geek artistic

You get what you pay for (£135) from next year.

2007-04-28T23:56:00.000+01:00

BBC, ITV to launch free satellite HDTV in UK by 2008

Posted Apr 28th 2007 12:24PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Although there's a lot of grumbling in the UK about that £135 ($270) yearly television license fee (only $87 for a black and white set!), it's hard to complain that the BBC doesn't try to use all that money in cool ways. Adding to their already-ambitious plans to distribute HDTV through torrent, datacasting, and IPTV, the Beeb announced today that, after years of delays, they've been approved to pair up with ITV and launch a free 200-channel HD-capable satellite service called Freesat in the spring of 2008. The move is designed to provide digital service to the estimated 25% of the British public that can't get the successful Freeview DVB-T service, but it'll also be free to any license payer who ponys up for one of the several available interactive receivers. Hmm, that's an interesting version of "free," must be the British spelling.

Looks like its harder and harder to make up your own mind for a decent Sky subscription nowadays. For fuck sake bring out the god damn HDTV standard in China or at least in Hong Kong will ya?

the only cool chinese male singer (pop)

2007-04-28T12:23:00.000+01:00

學友音樂專輯和精選:

1985年：《SMILE》
1985年：《遙遠的她AMOUR》
1985年：《局外人/交叉算了》
1986年：《情無四歸》
1986年：《相愛》
1987年：《初吻/炸彈》
1987年：《在我心深處》
1987年：《JACKY張學友》
1987年：《張學友87演唱會》
1988年：《意亂情迷》
1988年：《昨夜夢魂中》
1989年：《給我親愛的》
1989年：《絲絲記憶情歌精選》
1989年：《只願一生愛一人》
1990年：《似曾相識 (張學友的初戀故事)》
1990年：《夢中的你》
1991年：《情不禁》
1991年：《一顆不變心》
1991年：《愛你多一些精選》
1992年：《張愛友91演唱會》
1992年：《真情流露》
1992年：《愛火花》
1993年：《吻別》
1993年：《我與你》
1993年：《忘記他EP》
1993年：《等你等到我心痛張學友精選》
1993年：《祝福》
1994年：《學與友93演唱會》
1994年：《餓狼傳說》
1994年：《張學友Jacky Cheung 24K Gold 金藏集》
1994年：《偷心》
1994年：《這個冬天不太冷》
1995年：《三年兩語》
1995年：《擁友》
1995年：《過敏世界》
1995年：《真愛新曲＋精選》
1995年：《一生跟你走作品集》
1996年：《友學友95演唱會》
1996年：《情緣十載95友學友台灣演唱會》
1996年：《愛與交響曲》
1996年：《忘記你我做不到》
1997年：《不老的傳說》
1997年：《雪狼湖Citibank信用卡張學友珍藏版EP》
1997年：《雪狼湖》
1997年：《想和你去吹吹風》
1998年：《釋放自己》
1998年：《不後悔》
1998年：《友情歌歲月精選》
1999年：《有個人》
1999年：《走過1999》
1999年：《友個人演唱會》
2000年：《Touch of Love》
2000年：《Jacky Cheung15 十五年音樂精選》
2000年：《當我想起你》
2000年：《友情歌：張學友1995-2000世紀情歌金選》
2001年：《學友—熱》
2001年：《天下第一流》
2001年：《903 ID Club 拉闊音樂會》
2002年：《他在那裡》、《張學友新曲+精選》
2003年：《張學友音樂之旅Live演唱會》
2003年：《張學友4 in 1珍藏集》
2003年：《張學友1985-1999大碟全集》
2003年：《張學友1987-1999演唱會全集》
2004年：《Life Is Like A Dream》
2004年：《Black & White》
2004年：《活出生命Live演唱會》
2004年：《環球巨星影音啟示錄 - 張學友》
2005年：《環球百花齊放 - 張學友》
2005年：《雪狼湖（國語版）》
2007年：《在你身邊》

More about Jacky Cheung here and here.

The New World Order?

2007-04-27T17:00:00.000+01:00

The future in Intel's eyes

2007-04-25T10:55:00.000+01:00

Death, taxes and spam, there is just no way to go around it.

2007-04-25T08:46:00.001+01:00

For those who have doubts in how I think, the following Keynote roughly demonstrates the perception process of my brain.

Obssesion of possesion

2007-04-23T15:47:00.000+01:00

What drives the hard disc industry moving forward? Broadband + P2p + Good Content (aka porn).

After picked up my latest shiny 1TB (that's A Terabyte, it means one thousand Gigabytes) Freecom hard drive from my dorm reception, I decided to put all my gang boxes together and see how much my mac can eat.

The answer is: all of them.

It really is a glorious moment when all the LEDs on my 7 port USB hub led up, and all the holes on the back of the iMac plugged in. It literally made my eyes water. Screw HD-DVD, screw blue-ray, long live the magnetic spinning magic plates!

Words can not describe the beauty of a fulfilled mind, pics are surely necessary for memorial. Next year, when my sad life as my student finally ends and a larger place-of-living become possible, I will be thinking file server, fiber channel and RAID controllers.

Linuxtard?

2007-04-21T05:08:00.001+01:00

Some say his organs will be harvest by the Chinese government, some say he is now in jail and will never be heard of; Some say he made the second best prank in the world, (the best), some say he was just out there for show.

But all we know is, he is our boy of the day. Mr. Wang Kaiyuan (means the king of open source in Chinese) show the world today the courage of the sexy command-line based Linux community.

Woo.. Windows Attack

2007-04-21T03:00:00.000+01:00

Quanta to delay OLPC notebook shipments to 4Q07

2007-04-20T06:31:00.000+01:00

Quanta Computer's shipments of XO notebooks under the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) project may be delayed, again, to the fourth quarter instead of the third quarter due to a delay in designs of varied application scenarios for different emerging markets, according to an April 20 Chinese-language Commercial Times report.

Okay, so it is REALLY hard to make a decent $150 laptop and the pessimistic folks at Merrill Lynch might really got it right.

Btw, has anyone checked the secondhand chinese market? I got a IBM x21 for $200 last month, and it's operating system is (Windows 2000) not as gay as the OLPC sugar.

Heading to the states for WWDC

2007-04-20T03:58:00.000+01:00

Woo... looks like a good start.

Google is the new Microsoft

2007-04-20T03:00:00.000+01:00

They are making $1b in first quarter this year, and that almost doubles their last years figure of the same period. More here and here.

Bill made the wrong move, again.

2007-04-19T23:29:00.000+01:00

Finally, Mr. Microsoft finally announced his big plan today of making his (otherwise available for free on p2p) application suites for $3, exclusively to the children in "qualified poor countries". He might have read my paper few weeks ago, but sadly enough, he didn't get it.

First, not just poor child in poor countries need a decent personal technology platform - a.k.a a nice little thin client laptop; instead, people who can get most of the instant bangs from a nice cheap laptop are digital divide victims in the developing world.
Second, he made it as a charity - and charity is the biggest pile of bullshit that has a sole purpose to entertain the rich donors. It could NEVER be effective, nor sustainable. Why Bill is doing this ? Two words: total control. If he did this in the private sector, i.e. to supply cheap apps for OEM manufacturers who makes sub-$200 laptops, things could go out of control quickly. But this is a donation, a charitable initiative which Bill can pull the plug anytime he wishes.

I was using Google Web 2.0 suite the other day, and I clearly saw why Paul declared the death of Microsoft. Christensen is ultimately right, giant tech leaders always found themselves in extremely difficult situations when it comes to "dump the old crap" and make something new and better - at least this appears to be those well paid MS managers' last concern.

The interesting (and possibility good) thing is, when a market player of this size make a move, many others will jump on the wagon. Among "the others" we are likely to see some true innovators that finally has the courage, knowledge and resource to get things right.

Microsoft is really running out of tricks on marketing

2007-04-19T13:35:00.000+01:00

now they are using bill... geeeeze...

Knut's Song

2007-04-19T02:15:00.001+01:00

Damn! I want one of this:

BMW Mini Cooper Fun Manual

2007-04-19T01:41:00.000+01:00

EU Visitors May Pay Higher Roaming Fees

2007-04-18T05:43:00.000+01:00

Visitors to Europe may find they have to pay increased roaming charges as a result of price caps being imposed on calls within the EU.

According to analysts at Informa, a number of European mobile operators say they will increase the wholesale prices they charge non-European operators whose customers roam onto their networks, to "compensate for the loss of revenues resulting from the new European price caps".

More at BusinessWeek

Analyst: Vodafone to bring iPhone to Europe

2007-04-18T05:29:00.000+01:00

With regard to Europe, Vodafone's 200 million subscriber base -- compared to AT&T's 61 million -- with broad country coverage and investment in advanced technologies make the carrier a promising fit for Apple, according to the analyst.

"Our sources indicate that a rebate or carrier subsidy for iPhone of $50-150 is under serious consideration," Wu wrote in a research note obtained by MacNN. "From AT&T's perspective, a rebate is a great marketing tool to entice a customer to sign up for 2-year voice and data plans which cost $75-100 per month, meaning $1800-2400 in 'guaranteed' bi-annual revenue.

Via MacNN

Intel's Penryn Chip Performance Boosts

2007-04-18T05:20:00.000+01:00

According to Intel executive, Penryn-based computers will see the following speed improvements over the current Core 2 Extreme processors

- 15% for imaging-related
- 25% for 3-D rendering
- 40% for gaming
- 40% for video encoding (SSE4 optimized)

The comparison was made between 3.33GHz pre-production Penryn processor vs 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme processor-based desktop-class machines.

For workstations and "high-performance computing", Penryn is said to provide improvements of:

- 45% for "bandwidth intensive applications
- 25% for servers using Java

via MacRumors

Britain's $24B Health IT Scheme in Crisis

2007-04-18T05:16:00.000+01:00

MPs call for urgent action by National Health Service officials to ensure that the department's IT upgrade is completed on schedule and patient care benefits.

"An influential committee of MPs has warned urgent "remedial action" must take place if the long-term interests of NHS patients and taxpayers are to be protected. The NHS' National Programme for IT is the largest single IT investment in the UK to date, with spending on the programme expected to hit £12.4bn over 10 years"

more at BusinessWeek

Apple fined for air pollution in Sacramento

2007-04-18T05:12:00.000+01:00

"a new report indicates that Apple will pay $43,200 in penalties to the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District for an air quality violation that occurred at its Elk Grove facility in April 2006, according to the Sacramento Business Journal."

via MacNN

Intel profit rises despite flat chip sales

2007-04-18T04:49:00.000+01:00

Intel profit rises despite flat chip sales

By Ben Ames, IDG News Service

Intel posted a profit of $1.6 billion for the first quarter, a rise of 19 percent over that quarter last year, thanks to reduced personnel costs after recent layoffs and a $300 million tax reversal, the company said Tuesday.

Intel reported $8.9 billion in revenue for the quarter ending March 31, a drop of 1 percent from that period last year and narrowly below the average Wall Street expectation of $9 billion, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Intel reported earnings per share of $0.27, an increase of 17 percent over its performance in the first quarter of 2006 and well above the average analyst forecast of $0.22 per share. However, the company reported that the tax reversal inflated its earnings figure by $0.05, so Intel would have matched the forecast exactly without that charge.

Under the strain of a price war with competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel said it had a decline in microprocessor unit sales and selling prices compared to the fourth quarter of 2006.

Prices for the new Core microarchitecture chip family “held up well in a very competitive environment,” CEO Paul Otellini said. Still, much of the company’s profit came from cost reductions, since Intel was one quarter ahead of schedule in reducing its workforce from 102,000 to 92,000.

The least casholic person on the planet

2007-04-18T03:45:00.000+01:00

and he's fulfilling life. (From Fake Steve)