Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

Hey, Dad, it’s your theme song. =P

White and Nerdy

(Hey, you said you wanted to see it. ^_~ See if you can catch all the geek references!)

As anticipated, Intel is preparing to launch quad-core Xeons in November. Four cores will certainly increase performance, but they will not have twice the performance of a dual-core, or four times the performance of a single core.

For the foreseeable future, there will be no reason for the average home user to go with anything more than a dual core, and even that should be reserved for power-users and gamers. The current state-of-the-art in software development makes very poor use of multiple CPU’s. Until programmers understand the implications of having code running in multiple places at the same time, this situation is unlikely to change.

After having said all of that, I’m still wondering what AMD’s response will be. C’mon guys… get back in the game!

According to a recent survey, incidents of phishing in the first half of the year were up 81% over the end of last year. Phishing is becoming a bigger problem by the day. The worst part is that it doesn’t take an idiot to fall for one. I’ve spoken to very intelligent people who sheepishly admitted that they had fallen into the trap.

Some of the more insidious versions of the phisher scam include false complaints from fake E-Bay members (ie… “Joe Bogus says you swindled him in an online auction: click here to fix the problem"), fake purchase notices (ie… “Thank you for purchasing the ultra-expensive software we sell, your credit card or Pay Pal account has been charged $5000 USD, click here to complain"), and the fake overdue bill (ie… “You are 1 year behind on your mortgage, click here to stop us from foreclosing).

There are lots of variations, but all of the ones I’ve seen have been meant to put me into a state of panic, hoping that I would act without thinking. I guess I was just lucky that the first phisher scam I saw was an attempt to make me panic about my PayPal account… which I didn’t have.

There are a few rules that can keep you much safer online. Since the old-fashioned rule about never doing business over the internet doesn’t apply to most people, I won’t even propose that one. Here are my anti-phisher rules:

1. Never click on a link in panic. Even if the bill/complaint/foreclosure is real, an extra 30 seconds spent investigating isn’t going to make things worse.
2. Always check the link before you follow it. Most browsers and mailers will show you where the link goes if you hover over it. If you get an email that claims to be from Google in Mountain View CA, but the link goes to a domain like phisherking.ru, you can bet that clicking it will hurt.
3. Remember that big companies never send links in email. It’s much safer (though much more irritating) to go through the bureaucracy of a billing department than to click on a link that says “Billing Department”
4. Don’t let down your guard just because the link came from a friend. Phisher links sent by email viruses are not uncommon, and your friend may have been a victim of one.

It is official the Nintendo Wii launch date is November 19th and it will retail for $250.00. EB Games and Amazon are not yet taking pre-orders but the second they do I will notify you.

For those of you interested in what’s next in the world of hardware, Toms Hardware has a review of the upcoming quad-core Intel chips.

If you check out the comparison results, you will notice that the 3.33GHz quad really smokes the competition, but it doesn’t offer too much of a boost to games. It’s a pity that game developers haven’t yet figured out how to harness the power of 4 CPU’s working on the same problem.

A group of CBS affiliates threatened to forgo the broadcast of 9/11 due to decency concerns.

I’m not going to comment on whether the language was indecent. I’ll just assume that it was. What I’m commenting about is the fact that the murder of 3,000 civilians because they didn’t follow someone’s religion is far more indecent than anything that a few firemen could say in a moment of panic. Most “decency” advocates point to the fact that they shouldn’t have to explain to a child what it means when someone says “F*** You". I think that it is far more difficult to explain to a child what 9/11 was about.

Maybe we need to re-think some of our priorities. I’m all for the airing of historical documentaries, especially the ones about such an important event. However, I think that the entire subject is a little too intense to show it in its raw form at a time when young children may be watching. Pushing the airing of the show back till after 10 and putting the show in the Internet would be a start…. Figuring out what is important and how to deal with it in the future is the next step.

A group of Salvadoran gangsters shoved cell phones into their rectums far enough to “reach their intestines". I guess they weren’t worried about crappy reception. Well, at least they didn’t set the phone’s ringers to vibrate and ask their fellow inmates to call them… or did they?

Sony announced today that they are not going to be able to ship enough PS3 this year due to production issue with the Blue-Ray lasers for the PS3, forcing delays in Europe and Australia. This most likely means that Sony will not deliver the promised amount of PS3 to the USA market. Then again this may work in favor for Sony since demand is very low for the PS3 amongst gamers right now.

Star Trek first appeared on the air Forty years ago today, man are Shatner and Nimoy getting old. Shameless, didn’t you watch the original Star Trek when you where a teenager?

Intel announced today that it is headed for a 10% layoff over the next year. Some of this will be accomplished through attrition and previously announced business actions (like sales of business units). Some, unfortunately, appear to be actual pink slips.

This looks to me like the fallout from the butt-kicking that Intel got from AMD over the past few years. If you are one of the poor unfortunates who gets a pink slip, here is a list of steps you can take that may result in a new job

Microsoft has announced the prices for Vista today. As expected, they are pretty steep when compared to Linux. Could it be that Microsoft has pushed the wrong buttons this time?

The prices listed are approximately the same as the price of XP at the same level. You all remember those prices… the ones that were blamed for the agonizingly slow adoption of XP?

You know, of course, the the price to OEMs will be far lower. This will keep Grandma and Grandpa using Windows for the foreseeable future. The problem is with the geeks. Spending $159 on an upgrade that is mostly comprised of stuff that has been available for free in the last few generations of Linux distros is going to be a hard sell in the geek community. It won’t be long before the Linux snobbery displayed by slashdotters begins to rub off on the general populace. The next two or three years should be interesting.

Here is a story close to my heart. McDonalds will shrink the opening of the McFlurry ice cream containers in an attempt to save the lives of hedgehogs. Quite a humane thing for them to do. Nobody wants to see Spiny Norman get caught in a dessert cup.

The story is close to my heart because I was part of a crew who was on the “Spiny Norman for Student Senate President” committee when I was a senior in High School. I was neither mastermind nor ringleader, but I was always proud of the fact that he managed to win by a landslide… though that wasn’t the official position that the school took.

Some senior classes donate benches to the school. Some donate landscaping improvements. My class gave the school administration a pointless, single-fingered gesture when we found out that the only “acceptable” candidate they would allow just happened to be the son of a teacher. We got an imaginary write-in candidate elected. I think our donation was more memorable.