Movies to See Before You Die

The staff at Yahoo! Movies has put together a list of the 100 films you must see before you die. I haven’t seen every movie on the list. There are quite a few foreign movies I haven’t seen. But there are some problems with some of the movies on the list. And a few omissions I’m surprised about.

For instance, they have the movie “Alien” but not “Aliens” which was a much better movie. One of the rare cases where a sequel was better than it’s original in a series. And it’s not on the list?

Groundhog Day” is on the list but not “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off“? Outrageous! On what criteria was this decision made?

No “The Princess Bride“? That’s just crazy!

Well, at least there are plenty of good pictures on the list. Some of my favorites are “The African Queen“, “The Bridge on the River Kwai“, “Casablanca“, “Saving Private Ryan“, “The Searchers“, “Seven Samurai“, “The Shawshank Redemption“, and “Star Wars” to name just a few.

Of course any list like this is subjective. No one would ever have a list that matches mine. And that’s okay! It makes for a great discussion. I do intend to add some of the foreign films to my Netflix queue. We shall see what I think about them.

Wanted: Linux Outlaws

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Linux Outlaws now has a Wanted: Dead or Alive poster for those that want to spread the word of this great podcast. It’s an easy way to support the show and spread some love for Linux and the open source movement in general.

Dan Lynch posted a request to the Linux Outlaws blog and I thought I’d re-post it here and at Tech Scamps to give them as much coverage as I can.

I’m a big fan of Dan and Fab, since discovering them online back in the spring of 2007. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them and always reach the end of listening to their podcast with some nugget or morsel of information that I find useful. And it’s a fun listen too!

So if you enjoy exploring Linux and support the open source movement, then you should listen to a few episodes of Linux Outlaws. What do you have to loose?

Violation of the US Constitution

Can any more blatant violation of the United States Constitution have occurred in it’s history as the passing of the 90% tax against bonuses? I’m no expert on the law but in my opinion the answer is no. It’s an outrageous act! I can only wonder where the Constitution will be ignored next or who will be targeted next.

I’m not defending AIG. The bonuses should not go out. In fact, I don’t really understand why some of those people are even still employed. But AIG is not the only one culpable in this fiasco. And I fear this will not be the last case of impropriety we will learn of. Either by a company receiving government funds or by the government wasting tax payer money.

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Dan Lynch on UNetBootin

Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws fame wrote an article about UNetBootin that makes me want to try it out. UNetbootin allows you to create bootable live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions.

I always have a live CD around for troubleshooting and testing. But this looks to easy to do and much more convenient. I’ve got a few 512MB flash drives hanging around and a 2GB flash drive doing nothing. So I hope to try this soon.

Thank Dan!

‘Vampire’ Unearthed in Venice

Discovery Channel News has an interesting story about a Female ‘Vampire’ Unearthed in Venice.

A long time ago, I hung out with someone who was a big fan of vampire stories. So I always think of her when I stumble upon a news story about vampires. As a historian, I found this story particularly interesting.

Apparently, an archeological team excavating a 16th Century mass-grave site in Italy, discovered a woman with a brick in her mouth. They believe she had died in a plague and was buried with many other victims of the epidemic. The mass-grave was reopened at some point, perhaps due to a second wave of the plague. Diggers found this woman bloated and with blood on her lips, they suspected her to be a vampire.

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