I was playing an unhealthy amount of Madden ’10 last year, and the differences between the games are pretty easy to spot. It took about 10 minutes to get used to the new announcer but other than that same great game with a few improvements.

Madden 2011 Features:

• A new announcer for the play-by-play, Gus Johnson (well known for his March Madness coverage on CBS).
• 6 player capability instead of 4 in all previous games
• “Ultimate Team” is a combination of card collecting, fantasy football, and regular gameplay. It is an improved version of what came out during playoffs for Madden ’10
• More realistic controls – Madden ’11 tackles seem much more realistic and more control is put into the control sticks rather than the buttons.
• “GameFlow” is the biggest new feature Madden ’11 which acts more like a real NFL game – You create a game plan at the start of the game for different scenarios based on the opponents weaknesses and instead of choosing a play the coach will tell you via headset which play to use and how to pull it off.
• Faster game play, when using the GameFlow system you can spend about half the time to complete a game as less time is wasted choosing between 350 plays for each down. For those that don’t like the idea of this, of course GameFlow is completely optional but it is a cool feature after you play with it for a bit.

I was a big fan of the new controls in Madden 11, the buttons obviously still do the same job but now you don’t need to rely on them as much. When I was playing my buddy I was getting destroyed by his control stick jukes and he was doing a great job of working through the seem. The Jets could quite possibly be my favorite team this year simply because they have such a powerful lineup of running backs; I was averaging near 6 yards per carry which makes it very easy to go straight down the field.

The game for whatever reason just seemed slightly more realistic than Madden ’10, the graphics are about the same but I think the ambient sounds and better tackling system was what made it feel just a little better. Every year EA changes just enough things in the game to make it so that people end up wanting the new version, and once again they have succeeded.

The Madden 11 demo allows you to play full matches but you can only do so as the Jets or the Colts. I enjoyed the demo was great but as always it just left me wanting more and made me start looking up stats for when the season starts back up in full. I want more football, more sports, and I want the new Madden game once it comes out in a couple weeks. Pre-order Madden ’11 directly from EA to avoid the lines.

Madden ’11 Release Date: August 10, 2010 – Available for PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, and Wii.

The more complex the lock, the harder it is to get in.

Creating a good password is very simple, but many people do not want to take a couple minutes to do so. A large social network applications website RockYou.com was recently hacked, and the results were posted online. This gave researchers something to think about, because there were 32 million email addresses, passwords, user names, etc. to be studied. Imperva compiled the results of their research recently, and they found that 30% of users had passwords of six characters or less and that 50% of users used names, words, or trivial passwords.

Their study found these as the top 14 passwords:

• 123456
• 12345
• 123456789
• password
• iloveyou
• princess
• rockyou (Name of the website)
• 1234567
• 12345678
• abc123
• Nicole
• Daniel
• babygirl
• monkey

As a computer science student I can tell you that these passwords are all incredibly easy to hack using a brute force or rainbow crack. If your passwords even slightly resemble these you should change them immediately because you are putting your personal information at risk. When trying to break into an account the first thing you do is run through a list of commonly used passwords (such as the ones listed above, dictionary words, names, places, sequential keyboard characters). You want a password that is easy to remember, but not easy for even friends or family to guess.

Creating a secure password is quite easy, just follow these guidelines and you will have nothing to worry about.

How to Create a Secure Password:

DO NOT:

• Use a dictionary word, person’s name, place, etc. as your entire password. Example: password, Michael, your last name, Texas

• Use sequential characters. Example: 1234567, qwerty, asdfgh, 999999

• Use personal information. Example: (your last name)+(DOB), (first name)+(street address), (son’s name)

• Use a password shorter than 8 characters

• Use the exact same password for every website

DO:

• Use more character classes, more types of characters will make a more secure password. Try to implement special characters such as &,#,!<},|, numbers, uppercase letters, and lowercase letters. For example, the word television is very insecure. TELEvISIOn is more secure, and t3L3v|S|0n is much more secure.

• Use more than one word – phonetoiletdistrict is much more secure than any of the single words.

• Use a phrase to create an easy to remember password. Example: “The only thing to fear is fear itself” would become “Toltfifi”.

• Use multiple passwords, for instance your email address uses st1ffuPPerlip but your bank account is blu-rayc4tsftw. You can also use one “master password” and modify it based on the site, for instance you could use “nonANsequent1a!” for a password and change the AN to be the first and last letters of the website you are registering for. “nonANsequent1a” would be your password for Amazon.com, “nonEYsequent1a” would be your password for Ebay.com.

• Replace letters in a word with characters that resemble it. Example: bottle would become b0tt!3

• Add a random non-alphanumerical character into your password in the middle (not the beginning or end). Example: ilikefishing – ilike!!fishing

Password summary:

The longer your password is, and with more variation of character classes, the better protected you are. My passwords are typically 20+ characters made up from things around me and then I substitute in characters. Here is an example password, I am looking at a cookbook I got for Christmas called “Favorite Italian Recipes”. I would turn that into “F4v0r1t3_iTA1ian##$%_r3ci[p]ez” which might seem like a lot, but in reality you can type a 20 character password in about 1-2 seconds and it is just as easy to remember as “123456″ after doing it 100+ times.

People are saying that 2010 is the year to ditch your cable service, which is ironic since there is a guy in my living room fixing my cable box as I write this. This could very well be true, with the emergence of free streaming TV websites such as Hulu.com I am hearing more and more about people canceling their cable subscriptions. The fact that ESPN is willing to provide live streaming coverage is significant, because the downside to sites such as Hulu is that they are not allowed to post the content until it has finished playing on the regular broadcast stations. If ESPN is providing truly live sports events, it is no different than if you had a cable subscription for the same thing. This should start to worry the major cable providers (Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, etc).

Since you would still need to pay some sort of fee to get this service, it isn’t a free ride. The significant part of this story is that individual stations could start to negotiate directly with consumers rather than cable providers, cutting out the middle man. This could drastically cut down the price of programming while also pushing many of these large companies out of business.

The deal with ESPN is not set in stone yet, and both parties are refusing comment on the ongoing negotiations. This represents the future of the major gaming systems, they will become entertainment systems as well. I use my PS3 just as often to listen to Pandora or watch Blu-Ray movies as I do to play games, and now I can also watch BBC News broadcasts, streaming movies through NetFlix, and if this deal goes through I would assume ESPN and other providers will be knocking on Sony’s door soon as well.

According to an unnamed senior newsroom source there a decision could be made within weeks on whether or not the Times will go back to charging for their content (Source). The advertising based model was working great while the CPM price for advertising on the web was skyrocketing, but for the past couple years as revenue has declined while print subscriptions are in free fall the Times will have to make a change. There are three different options:

• Wall Street Journal model – Some free content, “premium” content for subscribers only
• Metered – You have to pay some amount per article (May vary based on type of article)
• NPR Model – Special features for being a subscriber

Honestly I think they are most likely to copy the WSJ, I have always wondered why the rest of the papers hadn’t caught on to this. It is a perfect mixture, you feed just enough information to the public that they will get hooked and want to pay for the full subscription. At the same time since there is a limited amount of free content, it will drive up the advertising costs on those articles to make them more profitable.

This is not just about one company, I feel that this is going to become a trend with many major publications within the next two years. It is simple economics, if everybody gives away their “product” for free because other companies are doing it, they will all go out of business. While print newspapers are on the decline we won’t be seeing any major shakeups in terms of the big players as long as they make the internet adapt to them.  This is still technically a rumor, but considering the position the Times is in, it is a necessary and inevitable change.

**The first thing you should try is a system restore, if this does not work, then go down this list until your computer runs**

I have taken the time to research different reasons for a computer locking up after it boots. Usually when a computer freezes on startup it is the result of a system file not being where Windows expects it to be. This could mean that a registry entry is missing or corrupt, the file system is corrupted by a virus, or the data itself on your hard drive has been written to a bad sector.

Definitions:

Bad Sectors – A section of your hard disk drive that has started to fail, causing inaccurate data to be read and/or written from your drive.
Registry Entry – Various settings, configurations, and other data behind the scenes that help instruct the operating system as to what files to open, programs to execute, etc.
Safe Mode – A limited version of Windows that opens the minimum amount of background processes to increase chances that you can boot into it. To get into Safe Mode, hit F8 while the computer starts and select “Safe Mode”, do not select the “with networking” or “with command prompt” options.

Each of these three root causes can be fixed; I will address each one individually starting from the easiest fix to the most difficult.

Bad Sectors

Once you start to develop bad sectors it means that your hard disk is probably starting to go, so the following is a fix but I would still recommend you replace the disk when you get a chance. To fix bad sectors boot your computer into safe mode (see above). Now you will run a Windows utility called chkdsk which scans for bad sectors and corrects for them. To run chkdsk do the following:

• Open up Run, type cmd and hit enter. A black and white command prompt will open, in this type chkdsk C:/r and hit enter. It will ask if you want to schedule on next restart (Y/N), type Y and hit enter.
• Chkdsk won’t take effect until you have restart your computer. Restart it and it will do a quick scan, once it is done wait until you get into Windows and then restat a second time and it will do a full repair.

If this worked, you will want to get a different hard drive because your current one is likely to fail again if it has failed once. Luckily hard drives are cheap, and very easy to install.

Hard Drives on Newegg.com

If this did not work, then continue on to the next section on registry entries.

Registry Entries

The next major issue is either missing registry entries, registry errors, or malicious entries. All of these can cause your computer to freeze after startup. Many times a registry error will actually prevent your computer from starting up at all, but depending on background processes it can make it freeze up after starting.

• To fix registry errors you will need your windows startup disk, put it in your computer and press F12 and select the CD/DVD drive option. Click on repair, and you might be able repair your installation.
• If this doesn’t work I would try one of the registry repair programs out there. Boot into safe mode (F8), then open up your registry cleaner and let it scan/fix the errors.

To prevent registry corruption in the future I would highly recommend you get a registry cleaner such as Registry Mechanic or RegZooka. Both of my computers have registry software on them, each has one of those running but they have the same effect in the end. I would recommend either of these programs.

Malware – Viruses

The reason why I put viruses as the least likely culprit of your computer freezing after restart is that most viruses are designed to do one of the following:

• Lurk until they get a chance to steal personal information such as credit card numbers
• Use your computer as part of a botnet, essentially controlling your computer
• Completely destroy your file system

In the first two scenarios your computer needs to function in order to achieve their goals, and in the last scenario your computer wouldn’t even make it to Windows. On the other hand, I have seen viruses that cause your computer to lock up after startup. This is probably a result of viruses that are attempting to access resources that for whatever reason they cannot get to, causing Windows explorer to freeze.

To get rid of viruses boot your computer into Safe Mode (F8 during startup) and run your anti-virus program. Try to delete the detected files outright, if it doesn’t let you then at least quarantine them.

If this solved the problem, then you should try to figure out why your anti-virus didn’t protect you to begin with (I woud call up the company and complain). If you don’t have any anti-virus software then you can try one of the following:

• AVG – Free anti-virus software, the protection is not as good as you would get with a paid product but the price is definitely right. If this were a car, it would be a smart car, good for getting around but a real serious accident won’t end well.

• Nod32 – This anti-virus has the best balance between performance and protection that I know of. Your computer will still run nice and fast while keeping you protected, this is what I would put on my computer. If this were a car it would be an Escalade, good protection while still fast and sleek.

• Norton 360 v3.0 – This is what I had on my father’s computer, this offers the highest level of protection. If you get viruses often or if you download a lot of things from the internet (music, videos, and games especially) then this is what I would recommend. It provides up to minute virus protection, privacy protection, seals up browser exploits, and includes online backups. This wouldn’t be a car, it would be an M1 Abrahms tank. Not at fast as Nod32 but as far as tanks go, it is fast.

If all of these steps have still not fixed your problem, try the following:

• Try running System Restore again (who knows, maybe it will work), go back as far as possible.
• Run a Memtest (burn the following to a disc: Memtest), this will check if your RAM is functioning properly.
• Re-install drivers while in Safe Mode, you can usually get the drivers from the computer manufacturer on their website by entering your service number.
• If everything listed has not worked, back up your documents, pictures, etc. and reinstall Windows, make sure to do a full reformat first. If you reinstall your OS and you still have problems, it is definitely time to go out and buy a new computer.

Feel free to check out my Custom Computer Configuration page or my Computer Optimization Tips page.

Hopefully you found this guide useful, you can share it with the bookmarks below or use the Retweet button at the top of this page to send it out to others. Feel free to sign up for my newsletter for more great tips.

A representative from the security firm Sophos told BBC News “The way to exploit this flaw has now appeared on the internet, so it is quite possible that everyone is now going to have a go”. Microsoft is claiming that “These were not attacks against general users or consumers” and “There is no threat to the general user, consequently we do not support this warning”. Unfortunately, despite Microsoft’s wish that this story would just disappear it does impact the general users when there is a guide showing how to exploit all recent versions of Internet Explorer (IE6, 7, and 8).

I don’t understand why anyone still uses Internet Explorer anyway, Firefox is far better with more plug-ins, functionality, and options while still consistently parsing JS faster than Internet Explorer can. My recommendation is that you take Germany’s advice and switch browsers, but unlike them I would recommend it permanently.

The “Redwood” GPU in this chip is more or less what you would find in the more upscale chips (5700 or 5800 series) with less processing units. There are 400 processing units, with a core clock speed of 775MHz and 1000MHz (Gbps) memory clock. There are two models, with a price difference of $15, one with 512MB graphics memory and the other with 1GB. For the extra $15 the 1GB card is an absolute steal.

What I feel will make this chip a success is the fact that it requires approximately the same amount of power as an integrated chip would. This means that you don’t need a gamer rig to support the ATI Radeon HD 5670, a standard desktop you bought from Best Buy or online should be able to support this card. On top of this, the card is only $99 on Newegg, putting it well within reach of the average consumer. Most people cannot go out and spend $300 on a graphics card nor do they have a 1000W power supply that many cards require these days. I have a feeling that this will become a very popular card, especially once the price drops down into the $70-80 range.

Unlike the Radeon HD 4770 or Radeon HD 4850 (or any nVidia card out there), it has full DirectX11 support. For the moment that is not a major issue, but just around the corner we will be seeing games that will force you to get a DirectX 11 capable card, so if you are in the market you might as well prepare early.

Overall I feel that the ATI Radeon HD 5670 will be a huge hit, and for good reason. It is debuting at only $99, DirectX 11 compatible, uses 61W at peak performance, and it will beat the daylights out of the integrated card that most computers come with.

Check it out on Newegg.com – ATI Radeon HD 5670

As 23.4 million Wii units have been sold, this should act as a huge platform for NetFlix to expand their business. Ever since Wii was released it has been stealing the show in terms of units sold, last month they sold approximately 3 million units. In order to use the service you have to put in a streaming media disc which NetFlix provides for free, and you will need a broadband connection. According to Nintendo this deal is a great fix because “we’ve always said we are an entertainment company”, and not just a video game company.

The thing that I find interesting is that Nintendo feels that the lack of HD capability will not hinder this deal. I think that is complete BS, I have a Wii and a PS3 and if I am going to have a NetFlix subscription and watch streaming movies, it would be on my PS3 not my Wii so that I can get high definition content. They try to make the comparison between their games and the NetFlix service by claiming that their customers don’t care about quality issues, and while that might be true for their games I can assure you that the guy with a 42″ HD television will not want to watch a fuzzy movie.

Nintendo said the following during the interview: “the vast majority of content for streaming is not HD content, so there is really no loss for the Wii consumer”. Which might be true considering it is a new service, but you can bet that within a couple months that will be changing. I think that in the end the decision not to beef up the Wii’s hardware will cost them, as well the decision to not have DVD playback functionality. Until I bought my PS3 I had a PS2 sitting around just because my Wii couldn’t play DVD’s.

Wii Netflix Streaming without an HD Option?  Child please.

As a result, Google has decided to fight back by removing their censorship filters allowing pictures of Tienanmen Square and other infamously censored content on Google.cn. While Google held approximately a 30% market share in China and they will surely miss that revenue, they are getting the best PR that a company could ever wish for in the Western world. The Obama administration is completely behind Google’s move and this attack by the Chinese is not sitting well with Secretary Clinton.

This is a blessing in disguise for Google, they stayed in China for longer than I expected. It was a huge story back in 2006 when they launched Google.cn that they were blocking iconic images of Tank Man of Tienanmen Square as part of a larger filtering system. That left a very bad taste in my mouth, given the Google motto of “Do no evil”; supporting an oppressive regime in a country that is growing in influence in our country fit under the evil category for me and many others.

China has tried to push new ways to censor internet connections such as the “Green Dam” filtering software that computer manufacturers such as Dell would have been forced to install on all computers sold within the country. Eventually the Chinese would have wanted to start forcing new restrictions on Google and rather than slowly complying with each regulation until it was no longer profitable, they are better off keeping the moral high ground.

Google is the first major business to basically give the Chinese government the finger in such a public way. They are getting a huge amount of support from the U.S. government, human rights groups, and internet users across the world that feel it should be an unrestricted medium. They are now the heroes protecting the civil rights of web citizens across the world rather than being seen as pandering to China as most other companies would have done in the same situation.

All I have to say is well played, Google. This will be a pivotal moment in company history as the public once again views Google as the company to be. Google chose morals over profit, and the business world clearly likes this new approach to international commerce. Take a look at their ticker symbol Goog and you will see that their stocks are already closing higher than before this news broke. They should hold a PR seminar some time, I would definitely like to learn from the master.

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