It is that time of year again, when everything on TV starts to dry up, it gets hot out, and men across the country start to get antsy. Yes, the National Football League pre-season is starting up soon, which means that Madden ’11 is going to be out soon as well too. They just released the Madden ’11 Demo for PS3, and Xbox360 last night for free in their respective online stores.

I was playing an unhealthy amount of Madden ’10 last year, and the differences between the games are pretty easy to spot. It took about 10 minutes to get used to the new announcer but other than that same great game with a few improvements.

Madden 2011 Features:

• A new announcer for the play-by-play, Gus Johnson (well known for his March Madness coverage on CBS).
• 6 player capability instead of 4 in all previous games
• “Ultimate Team” is a combination of card collecting, fantasy football, and regular gameplay. It is an improved version of what came out during playoffs for Madden ’10
• More realistic controls – Madden ’11 tackles seem much more realistic and more control is put into the control sticks rather than the buttons.
• “GameFlow” is the biggest new feature Madden ’11 which acts more like a real NFL game – You create a game plan at the start of the game for different scenarios based on the opponents weaknesses and instead of choosing a play the coach will tell you via headset which play to use and how to pull it off.
• Faster game play, when using the GameFlow system you can spend about half the time to complete a game as less time is wasted choosing between 350 plays for each down. For those that don’t like the idea of this, of course GameFlow is completely optional but it is a cool feature after you play with it for a bit.

I was a big fan of the new controls in Madden 11, the buttons obviously still do the same job but now you don’t need to rely on them as much. When I was playing my buddy I was getting destroyed by his control stick jukes and he was doing a great job of working through the seem. The Jets could quite possibly be my favorite team this year simply because they have such a powerful lineup of running backs; I was averaging near 6 yards per carry which makes it very easy to go straight down the field.

The game for whatever reason just seemed slightly more realistic than Madden ’10, the graphics are about the same but I think the ambient sounds and better tackling system was what made it feel just a little better. Every year EA changes just enough things in the game to make it so that people end up wanting the new version, and once again they have succeeded.

The Madden 11 demo allows you to play full matches but you can only do so as the Jets or the Colts. I enjoyed the demo was great but as always it just left me wanting more and made me start looking up stats for when the season starts back up in full. I want more football, more sports, and I want the new Madden game once it comes out in a couple weeks. Pre-order Madden ’11 directly from EA to avoid the lines.

Madden ’11 Release Date: August 10, 2010 – Available for PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, PSP, and Wii.

The more complex the lock, the harder it is to get in.

Creating a good password is very simple, but many people do not want to take a couple minutes to do so. A large social network applications website RockYou.com was recently hacked, and the results were posted online. This gave researchers something to think about, because there were 32 million email addresses, passwords, user names, etc. to be studied. Imperva compiled the results of their research recently, and they found that 30% of users had passwords of six characters or less and that 50% of users used names, words, or trivial passwords.

Their study found these as the top 14 passwords:

• 123456
• 12345
• 123456789
• password
• iloveyou
• princess
• rockyou (Name of the website)
• 1234567
• 12345678
• abc123
• Nicole
• Daniel
• babygirl
• monkey

As a computer science student I can tell you that these passwords are all incredibly easy to hack using a brute force or rainbow crack. If your passwords even slightly resemble these you should change them immediately because you are putting your personal information at risk. When trying to break into an account the first thing you do is run through a list of commonly used passwords (such as the ones listed above, dictionary words, names, places, sequential keyboard characters). You want a password that is easy to remember, but not easy for even friends or family to guess.

Creating a secure password is quite easy, just follow these guidelines and you will have nothing to worry about.

How to Create a Secure Password:

DO NOT:

• Use a dictionary word, person’s name, place, etc. as your entire password. Example: password, Michael, your last name, Texas

• Use sequential characters. Example: 1234567, qwerty, asdfgh, 999999

• Use personal information. Example: (your last name)+(DOB), (first name)+(street address), (son’s name)

• Use a password shorter than 8 characters

• Use the exact same password for every website

DO:

• Use more character classes, more types of characters will make a more secure password. Try to implement special characters such as &,#,!<},|, numbers, uppercase letters, and lowercase letters. For example, the word television is very insecure. TELEvISIOn is more secure, and t3L3v|S|0n is much more secure.

• Use more than one word – phonetoiletdistrict is much more secure than any of the single words.

• Use a phrase to create an easy to remember password. Example: “The only thing to fear is fear itself” would become “Toltfifi”.

• Use multiple passwords, for instance your email address uses st1ffuPPerlip but your bank account is blu-rayc4tsftw. You can also use one “master password” and modify it based on the site, for instance you could use “nonANsequent1a!” for a password and change the AN to be the first and last letters of the website you are registering for. “nonANsequent1a” would be your password for Amazon.com, “nonEYsequent1a” would be your password for Ebay.com.

• Replace letters in a word with characters that resemble it. Example: bottle would become b0tt!3

• Add a random non-alphanumerical character into your password in the middle (not the beginning or end). Example: ilikefishing – ilike!!fishing

Password summary:

The longer your password is, and with more variation of character classes, the better protected you are. My passwords are typically 20+ characters made up from things around me and then I substitute in characters. Here is an example password, I am looking at a cookbook I got for Christmas called “Favorite Italian Recipes”. I would turn that into “F4v0r1t3_iTA1ian##$%_r3ci[p]ez” which might seem like a lot, but in reality you can type a 20 character password in about 1-2 seconds and it is just as easy to remember as “123456″ after doing it 100+ times.

The NY Times is reporting that Microsoft is trying to expand the entertainment value of it’s Xbox 360 console by offering streaming media such as live sporting events and movies. Microsoft is currently in negotiations with the Walt Disney Company (parent company of ABC & ESPN) to provide a per-subscriber fee for live sporting event streams similar to the ESPN 360 service offered to broadband users. Xbox Live users can already (for a monthly fee) get NetFlix movies streaming through their Xbox 360, but the move into television is significant.

People are saying that 2010 is the year to ditch your cable service, which is ironic since there is a guy in my living room fixing my cable box as I write this. This could very well be true, with the emergence of free streaming TV websites such as Hulu.com I am hearing more and more about people canceling their cable subscriptions. The fact that ESPN is willing to provide live streaming coverage is significant, because the downside to sites such as Hulu is that they are not allowed to post the content until it has finished playing on the regular broadcast stations. If ESPN is providing truly live sports events, it is no different than if you had a cable subscription for the same thing. This should start to worry the major cable providers (Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, etc).

Since you would still need to pay some sort of fee to get this service, it isn’t a free ride. The significant part of this story is that individual stations could start to negotiate directly with consumers rather than cable providers, cutting out the middle man. This could drastically cut down the price of programming while also pushing many of these large companies out of business.

The deal with ESPN is not set in stone yet, and both parties are refusing comment on the ongoing negotiations. This represents the future of the major gaming systems, they will become entertainment systems as well. I use my PS3 just as often to listen to Pandora or watch Blu-Ray movies as I do to play games, and now I can also watch BBC News broadcasts, streaming movies through NetFlix, and if this deal goes through I would assume ESPN and other providers will be knocking on Sony’s door soon as well.

The NY Times is not only one of the most popular influential newspapers in America, it is also one of the most popular websites. For quite a while you had to have a subscription in order to view articles on the New York Times, but for the past few years they have been fully ad supported, while giving out all of their content for free. This was the last straw for most other online publications, with the Wall Street Journal being the only major publication to continue charging for content.

According to an unnamed senior newsroom source there a decision could be made within weeks on whether or not the Times will go back to charging for their content (Source). The advertising based model was working great while the CPM price for advertising on the web was skyrocketing, but for the past couple years as revenue has declined while print subscriptions are in free fall the Times will have to make a change. There are three different options:

• Wall Street Journal model – Some free content, “premium” content for subscribers only
• Metered – You have to pay some amount per article (May vary based on type of article)
• NPR Model – Special features for being a subscriber

Honestly I think they are most likely to copy the WSJ, I have always wondered why the rest of the papers hadn’t caught on to this. It is a perfect mixture, you feed just enough information to the public that they will get hooked and want to pay for the full subscription. At the same time since there is a limited amount of free content, it will drive up the advertising costs on those articles to make them more profitable.

This is not just about one company, I feel that this is going to become a trend with many major publications within the next two years. It is simple economics, if everybody gives away their “product” for free because other companies are doing it, they will all go out of business. While print newspapers are on the decline we won’t be seeing any major shakeups in terms of the big players as long as they make the internet adapt to them.  This is still technically a rumor, but considering the position the Times is in, it is a necessary and inevitable change.

This is one of the most common issues for Windows users, and at the same time one of the most aggravating. Depending on how you phrase it, whether your computer freezes on startup, locks on startup or just plain doesn’t work it nets the same result: pressing the power button and getting angry. I have been going around on Twitter @TailorMyPC helping strangers with their computer problems; one girl I met was having her computer freeze after 2-3 minutes of turning on her computer.  If this isn’t occurring to you now, I would recommend bookmarking this page as it will probably occur at some point in the future.

**The first thing you should try is a system restore, if this does not work, then go down this list until your computer runs**

I have taken the time to research different reasons for a computer locking up after it boots. Usually when a computer freezes on startup it is the result of a system file not being where Windows expects it to be. This could mean that a registry entry is missing or corrupt, the file system is corrupted by a virus, or the data itself on your hard drive has been written to a bad sector.

Definitions:

Bad Sectors – A section of your hard disk drive that has started to fail, causing inaccurate data to be read and/or written from your drive.
Registry Entry – Various settings, configurations, and other data behind the scenes that help instruct the operating system as to what files to open, programs to execute, etc.
Safe Mode – A limited version of Windows that opens the minimum amount of background processes to increase chances that you can boot into it. To get into Safe Mode, hit F8 while the computer starts and select “Safe Mode”, do not select the “with networking” or “with command prompt” options.

Each of these three root causes can be fixed; I will address each one individually starting from the easiest fix to the most difficult.

Bad Sectors

Once you start to develop bad sectors it means that your hard disk is probably starting to go, so the following is a fix but I would still recommend you replace the disk when you get a chance. To fix bad sectors boot your computer into safe mode (see above). Now you will run a Windows utility called chkdsk which scans for bad sectors and corrects for them. To run chkdsk do the following:

• Open up Run, type cmd and hit enter. A black and white command prompt will open, in this type chkdsk C:/r and hit enter. It will ask if you want to schedule on next restart (Y/N), type Y and hit enter.
• Chkdsk won’t take effect until you have restart your computer. Restart it and it will do a quick scan, once it is done wait until you get into Windows and then restat a second time and it will do a full repair.

If this worked, you will want to get a different hard drive because your current one is likely to fail again if it has failed once. Luckily hard drives are cheap, and very easy to install.

Hard Drives on Newegg.com

If this did not work, then continue on to the next section on registry entries.

Registry Entries

The next major issue is either missing registry entries, registry errors, or malicious entries. All of these can cause your computer to freeze after startup. Many times a registry error will actually prevent your computer from starting up at all, but depending on background processes it can make it freeze up after starting.

• To fix registry errors you will need your windows startup disk, put it in your computer and press F12 and select the CD/DVD drive option. Click on repair, and you might be able repair your installation.
• If this doesn’t work I would try one of the registry repair programs out there. Boot into safe mode (F8), then open up your registry cleaner and let it scan/fix the errors.

To prevent registry corruption in the future I would highly recommend you get a registry cleaner such as Registry Mechanic or RegZooka. Both of my computers have registry software on them, each has one of those running but they have the same effect in the end. I would recommend either of these programs.

Malware – Viruses

The reason why I put viruses as the least likely culprit of your computer freezing after restart is that most viruses are designed to do one of the following:

• Lurk until they get a chance to steal personal information such as credit card numbers
• Use your computer as part of a botnet, essentially controlling your computer
• Completely destroy your file system

In the first two scenarios your computer needs to function in order to achieve their goals, and in the last scenario your computer wouldn’t even make it to Windows. On the other hand, I have seen viruses that cause your computer to lock up after startup. This is probably a result of viruses that are attempting to access resources that for whatever reason they cannot get to, causing Windows explorer to freeze.

To get rid of viruses boot your computer into Safe Mode (F8 during startup) and run your anti-virus program. Try to delete the detected files outright, if it doesn’t let you then at least quarantine them.

If this solved the problem, then you should try to figure out why your anti-virus didn’t protect you to begin with (I woud call up the company and complain). If you don’t have any anti-virus software then you can try one of the following:

• AVG – Free anti-virus software, the protection is not as good as you would get with a paid product but the price is definitely right. If this were a car, it would be a smart car, good for getting around but a real serious accident won’t end well.

• Nod32 – This anti-virus has the best balance between performance and protection that I know of. Your computer will still run nice and fast while keeping you protected, this is what I would put on my computer. If this were a car it would be an Escalade, good protection while still fast and sleek.

• Norton 360 v3.0 – This is what I had on my father’s computer, this offers the highest level of protection. If you get viruses often or if you download a lot of things from the internet (music, videos, and games especially) then this is what I would recommend. It provides up to minute virus protection, privacy protection, seals up browser exploits, and includes online backups. This wouldn’t be a car, it would be an M1 Abrahms tank. Not at fast as Nod32 but as far as tanks go, it is fast.

If all of these steps have still not fixed your problem, try the following:

• Try running System Restore again (who knows, maybe it will work), go back as far as possible.
• Run a Memtest (burn the following to a disc: Memtest), this will check if your RAM is functioning properly.
• Re-install drivers while in Safe Mode, you can usually get the drivers from the computer manufacturer on their website by entering your service number.
• If everything listed has not worked, back up your documents, pictures, etc. and reinstall Windows, make sure to do a full reformat first. If you reinstall your OS and you still have problems, it is definitely time to go out and buy a new computer.

Feel free to check out my Custom Computer Configuration page or my Computer Optimization Tips page.

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