For the first time readers would be justified if they said that they read Playboy magazine for its articles. This was after they recently published an article that recounted one man's elaborate scam that had CIA believing that Al-Jazeera was sending coded messages to Al-Queda. The con-artist claimed that bar codes on Al-Jazeera's broadcast contained information about Al-Queda attacks. The man behind this was Dennis Montgomery, the head of a small software company in Reno. Due to this scam in President George W. Bush's administration raised the terror alert and cancelled several transatlantic flights in December 2003. Eventually with assistance from French Intelligence the CIA concluded that there were no secret messages in Al-Jazeera's broadcast.
I'm not sure whether to be upset about this or find this hysterical. On one hand there is the fact that the owner of a small company managed to fool all of the CIA, raise the terror alert and manage to actually get a significant amount of flights cancelled but, on the other hand one man still managed to fool the U.S. governement. If any moron with a crackpot theory can fool the U.S. governement I think we should start getting worried about our situation in this country, I mean think about all the time and resources that were probably wasted this absurd claim. Oh well what can you do, at least it was a fun read.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/22/playboy-goes-undercover-man-fooled-pentagon/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fscitech+%2528FOXNews.com+-+SciTech%2529
Monday, December 21, 2009
Nintendo wii worth half a million dollars
British Designer, Stuart Hughes, famed for plating consumer electronics in expensive shells such as silver and gold, recently created a solid gold Wii which is now selling for about $485,000. Hughes refers to it as the Nintendo Wii Supreme and claims it is "officially the most unique and expensive in the world." His site states that over six months of workmanship went into it as well 2,500 grams of solid 22ct gold as well as 78 quater-carat diamonds making the front buttons.
It is things like this that I never seem to understand, I mean other than slathering the system with pounds of diamond and gold how is it different from any other wii? I'll give you a simple answer: not at all. There are also a few things I would like to know as to how all this extra weight burdening the sytem affects its functionality or if all these extra materials cause an overheating problem. Basically there is no point to this and if anything it is a massive waste of time and money. I'm completely sure that these materials could have been put to a much better use than burdening an already struggling system. Anyway I digress.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/18/wiicked-expensive-designer-sells-nintendo/
It is things like this that I never seem to understand, I mean other than slathering the system with pounds of diamond and gold how is it different from any other wii? I'll give you a simple answer: not at all. There are also a few things I would like to know as to how all this extra weight burdening the sytem affects its functionality or if all these extra materials cause an overheating problem. Basically there is no point to this and if anything it is a massive waste of time and money. I'm completely sure that these materials could have been put to a much better use than burdening an already struggling system. Anyway I digress.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/18/wiicked-expensive-designer-sells-nintendo/
Twitter Hacked!
In recent news twitter was just hacked by a group calling itself the "Iranian Cyber Army". On December 18 if you tried to go on twitter you were greeted by a lovely picture of green flag with text above it saying "this site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army" and some text written in Farsi rambling on about control of the internet.
Apparently this is big news but I cannot help but think its a big joke and needs not to be taken seriously. If anything, whoever did this was probably doing a favor to the many twitter addicts forcing them to do other things with their time such as post on Facebook or Myspace. Overall not a big issue, in fact I'm not even sure why I'm writing about it.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/18/twitter-hacked-iranian-cyber-army/
Apparently this is big news but I cannot help but think its a big joke and needs not to be taken seriously. If anything, whoever did this was probably doing a favor to the many twitter addicts forcing them to do other things with their time such as post on Facebook or Myspace. Overall not a big issue, in fact I'm not even sure why I'm writing about it.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/18/twitter-hacked-iranian-cyber-army/
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Woman Loses Insurance Benefits Due to Facebook
A Canadian woman, Nathalie Blanchard, was receiving long term sick from her job at IBM due to being diagnosed with clinical depression. More recently the payments dried up and when she questioned her insurance company they stated that she was available to work due to her facebook photos. The articles states "her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday." Her argument was that she was simply following her doctor's advice and trying to have fun during nights out with her friends. Currently her lawyer is exploring what her next step should be.
Personally I think this case is a bit ridiculous due to the fact the Facebook is now grounds for someone to lose their insurance benefits. On the other hand if you are on long term sick leave for depression and are too stupid to not post public pictures of yourself having fun you probably do not deserve it in the first place. moral of the story, do not be like this woman and remember that nothing you post on Facebook is private.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576189,00.html
Personally I think this case is a bit ridiculous due to the fact the Facebook is now grounds for someone to lose their insurance benefits. On the other hand if you are on long term sick leave for depression and are too stupid to not post public pictures of yourself having fun you probably do not deserve it in the first place. moral of the story, do not be like this woman and remember that nothing you post on Facebook is private.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,576189,00.html
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
T-Mobile Resumes Sidekick Sales After Massive Server Fail
Recently T-Mobile just resumed selling Sidekick phones more than a month after suffering a server meltdown at Microsoft corp. Turns out that this meltdown caused Sidekick users to lose a majority of their personal information on their phone including contacts, pictures and more importantly phone numbers. The problem is that the Sidekick happens to be a phone that loses almost all of its data when the battery runs out, so due to this the data is backed up on a Microsoft server which restores this data over the network. Therefore, this server meltdown caused just about all of Sidekick users information to disappear.
Being a T-Mobile customer I have a very biased view on this whole situation, with that being said I think this is a perfect example of the amount of negligence this company exhibits on a regular basis. Sure T-Mobile managed to cover up their error by giving the customers $100 gift cards and dropping the price of sidekicks but I still do not think that is sufficient recompense for their mistakes. Lets think about it a $100 gift card to buy more T-Mobile garbage? I would have happily accepted a severance package from my overpriced contract that provides minimal services at best. Moving on, I beg to ask the question of how you can have your most popular selling phone lose all data with a loss of battery. So what do they do to patch this up? back up all of your personal data on a minimally reliable Microsoft server, obviously T-Mobile has learned nothing from Microsoft's history. I could go on and on about what an awful excuse for a phone that sidekick is but I would rather end here in saying this: Do not use T-Mobile.
Being a T-Mobile customer I have a very biased view on this whole situation, with that being said I think this is a perfect example of the amount of negligence this company exhibits on a regular basis. Sure T-Mobile managed to cover up their error by giving the customers $100 gift cards and dropping the price of sidekicks but I still do not think that is sufficient recompense for their mistakes. Lets think about it a $100 gift card to buy more T-Mobile garbage? I would have happily accepted a severance package from my overpriced contract that provides minimal services at best. Moving on, I beg to ask the question of how you can have your most popular selling phone lose all data with a loss of battery. So what do they do to patch this up? back up all of your personal data on a minimally reliable Microsoft server, obviously T-Mobile has learned nothing from Microsoft's history. I could go on and on about what an awful excuse for a phone that sidekick is but I would rather end here in saying this: Do not use T-Mobile.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Warranties: worth the price? (probably not)
A big question that has been floating around the consumer community is whether or not it is worth buying a warranty. This question is even more relevant in today's world due to the many advancements in technology bringing about larger and more crucial technological purchases. Lets look at the facts what are you really getting when you buy a warranty; guaranteed service for a product during a set period of time, a guaranteed replacement of a product during a set period of time or just peace of mind for a set period of time.
Fact of the matter is with just about every product you buy you are already getting a warranty so why should you buy an extended one? Statistics show that a majority of major problems experienced with a product will take place during the default warranty. Second of all with just about every extended warranty, the services they provide need to be examined and they do not always cover the scope of the problem you end up experiencing or just are not worth the price for the problem being fixed. So what do you do? Stop wasting your money and stop buying warranties. Then what do you if something goes wrong? Well there is a few options: 1. Spend more time investigating the quality of the product you are buying and how essential the need is for it (with any good quality product warranties are almost never needed), 2. Take better care of the things you buy and think about what they are worth before you think something is a good idea (i.e. using your television as a coaster) 3. If the product ends up breaking and it actually is not your fault, with all that money you have been saving not buying warranties you can now buy a bigger and better version of your former product. So end all warranties are a waste of a persons money and nothing more than a store's way of making more profit off of the consumer.
Fact of the matter is with just about every product you buy you are already getting a warranty so why should you buy an extended one? Statistics show that a majority of major problems experienced with a product will take place during the default warranty. Second of all with just about every extended warranty, the services they provide need to be examined and they do not always cover the scope of the problem you end up experiencing or just are not worth the price for the problem being fixed. So what do you do? Stop wasting your money and stop buying warranties. Then what do you if something goes wrong? Well there is a few options: 1. Spend more time investigating the quality of the product you are buying and how essential the need is for it (with any good quality product warranties are almost never needed), 2. Take better care of the things you buy and think about what they are worth before you think something is a good idea (i.e. using your television as a coaster) 3. If the product ends up breaking and it actually is not your fault, with all that money you have been saving not buying warranties you can now buy a bigger and better version of your former product. So end all warranties are a waste of a persons money and nothing more than a store's way of making more profit off of the consumer.
PC's advancing technology
The article focuses the more recently changing technology in personal computers. Everyone knows about the recent release of Windows 7 and the way it has been taking the PC world by storm. Although the biggest change that the PC world has been experiencing is the move towards Netbooks and away from desktop PC's. This movement has been supported by the advance in USB storage technology that is slowly moving away from CD and DVD storage. Because of this, companies have started building computers without optical drives allowing them to be much smaller making Netbooks the new trend in PC technology.
This movement is interesting because a few years ago this would seem ridiculous because flash drives were a very new technology and an optical drive was an essential component of PC. In fact a few years ago when Mac released the Mac book air it was seen as almost completely impractical due to the fact that it did not have an optical drive. Now only a few years later we are witnessing quite the opposite. Secondly a majority of users do not need the type of computing power that a desktop with a multi-core processor provides. Due to these facts Netbooks have become mainstream in the PC world.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,571023,00.html
This movement is interesting because a few years ago this would seem ridiculous because flash drives were a very new technology and an optical drive was an essential component of PC. In fact a few years ago when Mac released the Mac book air it was seen as almost completely impractical due to the fact that it did not have an optical drive. Now only a few years later we are witnessing quite the opposite. Secondly a majority of users do not need the type of computing power that a desktop with a multi-core processor provides. Due to these facts Netbooks have become mainstream in the PC world.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,571023,00.html
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