Archive for October, 2007

Daylight Saving Time May Confuse Windows XP

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

No! I’ve been working on a paper that I have due tomorrow and I glanced at the clock on my Windows XP installation and I noticed it said 5:07 PM. I thought to myself “awesome, I have more time than I thought I did” but then I looked over at my Macbook and OS X was saying it was 6:07 PM. My cellphone says it’s 6:07 PM. What gives? Well apparently Daylight Savings Time has been extended to November 4th, 2007 till 2 AM rather than October 28th, 2007, at 2 AM. While I just noticed this discrepancy, it would have been terrible if I didn’t notice it till tomorrow as it would make me late for a few events. I don’t know if this is just an error with my particular installation, but take note. Manually forcing Windows to synchronize with Time.Windows.com also doesn’t fix the issue, sounds like a Microsoft issue. Back to writing my paper and pretending it’s 5 PM instead of 6 PM.

Leopard Day

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Well today is Leopard day and I know where all the Mac fanbois will be. If you have always lusted for one of your friends/roommates/acquaintances/enemies/strangers monitors, Macbooks, or any other physical object then today around 6pm would be the perfect time to steal it and blame it on the gremlins. While I myself won’t have the chance to utilize this grace period I highly suggest you all go for it and let me know how it goes. Otherwise you could always join the crowds at the Apple stores and buy your copy of OS X Leopard and then let everyone else know you are gone for a few hours. Happy Leopard/Fri Day everyone, here’s a big cat to celebrate with.

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What Happened to the World’s Work Ethic?

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

I’ve joked about this time and time again how most of America(possibly the world?) gets paid to do nothing at work. I’ve got multiple friends that are fresh out of college and consistently tell me stories of sitting idle at work as there simply isn’t any work to be done. It boggles my mind exactly how this can occur, if I was the owner of a small business of 10-15 individuals I’d make sure my employees worked hard and were properly rewarded for it. Larger businesses I suppose have more trouble insuring there is enough work to do as individuals can fall through the cracks but still, how the hell do these companies make any money if they pay their resources to sit idle? Imagine the profitability some companies could make if they better utilized their employees. Life Reboot has a great article titled “The Working Dead” and it precisely describes this situation, it is a great read and I highly suggest reading it. Now back to surfing the Internet while pretending I’m out in the garage working ;)

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November, The Month of Midrange GPUs

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

It’s been a year since the 8800GTX was released and DX10 hit the market and we still haven’t received a properly priced mid-range DX10 card. The ATI HD2600XT and Nvidia 8600GTS were both terrible excuses for midrange cards with performance that results in barely playable DX10 experiences. For the most part Nvidia has been leading the GPU race with their 8800 series with the 8800GTS 320MB, until recently price above $300, landed in the upper-midrange while the 8600GTS was priced at roughly half the cost and less than half the performance. Finally though we will be seeing the launch of cards within the $250 bracket that will pack the punch of a current $400-$500 cards. Once again upper-midrange will bring the heat but while sipping on electricity. The 8800GT, which will feature performance that’ll surpass the 8800GTS and potentially rival the 8800GTX will face off against the HD3850 which will feature HD2900 performance with considerably lower power consumption and potentially astronomical overclocking opportunities. Both cards are projected to compete in the $250 price-point, expect more information as it becomes available and possibly a personal review.

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Windows 7 May Have a Stripped Kernel

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Looks like Microsoft may be taking some of the complaints with Vista to heart with it’s next-generation operating system, Windows 7. The kernel itself is one of the lowest levels of software within Windows and provides applications like Firefox and iTunes with physical resources while managing all the input/output requests to the hardware from the software. If I understand the New.come article on the “Mini-Me” Windows kernel, it’ll consume 25 megabytes of ram while providing basic I/O functions which could be perfect for high-performance single-function applications. What really comes to mind would be videogaming, imagine being able to shutdown all the garbage that runs in the background when gaming such as printer and peripheral drivers along with the dozens of other services that aren’t directly required for the primary process at the time. This would also be immensely useful with CPU benching as you’ll be able to devote nearly every clock cycle to your benchmark rather than maintaining the status of a dozen other applications. I’d really like to see Windows 7, or whatever Microsoft calls it, to incorporate a fully customizable installation where the user would have the option to install a bare minimum installation or a fullblown installation. If all else fails there will always be people willing to rip the kernel to shreds but it’d be nice to have the work done for us.

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How To: Buy OS X Leopard for Under $40, Legally*

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

Digging through my feeds I found this hilarious article by Crunchgear essentially describing how to take advantage of a local colleges’ student discount that sold OS X Tiger for $40/license and most likely will be selling OS X Leopard for $40/license also. What they did very wrong was 1)mention splitting a single license amongst 2 users which is piracy and 2)suggested non-college individuals to use college students to purchase these academic licenses for them. After reading the article I am questioning if the Crunchgear writer even went to college and if he even thought about what he wrote before he hit Publish. So after reading the comments and laughing at the number of readers saying they are unsubscribing (it’s ok to laugh at their blunder, I cleared it with TBS) I decided to show you a slightly more legal way to go about getting your copy of OS X Leopard.

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Apple Takes Another Step with new iTunes Plus Pricing

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

When I first heard of Apple’s iTunes Plus program I was ecstatic up until I was informed of the 30 cent premium per song. The iTunes Plus tracks are 256kbps DRM-free songs that are NOW one of the best deals in regards to pay-per-song services with a per-song cost of 99 cents, on par with DRM’d tracks. The iTunes Plus library now stretches over 2 million tracks and hopefully will eventually include the entire iTunes library in due time. Considering how the entire iTunes library covers 6 million tracks, hopefully the popularity of iTunes Plus will show Apple exactly what users are demanding. Enough with this DRM garbage, maybe in a year the record labels will realize that DRM is only harming the technology illiterate consumers, the active consumers will always find a way to get what they want.

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Cisco’s Brazilian Division Accused of Tax Evasion

Wednesday, October 17th, 2007

This strikes me as very odd that such a prominent company with such a stellar track record would go about and do something like this. I understand that Brazil’s rather suppressive impressive technology tax requirements would drastically raise costs across the board, isn’t it always better to be on the good side of the law? South America is an emerging market for technology sales and I bet Cisco makes a killing down there, so why go through such extensive lengths to avoid paying taxes on your products? From what I gather Cisco owes $826.4 million in taxes and fines on illegally importing $500 million in products. Talk about a tax evasion blunder, the point was to save money, not owe more money than what I imagine the original taxes would have been. Hope Cisco can sort this out in an amicable manner as there’s lots of gold money in them thar hills cleared rainforest lands.

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