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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Who The Hell Still Runs XP?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 27, 2010 by admin in Technology
Monday, December 27th, 2010Well, um, that would be me. And after a holiday data tragedy, I re-installed it. With a thumb drive.
If you’re a regular visitor of Dissociated Press, you may have noticed that for the first time since June 2008, we missed a day without announcing it. That’s because we were busy having a Merry Crashmas. Yes, while all of you were sitting around in your jammies Sunday playing with all the fun gifts we suggested for the holidays, we were unwrapping our little gift, a major system crash. Is it just me, or do hard drives always fail right after an extended period of hard work during which you keep telling yourself “I really should do a backup. Yeah. I’ll do it tomorrow for sure” and then dig back into your work at 5am on the Sunday after Christmas? Okay, it doesn’t always happen at 5am on the Sunday after Christmas. But when it does, you find out interesting things. Like, “Best Buy sucks”, and “wow I didn’t know ATA DVD drives were so rare these days”, and “wow, I didn’t know a DVD drive problem could cause a hard drive failure”. Actually they probably can’t. Our IT department (that would be me) has a hunch that it was a power surge, but whatever. An experience like this teaches you a lot of things. In addition to what I’ve already mentioned, you learn that your nerdy friend who says callous things like “WHO THE HELL STILL RUNS XP?” to you when you’re in the middle of a data tragedy isn’t really all that smart, because apparently 74% of businesses still do . You also learn that if you installed XP with a new disc in 2007, you will have at least 89 Windows updates to make. And you learn that your Mac laptop and your thumb drive are your friends. And that you can probably live without the 60 gigabytes of music you didn’t have backed up. We pointed out a while back that you don’t have time to listen to it anyway. You also learn that installing XP from a thumb drive takes approximately 164 minutes. That must be why guides like this put you through the rigmarole that they do. I just copied the XP disc to a thumb drive using my Mac laptop, set my windows machine to boot from a flash drive, ran a couple of simple command prompts, and waited. And waited. It took a long time, but I had plenty, since I had a week’s worth of work to recreate. We’ll be back tomorrow, after we finish sobbing over lost data. In the meantime, we highly recommend this incredibly cheap Samsung DVD drive
and a G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit
Rock Star Games’ L.A. Noire Uses MotionScan 3D Technology To Bring Nuanced Expression To Characters
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 16, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, December 16th, 2010New 3D motion capture tools like MotionScan by Depth Analysis open up incredible possibilities for character creation in media. Just imagine a Hollywood that didn’t require the expense and annoyance of a real life Tom Cruise.
A while back we pointed out how much your robot sucks, but fortunately, the digital simulation of you seems to be doing just fine. Today RockStar Games released a trailer (also below) for their upcoming release LA Noire
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Google’s Chrome OS Takes All Your Computing To The Cloud
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 8, 2010 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010Awesome. But why the heck would you want to do that?
The tech industry was abuzz the last few days with talk about Google’s introduction of their Chrome OS and notebook on Tuesday. If this means nothing to you, Wired has a good in-depth look here, but in a nutshell, Google announced that they’re launching their cloud-centric operating system and web-based software store in conjunction with a lightweight laptop that has no hard disc drive, comes with a 100MB a month Verizon wireless data plan, and essentially runs all your software and stores all your files on the web. A true cloud computing experience. While I must confess to being a bit of a Goldilocks-like would-be early adopter, always pouting “this porridge is too hot” or “this porridge doesn’t have USB“, I have to say that I have absolutely NO IDEA why they’re pursuing this strategy. Well, actually I do, and suspect it’s based on some of the same trickery that Apple used to get us excited about their new device (the iPad) when what they really were selling us was a platform to buy more stuff from them. What I don’t understand is why you or I would want to follow them down this road. Or up this sky, as the case may be. The selling points that Google highlights in cute videos – like instant web, same experience everywhere, always connected – are great. But underlying all of this “don’t worry about your files and software, we’ll take care of that for you” approach is something that still troubles me. I’m sometimes accused of being a little paranoid, and forced to pull out the old William Burroughs line that “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on“. But here’s the thing. While cloud computing makes a lot of sense for a variety of enterprise scenarios, why on GoogleEarth would you want ALL of your software running on a Google server somewhere, and more importantly, all your PERSONAL FILES? The recent US government-mandated shutdowns of WikiLeaks from providers like Amazon and PayPal should be a potent reminder that if you want to keep control of your stuff, don’t give control of it to a large corporation. And perhaps especially not one whose CEO has such interesting views on privacy. Or one that has such a curious relationship with a company like Verizon. Or that wants to take your CAPS LOCK key away. But seriously, in spite of my perpetual tech cynicism, I’m intrigued to see where Google goes with the Chrome venture, enough so that I’m signing up for their pilot program in the hopes of being a test user. See Google’s introductory clip below.
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Cool Cutting Edge Bikes
[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 24, 2010 by admin in Technology
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010There’s an amazing world of new hybrid-tech bikes to choose from. Let’s just hope the bikes don’t crash as often as their flash-driven websites.
 Bike 2.0 Proves Less Is More |
With winter descending on the godforsaken part of the US I live in, I thought this might be a good time to ponder replacing my now nearly antique Specialized Rockhopper before next spring. Although I love the fact that it’s as indestructible as a Russian tank, it also happens to weigh about as much as one, and is just as stylish. On top of its ancientness, I do almost entirely urban and light trail riding, so I always feel like I’m riding a small armored personnel carrier when I ride it through town. As I started doing research, I was open to the idea of an electric hybrid or something, partly because I was intrigued after riding a friend’s A2B Velociti last summer, but mostly because I’m buying a bike for transportation, not pure cycling. And that open-mindedness is where the trouble began. There are so many new and amazing approaches to the design and engineering of a bike these days that you almost need a team of researchers and consultants to fully explore the possibilities. DesignBoom, who also sponsored the competition, did a nice roundup from the Seoul Cycle Design Competition 2010, which is where I ran across the brilliant and elegant simplicity of the Bike 2.0, by Milan-based Danish designer Nils Sveje. It’s hybrid, chainless, has a continuously-variable transmission, a regenerative coaster brake, and instead of shifters, two wireless rings on the handlebar. The frame is also self-illuminating. If this bike ever goes into production, I want the first one off the line. Beautiful. Also pretty remarkable is the Audi BEIK, which possesses perhaps even more elegantly simple lines. What you may not notice right away is that as well as being foldable, the bike utilizes “frame steering”. I’d like to see that in action; there are no videos available, and you’ll notice none of the stills show the bike turning. On a slightly humorous note, the ECO FUV not only makes a nice play on the urban slang term, but if we could make these things mandatory transport in America, we’d solve the energy, pollution, parking, and obesity problems all in one shot. More bikes, images, and vids below. Read the rest of this entry »
Will Facebook E-Mail Be A G-Mail Killer? Who Cares?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 12, 2010 by admin in Technology
Friday, November 12th, 2010Why anyone would use either as their primary e-mail service escapes me. And using a Microsoft Office product through a web browser, via a Facebook account is sort of like pouring gasoline down your horse’s throat, poking his eye with a cattle prod, and yelling at it to get on the freeway
You’ve probably heard by now that Facebook will be announcing a full-fledged web e-mail service with POP access and Microsoft Office Web Apps integration on Monday. Unless – ironically – you’ve been on Facebook all day, because they themselves are saying nothing about it on the site as of this writing. So, with the tech press being as predictable as it is (apologies to Mr. Arrington, at least he breaks the stories), everyone is of course debating whether the new Facebook service is a “Google Killer”. Which is an absurdly framed question, in my opinion. Yes, Facebook and Google are in a battle to dominate the internet in various ways, but I will eat poop on the day that Facebook gets search right or Google gets social networking right. Of course everyone with a Facebook account will activate an available username@facebook.com option. And of course this will siphon in millions in ad revenue and put a big ding in Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google e-mail ad placement dollars. But will that mean that Facebook e-mail will “kill” G-Mail? I personally doubt it, for several reasons. First of all, because I know an astounding number of otherwise intelligent people who still use Hotmail or Yahoo as their primary e-mail accounts. And secondly, of the larger group of people that I know who use G-Mail – especially if they use Google Docs – the last thing in the world they’re going to do is give up the reliable functionality of Google’s cloud services to use a Microsoft Office product through a web browser, via a Facebook account. Forgive me, but in my opinion that’s like pouring gasoline down your horse’s throat, poking his eye with a cattle prod, and yelling at it to get on the freeway. But ultimately, I remain befuddled as to why people would use G-Mail or Facebook as a primary e-mail provider in the first place. Facebook is the company that helps you build a trusted network of friends and then tells you the reason you can’t export their contact info is to protect them from you. Unless THEY are giving them to another service, which then lets you export them. And Google? Aside from the fact that from day one they’ve indexed your e-mails so they can place ads next to them, they are in many ways Facebook’s strongest competitor not so much in terms of services offered, as in the realm of corporate deceipt. In their founding documents they said “we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers“. Two years later they introduced advertising to their results, and now derive the vast majority of their revenue from ad services. In terms of how to access e-mail, I still use a mail client and my own mail-server accounts. I guess I have the advantage of owning domains and offering reseller hosting, but this is remarkably easy to set up if you need web-based communication, and your hosting company doesn’t scour your files as a prerequisite to storing them for you. Ah well. To each their own I guess. One thing I must admit I am looking forward to though, is the first friends that get lost in FB’s interface and post an excruciatingly private e-mail on someone’s wall. You know it will be happening in the first week.