As some of you may know, I still run on dial-up. Recently, Facebook switched to their new GUI and added features and “cleaned it up”. However, with the switch came many bugs that aren’t seeming to be addressed no matter how many emails I send their support staff.

First of all, I can’t even login anymore. Basically when I type in my username and pass it doesn’t load and process the attempt. This instantly told me it was a server-side script issue and nothing to do with my internet or computer. Nonetheless, I went ahead and attempted the following steps:

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The gaming industry has finally seen a decrease in sales for the first time in the economic situation. While hardware sales dropped 18%, video game sales dropped 17% from $1.72 billion to $1.43 billion and software sales dropped 17% as well. This decrease is reported by the NPD while conducting their monthly studies in March. Although the situation has effected all other industries, it is no surprise that the gaming industry is one of the last to suffer. Offering recreation and infinite possibilities, it makes only sense that this would be one of the last to find their brick wall.

A NDP analyst, Anita Fraizer, had this to say about the situation,

While it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry given this month’s results, it’s important to remember that two very big things are different this year than last. First, Easter fell in March last year whereas it fell in April this year, and last March included the release of Super

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Microsoft finally allows users to remove software that they include on your system when you buy their new Operating System, Windows 7, next year. In response to the EU’s protests and the US’s anti-trust suits they are finally allowing users to remove key programs like Internet Explorer and Media Player from their system by placing an icon in the Control Panel.

However, when you “remove” it from your system, it will remain installed but lack substinence. This is a big step forward from all the years of problems Microsoft has faced under Bill Gates regarding these issues. Now, it seems, that the new CEO will be complying more and more with international governments to eliminate such obstacles.

These new developments are gold to the ears of companies like Google and Mozilla who have been bottle necked by the bundling Microsoft has done to quell competition over the years.

Image courtesy of thetechherald.

Carol Bartz, the new Chief Executive, is said to begin reconstruction of Yahoo sometime next week. From sources within Yahoo, Carol is supposedly placing a traditional structure on Yahoo much like the one she employed at Autodesk. From another prominent source,

Most expect Bartz to do a C-level style set-up, with executives like a chief operating officer, chief technology officer and also a new, more powerful chief media officer (who will also head PR), all reporting to her.

After losing many of their executives to Microsoft including Larry Heck (VP of search and advertisement sciences) and Qi Lu (VP of engineering for search and advertisement sciences), it looks like there might be a tough task ahead of Ms.Bartz.

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The widely acclaimed Tabula Rasa will end its service on February 28th, according to the open letter distributed by the company. The company has begun distributing rewards for their other games, as well as refunding subscriptions that were paid for February and January. NCSoft had sited that the reason for closing the service was that the game had a player population of less than it had anticipated, citing a gap between real and expected revenues.

Rumors had been floating around that Tabula Rasa would be made free to the public, however with the recent events putting forth, Tabula Rasa seems to be officially closing all services. Tabula Rasa will indeed be missed by many players, however in my opinion, I think NCSoft is making the right decision to focus on their more popular games, instead of lingering on some of their dying franchises.

Recently Microsoft started implementing it’s latest invention: a ‘Fix it’ button on its self help pages. It isn’t very widespread as of now, but the project is quickly gaining ground, seeing as how it started off with roughly four automatic ‘fix-its’ in December, and now it has grown to about 100 different ‘fix-its.’

To see how it worked, I decided to personally to try out this new feature. I found an easy one for me to try: The Internet Explorer icon is missing from your desktop. Upon arriving on the page, the button stuck out rather quickly. They still have manual fix instructions for Do-It-Yourselfers, but now you can automatically do it.

First of all, I put my IE icon in my recycle bin, then emptied the bin. Next, I clicked on the ‘Fix-It’ button, and a download message appeared. I chose to save the file, and an install wizard came up, so I installed the program that was designed to put an IE icon on my desktop. Next it required me to restart my computer, which I did. Then I noticed that the icon appeared without restarting my computer, but I went ahead and took the advise of the wizard and restarted my computer.

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On Tuesday, February 3, MySpace removed nearly 90,000 of its over 110 million users who were identified as sex offenders.  MySpace is a social networking website that has drawn in a younger crowd. 

Following the younger crowd is the sexual predators that lie and fake their age in order to lure in the users who are not careful.  Both MySpace and Facebook are constantly trying to reduce the number of sexual predators who use their sites but it is almost impossible to root out. 

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Seven months ago IBM created the most powerful supercomputer. Now IBM seeks to create an even more powerful computer; one that has the computing power of two million laptops.

You heard me right. Two million laptops. Equal to 20 petaflops. Much larger than the supercomputer that they build last year, which was the first computer to break the one petaflop barrier, pulling in at 1.105 petaflops.

They have codenamed it the Sequoia computer, and they schedule it to finish in 2011 for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, being built for the purpose of simulating nuclear tests. IBM says that it can also be used for weather forecasting or oil exploration. It will take up the same space as 96 refrigerator-sized racks in an area of 3422 square feet.

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A member in another forum called lolel had an interesting post, it said this,

“I had an issue with Securom launching the game using my retail CD. It was not recognized as a genuine disk. So I sent them an an email and they responded back in less than 12 hours. They sent a link to a new LaunchGTAIV.exe file that happens to be a no CD launcher. Below is what they wrote with a link to the new .exe file:”

So what do you think happened? Well the unthinkable happened SecuROM sent him a working no cd exe. Here is their email back to him.

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In these economical times, many of us are now forced to actually give a hand in trying to figure ways to cut back on spending. Some people have even gone the ridiculous lengths to sit in the dark just to save on electricity. However, I think there are many ways to save money without affecting your personal lifestyle. Simply cut down on the expenses you don’t need, focus on what you need and what makes economical sense in the long run, as well as choosing cheaper alternatives without sacrificing quality. 

This leads me to talk about purchasing computers. No matter how bad times seem, we may need to purchase a new computer at some point in time, which recently happened to me. Most of us may be accustomed to just heading to the store, or visiting an online alternative and purchasing a pre-manufactured system from one of the leading developers such as Apple, Dell, HP and others. However, did you ever sit down to think how expensive this is as a homeowner? Over the last 10 years, I have purchased 4 computers (high end ones for their time period), and have spent quite a lot on it. 

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