Archive for April, 2006

Life in the wild savanah is a weird mix of leisurly quiet life (herbivorous graze in the sun, lions sleep in the shade of a tree, hippos float lazily in a river) and of terrible activity (antelopes are always alert about what is happening around, felines start running as fast as they can in order to hunt a needed prey, crocodiles spring onto the inattentive passer-by along a piece of water).

But the first thing you will notice is a slow quiet pace. The most striking element of this is the omnipresent animal yawn. And I want to celebrate this with a braid of photographs. But do not forget the fight for life.

Hippopotamus seem to be yawning, but it is actually part of its digestive processes.

 

On the contrary, the lions are dozing in the shadow during most of their day (it eats, sleeps, hunts to eat).

Epson will have to worry about this.

While during a long time Epson was the undeniable champion of ink jet print longevity thanks to its unique pigment-based inks (inherently more durable than dye-based color inks of its competitors), Canon just announced a new professional ink jet printer, the iPF 5000 (MSRP $1,945) using a 12-color pigmented Lucia ink system that includes black, matte black and two shades of gray to improve on black&white prints.

Additionally, Canon introduces the Pixma Pro9500 (MSRP $849) which uses 10 colors (including two black cartridges and one gray one), and printing in A3+.

Everything leads us to the conclusion that Canon is preparing an extension of this approach to cheaper products, for the obvious pleasure of all consumers willing to produce great photographic prints.

Even more landscape images from the Masai Mara National Park in Kenya (Spring 2006).

Savanah after the rain

After the announcement of the demise of Konica-Minolta, and its replacement with Sony (actually in place now that April came), I asked myself what is now the consequence of this on camera prices.

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This is what the firm with the yellow logo announced. And this is all coming from the digital camera business that is being even better than expected.

This would be the first confirmation that moving out of the analog camera business was the thing to do (from the point of view of the company – some users may differ, but most of them already proved Nikon right).

Obviously, Nikon also announced its intent to increase investment in Research and Development (R&D) for this digital camera product line, in order to speed up development and increase market share (shipments of high-end SLR increase by 23.4 percent this year).

This is the promise of a product that is not even available yet but could well behave like a FireFox plug-in (an extension to the famous Internet browser). Developed in Prague, it is becoming the center of all talks while it is not even available to download: AllPeers.

As a matter of fact, this is the emerging tip of a new iceberg for P2P technologies. Knowing that the RIAA, the MPAA, the FBI, local police, etc. decided to go after all the users of P2P software (even if they are not very efficient at this) when they are using them to download copyrighted files (like rock songs or blockbuster movies), this tip floats on the announced under-water ice of arriving DarkNets. It is a P2P technology for friends only. Instead of seeing millions of other unknown people who to download from, you connect directly only to people you know and the DarkNet fragments so deeply that it becomes impossible to catch particpants. No direct link to anybody, but several hops between you and other P2P users. The inspiration seems to be paramilitairy networks of resistance to oppression or urban guerilla groups.

Future will tell us if this becomes overwhelmingly used for file transfers/sharing in the coming years.

Ok! Those do not look like nice words. But the European industry is starting to consider very seriously the consequences of these. They represent two European Directives intending to reduce very significantly the toxic waste and the use of hasardous materials in the electrical and electronic products (this is so wide a scope that a lot of everyday’s products are targeted: photo cameras, TVs, cars, home electric appliances, etc.)

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A photography friend’s web site: Sentiers sauvages (Wild trails) where you will find a lot of nice animal pictures. Plenty of birds, but also some pictures taken in Africa including some that may remind you of my own safari to Kenya (this is no random encounter, of course).

At least, this is the offer that just fell on the French public from Free.fr (they had shocked the competition just a few days ago by announcing that in the hot advertisment competition to replace the national telephone directory number with dozens of privately owned operations, they would open a free 118.818 number killing all possibility of competition). They announced that they are going to deploy a WiMax network immediately in the French metropoles.

Users equiped with the necessary wireless modem will have access to a nationwide network for broadband data. It is expected (knowing the usual price policy of Free.fr) that it could be extreemely well placed (for a reference point, today, they offer 20Mb/s ADSL, plus free telephone, plus free TV at 29.99€ per month). This should be the WiFi of broadband and it could be the end of the ugly connections between your portable PC and your 3G GSM phone (with sky-high prices, too).

If you think that Free.fr had previously said that WiMax would only be a mid-term solution (they said “3 to 5 years”), just think what would have been happening if they told us “short-term”…

Additional note: All about WiMax.

That’s just the beginning. Movielink and CinemaNow are now the first significant (and legal) source for movie downloads.

The big question is still “will they succeed?” Two issues are key here. First, the movies are protected by a DRM solution that limits significantly the ways you can use the movies you just bought. Second, and maybe more important, the price issue will play a significant role: about the same price as the physical DVD in a plastic box and with a booklet (9.99$ to 26.00$) but with only the download.

I am not sure this is the best way to push the sales up. The market will tell.

 

A green lizard too lazy to cross the Mara river (Kenya) is using the back of a friendly hippopotamus

Remember! I advised to bring a trans-standard zoom to take a few postcards during your photo safari (there is more than mere animals in an African wild life reserve). Morning and evening lights gave me the occasion to make a few interesting images in the landscapes I was in.

I collected here some of the most representative ones (I think) of the Masai Mara park. Here they are.
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I just did a few quick tests (I wanted to install a Linux distribution on a second-hand PC using the A7N8X-X motherboard for Athlon processors). I took me just a few minutes to remember that most distributions (Knoppix, Kanotix, Slax Kill-Bill, Movix2, etc.) do not support the Ethernet controler for this family of motherboards (only the A7N8X-deluxe has a solution by the presence of its two different Ethernet controlers).

This will call for the installation of a separated driver. It is available, but it’s true that this is a significant handicap before the installation of any LiveCD (even if that is useful to start without even installing Linux on the hard drive).

At least, let’s see what this editorial tradition produced this year as good spoofs and fool’s jokes:

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For the lovers of nature images (mostly African), I was directed to a new web site. Seemingly interesting, images are not all perfect, but some are quite neat.

Colors of WildLife

Thanks to Simba.