End of the world is nigh? Okay, it's the beginning of September. How come the October issue of Computer Shopper showed up in my mailbox? No wonder Stan Veit seemed to know the dark and terrible secret this issue contains. (This isn't the cover for that issue. The CS website is a bit behind.) If you're on the advance list, you know by now so feel free to comment to hardedge@cnet.com. If you're not, we're going to wait about 10 more days before we let the cat out of the bag.
Financial doom and gloom hitting Intel? "High-tech bellwether Intel Corp. has lowered its financial projections for the third quarter, providing the latest sign of the U.S. economy's doldrums," is the lead for this story at CNN.com. Normally, I'd lose all respect for CNN at this point except that it went on to note that. "Intel isn't living up to expectations because the global economy appears to be losing steam, said Andy Bryant, Intel's chief financial officer. "What we are seeing is pretty uniform around the world," Bryant told analysts during a Thursday conference call."
Okay, so CNN took the word of Intel's CFO so maybe I shouldn't judge them so harshly. But wait, Bryant said it was the fault of the global economy, not a sign of the U.S.' economy tanking by its lonesome --as CNN states. Then there's this other small thing --INTEL CAN'T GET ITS NEW CHIPS TO MARKET!! Hasn't anybody else been following the bouncing ball here? Hasn't anybody else noticed that 3.6GHz Pentium 4 CPUs are about as rare as a speedy paycheck from a magazine?
Now let's look at the Piece of Resistance: We're all fed up and leaning over the vomitorium with the processors we have now. There's nothing we can do so much better with a 3.6GHz CPU than we could do with a 3GHz processor. (Sure, there's stuff I could do with one, but normal people really don't have a need.) Just how much faster should a game play in a test than any human being could possibly play it in real life? Then there's the PCI Express problem. How many folks out there would really upgrade their CPU and motherboard but aren't because the new motherboards have PCIe slots that will force them to kick up another $400 on a new graphics card?
Perhaps, before CNN points a finger of blame somewhere, the folk there should a.) Listen to what the speaker is saying, and b.) Understand the totality of events that may be the real cause of what they're reporting about. Back in the Dark Ages, when I conned NYU into giving me a Journalism Wax Tablet, that's what reporting was supposed to be about...
Custom stamps push the envelope Would you lick Slobodan Milosevic? Linda Tripp? Now, apparently you could, thanks to a new custom stamp service from Stamps.com. Launched last month, Stamps.com's service lets customers put wedding photos and pet portraits on their postage, a notion that The Smoking Gun's Web site finds inappropriate. "Nobody's dog deserves to be on a stamp," is how they open their prolonged juvenile diatribe.
Now just wait a minute.... I put Bear the Dog's picture on his own personal stamp and my cuter than cute, not-so-little, hairy marshmallow is worth every nickel (or thirty seven cents per stamp, plus service fee) it cost. (And it's not cheap!) As far as I know, the folk at The Smoking Gun are (or at least should be) old enough to understand that anything can be done wrongly. But it's not the fact of having a privilege to do something that's inappropriate, it's abusing that privilege that makes it so. Then again, they did their best to abuse the privilege as much as possible to get their story so they should probably know that as well. By the way... You don't need to lick anything. They're self-stick stamps. Hate it when they can't even get the basics correct.
WiFi-adelphia For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.
Oh please! Do it! In fact, every city in the United States should offer total WiFi coverage for its residents and transients. I can think of no better way for Homeland Security to keep track of what's going on then by doing that. And there's no legal reason they can't eavesdrop. It's the public airways, it would be in public places... Time after time the courts have held that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public venue. Go for it!
MoreGoogle Adds Features to Google Ok, so maybe we are a tad paranoid, but a Google fan created and launched an add-on to Google that is free, and useful, and does not contain spyware, and we are still suspiscious. Why? Because it is free and not from Google. True, developers have been doing this for years, so maybe it is a sad statement that we can't trust any good deed, but then again I downloaded it and like what it does.
Check back in a month and see if I blow up or something. Or, just try it....
Here's what their site says:
Why MoreGoogle is cool even though it's not from Google! :-)
See page preview thumbnails "Open in New Window" Button Live Amazon.com product information Get accurate site access statistics Retrieve older versions of a site Find more related web sites It's free :-) (as in "free beer" and "no spyware")
Top Download Music Chart Debuts The BBC has a news item about the first-ever music poplarity chart based on number of downloads instead of number of sales. BBC Radio 1 will present the "Weekly Download Top 20" today, while rival Virgin Radio will begin a similar chart. Will the NY Times be far behind? # Permalink
Posted at
11:34 AM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
eBay Bids for S.Korean Auction Company Auction giant eBay Inc. raised its stake in a South Korean auction affiliate Internet Auction Co. to 86 percent from 62 percent for a whopping $530 million dollars. This is part of the company's recent decision to expand in Asia. # Permalink
Posted at
10:21 AM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
P-Diddy's Diamond hPod Just in time for this week's MTV's Music Video Awards, HP rolled out a custom, diamond-encrusted hPod for rapper/music and fashion impresario Sean John, aka P Diddy.
We predict that by the Oscars, many a celeb will be toting custom bling like this, and that means that award show freebies may bring a whole new meaning to the word "convergence", or the moment when fashion and electronics collide.
Ultimate Mystery Spam Alice's Rant of the Week: We all get way too much Spam to comment on it anymore. What's left to say after you've wittnessed money scams, illegal drug offers, plus the occasional porn blast that makes its way across your preview pane every day.
And yet...today I received this. (see above)
There is so much that can be said, but for starters, what the hell is this? (If you speak this language, please send a translation) And who were they hoping to snare with this grainy, ugly graphic. And most of all, why me?? Why?
AMD demonstrates first X86 dual-core CPU Having two processors on a single CPU core is waaay cool. Just ask IBM. It's Regatta (PowerPC) processor has been going gangbusters for some time now. On the IT side, it's a great idea. Many software licenses charge by the CPU. Cut the number of processors in half by offering dual core CPUs and you cut your license bills in half. On the game side, well, let's just say, oh yeah.... Now, just to be fair, Intel is headed for a dual core solution as well and while AMD is now the first to publicly demonstrate one, it should prove interesting to see who comes to market with one first.
Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service How awful is this? Kevin Poulsen at SecurityFocus reports: "Overdue debtors beware: You may not be able to rely on Caller I.D. to screen out those annoying bill collectors much longer. A California entrepreneur has a plan to bring the hacker technique of Caller I.D. spoofing to the business world, beginning with collection agencies and private investigators.
"Slated for launch next week, Star38.com would offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a Caller I.D. spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose. " # Permalink
Posted at
5:18 PM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
Linux gaining ground! About a third of businesses plan to migrate at least some Windows machines to Linux, according to a recent survey, but adoption will continue to be both slow and cautious, as companies evaluate a maze of economic factors.
In a report on total cost of ownership for the Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows operating systems, research company The Yankee Group found that only 4 percent of businesses planned to migrate Unix servers to Linux within the next two years. A total of 11 percent intended to move Windows servers to Linux, while 21 percent proposed to add Linux servers to a predominantly Windows environment. On the desktop, 36 percent of businesses expected to have a few Linux PCs in their business, but only 5 percent planned a total migration to Linux. A majority--57 percent--planned no changes for Windows on the desktop.
But here's my take: Last week, a friend tried to purchase 23 copies of Red Hat Linux from Red Hat and was told it would cost him about $20,000. That doesn't sound like a less expensive alternative to Windows and methinks that some may be cranking the window up a bit too quickly. # Permalink
Posted at
5:08 PM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
Intel's Chip Shrinking Milestone Moore's Law is holding steady at the house of Intel. The company announced a new technology breakthrough that can create a 70 megabit memory chip with switches measuring a scant 35 nanometers. That's a 30% smaller than anything done to date.
Intel also pioneered a way to turn off unused sections of a memory chip in a power saving sleep mode. Then again, isn't that what Bill does every day?! (And I'm darn proud that I did it first! -Bill)
BTW: Intel is heading for 22nm CPU design by 2011.
Internet Turns 35 The Associated Press has a great piece on the Internet turning 35 this week. "Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on Sept. 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other 'nodes' joined the fledgling network. Then came e-mail a few years later, a core communications protocol called TCP/IP in the late 70s, the domain name system in the 80s and the World Wide Web — now the second most popular application behind e-mail — in 1990. The Internet expanded beyond its initial military and educational domain into businesses and homes around the world."
Now, Matsushita (Panasonic) has found a way to torture your muscles at home without the annoying smell of horse manure or all the post riding clean up and work a real horse demands. To some this may look more like a motorcycle seat, but when it starts bucking, we guarantee it will be pure horse. # Permalink
Posted at
8:59 AM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
iClone and others Hewlett-Packard Co. unveiled its own version of the iPod portable music player Friday, showing the fruits of a groundbreaking partnership it had previously announced with Apple Computer Inc. The product is a replica of Apple's latest models of the popular white 20-gigabyte and 40-gigabyte iPods -- but carries the HP brand instead. The price will be $299 for the 20-gigabyte model, or $399 for the 40-gigabyte model, matching Apple's current prices. The players will be available in early September -- the same month HP will release about two dozen other new consumer products, including a 42-inch plasma television and an all-in-one home theater projector, which were also announced Friday. # Permalink
Posted at
8:48 AM
0 commentsEmail this
Link
The RealTechNews Official Collection of Interesting
Technical Websites (In Alphabetical Order)
Okay, it's the beginning of September. How come the October issue of Computer Shopper showed up in my mailbox? No wonder Stan Veit seemed to know the dark and terrible secret this issue contains. (This isn't the cover for that issue. The CS 
Would you lick Slobodan Milosevic? Linda Tripp? Now, apparently you could, thanks to a new custom stamp service from Stamps.com. 
Ok, so maybe we are a tad paranoid, but a Google fan created and launched an add-on to Google that is free, and useful, and does not contain spyware, and we are still suspiscious. Why? Because it is free and not from Google. True, developers have been doing this for years, so maybe it is a sad statement that we can't trust any good deed, but then again I downloaded it and like what it does. 
Auction giant eBay Inc. raised its stake in a South Korean auction affiliate Internet Auction Co. to 86 percent from 62 percent for a whopping $530 million dollars. This is part of the company's recent decision to expand in Asia.
Just in time for this week's MTV's Music Video Awards, HP rolled out a custom, diamond-encrusted hPod for rapper/music and fashion impresario Sean John, aka P Diddy.
Alice's Rant of the Week: We all get way too much Spam to comment on it anymore. What's left to say after you've wittnessed money scams, illegal drug offers, plus the occasional porn blast that makes its way across your preview pane every day. 
Moore's Law is holding steady at the house of Intel. The company announced a new technology breakthrough that can create a 70 megabit memory chip with switches measuring a scant 35 nanometers. That's a 30% smaller than anything done to date.
Yee-Haw Dept.: Anyone who has ever ridden a horse quickly discovers the world of muscle pain that awaits the next morning.
Hewlett-Packard Co.