Tag: Media

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Does Bing Copy Google’s Search Results?

UPDATE 2:
Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it

UPDATE:
Bing’s reply.

Matt Cutts and Harry Shum

It’s the first day of February 2011 and the news are coming in. The first one that really caught my eye is Google’s accusing Bing of cheating by copying search results. It is not about the regular search results. It is about search with unusual misspellings.

Matt Cutts’ comment on Hacker News:

I had a front row seat for this test. I believe the experiment we ran provides conclusive proof. I’m on a panel with a representative from Bing later today and I’ll ask Bing about this directly.

I’m pretty sure Bing (read: Microsoft) could say that they want to give the users the best search results possible. If they did say that it means Bing would have admitted that Google is better. Bing could also say that they are not a mere search engine, they are Decision Engine.

Let’s see how this one goes.

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Blown Capacitors on eVGA GeForce 7100GS.

Yep, this would be another eVGA graphic card with blown capacitors. Practically all the ones I bought during the same period suffer the same fate. I suspect the inadequate cooling system cause the problem to begin with.

The blown capacitors on this board are: FZ67, FZ69 and FZ6A.

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Intel Is Fixing Design Error in Chipset.

From Intel Press Release:

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 31, 2011 – As part of ongoing quality assurance, Intel Corporation has discovered a design issue in a recently released support chip, the Intel® 6 Series, code-named Cougar Point, and has implemented a silicon fix. In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives. The chipset is utilized in PCs with Intel’s latest Second Generation Intel Core processors, code-named Sandy Bridge. Intel has stopped shipment of the affected support chip from its factories. Intel has corrected the design issue, and has begun manufacturing a new version of the support chip which will resolve the issue. The Sandy Bridge microprocessor is unaffected and no other products are affected by this issue.

The company expects to begin delivering the updated version of the chipset to customers in late February and expects full volume recovery in April.

Glad to know that Intel is being pro-active with their quality assurance policy. The next step they need to do is to re-consider the position they just filled; they don’t really need it.

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Don’t Panic: Yet another security vulnerability in Windows and the temporary fix.

Frist microsoft said this:

Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a vulnerability in all supported editions of Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow an attacker to cause a victim to run malicious scripts when visiting various Web sites, resulting in information disclosure. This impact is similar to server-side cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Microsoft is aware of published information and proof-of-concept code that attempts to exploit this vulnerability. At this time, Microsoft has not seen any indications of active exploitation of the vulnerability.

Then Microsoft provide this:

To have us fix this problem for you, go to the “Fix it for me” section.

What are you waiting for?

Related:

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Saturday Night Live, The Social Network and Mark Zuckerberg.

I would like to say that I have not watched Saturday Night Live in 10 something years, I only checked facebook once a week or less and I have not seen The Social Network. I would also like to say that I was involved in the making of The Social Network, a small role in the production.

Apparently Mark Zuckerberg is making a cameo on Saturday Night Live with Jesse Eisenberg as host. How do I know that? Twitter. Wired.com said so.

Recap:

  • Have not watched Saturday Night Live in years.
  • Have not watched The Social Network even though I did some work for the production.
  • Have a Facebook account, but not really active on it.

I guess I won’t be talking about this Saturday Night Live when other people do (that’s you, Leo Laporte and TWiT).

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The Return of Gateway GT5404.

I’ve got a call from an acquaintance on Friday regarding an old computer I’ve worked previously worked on. It is the Gateway GT5404 computer I worked on in 2007. The very same computer that came with Windows Vista pre-installed and later had Windows XP installed by yours truly. It is the very same computer I wrote about on the early incarnation of this blog.

After a good 3 years and 11 months, Windows XP no longer boots. I have yet inspected the computer so I would not know what really went wrong. My plan is to install a new hard drive and install Windws XP on this computer again.

As usual I’ll be documenting the installation process.

Till next time.

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About that Amazon Password Security Flaw…….

A post on Reddit a few days ago pointed out the security flaw on Amazon.com account. Since then the story was picked up by numbers of sites such as Wired.

Based on the posting on Reddit, changing the Amazon.com account password should fix the issue.

update5: changing the password clears this problem.

I have personally verified the fix/workaround. You should change your Amazon.com password now.

It is a pretty easy fix the customers can do but it would be much better if Amazon fix this on their server. I do not know how many customers Amazon has but I assume in high millions.