More precisely, according to an eMarketer market study, the companies advertising on the Internet are rushing to be in front of the English and French Internet users. Much more than for Italian, Spanish and German users.
The exact origin of this difference is not well explained, but the advertising companies probably believe more in these two countries. All in all, the 136 million Internet users market of these five countries start to be large enough to be compared to the USA.
It seems clear that if you have interest in a video game that is not just out to the market (even if it is only a few months old), the addition of a new wide LCD display can be source of endless troubles. You may not find the game using all the nice display surface you just gave it. Only on solution: Tips from WideScreenGamingForum.
Steven Walton, of LegionHardware, has been doing a very interesting comparison. He’s interested in getting the best possible CPU for a gamer willing to pay around $220 for his CPU. This is a nice price point because it seems to be around what most gamers are ready to pay to have a fast machine, and not too high (to avoid paying too much for little more performance).
I’ll let you check the details (benchmarks for memory, CPU performance and PC games), but the comparison tells that the Intel CPU is still the best bang for your buck, but the difference is quite small.
If he had to choose, Steven Walton says he would go for the Intel CPU. I admit easily (I already wrote here about that) that I don’t wont to come back to a monopolistic position for Intel, so I’d choose AMD and the Athlon64 X2 instead. But the choice is yours (my next machine will wait a few more weeks).
A photographer is hidden behind the FloFlo pseudo. She went to Northern India in December 2006 and she brought a few interesting phtoos organized as mini-slide-shows. The initial sorting allowed to separate some photograph of animal (wild or not) and snapshots of the Indian daily life (from a great country were colour is present everywhere in life).
Australia environment minister Malcolm Turnbull is seriously considering banning the common traditionnal incandescent bulb in order to significantly reduces energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Even without a ban, you could also think about reducing your own personnal electricity bill by switching to low energy compact fluorescent lamps.
For me, the CompactDrive PD70X is still a marvellous machine when you want to copy your flash memory cards onto portable hard disc storage. It still owns the speed record and it behaves like a camel when it comes to electric energy.
Today, I learned a few interesting informations that I want to share with the other owners:
The HyperDrive HD80 (best distributed in the USA) seems to use the same electronics core and share the same firmwares
Some users have had difficulties with 2+GB cards
A new firmware version (2.2) is available from the German site (Resolves compatibility issues with certain Lexar CF cards; Fixes bug in usage of fragmented non-contiguous hard disk space (requires reformatting of hard drive); It is still unclear if this solves all the 2GB/4GB card problems)
The new firmware increases the battery charge time (to better compatibility with most recent large capacity batteries)
The PD70X is now officially considered by its manufacturer as a product having reached end of life and will no longer receive new firmware upgrades (but people will certainly keep checking the HyperDrive firmwares since up to now it was a successful bet)
A good product reaching end-of-life. Many advices from people wishing to replace their fastest Portable Hard Drive Storage. I remarked (but I cannot give my own opinion here):
HyperDriveHD80 (internally and externally similar to PD70X; probably condemned in the short term, too)
HyperDriveSPACE (well received by the press; very positive article in March 2007 Chasseur d’Images)
Again, I come back to the issue of free fonts of great quality. DaFont holds links to hundreds of character fonts readily downlodable for both Mac and PC. Usually, this leads to a bunch of crap fonts. Here, the top 100 list is really of impressive quality. Waltograph is copying Walt Disney’s signature, Evanescence is both sophisticated and elegant, Loki Cola will remind you of some cola brand, Shanghai is the archetypical Chinese font, and all the others are really pleasant.
Now, what is often left aside in most font libraries is the presence (or lack) of accented letters. DaFont tells you clearly which ones have those internationally-needed letters and adds also the Euro sign to it.
When you deal with high-end graphic cards (high-end both in terms of performance and price), you soon discover that you are spaeking about racing machines eating a lot of energy, needing a very efficient cooling solution and usually bragging about their performance through the sound of noisy fans.
Here comes the announcement expected for very soon now of AMD-ATI X1950 pro graphic cards promised by PowerColor. They would be passively cooled (meaning no fan, no noise, but merely a high-tech high-efficiency radiator). It could become the most powerful graphics solution on the market in the “no noise” category. Since the graphic cards often are the biggest source of noise in the gamers PC, that would mean Revolution.
Believe it or not, this is what Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, just told to financial analysts. He was trying to explain why the actual sales are already considered as much lower than the initial MS estimation. Apaprently, the most exotic countries (China, Russia, South East Asia) are on the list of the accused. But wouldn’t it be possible that the reason lies in selling Vista at an horrendous price while bringing only a cute new interface and potential problems with a rights management technology that will lead to more problems than solutions for the average user?
The solution (according to Steve): A re-inforced fight against piracy and a stricter WGA system. It’s only the beginning…
Canon is presenting today a new high-end product under the name of 1D-mkIII.
Here are the main features:
10.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor (1.3x factor): Going to today’s standard
10 fps continuous shooting for up to 110 frames: Did you say high-end?
Dual DIGIC III processors: Real processing power
New AF system with 19 cross style sensors
EOS Integrated Cleaning System: Canon is now bringing the 400D system to the full SLR line
ISO 3200 (expandable to ISO 6400): You can expect a good sensor to reach this
3.0†LCD: Big and with Live View for PC-controlled operation
Improved viewfinder
Price around $3999
Availability: April 2007
Definitely a big camera. Definitely what some pros were expecting.
Side note: It may indicate that the Canon EOS 40D will not be arriving this month, if this is the only announcement before PMA next month. Rumours still being just that: rumours.
Today, I want to present a major movie, one of the world best films, a diamond from 1950. Rashômon is one of the most important movies of its time, and it stays as a golden nugget for both its form and its contents. Akira Kurosawa is clearly not any movie maker, he is the author of Yojimbo (the bodyguard) which was the source of For a fistful of dollars with Clint Eastwood as well as Last man standing with Bruce Willis (the least interesting of the three). He also created Seven Samurais which will be done again in a western adaptation universally known as The Magnificent Seven.
But Akira Kurosawa is not only a Japanese movie maker and director, he also was at the origin of a true revolution of 20th Century Japanese cinema. He introduced techniques and ideas coming from the Western world (like Hokusai had integrated the impressionnists’ painting in his works), and he brought to light an exceptional cinema where everything is worth keeping. Rashômon is of that quality. One single story, told from different points of view, grows to the size of four different mixed stories. Each camera angle brings distinct tint and perception. The picture-goer will be drawn into the camera moves and will perceive how much there is no perfect point of view, how much a motion-picture (and its director) tells a unique story merely by placing a camera here instead of there.
But it is also the dramas of three people stuck in their environment, their culture, their prejudices and those of their contemporaries. You will be deeply moved, but there is not even a hint of cheap sentimentality.
And we will remember that Rashômon was the reason for the creation of the Best foreign film category of the Academy Awards. A motion-picture that breaks so many cinema rules, and still stays attractive to the largest public, that it appeared necessary to Hollywood to open a new category just for it.
Synopsis
Toshirô Mifune plays a bandit accused of the heinous murder of a man. But didn’t he rape his wife too? Four witnesses (including the bandit and his victim) will tell the single sequence of events. Each one will slightly transform it according to his memories and the personnal additions. Where is the truth? Are memories real?
After that, you will be able to come back to Pulp Fiction (a movie I simply loved) and perceive how difficult it is to reproduce the strength of Rashômon.
We hear that the newest graphics chips from AMD-ATI will be delayed by a quarter (not arriving before Q2). nVidia gonna love that delay. Their 8800-series will sell all alone on the market of DirectX 10 for quite some time. Let’s hope that the lack of real competition will not become a serious monopolistic problem.
At the moment, the nVidia event is arrival of plenty of GeForce 8800GTS 320Mo OC cards aiming for the “under 250$” market.
For once, a scammer let us smile (though against his will). Let’s smile.
Today, it is the 419 scammers that have been baited by an Internet user who decided to have fun with them and convinced them that he would give a lot of money to people who would recreate famous scenes from movies or TV shows. Here, they accepted to play the well-known “dead parrot” Monty Python sketch.
This is pure exceptional anthology. A moment that will stays in the history of Internet scams and scam baits.
Today, I am asking a simple question to solve a little problem I have :
Since I installed a RAID array in an OpenSUSE machine, I can observe that the little red LED light of disk access flashes once every seoncd -even when I do not try to use the array. Would somebody be able to explain me why the machine finds it necessary to regularly check at least one disk so often?
Yes! If you want to get top photo quality, an inkjet printer is the best solution. But the cost is high. To reduce it, look at the color laser solution. Most entry-level printers are sold under 300$ and the operating costs are tremendously lower than those of an inkjet (toners are more expensive than liquid ink cartridges, but they routinely print several thousand pages). Moreover, they are FAST (several pages per minute instead of several minutes per page).
However, the market is maturing a lot and new models are arriving. The proof? Look at the latest color laser printers comparison from Tom’s Hardware and check the list of tested printers.
HP Color LaserJet 2600n (already tested in November 2005 here)
HP Color LaserJet 3600
Magicolor 5430DL
Lexmark C522n
It is nice to see that one-pass color laser printers become more and more affordable leading to even faster (more silent) printers than was available a year ago.
The conclusion has nothing new for the observer: Lexmark is disappointing, Minolta is bulky (despite or because it is very complete), old HP 2600n has printing cost too high for a large use. The newest HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer is -not surprisingly- the best offer: An excellent compromise like HP has always been providing for blak and white laser printers.
Previous Entries
For me, the CompactDrive PD70X is still a marvellous machine when you want to copy your flash memory cards onto portable hard disc storage. It still owns the speed record and it behaves like a camel when it comes to electric energy.
Canon is presenting today a new high-end product under the name of 
