News

June 2005

Trains photographed with art: A really nice web site blending art photography and love of trains (two mild pleasures I share).

Linux Tip #10 (ucLinux): A very complete article in EDN-Europe about using the ucLinux distribution, very specialized in building small embedded systems. And, furthermore, David Marsch gives all the details about using it and good advice about writing device drivers.

The inventor of the integrated circuit dies: Even if you did not know Jack Kilby, your life has been deeply influenced by his work at Texas Instruments. His 2000 Nobel prize in Physics was well earned.

DivX 6: Nearly everybody heard about it now (in a matter of minutes, the news was all over the Internet, I guess), the latest version of the DivX coder-decoder is now available with a lot of new features (more and more, the .divx file format is competing with the features of a full DVD). But encoding is no longer for free.

The tree of life: This project describes in a tree the relationships between all the various biological species. Filled and written by recognized scientists, here is a very nice web site (As much a scientific reference as web site pleasant to visit).

Dynax 7D tip #13: Finally, Microsoft decided not to wait until its next Windows (codenamed Longhorn) to add the ability to read RAW-format files. Right now, you can download (for Windows XP, and if you have a 50MB patience) a RAW file visualizer.

But it works only with Nikon and Canon digital cameras (not yet with our beloved Konica-Minolta).

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

The grocery Store Wars: You will learn all about the dark side of the farm.

The end of the biometric passport? It may be the case if we hear that Ireland decided to abandon the idea of including biometric data in its future passport (a requirement of the United States of A in order to travel there without a visa after October 2005). The official reason: It doesn't work; The technology isn't reliable enough for this application. The thunderstrike: The US are on the verge of abandonning the requirement, for the same reasons.

Source:

Corel PhotoPaint, the tutorials: I am currently working on a graphic project that is taking a lot of my attention (not being a graphic artist, the simplest things take me days to build). I used Google to find some free resources on the web to help me. Here are the best tutorials I found:

Laurie McCanna's Free Art Site
Visionary Voyager (Australia)
Pixel2Life
About.com

I hope I will be able to show you the results here some time next month.

AntiSpam tools: For all those who are asking for the Anti-Spam tools (tools for fighting our way through SPAM e-mail) that I would recommend, I remind you that this is all on my other web site SpamAnti.net.

An Intel x86 for Apple: Even more precise, Apple contracted Intel (not AMD) but it may not prohibit a future AMD-Apple agreement; Windows (and Windows applications) will be able to run on a Mac/86, but MacOS will not run on a normal PC (only on a Mac/86).

An x86 for Apple: This is now official since Steve Jobs presented an x86-based Macintosh running Tiger. Transition will start from beginning of 2006 until 2007. You read it here first!

CD Burner XP Pro: I have already written about this excellent freeware able to replace both Easy CD and Nero. But I finally decided to use it with both my CD writers. Highly recommended for CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R or DVD-RW.

An x86 for Apple? For a few days there have been a persisting rumour on the Internet. Seemingly, Apple is looking at AMD to replace IBM processors of some mobile products. That would be a small earthquake in processor technology.

Today's image: A wondrous sunset yesterday gave me that nice photo.

Dynax 7D tip #12: It's not a Dynax 7D tip yet, but it's interesting nonetheless: Microsoft announced that its next Windows (codenamed Longhorn) will contain native support for the RAW format of major digital photo devices (probably including Konica-Minolta).

Kodak abandons SLR/c and SLR/n: I believe that this end-of-production for the high-end digital SLR from Kodak (14 mega-pixel!) as the first company to move out of a market that is overwhelmingly in the hands of exceptional leaders Nikon and Canon.

DRM #2 (Pentium D): Intel helps in insuring that our PC will refrain themselves from using proprietary information (be it music or video). It was not told before a presentation in Australia of the double core Pentium D, but now we know that this technology is included in the latest technology product from Intel. It is aimed at restricting access from the CPU level (not only at the Operting System level, as today). Windows Longhorn and a Pentium D make a dream team for the movie/music industry (MPAA/RIAA) and for the companies that really want to keep things secret (Arthur Andersen no longer will need to shred Enron documents to pieces during a public inquiry).

Update: Intel now denies the Australian news and says that no DRM tehcnology is included in the Pentium D.

Dynax 7D tip #11: An interesting article comparing respective advantages of film and digital photography from the point of view of image quality. For serious image lovers and photographers.

Driving lessons : From Italy, I believe.

24hours.dk
Driver lessons

I'm more of a leftist than I thought : according to http://politicalcompass.org/.

DRM #1 (Windows Longhorn): Now that Windows 64 is available, we can start and speak about the next version. The official replacement for Windows XP is - as for now - named Longhorn (as a bovine species known for its... long horns).

Let's remember and keep in mind some important things before we start shouting with the Longhorn-expecting crowd: It will use a a technology named Trusted Platform Module (TPM) whose only aim is to administrate the owners rights of documents in order to preserve copyrights. A few consequences are probably arriving with this:

The gradual end of the possibility to copy multimedia data (protected MP3 files, DVD, etc.) from computer to computer.
The ability for a company to limit strictly who will be able to read one Word document (or to insure that it will auto-destruct some time set in the future).

But, in order to function, all this will come with the need to use a fully TPM-compatible platform (even the motherboard and its BIOS will have to be compliant, as - maybe - the hard drive). It may be quite interesting to observe.

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June 2005

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