PATREONItems tagged with AMA
Alienware has had a busy January. During the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, the Dell subsidiary unveiled updated versions of its Alienware 15 and Alienware 17 gaming notebooks complete with fifth generation Intel Core processors. And earlier this week, we took a look at Alienware’s Alpha which not only serves as an HTPC, but also a console PC for light gaming while lounging on your couch.Alienware Alpha But if you’d like to hear more about Alienware’s current product lineup, or what happens behind the scenes when new products are developed, why not go directly the source? Luckily, such an opportunity has presented itself and Alienware General Manager Frank Azor will...
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Billionaire, Genius, Playboy, Philanthropist - these are terms you may have heard in reference to the fictional Tony Stark, aka Iron Man. In reality however, super heroes these days come from all walks of life, including Super Geek Heroes like Bill Gates. There's little question, few people have done more to shape the face of the modern computing than Mr. Gates. In his earlier days, the man was either revered, feared or loathed (competitively) for his business prowess, creativity and analytical foresight. These days, the Bill Gates is a shining example of what it means to give back to your fellow man. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does some pretty amazing things for charities in...
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It's the most wonderful time of the year. Actually, while it is the holiday season, it really sucks. Look at the economy, the stock market, job losses, and earnings reports for many companies. But it is the time of the year for tne annual Amazon.com Customers Vote promotion. How does it work? Step 1: Vote. Browse our six rounds of great products, and vote for the ones you'd like to buy at an amazing discount. Step 2: Check E-mail. Check your e-mail the day before each buying round to see if you've been randomly selected to participate in the race to buy. Step 3: Go! If selected, make sure you come back and log-in early on race day. We will have many more participants than deals, so the race is...
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According to the Washington Post, President-elect Barack Obama's campaign team uploaded more than 1,800 videos to YouTube, which were viewed over 110 million times. And apparently, even though Obama has already won the election, he will continue to use YouTube as a primary means of connecting with the American People. This coming weekend's Democratic Radio Address will be delivered by President-elect Obama and will also be filmed and then uploaded to YouTube. The Washington Post claims that the weekly Democratic Radio Address has never been recorded and "broadcast" on video before. This will not be a one-off event either. The weekly Democratic Radio Addresses will all be videotaped and...
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OMG, finally! We're glad to see a retailer as large as Amazon.com has taken some initiative. How many of you are frustrated by blister or clamshell style packaging such as above? The dang things are so annoying that "how-tos" have been written about them. It's easy to get a cut from their sharp edges, so we're not surprised that articles about "safely" opening them has been written. Custom openers have even been developed. Amazon.com is, with its "Frustration-Free Packaging" project, taking a step toward eliminating not just those packs but also things like tiny SD cards packed in large boxes. The project is starting small, with only 19 products from manufacturers including Fisher-Price, Mattel,...
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This isn't a political post. It's a security post. While spam in general is an annoyance, spammers tend to pick those subjects they feel will get people to open up email. According to online security company Secure Computing, the election contains just those sorts of subjects Their study indicates that spam referring to Barack Obama outstrips that referencing John McCain 6 - 1, while Sarah Palin spam easily beats Biden spam 7 - 2.It's interesting, as the ratio has nothing to do with the ratio of mainstream media news items. In those, McCain beats Obama 10 - 9. On the other hand, the Palin - Biden ratio is pretty close to the number above.According to the report:"Though...
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It appears that a bug in a network driver used in the kernel of the latest alpha release of the popular Ubuntu Linux distro is damaging Intel network controllers, sometimes irreparably.In bug #263555 on the bugs.launchpad.net website titled, "[intrepid] 2.6.27 e1000e driver places Intel ICH8 and ICH9 gigE chipsets at risk", it is noted that the NVRAM on Intel 82566 and 82567 based LAN controllers is being corrupted, but the bug seems to have affected only notebook users at this point..."In some circumstances it appears possible for the 2.6.27-rc kernels to corrupt the NVRAM used by some Intel network parts to store data such as MAC addresses.This is limited to the new e1000e driver, and reports...
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In a Monday press release, Amazon.com announced that buyers who want to get their hands on some upcoming hot games can upgrade their shipping to be assured they'll get them on release day: Gamers have been asking for it and Amazon has answered the call. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it will offer release-date delivery for "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09," "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed," "Fable 2" and "Gears of War 2." For $5.98, Amazon customers can upgrade their shipping option for guaranteed delivery of these titles on the first day of availability to all addresses within the continental United States. Additionally, Amazon Prime customers will receive release-date delivery for...
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Amazon customers, watch your e-mail inboxes carefully today. You might be one of the select few who get invited to try out Amazon's new Video On Demand Service, which is scheduled to rollout today for a limited, invitation-only debut. The rest of us schlubs will have to wait until later in the summer to check it out. Unlike Amazon's Unbox service, which is a download-only proposition, Amazon's new Video on Demand service will stream movies and TV shows directly to your computer. Amazon's Unbox service requires proprietary software and runs only on Windows-based computers and TiVo set-top boxes. Right now, our only source of information about the Amazon Video on Demand service is from the New...
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With the so-called "Amazon Tax" taking effect in New York state on Sunday, Overstock.com filed suit Friday against New York, joining Amazon.com, which filed a similar lawsuit in early May.Overstock.com, which is based only in Utah, has no operations in New York, and sells exclusively through the internet, views the new law as unconstitutional under both New York and federal constitutional provisions, including due process clauses under both constitutions and the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution as well. The complaint filed in the New York Supreme Court calls upon the court to issue an injunction and to declare the law unconstitutional. It names as defendants in the suit the New York State...
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On Sunday, June 1st, the so-called "Amazon Tax" will go into effect in New York state. While formerly only retailers with brick-and-mortar stores in a state were required to collect sales tax, New York has enacted a law which forces etailers to collect tax on sales, if they have affiliates which redirect traffic to their sites (e.g., Amazon.com affiliates).Starting June 1, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) will charge a sales tax to shoppers who live in New York, even though the retailer maintains no physical operations in the Empire State.Why the crackdown? With the economy in the tank, the State of New York was getting desperate to fill its budget gap. So it expanded its rules about what constitutes...
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Akamai is a Hawaiian word that means intelligent. It's the name chosen by a very intelligent group of MIT -centric founders for their global Internet content and application delivery business. Since they act as a sort of content mirror for all sorts of customers all over the web, all over the world, they're almost uniquely positioned to offer an opinion on the age-old Internet question: "How You Doin'?" Today Akamai released the first of what they say will be regular quarterly "State of the Internet" reports. So what is the nature of the malware and bugs attacking user's systems out there? Old-school stuff, primarily. One interesting observation about the ports that see the highest levels of...
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Internet years go by fast. Way back in ancient web history --2001-- Borders books thought it was a good idea to ally themselves with a fast-growing web portal called Amazon.com. Perhaps you've heard of it. I'm sure it seemed like an interesting sideline revenue stream to Borders enormous brick-and-mortar book sales at the time. Borders has now finally woken up to the fact that Amazon is basically putting Borders' regular stores out of business, and they're trying to recapture sales revenue currently lost to the Internet by launching their own e-commerce site, borders.com. “The decision to partner with Amazon, at the time it was made, was made I think for very good reasons,” said Kevin Ertell,...
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Wait, wait, Barack, it's a game. They're not wasting real gasoline. Oh, wait, that's not his point.Obama's comments came during a campaign stop in Indianapolis. He told the crowd, "I was just catching the news this morning about Grand Theft Auto, this video game, which is gonna break all records and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it."Now, this isn’t intended for kids, although I promise you there are kids who are playing it, but these video games are raising our kids," Obama continued. "Across the board, middle-class, upper-class, working-class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of their time not on their studies, but on entertainment. "While he has some good points,...
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The State of New York enacted a statute requiring Amazon.com to collect NY sales taxes on orders going to New York State residents. Technically, all Internet sales have long been subject to sales tax; the NY consumer was supposed to report such purchases and pay tax on them. You can imagine how little tax was collected by relying on consumers to drop a dime on themselves on their yearly tax returns. So New York decided to make it Amazon's problem to keep track of and collect taxes from New York residents. How did they turn Amazon into a New York retailer overnight?Generally, only those companies that have a physical presence — like an office or store — in the state where the purchase is made...
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Yes, the end is nigh. Not only has New York State's "Amazon Tax" been signed into law, it will take effect on June 1st.New York Internet shoppers, take note: in five weeks, sales tax-free shopping will end on many Web sites thanks to rewritten state rules that are trying to force Internet retailers to collect.At Chrono Tech Watches in White Plains, Jerry Nally is glad the clock is ticking on many Internet retailers that don't charge New York sales tax. Nally says those so-called "e-tailers" steal his customers."They'll come in our store, look at our product, touch it, play with it, look at the warranties, then go back to the web and buy it tax free," says Nally.The fact of the matter is,...
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Filling out our California income tax this year, we laughed when we came upon the "Use Tax" section. Did we buy anything from out-of-state retailers that we owed California sales tax for? Of course we didn't! But whether or not we did, New York state is close to closing that loophole for its residents with the so-called "Amazon Tax."The so-called "Amazon tax" closes a loophole for Internet retailers who derive sales through affiliate programs in which Web site owners place a link to the merchant on their site and earn a commission on sales made from referrals. In lobbying for the bill, the industry group representing New York retailers had argued that the exemption from the sales-tax collection...
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Fortunately Amazon.com launched this service on 4/2, or we might have wondered ...In less than a minute and using only text messages, Amazon.com customers can find the product they are looking for and complete a purchase using TextBuyIt. Simply send a text message to "AMAZON" (262966) with the name of the product, search term or a UPC or ISBN code, and, within seconds, Amazon replies with the product or products that match the search, along with prices. To buy an item, customers simply reply to the text message by entering the unique single digit number next to the item they want. Customers will then receive a short phone call from Amazon with the final details of their order and asking them...
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Thought Microsoft actually made the following statements prior to Toshiba's official announcement, it is reasonable to assume that they knew what was coming. It seems like they're not very concerned about the potential impact:“We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace,” Microsoft said in a statement. “As we've long stated, we believe it is games that sell consoles and Xbox 360 continues to have the largest next-gen games library with the most exclusives and best selling games in the industry....
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When Amazon.com opened its software download service in early January, it seemed curious that they would create a downloader app if they didn't have something larger in mind. A job posting on Gamasutra suggests Amazon will soon start a PC game download store to compliment Unbox, its video-on-demand service, and the site's MP3 download store. The job posting asks programmer/engineers to apply to become a part of the Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team at Amazon, which is "responsible for digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon website, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store."This is precisely what we have anticipated, though not...
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A massive volume of telecommunications data flows through undersea cables. We've seen the havoc that's created when one of them is severed, and it looks like the middle-east and western Asia are now experiencing the trouble created when 4 of them are damaged in a little less than a week.Having one cable damaged is unusual, 2 or more in the same time period is very odd, but 4 is virtually unprecedented.“Most telecommunications experts and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows what damaged the cables or whether the incidents were related.One theory - that a wayward ship traveling off course because of bad weather was responsible for cutting the first two cables...
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When Amazon MP3 launched last year, you can bet it was looked upon by Apple as just another minor threat to iTunes' dominance. But with the signing of Sony BMG, Amazon is the only retailer selling DRM-free music from all four major music labels. And now it's a major threat.Today Amazon announced that Amazon MP3 is going global, spreading DRM-free music worldwide. "We have received thousands of e-mails from Amazon customers around the world asking us when we will make Amazon MP3 available outside of the U.S. They can't wait to choose from the biggest selection of high-quality, low-priced DRM-free MP3 music downloads which play on virtually any music device they own today or will own in the future,"...
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