(this brand new image for Spinning Gears columns is courtesy of Narilka, who graciously gave permission to use it!)

When story broke a few days ago about researchers in Scotland managed to build a 1,000-core processor, I was amazed. As someone who’s actually spent some time in a CPU fab, I’m more than impressed at the skill and design that had to go into making a processor with so many cores in it – and before you whine, no, it’s more than just making a really big processor and dabbing lots of cores on the board – there’s more to it than that.

Even so, and even as impressed as I am, an old column by John C Dvorak called Why Isn’t the Desktop Moving Forward? popped to mind immediately. After all, as Mashable noted, this new thousand-core processor could speed up systems at least 20 times…so what would we do with all of that power? Do we need it?

Let’s discuss behind the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: The Age of The 1,000 Core Processor…

Yes Virginia, you can still build an affordable gaming computer that can play most of the best recent titles available, and PC Mag can show you how. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots of configurations you could choose, and there are a few things I might do differently from this particular config, but all in all, the whole build was just over 800 bucks and sports a pretty speedy video card under the hood and plenty of memory.

Part of where they saved the money was by going with an AMD processor instead of the all-but-standard Intel CPUs these days that offer clearly more power but at a higher price point. Still, all of the prices used in the piece are list, and you can probably do better shopping on the Web, which most people will undoubtedly do.

Have to say, they picked a pretty snazzy case, too!

Gadget names as fruit? Hilarious parodies of technology problems and the words we use to describe them? Yup, the brits have all of that, and it’s awesome.

Check out this preview of a show called The One Ronnie that airs on BBC One in the UK – a sketch that starts off with “My Blackberry’s Not Working” eventually becomes a hilarious tour through technology product names and some very well placed dongle jokes. Shame we don’t get the show over here in the US!

I dare not embed the video here, but if you’re planning to pick up Microsoft’s Kinect for the holidays (as we suggested in the 2010 Holiday Gift Guide) you may have had a very very important question that you needed answered. If you’re GWAR, would Kinect work for you?

Well, the answer is over at Game Informer, and the video is poetry in motion. Seriously, it’s pretty amazing. Granted, it’s worth noting now that this is GWAR we’re talking about – meaning they’re offensive, gross, and definitely not for the young or the faint of heart. However, if you think the idea of GWAR in front of a Kinect playing Dance Central is as hilarious as I do, you’ll love this.

[ Game Informer :: Does Kinect Work If You Are GWAR? ]

This is a video that I tend to fall back on when I hear people still – even now – misinformed about net Neutrality. I had a lengthy discussion with friends yesterday in the wake of the FCC’s ruling on the matter of Net Neutrality yesterday.

I tend to sit in the camp with with Dan Costa, thinking it’s actually a pretty decent compromise, and frankly whenever the members on the FCC board who are clearly in the pockets of the telecommunications industry (hint, they’re the two who dissented) are upset with the ruling, it probably means more good things for the future of the Internet than bad ones. That being said, Net Neutrality purists – myself included, are a bit upset about the ruling: it could have gone further, and it probably should, but I’ll take incremental progress wherever I can get it, especially when I know that farther-reaching progress simply isn’t attainable (or won’t hold up in court.)

Sadly, a number of people are already digesting the easy-to-swallow ISP and telco-industry talking point that this is “overreaching government regulation of the Internet,” something that’s not only blatantly false it’s probably only a shadow of the actual authority that the FCC actually already has over the industry that it chooses not to exercise in the name of open markets.

Here’s the litmus test that I usually give people:
1. Are you willing to pay ISPs more for the current level of service that they offer?
2. Are you willing to pay ISPs more for offering no additional services whatsoever?
3. Are you opposed to government – the advocate of the people to industry – stepping in to stop the 1 or 2 from happening?

If you answered no to all three questions, like most sane people would, congratulations – you support Net Neutrality.

Still confused? Check out the video above, featuring Professor Tim Wu from an interview with Engadget where they dissect the issue into bite size chunks suitable for the Facebook generation.

[ Engadget Explains Net Neutrality -- and Our Full Interview with Professor Tim Wu! ]

This happy holiday video over at CollegeHumor is hilarious yes, but it rings true especially for our fellow geeks. Being normal never helped anyone!

Happy Holidays!

I haven’t been lucky enough to get my hands on a Google Cr-48 Chrome laptop just yet, but I’m definitely in the pool of willing testers. The laptop may be a bit ahead of its time, judging from most people’s first impressions of essentially using a wireless terminal to access data, resources, and applications that all reside “in the cloud,” or essentially, on the Web.

Bluntly, the Cr-48 features a beautiful matte black finish that everyone who gets their hands on it seems to love, but it doesn’t feature wired Ethernet, there’s no optical drive, there’s virtually no data store that gives you a method to really work or be productive when you’re offline. There’s a pretty fast SSD inside, but it’s not large and it’s designed to host the Chrome OS and any downloadable files. Essentially, the thing is fast, light, sleek, but absolutely requires an Internet connection to really work.

Granted, if you’re like me and you’re always somewhere there’s wireless or some kind of Internet connection, that’s not really an issue for you – you very well may be able to be as productive with the Cr-48 as anyone with an fully-featured laptop, but we’ll have to see as Google’s test program widens and manufacturers willing to produce Chrome OS laptops come to the fore.

[ PC Mag :: Google Chrome Cr-48, Paragon of Minimalist Design ]

(image above from the fine folks at Penny Arcade, from this comic in 2004. Click to enlarge!)

Let me set the stage: a few months ago I got a semi-threatening e-mail claiming that someone – someone I didn’t know – knew my Web host’s security hardware and what’s installed on it, and that they knew how to exploit it. They implied they had already exploited it, and that it was my fault for not knowing or understanding “IT Security.” Now – I’ve worked in IT since I was an undergrad in college, so I know a thing or two – I’m no subject matter expert in security and intrusion prevention, but I know a thing or two. The e-mail came off a little ranty, and when they spammed all of my e-mail addresses with it, I just set up a mail rule to trash it before it hit my inbox and called it a day.

Then today, I got word from an anonymous tipper to my Gears and Widgets account (which isn’t really a secret, I’m phoenix@gearsandwidgets.com – drop me a line!) that someone was masquerading as me over at the ZDNet blogs, and that they just wanted to give me a heads up.

Sure enough, one Google search later, I found someone over there with the same name I was accused of having in that threatening e-mail (which my Web host, by the way, described as “pure fiction,”) and then someone else posting under my name, “Alan Henry,” with their own freshly registered account, where they were busily trolling other commenters. In their attempt to track down who the troll in their midst was, a few people there found my bio information at PC Mag, my LinkedIn profile, and deduced that their troll must be Alan Henry, the freelance writer, technology blogger, and author of sites like TechTV Forever, The Classy Geek, and of course, Gears and Widgets.

Sadly, they’re horribly mistaken, and in their fervor to take down their “Alan Henry,” made light at my experience, my blogs, my work, just about everything – so sure that I was who they hated. It hurt, a lot, and sure enough I both registered my own account to try and refute the claims and reclaim my identity, and submitted a ticket to ZDNet Support to take note of the issue and see what they could do.

Admittedly, I don’t have too much faith that they’ll be able to do anything although I hope they can. It’s difficult to try and moderate so closely any comments on the Internet, but it’s disheartening that this could happen. All I, the real Alan Henry, can do is sit back, hope it plays out, and hope that the issue doesn’t get worse or spread elsewhere.

Still, I make this post partially because I want to make it clear I’m not this person, but partially because I’m curious about other people’s opinions and experiences. This isn’t identity theft – nothing of tangible value is being taken from me – but it’s definitely annoying personally, and while professionally – as a writer – I don’t think it’s serious it does introduce some negative connotations of me on the Web that someone could find.

All I can do is wait for it to blow over, but what about you? Have you experienced anything like this – just having your name hijacked so someone can troll or comment on the Web either just because your name is convenient or because your name has some gravity behind it? How did you deal with it? Let me know what you think.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, everyone – where we’re all feverishly looking for the perfect gifts for the people in our lives. If you haven’t started your holiday shopping (like me, sad to admit) it’s about time! Oh, but what do you get for the geek in your life that’s looking for a techy present under the tree or in their stockinig this holiday season? Well, I have a few suggestions.

Granted, just like every year, everyone is doing holiday gift guides, but this one is a little different, and a little more fun. Ready? Head behind the jump to see five gift ideas that’ll make any technophile happy this holiday season!

Continue reading Gears and Widgets 2010 Holiday Gift Guide!…

Google announced its long teased Chrome OS this week, complete with an “app store” that will serve up Web apps that will run inside the operating system and a pilot program for people who want to try the new OS on the first notebook computer that will run it, the Google Cr-48.

You can sign up to be a part of the Cr-48 pilot program now, and the new Chrome App Store is on the way with a number of feature apps including Springpad, the New York Times, and more.

Google also noted that Acer and Samsung would also be releasing Chrome OS notebooks in 2011, did a demo of the OS, and explained to the crowd of onlookers that the operating system is for people who “live on the Web,” and as initially predicted, the OS and almost all of the notebook’s data lives on the Web, hosted by the app owners or by Google.

Whether or not the new OS is primarily for netbooks or if we’re witnessing a revolution in the operating system market remains to be seen. We’ll see when Chrome OS notebooks are available whether people are willing to drop Windows or Mac OS to flock to them.

[ Chrome OS Notebooks from Acer, Samsung Coming Mid-2011 ]