Archive for June, 2009

If you want to know more, you can even buy those horse legs.

When you’re a company big on data crunching, when you have a file, you can’t help it: You must explore it and draw conclusions. This is what Google is doing with its Human Resource files. They use algorithms to identify more easily people ready for a promotion, for an additional review, or people on the verge of quitting.

This is probably quite feasible supposing that you have enough data and enough CPU/database power. Google has it all (and plenty of power for sure).

I am not quite sure if this undeniable technical step forward is really good news for individual liberties.

Source: The Wall Street Journal.

Steve Jobs is rejoicing: It seems that Apple already sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G-S (the new Apple mobile phone) in the first 5 days after its launch.

…but I couldn’t fly.

Jose Luis Ortiz has changed it all. He installed a small video camera on one of his royal eagles.

And now, you and me can fly, really fly. Breath-taking! Boarding a plane became so down-to-Earth. I now want to have wings, I want to fly like an eagle…

How many PC gamers started their career with video games as raw (according to today’s criteria) as Doom or even Quake. We may find their quality too low for our eyes, but they already demonstrated their main strength: the gamer found interesting adversaries and environments where you could not know what would happen behind the corner of a corridor (that generation of video games did not yet open the doors to a wide environment like in FarCry or Crysis).

Doom 1

Already, before the year 2000, PC games were expensive. But here comes the Internet and bands of Internet users now expect to find free things all around. Authors of such games (like Id Software) decided to follow this trend and offer some of these older games as ways to attract more customers for other games. These ones start by being free, and stay as being very pleasant to play.

Doom was put in the public domain a few years ago. Consequence: Here is somebody deciding to re-write it in Flash and you will be able to play Doom (more precisely, Doom 1). You will need Flash 10 and I’m told that PowerPC Macs are not compatible, but you’re going to tote a shotgun and the BFG mini-gun at outer-space monsters and without paying (free).

Doom is not enough? You want more, more quality, more guns, more speed? Why not Quake? Id Software just opened access to QuakeLive.com. For free, you’ll get to play Quake, right now, freely, for no money. It will be fun…

More precisely, here is Quake III Arena with free access to all. It will go fast. This is violent gaming. It will only stop when you’re dead.

This is not enough? Again? So, let me offer some video games with calmer settings, but still free. Even better, Linux games.

live.linuX-gamers.net succeeded at preparing Live-DVDs (DVD that are completely autonomous, you can boot on them without installing Linux).

live.linuX-gamers.net (DVD)

Belgian Kimberley Vlaeminck, 18, went to a tattoo parlor and asked for 3 tattooed stars. But, she fell asleep and woke up with 56 black stars. In a sense, this is nice, but she seems pissed off.

PETER DECONINCK/AFP/Getty Images

Update on 24-June: It appears that after some time and media pressure, Kimberley admitted that this was not a mere issue of misunderstanding between the tattooist and her. Frightened by her father reaction to her stars, she tried to explain that it was not her fault. But she actually requested 56 stars from the beginning. So, she was lying…

I have been publishing some photos from my travel to Kenya last October, but it became apparent to me that I had forgotten to present the photos I took during a short encounter with a serval (Leptailurus serval, previously Felis serval, pronounced /ˈsÉœrvÉ™l/) which is a relatively large-size African wild cat. Amazingly beautiful, it is quite difficult to observe by day. Actually, it’s Alain Pons (our guide and famous wildlife photographer) who called “Stop!” after seeing a pair of ears just a couple of inches above the grass of the Masai Mara. Even, after braking hard, it took us some time to find it again.

Serval - Copyright (C) 2008 - Yves Roumazeilles	Serval - Copyright (C) 2008 - Yves Roumazeilles
Serval - Copyright (C) 2008 - Yves Roumazeilles	Serval - Copyright (C) 2008 - Yves Roumazeilles
Serval - Copyright (C) 2008 - Yves Roumazeilles
Click on the image to enlarge thumbnails

On the last picture, you can notice the black and white pattern of the back of the serval ears. They are considered as a beacon to help kittens follow their mother, giving them very visible indicators that stay invisible from the point of view of their preys.

633,048 votes (9:47) become 587,913 votes (13:53)

It seems that everything has already been said about the riots and protests that are currently observed following the presidential elections in Iran.
Up to now, I felt unable to even comment about it. But I wanted to add my own little pebble to the building of putting light onto the events that are probably at the core of a real re-foundation of the Iran nation and society.

Like many others, I have the intense feeling that this is a battle between two factions inside the same political regime. The difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad still is more a difference of degree than a difference of nature and even if the results have been rigged by the State direction (see on the right the Iran TV announcing results in favor of Mousavi, then correcting them in favor of Ahmadinejab – while the Ministry of the Interior had already unofficially informed Mousavi of a victory that would come to be quickly denied), the candidates were no less pre-approved before the elections.

Call me pessimistic, but I fear this revolt will not be the revolution awaited by some many people out of Iran.

In the meantime, people are killed while fighting for their liberty. This is exactly the kind of fight that is bringing democracy in a country… in the end.

Sources:

• Michele Roohani
• The Big Picture: Iran’s continued election turmoil (27 photos)
• DotFutureManifesto

© Matt Bors

“Sure, we could all stay home and quietly the results of a blatantly stolen election…”; “But we reject the American way of life!”

The atom bomb is obviously usable (it has been used more than 60 years ago) for war. But some people had the weirdest idea: Using the bomb (Not a nuclear power plant, mind you! A real bomb) for civilian uses. Wired has an interesting list.

• Digging a hole, a big hole, a harbour
• Digging a new Panama canal
• Natural Gas Exploration
• Mining Oil Shale
• Disposing of Nuclear Waste (Would you believe it?)
• Propulsing humans into space
• Defending Earth From an Asteroid

None of these seem to be remotely applicable…

I was at Le Mans 2009 endurance car race during the official test runs of last week. I brought back a few photos (despite the considerable problem of shooting pictures under the rain).

Peugeot 908 HDI team - Pit stop (Le Mans 2009)

Peugeot 908 HDI (Le Mans 2009)

The whole gallery and the mini-site to buy posters.

Apple is not only delivering sleek computer designs and nice little mobile phones. They are also producing a good web browser: Safari.

It’s new version, Safari 4, is just out. Faster, still as good and powerful, but Apple is now claiming the crown for the “fastest” web browser. It could well be possible when Snow Leopard OS-X becomes available later this year. Running natively as a 64-bit Mac application, it could gain 50% from today’s already powerful base of Safari 4.

Safari version 4

Safari 4 is available for Windows XP, Vista, or mac OS X 10.4.11 or newer.

What could be hiding in your cell phone? The worst is still possible as shown in this diabolical video.

you merely change the size of the Windows desktop and all your desktop icons are forcefully moved around against your will. After one or two of these, you’d be ready to cry, while backing up the position of the icons would be enough, before connecting a new screen, or attaching your laptop to a video-projector, etc.

Up to now, you could only cry and reposition the icons. But here comes DesktopOK. What can I say? It does exactly what you want and what you need: a mere backup, a simple restore and your icons come back where you wanted them.

Simple et necessary.

I’ve been using and recommending the Opera web browser for many years. It’s a kind of a Firefox where everything you need would be directly included rather than having to download extensions. And it’s fast too. For mobile applications (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) Opera Mini is probably the best possible option and it is in a tight competition for the market leader position.

Now, Opera is launching a beta test version 10 of the browser. And it has amazingly interesting new features.

• Fast browsing on slow connections
• Tab browsing enhanced and flexible
• Speed dial from the empty new page
• Web mail integration
• Re-sizable search field
• Much faster web engine and impressively standards-compliant
• In-line spell checker (I use it a lot to support my blogging habits)
• Auto-update (better than merely asking you to check for updates)
• Mouse control

Even better, after testing it in alpha, I can tell you that it is quite stable. The beta version should stay that way and that is a good thing too.

You can download it here.

The International Space Station is the product of a complex assembly process out of elements brought upt here by rockets and the space shuttle. Here is a video animation from USA today showing the sequence of events in this build-up.

You can browse, but you can’t hide… from your browser.

Actually, your browser knows a lot about you. Some scientists believe that from your browsing habits they can recognize fairly precisely if you’re a man or a woman.

Using your browser URL history to estimate gender

Be patient, it may be long.

According to it, I am a man…