The IT Solution

Old but still a good way to understand IT solution. Click on the picture to have a bigger view of it.

Do we need a National Broadband?

I don't have a TV. I admit I am poor. I get all my local news from Inquirer.net, GMANews.tv, and SunStar.com.ph. So recently I have been baffled by this current news in our country that talks about the NBN-ZTE Deal. For the uneducated (like me) NBN stands for National Broadband Network and it is a project by the Philippine government to create a private? network among all its government offices throughout the country (correct me if I'm wrong). And the beneficiary of such deal is ZTE Corporation of China. With a staggering budget of more than $300 million, this is the most talked about issue nowadays in Philippine tv airwaves. It even has its own Senate hearing.

As for me, I don't believe in this whole NBN thing. I prefer the private sector fund this kind of project. They have the money, they already have the expertise, and they can monetize this kind of undertaking. What benefit is it for the Philippine government to undertake this one? Just let us take a look at the US, the ones funding citywide "wification" are the private firms such as Google. And why do we need a private network? Is the internet not enough? If the problem is geophysical can't we ask the local telecommunications firms to serve that area? Or do we still have zero signal areas in our country? Anyway this is an interesting issue that will get interesting in the upcoming days. I will be reading more articles regarding this tv drama and giving some of my unimportant inputs.

Happy Programmer's Day

Technically it was yesterday, 09/13/2007. So anyway Happy Programmer's Day to all coders all over the world!

Programmer's day is celebrated every 256th day of the year. In programmer's lingua franca that's 2 to the 8th power. Why that calculation? I don't know.

So to everyone out there give some love to your favorite computer scientist. And to the computer programmer's out there, celebrate by fixing those damn bugs.

Photoshop Online

Today, Adobe just launched their premier photo editor program - Photoshop - into the online arena. According to the article, "Photoshop Express isn't meant to duplicate/replace Photoshop CS3 or Photoshop Elements. Rather, it's a new member of the Photoshop family that's meant to make Adobe imaging technology immediately accessible to large numbers of people."

A screenshot of the program will confuse some Photoshop veterans as the web application doesn't resemble anything like the Photoshop CS3. Rather it looks like Adobe Lightroom. Either way it's a win for consumers as Photoshop will reach to different segments of people at the price of free.

Seven Wonders of the IT World

CIO.com has compiled a rather interesting list of the Seven Wonders of the IT World. Some are very interesting while others are not.

The first one is the computer closest to the North Pole, and that title belongs to Webcam #1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory takes care of this floating eye at the top of the world.



The second one is the computer farthest from Earth, and that title belongs to NASA's voyager satellite. It is three times farther away from Pluto.




The third one is the world's most intriguing data center, and that title belongs to Googles' The Dalles, Oregon data center. It has a hydroelectric dam for power, two four-story cooling towers.






The fourth one is the world's largest scientific grid computing project, and that title goes to the E-sciencE II (EGEE-II) project. It is a large-scale scientific research projects in fields from geology to chemistry.




The fifth one is the world's fastest supercomputer, the IBM BlueGene/L (BGL). It helps researchers answer physics questions about stockpiled nuclear weapons and materials like Plutonium.




The sixth one is the world's smallest PC to run Windows Vista, the QOQ Model 2. Such a small and stylish device that runs the latest OS from Microsoft.




And lastly, the seventh one is the biggest paradigm change in enterprise software, that title belongs to the Linux kernel. One of the biggest name in free and open source software revolution.





Disclaimer: All images from CIO.com. Please click here to view the entire article.

Netscape done.

Digg-killer and rebranded Netscape.com will cease to exists. As an avid Digg-reader, yes I spend like 2-3 hours a day just "digging", I think any technophile should be a digg-reader. With its editor free democratic voting system, Digg has risen from its obscure beginnings and into the spotlight, often to the point of branding voting style websites as Digg-clones or possible Digg-killers. One such website is Netscape.com.

I used to browse at the old web portal style of Netscape. But as soon as they turned to another Digg-clone my interests for the site declined. The whole navigation thing was just despicable, I'll be lost trying to work my way through the site. And as the news of its imminent closure looms, that says a lot that it is not just me that hated the new style.

Please bring back the old Netscape site. The one with editorials and cool and original articles.

I want iPod Touch

Wow! Apple just revamped the whole iPod line-up. Their new iPods are the new iPod nano, the new iPod classic, and the very brand new iPod Touch.

The New iPods

The iPod nano brings video (finally!) to the nano family, with capacity still at 4GB and 8GB. The iPod classic boasts of capacity up to 160 GB. The iPod touch on the other hand boasts the same functionality as the original iPhone minus of course the phone functionality. Capacity also is limited to 8GB and 16GB but I'll be damned that is one slick device.

Having owned a 1st Gen iPod Nano device I can say that Apple creates very intuitive product. Next purchase for the holiday season, hmmm, iPod touch!

Foleo has been cancelled!

A look at this article reveals Palm is canceling the Foleo. It has been awhile since I blog about Palm's intention to create a mobile companion device, the Foleo. But it seems Palm succumb to outside pressure about the relevance of their much hyped device. Engadget for their part has filed an appeal to Palm to reconsider axing the said project. Click here to read the very nice article engadget bloggers (don't know they could come up with originals, but it was good) throw at Palm.

With millions and millions of R&D money already spent in conceptualizing Foleo, I don't think Palm will just throw in the towel. I bet they will regroup and essentially (hopefully) create the Foleo as a real contender or if they don't Eee will eat their lunch.

Python 3000 released!

Python 3.0 has just been released! Be wary though, this is just an alpha release, with beta releases next year and hopefully the final version will be delivered by August 2008.

For those who are not familiar with Python, it is a high-level and multi-paradigm programming language (functional, object oriented and imperative) which has a fully dynamic type system and uses automatic memory management; it is thus similar to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, and Tcl. [wikipedia.org]

Its new version is called Python 300 (a.k.a. "Py3k", and released as Python 3.0) is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed. [python.org]

So if you are ready to learn the wonderful world of python, well I just started myself, click here to download the new alpha version of the language. Be warned though, this is not yet a stable release.