News

May 2005

Windows 98 (follow-up) : It was no reason for despair since the new Sapphire Radeon 9800pro 128MB-256 bits works perfectly with Half Life 2. Much better than the ugly 6600GT that annoyed me during more than a week.

Radeon rules (and for cheap).

Windows 98 (follow-up): Even with a brand new installation (see below), reinstallation did not bring satisfying results for a game lover like me (Half Life doesn't work, Far Cry doesn't work, Splinter Cell - provided by Leadtek! - doesn't work either; only the old Settlers IV works). So, I was pushed into a clear conclusion:

Windows 98 and GeForce 6600GT
do not sleep well together.

The video card reseller being of the same advice, I replaced the useless LeadTek card with a Sapphire Radeon 9800pro 128MB-256 bits. At least, drivers installed in a matter of minutes. Game tests are coming.

Vampirism as seen by a pharmaceutical company: Here is an exceptionnal document (!) telling us about vampires in a professional context. Everything is present: PowerPoint slides, technical details, financing, company slogans (in the lower right corner of the slides). 30 minutes of utter laughter. From Peter Watts, author of Starfish (Science Fiction).

Windows 98: I had a few difficult days (from the computer point of view, of course) with a full re-install of Win98 on my main PC. Everything is much cleaner now, even if this was a rather long process.

Linux Tip #9 (LinuxISO) : The single location where you will find all big GNU/Linux distros.

Linux Tip #8 (Ultimate Boot CD) : 100% specialized in maintenance and repair of PC, here is a great GNU/Linux distro with plenty of useful tools immediately useful. But only for system adminstrators.

Too much transparency is bad for the computer business:

Bad week: I hate this week. Among other bad things, I had a couple of hardware failures. So, I had to go and buy some replacements. Here are my comments about it.

My AGP-8x PowerColor Radeon 9800pro (128Mo/128bits) video graphic card is slowly plumeting to death (an annoying memory addresing problem that leads to screen bands and some impossible display errors in 3D games).

Note: Prices did not really moved down for this kind of card since I paid 169€ in August 2004. For 150€, I can't have more than a Radeon 9800pro (no X800 is under 230€)! Concerning NVidia boards, there is only the GeForce 6600GT in this race at these prices. But hey are slightly more powerful than the Radeons.

Replaced with: A LeadTech WinFast A6600 GT TDH because it appeared as the fastest in Tom's Hardware 6600GT comparison and at 198€ it was also the cheapest I could find this afternoon in rue Montgallet (Paris) while it includes an MPEG video encoder (VIVO/Video-in-Video-out), 2 screen display, and PC games Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell.

But, for the time being, my PC is become unstable (like I didn't have with the Radeon video card, before).

A no-name Ethernet hub just died on me.

Note: Prices are at an absolute bottom low cheap bargain level. Brands seem to have nearly no space for them here. Moreover, there is no longer any cost advantage to choosing a hub rather than a switch (but a router is still aroudn 35-40€ and too often includes also a useless ADSL modem).

Remplaced with: A CNet CNSH-800 swicth at 19€ for a reasonably nice 8-port 10/100 swicth able to automagically recognizing crossed RJ-45 cables.

CD-R won't last long: According to the French magazine 60 millions de consommateurs, not only CD-R and DVD-R are not eternal, but some may even not survive a full year after a clean burn and ideal storage conditions (22-23°C, 50% humidity). There would be 10-15% loss (some brands may score even lower!).

Problem: This means that CD-R simply are not for long-term storage/archival.

My personnal experience: Burning at 2x or 4x, with or without over-burning, all media brands (no name brands are often of lower quality), storage during 3 years (some even stayed in a bank safe) and I get around 25% of my CD-R not readable.

Conclusion: I am leaving CD-R for good. I won't archive on CD-R anymore. The price of hard-drive megabytes is so low and the CD-R are so error-prone that I no longer have any doubt.

HalfLife2 or HalfLife64: Here it is! There is a 64-bit version of this great game. It is targeted to the 64-bit newest CPUs from AMD.(and it follows the path set by 64-bit Unreal Tournament or 64-bit Shadow Ops: Red Mercury Rising). More details, a deeper view of the panorama, but you will need to have a top-notch graphics card to get those advantages.

Soon to come: Special game versions for the bi-processor CPUs we just start to see on the market now.

American Secret Services have a hard time at confidentiality: They just published a report about the death of Italian Nicola Calipari when crossing an American checkpoint with ex-hostage Juliana Sgrena (just released). The document is in PDF with parts blacked to preserve some confidential data. Unfortunately, a mere cut-and-paste will bring back all the information (including confidential names and more).

Great work, indeed! Let's hope real secrets are kept by more able people.

Cleaned version (PDF)
Full version (Word)

Dynax 7D tip #10: Again on the front of the handling RAW files for my Dynax/Maxum 7D, here is a tool both simple and cool, RawDrop, that allows a single file drop to convert it from Konica-Minolta RAW to either TIFF (8 or 16-bit linear), or 48-bit PhotoShop.

Why this tool? Simply for 3 good reasons:

1. You may keep a file in a non-proprietary format (TIFF) or in a common format (PSD). Excellent for your long-term archives.
2. Once converted to TIFF-16/PSD-48, you have everything you need to apply corrections (with nearly any existing graphic software - PhotoShop, Corel PhotoPaint, PaintShop Pro, GIMP - with maximum color depth before converting back to a lighter file format. It's the end of Minolta tools!
3. It works with other cameras RAW format (Frank Siegert wrote it primarily for Canon EOS 10D and D60, but it works with nearly any digital camera RAW file).

Only one drawback, TIFF-16 files are real heavy on the disk space: 35MB.

Based on the excellent DcRaw.c free code from Dave Coffin.

Unfit: If you like Dilbert sense of humour, but you'd like to see him in a gym, jump to Unfit.

BEFSX41 - Upgrade hell (the Sequel): A follow-on to the news I published last week: Linksys is preparing a new version correcting the awful bugs of v1.50.18. I don't know yet when it will produce one usable version. In between, just keep v1.45.3 you took from their FTP site.

Dynax 7D tip #9: This is not a real tip yet, but it may become one. Like other digital photographers, I'm a bit worried about the future of these RAW files my Dynax 7D produces. Will I be able to read them in the future? OpenRaw.org is going a step further and try to lobby the manufacturers to publish the internal details of these RAW files. Let's hope they succeed.

Windows 64: You have a powerful 64-bit processor in your dream machine (probably an AMD Athlon 64) and you just heard that Microsoft is going to offer free upgrades from Windows XP Pro to 64-bit XP. Don't run right now! First, remember that Microsoft officially stated that this system will not support 32-bit drivers (virtually all existing drivers) and it will not support 16-bit applications (It's amazing how many of these Win 3.11-old applications are still in use in our machines).

Source: Tom's Hardware Guide

 

Dynax 7D tip #8: Irfan View freeware I recently recommended here for its RAW format plug-ins has another significant feature for digital photography users.

Irfan View is able to resize an image in a way that is tremendously nicer than nearly all the other graphics softwares. Irfan View brings you the Lanczos filter which is nearly as good as the well-known PhotoShop bicubic interpolation method. It preserves the apparent detail from an image that is blown up to enormous sizes. That is the end of all those ugly little blocks and stairs that appeared in your image when using a less powerful software.

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Other links

• An excellent freeware source : NoNags.
• Tom's Hardware Guide is THE reference web site about computer hardware. Can be found in various languages:
• English THG
• French
• German
• Italian
• etc.

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