Technology

Provocative ain’t it? And very hypocritical since I’m writing this on a blog.

With widespread of various online blog services anyone and their mother can have a blog. And that’s ok, it mostly doesn’t get read (just like this blog which has some 3000 views a month).  But it gets bad when one gets recognizes and is a sort of internet celebrity.  Suddenly their opinion matters. Suddenly what they say/write is holy and true.  It gets worse when they abuse that and use their fame and reader support to extort favors or money from others.

Extort… its such a harsh word – some might argue. I want to concentrate on the tech industry, because its what I know best. How do you call a person who will says:

“give me <insert product name> and I will write a good review of it on my tech blog”?

What do you call a person who says:

“if you don’t give me <insert same product name> I will obtain one myself and write very unfavorable review of it on my tech blog”?

or better yet

“you gave me <insert same product name> and if it does not perform up to my expectations either you give me a better one or I will write a very unfavorable review of it”?

Its all true. I seen them. From Facebook to regular blogs celebrity bloggers do that on regular basis. So how credible is information on blogs? To answer, its as credible and as true as person who writes it.  And for most part write it because either they get paid to do it,  they want to get paid to do it, they are a fan of certain brand or they have something against them so they will write a bad review. Celebrity bloggers get sponsored, so they will not write a bad review because they keep wanting to get sponsored, its good to get free stuff because you wrote 4 paragraphs on your blog during lunch break. Facebook bloggers are also common, they often write stuff and point companies and brands to their profile, when they gain a following writing something critical of some product could hurt a brand so they are kept happy.

Reason I’m giving this rant is cause I find it somewhat repulsive. It is down right cheating the end user, it is giving false information and abusing one’s trust. Now days it is very hard to get a decent review, so buying equipment is harder because one cannot make a educated purchase cause all sources of information are tainted.

Internet forums can be one of the better sources, unfortunately due to trolling and many dissatisfied end users they too can be somewhat tainted. And with electronics and computer equipment now days being very similar, how to decide what will work best?

The only way I know how is to call up the tech support for a product which I want to purchase/use and ask the technician the questions directly. If they are a real tech support and not scrip reading drones you could get a decent answer.

Today I stumbled across this link:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

I its a nice simple informative thing. But what got my attention was the Japanese Spider Crab. Apparently they go to be 3m in size! Its a scary picture, something that you get in Red Lobster for $25 now big enough to have you on its dinner plate.

Google produced this composite picture:

http://1.yukozimo.com/no/4732-2.jpg 

Terrifying ain’t it?

Thank again for you sea food lovers, this is a lot of crab meat. Better have you bib and butter ready 🙂

The rule “if it doesn’t fit use a bigger hammer” does not apply to motherboards.

Here we have ASUS P9X79 Pro, 4 days after initial release on the market.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131800

Very nice motherboard, with pretty high price of $330.

    Yes sir! 4 bent pins in the socket, this equals to = CID (Customer Induced Damage) and the motherboard looses warranty 🙂

Some people should not build computers.

You know, every once in a while I get this jaw on the floor feeling when I see people throw their money away at something just because its new and trendy. Its like with Mac products, I donno what I does but it has the apple logo on it so I’ll buy it. I got used to that behaviour but when I see someone buy 2 routers which are top of the line products, but why the hell do you need 2? You need just one, if you got problems with range you buy an access point for 1/3 of the price.

ASUS RT-N56U is a very nice router. It quite functional. It supports piracy by having integrated torrent client which can download movies and music straight to connected HDD on USB. It is not the best router, quite frankly it works better on alternative software like DDWRT and some claims made by the company like directional radar are just fiction.

But when some pimply geek buys two and tries to configure some crazy network with FTP servers, streaming downloading, multi accesspoints, I have to ask… why? How big is your apartment? generally even if you have a house and buy something that is not low-end then it should be enough, in some cases additional access point can be needed if you have a 2nd floor or deep basement. The only reason to justyfi why you want to buy 2 quite expensive routers that recently surfaced is vanity and need to show off in front of friends and on internet forums. Grown men would buy a good sports car like Porche or Jaguar, geeky boys will buy a black slab router with glowing blue LEDs on fron panel. Same goes for all the geeks who bought motherboards based on Sandybridge chipset just as they came out, before Intel admitted to releasing a faulty chipset, same type of people will buy the new Bulldozer CPU by AMD and are waiting with anticipation for new Intel X79 chipset based motherboards.

I don’t understand people who want to buy something that just entered the market. You cannot trut initial reviews because for one they are paid for by the product manufacturer, two most websites and magazines make money off super reviews, noone wants to read about how bad SandyBridge is, and how its another budget approach by Intel, noone wants to read about how weak AMD Fusion is. It won’t sell.

You have to remeber that anything that came out today, will potentially have a lot of bugs to be resolved by firmware/software updates in upcomming months, and might have some hidden issues. Why be a beta tester when you can sit comfortobly, relax, read up on what is happening, wait 3 months and then decide wheather to buy the product.

By that time it will be cheaper, and have much better support.

But some people never learn.

After several Intel meek and weak chipsets finally comes something worth mentioning.

It is the X79 chipset. With two full x16 pcie slots and two x8. Supporting 3-SLI and Quad CrossFireX. 2 SATA 6Gb/s and 4 SATA 3Gb/s with additional Marvell andASMedia controllers featuring powered eSata. Intel and Realtek Gigabit LAN, 6USB 3.0 on the back IO and another 12 on midboard.

Up to 64Gb of RAM DDR3 ECC and non-ECC.

With ASUS UEFI BIOS, ASUS SSD Caching allowing for faster SSD operation, DIGI+ Power Control… and much more… looks like finally something worth writing about after 1156 socket which was pathetic and Sandy Bitch 1155 socket with was plagued but many issues from the beginning to this day…

By far I love the BIOS flashing feature which doesn’t require RAM or CPU to be present. Its an excellent tool which comes in handy when ignorant people purchase a board and a CPU without prior checking if the CPU is compatible with first release of the BIOS. Now you can be as oblivious to MB specs as you want…

… and its super cool, powerful and surpasses intel in most ways.

Unfortunately Bulldozer cpus right now have stepping of B2G, this revision makes them incompatible with anything below 970 chipset, anything like 890GX or older chipsets are unsupported!

On top of that, in Turbo mode bulldozer requires 140A, yes amperes, a motherboard with weak power management will fry, the VRMs will be smoking like hotdogs on bbq.

Which kinda makes me happy, all the fan boys and so-called overclockers will be so outraged, and they will blog and complain and claim to never purchase anything AMD based (until next big product).

Its the little things in life.

Check this ASUS UX20 out

ux20

 Full aluminum case, very high quality finish,

ux20_2

Powerful intel i7 cpu and Windows 7 ultimate

ux20_3

Lightweight and extremely slim design

UX20_4

Full size chicklet keyboard with large comfortable touchpad

ANd yes it has USB ports!

Avreage battery life is about 5 real life hours… meaning it will last a whole day if you hibernate it and power don when not using it.

ASUS keeps making really nice products, innovative and unique.

I donno how much you know about bicycles. Until I built my own I knew how to inflate the tube in the tire and that once in a while I should use some grease on the gears and derailleurs. But after putting together a very decent mountain like bike with a dual suspension I have to say I learned quite a bit. And there is a big advantage in having stuff like disk brakes and precision derailleurs, profiled handlebars, front dual suspension fork, rear shock absorbers ect… its there to help the rider, its there to make the ride more comfortable, make the ride easier and safer.

Which brings me to the point of today’s rant. It apparently is a growing trend to forget all that stuff and take the minimalistic approach. It centers around the concept of fixed rear gear. Basically the rear gear is permanently fixed to the wheel.  Which means that the cranck set connected via the chain to it is always tuning. This concept is not new, actually its how the first bikes in 19th century worked. With no concept of a freewheel, the rider had to constantly pedal whether he/she wanted or not, going down a steep hill really was a challenge because pedals would spin faster and faster.  Fortunately a freewheel hub was quickly developed and all those problems went away… until now.

Apparently it all started with bike messengers (they had to be pretty poor and pathetic bunch of messengers), who in order to make their bikes lighter started removing parts like cogs, brakes,   derailleurs… ect. I guess freewheel hub was also too heavy and got removed as well so now we got a frame, 2 wheels and the handle bars (maybe they should take off the seat too, it should weigh like 300grams thats like over 1 lb!). But ok, nothing more logical like riding around a busy city like Manhattan on 28 inch wheels with rubber band like tires, no gears, no brakes. Noone likes bike messengers, they are dirty, smelly, usually have dreads and apparently they don’t like themselves either cause they got suicidal tendencies.

The problem is that some trendy fucks adopted this as a new cool thing to do. Ride with fixed gear! oh yeah, it will go great with pants 2 sizes too small, thick framed non prescription glasses, fluorescent limited edition sneakers (limited edition because they are just too damn ugly to mass produce) and vintage looking shirt which cost a months income of a regular middle class family yet looks like something purchased in a ghetto thrift store.  More and more I see people on either custom built bikes or regular ones stripped down and modified. Its sad and pathetic.  I spent about $800 – 1000 to custom build from scratch a kick ass mountain bike which would do well in the city. Most parts are high end stuff from SRAM company: owners of Avid, Truvativ, Rock Shox.  I can jump down several flights of stairs, take any curb, stop on a dime in sun/snow/rain go up hill at 25km/h and downhill at 50 km/h. I got my money’s worth. But I could have spent the same amount or much much more on a thin steel tube frame, powder coated in some funky colors, with a wooden stick as a handle bar and tiny wheels with tires as wide as of my pinky finger.  So I can struggle to start when the lights turn green, get stuck in cracks wider than my finger, and if someone or something jumps in front of my bike i can fall off or hit it because I have no brakes. Great deal!

Seriously what’s wrong with people? Fashion is idiotic now days, on top of that tons of badly dressed kids ride around on the street in a kamikazi style feeling all trendy. Today on my way to work, one of those “trendy” loosers passed me on ramp that led to a bridge. He was going downhill on blue with white flower motif fixed gear bike, no brakes just a wooden handle bars, struggling to keep the speed down and not fall off. I wanted to shout some obscenities at him but then again I was going uphill, shifted my sram x-7 to 3rd smallest gear and quickly reached speed of 20km/h, got onto the bridge and was at the other side before he prolly got down and off the ramp. Sad part is that my bro also joined the ranks of those idiots.

Back, for past 4 months I have been working in a terrible job. It promissed to be a great learning opportunity and would also advance me to a head of a department status which means more $$$. Well it was fools gold. I slaved day after day doing meaningless tasks, constant pressure, constant stress. Nothing new, nothing worth the effort. Company that created a huge buzz as to being a “trendy cool place to work at” infact was more like penal colony on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. I hated every moment of it and finally when I saw that I can’t do anything to steer it in the right direction I quit.

Now here is the thing, I know I wasn’t the only one unhappy with that company. But I can’t openly say it in public, or more to the point I can’t warn people who would want to work there. If I post somewhere anonymously my opinion can not be very trustworthy, then again if I sign my name to it and in detail describe why the company is bad it could lead to problems getting another job because if a recruiter from another company googles my name and comes across me giving negative opinion to a company that shows lack of loyalty (as if the company I quit was loyal towards me) and possibility that I’ll do the same to them, also the company I quit could try to sue me for ruining their reputation (and given their international fame, they could be successful), and even if they don’t sue me they could just give me poor reference and that way I don’t get a job.

So, I wasted 4 months of my life, during that employment I actually found first gray hair on my head… my social and personal life suffered because of that and the money I got was not enough to cover  all the unpleasant situations which I encountered.  And I can’t do anything about it. Only thing I can do is quit and never ever have anything to do with that company again. Also it is a good idea to avoid people who worked there in future jobs.

Never the less I pity the people who will go to work there and because I’m such a nice person I’d like to warn them against switching over. I had a comfortable situation where I left my old job at excellent terms and could come back if something backfired… and it did so I did. Others might now be so lucky.

Most people never called any tech support.  For different reasons.

My friend once told me, “… only people that call tech support should never bought the product they are calling about in the first place. And most of the time they are idiots.”.

I never believed that, but after 3 yeas working on different levels and experiencing various angles available in tech support of a big company I started to agree. But not entirely…

There are many kinds that call tech support:

Main groups:

-idiots, the real ones, IQ <100 should not be entrusted with a digital watch from a bubble gum vending machine let alone computer, cell phone, PDA, GPS and absolutely no computer components. They recognize 24 – 28 keys on standard 104 key keyboard, require 2 hands to operate a mouse are able to type everything from a question to web address into popular search engine however that does not mean they can properly interpret the results. Their computer knowledge is based on hear say, what the sales guy in the computer store said while trying to sell the most expensive and outdated piece of crap in the store and friends teen son/daughter.

-wifes of the above mentioned idiots, we should take pity at them, they are the housewives who spend all day at home cleaning, cooking and raising kids but on top of that their idiots husbands/boyfriends assigned them a task of calling in to the tech support to solve a problem which they don’t know how, and/or won’t admit that they are too stupid to do so and they can’t stand talking to someone who might be smarter than them, especially when if you are on the phone the other person can hang up if you try to scream at them to enforce a point.

-small time salesmen, their job is to sell a product, by any means necessary usually it involves lying, bending the truth and lots of smiles. Once the customer realizes that the product they were sold is a piece of junk and does not do what they wanted it to do, but he sure overpaid for it, then they come to the salesman demanding explenation how they can get that piece of junk working. Thats when the angered sales guy call the tech support yelling and threatning in order to get answers how to make the piece of junk magically working like a good quality product.

-big electronics store sales/support staff, they don’t care how to fix it, they just want to send it in for repairs even if the problem can be solved by pressing one button or reinstalling one program. They don’t care, they just want it off their hands.

-hypochondriac forum dwellers, they stalk internet forums, target the posts what outline a problem some user had(or thought that atleast), they escalate it in their head and call to get immediate solution even if they don’t have that problem, never had and never will but in their heads its common, its been reported on a forum and he wants justice! Its a form of psychotic behavior.

-mega hyper geeks, tend to spend all their money on electronics and computer equipment, will buy a product to incorporate it into some bigger scheme, anything from overclocking and modding to some insane Dr. Frankenstein electronic creation, composed of many different pieces, all linked up (usually via wifi cause god forbid we use cables) this can be anything home theater system, server system, office network, college dorm mega movie streaming setup whatever, problem is that they though it up and expect it to work, but rarely they read the specs which usually are against them, the whole setup fails to work properly, tech support gets the beating.

Tech support engineers are experts, they are the best in their field, each day they are faced with new challenges and new problems and benefit from each others’ cases. They got access to data bases specifications and are all IT majors some with several degrees. Each day means they get better at what they do and each day they have more knowledge. You should take their advice because they know what they are talking about. The sad part is that none of the types of people listed above take tech supports’ advice (or they are simply too dense to understand it) and all that knowledge is used daily not to help people but to prove that what they think and what they are trying to do is wrong.

In a nut shell tech support are smart people who need to use their knowledge to prove idiots wrong, in a cultured, polite, professional manner (and if you got skills you can make the idiot realize who stupid they are, even if its just for a second).

I don’t know what is the big deal? When you have a laptop or desktop it has a motherboard, the moterboard works because it has a set of commands in something called BIOS – Basic Input Output System – now over the time new BIOSes are released for almost every motherboard so that it can be more compatible with hardware that was released after the said motherboard was and if any tweaks are necessary they will be incorporated in the next (newest) BIOS release. It is easy, it is quick, it should be done!

Its very simple, you goto the manufactures website find your motherboard, find the download section for it – in there you will have the BIOS files. You pick the newest dated file, download it, unzip it (it will probably be zipped) use a Windows Utility provided by the manufacturer to flash it. Many companies like ASUS have BIOS flashing utility in BIOS itself, copy the unzipped BIOS file onto a pendrive connect the pendrive to the computer, you enter BIOS (F2 during POST) find EZ Flash, launch EZ Flash, select your BIOS file on the pen drive and hit flash, do not interrupt. That’s it.

Why flash you ask?

First of all support of new CPUs and newer hardware. Second better memory support. So if say you buy a new CPU and you put it into your 2 year old motherboard (yeah, 2 years for a motherboard is a long time, 3 years and its basically old and not very useful) and it doesn’t work you probably would want to flash the MB with new BIOS and I bet it will start with a new CPU. Also if some memory modules don’t work with your motherboard you should update your BIOS. If you have a 3 year old motherboard and you buy a graphics card which was just released (aside from this being a very stupid move) and they don’t want to play together, then you also want to flash your BIOS.

No this is not a fool proof solution for every problem, however it does solve a lot of problem when dealing with compatibility. And carries very little risk of damaging the motherboard.

I hate when idiots argue that BIOS updating is to be done only in extreme situations and can destroy the whole system. On the other had they will boast about the gains and benefits that come from overclocking (which can really damage your hardware if done improperly). Oh well… Some companies like ASUS provide motherboards with features like CrashFree BIOS – which basically allows you to restore BIOS to original version from a CD, or like the ASUS Republic of Gamers motherboards which have 2 BIOS chips because at ASUS they know people will mess around with the motherboard’s BIOS and overclock it so in case they damage something you always got a spare.

For a while ASUS has been making motherboard with Core unlocker feature. Motherboards for socket AM3 not that overpriced Intel crap. But they have been expensive (example ASUS Crosshair III Formula).

Now that is changing! New ASUS M4A89GTD PRO has many many cool features.

With the main one – Core Unlocker(to unlock cores in AMD AM3 CPUs)

Memory OK (for those idiots who buy crappy flashy LED laced memory modules like Kingston HyperX or Geil Black Dragon and can’t get them to work)

GPU Boost for better graphics

TurboKey (instant hardware overclock)

and USB 3.0 ports.

I never had the chance to test it but now that opportunity presented itself I did it.

Took ASUS M4A89GTD Pro and Phenom II X2 555 cpu (only 2 cores available) put it together with some GooD RAM DDR3s  and off it goes.

Sorry for pic quality I was taking them with my lost&found Sony Ericsson w810i.

Here it is with a regular locked CPU

And at a flip of a switch:

Here are some CPU-Z screen shots:

It works! It really works, the fun part is that a MB which will cost around 130 ~150 USD can turn a $200 cpu into a $400 cpu instantly given that the said CPU has all 4 cores intact. Sometimes manufactuers lock cores because they are faulty so instead of Phenom x4 you get Athlon x2 but the CPU is saved, unlocking that wouldn’t be a good idea cause the system would be unstable (intel used to do this back in the day with celerons, faulty pentiums would get cut and branded celeron). So far this Phenom x2 555 worked over night on OCCT all cores loaded 100% and didn’t freeze or reset, seems that I got a good one on my hands. I still have some athlon II there and will see if that works as well.

Anyways… coolness to the max.

I remember in my old apartment in Brooklyn I had a cable modem and a regular D-Link router, which had 4 LAN ports and one WAN port, really simple user interface and worked beautifully for over 4 years. Now having a non-wireless router seems to be some of shame or disgrace. People will buy a Wireless Router if they need it or not, and of course it has to be the best, fastest one on the market. It makes me laugh and then I feel sorry for those people who rely on WiFi so much. We went from 802.11a to 802.11b to 802.11g and now finally 801.11n stopped being in DRAFT but never the less it is not perfect. Most of the time wifi can offer decent to good network connection however the speeds are much slower than what you can get through cable, plus those speeds vary, depending on the signal strength, proximity to the router and interference. Sometimes distance from router to a computer with a wifi card can be less than few feet and signal strength be close to 0%. Sometimes you can have a good signal strength across 3 apartment floors. Sometimes driver and compatibility issues will not let you connect at all.  It is not reliable, its good to have occasional internet access not something to stream movies, do video conferencing or download huge files through – for that they came up with fast ethernet and gigabit ethernet. I mock and laugh at people who buy a wireless router, don’t have a wireless card in their PC and buy one specifically for their PC even tho the router sits on top of the PC – its like a matter of honor – I have WiFi I can’t lower myself to connect my PC through LAN… idiots. I see them everyday. Maybe in 5 – 10 years wireless communication will be better, now days, its just there it works but its not something to rely on, and its not something to be made a back bone of an office place. Especially when cable is faster, safter, easier to install, virtually on every computer, PC, Laptop or server have a LAN card, and the signal will not scramble when you turn on a microwave.

Here is XKCD comic to illustrate my point:

Its funny I have an Eee PC with Ubuntu 8.4 which can’t connect to a Netgear WGR614 v7. Same Eee connects perfectly with ASUS RT-G32 and quite ok with WL-600g and very well cause I catch the signal from across the street from a 5 story building off ASUS WL-500Gp v2. Before you say … oh its all ASUS, well Eee 701 is equipped with Azurwave wlan card which has nothing to do with ASUS and the drivers are open source from uBuntu. I hate those people who buy a wireles router or wireless card and  for some reason expect it to work flawlesly in every way. Daily I get idiotic questions like “what is the range of this router?” and my reply? “Well, theoretical range in lab conditions, is 150 feet, but in real life you’re best off consulting nearest fortuneteller”, my wifi signal strength varies from low to high every hour and speed jumps from 1Mbps to 54Mbps…. go figure. But people will keep believing in it and shall never ever go back to cable even if the router sits foot away from their PC desktop. Another thing is that you need to configure a router…

Once in a while I meed people who actually read the manual yet lack fundamental knowledge how to use the functions described in the manual, they are those people who want to use every possible available function even if those functions don’t apply to their network setup or the way they want it configured –  its another sickness – sometimes people have to know everything and have everything turned on and setup, sometimes its even useful – like for example – they want to have MAC filtering on, good little work and your network is safer, but then again some will want port trigger configured, and they don’t know what port trigger is, why it is there but it can’t stay blanc.

Scarier are internet-nazi parents who discovered access control and I get a call to explain to them how they can limit their kids internet access so they can access it only from 6pm to 11pm and half day on weekends. I’m glad that my parents never learned what internet is for and never got the idea that they should restrict it.

Remember when I said that if you use a better CPU your graphics card will also work better, well this is true but… You need a good graphics card, here is an anti example, I used an old ASUS GeForce 8600GT SILENT and compared results in 3D Mark 2006 using Core2Duo X6800 CPU and Quad 9550. As you can see results are not very satisfactory, meaning if you want to blow extra 150 bux for a better CPU and the rest of your system is 3 years old then well… don’t bother.

You know all those ads in the magazines, music channels, internet sites that tell you that you can download a great application for your phone to daze and amaze your friends? Like the coin game, the candle blowing out trick, the x-ray phone camera ect… its a sham, because of my programming background when I saw the I immediatelly had this whole concept in my mind how the program worked, complex algorithms, special functions, unorthodox solutions. But you know what? its a freaking cheap piece of crap, a monkey with comodore 64 could produce something better. Its all based on a trick, usually single image to pop up when you press some button on the phone,or who those omnia, iphone ect type of phones with motion sensor its activated by the motion sensor. The only trick is to fool your viewers that this is some great piece of software. I mean I had a palm pilot with a tricorder app, that actually was fun… opposed to ghost sensor and x-ray. Don’t spend your money on this crap, I actually regret downloading them for free and wasting my time installing them and learning how to operate them.