Upgrade – Paul's Tech Talk

Google Ups the Anti!!

PaulOctober 4, 2008

As part of our effort to protect the accounts of AdSense publishers, we have mailed a Personal Identification Number (PIN) to the payment address entered in your account. This PIN must be entered on the PIN Information page before any payments can be issued to you. In the meantime, your account remains active, and you may continue to show ads and accrue earnings.

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Well that came unexpectedly, Google actually is trying to protect our accounts now from getting phished and or/taken over by some malicious person. This is called two factor verification**, Something you know and something you have. You can also get verify through your Cell Phone. Here is what they said in my Email:

Hi,

In an effort to protect the accounts of Google AdSense publishers,
we've starting using automated telephone number verification to
ensure that your information is accurate and up-to-date. As a result,
you should see a Required Action on your Payment History Page to
'Please verify your phone number' after you log in to your account.
To initiate this process, lick the 'Please verify your phone number'
link and follow the instructions.

Keep in mind that you have 6 months to enter the verification code.
If you have not entered your verification code within 4 months, we'll
start displaying Public Service Ads (PSAs) on your web pages. If you
have not entered your verification code within 6 months, your account
will be disabled and any unpaid earnings will be refunded to the
appropriate advertisers. You can learn more about our phone number
verification process at
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=32055.

For additional questions about getting paid, please visit
http://www.google.com/adsense/payments.
If you prefer a video presentation of this information, we encourage you to watch our Payment
demo (currently available in English only), located at http://www.google.com/adsensedemo4 .

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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So here’s my take, you don’t have to verify both of them just one or the other. It is going to be rather difficult that people get paid. I don’t think this will be a big problem for most people, but I am sure some are going to get annoyed having to enter their* pin every time they want to get paid. So what do you think? Is this a good upgrade or a bad upgrade you decide and leave your comments. I want to hear them.

(*) Thanks to the Diggers to showing me I had a mistake.

(**)Someone ask why I capitalise the two in so I changed it!

(The Google Letter) That text is from my email no changes have been made except line breaks, so if there is an error it comes from Google.

Is Spore Worth 49.99?

PaulSeptember 10, 2008

So I been doing a little digging and trying to find out what the heck people are complaining about and I found some great reviews telling me exactly why people hate EA. They don’t necessarily hate Spore or Will Wright, but the Security around The Spore game.

So In a couple of these comments. These reviews talk about Creating the creatures and All. I’ll submit some of the reviews that I thought was relevant and let you decide for yourself. I would however wonder the one big question? Is Spore Worth the Money? Here’s the details that I know of right now:

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You can only install it 3 times before you have to call EA to get an override code. (Although I heard rumors that if you unistall it, you will get a credit for an Install)

You can not Install new hardware or upgrade your hardware because if you do, it’ll count as an install, According to this one person.

The game only allows 1 login per Install. So you can’t have more than one character and one universe according to this person.

Part of the Copy Protection prevents you from taking your saved games off your computer and taking it over to your friends house, according to this Person.

On the Mac Version, it tends to breaks subsequent versions of the system services according to this one person.

According to Amazon the reviews aren’t pleasant. I tend to agree does this mean there are going to be even more people pirating it because they don’t want the DRM or Is EA going to send out a patch to fix this. I am curious as to see how EA responds to all this NONE TOLERANCE to DRM.

After seeing all these reviews of Spore, I tend to agree with everyone. I’ll probably wait and see before I buy my copy. All the reviews however don’t look promising or even makes the games look like it wouldn’t be fun.

Upgrade MsDos 5

PaulNovember 11, 2007

Thought people would like to see the past. I remember 5.25′ Floppies don’t you!! Man that brought back memories. Man I was what 14 when they sold MS DOS 5. I hope people enjoyed it.