This portable DVD/MP3/VCD/more player is only $158. There must be some catch but I can't find it. It looks ace. The Panasonic MP3 CD-Walkman I've been looking at was $200. Update : Catch is it has no batteries, it must run off a powerpack and thus is not actually portable. (thanks Dave)

And DVD writers have dropped to $450 (Pioneer DVR-106DSW DVD-/+R/RW or Pioneer A05 DVR-A05P DVD-R/RW & CD-R/RW). I should just go and get one. Then I can go about transfering a friends ultra rare movie (and various Walken videos) to DVD instead of the currently planned 4 x XVCD.

Pity blank DVDs cost so damn much.

I want to work for Lowry Digital Images:

TBP: Tell us about your work on Citizen Kane. Considering the huge importance of this film, you must realize the enormous significance of Warner Bros. handing over the film elements for you to work with. I understand the original print was destroyed in a fire many years ago. Where did the new source elements come from and what was their condition?

JL: Warner Bros. does the scanning of the film and provides us with data tapes or digital video tapes. We process the images and return data to them in the same format. In the case of Citizen Kane we worked with PAL resolution images of 720 X 578 pixels at 24 frames per second. We look forward to the day when we will have the opportunity to process 2048 X 1536 pixel (or higher) images and make new negatives of films as important as this one. This could lead to preservation of the films in a simple and standard format for the next 100 years.

... and more from the Chicago Tribune ...

"Roman Holiday" was a bigger challenge than "Sunset Boulevard." "Frankly, a lot of shots are out of focus," Lowry says. There are a lot of weird opticals. It wasn't well lit."

You know, this isn't really a bug. The freeware version of ZoneAlarm, a personal firewall for always-on internet users, deliberately does not differentiate between what program is running Win32 Services... so the moment you run it on Windows XP various pop-ups arrive telling you that Win32 Services is running and should it access the internet? Of course a virus could easily be written to use such an annonymous important sounding name and presto... through the firewall. The whole point of the Paid version of ZoneAlarm is that it's more secure because you can tell what is running beyond what it tells you... still, someone announcing this as a bug is a nice way to force ZoneAlarm to give more away for free.