I’ve seen a lot of trendy sites come and go and I frankly suspect Facebook will be another Myspace (or one of many other sites no longer relevant).

How Facebook intends to make a profit without selling its users’ private information is anybody’s guess. General Motors recently pulled its $10 million in ads after coming to the conclusion they simply don’t work.

As a potential investor and as someone who has seen so many sites disappear over the years, I’m incredibly standoffish when it comes to Facebook. I use Facebook to a degree, but I don’t really care for the product. It’s got way too much going on. It’s obvious to me that whomever they hired for the user interface doesn’t know what the heck he/she is doing.

Of all the tech IPOs I would have gone in if I had the money in recent years, Google is the only one I would have jumped in on. It’s a company that works, even though some of their products end up failing. Facebook is essentially one big product that’s going to be bankrupt in just a few years.

You would think that all ISPs with bandwidth limitations would provide its customers with free tools to monitor their bandwidth. Not in my case. Charter Communications has repeatedly said they are working on them. I eventually said “enough” and went in look for tools to do the job.

I’ve tried a few different programs which promised to monitor bandwidth for my computers but it wasn’t until I came across DU Meter from Hazel Technologies that I found what I had been looking for.

DU Meter had a very easy to use installation wizard. You don’t need to be an educated network administrator to be able to use DU Meter. It’s simple and straight-forward. The default settings will work for 99% of users. I expected I’d have to customize the heck out of it, but that wasn’t the case. It was clearly programmed by someone who knew what they were doing. I’m sure customer feedback has been tremendously helpful.

One of the things I found frustrating with other bandwidth monitoring software had to do with cross-network file transfers. Most of the software chose to include that in the bandwidth totals. DU Meter, by default, chooses to monitor “Internet only” transfers. This has been an enormous help to me. I don’t have to constantly change a setting every time I want to transfer something from one computer to another.

Perhaps the best feature of DU Meter is the archived data transfer stats. You can go back days, weeks, even months to see how your Internet habits have affected your Internet data usage.

There are only two drawbacks to DU Meter. One of them is the program can’t monitor all of the bandwidth across the network. You’ll need a router with bandwidth monitoring technology if you have gaming consoles and the like which are hooked up to the Internet. If you only have computers or you don’t do very much online with those consoles, you’re going to be just fine with DU Meter.

The other drawback is that it’s not free. However the price is quite reasonable considering the frustration that I’m sure would ensue once your ISP cut you off for going over your bandwidth for the month. It has really put my mind at ease. If your ISP has bandwidth limits, I highly recommend giving DU Meter a try. Its 30-day trial offers you plenty of time to give it a shot.

With Intel soundly trouncing AMD in the CPU marketplace, the only place I felt comfortable looking is Intel when I built my new PC during Christmas break.
Here is a rundown of the components I used:

• Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA
• Fractal Design Define R3 Silver Arrow w/ USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Silent PC Computer Case
• G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
• ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
• Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler
• Intel Core i7-2600 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor
• ASUS P8Z68-V LE LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
• Galaxy 43GGS8HX3SPZ GeForce GT 430 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
• SeaSonic S12II 520 Bronze 520W ATX12V V2.3 / EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

I didn’t need the latest and greatest technology with respects to the video card and optical drive so I saved quite a bit there.  I’m quite pleased with the resulting PC.  Intel has a very impressive CPU with their Sandy Bridge line.  I highly recommend them.

Maxis just announced a new Sim City title and it’s definitely something that piqued my interest.  Age of Empires Online did the same thing initially, but that fell to the wayside.  I don’t want an “Online” version.  I want a new sequel to the “regular” A0E games.

I confess to never being a fanatical Sim City player back when Maxis was making those titles, but I did enjoy the games to an extent.  I think that nostalgic part of me is hoping this is going to be something that actually gets me back into PC gaming.

The old Sim City games were never the total city simulators I wanted.  I’m a micromanager.  I think that’s why I enjoyed RollerCoaster Tycoon so much.  You could change virtually everything under the sun in that game, from coaster designs to the type of pathing your customers walked on.  With Sim City, you were always limited to what actually went on in your city.  Zoning residential, commercial, etc always felt like they had gamers on training wheels.  It never gave me the control I wanted.

Maxis, please don’t screw it up.  Give us more control over what happens in our cities.  The new Sim City could be awesome.

And to my delight, someone used that epic Hitler scene from the 2004 film Downfall and added the subtitles that fit AMD’s epic disaster. People have used this video to suit all sorts of failures. I love it.

The Egyptian, a great 1950s film, was released at $40 on Bluray and limited to just 3000 copies. As much as I would have liked to have bought the film, there’s no way I’m going to pay that much for it. Drop the price and raise the number of copies available and you’ll do better.

Limiting your release to 3000 copies is almost begging pirates to make your movie available on bittorrent. You might as well just send them a copy!

I realize that OnLive, the online service in question, is a competitor of the one that GameStop has, but how on Earth is what GameStop is doing even remotely legal? You can’t open a brand new game, remove a coupon, and sell the game as brand new! But tell that to GameStop.

Now that media reports have circulated and after talking to Square, GS has stopped selling physical copies of the game [they still sell digital versions] until Square ships them copies of the game without the free coupon for the rival service.

GameStop’s actions are completely ridiculous in my view, and I’m sure illegal as hell. I hope to see some sort of lawsuit come from this, whether it’s from Square or a consumer who bought the game as new, but it clearly wasn’t sealed.

GameStop was in essence really just selling used copies of Deus Ex at the “new” price. I guess GameStop really is only good for selling used games after all.

These high temps would be expected in July/August, but early June? It’s made for a miserable week. You just can’t escape the sweltering temperatures. It’s taxing on the air conditioning as it not only tries to cool the rooms, but remove the high humidity. Both tasks have been difficult for my little window unit to manage.

There appears to be some relief on the horizon. Tomorrow, it’s not even supposed to hit 70 degrees all day! If the humidity isn’t bad, it’s going to be an incredible day.

I expect to be quite busy the rest of the week because you really shouldn’t exert yourself very much outside with this type of weather. A lot of people end up in the hospital with sunstroke and all manners of heat-related medical problems.

I tend to follow the Weather Channel’s advice regarding these hot days of summer: relax, stay inside or in the shade if outdoors, and drink plenty of water.

Had I not had a second computer to look for help with the removal of this piece of malware, I may never have gotten it removed. The malware hijacked the web browsers on my PC, making it impossible to search for help on the infected PC.

I tried transferring the required removal tools via Google Desktop, but the file transfer was rejected by the malware. I ended up wasting a perfectly good DVDR on less than 1 MB of software because I couldn’t find my damn USB thumb drive.

Zap2it’s issues now have me looking for a new TV Listings site. They were by far the best listings site.

The 512MB Geforce 8800GT was the top of the line at the time, but over time I’ve come to regret buying it. It was serious overkill and I haven’t played any games that needed that sort of horsepower in some time.

After taking a look at the IO panel of the Dell, I couldn’t find any monitor hookups that weren’t part of the Geforce card itself, so it looks like Dell tried to save a few bucks and went with a cheap motherboard that didn’t feature onboard video.

One solution would be to replace the card. I don’t really like this idea because it obviously means money out of my pocket.

The other solution I’m considering is removing the power cable to the video card and using remote desktop (actually Teamviewer) on my other system to use the Dell with the bad video card. Will this even work? Does the Dell need a video card since there doesn’t appear to be any onboard video? I’m worried about it not POSTing.

UPDATE: It may not be the video card afterall…. more in the comments.