Archive for September, 2007

Even if I persist in advising you not to pirate-copy MS-Office, not to download Word, Excel or PowerPoint but to download OpenOffice for free, I can’t resist to the temptation to give some echo to a Microsoft proposal.

Steal Office!

MS-Office is still out of reach for normal people around $400 (for this price you can consider buying a computer). But Microsoft hides behind this slogan a proposal just for students starting September 20th: $60 for MS-Office, it’s a steal.

Not sure this is really a steal, I keep recommending to download OpenOffice for free…

Mad is the only adjective you want to use with the guy. and probably about Linux, since Saikee installed no less than 145 Operating Systems on his PC, including 137 different GNU/Linux distributions.

Linux.com published a good post giving three ideas about how to optimize your GNU/Linux distribution performance.

My job at Johnson Controls (world-class automotive equipment manufacturer) have me travelling quite significantly these days. Currently, it’s leading me often to Brazil (we have a manufacturing plant in Gravatai, RS -near Porto Alegre in the South of Brazil).

I’ll take advantage of the next trip there to extend it with some photo tourism. Thanks to Objectif Nature, I’ll be visiting the Pantanal and the Amazonian forest in search of good wild-life photo opportunities (if you want to join there are still some available seats on this one).

You can expect new images from this trip here in November.

Iceland ministry of fisheries, Einar K. Gudfinnsson, decided that whale hunting -who started again in 2003- had no longer any reason to be. The reasons probably lie between the international opposition to whale hunting, lack of internal Iceland market and lack of exports to Japan.

Source: Futura-Sciences.

Strange coincidence in the recent press releases about DVD discs.

For the first time, the industry group that manages the licenses for the DVD format (the DVD 6C Licensing Group or DVD 6C) decided to revoque the DVD patent agreement of Chinese manufacturer Chaoyue (Jiangsu) Digital [1]. They must have been doing really ugly things to loose even the right to try and manufacture DVD players.

Apparently without any link, we also learn that researchers from the Tsinghua University of Beijing created a new high definition DVD disc format. Quite similar to HD-DVD, its name will be CH-DVD (China DVD?) and it will contain some specifically Chinese patents and IP. But this is not the first time Chinese authorities tried to start a new format in direct competition with an international standard. The most recent being the EVD that roared to replace the DVD [2].

For those of you who missed the detail: The Nikon D300 is slightly more expensive than its direct competition (Sony Alpha 700 or Canon EOS 40D), but it won’t be available until mid-November of 2007. The Canon is already available (in small quantities, though) and fully released. Nikon lovers will still have to wait a little more.

Some fear that the D300 will not be in quantities before the beginning of the year but nothing seems to support such a notion.

Update : it seems that Nikon won’t be able to meet its initial release date. You can expect the camera to be available in December (can you spell “last minute Christmas shopping“?). Furthermore, the European price will take a 200€ increase. All this points to a limited manufacturing capacity (at least compared to the expectations of the public).

A few days ago, it has been released publicly that a new Flash memory card format is arriving. I can see the John “Consumer” Doe thrilled in anticipation of yet another new card format: UFS. I can imagine that it will solve all existing issues with dozens of previously existing -and incompatible- memory cards.

This is going to offer a vastly improved speed for the users. To quote from the press release: “Today, users experience a three-minute access time for a 90-minute (4 Gigabyte) high-definition movie; with the new standard, this would be reduced to a few seconds.” Do we care? Will the movie run faster?

Of course, it is touted by its promoters as a giant leap in technology and the universal memory solution (do I hear “snake oil”?) I need a little more than a long list of supporters to jump and shout joyfully…

Right! This is the ambition of Rotten Tomatoes to present us with the list of the 100 best reviewed Science-Fiction movies.

After all, even the most cool-headed men can sometimes appear identical to the most futuristic Sci-Fi authors. The promoters of a mad Japanese project make it obvious with this tower (should I say “sky-scrapper”?) of 13,000ft high that could welcome no less than a million souls. A tower that Taisei Construction Corporation (TCC) intends to build in the Tokyo bay in Japan.

I am not prone to vertigo, but I would still be worried if I had to evacuate such a building…

Source: Futura-Sciences.

The latest news from the markets for the electronic components for computers are quite diverse currently. NAND-Flash memory should see its prices raise (or no longer fall) because of a production stop at a Samsung plant that will pressure the offer. But more oddly, DRAM memory prices seem to be aiming low even if some European markets (incl. UK) did not react quickly, while the price of motherboards is stable (or high) with suppliers like Asustek, MSI and Gigabyte congratulating themselves for climbing revenue during this Summer.

Along similar lines, sales of LCD screens are very brisk despite prices that do not lower since the beginning of Summer (all LCD panel manufacturers saw their shipments increase except HannStar).

Source: DigiTimes Asia.

The Sietch blog publishes an interesting map of the world where country sizes are proportional to the size of their underground oil reserves.

Colors can also point to the big users of oil (headed by the United States of America) which are also the big CO2 producers.

Why do you believe that every country in the world is looking at Saudi Arabia as if it was the princess of the Arabian Nights? You can also forecast that our gouvernments will be forced to speak politely to a number of countries they ignored up to now: Libya, Kazahkstan or even Sudan and Angola.