Posted 11/05/08 at 08:11:52 AM by Paul Lilly

Tread carefully fellow surfers, for there are angry netizens all throughout the web. Apparently, the anonymity the internet provides has users flinging insults and saying things online they wouldn't otherwise say in a face to face confrontation. The epiphany comes courtesy of a CNN report, which points out that blogs and forum posts often times "descend into ad hominem attacks, insults, and plain old name-calling." Welcome to the internet, CNN.

The news site put a lot of research into its report and is worth reading if for no other reason than to see a major news outlet devote a paragraph to "lulz" and what the term means. True credit for this one goes out to The New York Times Magazine, who as CNN points out published a story about trolls back in August. As one ex-troll told the publication, "Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh."

And it's not just caffeinated teens who are responsible for internet-rage. CNN references the recent account of a 43-year-old Japanese woman who killed her online "husband's" avatar after he divorced her. And don't forget those "celebrity gossip sites [that] are full of snarky comments about stars."

Our response to the 1,200-world write-up? "No s*%t." Hit the jump and tell us yours.

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Internet, Rage, cnn, report

Posted 10/27/08 at 06:21:54 PM by Pulkit Chandna

AMD’s share of the processor market continues to plummet as the beleaguered chip maker is just not able to arrest the slide. AMD’s market share in the third quarter stood at 17.7 percent, down 1.1 percent from the previous quarter, according to a report by Mercury Research. AMD has ceded more than one-fourth of the market it held a year ago – its market share was 23 percent a year ago.

AMD has failed to guard its market share despite budget positioning – especially in the sub-$200 segment. AMD’s woes seem to stem from its “comparatively weaker mobile mix”. With notebooks now outselling desktops, AMD will have to quickly strengthen its notebook processor lineup, if it intends to cling onto its remaining market share.

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amd, intel, data, report, Market Share, mercury research, third quarter

Posted 10/08/08 at 10:49:12 AM by Paul Lilly

Panda Security has released its quarterly report for the third quarter and in it the security vendor notes a sharp rise in the amount of adware. According to Panda, adware accounted for 22.03 percent of adware in Q2, but that number has jumped to 37.49 percent in Q3, which is more than a third of all infections. Panda attributes the trend to the amount of fake antivirus programs in the wild.

The report also puts social networking in the spotlight, the popularity of which has made them particularly prone to cyber attacks. Of the social networking sites, Panda notes that MySpace has been both the first victim and most frequently targeted by hackers.

"Attacks on social networks are not new phenomenon; the first recorded incident occurred in 2005," the report says. "However, attacks have increased ad diversified just as the number of users has grown. These attacks aren't focused exclusively on distributing malware, but also involve phishing, identity theft, or propagation of spam."

Surf safely!

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Software, Security, malware, report, adware, panda security

Posted 07/18/08 at 07:02:56 AM by Chris Moody

Solid state drives (SSDs) are usually considered to be more power efficient, faster, and in some respects more reliable than hard disk drives and they command a hefty premium over other drives. Dell's offering of a 128GB solid-state drive as an option on its Latitude, XPS, Alienware, and Precision laptop models for $649 is a steep drop price drop since many SSDs with half of that capacity still sell for more than $700.  Is it really worth it? The IDC released a report that claims the performance gap between SSDs and lower-cost high-performance hard disk drives is not that significant at the system level.
 
TargetTech.com quotes David Reinsel, one of the authors of the report, "Many tests have been done comparing 4,200 rpm hard drives to SSDs, but 5,400 rpm is now mainstream and even 7,200 rpm disks are available." He adds that the gap between performance in systems with 7,200 rpm 2.5-inch drives and systems with SSDs was much smaller than expected, mainly because of the performance of the system as a whole rather than just the storage device. Reinsel goes on to say, "There will be what's called a 'period of interdependency' with this technology. It isn't just plug and play." He suggests that system redesigns will be necessary in PCs and enterprise systems to gain the full benefit from flash.

If you are the ultra curious type and have ten grand to blow you can grab the report here. My credit card just laughed at me for trying.

Even though SSDs have dropped in price, they still are not a good performance item for the price point.  A Fujitsu 120GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb OEM notebook drive is going for $99, versus a $640 SSD with the same capacity. The price savings can buy you a lot of other goodies. We will have to wait for systems to be updated to take advantage of SSD drives and of course in the mean time, the price will continue to go down. When will it be the right price point versus performance for you to make the switch?

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samsung, Hard Drive, sata, hardware, ssd, report, Solid State Drives

Posted 07/07/08 at 08:53:12 AM by Chris Moody

In May 2008, McAfee set up 50 individuals from around the world with new laptops and email addresses and then had them surf for 30 days trolling for spam to discover “how much spam they would attract and what the effects would be, both short lived and long term”.

Every techie reading this is thinking the same thing, Well DUH, they got a crap load of spam and were really @%!#& annoyed by it. Really McAfee’s S.P.A.M. (Spammed Persistently All Month) Experiment amounts to pseudo news or a marketing campaign. That is not to say that it did not generate some useful data, but most of its conclusions are a no brainer.

Jump through to see what conclusions McAfee came to!

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spam, email, Mcafee, report