Archive for July, 2007

Some time ago, I had spoken here of SequoiaView, a Windows utility to visualize the space used by files on a hard disk drive (a great way to prepare for freeing space on a hard drive choking full of hundreds of GB of data).

Today, I found a free utility doing about the same task on a Mac: GrandPerspective. Recommended.

Source: LifeHacker.

Now, we had announced them: Summer sales. AMD started with nearly all its CPU products, Intel followed immediately, AMD announced that they would not go further for now. Today, Intel does it again for quad-core processors (but prices are already so high that you need breathing assistance to observe them in the rarefied air of this altitude, and you and I don’t dwell there).

AMD (previously ATI) has prepared entry-level graphics cards under the names of Radeon HD 2400 and Radeon HD 2600. These lines were quite eagerly expected since nVidia was nearly alone on the DirectX 10-compatible card market (mostly with its geForce 8600 line). Even if the DirectX 10 games are still uncommon, we expect many of them to be coming up (including Crysis from EA – an FPS expected for September 11, 2007).

Recently, we saw a number of analysis of these new cards, that I would like to share with you:

• HD video comparison of geForce 8600 and Radeon 2600 (Guru 3D)
• AMD’s Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 series graphics processors (TechReport)
• AMD 2400/2600 74-page monster test (HardSpell)
• Radeon 2000-series and Linux (Phoronix)

BibliOdyssey is a web site about art in antique prints. You love books, you love quality books, you must stay tuned to BibliOdyssey.

Today, I just want to point to one single impressive post there: Drawing on the Renaissance.

For the music lovers, the sound amateurs, the podcasters, Audacity is a tool out of the usual: despite its cheap price (it’s free) it has near professional features.

We are speaking a lot about the exceptional FPS game known as Crysis which is prepared by Crytek and EA (launch in September 2007). Everything has already been said about the very high image quality and playability. However, Ubisoft announced that they bought the rights to the Far Cry franchise and are preparing Far Cry 2, as a sequel to the 2004 game title.

Forecasted for Spring of 2008, it will probably try to draw from the past success of Far Cry and the expected success of Crysis. But nobody knows if it will be using FarCry technology (most probable) or Crysis technology (not to be expected).

See also: FarCry2 web site.

AMD just announced two things nearly simultaneously : loosing $600 millions in operations in the last quarter (the financial balance is not good, but the message in there is: “it’s gonna be better soon”) and receiving a €262 millions from the German government (approved by the European Commission) to support the investments in their Dresden plant.

You should avoid dating married women. But it’s even more true when she is married to a Japanese man.

Source: Found on the Web.

And it does not even look illegal: Warner signed a partnership with imeem to share the adveertisment revenues from the web site when the North American users freely listen to the music freely available from the Warner catalog (including Madonna, Linkin Park, Green Day, Josh Groban, Faith Hill, My Chemical Romance, Big & Rich, John Adams, Shawn Colvin, Jaheim, Cher, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Seal, Blake Shelton, the Flaming Lips, Eric Clapton, Hot Hot Heat, Damien Rice, The Used, Joshua Redman, Michael Bublé, Chris Isaak, Robert Randolph, Steely Dan, Trapt, Fleetwood Mac, Emmylou Harris, Brad Mehldau, Goo Goo Dolls, Tom Petty, as well as Alanis Morissette, Michelle Branch & the Deftones).

The most ingenuous method to unload an excavator from a truck. You no longer need a crane and a ramp.

From Thailand, through Neatorama.

Palm, the PDA manufacturer taht competes directly with the Microsoft technology known as Windows Pocket, has been suffering for years in an economical context very adverse to this market segment. But they received in beginning of June a nice shot of dollars in the form of financing by private-equity Elevation to the tune of $325 million de dollars for 25% of the company shares.

This should give them enough dough to start thinking clearly about how to move out of the turbulences.

Netherlanders are really nature lovers. Even in USB memory sticks.

You know that S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the FPS game of last month, after several years of development, was an instant hit on the market. As is usual in this kind of market, past the first three months, the game will be already old and the developers must work out the next steps. So, here are a few of the news collected for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

There will be a prequel to STALKER – Shadow of Chernobyl (the current game). The title should be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear sky to present the events one year before the current game (in 2011). The Zone in STALKER – Shadow of Chernobyl is supposed to be comparatively calm and quiet (Really! You wouldn’t have guessed that…) [1] [2]

For those who wonder, I’m still playing a lot with STALKER. Currently, a 24″ LCD, a dual-core Athlon 5600+, 2GB or DRAM and a nice geForce 8800 GTS 640MB is a marvelous configuration to play this game and on the second attempt S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is still as much fun as before.

After several months telling you about the plumeting prices of CPU processors and DRAM memory, I have to inform you that the industry signals are changing. AMD and Intel are kicking prices down a last time in July before the rush that will only happen at the end of the year (with the arrival of a many new products). Simultaneously, we start hearing from DRam eXchange and Digitimes that DRAM prices are kicking up again (+20% at the end of June for DDR-2 @ 667MHz). According to DigiTimes, it would be an anticipation from the distributors restocking in preparation of the Fall rush for new machines under the -long awaited- influence of the Microsoft Windows Vista launch.

Optimal time to buy…

Aquamacs is a software program in development for two years, but the ambition is quite interesting: Integrate Emacs, the prfered text editor of Roumazeilles.net, into the Aqua environment for Mac. This is an impressive feat because they are at the opposite ends of technology: Aqua is associated to graphics elegance, subtlety and grace allied to the most modern techniques of User Interfaces; Emacs is known for its roughness, performance and complexity.

Worth considering by all Mac lovers who checked on GNU-Emacs and were not satisfied by the lack of integration in the Mac GUI.

You know it, one of the most eagerly anticipated video games ofr this year is going to be Crysis from Electronic Arts. As it is going to be one of the biggest laucnhes of the year, we already see the sound of big marketing working up with a large number of distilled information bits sent progressively to wet the public’s appetite. These days, it produced a few newsworthy tidbits like the press release leaked from EA and confirming that the game will be on the shelves in next September.

We also observed the appearance of partial information about the game use and usability (this comes from the internal development versions of the game that some if the observers could see even though they are still tehcnically limited):

• Graphic design is still very impressive (you can click on the image on the right to get a rough feeling of what to expect in the snowy/icy environment of the second part of the game – after the tropical island opening sequences of the game).
• The game will be able to eat up multi-core CPU ressources (even quad-cores – with a video)
• Many screenshots (here and here)
• A visit of a pre-E3 Crysis version with screenshots and videos

Last but not least, we can find a large number of big videos available on the net:

• On an IGN forum
• Sur les serveurs français de JeuxVideos.fr

I would say that the target is a game with an amazing complexity, an impressive playability (if you master the many different control keys and options), with stunning graphics (even more at high res), but will be able to drown the biggest PC configurations (both in terms of CPU and GPU).

The bane of LCD displays: dead pixels. It is still very uncommon to find display manufacturers who accept to provide a garantee against dead o stuck pixels on their LCD screens. Honestly, this is bordering on abuse knowing that the main objective of the screen is to display several hundred thousands of pixels: Dead pixels (lit or black) only reduce significantly the main function of the display.

But, above the rightful teeth-grinding this produces, there was no technical solution in sight. However I found a tool that offers to correct this problem on your screen without paying a dime. The surprise comes from the fact that it is a software tool. Probably, like I did, you will exclaim: “What’s this story about a software program able to correct a hardware failure?!!” This should be either day dreaming or a scam. But since they ask for no money, I decided to give it a try anyway.

I happen to have a Hyundai LCD display with a stuck red pixel. Usually, this is not much of an issue (after all, it is only visible on a black scree; on white window backgrounds, I can’t see it and I forget about it). So, why not?

(more…)