Product Review: Nvidia 7900GT

It all started pretty innocently; I was playing one of my favorite PC games “Evil Genius”, (2004), when all of sudden… these black bars started appearing on the screen, extending from the top of it, all the way down to the characters I was playing in my secret underground base, making them appear as if they were marionettes, which is strangest thing I ever saw.

Afterwards I switched to playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2005 for PC) and strange things kept appearing there too. It progressively worsened as in the images below to the point I couldn’t play the game any more:

First I thought this was the issue with GTA: SA in itself. So I reinstalled the game and started all over again, deleting previous game saves. But the same issue kept appearing again. Too bad I discarded my saved game files on the first run, where I managed to complete the part of the game that happens in Los Santos, before the story forces you to escape to San Fierro. Could have saved myself repeating the same thing all over again. Thankfully, GTA has a good replay value, so wasn’t a drag to do it again.

After looking further into the graphic’s corruption. I discovered the real culprit. Nvidia 7900GT graphics card. It just wasn’t built up to scratch for the money I spent on it in April 2007. It gave out the ghost, but it turns out there is more to it then a faulty card.

In fact the Nvidia corporate honchos were very well aware thay are placing faulty or graphics cards that weren’t up to scratch on the market, thus jeopardizing the Nvidia brand with substandard product quality.

Which is exactly what they did, and yet I can bet you they commanded enormous salaries and bonuses for their supposed talent and genius. They gave that famous Nvidia “the way it’s meant to be played” splash screen marketing pitch a whole new ridiculous meaning. 

After taking my PC box to the local PC superstore with all sorts of things and gadgets on offer, the in-house repair team sombrely declared my graphics card as “Dead On Arrival”.

“What kind of new graphics card would you like? Nvidia or ATI?"

“Is that a joke?”

“No, khm… I guess ATI.”

“Yes. Only ATI.”

When it comes to marketing, Nvidia is like a sleazeball that has the gift of the gab to pick up the chicks. Eventually he is discovered as a sleazeball, but by that stage the girl has to live with what she has done. ATI on the other hand is a good guy that can’t speak up for himself, but when a girl takes him home, the odds are she will stay with him forever.

Wish ATI or AMD as it is now known would sort it @#$% out when it comes to their marketing campaigns. They really need to start communicating better to gamers about the quality of their product. And for heavens sake – simplify it!

Cut out all the confusing and endless numbers you put out and when it comes to marketing, follow Nvidia’s example, (but not Nvidia's production practices).

 Nvidia - Disaster

 Nvidia - tempers run hot

 Nvidia - faulty graphics

Product Review: "Driver Robot" by Blitware

Software and computer business is to geeks what cocaine is to gangs; the fastest way to wealth and power. In geeks case; a fast way to fame, fortune and judging Indian beauty pageants.

Ok, I admit it; I got taken in by slick marketing to purchase a legit license for this software. The problem is – it doesn’t work as described in the marketing spiel. And that is the real issue with this software; marketing. As Public Enemy would rap; “Don’t believe the hype”.

Driver Robot is pitched as breeze to work with for mere mortals. It is breeze to work with… if you are an advanced PC user, which %90 of us are anything but.

My PC is a tough customer for a product such as Driver Robot because it is a child of two extremely user unfriendly companies: Microsoft (software) and ASUS (hardware). I guess Microsoft would be the mother and ASUS the father?…. Doesn’t matter.

           

Driver Robot could not deal with the parents above in order to put the child in its place. Neither one of them were helpful or cooperative for the child’s benefit. Any driver update software worth it’s salt must be able to deal with negligent parents such as Microsoft and ASUS. To illustrate what you will be going through, I posted some screenshot and… good luck figuring out as to what the @#$% is going on:

The positives are: you suddenly became aware of what drivers you don’t have up to date (if you can figure them out). This is the part that Driver Robot does well (more or less). What it doesn’t do well…

The negatives: you don’t know what new drivers you have just installed and you got to keep track of them… on paper! It shows new drivers as not installed, in spite of fact you just did install them. It also miss ID’d my printer as CANON when it was ESPON and kept nudging me to install the driver that wasn’t needed. And… look I don’t know… (sigh)…

When it comes to us mortals who just use their PCs for web browsing and playing PC games, it is not salvation that will magically make all of our drivers up to date. We will know when such a product arrives. You will be able to click on a button or two, leave your PC on to do its thing automatically, go to a pub, have a beer, return home, restart your PC and… bada-bim, bada-bam! Everything is sorted without you even noticing.

           

I’m certain Blitware staff are good people, but they need to change their marketing angle with Driver Robot. When I bravely requested a refund advising that in my particular case it just didn’t work, they promptly refunded my money. The only loss suffered is currency conversion both ways from New Zealand to Canadian dollar and vice versa (about %5 - %7).

In that regard – respect to them.

Service Review: Vodafone IOU

I’ve been on Vodafone mobile phone network ever since the mobile phones flooded society in very late 90s and early 2000s. Few years back they introduced this system called “IOU”, in case if you ran out of credit, you text a certain number, it loads $5 onto your phone, which is then paid back when you top up next. Simple enough, right?

Wrong! Here I am somewhere on a bus station, desperately needing to call somebody but I don’t have credit. “Of course”, I thought, “I’ll text that IOU service”. Wrong! The IOU service needs to be set up in advance. Damn.

At home I tried to set it up, but it all turned into a fiasco. The entire Vodafone NZ website is unnecessary crowded with all sorts of things complicating everything. Wanted to send them an email to complain about not being able to set up the IOU, but couldn’t even do that.

First you have to set up “My Help” account. Which I tried, only to keep getting a frustrating message “Email already in the database”, or similar. Oh, for @#$% sake! The email help request form is far too stringent for what should be a simple inquiry.

Would have made a complaint to Vodafone about it, if I was able to. Instead I kept thinking about going to Commerce Commission or Better Business Biro (if there is such a thing in New Zealand), but then thought that probably the most effective way to draw the attention of Vodafone’s well salaried head honchos is to contact NZ Herald’s Sideswipe section.

In the end this service review ended up on this Blog. Vodafone charges $1 per call for a customer enquiry. How’s that for customer service? I am not going to pay that as a matter of principle. That fee goes against the grain of capitalism and free enterprise. We the people should not be paying that.

That’s why I wanted to send an email to them instead. Which seems to be purposefully complicated so you can’t get in touch with Vodafone that way and you have to call them. It all resembles an extortion racket enforced upon Vodafone users.

Conclusion: it seems easier to get on North Korea’s official web page and request a signed autograph from “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, than it is to email and get help from Vodafone.

Book Review: "Shadows on the Mountain" by M.C. Kurapovna, 2009

         
Really tries hard to give credit to a lesser known guerrilla fighter in the Balkans during WW2. Serbian Chetnik commander Dragoljub “Drazha” Mihajlovic. Having had a difficult task of being one of the few generals who happened to fight both the Nazis and the Communists at the same time, it isn’t surprising his story, and that of the movement he lead, was doomed to ultimately end in tragedy.
 

Although Serbs often like to point out they were the only ones who were both anti-Nazi and anti-Communists, as well as a staunch pro-Western ally during WW2, there are other examples. Greeks too had the same problem of a communist takeover, however their civil war (1946 - 1949) happened after the WW2 ended, while Serbs were cornered from both sides at the same time.

            
This attempt to put into a positive light a tragic historical figure who was caught up in a whirlwind of events is heavily compromised by a series of factual and embarrassing errors.

            
By the time I was fully annoyed with them and finally decided to start keeping track of these as they kept popping up, I was already in pages 200 and above. From the earlier pages I could only locate the one on page 65. Sorry, couldn’t bother re-reading this book again and going through it with a fine toothed comb. Oh, also on one of the photographs a group of Chetniks and Ustashas are mistakenly labelled as opposites.

            
Here are some factual errors I did wrote down:

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Page 228/

“…Massacre of 72 Croat Partisan sympathizers in Vranjic, a Croatian city near Osijek, on the beautiful northwest coast of that country...”

Osijek is a town in North East of Croatia, in the Croatia’s Slavonia region which is not adjacent to coastline.

Page 241/

“…Murder of poet Ivan Goran Kovacic in 1946…”

The great Croat poet (and a Partisan himself) I.G. Kovacic was killed by the Chetniks in the year of 1943 near Foca in Bosnia.

Page 253/

“…Southern Serbian town of Pearsonovatz named after Drew Pearson…”

Never heard of it. Let me check on Google or Google Maps. Nope. Doesn’t exist. Ok, maybe it's a very, very small village that doesn't even feature on the maps, but it certainly can't be then classed as a "town."

Page 289/

“…Djuic, from the Montenegerin village of Topolje…”

Momcilo Djuic, another famous WW2 Chetnik commander and the only one who managed to evade Tito, and die of natural death in San Diego in 1999, was born near Knin, Dalmatia, Croatian coastal region.

Page 65/

“…Maks Luburic… himself an Orthodox Christian from Montenegro…”

Probably the most outrageous claim of all. Maks Luburic, one of notorious Ustasha commanders was a Croat born near Ljubuski, Herzegovina.

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My belief is that Montenegrins have enough to deal with the fact that Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Arkan were all Montenegrins, without saddling them up with Djuic and Luburic who weren’t.

The story of the Serbian guerrilla fighter Drazha Mihajlovic, who died in the shadow of a much, much better known Croat communist leader Josip Broz Tito, his main enemy and rival, is an interesting one and should be re-examined now that so many years have gone past, with a new light cast on those faithful events.

From 1941 when a group of Royal Yugoslav Army officers decided not to accept the unconditional surrender, but withdrew to Ravna Gora, Serbia, to fight on against the Nazis, only to find themselves mostly fighting the Communists instead. To their showdown against the Communists in "Battle of the Neretva" in 1943 which they lost and their final stand and defeat on Zelengora mountain in 1945.

Sadly this book is falling short of being an accurate historical record. Here’s hoping something better will be written soon. Let it be warts and all but let it be accurate.

Book Review: "Rogue Regime" by Jasper Becker, 2006.

       

It’s a difficult book to digest, not because of writing, since writing is superb, but because of subject matter. Most difficult part of it is when it covers the “1994 North Korean Famine”. Starving people are contrasted to luxurious living by Kim Il Sung, (North Korean Dictator 1948 – 1994) a fraud and a Stalinist puppet, and Kim Jong Il, (North Korean Dictator 1994 – current) a raging egomaniac. 
          

Read the story of the truly richest men in the world. Whereas kings are tought to be representatives of god, in North Korea the Kims became gods themselves. Whereas kings are tasked with looking after the people, in North Korea people are tasked in looking after the Kims.

            
After this book, read “1984” by George Orwell and marvel at how Orwell managed to get so close to predicting natural evolution of communist political correctness and single minded thinking into something that can only be described as utter nightmare. Wander at how close that prediction is in North Korea.

            
Where people live completely unaware of the outside world, thinking they reside in paradise on Earth, while that is only true for the “Great” and “Dear Leader” themselves. Two gangsters who sacrificed millions of people to maintain the regime based on a bankrupt idea that ended up on a trash heap of history long time ago.

            
Two men epitomizing evil in human form, who send their children to be educated in private Swiss schools while they rail against the Western style democracies. Two men who maintain a Joy Brigade of 2,000 beautiful women to fulfill their every sexual desire, who import foreign prostitutes and BMWs while people are starving in the streets…

            
If you are a bright and upbeat intellectual with faith in humanity, who is interested in world’s affairs, don’t read this book. You won’t be able to handle the truth. Because in this case, the truth is ugly.

            
For all the rest, dive in to the deepest and darkest depths of human nature.