Director Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have agreed to make two movies based on JRR Tolkien’s book The Hobbit, ending months of legal wrangling.

Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, co-chairmen and co-CEOs of New Line, says Jackson - the director of the smash hit Lord of the Rings series - and producer Fran Walsh will both executive produce a Hobbit movie and a sequel, but no decision has been made about who will direct the films.

According to IMDB the first Hobbit movie is scheduled for 2009.

Source: ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Mozilla development team recently announced that anyone could join the Firefox 3 Beta 2 Test Day. That was last Friday, but you can still download the Firefox 3 Beta 2 RC1 Build from here.

Before you install you should either back up your profile or use the profile manager to create a new profile for testing.

In order to limit distribution of this not-yet-tested release, anyone who was linked to the release candidate download directory will be redirected to this announcement. If all goes well during the testing, Firefox 3 Beta 2 will be released on December 21st in the early afternoon, Pacific Standard Time. You can track the progress on the Firefox 3 Beta 2 Release Checklist.

New features and changes in this milestone that require feedback include:

• Improved security features such as: protection from cross-site JSON data leaks, tighter restrictions on site-specific content using effective TLD service, better presentation of website identity and security, malware protection, stricter SSL error pages, anti-virus integration in the download manager, version checking for insecure plugins.
• Improved ease of use through: better password management, easier add-on installation, new download manager with resumable downloading, full page zoom, animated tab strip, and better integration with Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Richer personalization through: one-click bookmarking, smart bookmark folders, location bar that matches against your history and bookmarks for URLs and page titles, ability to register web applications as protocol handlers, and better customization of download actions for file types.
• Improved platform features such as: new graphics and font rendering architecture, JavaScript 1.8, major changes to the HTML rendering engine to provide better CSS, float-, and table layout support, native web page form controls, colour profile management, and offline application support.
• Performance improvements such as: better data reliability for user profiles, architectural improvements to speed up page rendering, over 330 memory leak fixes, a new XPCOM cycle collector to reduce entire classes of leaks, and reductions in the memory footprint.

You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.

The first release candidate of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP is now available. Visit Microsoft to download the Standalone Update Package (Windows® XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate).

Microsoft gives the following overview of what to expect:

This is the self-extracting executable that contains the update package for Windows® XP Service Pack 3. Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.

This pre-release software is provided for testing purposes only. Microsoft does not recommend installing this software on primary or mission critical systems. Microsoft recommends that you have a backup of your data prior to installing any pre-release software.

Early feedback from other users indicate that SP3 provides slightly better overall performance. SP3 also includes NAP (Network Access Protection) support which helps determine your computers “health” before granting access to on-line update services.

For those of you with a somewhat “fishy” XP license, be aware that SP3 will ask you for the product key, but this time AFTER the installation. Just so you know…

On the 18th December 1987, the initial version of the programming language Perl was announced by Larry Wall on the news group comp.sources.mis. During the years Perl has become one of the most popular programming languages and is especially known for its great ability to process text.

Perl is often included in the standard set-up for both Unix and Linux systems, and is widely used for executing local applications and as scripts in various web solutions.

The last main update from Perl, Perl 5, came back in 1994, but the language is still maintained. The latest version is 5.8.8, but Perl 6 is currently under development.

Perl is one of few languages that can do a lot from only a few lines of code. This again can make it difficult for anyone but the author to interpret what a piece of code actually does.

Perl supports modules, which is used extensively. CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) is a collection of alomost 13.000 Perl modules that offers tons of pre constructed routines available for other Perl developers.

Once again, Happy Birthday and best of luck!

The concept design of the ship Princess Kaguya has been carried out in cooperation with one of the top cruise ship building yards in the world, Aker Yards Cruise & Ferries (www.akeryards.com).

The size of the ship, 450,000GT, 505m length, 58m breadth hull, 20 decks, was first determined as an adequate level as defined by the requirement to have the “functions of a city”.

The highest priority was the functionality of the vessel so the appearance of the ship is in no way eccentric, and remains orthodox.

Trial speed is 22kn, which is more or less standard, however if one considers the grand size of the ship, its speed is nothing but surprising.

The largest allocation of floor space on the ship is the multi-purpose hall. This awesome floor space of 7,000 square meters is essential for various kinds of events to be held. It is about 10 times bigger than any of the halls in the hotels, and is capable of holding any kind of trade show, convention, in-door sport event, etc.

Three different class hotels, each with 1,200 rooms.

The size of the shopping mall was something also not to be compromised. A spectacular 300m long, 16m wide, 18.4m high atrium, to hold about the same number of shops as in a department store.

The building has not yet started but with a solid investment team I can’t see any reason why this shouldn’t become a reality.

More info and specifications [Source: princesskaguya.com]

Update: Royal Caribbean have already ordered a 360m length, 73m heigh ship named Genesis which will be ready for launch in 2009. The massive vessel weighs 12 times the Eiffel tower and will have a capacity of 5400 passengers. Until Princess Kaguya sets “sail” it will be the worlds largest-ever cruise ship.