Playboy Unveils Elaborate Scam

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

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/

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/

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

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.

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.

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

Shrimp see the future of High Definition DVD

In recent discoveries, a shrimp living on Australia's Great Barrier Reef may be the key to developing and super high-quality DVD player. These Mantis shrimp have a pair of the most complex eye in the animal kingdom and have the ability to see in 12 primary colors (four times as many as humans). The remarkable method that these shrimp use in their eyes to process the way light travels through may hold the key to new DVD technology.

I think its quite fascinating that something this interesting would be found in nature. I don't think anybody could have guessed that the key to better DVD technology would be in the eyes of shrimp from the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Scientists stated that these shrimp's eye process colors the same way a DVD does, the only difference is a DVD can only do this effectively with one color while the shrimp's does it with 12. That said, this breakthrough leaves much room for improvement in DVD technology.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569581,00.html

Facebook allows you to get in touch with the dead (and exes depending on your personal preference)

Recent complaints about the Facebook feature that suggests people should reconnect with friends they have not been in touch with, has caused an uproar in the Facebook community. The issue has been that this feature has been suggesting to users that they reconnect with friends or family members that are dead (and their facebooks are still existent), which is causing discomfort among facebook users. A less prevalent issue (or more depending on your personal preference) there have been instances of this Facebook feature suggesting that users reconnect with ex-wives or husbands. This has been referred to as glitch that reveals "insensitivity of the algorithm," and Facebook will be investigating this glitch.
This issue is gotten completely out of control and needs to be put to a stop. I do not understand how this possibly can be an issue, have people seriously reached the point where they can do absolutely nothing for themselves? First of all the issue of this feature suggesting that people reconnect with ex-wives and husbands should not exist. I'm going to help these people out right now: 1. log onto you profile 2. go into your settings 3. go into your privacy settings 4. look for the little box that says block 5. type in the individuals name 6. click block, and there you go problem solved. If you can't let go of this person enough to do that then you have bigger problems than the ones facbook is presenting you with and should be dealing with them rather than blaming the Facebook admin's. I suggest a similar solution to the dead person problem where you can either delete the person's facebook and if you can't do that simply follow the steps I have so kindly provided. If none of these solves your problem there is a good chance you are beyond help and need to solve your own problems rather than consistently blaming things like Facebook.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569559,00.html

Cell Phones=Cancer

An article recently posted on the Fox News website headlines an ongoing study that the World Health Organization has been doing attempting to link cell phone use to a cause of cancer. This study has been going on for 10 years and cost 30 million dollars and the conclusion is that there may be a "significantly increased risk" of some brain tumors "related to the use of mobile phones for a period of ten years or more." Then the article goes on to quote Elisabeth Cardis, the head of the study, who then states "In the absence of definitive results and in the light of a number of studies which, though limited, suggest a possible effect of radiofrequency radiation, precautions are important."
I'm not sure if I am the only one who thinks this but this study is absolutely ridiculous and has gone on for way too long. Lets take a second look at these numbers, 10 years and 30 million dollars and here is what we got: "In the absence of definitive results..." That is amazing, 10 years and 30 million dollars down the drain to produce an "absence of definitive results." The only reason this study is still going on because it is being funded by the same group of morons from 10 years ago who could not accept the fact that cell phones were going to end up being the next generation form of communication, so in their sad attempt at digging for a reason to get rid of cell phones they found cancer. Finally 10 years and 30 million dollars later they have gotten absolutely nowhere and are now making ridiculous claims, with no real merit, to hold on to what little publicity they still have. Here is an idea for the World Health Organization instead wasting 10 years and 30 million dollars maybe they should put it towards cancer research, which would show this study for what it already is: an epic waste of time and money.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569465,00.html

President Obama assassination poll on facebook

This article focuses on the U. S. Secret Service investigating a facebook poll about President Obama's assassination. This is a perfect example someone making a blatantly bad decision. The fact that whoever created this poll thought that there would be no negative consequences shows an amazing amount of ignorance. In the article there are many people quoted saying that the person deserves to be prosecuted. While this technically violates our first amendment right to freedom of speech considering the time this country is going through with the employment of the patriot act a person cannot afford to be this ignorant and make such a foolish decision. I think to some extent the person should suffer consequences for his actions but, we also can't forget about completely breaching the freedoms of an American citizen.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/28/secret-service-probes-facebook-poll-asked-obama-assassination/

Microsoft v. Apple

Most of the competition between these two corporations has been in innovations in technology and software as well as the same boring ad campaigns that both of these companies flood the media with. In this article we get to see a different side of the battle between these two companies which is on the business side. Microsoft has recently begun to poach employees from the Apple stores in order to man their newly opened Microsoft stores.
This is an interesting move by Microsoft as well as a very smart one. On one hand you have Apple inc. a company that has opened stores dedicated to selling solely Apple products. Microsoft comes along with the same idea and what better way to compete? Why not simply steal Apple's employees and take advantage of the experience they already have. When you consider that Apple is certainly not known for overpaying their employees it really comes down to offering a higher salary. Even if Microsoft may be losing money by offering their employees a higher salary than Apple, they end up making their money back from the business they're stealing from Apple as well as one upping their competition.
The end all to this is that this is just another small battle being fought in the war between these two companies. While on the outside these two companies may be battling through their innovations in technology most people forget that the real battle is being fought on the business end.

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/MS-Reportedly-Raids-Apple-Sales-Staff/story.xhtml?story_id=11200DOTZUJ4