Daniel Mak

19 Days…

July 14th marks the day when Stargate SG-1 Season 10 , Stargate Atlantis Season 3, Battlestar Galactica Season 3 and Gundam Seed C.E Stargazer mini series Premieres..

Both Stargate shows and Battlestar Galactica Left off with a huge cliffhanger.

In SG-1, the Ori Battleships have arrived in the Milkyway galaxy by means of the supergate and are practically slaughtering the what should be known as the “Milkyway Alliance + Asgard” (Earth, Free Jaffa, Tok’ra and the Lucian Alliance) are fighting with everything they got against the Ori ships with no luck, so we’ll finally find out how that battle ends on episode 1..

In Atlantis, the alliance with the wraith go sour, the wraith have Ronin Dex and Rodney Mckay histabe onboard their hive ship and now they know the location of earth which is where they are headed at the end of Season 2. Episode 1 will explain if they ever reach our galaxy or not.

Both series will feature new enemies, like the Wraith and the Ori aren’t bad enough already. lol

Meanwhile at Battlestar Galactica, the season ended with the survivors settling down in a earth like planet when all of the sudden the Cylons arrive. The fleet makes a jump away from the planet before the Cylons could have destroyed them.

Trailers for the Stargate series are out (check out sci-fi for the trailer)

My iPod

Yes, I have made the switch from my 5GB Zen Micro I got 2 years ago to a new Apple iPod. :p

(I probably won’t take any pictures cause I’m sure you already know how it looks like. hehe)
anyway, the color I got is black, it looks cool..
This is the video iPod and has 30GB of total capacity. So far I have yet to use half of it but still over 5GBs.. lol and since this player can play videos, I also added some videos into the iPod.. hehe. Since I have just gotten this iPod I have yet to really see how much battery life this thing carries so I will/might update this article after I give this thing the run for its money.

the iPod came with software, an iPod carring bag, the USB data cable, the ipod itself of course, software, headphones and a dock adapter for the universal dock for ipod which unfortunantely is a seperate piece of toy you need to purchase seperately.

Since I already use iTunes, Installing this was a simple plug in and let the computer do it’s job. As soon as I opened iTunes, with the iPod connected to the USB connection, iTunes automatically synced the iPod with iTunes hence all the music that were on my iTunes playlist were automatically added to my ipod and I didn’t need to manually add the songs to my player like I had to do with the Zen Micro, same with Video. But if you ever intend non-apple supported file format to work on the ipod, you need to first convert it to apple supported video file which are

H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats
MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec., Simple Profile with AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 Khz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

so you’ll need programs to convert it.

Why pay 49.95 when you can get it free ? o_O

This is the weirdest thing. So today I went to TigerDirect to get a DVD Burner for my MCE. When I get there they were selling a NEC ND3550A DVD Burner and eTrust Internet Security Suite thats bundled for 36.99 (126.99 before the 90 dollar mail in rebate). $20 for the DVD Burner, $40 for both the DVD Burner, $30 for the ISS softwar (yes you need to go into OnRebate and claim 3 different rebates in order to get your $90 in total.. :p) anyway…

Thats not the point. I just installed ISS software on my dad’s computer (ISS installs.. eTrust Personal Firewall, eTrust EZ Anti-Virus eTrust® PestPatrol® Anti-Spyware, eTrust® Anti-Spam). Everything went well, it finished installing successfully like it’s suppose to, restarted the machine. After rebooting the machine, it started the configuration. OK. nothing wrong there, everything is already installed.. BUT when it came to configuring the Firewall, thats where it surprised me.. The configuration loked familiar, like I’ve seen it before. It finished the Configuration and opened up their Personal Firewall. Its looks exactly.. or should I say, IS Zone Alarm Pro. right down to the interface, its Zone Alarm Pro only difference the brand. Did a search on google and it confimed my assumption. eTrust EZ Personal Firewall = rebranded version of ZoneAlarm Pro. So this is what makes me think. You want Zone Alarm Pro. Why pay 49.99 for that product when you can get it next to free if you gotten the eTrust Personal Firewall (You can get it at TigerDirect. US Site has it for free, $29.81 with a $30 MIR. Canadian Site has it $37.81 with a $30 MIR so thats 7.81CDN after rebate for a rebranded version of ZoneAlarm Pro which costs 49.99US…

lol

See for yourself

Everything looks exactly the same (besides the anti-virus thing, the firewall is up to date and the learn more thing) everything else looks exactly the same.. haha (I did not take these pictures, I found them on google. So I don’t take ownership of these images.)

If you still don’t believe me, look up “eTrust Personal Firewall” and compare it “ZoneAlarm pro” and you’ll see what i mean :p