Time to improve bannination

Subject: General Tech | April 14, 2006 - 04:46 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Tech Connect Magazine links to the SBS, a shared ban system for Steam based games.  If you are losing your cool to cheaters, give the system a shot, hopefully it will make blasting away opponents even more fun.

Get info on your running processes with a click

Subject: General Tech | April 14, 2006 - 04:39 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The Moditory wants you to know about Process Library and Quick Access.  Run their free program in the background and when you bring up task manager, every process will have a link to their database to tell you what it is.

Sometimes simple fixes are the best

Subject: General Tech | April 13, 2006 - 03:13 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Sick of cords all over your desktop, and don't want to give up your favourite mouse for a wireless one, plus all the batteries you have to keep in the desk drawer?  PC Modding Malaysia reviews an incredibly simple solution ... the XTracPads Mouse Bungee.

Like an old friend, but one you are never happy to see

Subject: General Tech | April 13, 2006 - 12:07 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Suddenly your desktop turns an alarming shade of blue, with white text in your system font, and the adrenaline starts to surge as you desperately try to remember if you have saved recently.  The BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) is something you become very familiar with, and PC Stats hopes to make it rarer in your life, and give you more tools to deal with it if it does try to make you miserable.

It's almost like MP3 playing tupperware

Subject: General Tech | April 12, 2006 - 12:20 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Ars Technica reviews some inexpensive flash based MP3 players, all holding around 512MB.  Don't worry about killing a 40GB iPod at the beach, bring one of these fairly easy to replace players for those trips into human friendly environments that have hazards for electronics.

Get your patches while they're hot

Subject: General Tech | April 12, 2006 - 11:56 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Time to use that Windows Update shortcut in your tools menu, 10 critical patches came out yesterday, mostly for IE, though  others are affected as well.  CNet reports no screaming about incompatabilities, so you will be safer getting them installed than leaving it for a while.

Enjoy someone else's installation pain

Subject: General Tech | April 11, 2006 - 11:54 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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While putting together a system for review, ExtremeTech ran into a little problem most of us are familiar with, no POST.  Read on for some tips on what to do, and some reassurance that, in fact those things don't just happen to you.

Is Electro-Smog really a worry

Subject: General Tech | April 10, 2006 - 12:03 PM | Jason Smith
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Electro-Smog sounds like the newest graphics feature in a game, or maybe the basis for one of this year's summer disaster movies.  The Tech Zone stops using their bluetooth headsets for a moment to wirelessly post a look at how all of the radio frequencies we are bombarded with might affect our health, if at all ... I still don't see how we can live in a dark, futuristic world without electrosmog setting the mood.

Buy a Motherboard and Processor, get Age of Empires 3 Free!

Subject: General Tech | April 8, 2006 - 08:22 AM | Ryan Shrout
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One of our great sponsors, Monarch Computer, asked me to pass on the news that this weekend they are sweetening the deal on the free Age of Empires deal going around the web!  Now, only at MCS, you only need to buy an AMD processor and motherboard combo to get the game for free; you don't need to buy a new video card anymore! 

Age of Empires III is a great RTS game and if you haven't tried it yet, this is a great chance to get

Become oblivious to the world

Subject: General Tech | April 7, 2006 - 12:29 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Oblivion, the fourth in the Elder Scrolls series, is here to preempt every responsibility and hobby you have.  Don't beleive me?  Just read the review at Elite Bastards ... then again, if you value life outside the house, you might want to skip it.

Google Earth just got more learnin'

Subject: General Tech | April 7, 2006 - 12:11 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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CNET just discovered the newest thing about Google Earth.  Google has joined with Discovery Communications to bring historical information to 10 U.S. landmarks.  It won't be too much longer until their database grows, and others start to add their own content.  Where was this when I was in high school?

Victory is within your grasp

Subject: General Tech | April 6, 2006 - 06:23 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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GruntvillE has reviewed 2 mats from Corepad, one which is a large high quality mousepad, The Victory, and a 3 foot wide one called the Deskpad XXXL.  These will help you get that last bit of inaccuracy out of your mousing, or raise mediocre performance to new heights.

Securing Wireless, Easy and Very Important

Subject: General Tech | April 6, 2006 - 12:03 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Adrian's Rojak Pot points out the importance and simplicity of securing your wireless network.  You may have setup the network to share a net connection, but isn't it better to know who you are sharing with?

"Many of us are hooked onto WiFi these days. But just how secure are our wireless networks?

Join jwsk as he discusses why we should beef up the security of our wireless networks and how we

can do it quickly and easily!"

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Get wireless audio without selling blood

Subject: General Tech | April 5, 2006 - 03:27 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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TECHGAGE reviews an interesting product from Logitech, called the Wireless Music System.  For around $130, you get a broadcaster and reciever, that integrate with any PC and stereo system, allowing you to broadcast music from a PC or MP3 player right to your stereo.

Get your shiny new ESP machine

Subject: General Tech | April 5, 2006 - 11:53 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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CNet has posted a story on an MIT project that has designed a device to read minds.  While it may not give away exactly what someone is thinking, it will tell their mood with surprising accuracy.  Read about it so that you can recognize if someone is using it the next time you sit down to play poker.

Apple to Let Windows XP Applications Run on Mac OS

Subject: General Tech | April 5, 2006 - 10:08 AM | Jonathan Hung
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In what can be their biggest strategic maneuver since switching to Intel CPUs, Apple Computer has just announced it will allow users of their Macintosh computers using Intel chips run Windows XP software.

The software is called "Bootcamp" and is availble for download now as a trial. Bootcamp will also be available in Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" (I'm waiting for "Puma" myself...).

Those of us who have been keeping an eye on Mactels this announcement is not a big surprise as videos of Windows XP running on these computers have been available for some time already.

The difference a BIOS can make

Subject: General Tech | April 4, 2006 - 04:17 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Overclockers Online reviewed the ECS K1A MVP before it was available, and were not impressed with the overclocking potential.  Now that the board has been through a few BIOS revisions, they revisit the board to see what effect a more mature BIOS will have.

Intel, Red Hat Launch Global Solution Acceleration Program

Subject: General Tech | April 4, 2006 - 02:49 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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LINUXWORLD, Boston, April 4, 2006 —
Intel Corporation and Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading
provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced the creation
of a global program to help customers plan for, accelerate and optimize
their deployments of Linux solutions. The program will be the first of
its kind for Linux solutions development, initially focused on
developing and disseminating tools for virtualization of enterprise
computing.