Chad Weirick
Chad Weirick
Recent posts
If you're not already wearing your tin-foil helmet you now have 10 seconds.Ok your time is up. Wired has sent out a few probing questions to bigger ISPs to see what kind of data they collect on their usage of their users and what it would take for them to turn that same information over to various 3rd parties.. "Wired News, with help from...
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Major League Baseball is joining the growing ranks of companies who are less than enthusiastic about the "placeshifting" feature. Here's a tidbit from Ars Technica: "Like other professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball is jealous of its content. The latest company to come under its scrutiny is Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox...
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Microsoft has finally hit the 1 million sales mark with its Zune series of MP3 players, and is now only about 99 million short of catching up to the 100 million mark of rival Apple. Still, it's a very good sign that a major player like MS can muster up so many sales in a relatively short time, especially given that companies like Apple and...
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Blizzard, the people behind the mega-hit MMORPG World of Warcraft (and other great games), is starting to become more aggressive with companies that sell online gold for real life money. What method are they going to use to fight the constant spams from companies that are violating their terms of service? Suing them, of course! "As many...
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You know it's a good time to be a techie when coffee shops, fast food joints and even car rental companies like Avis are helping you stay connected anywhere you go. In fact, it's just a good time for anyone who wants to stay connected as often as possible with companies like Avis paving the way to a more connected tomorrrow. Here's a snippet...
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Spam, the other 4 letter swear word that starts with an S, might soon hit a bump in the road thanks to an initiative called DomainKeys Identification. "A key Internet standards body gave preliminary approval on Tuesday to a powerful technology designed to detect and block fake e-mail messages. It's called DomainKeys Identified Mail, and...
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As laptop sales continue to soar it seems that the day of the UMPC might soon be upon us. UMPCs are essentially scaled down laptops in both size and power, but completely capable of running normal OSes and applications (i.e. no need for Windows Mobile or a similar OS).It looks like MS has gone back to the drawing board with their take, Origami,...
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Google is gearing up to offer what could be a very attractive bundle of apps and branded services to ISPs. Here's what their web site has to say about Google Apps: "Google Apps brings together essential services to help your business, school, group or family communicate and collaborate more effectively. These services are powerful, easy...
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently gave a speech about the future of Google to a crowd of surfers and texters. The talk covered several topics from dealing with governments such as China to the future of Google. Here's a snippet: "Just weeks after Google announced iGoogle, a new name for its personalized home...
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There are some debates that have raged since the dawn of time: evolution vs. creation, great taste vs. less filling, red vs. blue, and of course there is always the great mouse pad debate to consider. Of course in this day and age everything gets a fancy new name, so the debate has actually changed from one of to 'mouse pad' or not to one...
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The Folding@Home team is constantly striving to add support for more devices to join the good fight against diseases ranging from Parkinson's to Alzheimer's. First they added support for alternative OSes, then video cards, and now a second gaming console, the Xbox 360, looks like it has a fair chance at showing its processing muscles off....
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A new study shows the dangers of buying an iPod for people with pacemakers: "The portable music players caused pacemakers to malfunction in 50 percent of patients, according to the study by a Michigan high school senior that was expected to be presented Thursday at the Heart Rhythm Society's annual meeting, in Denver. The biggest concern...
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With AMD planning to release the K10 "Barcelona" CPU and R600 series graphics chips before the end of the year, it's an exciting time for AMD. This can be great if you're an investor, or it could be a bit tense if you're an employee wondering if you might get "downsized". Here's what DailyTech is reporting: "After confirming it had to...
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A few government agencies and even a couple of large corporations have decided to delay purchasing Vista for the time being with reasons of (but not limited to) security, support, and high hardware requirements. Apparently the agency in charge of the airways in the U.S. falls into the last category: "An internal memo from top technology...
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Apparently in Michigan the answer is 5 months in prison, 5 months home confinement (Is he banned from broadband access?) and in this case $15,660 restitution. "Between Aug. 26, 2003 and Sept. 7, 2004, using two different eBay user names, Thomas sold counterfeit copies of Rockwell Automation software in 49 separate eBay auctions, receiving...
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Windows Live has been around for several months, but apparently it took a redesign complete with the old hotmail look to get the ball rolling. "Microsoft had been tinkering with Windows Live Mail for months, but testers still weren't happy. The program was too slow to load, too different and, well, just not like the old Hotmail it was intended...
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Extremetech has an article about the rising cost of computer gaming. It is certainly worth a look if this is your hobby. "The market for PC hardware is hugely fragmented. There seem to be hundreds of suppliers of peripherals, such as keyboard, mice, and displays. There are dozens of manufacturers of motherboards and add- in cards. Let's...
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OK, it's actually a 'typewriter' not a true keyboard, but it's still a waffle iron too. Who could really call him/her-self a true geek without a keyboard / typewriter waffle iron in their kitchen? Today we get our answer... "There's no need to spell out why this waffle iron rocks harder than most. Fleeing the cubicle for the kitchen,...
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A Chinese-American high school student from Fort Bend Indiana developed a CS level based on his local high school, and what did he get for his trouble? An A+ in his computer science class? Nah. How about a contract from Valve to make levels for their upcoming games? Nope. He got picked up by the local police after a few parents caught...
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Game sales have been in a bit of a slump recently, but Gamasutra is reporting that we're seeing a pretty large sales spike: "According to data from research firm NPD Group, sales of PC games have risen by 48 percent on the previous year, during the first two months of 2007, with sales lead by the success of Blizzard’s World of WarCraft and...
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Mozilla has a new alpha of the next major release of Firefox (i.e. 3.x) available for download. As with all alphas and betas, this is not a finished product, so don't disregard the final product based on what you see in the alpha. "Gran Paradiso Alpha 4 is an early developer milestone for the next major version of Firefox that is being...
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Information week is reporting that Apple has a patch out to fix performance issues with their Intel powered laptops: "Problems associated with the batteries included them not being recognized by the computer or the battery not charging when the notebook is plugged into an AC outlet. Also, the batteries could exhibit low-charge capacity or...
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