The past few weeks have given us all a quite invaluable lesson in nation building. And I am not referring to our crying need for a well-trained police force. No, siree. The event that made us into an international laughing stock has somehow also demonstrated a most pressing necessity, something essential to our future survival as a people, as a nation.

We have never been a nationalistic people. And I do not blame anybody, or any group among us for this. How can I or anybody for that matter blame anyone among us? After all, we were never a people. We never are, and never have.

Our forefathers were a bunch of islanders, described by historians as fun-loving, fiesta-crazed drunkards, happily living off the bounty of their respective islands. Seeing how we are today does not give much motivation to refute such notions.

Canon's 120-megapixel CMOS

When I bought my first digital camera, a point-and-shoot affair, I decided to let my pocket grin and bear the extra pain brought about by an extra megapixel for the camera's image sensor. In 2004, a five-megapixel digicam was state of the art, something that gave even a photographer-wannabe some delusional bragging rights.

Since then, pixel count has become something that reminds us of the superpowers' race to have the bigger nuclear weapon stockpile during the Cold War. Camera manufacturers, and lately, even mobile phone vendors, have been piling megapixels after megapixels on their cameras and their handsets' built-in cameras in their bids to outdo each other.

Today, however, Canon's competitors might have a hard time matching its latest announcement. The company said it has developed an APHS-H-size CMOS image sensor capable of delivering 120-megapixel (13,280 x 9,184 pixels) images.

The CMOS image sensor offers nearly 7.5 times larger pixel count compared with that of Canon's highest-resolution commercial CMOS sensor of equal size.

Of course, pixel count by itself does not determine a camera's capability. Other features, such as ISO, play roles of equal importance.

India's BlackBerry Ban

Will BlackBerry users in India see their government carrying out its threat to ban encrypted messages sent on their Canadian smart phones? Afraid of misuse of the BlackBerry's encrypted services by militants, the Indian government has joined the bandwagon of security-conscious countries intent on limiting, if not banning outright, one of the phone's main selling points.

These governments, worried that militants and other anti-government groups could use BlackBerry's encrypted services to plan attacks, are using their powers to forcefully gain access to Research In Motion's subscription services, or require RIM to decode its services. Or the Canadian mobile phone company can take the highway.

As if militants and other anti-government forces could not do their things without the RIM phones and encryption services.

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.