Not only did AMD's Quad Core dissapoint, now I can't even reach their website because the database server is down...

I recently acquired some high end server equipment and am looking to liquidate, if you are interested, please drop me an email badmark@gmail.com.

Description:

This equipment (minus one unit for inspection) is still in original packaging and in excellent condition.

(8) Egenera pBlade Servers (Each with (4) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU and 8 GB / NO HD)

(8) Egenera pBlade Servers (Each with (2) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU and 4 GB / NO HD)

Although I would prefer to sell as a lot, if you are interested in just individual components, I will consider any offer. The entire lot consists of:

(48) Intel Pentium Xeon 3.2 Ghz HT EM64T CPU 

(96) Micron MT18HTF12872Y 1GB DDR2 400 CL3 ECC REG

Below are snaps of the interior of the units.

I don't normally post job listings, but this one is to help out a friend.

A contracting company in the Sterling/Chantilly Northern Virginia area is seeking to fill (2) positions: Senior Unix /Storage Engineer and a Storage Engineer.
Sr UNIX / Storage Engineer:
Proficient with Sun Solaris, as well as Sun Enterprise hardware
(Specifically: V120, V240, V280, V480, V490, F3800, F4800, F6800, V20z, V40z, X4100, V880, E15k, and E25k) and SUN/Hitachi/3rd Party Storage Area Network devices.

The engineer is responsible for meeting with the client technical staff to document "as is" infrastructures, analyze collected data, collaborate with team members and implement an optimized, resource efficient, accredit able solutions. He ensures that the team's implementation, quality, schedule and project/task objectives are met on time while sharing best practices with peers and management.

Backup Engineer:
Provide day to day O&M to Sun branded Storagetek libraries such as L8500 & L700 models in a mixed Linux/Unix/Windows environment.

The engineer supports all aspects of daily backup and restore activities dealing with tape backups / rotation, media planning and applies patches, firmware upgrades, testing of back ups, disaster recovery plans, and create accurate documentation.: Administer the SAN with a combination of Hitachi, 3Par, CISCO MDS and Brocade with a variety of hosts running Solaris, Windows, Linux, and OS/X. Create zones, provision storage LUNS, and be able to provide storage utilization reports. All requires experience working on Sun Solaris Enterprise class machines.

The company is flexible on the Storage or SAN requirement for both positions, so if you are a candidate who may be a 'close' fit, but not a 'perfect' fit, please contact regardless.

Please send all contact to Job@PlateWire.com

For those of you wondering, yes, PlateWire is down, has been down for over 15 hours at last count. Why is PlateWire down you ask? Thanks to the great folks @ 1 and 1 (Note: Sarcasm). Since January I have experienced numerous outages with the server where PlateWire lives and everytime 1 & 1 claims its this or the other, most often blaming me. Turns out they have faulty network hardware and don't care much for honoring their 99.99% uptime clause in their contract.

Please, if you are looking for a hosting provider, dedicated server, virtual server, web hosting, whatever, please DO NOT even consider 1 and 1 unless you enjoying getting jerked around by incompetent, inempt individuals who could give a damn that your livelyhood is going down the tubes.

Apparently I am not the only person that has been affected by their incompetence, Dmitri from San Fran launched 1and1Sucks.info which delves deep into issues with this joke of a company.

On a lighter note:

Yes, It has been a while since I've updated my blog, but have setup a plan to update more frequently. I plan to publish some technical articles, especially focusing on Microsoft Silverlight, a wonderful new product that in my opinion will revolutionize web development as we know it. I'll also be delving into LINQ and all of the neat new features of Orcas.

Last year I decided to upgrade my laptop (An Averatec with a 15" screen), for something more lightweight. I had seen several ultra portables which made me drool! After some research and bargain shopping, I came across a nice unit, the HP Compaq NC4010 (CNET's Review). One of the selling points of the unit, was that it came "Windows Vista Ready". I was certain I would be making the move to the new operating system as soon as it launched, so I figured I may as well purchase a notebook which will be ready for the future. This option actually overweighed the short battery life (I purchased an extra battery, which doesn't affect its portability much).

Well, after much waiting, Vista finally arrived. I eargely loaded the OS unto my trusty nc4010, only to find that the video drivers were not found, all that was listed in Device Manager was a Standard VGA Adapter! What the truck? After scouring HP's Support web site I was unable to find Vista drivers. After several calls to HP's support center and hours wasted on hold, I've been told that HP does not support Windows Vista on the NC4010!!!

Excuse me? So this "Windows Vista Ready" sticker on the machine and the packaging means absolutely what? It was my impression that false advertising was considered a crime in the United States? Well, I guess from HP's executive actions, crime is not a concern. Well, I guess it's back to XP for now, 800 X 600 at 8 Bit just doesn't do Vista justice.

UPDATE: Jan. 16th 2007

They seemed to have corrected their error, so I would not recommend entering email addresses in as they are probably selling them, slimy bastards!

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So I came across this ad for National Lampoon (Spy Cam (NSFW) it looked like a scene out of one the movies), in order to continue, it asks for an email address, as usual, I am not one to use my real email address, so I just pulled a name of thin air and attached '@aol.com' to it. Lo and behold, the next screen I was an address input screen, already filled in!

I could not believe this! This had to be a fluke!

No, after several very common first names, each and every on returned a real persons first and last name, their full address, phone number, and sometimes their date of birth! I quickly skimmed through my contacts searching for AOL addresses, each and every one returned correct information!

Now at first I thought this might just be AOL email addresses, but then I found that it did return information on emails from other domains, like Hotmail, Mac, etc. More than 60% of the valid email addresses I used brought back VALID information on individuals, including myself!

This is a prime example of irresponsible handling of data. Who is responsible for this?

This is what a quick WHOIS of the domain name returned:

  Funny Free Clips
   Customer Service (pr@companywebmaster.net)
   954-337-9221
   Fax:
   13900 Jog Road Suite 203-251
   Delray Beach, FL 33446
   US

I've contacted "Customer Service" in regards to removing my personal information, I recommend you check to see if any of your email addresses show up as well.

On Nov. 20th of this year when the Washington Post article went out about PlateWire, we were just getting the finishing touches on the new version, which we launched in a rushed effort to show the new features, failing to add any of the ads we had been previously running, from Text-Link-Ads and AdBrite. After a few weeks, we decided to settle on one of these two advertisers to be our exclusive ads provider, we only want to turn on ads for guests, and we are adament that ads should in no way be intrusive to the experience.

Well, to make a long story short, I spent the better part of last week attempting to contact someone at TLA, to no avail. My first choice was TLA, their reputation in the blogosphere seemed to be decent and although they required server side code (At the time they only offered ASP, and I was running ASPX; I actually spent a few hours making a server side handler for ASP.net and forwarded to them the code which I never received a thanks for, guess that should have been a clue) I thought I'd give them the first shot. After 7 days of sending emails, filling out their "Contact" form, and voicemails I heard nothing! I decided to see what response I would receive from AdBrite, bang! Immediately I received a call back, from a very helpful associate. He discussed with me my site, my goals, etc. Wow, actual service, I was honestly aghast! Well the decision made itself, AdBrite was the service to go with.

When I finally received a response from TLA, I was told "You dropped our ads without telling us", thats why they ignored me? What are we in elementary school?

On a side note; it seems that TLA was recently purchased by MediaWhiz, perhaps they forgot to sell them the magic that made them what they used to be?

Right around the time I was putting the finishing touches on the initial version of PlateWire, I had an awful experience at a local dealership when seeking service for our family's Land Rover, Molly. The way I was treated by the dealership, Rosenthal Land Rover upset me so that I decided to vent my feelings publicly (notice a recurring theme? :-). I registered and posted http://RosenthalSucks.com and within days I was amazed at the response I received from other ex-Rosenthal customers, apparently I wasn't the only one they had treated like a 2nd class citizen, it seemed to be regular pattern with these guys.

Obviously, Rosenthal was not very happy with the web site, and asked me on several occasions to take it down. I replied, on what grounds? My claims we're truthful and not slanderous, I was only educating other individuals before they too became victims of Rosenthal. So I offered them this solution: I developed a small site (inspired by this incident) RespectThyCustomer (very, very rough, I've hardly put 4 hours into it), and offered Rosenthal a solution; send RespectThyCustomer 100 or so happy customers that give Rosenthal a positive feedback on the web site, and I would freely hand over the RosenthalSucks.com domain to them. They declined, well actually they never even acknowledged my offer, I guess they don't care to make happy customers?

In the midst of everything thats been going on this week, I received an email from the Internet Sales Manager, inquiring about my current car needs; "Perhaps we missed your business last time or you decided to put off your purchase for a time, but you now have a need for a new or pre-owned vehicle. ". So now they know exactly what I want and when I want it? When did they invent the mind reader, I'm sure other dealerships would be interested in their technology :-P

The funny thing is this; RosenthalSucks.com is actually the reason that PlateWire got it's first article in the Washington Post! A  reporter had contacted me about RespectThyCustomer, and the reason behind it. During our conversation I mentioned PlateWire, and the rest as they say is history.

The sales manager at Rosenthal has since emailed me letting me know I have been removed from all email sales list, you'd figure they would have done this previously, but their incompetence does not surprise me.

It is my ardent belief that a new age is just over the horizon, an age in which the voice of the people will become so loud the powers that be will no longer be able to drown it out.

Let your voice be heard!

So I received an email inviting me to preview Crazy Egg, something I am positive I did not request to be notified of on launch, how did they get my email?

Anyways, I guess the whole point of this product is to give you a "Heat Map" of where users are clicking on a web page. Has anyone used Google analytics? They do the same exact thing, and better yet they dont slow down your website to a crawl. I'll be honest, I gave this product an honest attempt (Why dear God?) but only to be dissapointed even further. Crazy Egg in nothing but investor hyped fluff that will go absolutely no where.

My 2 Cents.

A company I've never previously heard of, Moixa Energy Holdings, has announced their development of new AA USB Rechargeable batteries. Yes, I wrote that right, USB re-chargeable batteries. Batteries running low? Pop the top and plug them into your USB port for a quick recharge. USBCELL, a new category of rechargeable batteries, should add an oompf to the currently exisiting rechargeble battery market.

This is definately a battery I will be trying as soon as it becomes available.

Apparantely someone at WalMart got a little ansy about adding the Microsoft Zune to their online database. Based on some reports, for a short time yesterday, Walmart had the Zune listed at a retail value of $284.00. Question is, was this price set prior to Apple dropping the price on their 30GB iPod down to $249.00 from $299.00? Will Microsoft come in even lower for this wonderful Zune we all keep hearing about?

Walmart has a whole section dedicated to the Zune.

Only time will tell....

UPDATE

It's seems someone at Microsoft leaked the final price of the Zune - Drumroll please - $229.00. Apparantely they've decided to drop some pre-loaded content to make the price below that of Apple's iPod.

Take into consideration everything mankind has accomplished, especially during the past century, science, technology, quality of living, etc; and still we must all suffer the reality that is the Department of Motor Vehicles.

White males are more than eight times as likely to kill themselves as women of the same age and the risk increases as they get older, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Bought a new toy! Motorola Q! Windows Mobile 5.0 (Already built an application in Visual Studio 2005, had a bit of an issue with certificates when I went to deploy, but found a quick and easy way around it here), 1.3 Megepixel camera, bluetooth (This really cool PC remote control feature), chock full of geek fun!

Atomic engineering helped to develop 110 Ghz circuit speed, a Guiness world record?

So, I went to purchase a copy of LiveStats server for a client that wanted the best web site analytics package out there, and lo and behold, DeepMetrix has been purchased by none other than Microsoft! I guess it doesn't come as much of a surprise since Google purchased Urchin and integrated their technology into Google Analytics and AdWords.

Notice my Google ads not working?

I am currently disputing charges of click fraud with the behemoth, they claim that this site caused click fraud, yet they fail to show proof or even give any details. I have furnished log files, testimonials, what else do these people want? Just an ant against a giant. Oh well, guess they will just keep my earnings and I'll switch to another link network. You gotta love shady business practices such as this.

I have lost all respect for Google.

Someone close to me, for the past 2 years has been proud to be a SuicideGirl. It was a well deserved honor, for $g(Inocencia) (Her SG Name) is an amazing and wonderful woman. From early on she was quite fond of the community of awesomely talented and empathetic individuals. Although with time, she began to get the feeling that the staff, particularly, Missy, were somewhat 2 faced.

One day, Inocencia, came across a website offering pornography content, licensed content you could "lease" to use on your very own porn site. For some reason the girls in the sample pics seemed awfully familiar to her. She then realized the pictures she was looking at were actual SuicideGirl pics, without the familiar SG logo, she was looking at pictures of her friends! How did this happen, she thought? With a little investigation she actually found out that SuicideGirls had actually sold the content for that exact purpose. This was absolutely appaling to Inocencia, she submitted her pics to a web community of like minded individuals, who appreciate the girls as art, not as meat.

Angry at this fact, she decided to vent, to whom else, but all of her friends on SuicideGirls. She made a "Journal" entry mainly venting how she felt and that she felt betrayed by Missy. Lo and behold, not 2 days later, Inocencia goes to login as she regurlarly does and she is redirected to "Renew your membership" page.

What ???

She asked if I could log in and see what was up, I agreed.

Once logged in, I went to her profile and was floored to see that she was "Archived". I ran a quick search through the boards, and found a posting by Missy, it read "For private reasons Inocencia has requested to be archived". What? She requested to be archived? This was absolutley ridiculous!

So, I in turn decided to post on my "Journal" a little message of what I thought of this, mind you I am a paying member. This was my post:

"Actually, Inocencia DID NOT request to be archived, she was archived without so much as an email notification. The most likely reason is that Inocencia reported on her blog that SG is actually licensing their content to PORNOGRAPHY SCUM in order to generate revenue. The truth of the matter is that SG is no longer run the way it was started, it has become a money hungry machine who does not care about the people it tramples along the way.
Inocencia was repeadetly asked to modify or altogether remove her blog entries, what happened to free speech?
It's a sad truth Missy, why do you lie, Inocencia never asked to be archived."

Not 4 hours after my entry, I decided to check if I had received any comments, after login I was unable to reach my profile page. I checked in my account settings, and this is what I saw:

Well, so much for free speech and open minds. I absolutely love what SuicideGirls was when it began, now I'll just sit and wait for the death of this souless abomination.

SuicideGirls
2001-2006
R.I.P.

Update October 17th 2007

Read what other BS SG is pulling on a photographer, geez Missy do you have a soul?
http://apneaticmedia.com/

Just announced, CNN has just launched a new department, I-Report and it's recruiting the entire world to become reporters!

They even include a ToolKit which gives some trade secrets for taking the perfect photo or video.

The proliferation of video devices and computers should make for a very interesting experiment. I beg to wonder how much CNN will censor or shape the reports submitted by users to their own agenda.

A little while back I was doing a gig for a gentleman very familiar with patent trolling. He was constantly digging at me to deliver him ideas, ideas that could be produced into a consumer product. Being accustomed to solving logic based problems through software, it was to be an interesting task. To make a long story short, one of the ideas both he and I prefered was a small desktop device that would:

1) Accept receipts, business cards, scraps of paper with a recipe, any paper within certain dimensions into a double sided scanner, which would scan and OCR

2) Temporarily store OCR information to internal cache, and triple check consistency of reaped data. Snapshot would be sent to a workstation client, which in turn would request confirmation from a user that all data was acquired. Once confirmed, the "machine" would transfer scraps of paper to a shredder device that would then permantely destroy original copy

3) Share data to Personal Information Datastore and link back to electronic reproduction.

Unfortunately, this idea was never followed up on, heck it wasn't even patented (Want to make it happen, let me know!).

Today I read about Intuit's launch of their 2007 version of Quicken personal finance package, which they tout as a virtual file cabinet.

"The ability to easily download or scan important financial documents and create a permanent digital archive inside Quicken makes perfect sense to people and will certainly help them locate these documents at tax time or years later if audited."

I certainly hope this is an attempt towards something resembling my idea. To be free from all of these pesky little papers that I seem to amass on a daily basis, would be a welcome blessing.

Gratis Internet, the company that started with Free Condoms and earned their mark giving away Free Ipods, are closing up shop.

It appears that the lawsuit filed by Elliot Spitzer, New York state Attorney General, affected them tremendously. Being an ex-employee of this company, I saw this coming, primarily due to the fact that they hired a COO from a completely different industry, who after 3 months, still didn't understand how the company generated revenue! Just goes to show, a business model based on breakage, will eventually break.

All of my condolences go out to my ex co-workers, half of which were laid off this week. Peter Martin, one of the co-founders left the company last week.

Another internet saga comes to an end.

Gratis R.I.P.

PS: Here is supporting documentation. Besides the fact that half off the staff has been laid off, and "more cuts coming" whispers are heard through the galley, the lawsuit filled against Gratis request at minumum $500 per New York residents email address in their database. As NYC was one of their top cities in a database of over 150 million email addresses, you do the math.

AMD announced plans to purchase Canadian based ATI for $5.4 Billion. Will this venture pose a threat to Intel? I believe so, both companies have consistenly delivered quality products and technological advancements. I'm excited to see the products they've yet to develop.

AMD’s acquisition of ATI will position the new company to deliver innovations that fulfill the increasing demand for more integrated solutions in key market segments while also continuing to develop “best-of-breed” discrete products that empower customers to choose the combination of technologies that best serves their needs. In 2008 and beyond, AMD aims to move beyond current technological configurations to transform processing technologies, with silicon-specific platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance. Thus, the combined company intends to empower its customers to create their own unique products and solutions within an open-innovation ecosystem free from artificial barriers to customer success.

“ATI shares our passion and complements our strengths: technology leadership and customer centric innovation,” said AMD Chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz. “Bringing these two great companies together will allow us to transcend what we have accomplished as individual businesses and reinvent our industry as the technology leader and partner of choice. We believe AMD and ATI will drive growth and innovation for the entire industry, enabling our partners to create differentiated solutions and empowering our customers to choose what is best for them.”

Under the terms of the transaction, AMD will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of ATI for a combination of $4.2 billion in cash and 57 million shares of AMD common stock, based on the number of shares of ATI common stock outstanding on July 21, 2006. All outstanding options and RSUs of ATI will be assumed. Based upon the closing price of AMD common stock on July 21, 2006 of $18.26 a share, the consideration for each outstanding share of ATI common stock would be $20.47, comprised of $16.40 of cash and 0.2229 shares of AMD common stock.

AMD anticipates it will finance the cash portion of the transaction with a combination of cash and new debt. AMD has obtained a $2.5 billion term loan commitment from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. which, together with combined existing cash, cash equivalents, and short term investments balances of approximately $3.0 billion, provides full funding for the transaction.

ATI has received an opinion from its financial advisors that the transaction from a financial point of view is fair to its shareholders. The transaction was unanimously approved by the board of directors of each company. The transaction is subject to ATI shareholder approval, Canadian court supervision of a Plan of Arrangement, and other regulatory approvals including merger notification filings in the United States, Canada and other jurisdictions, as well as customary closing conditions. In the event that the transaction does not close, ATI has agreed to pay AMD a termination fee of $162.0 million under circumstances specified in the acquisition agreement. The transaction is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006.