of Adobe Systems Inc.’s Creative Suite software will go on sale next month, a launch that executives have billed as the most significant in the company’s 25-year history.

NewsFactor - Some of the most interesting software development these days is being driven by two simple truths: The World Wide Web is vast, and mobile phones are small.

PC World - The recently formed Linux Foundation, a merger of two Linux evangelizing industry consortiums, named its 15-person board of directors Tuesday. Along with executives from IT firms, the board also features the founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, a leading end-user of open-source software, and a lawyer whose work is focused on consortiums and standards development.

InfoWorld - The recently formed Linux Foundation, a merger of two Linux evangelizing industry consortiums, named its 15-person board of directors Tuesday. Along with executives from IT firms, the board also features the founder of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, a leading end-user of open-source software, and a lawyer whose work is focused on consortiums and standards development.

NewsFactor - Microsoft reported on Monday that it has sold more than 20 million copies of its new operating system, Windows Vista, during the first month of the software's general availability.

AP - A Russian school principal accused of installing pirated Microsoft software in school computers was ordered Tuesday to stand trial for a second time, in a case widely seen as a misguided attempt to crack down on software bootlegging.