old.

I still get that twinge of jealousy with all his equipment that would have cost a pretty penny back then.  Not to mention his parents never seem to care about him wardialing thousands of calls on their line.  My parents freaked out everytime a computer would dial me.  But how else would I join those wionderful BBSes and get my TradeWars on?

WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars

As the title says, not much more to say. This is a huge update with thousands of changes across the board, both on the frontend and backend… so pretty much a brand new browser. I’ve tested a few of the builds, but a couple of my extensions wouldn’t work with 3 (yet), so I haven’t used it for my main browsing.  But I love the auto-bookmark search addition, which was my favorite feature of the Flock browser.  Plus it seems alot more snappy, and less memory hogging than Firefox 2.

Mozilla is trying to get a world record for most downloads in a day off the thing. See more at SpreadFirefox.

And I do mean old. I will say that I had almost this exact same dot matrix printer that I used for many many years. Kudos on using the Spectrum, but the amazing thing to me is that the hard drives act as speakers.

Here it is… the remix of Radiohead’s “Nude” :

Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Creative makes sound cards.  Sure they make alot of other things now, but they built their business on sound cards.  They succeeded a thrived in the very early PC market to make soundout of PCs better and better.  This is where the good part ends.

There are many constants in PC hardware, and one of those is that Creative drivers suck.  I mean, there are other companies known to have substandard drivers or to not make very frequent updates.  But I bet if there was a poll of the ones most well known for this, Creative would clearly be at the top.  Another bad thing Creative is known for is misleading advertising and product specifications.  By misleading I mean total untruths.  No matter how many times their shady product details are revealed for the truth they are by many respected hardware reviewers, they still seem to one-up themselves.

I won’t be going into the whole history of this, because frankly it just requires a few words in Google like “creative misleading” or “creative shady” or something similar,  and you will get more than you will ever want to read.  And you know what you won’t find?  You won’t find one Creative representative denying any of it.

But, this article is about some current topics.

First: Creative has a second-wave of X-Fi sound cards.  These sound cards are different from the previous few X-Fi sound cards in one important way:  They don’t have an X-Fi chip in them at all!

Second: Creative doesn’t want your old non-X-Fi card to work in Windows Vista.   Y’see, Creative hardware of past generations work fine in Vista.  There is absolutely nothing hardware oriented keeping them from working, and working well.  But Creative won’t make drivers for them.  Not only that, but when a intrepid user modified the drivers for the Audigy card he owned, Creative handed him the Cease and Desist rigamarole. (Because that link is straight to the Creative forums, and possibly could be modified or removed at any time, I include the post in it’s entirety after the break.)

continue reading "Creative never hides their true colors"

Apple fanatics have one less tic mark to their list of all that is good.

Linux fanbois can continue their chest pumping, however.

Apple users tend to be a fanatical lot, often expressing their choice in pre-fabricated computing platforms as if it were a religious experience. There is no sense running down comparisons or arguing any points, it’d be just like arguing religion or politics.  This is really odd considering it is just an electronic device. Even if it comes in a pure white candy shell.

One of the common things to hear supporting the halo around Apple is that “Macs don’t have viruses”.  Apple even proclaims it in one of their Mac vs. PC ads, and on their website. Of course, this is false, but don’t try explaining that.  They also state that because they use a Unix base for Mac OS X, that there are little to no vulnerabilities.

But Thursday, in an international security conference called CanSecWest in Canada, there was a little hacking competition waged. The “PWN 2 OWN” competition featured a $10000 grand prize to hack into a laptop and steal a file. First one wins. Charlie Miller did it in 2 minutes.

The machine was running the latest Mac OS X version with all security patches. Due to agreements at the conference, the way he hacked it will not be revealed until after Apple has been fully notified of the breach. But the contest had stipulations that the contestant could only use software pre-installed on the system.  So, the likely vulnerability was Apple’s Safari web browser.

The thing is, he could have gone after any OS, as the three laptops offered for exploiting were one each of the Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux varieties. Why did Miller choose to target the Mac? Because it was the easiest.

The format war is over.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

Now we can finally all go buy a damn movie player. Even though we won’t notice that much difference over regular DVDs. And now Microsoft can scramble to change their XBOX360, or not.

click the link at the top or the link below to see the full press release.
continue reading "Sony avoids another Betamax - HD DVD is officially dead"

note: I started this review before the holidays, shortly after I bought these two mice. I put it on hold due to the sad fact that the Logitech G9 laser died on me. So, you lucky readers get a bonus anecdotal review of the Logitech support and RMA process near the end of the article.

I’ve been meaning to do formal reviews on drzy for awhile. But I get too lazybusy and usually just do a three-sentence blurb in a semi-related post. But after my Logitech G5’s middle button finally annoyed me enough to seek a replacement, I decided to upgrade. That, and the fact that there are some amazing deals on mice right now. Well, amazing deals compared to their suggested retail price, anyhow.

About 4 or so months ago, I started having problems with the middle mouse wheel/button on my Logitech G5. It became increasingly difficult to click the button without having the wheel register a move. This was compounded by the fact that the wheel also seemed to be “misaligned”. As in, the wheel doesn’t register a move just on the little wheel “clicks”, but also between them sometimes, which makes for a frustrating experience not just in gaming, but even in normal browsing. I put up with this for a few months, sometimes searching the web for quick fixes or at least people to commiserate with who have the same problems. I found the latter, but none of the former. I paid good money for this mouse when it came out, yet it was out of warranty, so I had no options to get the new “improved” G5 mouse except to buy it, again. I really hate buying the same thing twice. I am convinced the design problems with the G5’s mouse wheel have to do with over-engineering. They made it not just click down, but also click to either side as well. From the moment of buying one of these, you can feel the little wiggle in the wheel due to these “enhanced” buttons. As much as I tried to make them useful, these extra buttons are completely dead weight to me, as most games don’t even recognize them.

I won’t knock the performance of the mouse, although I wished they had made a better design than the old MX5xx series, the mouse was very accurate, and I had no laser-mouse-lag problems. (Keep in mind I game at low sensitivity normally, and am definitely in the “wrist-flicking” camp).

I heard about the Logitech G9 when they first announced it a year or so ago. It sounded boring, and the shape was… er, interesting. I had no intention of upgrading. I liked some of the other Logitech mice coming out, but I definitely didn’t want a cordless. I don’t care how many Mythbuster-esque tests people have run to refute it, I can definitely feel a response difference between wired and un-wired mice. Enough to make me uncomfortable with wireless mice, and therefore, never use them for gaming.

I had not heard of the new Microsoft Sidewinder or the new Razer line until I stumbled on both of them at an infrequent visit to Best Buy. I rarely retail shop nowadays for obvious price/availability reasons. But I will go if there’s a rare occurrence of a good sale, or if I’m buying something that never drops much in price, such as console-related merchandise. So, while I’m there I may as well browse. I went through the computer section and the first thing I saw was an endcap dedicated to Razer. They had three mice out on display: a Lachesis, a DeathAdder, (neither of which I had ever heard of) and a Copperhead. When the Copperhead came out was around the time I had bought the G5. I liked the Copperhead, but I didn’t like the gel feeling middle mouse and I had heard lots of bad things about Razer drivers (although Logitech has issues with theirs, as well). So I tried my hand on all of them, and while comfortable I wasn’t impressed. I have smallish hands and the Lachesis felt way too big. The other two were just too smooth. I like hard edges to hold on to. Still they were stylish and had impressive technical specs. Keep in mind, I wasn’t really looking to replace my G5 just yet.

So I wandered further and saw the Microsoft Sidewinder. People who have been computing awhile should recognize the Sidewinder name, as Microsoft used it for their high-end mice many years ago. I owned the first Sidewinder Optical. So, I guess they decided to relaunch the name with a high-end corded gaming mouse. The first thing that grabs you is the look of it. It has very unconventional shape and buttons. They didn’t have one out of the package, but you can reasonably see/grip the thing over the clear plastic container. I sat there pawing it a bit, and deciding if I liked it or not. The strange looks appealed to me as a sort of steampunk mouse. It had two round steel over-and-under thumb buttons, a sleek design broken up by sharp overhangs, and it looked like a mutated jellyfish.

continue reading "Logitech G9 vs. Microsoft Sidewinder (vs. the G5 a little) Mouse Review"

Technology from the University of Wisconsin to “print” images in the air with a cascade of water droplets. They call it AquaScript.

The Youtube comments suggested exactly what iw as thinking… that this is a really neat technology, but the true genius of it would come out if they had a matrix of valves (instead of a line) and thereby created 3-D images.

This guitar’s features didn’t really sound all that impressive at first, but that’s because the first news article I read didn’t really explain very well. Just watch this Gibson video below that shows a how-to on operation of the guitar. Anyone who plays will drool, especially if you love alternate tunings.

This is officially part of the Les Paul line. First off, this thing will tune the guitar for you, on the fly. Not with some helpful tones that help you tune by ear, but with actual servos on each key that turns and tunes the guitar for you. It will also automatically change to any alternate tuning programmed into it on the fly. And to top it off, it takes most of the work out of stringing the instrument. All of this combines with a MSRP of $2499, which actually was much lower than I was expecting, due to the fact that many Les Paul’s already cost about that much.

New York State is doing what AMD wanted to do many years ago, but gave up… nail Intel with Antitrust proceedings.

I remember in the mid-90’s when AMD was just about to spring the Athlon chip that nudged them ahead of Intel in performance for the first time in, well, ever. For years before this, AMD would publicly decry Intel’s business tactics… trying to shove them out of the market. Exclusive deals with Microsoft, shady dealings with review sites and benchmark tools, and weird clock performance ratings. AMD shouted about these things early and often. But nothing ever came of it. Either their legal team was inept, or Intel’s was just that good. After many years of this, AMD seemed to give up. I haven’t read a peep of anti-Intel whining out of them in years.

Now, out of the blue New York wants to do the dirty work. This was prompted by similar suits/investigations by the European Union and other countries. (I believe Microsoft is getting a bunch of similar scrutiny and attention).

This couldn’t come at a better time for AMD, as they were trounced by the great performance leap of the Intel Core2 proc, and are now struggling to show they can compete. Even I, as a long time buyer of AMD, had to switch… after over a decade of using AMD chips in my gaming rigs. I mean, the Core2’s are so fast and so cheap, and left me with a great upgrade path.

AMD also is feigning ignorance in the matter, and was subpoenaed themselves in the case.

This is going to get interesting.

The FRONT software system allows people to trace out furniture, or any object, in 3D and completely realtime. The system then relays it to an fabrication device to mold the drawn model into an actual piece of plastic furniture.

The first part of this video is the drawing/modelling, and the second half shows a bit of the fabrication and the final pieces. Although it is a bit odd that they don’t show the pieces in use. No one sits on the little lumpy chair or drinks a gin n’ tonic off the swirly holey table.

In soviet russia, the monitor shoots you!

Ever since my robotics class ended a year ago, I thought I would never have my hands on a AIBO again. The professor made sure to express his disappointment while telling us that Sony discontinued the AIBOs and, in fact, the entire Sony robotics program.

This is despite the fact that AIBOs are so good, and relatively cheap compared to other completely programmable walking robots. The AIBO was left to scavengers in the various Robosoccer leagues. And as servos failed and plastic cracks.. so would the poor little dog fade out of existence.

And then today, I see this photo:

I don’t even know what magazine this is, and I couldn’t find a bigger image. The print is illegible except for a few words. I’m sure we’ll hear more about it in the future. I will update this post with a bigger pic, if I find one.

So, all we really know is, it’s going to be a Playstation 3 accessory. That’s very hopeful since it could hardly cost mor ethan the playsation itself, so it will likely be much cheaper than the original AIBO. But that could also be bad, in that it could be a dumbed down version of the original.

Disable Bad Behavior in the plugins section of your site’s control panel. Apparently the blacklisting service used for Bad Behavior was giving a false positive to anyone actually using Bad Behavior, so you would be blocked from your own site.

To correct the issue after disabling, update to the newest Bad Behavior.

fully controllable, portable exoskeleton:

When they start speaking of “autonomous operation”, you can visualize the beginnings of Cyberdyne.