When I upgraded my graphics card from a GeForce GTX 470 to a GeForce GTX 690 I was thrilled.  I’d designed my computer around making upgrades like that later.  I didn’t have the budget to build the “perfect” machine when I built it, but it was at least a solid platform to improve from.  So the long-overdue graphics upgrade was on my list of things to do from the beginning.

In fact, the old GeForce GTX 470 was even relegated to being a dedicated PhysX (physics) card.

And you’d think that throwing in a monster of a new video card, a dual-processor card at that, would make my silent PC unbearably loud.  After all, the GeForce GTX 690 is hardly designed for silence.  But in fact, quite the opposite has been true.  With ridiculous SLI performance available, even bumping up the quality settings in all of my games, the GeForce GTX 690 is so under-utilized that it hardly ever has to kick the fan speed up to cope with the heat.  Whereas the tiny GeForce GTX 470 had to wind up like a freaking jet engine for some video games.

So the nVidia GeForce GTX 690, I love!

But ever since I upgraded to version 310.90 of nVidia’s display drivers, I’ve had a problem.  Every single time that I turn on my computer, I have to start my computer twice!  From a cold boot the drivers always fail and Windows throws me into a low-resolution driverless mode.  It’s easy to identify as my logon screen is at an extremely low resolution.  Fortunately I can just hit restart from there.  Thereafter, so long as my computer is rebooting, second boot, every boot until I actually turn it off and cold boot again, the drivers detect the card correctly and all is fine.

It never happened with the older versions of the drivers that I had.  It always detected the card correctly the first time, every time.

Only once I “upgraded” to nVidia GeForce display driver 310.90 did this problem occur.

I’ve noticed another bug as well, that may or may not be related.  It detects my monitor on the wrong port.  In the “NVIDIA Control Panel” software on the “Configure Multi-GPU, Surround, PhysX” configuration screen is shown a representation of my two cards.  It even breaks down the GeForce GTX 690 into cards A and B, along side the GeForce GTX 470, for the three cards it technically is.  And each card shows which monitors back-end ports have which monitors plugged into them.  It correctly identifies which the DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, etc. ports are available on which cards.  But it always gets it wrong on which one my monitor is plugged into.  Not just the wrong port, but the wrong card.  I plug it into card A and it shows it as being on card B.  I move it to the one and only DVI port on card B to match its idiocy and it then shows it on card A.  (And not even the right port type on card A.)  It just totally flubs the port my monitor is plugged into.

Now maybe that bug is in no way related.  Or maybe that bug is the reason that I have to reboot my PC.  Don’t know.  Don’t really care.  The point is, starting your computer up twice each and every time gets really darned annoying!  You think people complain about the long boot time of Windows 7 on a hard drive now, try making them double that!  And it’s not automated either.  You have to boot it up and then manually restart it yourself!  You can’t just walk away and wait.

Now, you might ask, why don’t I just uninstall the bad driver and roll back to a prior version?  Oh, right, because the prior version of the drivers had a gaping security hole!  Seriously nVidia?  My choice is to either boot twice each and every time I start up my PC from cold, or to have a well-known security vulnerability on my PC allowing network attacks to escalate their privileges to super-user level access?  That’s a pretty crappy choice there, nVidia!  Get your freaking act together already!

So the year has only just kicked off, and yet we’re already being scared shirtless by vulnerabilities, holes, and hacks in the wild.  Normally I’d have covered all of these in separate blogs, but because I’m playing catch-up after having eye problems, I get to mash them all up into one super-security warning. Let’s get down to utter chip-chilling tales of terror:

Microsoft

When it comes to security, Microsoft is always down in the dumps. This year starts off no differently. Not only has Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday nuked 12 vulns for us, which is quite a lot for a Patch Tuesday these days, but on top of that it doesn’t include one whopper of a security hole found this Holiday season in older versions of Internet Explorer that allows malware to be installed on a PC just by visiting a malicious (or hijacked) website. Microsoft released a temporary workaround for the vulnerability to IE6, IE7, and IE8, but that workaround has already been … worked around.  Oh the irony.  In the wild I might add.  So take it with a grain of useless rocks. Maybe it’ll be fixed next month, but not this one.

nVidia

While it shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone that something as common as a graphics driver used by probably at least half of computers out there is a point of attack, it was something of a shocker to hear that you should immediately update to nVidia GeForce display driver version 310.90 right now to close the mother of all security holes allowing network attacks to gain super-user level access to your PC and to elevate privileges to lower-level access. Why would a graphics driver have that kind of a network bug in it? And why would a graphics driver allow you to elevate your access level? Goodness only knows. But if you’re got nVidia graphics under the hood and you don’t update your graphics drivers this second, you’re sitting on a huge security hole.

EDIT: But be prepared for other problems with this driver update!

Adobe

Of course a lot of people choose not to use Adobe’s Acrobat Reader. Plenty have switched to third-party alternatives, such as Foxit. And now, they’re suddenly wishing that they hadn’t. Why? Well, as if Adobe software wasn’t bad enough when it comes to security, it turns out that Foxit has its own buffer overflow bug worse than anything from Adobe. It can’t handle very long query strings after a filename and can be used to overwrite the program’s memory to execute arbitrary code. Yes, that’s right, just opening a file with a maliciously crafted filename will allow Foxit to execute whatever code a malware author wants to. Oops. This is one time when Foxit is definitely not “better than Adobe.”

But fear not. Firefox is coming to the rescue. Usually when the words “Adobe” and “security” are used in the same sentence, it means trouble, but here’s one time when it doesn’t: Firefox is now including PDF reader straight into their web browser using some fancy HTML 5 footwork. No more plug-in is needed to view a PDF file in Firefox, so you can kiss your Adobe plug-in (or even more dangerous Foxit plugin) goodbye and say hello to improved speed and security. Huzzah! I guess.  If you don’t actually use Firefox, well then, sucks to be you.  :p  Just kidding.  I’m sure everyone will be doing it before too long.  Except, perhaps, for Internet Explorer that is.

Java

Well, next up on the list of lowest common denominators in the security world is … Oracle.  Who doesn’t want some Java lovin’. Or perhaps in this case hatin’. A new Java zero-day exploit can compromise PCs, allowing a hacker to, you guessed it, execute arbitrary code, escalate privileges, etc. Basically any hacker can own your PC just by you visiting any malicious (or hijacked) website. At least assuming that you have Java enabled. It affects the latest and greatest Java 7 update 10 and prior versions and is being used widespread in the wild. Hopefully Oracle will fix that up for us some day. In the meantime, time to turn off Java.  How many times have you heard that?  Why does anyone even have it enabled?

Ruby on Rails

And surprisingly, our last security warning of the New Year isn’t for Adobe Flash. Nope. It’s far worse than that. Ruby on Rails has been derailed! With two critical security vulnerabilities, anyone can perform remote code execution against any Ruby on Rails application that has the XML parser enabled. (Which just so happens to be the default setting, and for good reason as it is heavily used.) Which is bad enough. But these holes also allow hackers to run system commands on the server with the same privilege level as the application. So if you were wondering about how a hacker can hijack someone’s website to serve up all of those malicious web pages that can use those security holes in Java, Internet Explorer, etc. to infect anyone’s PC just by visiting the website, there you go.

Fortunately Ruby on Rails has been patched already and if you update to the latest version, you’re safe once more. But the key there is “if”.

Conclusion

So all in all, this 2013 year has sure started out with a bang! Insecurity: 2013 reminds us once again that security is far from a given. Take it seriously and get updating!

Big news at CES this year is that nVidia announced their intention to create a portable gaming console based on Android which they are calling Shield.

Hmm…

On the one hand, I get it. When it comes to video games, nVidia is right in there on the hardware side as well as working with video game producers to optimize well and such. Additionally, nVidia has jumped into the smartphone CPU/SoC market with their own ARM-based graphics powerhouse (for cellphones anyway) chips such as Tegra.

I get it.

Really. I do.

But it’s still complete and total rubbish and doomed to fail.

Why is that? Well, gee, just ask Sony. Who the heck needs a little gaming gizmo to carry around when we can whip out our cellphone and play Angry Birds? No one takes portable games seriously. If you want a real game, you play on a real console hooked up to a TV … or even better, you play one on your computer. Portable gaming is just frivolous fun. It’s not worth spending money on. It’s not worth overdoing. And smartphones now fill that gap quite nicely.

I’d be surprised if Nintendo, the portable gaming console leader, can even keep up a decent profit now that smartphones are a dime a dozen. Who wants to spend two hundred bucks on the latest gaming gizmo and another sixty bucks per game when you can pull out the phone that you already have and download any random waste of time title for free or five bucks?

Once again, cellphones have killed a market by doing the same thing that something else used to do. From music players, to portable video players, to PDAs and BlackBerries, to portable gaming consoles, and likely soon to be digital cameras, smartphones are eating up market segments that used to have a place in the world.

So why on earth would nVidia be so stupid as to try to break into a market that’s on a rapid decline? Sure, they have the technology and the expertise. The one thing that they don’t have however, that no one has, is a customer. Just ask Sony. By most rights the PS Vita should have been a treat. It has all the weird gimmicky gizmos and doo-dads, not to mention some amazing performance for its size. But frankly, as we fling aggravated avians through the big black yonder, we just don’t give a fig about those doo-dads and gizmos.  Hardly any of us even care about super-duper performance … from something that fits in our pocket. When we have our phones, why would we spend the small fortune on some other dedicated device that only does games? And then spend another small fortune on the games themselves?

It’s a business model that just doesn’t work anymore. Don’t be surprised if Nintendo soon announces that they’re out of that biz and focusing on their normal console business instead. Sony keeps trying … and keeps failing.  Sony doesn’t seem to understand that the only people who care about high performance and fancy dancy features are the people who already have them in a big expensive box.  Mobile gaming just isn’t something to take seriously.  Those rare few who actually care enough to put their money where their mouths are don’t have nearly enough money to keep that niche afloat.

Frankly, at this point, about the only thing that’d really work at all for the mobile video game business is something that Sony already tried … but tried to overdo: a phone designed for gaming. Maybe if their analog sticks had worked, they might have had a chance. But even then … not likely. Not with all the branding and over-the-top horsehockey that Sony involved anyway.

The problem is, existing Android/iOS games are designed to be played on a touchscreen. (Funny that.) Or if not that, then by motion control.  The two essentials built into smartphones these days.  So taking those titles onto your super-special-gaming-phone (or Android-based gaming console) means that the incredible vast majority of games to play on your high-end-portable-gaming-device aren’t going to use any of the sticks, buttons, fondle-spots, gropers, widgets, etc. that you make available on your device. Meaning that, by default, your device is already not compelling. The only way to beat that self-destructive start is to launch with a good line-up of games that makes your device compelling. And I don’t just mean like five crap games. I mean at least a dozen on par with Mario, Sonic, Metroid, Zelda, etc. that no one else has or will ever have. Games that make highly devoted followers, that you’ll be able to milk for sequel after sequel after sequel to keep your highly devoted followers tied to your platform. And you have to have a gaggle of third parties locked in with promises to deliver titles over the coming years. Then, and only then, could you possibly hope to break into the portable gaming market that the cellphone ate.

And even then … good freaking luck. Because even if your platform supports the same Android/iOS games that everyone else is playing, it’ll force everyone else to ask why buying into your platform is worth the expense when they can already play Android/iOS games on their phone.

But even if you can ignore all of that, you also have to admit, nVidia’s Shield is also just butt ugly. Seriously. Who the heck came up with that design? Talk about not winning anyone over! Ugh! I wouldn’t be caught dead holding that thing.  It’s even worse than anything Nintendo is doing lately!  It’s the exact opposite of sexy.

So let’s face it, already nVidia has completely missed the market. Their console is ugly. Their console is a purchase secondary to a phone … that’ll be able to play most games their console can, defeating the purpose of their device to most people. And I’ve heard no talk of must-have titles exclusive to Shield. All epic fails by themselves. Put these three failures together however and it makes for … a Super-Dooper-Epic-Pooper of a Fail. (Or something like that.)

Now, all of that aside, some kind of generic portable-game-like-device that Bluetooth’s its controller sticks and buttons into a phone that you clip into the middle of the device, perhaps on expandable rails to fit anything from a 3.5” tiny screen smartphone to a 5.5” phablet, that might have some merit. Especially if the expandable rails thing worked in reverse to somehow fit it into a pocket when not in use. Or if it clipped well into place like a barely noticeable phone case. A device like that, especially if you could somehow finagle it with some kind of new high-speed NFC link, or sell phone manufacturers on a hard port like USB but better, could potentially even offer extra compute power or even turn the phone into just a screen. Maybe something as crazy as that could convince people to buy, because they’re not replacing their phone, they’re upgrading it. They won’t have to juggle two libraries of games. And when they need compactness they can just take their phone only and still play most of the video games that they’ve downloaded.

Something like that might have a slim chance in hell … if it was done very carefully and got lots of people on board before the official launch and a lot of follow-up commitments for after.

But nVidia’s Shield? Doomed to fail.

Even the concept of an Android box to connect to your TV and use as a game console is quickly becoming pretty stupid to invest in as USB Android PCs on a stick are becoming more and more common and most dirt cheap. It won’t be long before form and functionality hit the right balance there and anyone who wants one will already have one, and thus have no need for something official or fancy, let alone being a device limited to gaming.

But to try to convince people to not use their phone for mobile games? These days? Ludicrous. You might as well try to sell them on a PalmPilot while you’re at it.

So here is where the circus meets the professional. I’m tired of crappy phones with their dinky apps and their cloudy touchy-feely internet-is-all-encompassing malarkey. What I want is real mobile computing. I want to run the same software that I do on my computer at work and at home. I want full-blown Microsoft Office. (Or OpenOffice. Or LibreOffice.) I want full-blown Adobe Photoshop. (Or GIMP.) I want the real internet. I want a real version of Windows. I want real software. I want the real deal.

No more freaking apps!

I’m tired of PDA-like behavior from my smartphone. Seriously people, my Palm Pilot wasn’t good enough then, and cellphones killed off its advancement years ago. Only, they haven’t advanced significantly in its place. Smartphones now still can only just barely do what PDAs did way back when.

Since freaking Y2K we’ve been able to put an x86 PC into a pocket. It’s over a decade later, and we somehow can’t put a full PC into a smartphone?!?!?!

Yes, it’s going to be slower than a good laptop, which is already slower than a desktop PC. I get that. I can be patient. I can wait for my application to load. Especially if it’s a real application and not just an app. Really. It’s okay!

Yes, battery life may be a bit tricky. Though, honestly, I really don’t think it should be as bad as some make it out to be. Put in a slightly larger batter for starters. And continue improving the technology to use less power. There’s nothing new here. But if you don’t start somewhere, you’ll never be sufficiently motivated to iteratively improve the design.

And honestly, with good drivers, even Windows has been stable enough to run 24×7 lately. And that’s without some fancy new not-entirely-asleep sleep mode that updates things periodically while asleep. And there’s always Linux. Heck, my cellphone has needed a reboot more often than my PC has!

So it’s about flirking time that someone brings a full x86-capable (with PCI bus) solution to the smartphone. Really. It was about time half a decade ago! It’s way beyond about time now.

I don’t care if it’s Intel. They’re certainly poised well to do it. They have the technology, just not the cojones, apparently.

I don’t care if it’s AMD. After their acquisition of ATi there’s no reason that they couldn’t do it with their own SoC. And while Intel is fiddle-farting around with x86 smartphones without a PCI bus, there’s a big freaking opportunity here to take the market right out from under them. They’d even deserve it too!

Heck, even nVidia ought to be able to make a chipset for an Intel Atom that includes the PCI bus. nVidia used to make good chipsets. (And, of course, they’re great at other stuff too, like graphics.) And they’ve come to some kind of agreement with Intel again, right?

As much as it pains me to say it, at this point, I’d even consider something from freaking VIA! And I’ve never used a VIA product that I didn’t hate. They bring unstable to a whole new level! But even they are positioned to make an x86 smartphone that can run Windows.

Someone, already, geeze!

It’s bad enough that tablets are barely even getting there, but by now we really should have an x86-based full-Windows-running phone.

I’d say thank goodness that Fujitsu finally gave us one with the F-07C, except that oh, wait, it’s only available in Japan. 

I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the UMPC world right now. I’ve been all excited about the possibilities that will open up for them with Intel’s new Oak Trail platform. Not to mention nVidia’s ION. And the news that nVidia and Intel have settled their differences. Hardware-wise, UMPCs could be outstanding!

Except, so far, it seems … not.

The closest thing I could find to a nifty replacement for my aged Viliv S5 with all of its design quirks (and outright flaws and omissions) is the Ocosmos OCS1. Except it was much better before they finalized it. Back when they first demoed their concept design it had a slider keyboard. Now … no slider. Apparently they don’t think we want one? As if! But I’m also not seeing any GPS in there. And what about 802.11n? Forget b/g, I want b/g/n! Not to mention are there no 4g (at least in theory) modems yet or something?

Is it really too much to ask for something like a Viliv S5 (or smaller) with 802.11b/g/n wifi, a 4g modem, a 64GB (or larger) SSD, Bluetooth (maybe even Wireless USB?), GPS, a real pen stylus, a multitouch screen, an 800 pixel vertical resolution (like wxga 1280×800 is so hard), a slider hardware keyboard (even if it also uses a software keyboard), spearkers, mic, camera, two headphone jacks (one for speakers and one for mic so that you can use a freaking heatset), mini HDMI, at least one USB port, motion-sensing gyro or whatever to at least determine orientation for switching between speakerphone and cellphone mic/speaker usage (if not for gaming), and at least 9 hours of battery life so that it can do an actual day’s work? And while we’re at it, some front panel buttons that don’t break, and some extra programmable buttons so that I can do a little gaming too?  (I mean even an NES controller had four buttons.)  I really didn’t think I was asking for the moon with those hopes and dreams for a new UMPC, but apparently so.

Color me disappointed with the UMPC world. I guess I kind of figured they’d, you know, improve over time. Especially since the actual processor components are getting smaller and cooler whilst simultaneously improving their performance. I just kind of figured the rest would follow that example.

I’m also thinking that UMPCs like these (mini-tablets?) could really adopt the concept I’m seeing in the laptop battery world where you have one smaller battery built into the design, and the option to use that and a larger full-back-sized expansion battery to extend the life into the actually usable range, even if it would probably double the weight of a mini-tablet.

And while we’re at it, can I have one that uses its real estate well? As in sleek edges, not lots of rounded corners and wasteful spacing? I do still want to fit this thing into my pocket after all. Something that I can only just barely manage with my Viliv S5.

I want something that I can work on, not just some toy. Something that can successfully replace my laptop, my cell phone, my GPS, and my MP3 player, all in one sweet sweet package. You know, what PDAs were supposed to become? What even the best Android smartphones still can’t do? (And no, we’re not even mentioning that iThing.)  Something that can run not only office software, but things like GIMP, Audacity, Visual Studio, etc. That can do real work. And can still play, of course. Obviously not play well, but at least something better than solitare and minesweeper.

Is that really too much to ask for?  A real operating system and real applications instead of “apps”?

When I got my Viliv S5 I thought we were so close.

But it’s been a while now, a long time as far as consumer electronics and computers are concerned, and I don’t feel like we’ve actually gotten any closer to a device that actually works and meets 100% of my needs.

What a shame. Why should I spend money on another imperfect solution when my antique Viliv S5 is almost as good? If you want my money, it’s all or nothing. Sell me a tablet UMPC that I can really use or don’t bother trying.  And don’t even get me started on those stupid little folding netbooks like laptops for little monkeys.  Bah.

Oh, and for flirk’s sake, NO ONLINE STORAGE! They make these things called hard drives (or SSDs preferably) for a reason!  Like I really want to freaking network all of my data.