OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[nhwbrooklyn]

yep galaxy s... yeah i got mine for 100$... of course 2 year data plan was required (thats where they get you ).

[maxw3ll]

Got one of those little flying helicopters for xmas. After previously owning and crashing earlier versions repeatedly I had little confidence in it. I was extremely surprised in the control and maneuverability. It made my xmas very fun. I think they sell them at the mall now. For $20 bucks or so I have already got my use out of it flying around the house.

[Sweatpants Murphy]

Got one of those little flying helicopters for xmas. After previously owning and crashing earlier versions repeatedly I had little confidence in it. I was extremely surprised in the control and maneuverability. It made my xmas very fun. I think they sell them at the mall now. For $20 bucks or so I have already got my use out of it flying around the house.

one of the people that works at Brookstone was telling me about the newer ones that are much easier to control now...I was thinking about checking those out!

[-Deborah-]

Got one of those little flying helicopters for xmas. After previously owning and crashing earlier versions repeatedly I had little confidence in it. I was extremely surprised in the control and maneuverability. It made my xmas very fun. I think they sell them at the mall now. For $20 bucks or so I have already got my use out of it flying around the house.

Sounds like a fun gift!

[maxw3ll]

It really is cool. Its made of metal so it doesn't have a cheap feel. It is so easy to fly, and it charges off a usb connection from your computer. The one I have is the S07 and it is yellow.

[nhwbrooklyn]

Sounds like fun... good cat torturing device.

[DeanUK]

Great picture of the ISS in front of the sun during the solar eclipse the other day on this page:-

http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/eclipse110104_solar_transit.html

[Darl McrBride]

Pee controlled urinal video games, awesome:

http://singularityhub.com/2011/01/05/controlling-video-games-with-your-pee-sega-brings-awkward-fun-to-the-restroom/

@dsred, I'm not trying to bash avg in particular, I've even tried it myself. I also doubt that (most) of these kinds of issues are unique to avg. But since you asked...

Two leading security firms have been accused of ripping off customers by cutting short their antivirus subscriptions. AVG and Symantec are offering their own customers discounts on subscriptions via email or pop-ups, but the new subscriptions start immediately, 'short-changing' users who had months left on their existing deal. Both Symantec and AVG owned up to the practice, and said they had no plans to change their ways, instead advising their customers to upgrade as close as possible to the end of the subscription. However, the pair actively send out emails and pop-up messages that encourage customers to upgrade immediately.

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Last night's mandatory update of AVG 2011 Free edition has caused most 64-bit Windows 7 PCs to fail while loading Windows. On their website they have an FAQ with instructions on how to repair the problem using a boot CD or USB device.

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After getting a positive from the AVG virus detector while playing music on iTunes just a few minutes ago, I did a bit of research. It appears that AVG has recently pushed an update to the virus definitions that flags every iPod/iTunes related file as being infected with the 'Small.BOG' trojan. Interestingly enough, AVG does not have any information on this particular virus in their virus encyclopedia. Discussion on the Apple forum is up to 4 pages and climbing. One user there had an interesting thought: 'Maybe Palm has some shares in AVG...MUAHAAAA!!' (on page 3).

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The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints.

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Slimy anti-virus provider AVG is spamming the internet with deceptive traffic pretending to be Internet Explorer. Essentially, users of the software automatically pre-crawl search results, which is bad, but they do so with an intentionally generic user agent. This is flooding websites with meaningless traffic (on Slashdot, we're seeing them as like 6% of our page traffic now). Best of all, they change their UA to avoid being filtered by websites who are seeing massive increases in bandwidth from worthless robots.

[romster]

Cool pic Dean.

[SeattleLionsFan]

That is cool. Also shows how huge the sun is...

[dsred]

Yeah Darl, I'm noticing lately that my puter has slowed to a crawl on some websites after the upgrade to AVG 2011.

I may have to rethink my endorsement.

[bimmer84]

I recently changed from AVG to Microsoft Security Essentials.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

[SeattleLionsFan]

Does anyone here use Skype for videochatting? I was planning on getting a netbook to Skype videochat, but I was wondering what the necessary specs were...

Thoughts?

[bimmer84]

SLF, we have a Netbook, but have not used it with Skype. You might check this out for a little further info beginning with Post #8.

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7595_102-317040.html

[bimmer84]

Or you might want to check out this thread.

http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97004