Hamilton moving out

In an recent interview Lewis Hamilton said that he is tired of all the paparazzi in UK so he is going to move to Switzerland... So this brings up a huge question for me and should for you as well. Is he really going there to escape paparazzi or he is going there for same reason M. Schumacher is living there? Simple fact that for foreigner income tax is set to only 2% - might have changed since last I looked into this but hey... Switzerland!!

Harlem Gangstas...

So we just got... or about to get American Gangster which tell supposedly true story of a Harlem gangster and also there will be Mr. Untouchable that takes a look on roughly similar time period, yet I believe slightly later... but still the same story... seems like Hollywood is moving from Bronx mob to Harlem gangsters...

next year seems to be good year for portable gaming...

Seems that in coming year laptop gaming is gonna heat up!
And Things might come sooner than expected. While ATI says that they are working on some great cards that will see the light in near future - mostly next year, the Inquirer reports that Nvidia is planing to bring out 8800M GTX before December. Article says that it will launch when Clevo will have notebooks ready, and as it is MXM module I sort of fell the pain for all those who bought new Dell 1730...

Menace to ad revenue

Some time ago there were some reports such as one here, that called for blocking Firefox due to its adblock extension which leads to lost revenues.
While I do not intend to say anything about the adblock extension as such and argue why blocking Firefox is just stupid, I do intend to look at why the decision was irrational and nowhere near the solution to the problem.
It is important to distinguish that problem is not the adblock and that people use it to ignore ads but that ad generated revenues are going down. It would be natural to seek answers if you would see that your user base is growing however you revenue is not. This is exactly what has happened and I believe that adblock got all the blame for no reason - well... undeserved blame at least.
To see the true reason one has to look past browsers and into internet usage trends.
I should say that I read my fair share of blogs and news sites every day and more there are, harder it is to keep up whith which ones you have read already and which you still need to read. sometimes I just forgot about some and later had too many things to go through and I believe this in a way is a problem for many readers out there. One of the best solutions for this is using a feed reader. Most of the sites nowadays support some for of feeds so it is easy to switch to them and many people do so. I would not say that I personally have signed of for incredible amount of them but enough of then to see a connection prior mentioned problem.
I have not seen a single ad on a feed.
When I looked at my trends on in Google reader, I look at about 13% stories and I go the page even less - mostly for feeds that only give headlines as rest of the stories I read on the feed. So here we are - the ultimate threat to ad supported sites is its readers best friend - feed!
Another important aspect to look at is that even you have headline only feed (maybe with first paragraph) you still loose on people not opening main page and spending time on site to browse it rather than just read the story.
I was also weary impressed with Google reader as I have not seen any ads on it so far... impressive knowing that that is how they make money!!

We are not dead yet...

So BBC reports that mafia has a turnover of $120bn. Not really sure is that worldwide or just Italy, but those are some amazing numbers...
I thought in change of career coming....

is iPod killing music sales?

The Inquirer has an interesting article about iPod killing industry. Although I did own a Walkman back in a day I can not agree with with writers opinion that Walkmans were so much better devices, even though he raises some good points.
One of which is:
"Sure, you could store a zillion albums on it, but you never will. Firstly you only possess a copy of Queen's Greatest Hits, The Best of Steps and James Blunt's Bluntastic! What are you going to store on the remaining 39.5GB of space?
Well. It's going to be stolen music, isn't it?"
Even though it has nothing to do with Walkman around which most of the article is based - this I believe is the best point he makes. Going by the estimates of my music collection an average album takes 75MB on my hard drive. so on an 80GB iPod or Zune you will be able to store round 1000 albums! That is very big number and if you bought 1 album a week it would take almost 20 years to get that kind of collection... legally at least.
Yes you might argue that large storage space can now be used for movies which have even less of a legal presence in digital market, or general storage or file transfers.
And even if you plan to use it as storage, what will you store on it? Sure it will be more media of some kind.
So in the end we have large amounts of storage on these devices with an urge to fill it up as soon as possible and for most people only way to do so is by illegal downloads that are easily available that legal options will have hard time catching up and competing with price.
On a little side note, iTunes Plus songs now going at same rate as normal ones should have come long time ago, not so much for DRM - free media but for being better quality and larger file sizes to help fill up those iPods with legal music and leave less room for P2P stuff...

Making names easy

Seems like both ATI and nVidia are being on same page in way that both have chosen to hopefully simplify their naming schemes...
While ATI has decided to to dedicate last two digits of name to signify performance, nVidia has gone different way by drastically changing it. If I got it correct than there won't be any 4digit codes any more but letter digit combination. will start of with D or NB - desktop/notebook - following by a digit to signify generation I suppose and one last letter at the end to signify segment - E for enthusiast, P for performance, M for mainstream and might be something for value as well..
Sources here and here

Some Intel stuff...

I will start of with sort of the boring bit....
here is a look at models Intel has planed for near future:

Nothing too surprising there... just to see that new socket is coming and that dual core seems to be no more aimed at enthusiast market as there are no Extreme dual cores... which I suppose makes sense as quad is the new thing...
Also as the new dual model is only E8500 I would say it is safe to say that there will be E8600 and E8700 at least, which could bring frequencies up to 3.4 to 3.5 Ghz area looking at trending in E8xxx series... sure would look forward to those as most of the games yet no fully profit of quad core.. while have to say that it still new tech!

And here come the sad new for me and many out there.
OK they are not that sad but not great either... rumor has it that now mobile processors on Penryn base will not be full Santa Rosa refresh - not really compatible with current socket. It seems that with some modifications it will be usable, but as I was looking into getting new lappy early next year.. seems I will have to wait at least until Q2 when the Cantiga chipset comes out, which will bring full support for Penryn!!
more here

keyboard cooling

It is no secret that one of the biggest things on laptops exterior is keyboard... and Intel has decided to use it size and relative openness to mod into a cooler.. and I really believe that it is a great idea.. Plus they have also made it water resistant so you can drink some while working on you lappy quite safe... While on the other hand there are enough hole near keyboard as it is to be relatively useless...
more at Fudzilla

Extreme

simply WOW...
when I did bungee jump I thought it was wicked... but this... just takes the cream...

I know I would be scared shitless to do it.. but hell I wanna try it!!!

Game Mashup

I would not say that I am a fan of any of these two games - Halo and Meteroid... but this is nice none the less...

Love the ending...

mixed influences...

While watching the new Kayle Minogue vid

I could not stop and wonder... is it just me or is there lot of similarities with Marilyn Manson work? looking at all the artwork and the whoooo... in the song... Did not strike me as one particular Manson song but his style in general!!!

Jumper..

This one seems to be like a nice movie and has some nice actors in it...

gonna look forward to this:

graphics battle

It seems that lately ATI has been making some headlines and suggesting that ATI vs nVidia battle is again on the horizon..
As ATI has managed to shrink to 55nm it seems very promissing for new mobile GPU and that is something I am waiting for. It seems that with nVidia dominance nothing much has happened in mobile market in last year.. and I really need a new lappy.. :D
link

iPhone comercials

So here are 3 iPhone comercials:



After watching these.. All I can really say that Apple is at it again... just putting blind bullshit on the table to get people to buy its product.
The one about 4 devices... common... we don't live in past.. most phones at that price range today deliver all that... well maybe without texting experience...
I can in a way see maybe how the voice mail be cool and all but personally I turn it off as I find it irritating to listen to all the messages... I prefer to get a message saying who called while I was busy... and the internet... well.. maybe useful....

fall season...

Seems like the coming fall season will bring some nice hardware to us.. All four major brands are cooking something up... Intel got the 45nm processing where AMD got it's native quad processors on its new K10 architecture... sure lot of performers expected...
Also ATI and nVidia are bringing new stuff out... and it also seems that ATI might be coming out stronger in mid range.... this should be good fun...
Yet a thing I am looking forward most to is what will AMD will bring to mobile market... It seems that it has nothing there for performance... I would love to have some choice when I come to buy my new lappy...

Are we really that LOST?

To be completely honest I must say that this sort of blindsided me...
It seems that all so popular TV show Lost is changing or maybe adding a direction to it by entering the gaming scene.

I am sure they will make loads of money considering the huge fan base of the show! One thing that leaves me wondering is that since there are 3 more seasons of Lost coming, is this not too soon? Or does that only mean that there will be more Lost games?
Source

Hard Drive in different direction...

Latest thing in Hard Driver market is switch to the SSD drives... However Slashgear reports stat company in Utah believes that SSD is not enough and there is need for more.... They propose to install HD via PCIe interface. This seems to make it really fast and I can see this really taking off as this eliminate lot of wiring that no one likes.... hope they do good and looking forward to see more of this concept!!!

Serenity coming...

The Cinema Blend is reporting that Universal is thinking about making the sequel to Serenity. I know that many people including me would love to see this happen... It would be even better if they brought Firefly back as well... but even Serenity 2 would be dead good. Only saddening fact that the article points out is that since Serenity did badly on Big screen... sequel might be straight to DVD which would mean lower budget... but lets hope for the best!!!

keeping up with Russain drikin..

Some time ago I posted a vid of dude drinkin 0.5L bittle in one go... so here is what happens if you are unemployed and have been drinkin for some time now... enjoy

overhype

With all the hype from Halo 3 watching this video made me feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing that I am not the only one thinking that it is shit!

More here

Microsoft taking care of things..

I have been using Hotmail for some time and find it relatively good, but that is not the story.
Some time ago MS opened a promotional campaign/site 'site of the champions' . It had some mystery to it.. and I hoped it will be like the alternate reality thing MS had going in Jan 2007 if I remember correctly to launch Vista! Wonder how is the space trip going there... Anyhow. I signed up for the champion newsletter with my Hotmail account. Because I do not get much mail in that.. I tent to check my junk mailbox as well as sometimes filters are trying too hard and get some good stuff mixed in there... You might already see where this is going... Hotmail moved the mail straigt into Junk folder... like it should as it was to advertise 10% off to MS SideWinder mouse....
Good Job MS... Next up to get those msn newsletters in Junk by default..!!!
Sorry I got no screen of this.. already deleted the mail as a habit...

Jolly good fun....

I have been catching up and watching some game vids... most notably FarCry 2 which I found out got award of best new game in Leipzig Games Convention... and form what I have seen so far... it looks amazing. I like the idea that they are getting rid of percent health bar in favour of 3 level health... good - damaged - terrible... should be good with all the healing animation

Also the vegetation should be very nice.....

Although Crysis is receiving most of the hype at the moment as next big thing... I really think that this should not be neglected because it can well turn out to be even better game... well might not beat Crysis is all the spectacular graphics but gameplay... who knows... who knows...

Just on a sidenote.. Unreal Tournament 3 looks bloody awesome as well.. I really like that they are going for a darker and grimmer look and feel compared to 2004 one... imo it was too colorful and bright for my taste... at least the outside vegetative levels...

Undressing quickly...

This might come in handy in those intense situations when you need to get naked quick...

Are linux mith really debunked?

I do not intend to look at all the miths about the Linux and it users, but I recently saw this article debunking 5 common misconceptions about Linux. I also do not want to dispute all that is written there as I agree with the last 3 points. Linux is compatible with lot of software, It is enterprise ready/ people use it, and It is professionally developed.
However what I can not fully agree yet is that Linux is easy to use and it is ahead of time. Let me start with it being with time or ahead of it. Article mentions many features that Linux had before Windows as default and I am not going to dispute that, however most of them are power user / security related. When I tried Linux (might be just my experience) I find it that there are many things for every day user that are behind times and that are overlooked in the article. For example install wizard. I downloaded some software for my Linux and I could not get around how to install it. And when I did get it installed I had hard time finding where... What Linux desperatly needs is to get rid of terminal and more to the GUI stuff...
At the end of the day how many of you have left a website shortly after opening it because it had late 90's design feel to it? I know I have many times and it has noting to do with the product. People live I candy! I suppose point is that I candy needs to be consistent. Which brings me to the next point. Linux is hard to use. Here we come to point... once you have used Linux for some time and know basic commands and where what is - it is easy to use... but as long as average joe will need to know any command line and there will be no on screen instructions for the basic and slightly advanced features... Linux will be hard to use. Period.