Archive for category Opinion
Throwing AMD Bulldozer A Bone
AMD - Bulldozer or Bobcat?
So the reviews are in, and it’s not a pretty picture. AMD Bulldozer has hit the street and reviews across the board show the new flagship CPU from AMD barely keeping pace with Intel’s “consumer tier” i5-2500k in performance benchmarks, while having the high end Intel i7 line of processors stomp it is almost every benchmark.
Tom’s Hardware had a retrospective on the AMD Bulldozer release and poised the question, “Did we expect too much from AMD Bulldozer?”. The writer takes the position that AMD marketing set expectations too high for performance and competitiveness in the marketplace by stunts such as the Guinness World Record for a processor hitting 8.4Ghz overclock.
So is it all doom and gloom for AMD? Can nothing positive come from the release of the AMD Bulldozer architecture? In this blog, my goal is to outline a couple important points we should all take from AMD Bulldozer and perhaps a give silver lining to the clouds currently gathering above AMD.
Why alternatives to Bitcoin are Pyramid Schemes
Scrooge loves alt blockchains
I’m sure you’ve all heard the news swirling around the usual Bitcoin (BTC) related news outlets that there are a myriad alternative Crypto-currencies available now (referred to colloquially as “alt blockchains”). Popular ones being IXcoin, I0coin and Solidcoin to name a few, all touting the reasons why users should jump the Bitcoin ship over to their new ark on the path to cash laden greener pastures.
So what’s the catch?
If you’re currently working, mining or trading on any of these Bitcoin alternatives and haven’t asked yourself that question, then please read on with an open mind. If you’re currently looking into these new alternatives but are unsure, I hope the information I’m able to provide gives you enough knowledge to make your own informed decision.
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Why the idea of FPGA Bitcoin Mining is stupid
Posted by eric in Bitcoin, Hardware, Miscellaneous, Opinion on August 23, 2011
SKYNET BITCOIN MINER: ONLINE
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have been around for quite some time now and have seen wide deployment as a middle ground between utilizing an existing platform (ARM comes to mind) or investing to have a custom ASIC created. Since Bitcoin Mining has boomed, there has been whispers of a fabled “great FPGA grid” that was going to ruin the Mining marketplace and dominate the Bitcoin economy.
The problem is that FPGA’s are terribly inefficient. Let me explain why, then let you all in on a little secret.
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On the subject of Bitcoin and creating free Money
The All-MIghty Bitcoin (BTC)
I don’t want this blog entry to be about explaining Bitcoin (BTC), so I’ll point you folks looking for more information over to Wikipedia where they have a very in-depth article on the topic. What I will talk about in this post is a story of my involvement in the whole Bitcoin shenanigans that are happening on the net and where I think I’ll go with, or leave it.
In early June of this year I caught wind of Bitcoin really taking off through a friend who had started experimenting with solo mining using his CPU. At the time, I had thought nothing much of it and brushed it off as just another distributed project along the lines of SETI@Home or Folding@Home.
Over the course of a week or two, through bloggers and twitter feeds the whispers in the wind of Bitcoin had turned into a full on fog horn! Bitcoin was a modern day gold rush and if you weren’t in on it, you were missing out! The numbers at the time were ridiculous and it sounded like you’d be stupid not to get in on it. Earnings for miners being upwards of $2000 per month, people investing thousands of dollars in new hardware and obviously the news media coverage of the less glamorous use of Bitcoin… that of the drug trade through the Silk Road.
I didn’t want to be the last person to the party, so I jumped in.
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6 Reasons the new AppleTV is a Floppy Turd
Posted by eric in Apple, Multimedia, Opinion on September 1, 2010
New AppleTV
I’m not an Apple insider nor have I actually used the new AppleTV which was revealed today by Steve Jobs. What I am though is an avid user of multimedia devices on my Home Theater. My current toy of choice is the spectacular Western Digital TV Live!, which literally plays everything*.
So I was a bit excited today to hear that Apple was rolling out a new model of their somewhat lame duck that is AppleTV. What they delivered was a big, fat, floppy turd on the chest of everyone at the conference. I was let down during the demonstration and even more let down after actually reading the technical specifications posted to Apple’s site.
And on that note, I present my Six Reasons why the new AppleTV is a Floppy Turd.
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Review — Borderlands SUCKS and so does everyone on the Internet!
I was excited to try out Borderlands after reading a lot of the reviews on many gaming sites. Needless to say after about ten hours of playing this bore-fest it was on its way back to GameFly.
Perhaps my expectations for it were too high, expecting things like plot and decent graphics…. you know things games aren’t expected to deliver (apparently).
My qualms with Borderlands are simple…
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The Reason Cellular Providers Will Drop Open Platforms
For quite a while now I’ve been ranting to anyone who will listen about why I feel cellular providers are crazy for allowing open platforms on their network. I was shocked when, seemingly without trepidation, providers like T-Mobile and Sprint opened their networks to phones from HTC and Samsung running Google’s Open Source operating system, Android.
What’s the big deal you ask? Well, from where I’m standing it would seem that historically cellular providers wanted to maintain a good bit of control over devices on their networks. Some providers limiting functionality to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices depending on your level of service, while others such as Verizon installed their own Java based software platform on every phone.
Enter Android.
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Coming Soon — Magic The Gathering Online Smart Bot!
Posted by eric in C# Programming, Gaming, General Software, Opinion on September 14, 2009
12/21/2010 UPDATE: I have released the source code for my MTGO trading bot “ApocBot”. You can view that blog post and download the code for free here.
I thought I’d take the opportunity to update my blog here to talk about what I’ve been working on lately, as it would appear that my free projects of WWWinamp and the Discogs API are no longer updated
I’ve been working on my first retail product and I’m really excited about it!
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Review: Intel SS4200-E NAS
Posted by eric in Hardware, Networking, Opinion, Reviews on September 12, 2009
Well, it finally happened. The D-Link DNS-323 NAS that I’ve been using for the past two years with a 750GB RAID1 finally filled up 
The DNS-323 has been a great NAS! I had my doubts at first with a D-Link product, since in the past their networking products that I’ve used haven’t been quality. So my issue was, how do I upgrade from a RAID1 on a two-drive NAS to a new fault tolerant system that has at LEAST 1.5TB of storage. I mean, if you’re going to upgrade you need to make it count, so doubling the capacity of my current NAS was the primary goal.
I did some research and with NewEgg running a sale on the hardware, I settled on the Intel SS4200-E NAS. On the spec sheet, this NAS met my requirements because it supported up to four drives, RAID5 and RAID10! Technical reviews I found of the device put it at the top of the chart when it comes to RAID5 performance.
iPhone Tethering Hack – Nothing New!
Recently my fellow iPhone owners discovered with the latest 3.0 Firmware for the iPhone, that they were now able to enable tethering with no more than a small download using their phone’s browser. Thus “sticking it to the man” and allowing their iPhone’s to now work as a modem for the laptops.
The problem? Well, there are actually two:
First – It’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service and you MIGHT get into a little trouble for enabling it.
Second – It’s nothing new. There have been hacks around for years that would allow you to use your Blackberry as a Bluetooth Modem for free, versus paying the $60 to enable a Smart Phone tethering plan through AT&T. What IS unique about this situation is that tethering was a HIGHLY PUBLICIZED missing feature from the iPhone 3.0 firmware for AT&T customers, so it’s compromise has drawn much more attention as previous “work arounds” have.
So what’s AT&T and iPhone owners everywhere to do?
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