News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Turns out that American cheese is the sausage of cheese making—you don’t want to know how it’s made. And there’s the fact that it’s legally named “a homogeneous plastic mass.” Despite this, American cheese is still my favorite.
It doesn’t pay to be a repeat customer at certain online stores. Some internet shopping sites charge different amounts for the same product, based on whether you’ve previously done business with them. It’s possible to get significant discounts simply by deleting your browser’s cookies.
Link: http://consumerist.com/…
Cell phone companies are testing a new system whereby the user connects to the phone network via his/her internet connection. It costs less and gives better reception in the home. This seems like it could backfire, however, because the cost is really being transferred to the company providing the internet service.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Looks like the first round of products for the new USB 3.0 standard won’t come close to the interface’s maximum speed. According to the linked article, first-generation devices will run at about 150MB/s versus the 625MB/s allowed by the standard. Note, however, that this is still twice as fast as USB 2.0.
Link: http://www.tgdaily.com/…
(via digg)
New Zealand will be implementing a new section of its copyright law, aimed at file sharers. Guilt will be assumed upon accusation. The penalty will be to disconnect the user’s internet service. This reminds me to be thankful for the Bill of Rights.
Link: http://torrentfreak.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Update: New Zealand has changed its mind.
Because the borders of a country are special cases, the U.S. Government is allowed more flexibility in border zone searches and seizures than is normally permitted by the 4th Amendment of the Constitution. For this purpose, the border zone of the U.S. is defined as anything within 100 miles of its external boundary. This doesn’t sound that bad, until one realizes that it encompasses two-thirds of the U.S. population.
Link: http://www.aclu.org/…
(via digg)
The linked article has a list of the 500 most common passwords. If any of your passwords are on the list, it may be time for change. The site doesn’t explain how the list was compiled, but the original source is Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication by Mark Burnett and Dave Kleiman.
Link: http://www.whatsmypass.com/…
(via Consumerist)
“Mirroring” (aka RAID level 1) is where a computer has two or more identical drives, and anything that gets written to one is also written to the other(s). This provides a basic level of protection should one of the drives fail. But there are many, many reasons why it’s not a viable backup method, especially for a commercial website. At a minimum, any backup should be physically separated from the computer itself, preferably at a significant distance in case of fire, flood, or similar disaster. I’ve been hearing a lot of radio advertisements for a remote backup system called Carbonite. Also, PC World has a list of 17 online backup sites. If you’ve tried one of these I’d like to hear your opinion on how well it works.
Apple’s iPhone App Store recently served up its 500 millionth download, nearly double the amount from just one month previously. Looks like Apple has another winner on its hands.
On a related note, here’s an article on how the iPhone’s touch screen works. Turns out it isn’t like the others.
Thanks to Josh for this topic.
Apparently we are in the midst of a massive internet worm attack, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in years. Estimates of the number of compromised systems range from 6% to 30%. Let me clarify—that’s the percentage of all Windows computers in the world that have been taken over. The worm doesn’t destroy data on the target systems, it just turns them into ’bots for sending spam and creating DDOS attacks. Time to update those virus definitions and do a scan.
Link: http://www.computerworld.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
Several Seagate hard drive models, but especially the Barracuda 7200.11, have been freezing up and failing. The problem is with the firmware, and Seagate says that the data is still intact on the drives (but just not accessible). See the linked article for instructions on how to update the firmware.
Link: http://seagate.custkb.com/…
Update: The first fix released by Seagate had a bug in it. They’ve released a second fix.
In the third installment of an ongoing series, Chad’s News is pleased to introduce the Electroman power strip and surge protector.
Link: http://www.whatonearthcatalog.com/…
(via Neatorama)
