If you don't know what an alethiometer is, you haven't read His Dark Materials, a trilogy by Philip Pullman. But don't worry! Now you don't have to! The movie of the first book, The Golden Compass is currently in production and scheduled for release December 2007. And to make that news even more exciting is the news that the film will star Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.

I was wondering how they were going to get around the controversial elements of the book, but now I see how. The children are kidnapped and experimented upon by a "mysterious organization." In the trilogy, the evil "mysterious organization" is the church, though I don't recall Pullman calling out a specific religion.

His Dark Materials was one of my very favorite trilogies. Next Christmas will be a good time at the movies.....

It's not official or final, but the preliminary results show that our own Glynn Foster has won a spot on the GNOME Foundation Board.

Congratulations, Glynn!

Technorati Tags: JDS

Sun has released Solaris 10 11/06 today. Internally, we called this "Update 3". The biggie features for this update are Trusted Extensions and Secure by Default. Yes, all of the security features you loved back in Trusted Solaris, are now standard as part of Solaris 10. This isn't just for the feds either. Banks love it. Wall St. loves it. Corporations that need to follow Sarbanes-Oxley love it.

Get it here.

Technorati Tags: Solaris

There's a new JDS desktop in OpenSolaris. We've rev'ved it up to GNOME 2.16, but have also added some really cool features. Check it out and then download it from Build 53 on opensolaris.org.

Technorati Tags: JDS

Today is World AIDS Day. Take a minute out today to remember the friends and loved ones we've lost to AIDS.