Internet Business Daily

1) Sony Lithium-Ion Batteries: Computer manufactuers have recalled 9.6 million Sony made notebook battiers so far this year. The recall to date has cost sony about $433 million, bur reputation costs were much higher.

2) Amazon.com Unbox: Amazon’s movie download service was a complete flop. It is slower than driving yourself to Blockbuster. Its restrictive on how the purchaser uses the movie they paid for. It has lower resolution than a DVD. It requires a cable from your PC to TV. Horrible.

3) Vonage VoIP: With little to no reliable customer service and the constant question of clarity and receiving voice mail in a timely fashion, Vonage’s Voice Over Internet Protocol telephone may be cheaper, but is it anything but efficient.

4) Hewlett Packard: HP was a legend in Silicon Valley making a good product and doing good philanthropic work. What’s all that worth when executives violate the privacy of employees, journalists, and even board members? Planting spies in newsroom janitor staffs? Yes, I’m sure HP will not put any spyware or other questionable features in their computers. I can trust HP. Can’t I?

5) Microsoft Vista: Initially Microsoft will not be giving access to the Vista Kernal or core code to any of its third-party security software vendors until Service Pack 1 is released. So until SP1 you will be depending soley on Microsoft to protect your computer. I wish I was lying, but I’m not. Microsoft screws up again. Maybe we can spin this into a new antitrust lawsuit =).

6) Recording Industry Association of America: This year the RIAA released a film called “Campus Downloading” warning students that they could be kicked out of school and arrested for downloading music without permission or paying a fee for all digital music. So much for fair use. With all the complaining that consumers don’t really buy and own digital music, I guess I wasn’t really paying Apple who pays you for music now was I? The RIAA needs to learn what the word “distinction” means.

7) Blu-Ray v. HD-DVD: Initialy this was just going to be a gigantic headache as the movie standards war of the 1980s (VHS v. Betamax) reared its ugly head once again. With consumers not knowing if Blu-Ray or HD was going to prevail and having to spend $1000-$2000 on a player that could be obsolete in a year, how could this not frighten anyone looking to trade up. Luckily Toshiba came out with a controller chip that will allow players to read both formats.

Paperless Voting Machines: After the 2000 Presidential Elections, it was realized that a better system for counting votes was needed. The answer was The Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machine which provided no paper trail, no reliable way to audit results, and refusal of third party security assessments, The DRE caused people to lose more faith in the electoral system than to have more in it.

9) Ultra-Mobile PCs: Not small enough to fit in your pocket, not large enough to be practical for constant work. Enough Said.

If you walk into any computer retailer to pick up a new desktop or laptop, one of the first questions you should be asking yourself is “Do I get a computer with an AMD processor or one with an Intel processor?”

But even before you can even ask yourself that question, you would need to know the benefits to siding with one processor over another given your specific computing needs. Some people are going to tell you it doesn’t matter, and others might say Intel is better because they are number one in sales and have been around the longest (assuming that’s a viable answer). Neither of those however even resembles a thought out decision.

Let us compare AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 4800+ to Intel’s Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Dual Core in five different benchmark categories; Gaming, Photo Editing, MP3 Encoding, Multitasking, and Day-to-Day tasking.

Gaming: In testing Half Life 2 on a screen resolution of 1024×768, it was found that the AMD was performing at 140.6 frames per second while the Pentium was only clocking in at 106.3 fps. This is unfortunately a 10% difference that Intel needs to play catch up on.

Photo Editing: For this one of the most common tasks done was tested, Cropping. For this Photoshop was used and was tested to crop a relatively large image file down to a size appropriate for websites. Once again AMD took the prize finishing its task in 146 seconds leaving Intel to come in ten seconds later. Now a lot of us might think 10 seconds isn’t that big of an issue, but it will matter to the person who is making a living out of it.

MP3 Encoding: This is another common task that is possibly even more common these days than photo editing. For this test Apple’s iTunes was used because it is a multithread application programmed to utilize multiple processor threads. This could be a little embarrassing for Intel given their chip is ripping an album in 2 minutes and 12 seconds while AMD had already finished in 1 minute and 50 seconds, a good 20% faster than its competitor.

Multitasking: For this test two relatively rigorous processes were used. First McAfee was set to do a virus scan on 40 gigabytes of data. At the same time (of course) the computer was told to encode 85 megabytes of video to DIVX. Much not to my surprise AMD finished up in 3 minutes and 15 seconds while Intel dragged its proverbial fat ass at 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Not the biggest victory for AMD, but things are starting to look clearer.

Day-to-Day Tasking: Last but nowhere close to least is the run of the mill Microsoft Office and web browsing that every Dick and Jane is going to do. I’m actually sorry to say AMD takes this test as well. I would have liked Intel to have something to show for itself. But according to BAPCo SysMark ratings just gets things done a little bit faster than the Pentium.

Now there are a lot more selections the Athlon 64 and Dual Core families have to offer, but if you were going to be choosing between these two processors, you read something like this and then you see the price tags: AMD $725 and Intel $1175, what would you choose?

The bottom line is there are going to be minor differences here and there with any competing chips, unfortunately all the differences here are in favor of AMD which leads me back to believe what I always have, Intel is overpriced because they have the top spot. There’s no other real way to justify a $450 dollar difference for chips that do the same thing. This could be the reason why you now hear rumors of Apple in talks with AMD so quickly after putting Dual Cores in their machines. But until that’s official its mere speculation, but it would be a logical move given the stats. So whether you are buying a new computer or building one from scratch, I’d suggest going with AMD. It’s going to perform better and cost you a lot less. Win-Win.

I was just talking to my friend who told me about a horrible story about his DLP television. He has a Samsung 56in DLP television, which he purchased a little over a year ago from Costco. A few days ago his friend went to his house and brought his ps2 over to play. So they plugged it in and was surprised by a loud noise and then the TV turning off. He tried playing around with it for a while but just could not get the TV to turn back on. All he heard was a very weird noise coming from the back of the television. He then decided to look in the manual to find out that there is a warning against plugging in a ps2 into the TV. Apparently the ps2 and the Samsung DLP TV don’t work with each other, and actually breaks the TV when it is plugged in.

He was able to return the TV after the warranty was up (thanks to Costco) and got a plasma instead. This has to be the most ridiculous problem I have ever heard. How would just plugging in a ps2 absolutely render a $2000 TV useless? Good job on that one Samsung.

Advances in computer hardware and software have greatly simplified data-collection tasks, so one result is the rapid accumulation of massive amounts of information. But, just having databases full of idle information is useless unless it’s able to be exploited in some way. What commonly happens is the data is collected, but the familiar, well-trodden solutions are still the most often used by the business analyst despite sitting on piles of alternatives.

That’s probably where the retort for any well-documented yet still unresolved problem came from; the phrase itself, “Drowning in data but starving for information” is a good example of something that is so familiar and overused, no alternatives are even attempted. Similarly, business solutions can be like that: hackneyed. Using solutions learned in seminars outlining any of the dozens of problem solving methodologies out there may not necessarily cater to your biggest asset, your very own data. The problem is there’s just too freaking much of it. And organizing it is worst than organizing the garage. It’s more like organizing the garage and being expected to make a profit from what you find in there. One solution for dealing with this kind of information overload is called data mining.

Data mining involves the computer-assisted analysis of huge amounts of data, using advanced software tools, for the purpose of extracting hidden, qualitative relationships. Sounds like just querying the database? Not quite, even though the first step in a data mining process is collecting the data in an organized manner. But, a querying just allows you to just ask the database ‘such-in-such’ and let it send you the records. What differentiates data mining from querying is that querying can be effective in acquiring information that fits expected outcomes, but data mining techniques are more focused on uncovering hidden patterns and associations not previously known to the analyst. It’s the difference between asking for a list of everyone who lives on Main Street and requesting the address of anyone, anywhere who has a good chance of buying what you’re selling.

In a nutshell, using mathematical techniques to methodically sift through warehoused information, data mining helps in the recognition of significant trends or patterns that might not otherwise be apparent. Great…but if its so hidden, how can you be sure it’s even relevant? Well, that’s a whole other matter and up to you to decide. But you get the point: the process goes way beyond just the software.

And data mining is not new. Used by military and intelligence agencies, techniques long used in statistical analysis have been incorporated in recent years into a focused methodology featuring software with more user-friendly interfaces. Data mining has been used in diverse commercial applications, such as detecting credit card fraud, defining shopping patterns, analyzing equipment failure and profiling criminals.

It’s no secret that the new U.S. intelligence czar is further developing data-mining capability for gathering huge amounts of information in an effort to discern patterns that look like terrorist planning. The system will supposedly take all the data mining and modeling work done by various U.S. intelligence agencies and develop tools and algorithms to detect terrorist activities. There are currently privacy advocates criticizing a program called Tangram, currently being developed for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It is supposedly being tested without using any data about Americans…well, “OK, if you say so”.

The problem with data mining is that it’s not as much of a black-box, low user interaction tool many would want. With the diverse kinds of modeling you can use (neural networks, classification trees, link and nodal analysis, etc.) there are some decisions to be made before you even get started, so you don’t just get garbage out from all the garbage you put in. How do you decide? It depends… just what do you want to know? Tangram uses custom algorithms and a technique called link analysis, a method for linking entities with no overt association. Apparently, that’s for scouting terrorists, but what if you just want to know who buys widgets?

Data mining is a flexible tool so business oriented software may have quite a different focus requiring other methods. Still, in the end, many end-users may not feel as confident in navigating all the options of such a package. And that is also assuming the term ‘data mining’ isn’t as nebulous as the term ‘organic’ has become in the selection of produce. Relying solely on the term ‘data mining’ being in the product description doesn’t necessarily mean you are not just getting a supercharged query tool that’s simply adding more data to your warehouse faster. Sure, tools that collect data efficiently are good too, as long as you know what you’re getting. A good rule of thumb before buying a data mining package: know what data you have, know what data you need, and know what it is you want to find out. A little research will tell you what models are commonly associated with solving those type of problems, so make sure the package you’re buying at least has that as an analysis option. Or else take a shot in the dark and just do what the leaders in your own market are using.

Data mining has even found use in the area of matrimonial actions. E-mails are often automatically archived and can be easily retrieved by software without data mining. Since they can also contain very personal information that is relevant, revealing affairs and hidden assets, that knowledge would be desirable. Even illicit illegal activity can be retrieved and investigated for further and presented during the trail. Consequently, the side with the most data about the other party has the advantage. But the side who has the data and has the ability to mine for hidden associations which upon further investigation can be substantiated has a bigger advantage. The cost of retaining a data recovery specialist is supposedly less than that of than the retainer custody experts and forensic accountants. But, here’s the rub. Data recovery experts may be retained for longer periods based on complexity of the data mining operation.

Of course, the technique is not without its controversy. The Center for Digital Democracy is a nonprofit group involved in diversity in media and suggests that some large Web sites did not protect personal data from disclosure under certain circumstances. It’s not a revelation that many internet companies collect data and track visitors online. The Internet companies collect data from every click their visitors take to track what they’re doing online. This data can be used for Web site designs, targeted advertising campaigns and product introduction when properly analyzed via any number of data mining techniques. Microsoft’s adCenter advertising platform contains Web analytics, behavioral targeting, audience segmentation and data mining functions.

When a user clicks an ad delivered by Microsoft adCenter, a cookie is placed on the user’s computer for 30 minutes, which enables Microsoft and the advertiser to determine if a visitor clicked an ad delivered by Microsoft adCenter or visited the advertiser’s website within the 30 minute period. The user’s identity remains anonymous, and no personal information is collected or stored by Microsoft. Reputedly, the ad performance data helps determine the effectiveness of the ad but the question remains: what useful information can be mined from this data, anonymous or not? How exactly do you make such technological advances profitable? And how do consumers, who may be largely unaware of the extent they are tracked online, feel when they discover it?

The right balance between a retailers need to know and a consumer’s desire for privacy is a big issue. Just how much do I want the grocer to know about me? Or if I’m the grocer…is there any market for salmon in this demographics? While anything has the potential for misuse, simply having data mining ability doesn’t automatically imply the proper techniques are being used to analyze the collected data. Frequently, all the end user ends up with is a mass of mush…or the other extreme where the output just restates the obvious.

Anyone that uses a wireless router for home or office purposes knows that anyone with a wireless card and is in range will be able to see that network regardless if it is encrypted or not. If you are someone like me then you don’t want your neighbors seeing and possibly trying to gain access to your network.

The name that people see for your network is known as its SSID (Service Set Identifier) which is usually set to a default depending on your router. Changing the SSID to something more familiar will help some, but since Windows XP automatically searches out nearby SSIDs, displays their name, and lets you easily connect to them, you need to tell your router to not broadcast its real name, essentially making it invisible. Since you will know the real name, you will be able to connect your own computers to the network with no hassle.

All routers are going to display their controls a bit differently, but they all work the same fundamentally. I’m going to give the steps using a Linksys router, but if you have NetGear or 3com you should be able to figure it out just easily.

1. Login to the router by opening your browser and going to http://192.168.1.1 . If you have never logged in the default login/pw is admin/admin, you can change this password in the router settings later if you like.

2. Click on the Wireless tab and in the Wireless Network Name (SSID) Box type a new name for your network, something unique that can’t easily be guessed is preferred.

3. In the Wireless SSID Broadcast section select disabled.

4. It is also a good idea to periodically change the channel on which your wireless is broadcast. You can do this in the Wireless Channel drop-down list.

5. Click Save Settings

6. Now you just need to tell your computer to connect to the SSID you assigned your network. To do this click on the small wireless icon in the notification area. Once that opens click on the Change Advanced Settings and then select the Wireless Network tab. Click the Add button in Preferred Network section and type in your unique SSID and click ok. Now your computer will know that network without seeing the SSID being broadcast and you’re done.

According to Bill Gates, there will be no more car accidents within 10 years. This is a direct statement from the software giant himself. Here is a blurb straight from the mouth of Gates:

“One of the Microsoft researchers has a goal that there be no car wrecks, no crashes of cars, because by having software that can take over whenever a driver makes a mistake. His view is that we’ll be able to eliminate even that source of death. I was very glad to hear that because, as we solve all these medical things, in fact, these car accidents actually is a fairly significant factor that it’s wonderful that software in 23 years, software can do a lot.”

No more accidents within 10 years is a fairly optimistic statement, even by the king of computers. In this article I will discuss the technology needed (and lack of) to accomplish Gates’ dream.

There are currently two ways for cars to become ’smart.’ The first way would be to have on board computers with hundreds of sensors to detects every little obstacle one may face on the road. This would drive the costs of already over-expensive automobiles even higher. Within fractions of milliseconds, a car would have to sense and react to the spontaneous maneuvers that drivers of today pull off. Is this possible? Well there is currently a contest going on, sponsored by the pentagon, that is giving $2 million to the first team of engineers that can successfully build a car that can do just that. The car must be able to navigate through ‘real’ traffic (here is an article on the contest). The contest will end after a year, which shows that this type of technology will be available soon.

Bill Gates’ statement was “no more accidents,” not “no more accidents for the rich people who can afford the technology.” If his statement were to become true, technology that is out of reach financially for 99% of Americans today would have to significantly drop in price. The only thing I do not doubt is the software behind his theory. I do believe that Microsoft is capable of writing the ‘brain’ to control these new-age cars.

The second method to accomplish “no more accidents” is with a central ‘brain’ controlling cars that are basically drones. What I mean is the cars themselves will not actually be sensing what’s going on around them, but rather a supercomputer than can tell where exactly each car is in relation to the others. This method is much more out-of-reach than the previous. Even if our satellite systems could be quick enough to send data back and forth between the supercomputer and the automobile, there is not enough bandwidth provided by satellites to accommodate the amount of data required to be transfered. In all reality, this is just not a feasible option.

No matter which method Bill Gates decides to use, everyone already knows his Microsoft logo will be everywhere and he’ll offer some sort of “Genuine Advantage,” which basically means your car will be disabled by a false-positive of stolen software. I don’t think I am alone in hating the Genuine Advantage, and I know it has nothing to do with this article but I just thought I would mention how bad it will be.

So Bill Gates, you have a huge challenge ahead of you, get to work!

Yes that’s the actual title Gizmodo has given this hilarious video that I thought I would share. They hook up 4 GPS systems in a car and drive around with some funny results. The ending gets very funny when all the GPS units try to talk over each other. Check it out.

*NOTE: Not sure why the ‘digg’ link isn’t working. If you like the video, goto digg.com and digg it!

So about 2 weeks ago I decided to apply for a MSN Soapbox account. I finally received my invitation (don’t ask) and signed on. Even though the layout leaves something to be desired, the videos play in high quality and functionally the site is flawless (as you will see with the embedded video).

I came across this video while using Soapbox and thought it was pretty amazing. BumpTop may be the future of the desktop GUI. I don’t want to say too much about it I think the video will speak for itself. Here it is:

Video: BumpTop� Prototype 3D Desktop