Are you like Brendan Spaar and have a lot of old Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges laying around with no way to play them?  The old school NES was a great video game console in the late 1980s and early 1990s but it does not translate well to today's high definition televisions.  If you can find a TV today with composite inputs you are lucky.

Enter the Analogue NT, a $500 console that does one thing:  Play Nintendo cartridges.  It appears to be the size of a USB hub and cartridges are top loaded into the console.  This will make you wonder why the original NES was the size of a small toaster oven.  Technology has come a long way and the Analogue NT is proof of that. 

What makes this 3rd party console better than the rest?  There is no clear answer to that question.  The base $500 model does not include HDMI output (you have to pay $50 more for that).  The only thing that makes it stand out is the minimalistic design.  If you have an original NES with a TV that supports composite inputs, you may be better off sticking with that.  If not, this console may be just what you are looking for to play those old school console cartridges that you picked up at the yard sale or Goodwill.

Source:  http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/26/8850397/analogue-nt-premium-nes-nintendo-console

By now I'm sure you've heard that Microsoft is about to release the next version of their operating system called Windows 10.  What happened to Windows 9?  Well Brendan Spaar has no idea but he can tell you not to worry about numbers and worry more about the iteration of the release.  You see, Microsoft tends to get operating systems right every other release cycle. 

Here's a brief rundown of Windows over the last 20 years:  Windows 98 was garbage, Windows 98 SE gave you working plug and play.  Windows Millennium Edition wasn't that great (sorry Skeeter and the rest of the team I worked with), Windows XP was.  Windows Vista was very lacking and most businesses chose not to even upgrade to it.  Then came Windows 8 with its Metro tiled design.  Companies took a pass once again. 

So does that mean that Microsoft got it right just because this is a tock iteration of their tick-tock (wrong-right) cycle?  Not necessarily.  A few plusses that Brendan Spaar has noticed about Windows 10:
You get the START button back.  Yay!
It is designed for touch screens which just about every laptop today has.

If you own a laptop (or Surface), Windows 10 is definitely better than Windows 7 or 8 due to the new browser, Cortana voice controls, and touch screen inputs.  Now for those desktop users out there Brendan Spaar recommends sticking with Windows 7 at least for now.  You always want to wait for hardware manufacturers to release good drivers for your mission critical hardware (I'm looking at you media producers and editors).  Only time will tell if Windows 10 is a success or a flop.  Keep in mind that you should really only be upgrading your operating system when purchasing new hardware.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Source:  http://www.informationweek.com/software/operating-systems/windows-10-10-reasons-youll-love-it/a/d-id/1321189

Nothing to see here please move along I am just testing out the system.  If you want to see more about Brendan Spaar then you should check back tomorrow and see what is new.

If you asked Prescott Winter, the former head of the NSA, what he thought of digital security at the top 100 Fortune companies he would respond with one word:  appalling.  This guy knows a thing or two about Information Security at the NSA.  He has served as the agency's CTO, CIO, and its deputy chief of Defensive
Information.  Brendan Spaar has learned that the main issue with corporations is that they put policies in place to prevent hackers and attacks instead of reacting to threats in real time.  A policy is not going to protect someone that is determined to breach your security.  This is a very interesting article and worth a read to anyone wanting to know more about Information Security.

Source:  http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/former-nsa-honcho-calls-enterprise-security-appalling/

By: Brendan Spaar

This is the question that many security researchers are asking.  A micro capital firm has joined forces with a group of researchers to offer a prize to the first hacker or team that can crack the iPhone 5s finger print scanner.  They are looking for a solution like lifting the fingerprints from a glass.  Brendan Spaar has seen this done in the movies and wonders if it can be done in real life.  The prizes include lots of currency ranging from euros to bitcoins, lots of alcoholic beverages, and even a "dirty sex book." So far the iPhone 5s has been released into the hands of consumers but no one has cracked the fingerprint scanner.  Yet.

Source:  http://news.yahoo.com/hackers-offered-cash-booze-crack-iphone-fingerprint-security-034002426--finance.html

The stars of The Big Bang Theory, which include Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco are reportedly banding together in order to negotiate a raise that would nearly double their currently per episode payroll.  Currently, the big three receive $350,000 per episode from CBS.  If their negotiations are successful, they will earn nearly one million dollars per episode and that does not even include syndication profits.  Brendan Spaar enjoys The Big Bang Theory and tries to watch it every week from his Forysth County GA home.  It isn't as good as Arrested Development but it is close.  Other million dollar per episode groups include the cast of Friends and the women of Criminal Minds.

Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/big-bang-theory-salaries-raises_n_3947318.html

Brendan Spaar thinks that the amount of data that Google collects is amazing.  Nearly every search in the world is done through the site.  Now federal regulators in the United States have declaired that Google is actually guilty of breaking their policy "do no evil." It turns out, according to police, those cute little Google Street View cars were actually war driving, snooping traffic of any unsecured WiFi hotspot that stood in its path.  Google argues that its cars accidentially jumped onto unsecured hotspots and that no useful data was collected.  This should serve as an eye opener to anyone that connects to their home router without a security key encryption like WEP or WPA.  If a little Google car can accidentally jump onto your network, imagine what your enemies could do.

Source:  http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Court-Declares-Google-Liable-For-WiFi-Snooping-125745

Let's face the facts.  Phone companies are dinosaurs.  If they do not keep up with the times, they will go extinct.  Right now the scramble is on for phone companies to reinvent themselves as data providers.  Anyone with a smartphone will tell you they talk on the phone a lot less than they text or access the internet.  The problem that the telcos are faced with, however, is that the FCC still thinks that they are a telephone company and regulates them as such.  Companies such as Google and Skype who have always been an internet service provider, are not regulated in the same way that telcos are.  Brendan Spaar wonders if the telcos need to take a page from Phillip Morris and totally destroy the old brand name and start new.

Source:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/09/12/heres-how-the-telecom-industry-plans-to-defang-their-regulators/

If you were part of the class action lawsuit against Facebook for using your name in their Sponsored Stories without your permission then you have a nice check for $15 headed your way.  Brendan Spaar is unaware if he was featured in a sponsored story because he does not use Facebook.  In addition to the settlement with some 600,000 users, the social media site must pay $5 million to the lawyers and several more million to nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and schools.  Maybe Mark Zuckerberg should adopt Google's philosophy of Do No Evil.  Is the person responsible for this ad campaign still working at Facebook?  There may be an opening soon.

Source:  http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/08/facebook-reaches-settlement-sponsored-stories/68752/