Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 27

Alright, Jeff and I were trying something new, we were trying to be on topic and keep the cast under 45 minutes. We failed, miserably, horribly, terribly failed. This was an epic fail if ever I’ve seen one (and I’ve seen more than one). In fact we ran so long we had to cut our main discussion. Anyway, look for a discussion on whether Googles cloud based apps are going to make choice of OS a moot point. Here’s what we did cover.

• Windows 7 going on a diet.
• LHC
• VooDooPC shake up?
• Sony Vaio TT
• Warhammer Online
• EA eases up on Spore DRM
• New TV Shows – Fringe and 11th hour – can they stop shooting themselves in the foot?
• Mobile Minute
  • Palm OS Nova delayed
  • Windows Mobile 7 delayed
  • Android

There you have it, another fine episode. Look for us next week, maybe we won’t double our target time.

 

 Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 27 [88:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (974)

Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 25

Well, this is something of an odd ball episode. This is the first episode (out of the 94 episodes we’ve done between vol 1 and 2) that Jeff isn’t in. Jeff took a mental health day, he’s trying to ween himself off politics. So Rick Cartwright joins me. Rick has been a friend of ours for quite a while and he’s guested on at least one prior episode of Max Geek (back in our trying to do live shows stage). Rick was originally set to join us as the moderate conservative view for our political discussion (which he does at the end). We got kind of carried away with what was supposed to be 15 or 20 minutes of tech talk, well at least half the show ended up being about tech.

There is another milestone, this is the first to be continued Max Geek. Rick and I just ran out of time and we were just getting started on politics. Next week sometime Rick and I will do a mini Max Geek Political cast to wrap things up. Without further ado I bring you the Max Geek 25 show notes.

• Does Google Chrome shine?
• XBox 360 price cuts, does this mean the XBox is ready to be replaced?
• Spore, it’s coming and it’s going to rock
• Politics
  • National conventions, do we need them?
  • Attack ads
  • Palin, we start in on the discussion but have to stop halfway through.

So, stay tuned next week, we should have a regular episode and a mini episode on politics with me and Rick.

 

 Maximum Geek Vol. 2 Ep. 25 [78:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1039)

Chrome – Security Risk?

So in the last day or so a few things have come to my attention. It seems Chrome has some issues and their name is Google. In the past Google has often been accused of serious privacy violations. Many of those were completely unfounded, the ones that had some basis were generally not a result of Google doing something but concerns about the type of information Google stores. Chrome is a victim of both Google policy and gathering far too much information. That second one doesn’t sound so bad right?

Too much information doesn’t seem like it could be a bad thing, until you realize that it’s conceivable that a hacker might be able to get at that information. Your entire search history, including secure sites, is what Chrome indexes. Go ahead, go to your banks website, log in and check your balance. Now type balance into your search bar and click on the “recent pages in history” link. On the resulting page you’ll probably see some of your account information right there. That information is stored on your harddrive, in files it’s conceivable a hacker could get to. While it’s not a specific security hole, we all know someone will eventually find an actual security hole in Chrome. In fact two have already been found, neither really all that bad, but it shows security holes are everywhere. These security holes are nothing new, not even anything to get excited about (similar flaws were found in the first release of Firefox 3). What happens when a real hole is found though? The information Google indexes is stored in an easy to find folder. Should this cause a freak out? Certainly not, but it’s something that should be addressed especially in this day and age. So there is no immediate danger and as I said yesterday, if Google responds to the risks efficiently enough we’ll be ok. The other issue is far more disturbing, at least to me. › Continue reading

Excuse me while I get political….

First of all, my apologies to Rick, you can’t even escape politics here. The DNC ends tonight with Obama’s big speech. There’s a lot of buzz and a lot of assuming he’s already won. That is a HUGE mistake. Right now I don’t know a single democrat that’s got any serious worries about whether or not Obama will win. This confidence makes people push for their candidate less. This election is not in the bag, not even close.

Right now we’ve got McCain waiting in the wings to steal the thunder of the democratic convention. The odds are pretty good he’ll announce his VP tomorrow to help steal the momentum Obama is building this week. What I’m saying here is, don’t sit back and assume we’ve got this won, that’s a sure way to lose. We now return you to your regularly schedueled geekitude.

Warner’s New DC Direction

Warner Bros. Pictures talked with the Wall Street Journal about their new direction for DC Comic films. The main film they talked about was Superman. Their plan is to make darker films, this is a direct result of the success of The Dark Knight. This appears to be a completely new Superman similar to what they did with Batman Begins. The eventual goal seems to be to do something similar to what Marvel is doing. It seems they want to bring Superman more in line with Batman so the two can work together eventually. In other words they’ve learned the completely wrong lesson from Marvel and the success of Batman.

The first mistake they’re making is in misunderstanding the success of The Dark Knight. It’s a good movie, but I seriously doubt it would have been this successful if it wasn’t for Heath Ledgers death. Not to take anything away from the film makers, but the hype doesn’t get much better than a death, especially when you’re a sequel to a successful film. Again I’m not saying it’s not a good film, but without Heath Ledger and his death it wouldn’t have done as well. What Marvel gets that Warner doesn’t is that there is room for different kinds of films in the same shared world. The tone of Hulk and Iron Man were different, they were in fact very different films.

With Superman I can see going darker than Superman Returns, but not anywhere near Dark Knight territory, I’m very worried they’ll do a serious disservice to the character trying to mimic Dark Knight. Warner has not shown any real ability to handle it’s properties when it comes to film, the good stuff has really been a result of them getting out of the way. There are several titles in development from DC, we’ll see what happens but I’m not really holding my breath.

One Stargate to Rule Them All

There will be no sixth season of Stargate Atlantis. The powers that be at Sci-Fi have decided to cancel it. They have already green lit a 2 hour movie, so it looks like it will follow SG1 in that direction. This doesn’t mean Stargate is going away though. There’s been buzz about another Stargate series in the works since SG1 got cancelled, well that series is going to air on Sci-Fi starting next summer after a 2 hour pilot episode sometime this winter/spring. The new show is called Stargate Universe.

Now this doesn’t exactly surprise me, with the Stargate Worlds MMO coming out I knew something would be happening. I’m a little surprised that they canceled Atlantis, but I think they were worried about taking audience from Universe. The concept behind Universe follows a new Stargate team, one that finds themselves on an unmanned ancient ship called the Destiny. This one is said to be focused on space action and I’m sure we’ll see all new bad guys. Brad Wright and Robert Cooper and producing and writing the show, so we can expect a similar tone to SG1 and Atlantis.

In some ways this sounds a bit like season one of Atlantis, our band of explorers is trapped, unable to return to earth. Now I understand why they did that with Atlantis, if they made it too easy to travel back and forth you end up with all kinds of questions and an expectation to see SG1 around more often. Even with the gate bridge there’s still a time factor. I’m hoping they use this trapped dynamic better than they did on Atlantis and that it sticks around. That’d be excellent from a story stand point, but how does it play out from a marketing perspective?

With Stargate Worlds coming out they’ve got some golden opportunities for some great promotions. If you can interact with the characters from the currently running television show then you’ve got a great way to pull more players in.  On the other hand you’ve also got something very unwieldy. You start sharing a universe across both mediums and you start having to worry about continuity. Frankly there are enough continuity issues in Stargate as it is. By cancelling Atlantis and starting a more isolated series they get two things. First of all they get a chance to change up the status quo with Stargates television prescence. Secondly you actually get to have more interaction with characters from SG1 and Stargate Atlantis.

I’ll be sad to see Atlantis go, but there were at least a couple of regular cast members planning on leaving at the end of the season anyway, we may actually see them stay around for the occasional TV or straight to DVD movie. This also means I can finally buy Stargate Atlantis on DVD when they release the entire series box set.  I have faith in Wright and Cooper, so far they haven’t steered the franchise wrong in my eyes. Let’s hope they can keep up the run with Universe.

Netbook Wars

The netbook market has been booming lately, everyone wants in. Lenovo and Dell are just the latest entries. I’ve had my 2133 for a while now and while I love it, I’m starting to think its screen is a bit small. I love how sturdy it is, I love the speakers and I love the large high speed HD and I really am happy with it. The thing is I don’t need this to be quite as portable or have quite as much battery life as I originally thought. I don’t travel all that much and I don’t just take this thing with very often. With my daughters when I go someplace there is no time for computing. Around the house though I use it more than my big laptop.

So now I’m thinking two things. Number one, do I need a netbook or would a basic no frills notebook be better? Number two, do I want a netbook with a bigger screen (although lower res)? I mean I should have no problem selling my 2133 for $500 which should be more than enough to get me one of the newer netbooks or a no frills laptop.

First off let’s take a look at no frills notebooks. This is definitely a more pricey solution it pushes the $500 mark pretty far. I end up with a 15.4″ laptop, Celeron under the hood with about the same amount of memory, HD space and around the same amount of battery life (probably a little less on the notebook) as a netbook. So more power and a bigger screen. Those are definitely bonuses. But I lose a lot of the ease of use. I mean 15″ is the same size as what I have now, not very easy to just whip out and play with (that’s right, I like to whip out my 15 inch “laptop” and play with it). I mean doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? As much as I like the idea of faster and more powerful, I just don’t think I can go bigger than 12 inches for a laptop like this. 12″ laptops start at around $700 to $750, that puts it out of my price range.  So that leaves me with other netbooks.

As I said at the start of this article there are a lot of netbooks either on the market or coming to the market.  The ones that most interest me are the 2133 (which I already have) the Acer Aspire One and the upcoming Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini. One of the things I want is a bigger screen. Well the Aspire One and Mini have the same size screen as my 2133. On top of that the Mini has no function keys. Keyboard is important to me on this kind of laptop. The Aspire One is very similar in size to the 2133, however it doesn’t nearly the speakers or resolution as the 2133. Compound that with a smaller battery and there’s really no reason for me to consider the Aspire One. So now I’m down to the Lenovo S10.

The Lenovo S10 is slated to release in early October. It’s a 10.2 inch netbook, similar in size to both the Aspire One and the 2133.  The S10 is a little deeper to acomadate the larger screen, but that difference is less than an inch. Weight wise they all come in about the same. While S10 has a larger screen it’s only 1024 x 600, quite a drop 1280 x 800 on the mini-note. The S10 also has less memory (ships with 512 meg and maxes out at 1.5 gig, my 2133 has 2 gig) and a smaller slower drive (80 gig 5400 rpm compared to a 120 gig 7200 rpm in the 2133). The upside is the S10 has the Atom. The problem is the Atom digs into battery life and the Lenovo only has a 3 cell battery. There is a reason the 2133 model I have is more expensive than the newer netbooks. In fact the 2133 I have is about as expensive as netbooks get. So can I give those things up?

This is a very tough call. I mean I can easily put an extra gig of memory in the S10 which really gets rid of that complaint. I love the battery life on my 2133, but I’m seldom very far from an outlet for any length of time. I think I can live with that. I have about 80 gigs of stuff on my 2133 right now (all my music mostly), so I’m definitely going to feel the decreased HD space. Still the Atom processor will make up for some of that performance drop from the drive speed.

In the end I think the Lenovo is a pretty good trade off. If I wait a little longer I could go with the Linux version of the S10 (assuming it comes with the larger drive and not just the 4 gig SSD) then put XP pro on there. That would save me enough money to bump up my memory. I think in the end the Lenovo is a better device for me. What do you guys think? Also while you’re at it, is anyone actually reading these blog posts? I mean we’ve never really blogged on Max Geek, we’ve always just been about the podcast, I’m interested in some feedback. Not that I’ll stop blogging, but I like to know what people think.