Archive for July, 2006

There was already a Pirate Party in Sweeden (along with ThePirateBay.org): Piratpartiet. But things are speeding up neatly in those days with the appearance of two French-speaking parties:

• In France, le Parti Pirate prepares actively the Presidential elections of next year.
• In Belgium, le Parti Pirate.

But, of course, this is only part of it since there are some more in other countries:

• USA
• Italy

Visibly, the Internet users do not want to let the traditional politicians handling their will to download files on the Internet.

And I am true to my word. Despite what could be your first reaction, there is nothing unsafe here for your children. There is nothing filthy here.

Or, how is it possible to misunderstand something if we do not look long enough.

[This is safe for work].

The new multicore processors from Intel just arrived. They are supposed to offer exceptional performance (with two computing cores in a single package) for an outstanding price.

The first real tests are popping up all around the web:

• RegHardware
• Presence-PC
• clubIC
• Hardware.fr
• TT Hardware
• Tom’s Hardware (fr)

Mostly, this is a magnificent machine for a substantially lower price than originally expected from multicore technology. All applications do not take advantage of two cores, but in some cases, this becomes a boon (for example, in FarCry, an Intel Core Duo X6800 does from 20% to 30% more than an AMD Athlon 64 FX2; But both processors are priced around 1000€).

Intel visibly took very seriously the task to challenge the recent crown of AMD in terms of pure performance. The next offers from AMD will be interesting to watch. All this happening in a commercial environment that looks quite favorable to price falls (see my previous articles), we must keep an eye on how all this evolves in the near future (including for the entry-level processor offers).

Nærfoto (Bjørn Rørslett) is the web site of a nature photographer. You will not find landscapes from Nordic Norway, but colorful images that strike the eye.

A cool whiff of air in the middle of Summer.

After long years of operation, Windows 98 is officially dead today (11 July 2006). As a matter of fact, this is not news and Microsoft was slowly reducing the efforts and even in June they refused to patch a security issue arguing that it would be too much effort (and that they couldn’t care less).

Win98 is dead, long live Window XP!

STOP! NO! If we look at the tables from Microsoft Windows XP SP1 will be dead in October 2006 already. Did I hear the word acceleration?

Being rich can mean that you can’t find your soul mate. Being rich can mean that everybody is running after your money and nobody’s looking at your inner heart. Finding a mate thus becomes awfully difficult.

Here comes the solution: MillionaireMatch.com.

You’re rich, very rich, filthy rich. You can’t find a good match. You need help. MillionaireMatch.com will find the right person for you in no time. the only condition: You need to be a CEO, a top model, a business angel, pro athlete or successful lawyer. Bottom line: If you’ve got plenty of money, they’ll find the person you’ll want to spend it with.

Absolute photo fun and weird nature failure in a Thai zoo, here comes Sai Mai, female tiger of two years initially fed by a pig and brought with piglets.

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You don’t need to look anymore. The digital photo reflex camera that brings Sony to the D-SLR market with the new Alpha brand will be available at the end of July (some say that Malaysia would be the first to receive shipments but this rumour lacks any substantiation). If you want to buy it, you will have to pre-order. All photo shops (online or not) should alow you to buy it but Sony has its own sales web site: SonyStyle.

Of course, you can buy it at your local photo dealer shop (or at most Sony distributors). It is quite probable that there will be a first rush where it will only be available with the standard zoom of 17-70mm f/3.5-5.6, but after the initial 28 July rush, the bare body should quickly become available to the masses.

FarCry, one of the best First Person Shooter video game (a game in the old shoot-them-all category of Doom or Quake), spent a lot of time on my PC. I played with it at day and at night. But Crytek, the game authoring company, is preparing Crysis as a follow-up, sequel, or renewed FPS video game.

On TotalCRY.com, the web site they opened to inform about the news about Crysis, everything points to a major technology leap.

• Immersive game play with cinematic realism
• Great images (the graphics engine/renderer seems to be ever more capable)
• Support for multi-core CPU

I have always been interested by the tele zoom lenses and a 70-200mm or 80-200mm seems to me to be the ideal companion. When it opens at f/2.8, it’s really a good solution. If it’s a macro zoom, it becomes even better.

Up to now, I was rather looking toward the excellent Konica-Minolta 70-200mm f/2.8 SSM or its little borther Konica-Minolta 80-200mm f/2.8. Two very nice lenses (white series herited from Minolta). It is quite possible that Sony will produce the 70-200mm in its new Alpha brand (see availability and price on the SonyStyle web site). But a new buying option shine now that Sigma announced a new fast tele zoom lens that could well be interesting too.

This large aperture zoom lens seems to have everything you need and a good price (much better than the anticipated 2300USD for the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 SSM). Its hypersonic motor (HSM) will allow a precise correction of focus and its 100cm minimum focus associated to a 1:3.5 ratio opens the doors to macro. If you also buy a 2x EX DG APO Tele Converter, you get a quite serious 140-400mm F5.6 AF telephoto zoom lens.

Lens quality could not be evaluated right now.

Available for the following lens mounts: Sigma, Canon, Nikon, KONICA MINOLTA (donc Sony), Pentax (donc Samsung).

Science fiction author James Patrick Kelly podcasts some of his works as MP3s. His stories were published in famous SciFi magazines like Asimov’s Science Fiction and The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

I think this would be a bad idea. This is why.

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