Archive for April, 2006

Google Top 100 Videos

Okay saw this post on dig about the Top 100 Videos on google and just had to post it. There are some hilarious videos on there, if you don’t check out any others then check out what the easter Bunny does the rest of the year, He Kicks Ass.

MANY People Will Not Be Able to See Windows Fancy Graphics

Thinking of upgrading to Windows Vista as soon as it comes out? You’ll definitely want to check your machine out to make sure it is capable of running the Aero display. You will need to have a legitimate copy of Vista, and not just any copy, Vista Basic will not show them at all. You’ll also need a Windows Vista specific video drivers. You’ll need a minimum of 1,800 MB per second of graphics memory bandwidth. Has anyone ever seen such a measurement before? I probably have, but it’s not something you see everyday or we would remember it. Microsoft said a tool would be available to measure it, to make sure your machine is capable of doing it. And you will need lots of graphics memory, a of 1280 by 1024 pixels or less will require 64MB, and for a larger screen, 256MB may be required.

Windows Vista plans to offer you spiffy new graphics, as long as you’re not a pirate.

With the new operating system, Microsoft is offering plenty of new graphics tricks, including translucent windows, animated flips between open programs and “live icons” that show a graphical representation of the file in question.

But before Vista will display its showiest side, known as Aero, it will run a check to make sure the software was properly purchased.

But it’s not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows’ fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won’t be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system. And even those with higher-end versions won’t be able to see the fancy graphics if they don’t have enough memory, lack sufficient graphics horsepower or have a graphics chip that doesn’t support a new Vista driver.

Those Aero requirements are not easily understood by buyers or computer salespeople, said Michael Cherry, an analyst at market research firm Directions on Microsoft. He said, for example, that he has no idea how much memory bandwidth his computer has. “I wouldn’t even know how to begin to measure it.” Source: News.com.

Me either Michael. Microsoft did say this was not the final draft and it somehow got posted by mistake.

With the big graphics requirments, this will be limited to home users and gamers probably for awhile, most businesses will not upgrade their pc’s to make it work, they will just wait until it starts showing up on new pc’s and then start dealing with it, much like we did with XP. Although, Windows XP has been the best version of Windows by far for me. I never have any trouble with it.

Ask Metafiler

Here is a great RSS feed from Metafiler, full of great questions, some tech related, some not.

Help Our Local Little League

I blog on a couple other sites, Realtechnews.com and at Revenews.com, and I am trying to help out our local little league raise some money, check out the post here at Revenews, and buy some of the t-shirts and help out our kids.

Eliot Finally Suing Direct Revenue

Spitzer has been investigating Direct Revenue, detailed in this document, all 76 pages of it. I haven’t read all of it yet, but these guys really take the cake. Detailing how they once talked about delaying the popups by as much as 2 minutes, but changed it back to 45 seconds after their revenue plummeted almost 15%!

Even the company’s CTO, Daniel Doman, knew the software was crap. In an e-mail, he called Direct’s code “pretty spooky software” (p. 41).

It was so bad that Direct Revenue employees and clients complained about the frequency of ad showings. “My computer crashed 4 times,” one worker wailed (p. 44).

They acknowledged among themselves that they were on the Dark Side. “We are doing exactly what they [Edelman] are accusing us of doing,” wrote another executive (p. 62). Source: Security and Privacy Blog

The truth is almost always found out eventually, if you read my interview of the former 180solutions employee, you’ll see they definitely chewed some of the same ground.

The New York State Attorney General’s Office is suing Direct Revenue, claiming the company secretly installed millions of pop-up ad programs and sent ads through secretly installed spyware.
The state’s top prosecutor filed the lawsuit Tuesday, seeking a court order forcing the company to stop and requesting an accounting of the company’s revenues. The lawsuit also requests “appropriate” monetary penalties.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer claims the company and its distributors offered free games, browsers and enhancement software to lure customers into unknowingly downloading code that linked their computers to the company’s servers, which then downloaded the spyware. Source: Techweb.

And it was just last October that they and 180solutions promised to be cleaning up their acts.

Online-marketing companies Direct Revenue LLC and 180solutions Inc. recently announced changes to their business practices that could make them more accountable for how their advertising-supported software, or adware, is downloaded onto consumers’ computers. Both companies concede that third-party distributors do not always obtain consumer consent before downloading the software, which some distributors combine with their own spyware.

Karma, baby, Karma.

Interview with a former Employee from 180solutions

Anyone whose ever read my posts knows I don’t like 180solutions and their ilk, recently, it was my pleasure to interview a former employee of 180solutions, referred to as Ex180 in the article. Really interesting info about what it was and is like to work from 180, and no surprise, the employees are embarassed when asked what they really do.

I remember my first embarrassing experience was my fifth day at the company… I got a call from a non-technical co-worker at my previous job to help her uninstall n-case. She knew who I went to work for and it was before the uninstallation stuff was so widely available on the web. That was humiliating… I was like, “wow… people warned me about this place before I came and here’s so-and-so needing help to get this crap off her machine”. Ouch.

Check out the entire interview, 180 From the Inside Out.