Preview 2 of Opera 9 is out. The big thing is the integrated BitTorrent client.
I’m not planning on using Opera but because Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Mac is dead, it might be fun to have it lying around to learn some AJAX quirks it might have. Besides, Opera’s rendering engine might be used in a number of handheld devices.
I read this article today about Toshiba buying out Westinghouse Electric.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Slashdot gets it wrong again. Really wrong.
First of all, Westinghouse hasn’t made blenders since around the time I was born. They sold off the appliances division to a separate company, White, which renamed itself White-Westinghouse. The confusion arises because White-Westinghouse used the same W logo, but any Pittsburgher can tell you they aren’t the same. The same holds true for other “Westinghouse” brands like Westinghouse Digital Electronics, the makers of the LCD panels referred to in the article. They have nothing to do with Westinghouse or Westinghouse Electric. The brand name was licensed to them recently when the CBS/Viacom media empire realized they had a merchandisable brand name they weren’t using.
[ore theorizing after the jump]Continue reading
My obligatory Superbowl blog entry:
“You can’t believe how seriously these people take their football.â€
—overheard, “Gridiron Cityâ€
The quote above comes from an op-ed in today’s New York Times. The answer is, “Yes, I can believe,†because, like Holly, I grew up in Pittsburgh, and they do take their football seriously there.
The article does a great job explaining why: the rise of the perennially bad Steelers came during the middle of the decline of the Pittsburgh steel industry.Continue reading
When I was in Costco the other day, I noticed that Pentax’s dSLR was undercutting the Nikon D50 kit by a couple bucks. Then, I read today that the Pentax *st DL with 18-55mm kit lens dropped another $200 to $599. If you figure the lens is about $100, we’re at $500.
Wow!Continue reading
The new watchword is to replace “domestic spying†with “Terrorist Surveillanceâ€. It consisted of a three-pronged assault of the news: Bush speaking at Kansas, A.G. Alberto Gonzales speaking at Georgetown University Law Center, and Karl Rove speaking at the Republican National Committee.
I won’t get into a defense or attack about this issue because it won’t convince anyone—we’ll rationalize our own view even in the face of facts.
Instead I don’t think this new frame will work. To me, at least, “domestic spying†sounds a lot more catchy than “terrorist surveillanceâ€Continue reading
Editor and Publisher reports that TimesSelect gets 156,000 web subscribers in the first 4 months which is among the 390,000 total web subscription base.
At $49.95 a pop, that’s a $7.3 million and $19.5 million respectively. Doesn’t sound bad, certainly not the way the article puts it.Continue reading
If the Telegraph is to be believed then the Disney is about to get Pixar for $7 billion dollars in stock making Jobs’s 50% share in Pixar the single largest shareholder in Disney.
Wow!Continue reading
A fun discussion on Flickr pointed me to this site that contains a quiz where you guess images as “fake†or “photo�
The site is sponsored by Alias, they have been the king of 3D graphics for many years now. I remember visiting my friend at Alias/Wavefront’s offices in Santa Barbara (back when they were a division of SGI) and seeing all the movies posters up on the walls there—each one had parts that were rendered with their software.
If you take the quiz and get a 10/10, there is a 4 question bonus round.Continue reading
DPReview posted that Canon built their 30 millionth EF lens. This is quite a feat since they only introduced the mount in 1987 (a new mount to go along with a new “EOS” body which added Minolta’s auto-focusing ideas into their previous auto-exposure (AE) design), just under twenty years ago. This is great stuff!
For reference, Nikon built their 30 millionth in 2001 and introduced that mount in 1959, or just over forty years.Continue reading
Here is a question I received today:
We’re planning to buy the 35mm film negatives from our wedding photographer, and we would like to have them scanned into digital format (as a back-up, and so friends/family can order prints). A friend of a friend offered to help us out—and “scan them at 16-bit resolution†for free.
Does that refer to bit depth (i.e. 65,536 colors) – or something else?
Would 11″x14″ prints from a “16-bit resolution†scan look ok?