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Transparent backgrounds

One of the fads nowadays is taking “transparent” desktop shots of your computers. Don’t know what I mean? Check this gallery out: http://www.flickr.com/groups/transparentscreens/pool/

I thought I’d have a go, and since a lot of the stuff I see there are hard to top creatively, I went on trying to add some difficulty to the shot so people can appreciate it.

Basically what I wanted to do was:

  • Take a shot with me in it (pardon the pantulog clothing)
  • Try it without a tripod (handheld)
  • Capture decent ambient light so the cathode lamp of my Athlon rig can be seen.
  • Shoot at an angle (meaning not straight on, which is what I see most of the time)
  • Get a somewhat challenging DOP (depth of field), since I wanted to take as much of the background as much as possible with minimal blur.

At frist I shot it at f22 with FEC 2 stops up to allow a real fast shutter. It worked, but it would drown out the Athlons CCFL light and Powerbooks Monitor (which would kill the final shot). So I had to settle for a big-ish f8.0 – which resulted in a significantly shallower DOP.

I though it was simple enough but boy was I wrong! Read More

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Oh really now?

It’s the Content, Not the Source

The Apple lawsuit really boils down to the definition of a trade secret, not the definition of a journalist. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg.

via Wired News

No. “Trade Secrets” or “Journalism” are just words being thrown around to defend each position on a legal standpoint. The Apple lawsuit(s) really boils down to a company willing to crucify its very own supporters.

Boooooo!

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Symantec: Mac OS X Becoming a Malware Target

Symantec: Mac OS X Becoming a Malware Target

Security vendor Symantec is warning that Apple’s OS X operating system is increasingly becoming a target for hackers and malware authors.’ They go on to warn that the only thing that’s protected Apple users from exploits so far has been the small number of Macs on the net. Now that people are buying Apple products for ‘style over function,’ according to one analyst, Apple computer has become a target for new attacks.

via Slashdot

The bummer here is that it was stated by Symantec, which easily could be construed as an act of furthering their own sales of AntiVirus software. But in general, friends and I have been discussing this before. That the reason OS X is said to be “secure” is simply because there isn’t enough interest in it for the malicious hackers.

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Evil empire?

3 tales of how a bit of success has made Apple evil–you be the judge

via MacMerc

Actually, in all honesty, Apple has never blindsided people when it comes to their technology. They release stuff with people fully aware what the limitations are (save for the iTunes part). The real issue for me is how Apple is losing its dedication to the people – which is one of the major reasons why they are still afloat despite a measly overall market-share.

As one article pointed out before – Apple supporters are loyal supporters. They may be a cultish lot, but hey, it works! This entails that [Apple] gaining market share is probably close to minimal (over time), but they sure aren’t losing any customers once they’ve gained them.

So the people aren’t going anywhere… despite what Apple has been doing. While true that Apple is “honest” with its customers most of the time, they tend to take advantage of the customers’ ignorance. They don’t read the fine print anyways, so might as well do this and that… charge em a hefty bill, and still come out looking good, and remaining honest”

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NOW’s the time to try this

iScroll2 0.18

iScroll2 has just been updated.

via Joel’s blog

I posted a review comparing this little hack to SideTrack a while back, where the former failed dismally to oust the latter. But as I said in the past: it had a lot of potential. That potential already became a reality in its past releases, but the biggest hassle was it never saved your preferences… until now.

There’s only one problem remaining: making sure it doesn’t break on a OS system update. Other than that, for people interested in trying the hack out, I can honestly say that now’s the best time to do so. I’ve personally un-installed SideTrack for good in favor of this hack.