blog.mchiu.com

A Guide to Peppers

Although I don't eat spicy foods as much as I used to, I still do enjoy trying something spicy from time to time. The last time something really hit me hard was when I was having dinner in Las Vegas (yes, I'm breaking the Vegas rule) and I dipped the tip of my fork into a habanero sauce to see how spicy it was. For the first 10 seconds, there was a bit of a bite to it, but nothing too bad. But after those 10 seconds, it spread all over my tongue, and I started to drool. Here's where it gets really bad... It tasted so good, I had to dip a chip into it to try it again, and the whole cycle repeated itself... In any case, I recently discovered the Soville Heat Units measure of how spicy a food is. It seems that the chemical that makes spicy foods spicy is capsaicin which by itself, has 16 million heat units!!!! This webpage provides a visual table of different peppers and their heat ratings. Pretty interesting stuff. If you want a really hot sauce, apparently, "The Source Hot Sauce" is the hottest sauce ever created with a rating of 7.1 million Scoville Units. Next time I want to shut somebody up for a few minutes, I'll have to remember to bring this sauce out with some chips... :D

Problems with the Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 has been released, and I am sure that lots and lots of people are excited about it. So excited that they will do anything to get their hands on a device in which they have to pay $60 for a game to play on it. Like robbing people of their newly bought units. It is sad to see that a product that now sells for $400, and will most likely go down in price over the next year can cause people to go crazy. This posting on Engadget describes the lengths people will go in order to get their hands on a 360. I'll just wait about another year or two before I consider buying one. At $400 a box and $60 a game, I think I can wait...

Funny scam

Maybe I need to start another blog dedicated to funny scams that people try to pull on me.

In my e-mail, "PayPal" sent me a message letting me know that people in other countries have been trying to access my account, and shows me their IP addresses. The e-mail is dated November 3, 2005, and somehow, they are able to predict the time and date that I will be attacked again since they list the dates of November 14, 2005 and November 15, 2005 as two other dates that I have been attacked. Pretty silly stuff... They even have a handy link for me to download the PayPal security tool... he he he... yeah right... bunch of nigerian fuckers... they need to get their facts straight, and also include a link that actually looks like it is pointing to PayPal sites. These lazy scammers were too lazy to even disguise the URL to the PayPal security tool, and have the link go to: http://207.75.200.231 instead of paypal.com. The sad thing is that there are probably people even dumber than these guys who will fall for this...

From security.center@paypal.com Thu Nov 03 12:21:59 2005
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Security Measures - Are You Traveling?

PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of buyers and sellers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity. We recently noted one or more attempts to log in to your account from a foreign country. If you accessed your account while traveling, the attempt(s) may have been initiated by you. Because the behavior was unusual for your account, we would like to take an extra step to ensure your security and you will now be taken through a series of identity verification pages.    IP Address  Time  Country 80.69.115.16 Oct 27, 2005 12:47:01 PDT Germany 80.69.115.16 Oct 29, 2005 18:37:55 PDT Germany 217.160.77.45 Nov 14, 2005 16:42:16 PDT United Kingdom 217.160.77.45 Nov 15, 2005 16:58:03 PDT United Kingdom   Click here to download PayPal security tool Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure meant to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account. Thank you for using PayPal! The PayPal Team

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page. To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences here.

PayPal Email ID PP6977

PNLPUQJROVPFLKWKWOZFWCSPBTIJIIUBPCJZHZ

More scams

So back in August, I posted an entry about this phone number, "666-8006" about some Nigerian scam out of Florida. Apparently, there have been a lot of people who have popped up on my blog and left some comments about how they have been called by this scam as well.

Recently, I have been called by 727-471-1415, but this group is so incompetent with their call handling that after 2-3 seconds of "Hello? Hello?" they still haven't picked up the phone and I have already hung up on them. The first time, I gave them up to 5 seconds, but they still hadn't picked up yet.

So I did a quick search on the Internet for this number, and came up with this. Yes, another Nigerian scam... One of these days I will be in the mood to take the call and fuck with them a little. If I do, I'll have to find a way to record the conversation so I can post it up here for everyone to hear how ridiculous these guys can be.

One of these days, I'll have to remember to create a database of these scammers so other people who come to this site can also benefit from this knowledge.

Nerd debate

So my co-worker from Taiwan and I had an interesting debate about how we look at "mobile computing". I guess there is really no right or wrong answer here, and it is all a matter of opinion on how you look at it, but I am, of course, more biased towards my own opinion, so I will present this from my view, and let you all comment on your own views. So one of our portfolio companies, OQO, makes nearly PDA sized Windows XP PCs. Their model 01 line is about to be phased out, as they gear up for their more powerful and robust model 02 (pretty cool names, huh?). That being said, my co-worker called me into a short meeting telling me that I am going to be really impressed with his new idea of what this company can do with their technology. Whenever someone tells me that I am about to be impressed by something, I pretty much start thinking the opposite way... he he he So one of the core technologies behind the OQO computers is the core module that integrates the whole system. My co-worker's idea is that it would be great if you could just license that technology out to someone who can then package it into something smaller than the OQO device itself. I'm thinking... but shouldn't that be OQO's job to continue to work on miniturization of its own product? But, he continues, the idea is that it could be so very cheaply because it would not have any display, nor any mechanisms to input. Now I am throughly confused... His reasoning is that most people who need a mobile solution are travelers. Travelers tend to frequent places such as airports. So if you are in an airport, the airport would provide you with a display, keyboard, and mouse, and you would just need to plug in your mobile computer, and you're ready to go. I'm not buying it. So he goes on to say that it's also good for business people because instead of taking a laptop back and forth from home and the office, they just need to take this small device with them. My line of reasoning is that this isn't truly a mobile device because you can't do anything with it until you are at a set location. Since there is no screen, no method of input, etc., you can't work on it while you are in a plane, in a train, etc. His contention is that these places would start to provide the display, keyboard, mouse, etc. if this thing takes off. Yeah right... keep dreaming... So then on the deal about taking your PC with you from home and work, I have two problems with that: 1) If you lose the unit, you have lost all your work. It would be better to get one of those thumb drives and transfer between your home and office since you want to have redundancy in this kind of situation. In fact, there is new standard coming out for USB drives called U3 that gives you the ability to plug in a thumb drive, and all of the applications are run directly off the drive instead of using apps that are pre-installed in the PC. 2) If you really want to have this kind of mobility, why not just get a mobile hard drive rack installed into your work and home PC? The installation and de-installation of the hard drive is a lot easier because all you have to do is plug in the drive and pull out the drive, rather than hook up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse cable. We basically ended the discussion about there, not really seeing the other's merits on the issue. I guess it's an issue of personal preference. What do you think about it?

Slow updates...

Sorry for the no posts for the last week or so...

The hosting provider I'm currently using has a really good deal, but now I have found a new host that is cheaper, has excellent customer service, and gives me virtually unlimited everything, so I am slowly making the migration over to the new provider. Not a whole lot will change, so you won't notice too big of a difference, but the updates to all of my blogs will be slow as I make the transition...