Email From Capitol One About Epsilon

This was sent to a girl I know that has a capitol one account. She says it is different from what you see in the news.
Of course this pertains to the breech of epsilon by hackers.

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Dear Capital One Customer,

As we have communicated over the course of the last week, Epsilon—a marketing vendor that sends e-mails on our behalf—notified us about unauthorized outside access to files that included Capital One® customer e-mail addresses.

The information obtained was limited to the e-mail address of some customers. No account information or other information was compromised. We’ll continue to provide updates when we have important new information to share. And, we’ll let you know what impact, if any, these developments will have on you.

Protecting our customers’ information is always a top priority for Capital One. We’re working with Epsilon and law enforcement, and we’re thoroughly investigating this incident to help prevent future ones like it. Epsilon is also conducting its own comprehensive investigation in cooperation with the appropriate authorities.

It’s always a good idea to ignore any e-mail that requests your confidential account or login information. And don’t forget, if you get an e-mail you think is suspicious, don’t click any of the links. Just send it to us at abuse@capitalone.com. Then delete it.

We apologize for any inconvenience this unfortunate incident has caused and appreciate your patience. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.capitalone.com.

Sincerely,
Capital One

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If you have no idea what this is about. Epsilon a large company that handles lots of large companies has been hacked. The rumor is that lots of innocent people have their credit card information stolen with this mess.

Should You Overclock Your Nvidia 9400

The question has always come up. “Should I overclock my video card?”.

We all want to know we are resourceful and frugal enough to make a good deal out of what we have. It’s in our nature.

Contrary to popular opinion.
Overclocking shows no actual performance difference.
It may show increase in certain feilds of benchmarking but will also show a hit in other fields. If the card makers made it so you could unlock magical sections of your gadget so you can save money, no one would buy better. The best you can get from overclocking is a cool score on a benchmark test.

Your video card is fine for what it is made for. I have seen some extreme benchmark scores come from that video card. Truth is though, once you put any weight on it like actually gaming and random processes such as gaming, you will see a drastic hit on it.

I have busted many video cards and processors and sticks of memory through the years (12 years) playing the cheap role.

For better performance buy a video card that performs better right out of the box. and then go back to your 9400 and overcliock the dogsquirts out of it and see what it’s full potential is. get benchmarks and play some games. Then toss it aside and put the newer better card in and see for yourself.

If you overclocked good enough the 9400 would have out performed a boxed 9600 right out of the pack. Low shader count means your video card will stop at the low number and not stress on drawing the greater shaders. In fact it will ignore them. So your benchmark scores could smear the 9500 9600 9200 210 video cards. but in actual game play. That’s a whole different story.

Just because a video card does not have certain features does not mean it will not perform as good. it just means it will look like crap and not have all of the image features. In some cases it will perform 1000 times better and faster when clocked like crazy, but you will not see what everyone sees in the game.

heck it was almost 3 years before I realized gtaiii billboards actually had crap on them. and that there was smoke coming out of the stacks at teh first safe house.

You do not want the video card with the first of a feature. you want the video card that came years later. The 9500 and the 9600 have huge shader counts yes, but they don’t have the nuts to use them.

move into the 200s or greater (which is the same processor as the 9000s) .. the freaking 500s are right around the corner.

Yank that card and stick it in a media computer. It’s great for dvd and 720p hd.

Work Pc bad performance, Pci Slot Need Help

Ok I am going to post a copy and paste of what I was saying in forum on pcpitstop. Not much help there, even though the title says, well… you will see..
actual convo : http://forums.pcpitstop.com/index.php?showtopic=165060

<i>I am using a dell dimension 3100 with a 2.9 g single core
2 gigs pc 3200
I have a video card in this old beast I bought from staples
the video card is a verto pny 8400 pci (not pci-e)
when I take the bench tests without the card, I get a better score in 2d.
in fact , if i have the card in it takes about 45 seconds to perform that part of the test.
without the card it is instant.
Anyone have any old pci tips I can use to get this thing off th ground and moving faster?:
I really need the tips, since I am limited to this machine and use it for cad and flash and photoshop

I understand that.
But the 2d takes about 40 seconds to complete.
as apposed to less than a second like it used to do.
or as it does with my home pc. i’m just looking for some old school tweaks.

Bios only allows me to select auto or onboard. sadly enough.

I have two gig pc3200 (the machine is a bit dated but it’s a work pc)
when I am in cad, as I scroll down pages I actually see waves like as if I haven’t installed drivers
although it will allow me to crank video setting to 32 bit and 1280/1024 and i have the nvidia control panel
just like if if the drivers are installed. so it acts like there is no drivers while it shows drivers. have uninstalled and reinstalled and updated and updated . I think I’m at the latest 181.22 or something .

The thing acts worse than if I used onboard.
I mean while in adobe flash, in autodesk,cad, photoshop, or anything that uses video. I have probably 12 grand in software installed on this machine so moving to another is not foreseeable any time soon.
and yes I am a long time pc gamer so I know how to reduce start up programs and disable items as I run another that uses tons of resources.
as i remember there used to be a driver addon we used to use for agp slots called a “gart”. and if i remember correctly, there was something for pci slots, but of course it’s a dell pc so drivers and software are limited.

I am tempted to locate a modded bios for this and set it so I can turn that dang onboard gpu off.

and yes what finch was saying is perfectly correct. But for the 2d segment of the pcpitctop test (the part with the descending rings) to take 45+ seconds. Something is clearly wrong. I have taken this test on probably all of about 17 computers here in the office, some with radeon pci-e some radeon agp some with nvidia agp and or pci-e some with onboard gpu and the ring portion always takes less than a blink. never does it take it take 45+ seconds except on my machine with an 8400 gs pci card or on a machine that has no drivers yet (we recently added monitors to a few pcs for the ladies here to watch a buncha junk going on with our installers and tracking). i just know i am forgetting to do something.</i>
Sorry, but reallu I am that dang lazy, I wrote all that out once, and it seemed to hit the mark. but erm it fell on wrong ears, or at wrong pace.
Heck I dunno.

and yes, that is pci slot, not pci express.

sold old cumputer parts

all whent for 1/3 what I paid for the new components

sad thing is the parts I bought recently where all on sale

paid 307 for  a pc update..  the old parts I paid 150  +80+80+75 +20

So yeah I took a hit. especially knowing the old parts are still good.

I upgraded pc for gtaiv

I yanked out the old single core  mother board and processor

with Amd754 64bit 3400 mb cpu

and the nvidia 7600 gs 512 mb ram

and two gig pc 3200 ddr  ram

this computer was maxed out, the processor size was the max, the ram was the two gig max and the video card, well they don’t put out much for an agp  slot, for less than about 300 bucks, and still make it worth having.

to install

Athlon  5600+ dual 64bit am2 (2900mghz)

2 gigs pc 6400 ddr2 corsair mem

EVGA nvidia 9500 gt with 512 ddr2

Crazy thing is, the memory will not max out till it gets seated with 16 gigs.  Untill they sell  8 gig mem cards for cheap, and microslop allows you to install that much ( I believe 64 vista allows a large number , unsure what that is.) I will be fine with two gigs.

I of course had an issue installing xp. I kept seeing a lock up while trying to install Vista. So I tried the un-thinkable. I installed Xp 64 bit. Crazy, it fired right up and installed everything smoothly. I whent to all manufacture’s websites and bam…. the drivers  ready and available.

I decided to go onthe regular benchmarking I do.

I started with gtaiii . The game that always lags when ou go through the underpasses, when branches pass over the car, or china town where the banners flap as you pass through. not one hitch,hiccup,fsb burp.

Windows xp 64, the operating system that was such a problem to everyone, now is the best I have ever seen. I can not believe what is going on,.

Next I jumped on vice city, walked out of the safe house jumped in a banshee and headed with teh shoreline to my right. I made it to the malibu club and about a block later… wait … wtf.. what did I see?.. I turned around.. right in front of the parking lot behind the club is a sign. !!! a sign!!! I get out of the banshee to read the sign and it says “no standing, no parking,m2” a bunch of other stuff and something that looked like the back of a bus.

Why have I never seen this before?… Well while I was standing there.  people started walking up .. and they just stood there. Like they where waiting for a bus..  ok.. so the new card, ddr2  and the 64 bit combo just turned something on I have never seen before..   WHAT ?

So I drive around and test my typical lag areas. all was smooth.

I am about to jump into vice city and see what goes on there.

I like my machine now.