From the monthly archives: January 2012
ANYONE who has grown up using a mouse or a trackpad will understand the concept of menus.
In a computer application, menus give us access to commands or functions that a program can carry out. For example, in a word processing program, you could execute a search and replace command by going to a the Edit menu and clicking on “Find & Replace.”
I’ve always liked the way artists could create pencil sketches from photos. I recently found a cool tutorial that shows you how to do this in Gimp, the free and open source image editor that is available in Linux, Windows and Mac OS. I decided to try my hand at it and created this “sketch” of Charlize Theron from a photo I found online, using the same technique.
VISITORS to Wikipedia last Jan. 18 didn’t get the treasure trove of information they had come to expect. Instead, they got a darkened page that asked them to “Imagine a world without free knowledge.”
“For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history,” the message read. “Right now, the US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”
WITH more than 3,100 high-tech companies showing off 20,000 new products over 1.9 million square feet of exhibit space, and 153,000 visitors attending, the Consumer Electronics Show this year in Las Vegas seemed as vibrant as ever.
So why did Jason Perlow of ZDNet predict the show’s death by 2015?
His reasons are compelling.
A LETTER came across my desk last month that reminds me that little has changed in the way the Philippine Internet domain is managed.
In the letter dated Dec. 20, 2011, the official Philippine domain registry, DotPH, told a giant retail chain that it would find itself temporarily homeless on the Internet if it didn’t agree to drop its current domain name, which is disallowed under current rules.
I recently set up a computer with Windows 7 Home Basic and quickly realized that it’s quite different from the Professional edition that I use in the office, or Home Premium that I’ve installed on other computers.
