monline

People kept asking me why in the hell am I going to buy a "brutal" MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and an ATI X1600 graphics card with 256MB RAM? I just took a look at the minimum system requirements of Apple's Aperture, a photo-management software aimed at "pro photographers" (as the PR of Apple states ). Interestingly the "recommended" configuration is almost the same as the minimal. It seems as if Apple designed Aperture exactly for the MacBook Pro owners.

A reference of all Nikon lens terms that you might ever face: Nikkor 35mm SLR Lens History, Terminology and Technology

Nowadays it becomes more and more common to call people with a strong focus on computer science a "geek". Most sources (and people) associate some negative meaning to the word, but actually are we not all geeks in one or another area of life?

[Wired News] A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

MPAA is now "buying" laws ... or in this case: it buys the right to erase them. Previously I only heard that companies buy out other companies (the competition) just to shut them down. Now the can even do this to laws and bills. I doubt that this is legal, but hey: you're in the 21st century! _Everything_ is for sale, isn't it? :->

Here's a short parody on sexual consent. It's magnificent and most funny.
P.S.: some addition to the previous one ...

IMDb

The movie is about a young scientist -working for the NASA in the USA- who returns to his homeland (India) to find his childhood nanny and take her with him to America. This is not a typical Indian film in many ways and I liked it very much.

The point is the constrast between the modern world and the old India, and the very basic problems that small village inhabitants have to face. The main character tries to bring some modernization to the village where his nanny lives (and do not think too much here, he just tries to persuade adults to send their children to the school), but clashes on quite strong opposition.

I'm going to Beijing for a week. My flight takes off in a couple of hours and I'm already packed up and ready to go. Hopefully there'll be not too much of a crowd on the airport. I'll put up photos in the gallery once I'm back.

There're now quite a lot file hosting websites where you can upload even huge files for free to share with others. Here's a short list just to name a few ...

According to this article the security of the new UK passports is more or less a joke. How could this happen in the 21st century? And what makes me most angry about this is that such "news" cast a false shadow over the IT industry and IT professionals. It makes "cutting edge" technology look like waste of money, but actually technology alone cannot solve any problems in itself. Everything can be used inproperly ... as with RFID chips in case of the new passports.

Maybe you've already got word of this: One Laptop per Child. The MIT Media Lab has launched a research initiative to develop a $100 laptop - a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created, which is independent of MIT.

The apropos of my post is that Boing Boing posted an article with a link to an image gallery of the new laptop. It's quite amazing.