2008 Dodge Dakota Review

2008 Dodge Dakota Review by Brandon Wirtz

I have been a loyal Chrysler owner for a long time.  My first car was a LeBaron, and I have always owned a Jeep of some sort.  The Dakota just doesn’t inspire the sense of Connection to the vehicle that I have had with other Dodges in the past.  Maybe I expect to much out [...]

Filed under : Reviews

Windows 7 Install: How Much Ram, CPU, and Video do you Need?

by Brandon Wirtz

I have been installing Windows 7 on every Computer I can get my hands on just to test how well it does.  I have to say I have been impressed.  At the lowest end so far I have installed it on a Toshiba Libretto U105, and while there is no Vista Driver for its Graphics [...]

Filed under : Computers, PCs, and Macs

3.5 Gigs of Ram Instead of 4 Gigs: Limits of 32 Bit Windows OS

by Brandon Wirtz

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go. But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you have a 4GB address space, you can only use about 3.1GB of RAM. That's because some of [...]

Filed under : Computers, PCs, and Macs

ReadyBooost and USB Flash to Make your Vista Faster

by Brandon Wirtz

Windows ReadyBoost can use the storage space some devices Removable , such as USB flash drives , to speed up the computer. When you insert a device with this capacity, the dialog box Autoplay offers you the option to speed up the system using Windows ReadyBoost. If you select this option, you can choose how [...]

Filed under : Computers, PCs, and Macs

How to Upgrade from 32 bit Windows XP to Vista 64 Bit

How to Upgrade from 32 bit Windows XP to Vista 64 Bit by Brandon Wirtz

Ah they said it couldn't be done.  It is impossible they say.  They lied.  Doing an upgrade from Windows XP 32 Bit to Vista 64 bit, is not straight forward but it is in fact possible.  Why would you want to do something like that?  Well for example if you had a Asus GS1 Laptop [...]

Filed under : Computers, PCs, and Macs

How to Fix the Error: Your System Is Low On Virtual Memory

by Brandon Wirtz

If you have ever encountered the error:
Your system is low on virtual memory. To ensure that Windows runs properly, increase the size of your virtual memory paging file. For more information, see Help.

You probably have your Page File mis-configured.  There are several things you can do to speed up your system and avoid this error.
With [...]

Filed under : Computers, PCs, and Macs

How To Migrate from Parallels to VirtualBox

by Brandon Wirtz

Despite Parallels and VirtualBox both being programs which run virtual machines on Mac OS X, they both use different file formats for storing the virtual machines on disk. Though I believe Parallels will open a VirtualBox disk, VirtualBox cannot automatically import Parallels disks. But it's not impossible…
If the guest operating system, i.e. the system [...]

Filed under : Technical

Guide to Installing IPCop Firewall on Linux

Guide to Installing IPCop Firewall on Linux by Brandon Wirtz

This Guide will walk you through how to install a firewall on linux using IPCop
 
What is IPCop
The IPCop project is a GNU/GPL open source project that offers an exceptional feature packed 
stand alone firewall to the internet community.  Its comprehensive web interface, well documented 
administration guides, and its involved and helpful user/administrative [...]

Filed under : How To, Technical

How To build an Igloo

by Brandon Wirtz

The snow house of the Eskimo is probably the unhealthiest of buildings made by any sav­age to live in, but it makes an excel­lent playhouse in winter, and repre­sents at the same time a most ingen­ious employment of the arch sys­tem in building. The Eskimos build their snow houses without the aid of any scaf­folding [...]

Filed under : How To

Ram medical helping people in need

by rab

The presidential campaign is gaining momentum and one is likely to hear many stories surrounding it. The two titans are clashing and several social, medical issues are coming to forefront. However there is one issue that has caught the public attention and that’s the issue about the American health care system.  True the health care [...]

Filed under : Random News

PiratesOnline.com A slightly more Grown up ClubPenguin.com from Disney

PiratesOnline.com A slightly more Grown up ClubPenguin.com from Disney by Brandon Wirtz

Following the success of ClubPengiun.com Disney is Launching a Pirates of the Caribbean online game at PiratesOnline.com.  With 3d graphics and an actual download Pirates Online.com is closer to the Second Life.  The Pirates of the Caribbean Online Game may actually do well in a world filled with medieval RPGs as it is slightly more [...]

Filed under : Reviews

Download AIM 6.5 It sucks less than previous versions

Download AIM 6.5 It sucks less than previous versions by Brandon Wirtz

Welcome to the future of instant messaging. AIM 6.5 lets you update your status, change the color of your Buddy List® window, play games with your buddies with QQ Games and so much more.
Installing AIM 6.5 overwrites any AIM 6 software that you might have on your machine. However, you can still use AIM 5.9, [...]

Filed under : Industry News

A How to Guide: Microsoft Windows Media Video 8, and DivX

by Brandon Wirtz

A How to Guide: Microsoft Windows Media Video 8, and DivX
By Brandon Wirtz
bwirtz@griffin-digital.com
This document has now been expanded in to a full fledged book and multimedia presentation.  To find out more visit my Digerat.com page here
An Introduction: 1
Choosing the Right Codec: 2
Best Codec by Bit Rate: 3
Implementation: 4
Live Video Stream to 30 simultaneous users (Windows [...]

Filed under : How To

Windows 98 Optimization Guide (Tricks Tips and Tweaks)

Windows 98 Optimization Guide (Tricks Tips and Tweaks) by Brandon Wirtz

Windows 98 Optimization Guide:
This tweak guide was written for advanced users. Smart users, who change one of these settings at a time, will find it useful… Those of you, who change all of these settings and then reboot, will watch their PC melt down before them (maybe not, but don’t try and sue me if [...]

Filed under : How To, Technical

Scale up with SQL Server 2005 / SQL Server 2008 - NUMA

by

This article is related to the NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access) feature available with SQL Server. NUMA is a very useful feature to scale up the Server.
Even before we discuss how SQL Server 2005 supports NUMA we have a few questions that needs to be addressed. A question that is frequently asked is:
What [...]

Filed under : Industry News

Epidemiologists learn from World of Warcraft plague

Epidemiologists learn from World of Warcraft plague by

Cory Doctorow:
From Lancet's Infectious Disease Journal, a paper from epidemiologists on modelling the spread of disease based on an accidental "plague" in World of Warcraft:

A new villain, a winged serpent called Hakkar, originally designed as a challenge for only the strongest characters, started transmitting its “corrupted blood” virus down the ranks until it affected almost [...]

Filed under : Industry News

Drastically Speed Up Vista On Your Laptop

Drastically Speed Up Vista On Your Laptop by Brandon Wirtz

This tweak made a huge difference in my laptop, it works on desktops as well, but makes it more sensitive to power failure which is not a concern on your lap top as it has a battery. When you are done your computer is about 20% faster for disk operations, which also speeds up e-mail [...]

Filed under : How To

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie by

Mark Frauenfelder:

For the last couple of months, Boing Boing readers have been emailing me about a two-hour documentary available on Google Video called Zeitgeist, the Movie. I finally got around to viewing it.
In three parts, Zeitgeist (which has no credits) attempts to show that 1) Christianity is rehashed pagan sun-worship and is used [...]

Filed under : Industry News

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie by

Mark Frauenfelder:

For the last couple of months, Boing Boing readers have been emailing me about a two-hour documentary available on Google Video called Zeitgeist, the Movie. I finally got around to viewing it.
In three parts, Zeitgeist (which has no credits) attempts to show that 1) Christianity is rehashed pagan sun-worship and is used [...]

Filed under : Industry News

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie

Jay Kinney reviews Zeitgeist, the Movie by

Mark Frauenfelder:

For the last couple of months, Boing Boing readers have been emailing me about a two-hour documentary available on Google Video called Zeitgeist, the Movie. I finally got around to viewing it.
In three parts, Zeitgeist (which has no credits) attempts to show that 1) Christianity is rehashed pagan sun-worship and is used [...]

Filed under : Industry News

Transformers Achievements and How to Get Them, Tips Tricks, Cheats, and Walk-thru Guide

Transformers Achievements and How to Get Them, Tips Tricks, Cheats, and Walk-thru Guide by Brandon Wirtz

A more complete walk through is coming, but for now this will get you through the Xbox 360 version of the achievements.  Some of the achievements are obvious.  Others are not.  I did my best to explain the easy ones so you could get those achievements quickly.
There are 42 achievements worth 1000 points (26 [...]

Filed under : Gaming