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Monday February 08, 2010
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Tech News Weekly: Edition 5-10I'm sorry to say folks that I won't be able to do the weekly news over the coming weeks. Trawling through the news on a daily basis typically happens at work (I have very little free time on weekdays), and my company is currently in the process of being relocated, generating a ton more work than usual. I expect that in the next 2 months or so my free time will pick up again and I'll be able to get back to the regular weekly tech news for you all. In the meantime, I'll be sure to post anything I come across that I think is relevant to the forum and will generate discussion. See you round the forum guys. -Ehtyar Table of Contents:
Click here to read the full edition now..
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Tale of a Would-Be Spy, Buried Treasure, and Uncrackable CodeAnother nice real life spy story: Quote When officials searched the aspiring spy, they found a paper tucked under the insole of his right shoe. On it were written the addresses of several Iraqi and Chinese embassies in Europe. In a trouser pocket they discovered a spiral pad in which Regan, who had been trained in cryptanalysis by the Air Force, had written 13 seemingly unconnected words — like tricycle, rocket, and glove. Another 26 words were written on an index card. In his wallet was a paper with a string of several dozen letters and numbers beginning “5-6-N-V-O-A- I …” And in a folder Regan had been carrying, they found four pages filled with three-digit numbers, or trinomes: 952, 832, 041, and so on. The spiral pad, the index card, the wallet note, and the sheets of trinomes: The FBI suddenly had four puzzles to solve. http://www.wired.com/maga...e/2010/01/ff_hideandseek/
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Saturday February 06, 2010
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Essay - Blogging: a great pastime for the elderlyI find the rise of twitter and the decline of blogging sad.. It seems like the amount of aggregate writing on the web is staying constant, we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary. Quote I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You'd walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it's just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak. Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet. http://www.roughtype.com/...10/02/blogging_a_grea.php
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Wednesday February 03, 2010
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Developers cheatsheetsFound this this morning, and it may be of use/interest to others Lots of quick reference/cheat sheets for a wide variety of languages and applications http://devcheatsheet.com/
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Tuesday February 02, 2010
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Seagate's Replica: Highly praised foolproof backup drive and softwareJust came across this on Tom's Hardware site -- they really love it and say it's the first foolproof backup solution they've come across. Might be the perfect gift for a loved one in your life who needs some backup intervention. Quote Seagate’s Replica is a portable hard drive with automatic backup, versioning, and disaster recovery features to make backup a no-brainer. The product works so well that it deserves our rare Best of Tom’s Award. Review: http://www.tomshardware.c...backup-recovery,2450.html Looks like its from $130 to $180 in price: http://www.seagate.com/replica/
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Itching to put together your own pc from parts, but need help choosing parts?Tom's Hardware is one of the most respected computer hardware review sites on the web. They've started a new recurring series called "BestConfigs" where they regularly challenge some of their more serious people to put together and optimize a few machines at different price points, and then they analyze the hell out of them, overclock them, and sum up the performance. So if you've been itching to try putting together a new PC, I think you'd do well to keep an eye on this series, and when you find a pc setup that tests particularly well and fits your budget, well then you have a parts list and you can give it a try. Quote Welcome to a new feature we call BestConfigs, where you can find recommended parts for office PCs, gaming rigs, a workstation, or a home theater setup. If you're so inclined, feel free to chip in with suggestions for next month's recommendations, too! http://www.tomshardware.c.../value-pc-build,2506.html
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Cache My Work: reopen your Apps after rebootCacheMyWork is a handy utility that enables you to reboot Windows without losing your place in your work. It builds a checklist of currently open applications, and will restart the apps you've selected the next time you logon to the computer. Cache My Work is great for occasions when you need to unexpectedly reboot, such as on "Patch Tuesday", after installing new drivers, or when Windows runs out of Desktop Heap, Handles or GDI Objects (which happens more often than I'd like - even with the fixes described here). If you're like me, you avoid rebooting your computer because it means you'll forget what you were working on. Every time I have to reboot because of some install/uninstall/patch, invariably I forget half of what I was working on because I don't remember all the docs and apps I have to reopen (those 5-15 minutes between "shutdown all apps" and "logged in, Windows quieted down" are huge opportunities for me to be randomized and lose my short-term memory cache). Home Page Download
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Monday February 01, 2010
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Boot Snooze: Faster boots combining hibernate and restartA DC Member wrote about an interesting idea for a utility, which was promptly coded by resident DC coding snack phenom Skwire, and dubbed "Boot Snooze": Quote Many users use the hibernate feature instead of shutting down so they can start the computer faster next time, there a downside for this though: the computer will hardly ever get restarted, so it can't perform the usual startup checks and other stuff that keeps the OS healthy. If others took the other rote and decided to shutdown the computer completely, the next start will be slower than a hibernate of course, but at least the OS will have a chance to reload, free memory..etc So why not have both? When a user wants to shutdown his computer, the little program will kicks in: performing a restart instead, which will then be accompanied with a hibernate after the computer completely boots so the next boot will be 5 seconds away! Click here to read more and download now..
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Tech News Weekly: Edition 4-10The latest edition of Tech News Weekly is out. Table of Contents:
Click here to continue reading the full edition now..
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Sunday January 31, 2010
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DJ Legend - The Super DJ Software Review ThreadThis thread contains mini-reviews of several DJ tools including:
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MakeUseOf.com: 5 Computer Hardware Review Sites for the PC EnthusiastNice roundup today on MakeUseOf.com about some good hardware review sites. They recommend the following sites:
http://www.makeuseof.com/...es-for-the-pc-enthusiast/
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Friday January 29, 2010
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I won't be getting an iPad anytime soonNice philosophical take on how cynical and wrongheaded the iPad is in terms of openness: Quote The iPhone can, to some extent, be forgiven its closed nature. The mobile industry has not historically been comfortable with openness, and Apple didn’t rock that boat when it released the iPhone. The iPhone was no more or less open than devices that preceded it, devices like those from Danger that required jumping similar bureaucratic hurdles to develop for. That the iPad is a closed system is harder to forgive. One of the foremost complaints about the iPhone has been Apple’s iron fist when it comes to applications and the development direction of the platform. The iPad demonstrates that if Apple is listening to these complaints, they simply don’t care. This is why I say that the iPad is a cynical thing: Apple can’t – or won’t – conceive of a future for personal computing that is both elegant and open, usable and free. http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html
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Thursday January 28, 2010
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 Best trackball?I am thinking to buy a new trackball. At the moment I mainly use my Wacom pad, Logitech G9(good mouse), n52 Gamepad and Logitech marble trackball, but I need a convenience trackball for my left hand when it is not on the keyboard. The L marble trackball is fine for general work but I need something better. I am looking for non wireless devices(sick of changing batteries) I read couple good reviews about this laser one for example. It is little pricey but if it is good I am sure I can get some juice out of it. Also my wrist is more important than the price of the trackball in the long run.. Plus it will be an office investment. Do you use any other trackball that can be the pinnacle of trackball design? Click here to read what members suggest..
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