Tech Review – TruXter

ATI decided a while back not to make that many low end video cards that have SLI. This of course takes away the chance of you buying two low end cards . One while you can, and later one when you can afford it again. I can see the plus in it for the video card makers.  Less newbies screaming about crappy manufacturing.  but also less newbies becoming pro by problem solving and wanting to upgrade and get more  performance.

I kind of notice this after the 9800 cards. Look at compusa and fry’s and look at teh PCI-E cards you will see that the low end cards 2xx all of the low end budget cards no longer have SLI connections on top.

I am disappointing in this. I guess I can start using ATI again, my motherboard is just about obsolete anyway.

I mean if NVidia is going to be like them, then why not just use them.

Apple Versus Microsoft

Do we not get tired of hearing the same argument over, time and again? ” Well Microsoft is better than  apple just look how many users we have” the retort is “well look at how many viruses you have”. and then as we all shrug at the next statement as a reaction is ” well that is because we have so many users, who in their right mind would create a virus for a mac?? why bother with infecting the three mac users out there” This always stumps the mac guy so he usually mauls around all the stupid responses he can come up with then he responds with the big be all end all answer ” Well i don’t care how many users there are on mac or Microsoft, I just like how much better Mac edits video and audio files”.

Really… Really??? Really guy? show me this huge massive collection of videos you have created and all the audio content you edited. Don’t show me some stupid cd you burned at 2 seconds faster on your mac than what some other dude could have done on his windows machine, Don’t send  me to look at some clump of pirated videos you burned to a CD or DVD collection. I will have to, by all means  grab my keyboard and give you a close frontal of a home row tattoo.

“Well a Macintosh is the best computer you can put windows on” . Ok that reaction is pretty good. Not that it is says either is better than the other, it does say that mac actually took the time to find the right set of components and slap them into one machine and mass produce many slightly varied versions of it and know that all parts are a great fit together. Cool great deal. What happens if you have two identical macs, format one and install windows on it, and install equivalent software on each and begin a benchmark? and then check out software that has no match and see what one is the best bang for the buck.  Can the mac play as many games? of the game they both can play which many plays the games the best,fastest,smoothest, has better image quality? What machine has the largest collection of software to be installed and used between the two ? Has either company broken any labor laws? ok that was a mean stab.

Truth is, since Macintosh has a legal bind against Microsoft saying that Microsoft can not build personal computers, after so many years They should at least agree to build computers that Microsoft can be installed on. Wait I guess they already do, since they are 90% PC parts already. The only big Money Microsoft can look forward to is to build something like a tablet or mobile device that you can not technically call a computer, and install it’s operating system on it. Wait.. I guess they already. We call them palm.

Well I am glad they both make an operating system you can install on a thumb drive and take on you when you make a family trip across country and do not feel like bringing your whole computer. Wait?? they don’t? Why not?? Oh you say because the instabilities and mass driver errors? I guess that makes sense. I mean how could any operating system be put on something so small . i mean that would be like  a pendrive boot disk. I guess that would take an operating system used by NASA or good enough to be used in most schools across the country. Would be crazy to think you could do everything Microsoft claims to do or be even better on a mac than mac is, all the while run from a measly 4 gig (or greater if you want) thumb drive.

Man if good wishes could come true.

It’s a rip off of hotmail’s little myspace clone thingy. Except it posts all of your feeds to your friends and family. Kind of sucks if you posted stuff you really do not want your friends or family to see or read. to me it is a straight out intrusion of creative freedom. can’t be free if you worry about what family thinks. anonymity is great way to say what needs to be said. you know… like if you had a blog or something that you just vented your frustrations of, and now all the people you talk about, can read it…. Like I wrote a review of online dating sites, and my mom called me two days later asking me if I have trouble finding women… I mean come on!!! Now I can’t uninstall the dang thing.

Now these picks are not by some internet standards or by any other influence other than me seeing extreme use in them.

Shop Savvy Bar-code scanner. Yeah the results have not been up to what I expected but hey, they do offer a chance to look at the products on amazon and see what other people’s reviews are of the items.

Zxing scanner. Not near as good as shop savvy, but is another scanner so I have two to pick through. Choices are wonderful.

Cherry Rplayer – you can manually insert radio stations you like – I of course have ZRock in mine, because well they only have an iphone app and well I want to hear Zrock Dang it!

Opera Mini- because it does some stuff that google browser will not, like play myspace games right off their site, without need of an ap.

Pandora Radio – I love the way it lets you pick a music type and just ride with it. (audio out to audio in on my car, excellent sound.)

Digital Clock from Socialmobile , it’s like my back up alarm clock  (only use it while it’s on the charger though)

Twit.tv by Mediafly – all the Leo Laporte podcasts I can listen to.

Pretty much everything I have found, are just trials or do not live up to what they charge you, or just plain ol toys.
still waiting for Myspace Mobsters Android ap. Or a nice pdf viewer that costs no money and does not have trial period.. like foxit for Droid would be real nice. Mozilla Firefox for android would be nice. Hulu would be good.
Tv.com player would fricken rock if it had shows i like in full episodes. like Smallville Two and Half Men. but seems like everything that I like, is just 1 minutes snippets, really how much bandwidth could 300×200 really be ? They could soooo make some money from the ads, kinda like hulu does, if they would just do it . Youtube ap is great, but don’t hit pause, you freaking video fail every-time you do hit pause.
A-online radio has great features but it does not make the list. It just does not buffer very well. See Pandora radio isn’t as free roam as Aonline, but I can plug my G1 into my car stereo, turn on Pandora radio and let it play all the way from work to home. I plug in A-online and it plays for all of about 20 seconds. If it is not a buffer issue then the garbage shuts off every time the back light turns off. I know it’s one of the two and I can do nothing about either.

According to an article in boing boing a school District in  (PA) [Lower Merion School District] Handed out laptops to students. This school reportedly has been reprimanding students for their behavior while at home. One student was shown a picture taken of them while doing something the school objected to, from within the child’s bedroom.

The laptops the children received had cameras on them. Reportedly these camera were used to spy on the children while not at school.

Their is notice that they are worried about children being to informative while online talking with strangers and the wide open public.

Update: The school district admits that student laptops were shipped with software for covertly activating their webcams, but denies wrongdoing.

Any person caught doing such a thing should be more than just investigated, they should be put in public notice.

Do we not have laws that protect us from this? should anyone for any purpose be so above the law that they can get away with such an invasion of privacy?

The students all should be allowed to return the laptops they where given (or are renting or purchased), the school should refund all deposits, and every principal,teacher,executive involved should be fired and replaced and spend no less than 5 years in federal prison for invasion of privacy illegal monitoring and surveillance without proper license and prior permits.

If they let this go, what exactly is freedom for? what is the proof that we protect the rights we obey ?

If you have been looking for a place to evaluate your website, or just looking for status on your website in google page rank or in alexa rank or dmoz rank, there is now a place to check this status Website Status, value and worth.
This should help with your seo (search engine optimization). Tell you what your current status is, and what tweaks you may need to better your position.
I myself got sick of running down the gauntlet of links in Google or Bing or even Yahoo.

The one Here you will find at Website Status, value and worth Did not give ME any pretty results and well that kinda is a bummer. but it tells me what I need to know. There are many sites out there that tell me my site is worth a few hundred thousand dollars, and there are a few sites out there that tell me it is worth less than fifty bucks. I love working on this site and all of the upgrades I do so to me it is priceless, kind of like the results I get (lol).

So go see what your website is worth and see what your page rank is in Google,dmoz, and Alexa. It can only give you an idea of what mechanical method people use before purchasing your established domain name. Don’t get mad if the value is not what you want it to be, it could very well be worth more in a sentimental way or a more logical manor than what this php script evaluates.

I declare war.

War on those who oppose.

I admittingly use  openly say that I myself pirate distributions of Linux operating system, because I use a torrent program to obtain it from the link son the linux distribution sites. I am so greedy that I do not share my copies or modded versions with anyone, until it clears inspection by the Linux community. I ninja my software.

I am the ninja pirate, I raise the flag the masked skull and cross-swords.

If you feel the same or even understand what I said, raise your flags.

Ninja Pirate

I had to do a scan, a known virus, with a number of virus scanners.
I used Jotti’s I used Virscan and I used Virus Total
They each have a mess-load of virus scanners through their site that allows you to scan at one time to see the results of each scanner

1st virus scan results

2nd virus scan results

Here are the results of the most known free or cheap virus scanners and antivirus programs out there, scanning two pieces of malware that we got at the office I work in.
Sad to say, the two most known, most promoted most noted free virus scanners out there, failed to detect this. Sad to say, we got these from a machine that was supposedly protected by Symantec Endpoint. We received an email that told us to update our tax information, and well it was bundled with an executable. The second one is another virus/trojan that was sent in an email disguised as being from Fedex, they sent an executable file saying it would help us track our recently shipped package.. The computer that received this email, the user actually ran th program and it installed and mass emailed her address book with the same message, then it downloaded tons of stuff into the machine, eventually shuts off internet access until an expected time then it opens internet back up quickly to download more updates, then it shuts it down.
So if you have a virus scanner that is cheap or free and want to see how it did in our little test, check the two pdf files I link and see for yourself.
If you do not have adobe pdf reader, I advise you use foxit, it’s ten times faster and much more useful.

I know this old stuff but I have to show it as I found it.
I have been using windows since 3.11.
Broke my first pc within days of getting it.
butter knife in the floppy drive.
Ewps. Hey I was a newb.

Here is the guy who did it best .
Evolution of Microsoft
I still think he should have said Windows.

In the video, wait for win 3.1 . Does that not bring back memories? .. lol memories of aps/gadgets.

Sound recorder never really changed did it??? I wonder why that is!

We have to look at the word Social first

“It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.”

I’m not so sure about the word “irrespective” sounds a bit redneck to me.  That’s what I hate about Wikipedia Anyone can edit it, even redneck Jim.

Well to start. In that sense Wikipedia is a type of social network. but let’s leave educational means of communication, out of the ring 0f  social networking, for this case, And let’s leave out youtube and Revver. They do have nice social methods (telling people their video is crummy) let’s not go into all of that. along with that, let’s not use dig either, their methods of filtering the spam has eliminated most comfortable social connection.

So let’s nail out the big Social Networks.

Myspace . This has been known as the trailer park of the internet. Why? well because of the 1997 appeal. The place is full of the mouse tracers and sparkly profiles like Geocities had. Everyone adds every person they see on there, as their friend. At one time it was like a huge challenge to get as many people as you could get added, added to your friends. Then you spend the next three months, weeding out all of the spammers and the real freaky people. It WAS an ok place to go and just read profiles. The profiles used to be like little ” I need a friend” Resumes. Now they are nothing but favorite band lists at the most. Really, why in the heck would someone list 200 bands. The ideal list would be at the most 10-15 bands. Not every dang band you ever listened to and didn’t want to smash your head with a hammer.

Then came the use of Myspace apps. Myspace apps are games that are connected with your myspace profile. They all;ow you and your friends  to join in and play against others and their friends. Great concept. For thos e who chose to not play the games on myspace, there was the bulletin board. In the bulletin board you could  write a short story and share  it with your friends and let them comment on it or re-post it. There was also the use of the “blog system” so you can write a long  story and show your friends or even share it with everyone of myspace. Some days you can get up to 2000 reads of a blog on there. I know I have many times.

Myspace also has the  “mood” section, where you can show the world your mood and give a quick explanation of your mood.

The bulletins have been taken over by the friends who have myspace applications. Some of the applications set to default the users to post to the bulletin and they do give the option to post to the bulletin, but most people don’t take time to read that junk and they just see the rods “post click yes” so they do. now the bullitens are flooded with “billy bob just  walked three feet”. Stuff n0 one cares about.

It is a clunky piece of junk that has not had a major overhaul, since…. well ever. but it is an ok place to find a whole lot of people.

Facebook Face book is a lot like myspace, even though the platform it is built on is different. The people join there and add as many people as they can. There is even an application to allow people to see people who know people they know, this gives them a chance to locate someone long gone. this also leads to 1000 people going” wait, who are you?? how do I know you?”
I for years called Facebook the antisocial network.

Well Facebook is just like the bulletin section of Myspace, but you really have no other means of group socialism. It is hard to just meet random people on Facebook because of the way the place is built. They ar working on that, but at the same time they are messing up bad by integrating many features that myspacce has.

Facebook now has Apps also, just like Myspace.  If you have one friend who plays the apps on Facebook, then you have a million and one invites in your inbox, 200 app gifts on your main page, and the bulletin is flooded in updates in the  user’s progress in what ever game they find the most fun.

“Facebook is really sucky, with all the ap invites and gifts and games and crap taking up the only means of ’social interchange’ this place is worse than myspace, except the custom profiles.”

Yahoo Chat “hi look at my profile and lets trade pics” spam bot link farm, full of  regulars who do not like new people. all of the regulars  have programs to kick other users out of the room, especially if the user is prettier, wittier or cooler than them. The regulars do not kick out the spam bots. This is the epitome of  what everyone ever perceived a chatroom to be. It is not what chatrooms really were.

Twitter Is like the Mood and status updates of myspace. Difference is, the place is a farm of spam, get rich quick and stick it to the man. i have lost a bit of interest in this place also. It seems Twitter has taking another route since it became mainstream. It is not quite what it looked like it would be. Yes it is a great place for all of  your followers to get a notice at one time about what you are doing or about to do or about to be or just left. Yes that makes it awesome. Especially if you are like a musician and no one knows when your show is going to happen. Musicians miss that point. Some think it would be cheesy so they refuse to connect at all..  and that makes them crappy and not heart effort musicians. If it aint from the heart, it aint  music.

I truly miss MSN chatrooms. That was really Social Networking. you used to be able to join a chatroom and exchange wit and banter with with up to 50 people per room. The rooms were separated by many categories. Most were separated by location , like city, and state. The city chats were always full to max of 50 people. The overflow rooms were always full of up to 50 people. The chat rolled at such a fast pace, your mind stayed well exercised. I feel as if I am getting slower by the day because there just is nothing that fast paced left to do. I can’t leave one post and wait 6 days for someone to reply to it. It’s just way to slow.
MSN says they dropped the program because it was not that big of a money maker. They have to be kidding. They had rotating banners in every single chat. With 50 people in each room, and there being over 200 main rooms, they had some serious revenue flowing in. I think they tried so hard to be like Google to beat Google, they missed on what was really working for them. I swear just a little bit of innovation for their chatrooms, and they could have potentially kept myspace and Facebook from ever coming out of the ground. Heck those places didn’t rise well and established, until the chatters had nowhere else to go. Facebook was around for at least three years that MSN still had chatrooms. Now look at the place.