Archivos mensuales: diciembre 2004

La verdad es que la Playstation 3 vendrá cargada. WiFi, discos Blu-Ray y de los gráficos se encargará Nvidia. Suerte que todavía tardará en salir y podré ahorrar.

Nvidia to power PlayStation 3 – Engadget – www.engadget.com

It’s been confirmed that the PlayStation 3 is going to use a Cell processor jointly made by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM, have built-in WiFi support, and use Blu-Ray discs (25/50GB), now Nvidia makes the big score and has announced that they will be powering the graphics in Sony’s next generation gaming console. behind it with a new There’s no solid specs on what Nvidia is throwing in there yet, but it should basically be a new GeForce GPU designed specifically to work with the Cell processor.

Interesantísima página que ofrece una visión de las complejidades de la escritura china con un curioso experimento: intentando escribir el inglés tal y como se escribe en chino. Fascinante.

Yingzi

Chinese style

Maybe there’s a better approach. Instead of using hanzi directly, let’s invent a new system– we’ll call it yingzi, «English characters»– that would work for English exactly as hanzi works for Chinese.

The basic principle will be, one yingzi for a syllable with a particular meaning. So two, to, and too will each have their own yingzi. (If we were creating a syllabary, by contrast, we’d write all three with the same symbol, the one for /tu/.)

Does that mean we need a completely separate symbol for each of the thousands of possible English syllables? Not at all. We can simplify the task enormously with one more principle: syllables that rhyme can have yingzi that are variations on a theme.

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Sí, la que usaba el ejército alemán para sus comunicaciones secretas. Las cosas que se encuentran en internet no dejarán de asombrarme.

Paper Enigma Machine

This machine is compatible with the original 3-rotor German Enigma used during World War II. For simplicity it omits the «ring settings» and plug board, but the primary workings of the machine are captured in this model. Great as an educational tool, or just for fun!

(vía: Hack A Day)

Si tu Nintendon DS tiene un pixel mal, la compañía (al menos en Estados Unidos) te la repara o la cambia. Es triste que sea asombroso que una empresa se porte bien con los clientes:

Nintendo fixes DS with one bad pixel – Engadget – www.engadget.com

Setting an example for any manufacturer that sells anything with an LCD screen on it, Nintendo is actually following through on its promises, and is repairing or replacing any new DS portable game console with even a single dead pixel (most manufacturers won’t offer a replacement or repair unless there is a minimum of three or four dead pixels). Even more amazing, some people are reporting that it only took a warranty fulfillment center four days to repair and return their DS to them.

Acabo de oir esta conferencia de Spencer Wells (ya saben, mi sorprendente nueva pasión por el podcasting). Ha sido una conferencia muy interesante y entretenida, y eso sólo con sonido, cuando era evidente que el público se reía de algo que yo no podía ver (ahora mismo estoy escuchando el turno de preguntas). He quedado tan encantado que he decidido leer ahora el libro, que me regalaron por mi cumpleaños, en lugar de esperar su turno:

Around 60,000 years ago, a man–identical to us in all important respects–lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races?

Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they fought, loved, and influenced.

Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups, and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be accounted for by just ten individuals.

It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind–as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries, questions now more compelling than ever.

Fernand0 lo ha hecho, es decir, ha puesto la lista de los regalos que le gustaría que le hiciesen estos reyes (o en Navidad, que al final viene ser lo mismo). Pues nada, yo también hago lo mismo.

A fernand0 le gustaría un Neuros. Yo la verdad es que creo que por el momento me apetece un iPod. Pero no por vicios musicales, que no tengo, sino porque he descubierto hace poco el podcasting. En realidad, vale cualquier reproductor mp3 -yo he desempolvado mi viejo Rio 500 que dormía desde hacía mucho tiempo el sueño de los justos. Le tengo mucho cariño, porque me fue muy útil en un periodo particularmente difícil de mi vida (además, fue un regalo), pero el pobre con sus 64 megas apenas contiene nada- pero con un iPod como que queda más guay, ¿no creen?

Eso quiero, y muchas más cosas.

Curioso artículo sobre gente que no sólo sabe que hay programas espía instalados en su ordenador, sino que los acepta tranquilamente.

Wired News: Spyware on My Machine? So What?

Not all web surfers think spyware is a problem. Some say the snoopy software is a fair trade-off for free applications, even with the intrusion into their computers and lives.

«Typically the assumption has been that spyware sneaks onto computers, or users are unaware of what they have agreed to install,» said Gregg Mastoras, a senior security analyst at antivirus vendor Sophos. «But some people actually do knowingly install adware because they want to use a particular application that comes bundled with it. Some just aren’t particularly concerned by adware’s presence on their computers.»

(vía: Techdirt)

Por primero vez. Hasta ahora, los libros eran su producto estrella. Pero el pasado fin de semana de Acción de Gracias vendió más dispositivos electrónicos que papel.

Amazon.com: Electronics outsell books, first time ever – Engadget – www.engadget.com

Amazon.com, which most people still think of as being primarily an online bookseller, hit a milestone this past Thanksgiving weekend when sales of consumer electronics leapt ahead of books very the first time, perhaps due to a Consumer Reports recommendationin their just-released December issue of Amazon as the best place to buy electronic online. Top selling electronics in November were SanDisk memory cards, Philips progressive scan DVD Players and Netgear wireless cable/DSL routers-all deeply discounted (and probably the real reason Amazon’s selling so much gear).

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Jakob Nielsen (el gurú de al usabilidad. En este caso, gurú de verdad) comenta las técnicas publicitarias más odiadas y cómo afectan al uso de la página. No hay sorpresas. Los navegantes odian en primer lugar los anuncios tipo pop-up que saltan ocupando la pantalla, y reaccionan echándole la culpa a la página:

Most Hated Advertising Techniques (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

Users have started to defend themselves against pop-ups. The percentage of users who report using pop-up or ad-blocking software increased from 26% in April 2003 to 69% in September 2004, which is an astonishing growth rate.

Users not only dislike pop-ups, they transfer their dislike to the advertisers behind the ad and to the website that exposed them to it. In a survey of 18,808 users, more than 50% reported that a pop-up ad affected their opinion of the advertiser very negatively and nearly 40% reported that it affected their opinion of the website very negatively.

People are getting ever-more annoyed by pop-ups: During a fifteen-month period from December 2001 to February 2003, user ratings of pop-up advertisers grew more negative by almost one full rating point on a 1 to 7 scale.

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Eso argumenta Carlo Longino. Y la idea es muy simple: para ver vídeos tienes que concentrarte en la pantalla, mietras que oír la radio, o cualquier otro sonido, es muy más fácil:

When you think about it, radio on the move makes far more sense, whether your preference is for music or speech radio. You can do most things while listening to the radio – drive a car, walk around, read a book, even. And radio producers are experienced in formatting programming that can be consumed while you’re doing other things. This makes radio ideal for mobile usage, where multi-tasking is the norm.

Y no deja de comentar las posibilidades de podcasting, que, efectivamente, no deja de ser radio que uno consume cuando quiere. La idea del podcasting me gusta tanto, que ya tengo incluso una fuente RSS de podcasts, aunque por el momento sólo contiene pruebas.

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