Back in 2008, Apple introduced the new Mini DisplayPort standard as the only video output method on the new MacBooks and LCDs. Mini DisplayPort is a freely-licensed VESA standard [1] and has now been adopted by a number of other display manufacturers, and is a miniaturized version of the original DisplayPort interface.

This week, the fourth revision of the HDMI high-definition video output connector was revealed in the form of HDMI D, weighing in at a mere fraction of the original HDMI connector size and intended for use with mobile and embedded high-definition video devices [2]. The new HDMI connector is expected to ship later this year, and is in direct competition with VESA’s Mini DisplayPort interface.

VESA is the international governing body for computer graphics standards, and has been designing video output standards since its conception in the late 80’s [3]. HDMI is a private group formed in 2002, and licenses its interfaces out to manufacturers at four cents a device + a $10,000 yearly fee.

HDMI doesn’t have many (if at all) advantages over DisplayPort, besides support for the xvYCC color space and Dolby audio codecs (as a part of the licensed technology). However, despite the licensing costs, HDMI has proved popular mainly due to its original mass adoption as a result of being signal-compatible with the DVI interface [4].

The new HDMI-D interface is smaller than the Mini DisplayPort, though both have the same maximum resolution/bandwidth and similar power requirements. The numbers are as follows:

References

1. The Case for VESA DisplayPort
2. HDMI-D Press Release
3. VESA – Wikipedia
4. HDMI FAQs
5. Mini DisplayPort Specification [PDF]

Despite PC users’ widely-varying taste and preference in operating systems and platforms, gamers need Windows. In fact, one of the biggest reason people around the globe tend to dual-boot is their undying love for gaming and the fact that no other OS out there can boast the wide range of gaming titles and genres available for their platform like Windows can. The traditional choice faced by most non-Windows users has been to either install and dual-boot Windows or bite the built and buy a gaming console – ask us, we would know.

But this is all about to change, thanks to Microsoft’s reckless abandon for one of its few truly-loyal userbases.

When Microsoft first began its frenzied Vista marketing campaign in 2006, one of the points it focused on most and repeated over and over again was just how big of a gaming revolution Windows Vista was. Gaming was a large part of the Vista WOW campaign, but it has since failed to disappoint. But this isn’t an article about Vista, it’s about how Windows is poised to lose its gaming advantage if Microsoft doesn’t get its act together sometime soon.

The problem is that Windows – standalone or in a dual-boot – is quickly becoming the lesser-appealing option when compared to a gaming console… in large part thanks to Microsoft’s ridiculous, biased, and fairly infuriating decisions to release games for Xbox and then for PC.

A major part of the gaming/entertainment Vista PR that went out around the same time as the OS: Microsoft Announces Spectacular Windows Vista Title Lineup. Spectacular? Hardly so. Take a look at the Microsoft Game Studios release history for 2006 and 2007, you’ll find a great disparity between the number of titles MGS released for Windows verses those for the Xbox (360)…

If you ignore expansion packs (the Zoo Tycoon development team seems to love these), you’ll find that Microsoft Game Studios released a total of nineteen titles for the Xbox over these two years, compared to a mind-blowing six titles for the PC over that same period – half of which were either available on the Xbox simultaneously or years before!

But what does Microsoft have to say about the obvious deterioration of the Windows gaming market?

The Windows gaming world continues to evolve, and we believe in the future of that property.

-Shane Kim, Microsoft’s Vice President of Interactive Entertainment

Sorry Mr. Kim, but we find that a bit hard to believe. Mr. Kim’s statement came in response to the recent (shocking) news that Microsoft’s (PC game development) Ensemble Studios – authors of Microsoft’s Age of Empires claim-to-fame hit series – would be shut down for "fiscal reasons."

Obviously Microsoft is in a hard place here, needing to cater to both of the (competing) PC and gaming console markets at the same time. However, due to the serious 3rd-party hardware/platform competition in the gaming console market it seems that Microsoft’s decision has been to give Xbox the priority here.

It’s obviously not Microsoft’s job to develop games for its own platform – technically, all they have to do for either the PC or the Xbox is develop the APIs and provide 3rd party gaming developers with the tools and support they need to make it work. And 3rd party developers have not let anyone down, with astonishing numbers of titles being published for both platforms.

But if Microsoft wants to ensure that its platform retains its current hold on the PC gaming market they’re going to need to do a bit more to convince potential Windows gamers to stick to their platform and not go out and get a gaming console instead. It’s quite a logical choice to focus on Windows here – there are literally millions of Windows users who would be using something else if it wasn’t for Windows’ vice-like grip on the gaming market.

The fact is, PC gamers and console gamers aren’t the same market targets. It won’t kill Microsoft’s Xbox division to treat their Windows gamers with a little bit more respect than they’re currently doing – if not for the users’ sake then for their own.

But no matter what Microsoft Game Studios does or doesn’t do, it can’t actually damage the Windows gaming platform – all it does is create a scenario wherein another OS can work hard and potentially overtake Windows at its own game (pun intended!).

Mac OS and Linux both have a rare opportunity on the horizon – but for it to have any impact on the current PC gaming sector’s dynamics, they’ll have to put a bit more effort into the gaming scene than they’re currently doing. Something that requires this sort of centralized coordination is definitely not one of Linux’s strong suites, so the ball is now squarely in Apple’s playing field, and it’s up to them what they do with it.

Basically, Microsoft needs to watch its step. The incentives for PC gaming are at their lowest levels in years with even real-time strategy games – the PC’s long-standing forte – being developed first for the gaming consoles and then, possibly, for the PC (yes, we’re looking at you, Halo Wars!).

And then there’s Bungie – cross-platform game developers bought up by Microsoft years ago, authors of the internationally-acclaimed “Halo” series, and now released from Microsoft’s reigns with its sights set squarely on developing games for the Mac once more.

At the end of the day, Microsoft’s size is getting the better of itself once more; with its own divisions failing to compete with themselves they way they should. Microsoft needs to pick up on this slow degradation of PC gaming satisfaction and do something to buck the trend, or else they could suffer some serious consequences.

For a device that’s supposed to do Firefox, Skype and not much more, an underpowered PC with a touchscreen isn’t going to accomplish much. For one thing, Firefox is a huge performance drain and a memory hog to boot that underpowered hardware (even on-par with an Eee) simply won’t support and for another, there’s no way to get PC hardware down to the sub-$200 price range.

What TechCrunch wants – whether they know it or not – is an oversized PDA, not an underpowered PC. And it’s not just a question of semantics, it’s a question of foundations and principles – and it makes a huge difference in terms of end-user experience and the bottom line.

For the functionality that TechCrunch is trying to pack into this opensource, mass-market web gadget, there’s nothing that wouldn’t work better, faster, and cheaper on specialized hardware rather than on generic PC components.

While the world is now in the midst of a touch-screen craze, it’s important to keep in mind when and where that works. For a web browser and a VoIP client, a touchscreen doesn’t provide much added value, but it does add quite a hefty amount to the bottom line. A couple of buttons at the top/side of the device that provide basic functionality (Go/Dial, Stop/End) would certainly suffice for most purposes. A thin slide-out keyboard is far-cheaper and more user-friendly than an onscreen keyboard, and would make things like entering site addresses and using email clients and Google Docs quite enjoyable.

A PDA-style ARM processor, running software compiled for the ARM platform could provide a more satisfactory end-user experience with regards to performance and can come in smaller form-factors and/or as embedded systems.

It’s important to bear in mind the difference between consumer electronics and a computer. Whereas Asus had to keep their Eee x86 so that it can run whatever a a PC user could demand from it, a web browsing tablet only needs to run what the manufacturer intends it to. In hardware design, there’s a constant compromise between flexibility and complexity which is directly tied to price, size, and ease-of-use.

A tablet designed to surf the web and run Skype doesn’t need to do anything else; but it shouldn’t do anything else if price and size are of any concern. It’s easy to get caught up imagining a device that can do anything and everything; but you can only go so far before things begin to spiral out of control.

The entire 8.x line has been of sub-par quality to date (8.3 and 8.4 in particular, which seem to crash randomly on a large percentage of Vista machines), hopefully the 8.5 release can provide a much-needed boost in terms of quality and stability.

It’s obviously too early to tell if the 8.5 releases addresses these issues, which are not listed in the release notes, but it’s possible that some of the causes of the problem have been resolved as a result of one or more of the bugfixes in this version.

• A cell-phone-wielding shopper enters the shopping plaza.
• Path Intelligence monitors mounted throughout the plaza detect that a new mobile phone is in the vicinity and log its IMEI code.
• As the shopper moves around the mall, his or her movements are continuously triangulated by the multiple Path Intelligence units, allowing movements to be mapped and saved for later analysis.

The good news: it’s totally private, there isn’t any (automated) way to map a particular record in the Path Intelligence logs to an actual person. The resulting logs can be analyzed for shopping patterns (where people go after visiting a certain store, peak hours of traffic, most popular regions, etc.) later on, providing valuable intelligence and allowing for improvements.

The bad news: The Path Intelligence logs — in-conjunction with other monitoring techniques such as cashier timestamps, credit card log, video surveillance, etc. — can result in the identification of the persons associated with logged behavior in the system; posing a real and tangible privacy/Big Brother concern.

The weird news: Everything in the above scenario can be directly mapped to an exact counterpart in the current web-tracking solutions in use:

• Shopper -> Visitor to a site
• Mall/Shopping Plaza -> Website
• IMEI code -> IP Address (unique, but not personally identifying on its own)
• Path Intelligence -> One of the many web-statistics companies

Everything from the tracking techniques used to the information gathered to the way its analyzed and used is directly taken from the way cyber traffic has been logged and analyzed for years. After all, why not?

Web monitoring solutions have proven to be reliable metrics for understanding the userbase of any given site; and more importantly, the number one tool to improving conversion rates and increasing the visits-to-sales ratio. If there are technologies that have proven invaluable to boosting the online commerce economy, it makes sense for people to attempt to apply these same methods to everyday life in the real world as well.

It’s somewhat of an epiphany to consider the amount of information available in cyberspace and how easy it is to obtain and analyze when compared to the physical world we live in. The quantity, quality, and pervasiveness of the data available to online far exceeds anything in the real world, and the use that it can be put to are truly amazing – and scary when extended to our normal lives.

Imagine for an instance the typical data available to a website owner enlisted with one or more of the web statistics services and just how useful such knowledge would be in the real world:

• Referrals. Who came from where, how people came across your store, and what they’re most interested in.
• Popularity Ranking. Know what stores in each mall are the most popular, down to the last customer. Find out exactly what sections of each store get the most attention (then compare it with sections are currently getting the most sales and try to maximize sales in those departments).
• Shopper Characteristics. As the Times article explains, the IMEI number can be traced back to the country the shopper comes from. In high-tourist areas (think New York, Las Vegas, London, Chicago, etc.) this kind of intelligence can provide great insight…

Basically, the real world is starting catch up with the online one (not the other way around, folks!), and there’s a lot it has to learn and a lot it has to benefit.

The problem with Express Gate isn’t that it’s Linux nor that it’s there – it’s the rather more-mysterious question of why it’s there in the first place. If ASUS had thought to make use of this Linux distribution to provide data recovery & diagnostics services, offer advanced BIOS configuration and updating options, or one of the infinite other creative ideas that one can manage with a light and fully-configurable OS that ships embedded with the motherboard, perhaps then we could see a use for it.

Instead, ASUS has opted to ship Express Gate with a Firefox-based web-browser and Skype (out of all things). Again, it’s not a matter of having something against either Firefox or Skype; but just the general lack of context for their being there. These days, a web browser is a means to an end. You don’t use it to browse the web, you use it to interact with the web. A web browser on a Live CD-like Linux installation isn’t as useful nor as productive as the web browser sitting on the desktop of your main OS, be it Windows or Linux.

ASUS’s major selling point is that Splashtop takes 5-seconds to load at most. If you stop and think about, it’s only impressive because it’s being taken out of context. 5 seconds is fast, but just how often do you need quick access to Skype and your computer isn’t already on? Most of us turn our PCs on and off once a day at most – and there are many that prefer to hibernate, standby, or just leave it on indefinitely.

While a “5-second desktop environment” is a highly-desirable feature, a “5-second basic desktop environment without the programs, applications and documents you need” isn’t.

At the end of the day, ASUS has an idea that has a lot of potential but isn’t being directed correctly. That spare desktop has a lot of room for usefulness and productivity, but a primitive web-surfing environment just isn’t one of them. Until Express Gate features a more-compelling feature set, it’s just another one of those PR initiatives. By “more-compelling” we mean “more exclusive” with applications and products that just won’t work as well on your usual OS (like the BIOS management and system recovery options we listed above), otherwise there isn’t any incentive to forgo the extra 10 seconds it takes to get into your real OS.

Express Gate was originally used as a way to get people to spend the extra cash for the higher-level motherboards costing a couple of hundred bucks extra, and now it’s being used to get people to choose ASUS over similarly-featured contenders. That wouldn’t normally be a problem – after all, extra features is always a great reason to choose one board over another – except in this case, it’s just fluff.

All that being said, it certainly is great to see that Linux has finally reached a level of prevalence where major motherboard manufacturers will consider making it a part and parcel of every board they sell – a kind of perverse play on all the anti-trust violations Microsoft has been accused of by convincing OEMs to ship all PCs with Windows from the get-go. And it’s important not to forget the role ASUS has played in bringing Linux to the masses in the past year – from the brilliantly-viral Eee to Express Gate, Asus has definitely done a lion’s share of work in making Linux as common-place as the PC itself. Hopefully future revisions of Express Gate can find a better use for Splashtop Linux and warrant a kinder review.

What are the most common causes of notebook sleep issues?

• A process running on the system does not allow the system to enter sleep mode.
• A hardware interrupt, such as some peripheral devices for example.
• An unstable driver which does not properly support sleep states or is just buggy.

I’ve owned several notebooks over the years, and almost every one of them have had an issue with sleep mode in one way or another, and over time I’ve learned a certain "practice" which ensures that sleep mode generally works when I close the lid of my computer…

1. Make sure that all of the latest updates are installed for your operating system (Windows Update on Microsoft Windows, Software Update on Mac OS X, your favorite package manager on Linux).
2. Close any running programs on the system (and exit any programs which are running in the notification area which is next to the clock on Windows systems).
3. Unplug all external devices (USB, FireWire, etc.) This includes your external keyboard and mouse if you’re using one, your printer, and whatever else you have plugged in. And no, your USB-powered rocket launcher isn’t an exception, even though it is really cool.
4. Use the "Sleep" option in your operating system to put the computer to sleep instead of the lid (Start > Turn Off Computer > Sleep on Windows XP, Apple menu > Sleep on Mac OS X).
5. Once the computer has gone to sleep, close the lid.

You’re probably wondering why it’s not a good idea to always rely on the lid of your computer to put it to sleep, and the answer is fairly simple. Notebooks have a sensor or switch which detects the position of the display (lid) and when the lid is closed to a certain degree it should trigger sleep mode… only that’s not always the case.

Some notebooks take up to one minute to fully go into sleep mode, and general habits have shown that you’re more likely to close the lid and immediately tuck your computer into its carrying case, which means you’re moving the computer around in mid-air before the hard drive head has gotten a chance to park, which could cause damage to the hard drive (and your valuable data). By using the operating systems "sleep" function and waiting for the signal that your computer is snoozing away (whether it be a flashing power light or a pulsating sleep light), you give the computer a chance to park the hard disk head and enter sleep mode correctly.

Mind you, some notebooks with older NVIDIA drivers on Windows Vista may cause your computer to go into a perpetual coma every time it falls asleep. If your notebook manufacturer hasn’t provided you with a newer graphics driver, I’d recommend consulting a sleep therapist LaptopVideo2Go.com, which has all of the latest NVIDIA drivers and modified INF files for installing them on any NVIDIA graphics card.

The problem is, these capacitors are also susceptible to internal damage and malfunctions, even if not as often. And when these capacitors do fail, it’s not as easy to tell nor as easy to fix.

Having recently purchased a Gigabyte X38-DQ6, I was disappointed to learn that their “Ultra Durable” gimmick didn’t necessarily mean that the motherboard wouldn’t ship with a bad capacitor in the first place. It soon became quite obvious the motherboard was afflicted with an ailment or the other: every time the PC would be improperly shutdown, the X38-DQ6 would begin to boot-cycle and refuse to POST until it was removed from the power for several minutes to an hour. And that period grew progressively longer until about a month later it still wouldn’t boot even after a 24-hour break.

The only good thing about the Gigabyte X38-DQ6 is the two year warranty – which I used to promptly ship the board back to the dealer and ask for a replacement. A week later, I was told to pick up the board; and upon my arrival I was informed that they had “thoroughly tested” the board and found nothing wrong with it.

Sure enough, the motherboard worked just fine once I’d re-assembled the machine; but a week later and it was power-cycling indefinitely once more. So I shipped the board back and was told that it was probably a bad capacitor (which I already knew, and tried to explain) and that it wasn’t detected since the GA-X38-DQ6 uses solid-polymer electrolytic capacitors which usually don’t leak or explode when they go bad – they just stop working the way they should without any visible symptoms of damaged/malfunctioning components.

Perhaps solid-core capacitors really are “ultra durable”, but companies like Gigabyte had better learn to start testing each individual capacitor on allegedly-damaged boards before declaring them free of defect and shipping them right back to their customers.

Let me get it out of my system before I even continue – every platform has a place in the market, every platform caters differently to different groups of people.

There are things that Microsoft Windows does quite well, there are things that Apple’s Mac OS X does well (I’m not really in the mood to touch on the “classic” Mac OS, I didn’t really enjoy those days of my middle-school education dealing with Mac OS 8.6’s misbehavior utter delinquency), there are things that Linux and FreeBSD do well, hell there are things that DOS does well (remember DOS? Disk Operating System? The thing you actually had to type commands into for your computer to do anything besides sit there and look at you like a 1980’s commercial for ET).

With that being said, why are there so many flame wars over which platform someone chooses to support? We aren’t monkeys, we don’t need to be flinging poo at each other. A lot of people like Linux because it’s free and the source code is readily available under the GPL licensing, it’s great for someone who really wants to learn the inside of an operating system in their spare time. A lot of people like Mac OS X for it’s outstanding user interface and rich UNIX underpinnings and excellent applications, everything feels like it goes together and overall it ‘just works’. But, the majority use Microsoft Windows, and that’s perfectly fine – Windows has the largest user base on the planet, there are thousands (if not millions) of different programs developed for it, and Microsoft have a really great set of developer tools available (known as Visual Studio).

Instead of whining over which operating system you want to sleep with you prefer and insulting every other person who isn’t running [insert your favorite operating system here], try to channel that negative energy into something constructive — like posting constructive criticism or helpful information, instead of turning every thread on the internet into a slag-fest between a healthy piece of food (Apple), a piece of glass (Windows), a penguin (Linux), or the devil (BSD). It’s not rocket science, it’s not politics, it’s a computer, a tool for communicating with friends, family, and co-workers no matter where you are, a tool for keeping track of your quarterly budget, a tool for listening to music or enjoying a movie, a tool for viewing the pictures your sister just sent you from her wedding in Milan. Let me say it again, just to be clear — a computer is a tool. It is not a religion or a cult following, and it doesn’t change your underpants for you.

Have you ever heard the voice nagging in the back of your head–you know, the one that’s always saying “you need a new computer…”–in some sort of off-tone zombie voice that resembles that of a dying cat robotic drone.

We’ve all heard it. But why must one always live on the bleeding edge? Let’s take a look further…

For example: This past Tuesday, Apple Inc. announced updated MacBook & MacBook Pro computers, featuring Penryn processors and some other slightly bumped specifications (such as 256MB video memory and a larger hard drive on the base model, and multi-touch trackpad capabilities). Sure enough, within an hour of the announcement, a hoard of MacBook Pro owners tossed their notebooks up on eBay or other on-line classified services (craigslist, anyone?)

Big deal! A whole 200 MHz processor clock cycle speed increase, a larger hard drive, and some video memory you’re not likely going to use unless you’re planning on running Boot Camp on that Mac and fragging up some people in Unreal Tournament 3 under Windows Vista or you plan on using Adobe Photoshop or iMovie heavily. You’re not going to see an hour extra battery life, or the ability to have your computer prepare your coffee on the dot and greet you personally every morning-”Hello, Mr. Jones, here’s your coffee, the newspaper is on the table, and the dog has pissed all over the damn floor and has taken a dump in your suade shoes soiled in the foyer.”

Point in case: I’m using a 2.2 GHz MacBook Pro, 15″ base model with 2 GB of RAM and 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. It’s rock solid and I haven’t had a problem with it since I purchased it, and I’m rather impressed with it. The update from Apple this past Tuesday didn’t phase me in the least. Why? Is it because I’m a former Windows user? Could very well be. Or could it be the fact I didn’t want to sell a computer that I’ve only had for one month just to pick up the latest and greatest. My MacBook Pro does everything I need it to, and I can’t even remotely justify upgrading at this point. I don’t even need multi-touch trackpad capability, I use an external keyboard 99% of the time, and when I’m not I’m usually using the keyboard on my notebook, not playing with trackpad gestures all day… this is a professional grade notebook, not an iPhone or an iPod Touch; yes I know this can be useful for some people, but for me it would be useless.

I can pretty much split the demographic into three sections:

1. New computer comes out, and suddenly your once-loved notebook is looking for a new home on eBay or craigslist.
2. You bought your notebook within the past few months, and now you’re upset or suddenly unsatisfied because a new model has come out.
3. You don’t care.

In the past two weeks, the GA P35-DQ6 has been – quite literally – disappearing off shelves both online and offline. Popular online computer part retailers like Newegg, ZipZoomFly, TigerDirect, Fry’s, and Amazon — all of whom carried this highly-successful board a month ago — no longer have it in stock.

What’s even weirder (scarier, even) is that some stores like NewEgg and ZipZoomFly would keep some sort of record of out-of-stock items. The page would still be there, a backorder button would be present, and there would be some form of indication or the other that the product, at the very least, even existed at some point of time… but for some odd reason, they don’t.

We even had the DQ6 in a saved wishlist on NewEgg, and it just vanished from the wishlist without a warning or notification – only the 200-dollar less total alerted us to its absence – whereas an nVidia 8800 GTX model that was currently out of stock presented us with a colored warning in bold, red text at the top of the page.

What happened to the DQ6? Is it simply a matter of Gigabyte trying to push its (relatively) lackluster X38-DQ6 product line out when all the enthusiast review sites aren’t seeing a reason to spend the extra hundred greenbacks for the X38 model, especially when the P35 performs equally well and there is no reason to take the DDR3 dive?

Or perhaps something more sinister is afoot – after all, this wouldn’t be the first time a successful product turned out to have major problems that didn’t show up in initial testing. It certainly is unlikely, but what other explanation is there for the complete disappearance of the DQ6 off shelves on- and off-line? Because we’ve asked around, and it seems that the DQ6 is getting to be a lot harder to find in PC retailers across the US and Canada than it was a month ago – several stores in question no longer carry it, with no explanation as to why or even if they’ll be bringing it back sometime soon… despite popular demand!

Gigabyte has only (very) recently become a “trusted” name in hardware; their motherboards – even as recently as last year – were considered to be of inferior quality and more of the proverbial bark than the “byte,” (pun intended). But since the release of Intel’s highly-successful Conroe/Core 2 product line, they’ve quickly to the top of most of the web’s recommended retailers list. As Gigabyte’s stock-chart attests, they’ve gained quite a lot since the Conroe debut – which in turn implies that they’ve got quite a lot to lose too, and plenty of reasons to silently discontinue what could turn out to be a not-so-great product afterall… but we hope that’s not the case – if only for the sake of the thousands of enthusiasts who’ve spent their money on the P35-DQ6 and its ilk.

We’ve contacted NewEgg with regards to the availablity of the P35-DQ6 and hope to receive some form of answer to this highly-puzzling question soon.

Apparently Chris Carter’s insanely-popular X-Files (and its cult following) had more than just the plot lines down right, it seems that The Truth really is out there after all! A startling article on on MSNBC today reveals that implanted “medical” microchips used for the purpose of the identification of cats, dogs, horses, and the elderly really can cause cancer after all, just like their TV counterparts.

 For those of you not yet enlightened by Chris Carter’s science-ficitional work of art, here’s the gist of what happened (which is, by no means whatsoever, to be considered a substitute to actually watching the X-Files!). In the X-Files TV series, FBI Special Agent Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) was kidnapped by “aliens” who had a unique identification microchip implanted in the base of her neck. Seasons later, Agent Scully discovers the microchip and has it removed, triggering a malignant nasopharengeal tumor to develop (in her nasal cavity). Later on in the storyline, Agent Scully’s cancer is healed by finding a replacement microchip (and we later discover that the microchip can cure cancer and most other bodily illnesses).

Moral of the story: the truth is out there – you just need to know where to look. On this particular occasion, the topic of interest is a tiny microchip (implanted at the base of the neck!!) used to store medical & identification information on pets and humans. It’s about the size of a single grain of rice (see picture at top), and can be scanned by moving an electronic (RFID) scanner across the skin, where the wireless signal can be read.

A good idea at its core, it was approved by the FDA for use on human beings in 2005 (previously being limited to pets and other animals), and heralded as a great accomplishment and time/life-saver for those who really need it.

It turns out that the manufacturer didn’t let on a supposedly unimportant fact: it caused cancer in the rats it was originally tested on – something discovered long before in the mid-1990s, in separate studies conducted by toxicologists and veterinarians.

It’s widely known that many X-Files episodes, like Law & Order and other TV Show series, have some elements loosely based on real-world rumors & behaviors, with a good dash of imagination added to the mix. But it seems that even the “out there” plot lines for the X-Files mytharc episodes couldn’t keep up with real life, with over 2,000 chips already implanted in humans and millions [sic] of domesticated pets and animals across the country.

If you’re using Windows Vista and you’ve been getting a ton of blank blue screens (more on that later), and you just happen to have a Logitech USB mouse or keyboard with Logitech’s “Vista Compatible” SetPoint 4.00 installed, then that’s most likely to blame.

Not having written drivers ourselves, we can’t honestly and fairly point the finger of blame at any party in particular. It’s very possible that either Microsoft or Logitech is to blame for this, but you never know.

If you know how to analyze BSOD dumps (btw, blank BSODs won’t create kernel memory dumps, make sure you have “small memory dump” selected); you’ll find that the WinDBG (or whatever debugging tool you choose) points its stubby little fingers at USBPort.sys and Win32k.sys – both stock Vista components.

The fact that no Logitech-created or modified files trigger the BSOD coupled with the plethora of similar BSODs under non-Logitech hardware environments seems to lean heavily towards this being a Windows Vista kernel-related issue… Especially because Microsoft has issued several hotfixes that “address” USBPort.sys-related BSODs for Windows Vista – none of which seem to take care of this problem on our test machines.

Then again, low-level drivers for various USB-powered components can perform operations through these Windows-core files and end up causing them to trigger the BSOD through no fault of their own.

At any rate, we’ll post back as soon as we have definitive answer, and we’ll be contacting both Microsoft and Logitech in the meanwhile. For now, either get that 2 dollar mouse out of the closet or, better yet, go back to Windows 2003 or XP if you’re serious about productivity and uptime.

[list of usbport.sys-related kb-articles for windows vista]

Forget the quality of the drivers – after all, the Windows drivers are utter garbage as well compared to some of the other companies out there. So if you put aside the fact that their Linux drivers hardly work, the X-Fi isn’t even supported (they ask you to upgrade to Windows if you want to listen to hi-def audio…), and that the site looks like it hasn’t been touched since the X-Fi originally came out, you’re still left with a little problem: Linux users like music too! 

Arguably, they like music even more. Look at it this way: to use Linux, you have to be a geek. Who listens to music 24/7 (on their PC, that is) and spends 400 bucks on an audio card except for a geek?

If the news on their site is headlined “May 18th 2006,” do you really think they’ll have something worth downloading? If you guessed ‘no,’ you’re probably right.

The entire site is a disgrace, and seeing as it serves no purpose, it should be taken down. After all, in the undying words of Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” If the Open Source Creative website doesn’t remove all doubt of their total neglect to a growing portion of the world’s computer users, then what does?

Maybe it’s their Vista drivers that clean up the plate… After all, they’re just as bad if not worse – because though Creative claims they work great, good luck trying to get some of their cards to work on Windows Vista with the latest “Vista compliant” drivers – you should fallback to the Windows XP ones instead.

So what is it with Creative? Well, it’s not Creative alone that’s the problem – it’s any company that has a complete monopoly over a hardware market, and names its products after ridiculously self-obsessed gamers like “Fatal1ty.” Creative has a monopoly over the sound hardware market, and it’s really not pretty. You want good hardware, you have to go to Creative, because they’ve forced everyone out of the R&D Market. If you’re willing to settle with sub-par audible “bliss,” feel free to checkout Intel or Realtek – except your gaming friends will laugh you out of the next LAN party, because you don’t have a Fatal1ty too.

Creative needs to learn a lesson, and be a lesson for the other monopolies there that don’t take care of their loyal customers. It’s one thing to be a monopoly, and another to abuse your position as one. Because let’s face it, not all monopolies have websites that haven’t been updated since 1999…

That’s rather scary. A robot – that can fight, kill, & plant bombs – all indiscrimanetly of course. The last time we checked, AI wasn’t in production yet, so we highly doubt the “VIPeR” can tell the difference between civillian and “guerilla fighter.”

If it’s an indiscrimate killing machine, remotely deployed to “combat zones,” it’s going to kill all the wrong people. If you’ve ever been to Lebanon or Palestine, you’d realize just why this is such a ridiculous deception: there are no “combat zones,” just combatants amongst civillians. All of them are next-door-neighbors, fathers, brothers, children. They’re not fighting against an army, they’re fighting against armed citizens and rebels. There’s a big difference.

Israel obviously isn’t worried about humanitarianism (the Human Rights Organization has charged Israel with hundreds of counts of Crimes against Humanity repeatedly), and it’s obvious they don’t care if this thing kills a hundred children so long as they get the terrorist school teacher – they’ve made that obvious before.

The problem is, this kind of thing is only going to get more common as technology advances. While most of the human race has enough wits left about them to not release something like this in such scenarios, the Israeli Defense Dept. has already verified that after initial field tests, this will be used by the IDF Infantry forces.

A killing robot, a civillian-interspersed population, and a government that doesn’t care for consequences and has no one to be afraid of… Yep, we’re scared alright for the future of human civilization.