Insider sources have revealed that in a stunning move by music publisher Elektra, they have signed Tom Cruise to portray The Cures’ front man Robert Smith in an upcoming movie detailing the life of the Robert Smith.

Movie studio insiders have indicated that Paramount was not happy with a deal that Tom’s people brokered with Electra on the project. Tom Cruise being a life long fan of Robert Smith’s work was jubilant at the possibly of portraying the music idol of his youth.

Still reading? So, there is no movie that I am aware of featuring Tom Cruise playing Robert Smith. Sorry to get you all worked up.  I was just tired of reading about all the Tom Cruise drama, like any regular person actually cares. I am a big fan of the Cure and when I saw the above picture of Tom Cruise wasting space in my Google news feed it reminded me of Robert Smith; however I was unable to find the picture I was thinking of so I posted the closest one I could find. 

Palm Infocenter has gleaned some interesting information from TreoCetral. The upcoming Treo 700p looks to have include:

Power Vision EVDO support
128 MB memory
1.3 Megapixel camera
Bluetooth, SD expansion slot
Refined industrial design, complete upgrade to the Treo 650
Software: Sprint TV, On Demand, Streaming music
Bluetooth DUN modem support

The device is said to luanch on 5/28/06.

More: http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8473/palm-treo-700p-release-date-leaked/

[WARNING graphic rant ahead] Is it just me or has mobile phone etiquette finally just vanished? There are very few bastions of mobile phone seclusion you can count on, private spaces you totally control, the confessional booth, spelunking deep caves, and the bathroom. Wait, that last one is now gone as evidenced by my recent trip to the men’s room.

So I’m sitting there doing my business, and some one walks in and starts to use the urinal. There is a RING and then a “hello”. I’m thinking, WTF. Then I hear, “...no I’m in the bathroom, where are you?”. I make out an almost inaudible chuckle from the stall next to me.

My internal dialog replays the conversation as such: “...no I’m in the men’s room, phone in one hand and **ck in the other...no I haven’t gone Brokeback Mountain on you, I’m taking a leak. Where are you?” On the other end of the phone I image the person saying, “Where am I? Not in the bathroom talking on the cell phone you freak!”

At least he washed up afterwards. 

Robert Hartley an occational editor here on PDAToday.com has run into a wall in building his uber gaming rig.  He hand picked all the best parts like the Intel D940 3.2 Dual Core, a pair of XFX SLi ready GeForce 7800GTX video cards, ASUS P5WD2 motherboard that supports dual card goodness and even includes the SLi connector cable, RAID 5...well you get the idea.

After discovering that the cards were refusing to run in SLi mode, he did some research and found a couple of interesting links. Apparently, someone has hacked the older 66.xx driver revision to enable SLI support with 6600/6800 boards on this motherboard. That shows that it works, but that doesn’t help with 7800GTX cards since they are not supported in that driver, and he also has a rule against running modified drivers on his system.

Another article he found, quotes an ASUS representative stating that there are no hardware limitations in the Intel chipsets or mainboards that would prevent SLI from running.

We sent an email off to NVIDA to get their response to this issue. Below are the email letter sent and the reply we received.

Click to read what came next...

Thomas Hawk of Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection posted his surreal experience with a horrid online retailer. This story has garnered extensive internet coverage over the past few days including a post on slashdot, which is where I first learned about it.

From Thomas’ blog post:

"I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again.” “I’m an attorney, I will sue you.” “I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call.” “I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you.” “You’d better get this through your thick skull.” “You have no idea who you are dealing with.”

These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday.

Read the whole post, it gets absolutely unreal: http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/priceritephoto-abusive-bait-and-switch.html

Slashdot reports that there have been serious intelligence violations by the FBI. Ya think? Who didn’t see this coming? Anyone...Bueler? 

“The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.”

The good news is that there are watchdogs like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

I am all for protecting our assets and people but there are some scary similarities to what’s going on now and here to what was going on in other parts of the world back in the 40’s. Our government puts a better spin on agency names and laws by giving them names that would make anyone who disagreed sound like an agitator.

But let’s be fair, I don’t think the FBI is really out to do any intentional nefarious activities they are just doing what they are told to do, and for the most part they do a stand up job. What seem to have happened in the past several years are an imbalance of powers and a lack of checks and balances.

Anyway, back to more pressing stuff like what am I having for lunch…

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations [washington post]
Significant FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act [slashdot] [source]