Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

I’ve written a cute little script that auto-magically redirects your browser to the https version of a file whenever you attempt to access a members only page. The main reason for doing this is to perform HTTP auth over a secure socket connection. That way, nobody can sniff your password and try it on other sites that you may or may not subscribe to. The only thing you have to do is accept my self signed certificate when you get a warning.

The pages affected include the submission page, the resume upload page, any members-only resume, etc etc. Accessing one of these will automatically kick you into https mode, securing all data transferred. If you want to leave https mode, just use any one of the buttons on the left-side menu.

I haven’t gotten around to adding the blog to the page authentication scheme, so blog auth remains unchanged.

Here is the list of games coming out this week:

Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 for XBox: A first person WWII shooter based on the story of 101st Airborne Paratroopers during D-Day. If you ever wanted to see what is like to be a partrooper during Normady, Brother In Arms is the one.
Devil May Cry 3 for Playstation 2: The first Devil May Cry was one of the few Action games to actually be a good 3D game action game. Devil May Cry 2 did not. According to the hype Devil May Cry 3 is better then Devil May Cry 1 but only time will tell.
Fight Night Round 2 for XBox, Gamecube, and Playstation 2: The next round in the EB games boxing series. If you like boxing games that do go by the name Punchout this is good one for you.
Domination for the PC: The next chapter in the Massive Assault universe puts you in the middle of a new war between the Free Nations Union and the Phantom League.
Ford Racing 3 for PC: Have you ever want to race a Ford Pinto? Well this one for you. I am still waiting for Jaguar racing with extra toolkit action.
Gary Grigsby’s World at War II for PC: I have no idea who Gary Grigsby is but he given you and 5 other players the chance to rewrite WWII.
Ice Nine for the Gameboy Advance: Delayed from last week comes the game based on the movie The Recurit which I belive came out year ago. I am still trying to figure out why you would release a game based on a movie that flopped a year after the fact.
Scrapland for the XBox: Delayed from last week. The XBox port of the PC game Scrapland with improved robat action.
It’s Mr. Pants for the Gameboy Advance: Rare’s Mascot host a puzzle game on the Gameboy Adavance. I thought Rare stopped making games for Nintendo, weird.
Major League Baseball 2k5 for the Playstation 2: Take Two’s Baseball game still coming out at budget prices. If you like Baseball games this will be the only one other Nintendo’s and Playstation’s baseball games, thanks to Take Two getting an exclusive MLB contract. Next year it will also not have its ESPN liscence and most likely will sell for $50.
MLB 2006 for the Playstation 2: The next in the series of 989 Sports last actual good games comes MLB 2006. The coolest feature areEye Toy sport and voice recognition. There will also be a sequal next year seeing as when Take Two signed their exclusive contract they still allowed Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft the rights to publish a MLB baseball game.
Mortal Kombat: Deception for the Gamecube: Why was this not released in Decemeber when the Playstation 2 and XBox versions came out, for that matter why did they even bother releasing it? The PS2 and XBox version flopped.
Mortyr 2 for the PC: Delayed again is this World War II FPS.
PsychoToxic for the PC: Gamespot says it best: “You assume the role of an angel destined to save humanity in this postapocalyptic action game.” Could this be the next Fallout? I do not think so.
Star Wars Republic Commando for PC and Xbox: A Team based first person shooter that has you playing as elite clone troopers in the Star Wars univerise set around the time of the third movie. Hopefully it will also have some kick ass Multiplayer action, but my hopes are not high.
The Sims 2 University for PC: The first in a sure to be long running expansion for Sims 2. This one has you taking the Sims to the University, I hope they have the computer science major option where your sim lives in a dark tunnel for four years only coming out into the light for food.
Worms 3D for XBox: Remeber Shorced Earth? Well thats the game in nut shell except instead of tanks you are a worm and its in 3D. It is a budget game but the Playstation 2 version is consider a hidden gem for the Playstation 2.
Yourself! Fitness for the Playstation 2: Is an attempt to get our fat lazy tails off the coach and excersize and diet right.

Lawyer Jack Thompson gives an interview on cbs news gamecore about his feelings on why the gaming industry needs to be sued into the ground for all the social ills they create.
The best part where he call the president of ESA (the game ratings group) president Doug Lowenstein the Goebbels of gaming industry was edited but someone saved it. Jack Thomson is often the lawyer representing victims of violence. Thomson always seems to blame the game companies for creating the violence and then proceeds to sue the game companies. SCO could really use a lawyer like Jack Thompson.

The Sony PSX is not dead as previously reported. The PSX was another of Sony’s great ideas that well they just sort of messed up and well it failed to live up anything Sony promised. The Sony PSX is designed to play PS2 and Playstation games, utilize broadband and record both DVD’s and television. Sony just forgot to add MP3 and DVD+R/RW support to it.

Nintendo is suing a Korean game company that is coming out with a Massive Multiplayer Online game to looks very similar to Legend of Zelda: Windtalker. I do not know how IP rights work in Korea but in the USA this law suit should fail. The precedent was set in 1986 when a judge declared that if you could tell the two games apart then there is no lawsuit. The first picture tells me that the game is different from Zelda: Windwalker; hence it an attempt my Nintendo to give there lawyers more Jaguars. The lawsuit between Marvel and NCSoft over City Of Heroes abilty to create characters simlar to Marvel character may also effect the lawsuit between Nintendo and the creators of the Zelda like game. The thing I do not get is why is Nintendo so clueless to reliaze that there may be a huge demand for a Zelda like MMORPG. I guess Nintendo does not like buckets of cash.

Some manged to fire up a time machine and has a review of the Playstation 3. My favorite new feature is the rubber duck action on the controller.

phpMyAdmin and phpBB, have been flagged with security vulnerabilities. If you aren’t running a web server, you probably won’t need to worry about any of this. If you are, then the latest patch levels contain fixes for the vulnerabilities.

Firefox 1.0.1 has been released with a whole host of bug fixes. The release notes also mention some internationalization and tabbed browsing improvements. As always, I heartily recommend Firefox both for it’s security and it’s ease of use.

The creator of Final Fantasy is going to be making some RPG’s for XBox now. This is the same tactic that Sony pulled a few years ago when they stole away Final Fantasy from Nintendo.

In what seems to be a feeble attempt to win back the gaming community, Dell has released an impressive looking pair of notebooks aimed at gamers and enthusiasts. These beauties are certainly impressive looking, and their specs put them ahead of most of the mass-produced notebooks on the market. The blinking lights in the base are sure to attract a few of the more boisterous gamers around too.

Unfortunately for Dell, most gamers are in the build-your-own category. A gaming notebook just doesn’t give them the flexibility to add their favorite tweaks, and certainly doesn’t lend itself to a liquid-cooled scenario. In addition, the gaming community tends to prefer a good AMD processor to an Intel. Athlon 64 has been pasting P4 on all of the real-world tests that involve actually using a game. Any laptop that has an Athlon 64 of any kind would be more popular with these guys.

The Shot at AMD near the end of the article was pretty irritating. Everybody knows that Intel always wins the 3dMark battle. The 3dMark benchmark has long been criticized as being too far from the real world to be useful. Aside from that and the encoding tests (Most of which are written using Intel’s Performance Library Suite… Intel wins stuff based on Intel’s library… go figure), Intel rarely wins anything at all.

For the record… I consider Dell’s notebooks to be above average. I own one, and I use another at work. Their desktops, however, have been lackluster lately. You seem to have the choice between an el-cheapo that is barely good enough for grandma, or an over-hyped mediocre box that is worth about half of it’s pricetag.

eWeek has a small article about 2 House anti-spyware bills. Apparently, the software industry favors the one that doesn’t require consent before installing monitor software, citing that “helpful” programs will get caught in the trap.

I beg to differ for 2 reasons:

1) If you don’t ask the user to install your monitoring software, he will have no way of knowing what is “helpful” monitoring software and what is spyware.

And more importantly:

2) As soon as you allow “helpful” monitoring programs, some lawyer will find an easy way to define his clients’ spyware as “helpful".

Anything that doesn’t require consent is just another piece of “feel good” legislation.

On the same day that AMD demonstrated dual-core Athlon 64’s, Dell says NO to AMD again. Of course I predicted it. Everytime AMD does something new, Dell talks about including AMD’s in it’s product line. Every time that happens, they change their mind back. It’s not hard to speculate as to why this is.

We know that Dell has paid for this relationship by losing all credibility with gamers and enthusiasts. I hope that Intel hasn’t been paying too much to keep Dell. Neither of them have much chance of regaining their standing with real computer geeks for a long time to come.

Update:
One noteworthy thing about this announcement: it is nice to see a demo announcement that does not claim that the new product is all things to all people. Hidden down near the bottom of this press release is AMD’s recognition that dual-core chips won’t benefit gamers in the near term. Hopefully, others will begin to follow this lead and be a little more truthful in their advertising. Well, OK. I guess I’m not that gullible either.

We’ve mentioned the EE2 site here before, but according to FiringSquad.com, it went live today. It’s been a long time since a good RTS was released. Lets hope that EE2 is worth the wait.

Check out the Empire Earth 2 site if you would like to sign up for one of their mailing lists.

ATI intends to give users a peek at their new 512 MB cards at a gaming festival in Dallas this week. Look for nVidia to announce the release of a 512 MB card tomorrow… No, I don’t have inside information, It’s a prediction based on historical data.

I like one guy’s comment… he’s still waiting for a sneak peek at the X800XL that supposedly shipped 2 months ago.

Recently, Microsoft announced that it was working on a rootkit identification tool. Well, Slashdot has a link to a rootkit tool called RootkitRevealer, and it is available for download now. Though the practice of booting from a known media to insure absolute control of what runs isn’t a new idea, I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen it applied to the security market. I’m sure a few security experts are out there slapping their foreheads saying “D’oh! I should have thought of that!".

Unfortunately, RootkitRevealer doesn’t say anything about how to remove the rootkit, just how to find it. Hopefully, Microsoft’s will.

There is another rash of mailer worms out there. Latest to make the scene are a new sober worm and yet another MyDoom variant. More juvenile twiddling by those too stupid to write real software.

Here’s one from the head scratching department: Why would anyone steal a swimming pool?. I guess the only answer is “Because they Can". I’m surprised nobody has taken credit for this abduction.

Gran Turismo 4 hits store shelves starting tonight. GT 4 has been in work for two years and was suppose to be one of the big games of Christmas. Instead of coming out for Christmas it got delayed and then the release date ping pong back and forth. About three weeks ago Sony changed the release date of GT4 to today before that it was not until the end of March. The big question is will GT4 be a success? Yes it will do well but not likely to level it is expected. Most of the preorders have canceled when it failed to show up in stores this Christmas.
What is shocking there is a serious lack of hype for GT4. Normally a game on this level gets huge amounts of hype; but so far I have not even seen a comerical for GT4.
GT4 is also no longer cutting age in racing simulations. Inovations like crash physics and online play, two big trends in the current set of racing simulations, are missing from GT4. I guess Sony figures that fans of GT4 do not want see the cars they are racing all beat up, but the lack of online play is just plain stupid. A few years ago it was fairly rare to see a racing game with online but in 2005 GT4 is the only one missing it. Even the budget junkie racing games have it now.
the innovationst that GT$ offers is b-spec and the ablity to take pictures of your cars and exchange them with buddies via the memory card. B-spec is the big talked about feature in GT4 which from all appearance is a poor way of adding Arcade style racing to the Gran Tursimo franchise. The other has me stratching my head going when did GT4 become Pokeman Snap.
GT4 Feburary launch will hurt the current market if it fails to live up it expected sales figures. Less then excpected sales will in some industry minds prove that big name titles can not succed unless release during Christmas. The gaming industy will respond to GT4 failure (if it does) by publishing even more games over Christmas time and which will force more games to flop during the Christmas season. If GT4 succeds then maybe the gaming indsutry will get the message about the overcrowding of the Christmas market and start to spreed big hyped games through out the year and create a healther retail environment for games on the market.

EA is getting sued by another set of its employess for unpaid overtime. This time they are claiming that they are entitled to overtime pay because they “do not perform work that is original or creative, and have no management responsibilities and are seldom allowed to use their own judgment.” I guess the lawyers figure the judge plays Madden.

If you are an OSS Geek, then you might want to check out tuxscout.com. It’s a site dedicated to matching up employers and employees employees in the open source community. Just like the employment section of this this site and GeekHall.com, tuxscout is free for everyone.

Before you ask… No, they are not affiliated in any way with this site. They are just OSS guys that have a similar idea about how to help a segment of the Geek community, so I thought they were worth a little free advertisement.

Someone stop these Redmond lawyers. According to this eWEEK arcticle and others, Microsoft’s lawyers are trying to patent the IsNot operator. This just illustrates what current patent law has degenerated to.

Since when are common and accepted practices patentable? I’ll tell you… the DotBomb boom. That’s when this country sprouted too many lawyers for us to support. It’s also when pseudo-technologists started trying to cash in on “discoveries” that were so obvious that a real engineer would never even consider a patent. (anybody remember single click shopping?)

My last dealings with the USPTO were in 1998, when I had to defend a patent application that was challenged just because the term “double buffered” was in the description. Because we weren’t trying to patent the “double buffered” part, it could be rewritten without the “double buffered” term. I don’t see how MS can rewrite this one without using IsNot. This patent isn’t meant to capitalize on an idea… just to tie the competition up in useless litigation.

Garbage patents like this keep Engineers in court and Lawyers in Jaguars. Though it pains me to say this, it is beginning to look like we will lose the economic wars to countries with saner patent laws. Defensive garbage patents have become the accepted way to squelch competition and thereby subvert the US economy. Those who file them should be considered guilty of treason.

Intel has released a new batch of P4’s including a new P4 Extreme Edition. This batch is kinda a snooze. Everyone (including Intel) is looking ahead to the first batch of dual core chips that are scheduled for late this year. In this round Intel has done a pretty reasonable job of ‘catch-up’ by releasing 64-bit parts with an enhanced “Speed Step". The 64 bit CPU will become much more testable in a couple of months when Microsoft releases 64-bit XP. The Speed Step technology is a voltage and frequency reduction during light CPU loads. It is similar to, but not as flexible as, AMD’s PowerNow! feature. AnandTech has a pretty good review. Firing Squad has one too.

Note that I said Intel has done a “reasonable job of catch-up". The comparisons seem to indicate that they haven’t quite caught AMD in performance. Maybe next time.

Here is the following games coming out for Feb 26,2005:

Ace Combat Advance for the Gameboy Advance - The hit console air combat game moves to small screen.
FIFA Street for XBox, Gamecube and Playstation 2- Finnally a soccer game that recreates pickup European street soccer or for all our American cousins the next sport to get the “Street” treatement.
Gran Turismo 4 for the Playstation 2 - Two years and minus online play comes the fourth game in the ultra console racing game series Gran Turismo. Hopefully the long delays where worth all it; I am still upset there is no online play.
The Settlers: Heritage of Kings for the PC - 3-D RTS simulation set in the Middle Ages with lots to explore. Sounds just like Civ whats not there to love?
Ice Nine for Gameboy Adavance - A sleath action game for the GBA that sounds just like Splitner Cell; even the guy on the covers looks like Sam from Splinter Cell.
Iron Phoneix for the XBox - Here is the game in four words: Multiplayer Kung Fu action
Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death for XBox, Playstation 2 - First Person shooter staring Judge Dredd not sure if Stallion returned to do the voices.
Kessen III for the Playstation 2 - The third part in the RTS series Kessent, which is Japanese medival war simulation, this time around may actual control your troops.
Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament for Gameboy Advance - The fourth Klonoa game that hopefully this time will not be ignored by video game fans.
Mortyr for the PC - For this series I am going to start using the following aycromn: YAWW2FPS which yet another WW2 First Person Shooter.
MVP Baseball 2005 for all systems - The last Baseball game with a Major Leagure Baseball licenses to made by EA for the next 5 years. That is unless EA comes out with its own system.
Nexus: The Jupiter for the PC - A Futuristic RTS that sort of sounds like Starcrap.
Project Snowblind for the PC, Xbox, Playstation 2 - A FPS spinoff game set in the Deus Ex universive; please pray this game is good. EDIOS needs it succed.
Robots for everthing and everthing handheld - A game based on upcoming animated movie Robots. Is this the first game to have the voice of Robin Williams?
SCRAPLAND is a third person action-adventure game set in a stunningly beautiful and futuristic world occupied by an amazing array of robotic characters. Do not forget to use your $5.00 off coupons at EB Games on this one; oh thats right the coupon expired Feb 19.
Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for the XBox - Finnally you can play Street Fighter 2 online with all your buddies; otherwise it a rehash of all the Street Figher 2 fighting games from the 90s. You also get a cool Ryu bust if you preorder it.
Tekken 5 for the Playstation 2 - The next game in 3D fighting series Tekken. This one has one of the coolest collectors editions; instead of getting a nicer cases a making of DVD for this one you get a huge controller, A cool set of six DVD cases to hold all five games in the Tekken series and an art book.
YS: Ark of Napishtim for the Playstation 2 - The return of one of the greatest RPG of all time from the 80s /early 90s. Want to talk about delays this game took 15 years to come out.

Sorry for no updates this weekend but I somehow ended up on MagFESTs con staff was busy dealing with it all weekend.

Ign has a good article about the attempts to resuce Enterprise from cancelation. I am presonally in the camp that is glad to see Enterprise die a painful death. Star Trek needs to take a break and come back in 10 years.

My favorite PSU and case maker, Antec, has a new line of PSU’s, according to this AnandTech article. My last 2 Cases and PSU’s were Antec. My next probably will be too.

EverQuest and Pizza Hut have teamed up to allow you to order pizza while playing EverQuest II. All you have to do is type /pizza and Pizza Hut will ship a fresh hot pizza to your house.

It looks like SCO may go down for something unrelated to it’s main claim to fame. According to eWEEK (and others), they may get delisted for a paperwork snafu. It’s difficult to imagine a company that seems to produce nothing more than lawsuits coming back from a blow like that.

Once again, we have someone postulating that Windows is safer than Linux despite all evidence to the contrary. The latest is an article I first ran into on Slashdot about a theoretical Windows system vs. a theoretical Linux system. Once again, a purely theoretical analysis of MS’s security based on trusting MS to accurately report flaws has proven that all of the data collected must be wrong. Of course, the theoretical model can’t be wrong, so the data must be.

We should pity the students at the Florida Institute of Technology. Their professor just failed his lab test. Miserably.

Kotoku has managed to get the specs from an inside source on XBox 360, also known as XBox 2. click here for more info

Not only does MicroSoft have problems with thier software but now they are having problems with hardware. MS recalls 14.1m Xbox power cables | The Register

To get you in the mood for the upcoming Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie you can now play Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy online. It’s one of the greatest games of all time.

It looks like WindowsXP-64 RC2 has been available since Jan 25. Don’t understand how I missed that. Oh well, It’s not news anymore, but it may help someone.

Slashdot is pointing to an article on Space.com that adds a new wrinkle to the argument over life on Mars. The argument is based on methane signatures found in subsurface rocks. I’ll bet they can get the same methane signatures from my basement tiles right after I serve a pot of chili at a LAN party. Lots of sulphur too!

SHA-1 has taken a few hits against it’s ability to secure data. The latest one ups the odds of attack from a message digest collision from one in 2 to the 80th, to one in 2 to the 69th. I don’t know about you, but I’m still not worried about someone breaking my hotmail password that way. If they give me the cost of the compute power necessary to break it, I would just sell them the password

Leakenova has submitted his review of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath for your perusal. If you’re looking for an honest appraisal of the game and it’s finer points, this is for you.

FiringSquad.com has posted a HL2 optimization guide for moderate machines. It can be a real help to those of us on a budget. If you would like to push up your FPS on your 1 or 2 year old system, check this out.

I stumbled across this link to the trailer for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Slashdot today. Obviously, every Geek should pop over there for a look. There are some obvious differences between the books and the movie. I know that Douglas Adams worked on the screenplay before he passed away… I’m eager to see how his view of the story changed.

One thing to note: I watched the Amazon trailer using Firefox on a Linux system, and it worked perfectly. Kudo’s to Amazon for their compatibility. It isn’t often that you find a company willing to make ALL of it’s customers comfortable.

Tampon maker Kotex has released a reworked Bejeweled in hopes that women will play it and see their ad at the end for Kotex Tampoons. The big change is the colored jewels that you match together have been reworked as charms like lipstick that you match. There are no pictures of Tampons in the game. The only way you can tell it was made by Kotex is via the ad at the end for Kotex’s product. This has to be in the category of the wierdest ad-based game I have ever seen. What is next? Trojan condoms offers a reworking of the naughty Atari 2600 game Custard’s Last Stand?

IGDA announces its nominees for their upcoming award game show at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The award show is March 9th and is the Oscars of gaming.
Here are the nominess:

Best Game
Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games/Electronic Arts)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North/Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

New Studio
Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes)
Crytek (Far Cry)
InXile Entertainment (The Bard’s Tale)
Obsidian Entertainment (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords)
The Behemoth (Alien Hominid)

Audio
Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Spark Unlimited/Activision)
Doom 3 (id Software/Activision)
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North/Rockstar Games)
Halo 2 (Bungie Software/Microsoft Game Studios)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)

Character Design
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft Entertainment)
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Computer Entertainment America)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Game Design
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North/Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Pikmin 2 (Nintendo)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Technology
Burnout 3: Takedown (Criterion Games/Electronic Arts)
Doom 3 (id Software/Activision)
EyeToy: AntiGrav (Harmonix Music Systems/Sony Computer Entertainment America)
Far Cry (Crytek/Ubisoft Entertainment)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)

Visual Arts
Doom 3 (id Software/Activision)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft Entertainment)
World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)

Writing
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North/Rockstar Games)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (High Voltage Software/Vivendi Universal Games)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (Obsidian Entertainment/LucasArts Entertainment)

Mark your calanders this week for the one of the best Anime conventions on the East coast: Katsucon XI, in Crystal City, Virginia. While attending Katsucon XI you will enjoy COSPlaying, video games, tons of anime, Larping, a dealer room, art work, special guests, and even a band.

AMD and Intel are both announcing 64-bit server chip releases this week. Both companies will be offering features that cut back on power consumption based on demand. I’ve worked with AMD’s PowerNow! technology for the Athlon-64, and found it useful, but not overly so for a desktop machine. In the case of a server, it would help immensely. I’m assuming that Intel’s technology is similar.

On a related note, AMD cut prices on the majority of their product line on the heels of the new releases.

LinuxDevices.com has the story of how Wind River Systems has migrated to Linux. It doesn’t look like they have abandoned their old flame altogether though. They are also offering middleware to help with IPC between Linux and VxWorks.

Once upon a time, VxWorks was king-of-the-hill in the realtime and embedded OS space. Unfortunately, the high price of their stuff had no chance of competing against the ever increasing quality and availability of embedded Linux. Their OS performed well, but the same features that made it blazing fast, also made it an easy trap for bad programmers to get caught in. Once upon a time, having a lot of VxWorks experience looked good on a resume. *sigh* Times change.

Here is the ulimate geek toy for your Gameboy Advance SP. Someone has created a device that allows you to monitor your cars performance using a Gameboy Advance SP.

Just in time for the release of Super Monkey Ball for the XBox comes this new contest from Sega where the main idea is you take a picture of yourself with some Monkey ears pasted on the side of your face. The winner gets a mystery prize and will be featured in all their marketing material. I guess some people will do anything to be famous.

Temco the game company responiable for such hits as Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Dead or Alive is famous for one thing woman in tight outfits and breasts that defy gravity) is sueing a group of so called hackers for altering in game character models and showing others how to do it. I guess Temco could not handle the fact that a couple of fan boys figured out how to see the girls in Dead or Alive naked. The scary part is Temco is pushing forward with the lawsuit on a shread of evidence Also when was modding game consider a bad idea by game companies; if Value acted like this we would have never gotten one of the greatest games of all time CounterStrike.

Here is the list of the games coming out this week:

Chicago Enforcer for the XBox - In the game you play as a gangaster living out those wild times in Chicago’s roaring 20’s. It is a budget game.
Constantine for the PS2 and XBox - Constantine the game is based on the movie Constantine which is based on the DC comic book Constantine.
Dai Senryaku VII: Modern Military Tactics for XBox- Dai Senryaku VII is a turn based modern military shooter and seventh in long running Japanese series that is finnally seeing the light of day in US as a budget game. Dai Senrayaku has been getting good reviews.
Disney’s Aladdin Chess Adventures for the PC - A chess adventure game using the characters from the Aladdin movie.
Everquest: Dragons of Norrath Expansion for PC game Everquest - Yet another Everquest release, if I ever get off my duff and make a game it most definetly going be MMORPG where I can charge people fifty dollars to buy the game, then charage people fifteen dollars a month to play and then come out with a must buy expansion ever six months for thirty dollars.
Nano Breaker for the PS2 - A futuristic 3D action game from the creators of Castlevania: Lament of Innocence; that has you playing as lone hero against the evil machines with a big laser sword.
NASCAR SimRacing for the PC - Another NASCAR gane from the dungeons of EA Tiborn studios; yes the one where they supposely whip the programers for only working 80 hours a week.
Star Fox Assault for the Gamecube - Fox McCloud and all his buddies are back for the next installment in the, now 100% Rare free, Star Fox franchise.
Tenchu: Fatal Shadows for the PS2 - Another game in the long running Ninja franchise Tenchu.
King of Fighters 02/03 for PS2: SNK Playmore’s countining installments of the long running figthing game King of Fighters.
WarioWare: Touched! for the DS: Wario is back with whacky mini games and this time you can touch him on your DS!
Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Bose for the PS2 - Just in time as you finish all the cut scences in the last Xenosaga comes the next installment of cut scences.
Winnie the Pooh: Rumbly Tumbly Adventures for the Gamecube - Another little game based on Winnie the Pooh.
Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials To Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005 for the Game Boy Advance - Another game based on the card game Yu-Gi-Oh.

     Oddworld Stranger’s Wrath is third game in the six part Oddworld story arc and the fourth game in the series by Oddworld Inhabitants for the XBox. Stranger’s Wrath takes a departure from the traditional platform style puzzles, that was a staple in the other three games, and moves more to a first person style shooter with some third person platform elements. Even though Stranger’s Wrath takes a departure from its traditional style of game play, Stranger’s Wrath still has the same look and feel of the other Oddworld games.
     Stranger’s Wrath’s environments are styled after the old spaghetti westerns like the Good, Bad and Ugly. Stranger the main hero act and speaks a lot like Clint Eastwood while channeling a little of the Duke. Stranger’s Wrath contains the traditional stereo types found in any good spaghetti western. The chicken who live in the towns you visit represent the white settlers. The grubs are the Indians and the bad guys look and act like the villains found in a good western.
   The first part of Stranger’s Wrath’s starts with you going to the Bounty Store to get a bounty on one of the wanted felons in the game. Each bounty is a boss battle where you go to the bad guys hideout and battle current bounty’s henchman and the current bad guy you are trying to collect a bounty on. The game gives you a choice to bring in the bad guy and his henchman in alive or dead. This element adds a little replay value to game by allowing to try to bring all the bounties alive or all the bounties dead. Each battle is design to solved in several ways, by giving you the option of run and gun, stealth, or a combo of both.
     In order to bring in the bad guys you must use a combo of different living creatures shot from crossbow that Stranger uses as his weapon in the first person view. You can also use hand to hand combat in third person view to battle the bad guys. Thankfully game allows you to switch between first and third person perspective with ease. Control in the first person mode is very tight and as good as it is found in Halo. In the third person mode was too lose causing Stranger to slide too much.
     You get your ammo, the living creatures, by hunting for them in the game instead of the first person traditional method of picking up ammo cases on the ground. Firing creatures like bugs, bee, spiders, sunks the return fuzzles and slugs add a lot fun and personality to the game over the plan boring bullets fired in most games. The other big break from the old school first person shooters is that there is no medical packs in the game. Instead you must spend stamina to shake off damage. Your stamina does slow recover in the game; but instead of hunting for a medical pack you now must run and hide to recover stamina so you can shake off more damage. As the game advances you will have the chance to upgrade Stranger with clip loaders that extend the numbers of rounds before having to reload, stamina and health extenders, brass knuckles to make you better at hand to hand combat and armor. The creatures in the game can also be upgraded.
     In the second part Stranger’s Wrath the game moves away from the boss battle formula to more standard adventure. The Chickens move out of the lime light and the grups move into the lime light. The bad guys you have been fighting vanish and are replaced by evil rednecks with guns. The meat of the fairly strong story in Stranger’s Wrath takes place in the second part but this also cases the story at point to feel rushed. The story in Stranger’s Wrath in second part also takes on a darker tone and the overall attitude of Stranger changes to a more caring character.
     Graphical the Stranger’s Wrath is a tour de force pushing the XBox to its limits. The frame rate never effect the gameplay and the graphical load times where rarely noticeable. Oddworld Inhabit’s use of colors and textures create a very immersive world; which draws you in and makes you feel like you are playing a great Western in a very Oddworld.
     The only major flaw in the game was the voice work or the lack there of it. There was very little variety in the voice work when you talked to all the characters and worse all the voices sound the same. This is very sad because of previous superb voice work in the other Oddworld games. The worst voice work has to be the Grubs in particlar the grub chief. Instead of sounding majestic and prophetic, the voice work for the grubs is shrill and very annoying. The music in the game was okay but keep cutting out in the middle of battles.
     Playtime for Stranger’s Wrath is about ten to fifteen hours. The is a small amount of replay value in Stranger’s Wrath with the bounty hunts in the first part. If Stranger’s Wrath had come with a level selection feature the replay value would have been a lot more. The skill level is moderate requring more brain then reflex, thanks to the abilty to save at any point in the game.
     Oddworld’s Stranger’s Wrath is another wunderkind of a game created by Oddworld Inhabits that creates a unique and wonderful world to play in. The use of creatures for ammo and mixture of play styles hits all the right notes. If you are looking for an innovative adventure game Stranger’s Wrath is well worth the asking price.
For the record there is NO NUKES in the game; but it does have suicide bombers and lots of explosives.

Umm… not sure what to say about something like FUDZilla. Yes there is a lot of FUD out there. And yes, a lot of it comes from Microsoft. But not everything they say about their product should be considered FUD. Puffing, Sales twaddle, opinions, and inflated comparisons are not FUD. Presenting intentionally twisted FACTS (that’s not opinions) is FUD.

For example, saying that Windows is more secure than Linux is an opinion . It’s a pretty good joke too, but it is opinion. Pushing out the numbers of 15 vs 34 vs 78 vulnerabilities fixed is borderline FUD. It can’t be real FUD because there is no Fear, Uncertainty, or Doubt asoociated with it. Nobody believes it, including the guy who said it. A better TLA for it would be LOL.

We should probably attack the real FUD like the “Get the Facts” campaign, where Microsoft actually convinced a lot of people that Windows was much cheaper than Linux. It only started to fall apart when their own quoted sources began to ask them to remove their assertions. If that hadn’t happened, who knows how far they would have gone.

What I see at FUDZilla is mostly rebuttal of someone’s opinion. Though I probably agree with much of what they say, it’s really just part of an ongoing debate. Calling this stuff FUD just waters down the term. The fact that MS can point to it and call it FUD themselves doesn’t help much either.

You know want do this to the all those lan cheaters out there…..Another one If EA took over Nintendo

CNet recently wrote a great article on the new growing trending of making money via Massive Online Roleplaying Games. The scary thing is they are correct you can. One of my best friend’s kid actually did make a ton of cash buying selling stuff on Evercrap. Granted he basicly only made about 2 dollars an hour; but he did make money; I think he stop when Sony banned selling Evercrack items.

I am starting a new feature; every week I am going post a great game that you never heard of because all you old farts where too busy playing Starcrap to pay attention. This weeks game is Beyond Good and Evil for the PC,PS2,XBox and Gamecube. Beyond Good and Evil (BG&E) was created by UbiSoft to be the next franchise from the genius of Michel Ancel, better know as the creator of Rayman. BG&E main story was the adventures of the female character Jade and her pig sidekick Pey’j as they try to raise the funds to maintain the lighthouse that is their home by taking pictures for various factions in the game. While trying to take the pictures Jade and Pey’j get caught up in the war between the bad guys the DomZ against the good guys the Alpha Sections, at least in first ten minutes when the story takes one of its many plot twists when BG&E introduce the other faction in the game IRISS.
BG&E was marketed as an action adventure game but it was more like the old school adventure Serria quest games (Space Quest, King Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, etc). Each area in BG&E are designed like a puzzle that will require you to use your mind more then your reflexes to get through the area. BG&E is very light on the violence and focuses more on stealth to get through the various puzzle in the game. The picture taking is a very small part of the game if you chose not to play the optional side quest of taking pictures of all the creatures in the game. One of nice features in BG&E is the optional side quests which add a lot of rich features to the game but do not slow down the main game if you choose not to play them.
BG&E strongest suit is its story. Ancel loaded BG&E’s story full of plot twist and well written dialog that draws you into the story and makes it hard to put down the controller. The character development is BG&E second strongest feature. The development is so strong that a lot of players will cry when some bad happens to one of the characters.
Graphically the game is top notch. The game clips along at a great frame rate with very solid textures and colors. Each area is so graphically rich that it has its own personality. The best thing graphical about the game is the character model which are so well done that they convene emotion. The audio and music is flawless and draws you further into an already deep game.
BG&E is one of those few rare treasures that comes along in great while that renews your love with video games. It is a shame so few people played it when it came out. The big reason BG&E failed was it came out in December 2004 in one of the busiest Christmas season ever and was so different for reflex multi playing generation that it was never given a chance to be discovered. It is currently selling used for around 15 dollars and is a steal at that price. Ubisoft if you have heart please make Beyond Good and Evil 2.

Edios finally put the final nail in the coffin of what was suppose to the greatest game studio on Earth: Ion Storm. The studio’s most famous creations where John Ramero’s infamous Daikatana and the now classic Deus Ex.
After Warren Spector and Harvey Smith left in November it was a matter of time before Edios killed of the studio. Edios has left Crystal Dynamics open but I have not seen a new Gex (IMHO their last great game franchise; I was not a big Blood Omen fan) in ages; hopefully Project: Snowblind is good. Crystal Dynamics next game after Snowblind is *shudder* another Tomb Raider, a death nail if there ever was one. All of this leaves me wondering how long till Edios will go the way of late often hated Accliam; another company famous for driving a game franchise into the ground (*cough*Turok*cough*).

You can set your calendar by Microsoft’s assertions about security. Ho Hum. Windows gets slammed by a bunch of vulnerabilities, they release the patches, they say “at least we aren’t as bad as limux". It all seems to happen every month at Microsoft’s pre-appointed patch time.

You have to understand… vulnerabilities appear once every month. Since MS is the only company with a monthly patchfest, they must be the most secure. Wanna buy a bridge?

I’ve been avoiding all of the recent news about SCO’s ever deepening troubles because I didn’t want to seem like I was picking on them.

OK. You caught me. I like picking on them, and I don’t care what it looks like. There you go.

If you want to see what I like picking on, check out Groklaw’s latest post. It looks bad for SCO right now. I would feel sorry for them if their actual output of product wasn’t lawsuits. This is less of a case of someone stealing from them, and more of a case of claiming ownership to what’s not yours.

I thought Civil War reancting was weird, but now someone had to go make things even weirder with the bright idea of taping paper plates to their heads and rolling a ball of duct tape around on their floor to reanact the popular PS2 game Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy, those of you who do not play console games, main idea is you are a prince and have to roll this ball around collecting objects to create stars in the skies to repair the damage done by your father when he wiped out all the stars in the skies. The games looks and plays like the devolpers spent way too much time with Mushrooms (there are a lot of odes to Mushrooms in the game btw. The trippest moment had to been when King barfed rainbows). Click here for some seriously messed up pictures of someone trying to renact this game

Just in time for valentines day comes the perfect little toy to say I love you honey:
It also looks great on your desk; perfect toy to say hi to all those wonderful bosses out there. Ign has a great review about it. For those sickos out there that must have it. You can purchase it at EB Games Online.

Since a lot of you are hard core Doom fans one of the level designers American McGee is releasing his next game for the XBox: Scrapland. Scrapland is best described as Grand Theft Auto with Robots. Here is a review of the PC version of the game. The big thing about the XBox version is American fixed the targeting issues. You can also get a five dollar of coupon from the latest issue of the EB Game’s in store magazine. Or you can use the coupon on the EB Game website I am not sure how this coupon is going to work since the game ships on the 28th and the coupon expires on the 19th.

Care to be in charge of middle earth? If you have a few pounds to spare (thats pounds sterling, not pounds of hot pockets), you can buy it here on Ebay. Hopefully, the buyer of this domain and site will respect it’s meaning to all of geekdom. Middle earth should be treated with reverence.

Thanks to TheRegister.com for the initial post.

Blizzard is hiring for Diablo 3. Here is the link to hiring website:
Blizzard’s HR site. I am seriously thinking about applying for that tools position

In a really ironic twist, Symantec’s competitor has announced a vulnerability that affects all Symantec products. Physician, heal thyself.

In this article from the offbeat section of USA Today, a man was arrested for telling lawyer jokes in front of a courthouse, but had the charges dropped. Does anyone else see a really good lawyer joke in that story? How would you like to be the prosecutor who lost this case?

This months crop of Windows updates appears to contain no less than seven critical patches. It is nice to see that Microsoft is finally marking some of it’s flaws as critical. If you aren’t set up to automatically update your system. it’s probably a good idea to download these patches from Windows Update.

Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil is due to be released on April 4th. Get the details and a bit of opinion from FiringSquad.

Who would have believed this 10 years ago? An expansion for a Doom game is announced, and meets with a resounding yawn. It seems like I wasn’t the only one who was disappointed with Doom 3. It could have been the fact that it could never have lived up to years of hype. It could be the fact that I’m older now… But I think the real reason is that, though improving the technology considerably, they did nothing to improve the gameplay. It really seemed like more of an upgrade than a new game.

Catalyst 5.2 is now available on ATI’s driver download page. It doesn’t look too interesting unless you have a X700 or better card. Since I’m stuck with a 9600 pro for the forseeable future, I’ll probably skip this one. I’m still waiting for an apology for the 9600, as well as an x86_64 linux driver that doesn’t crash X.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Chech out http://www.rssautopublisher.com/

But nobody is exactly sure how soon. In this GameSpot post, the release is sometime in FY 2006, which starts on April 1, 2005 for Activision. That means sometime within the next year or so. Can’t be soon enough for me.

The news about the Cell CPU is out. You can check out C-Net Wired or AnandTech for details.

Once again, we have a chip that is supposed to dethrone the X86 as the king of the PC. I wish them all of the luck in the world, but I’ll remain skeptical. Remember that even Intel’s much publicised x86 replacement Itanium (now known as the Itanic in some circles) failed miserably. We’ve also seen the Crusoe, the PowerPC, and others fall by the wayside over the past 25 years.

If Windows gets ported to it quickly, and popular PC games are written for it, then the Cell has a chance. If not… I’m afraid we’ll see another ugly post-mortem in a few years.

As was widely reported yesterday, there is a major spoofing flaw in every gecko-based browser on the market. This includes Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. Everyone except IE. Check out the article at TechWorld.com.

Well, looks like the Mozilla guys better get to it, or risk looking like hypocrites. You know you don’t have much time before Mr. Gates starts the FUD.

According to this TheRegister.com article, Spamhaus in accusing MCI of knowingly enabling illegal spam gangs and making a profit from it. If the contents of this article are true, MCI’s assertion that they can’t do anything about it won’t stop the impending doom. Every business has the right to institute a code of conduct for it’s customers. You need to do something about this before the community at large does it for you. Sounds like the first thing to do is fire your legal department and get a new one.

Intel has announced dual core production ahead of previous schedules. I’m not going to get too overjoyed yet… I was excited about HT technology, which turned out to be a real bust. I find that Windows and Linux both run faster with HT turned OFF! This includes a 50% increase in framerate in CS:Source.

One warning about the AnandTech article though… It states that a dual HT chip can process 4 threads simultaneously. That isn’t quite true. It can keep track of 4 simultaneously, but it only has 2 complete pipelines.

HT can be more efficient if you have multiple threads that need to share the CPU somewhat equally, but it can slow down threads (like game rendering engines?) that expect to get all or nearly all of the CPU’s attention.

Dual core systems can significantly increase throughput, but not in all cases. The very first concern is whether the OS can efficiently divide things up between processors, and the very last one is whether an app takes advantage of multiple CPU’s. Dual cores are likely to have little advantage in the short term, but will probably get more useful as time goes on.

Valve’s Steam Requirement for HL2 has always seemed like a lawsuit waiting to happen. It is ludicrous to distribute a game that requires constant internet access to play a local, single player game. The fact that this isn’t spelled out on the box makes it much worse. “Remote Licenseware” has been around for decades, but always warned the purchaser in advance of the limitations. It always made sure that you knew exactly what you needed before purchase, or the purchase was refunded.

When I installed my copy, the ensuing HUGE REQUIRED download was irritating enough on a broadband connection. I feel sorry for those on dial-up.

Give Valve a little while to fix their insane policies. If they don’t, the only recourse we have is to boycott Vivendi. That should wake someone up.

After a long, long layoff, the Shameless Geek is back. Check out what happened during Shameless’ short lived tech support career. Those of you who have handled tech support know you have always wanted to say these things

In a letter to Microsoft Customers, Bill Gates promised to work harder to make his company’s software work better with existing systems. What really needs to happen is for MS to release it’s proprietary formats so that existing software systems can work better with MS software. Are you game for that Mr. Gates?

I stumbled across this TCO Analysis by a retired World Bank CTO. This is the first of 4 articles advertised to be an honest attempt to determine the “real world” TCO of both systems by a Linux devotee. Though imperfect, the first part of the article points out how difficult it is to actually purchase a Windows-free desktop machine, and how little is actually saved when you do.

Though purchasing Linux-based systems on the web is probably much easier, how many people do you know in your purchasing department who would take the risk of buying “Blah Blah Super System” or something like that? The answer is probably zero. And remember… Telling a non-technical purchasing agent that a system is P4 FSB800 etc. sounds the same as “Blah Blah Super System". One really big milestone would be convincing Dell to add Linux (any distribution) to their dropdown web configuration menu. Then, Linux will have arrived.

Mozilla has released Sunbird 0.2, a standalone calendar app to go with their recently released Firefox and Thunderbird products. If this is anything like the last two products, it will be sensational when finished.

I’m not much of a user of calendar applications. My standard approach to scheduled meetings is to apologize for missing them. That gets me invited to fewer mettings, and everyone is happier. If anyone has an opinion on Sunbird, please post it here.

How’s this for Mega Geekware? These MP3 glasses are cool enough that they could even convince me to listen to MP3. The convenience and cool factor could outweigh the low quality of compressed music.

How about a pair of Bluetooth glasses that pump in high quality audio from the CD player? Or putting some video on those lenses?

Thanks to Specialst for the pointer.

Some good news for RTS fans: Empire Earth 2 is scheduled for release 4/26/05, according to Vivendi’s Insider. The official web site still says spring 2005. Advertised features include seasonal weather changes and a picture-in-picture system for managing parts of your civilization. The official web site is www.empireearth2.com and Vivendi’s product page is here.

Remember SunnComm? That company who made the most HILARIOUS booboo in software history? The DRM app that could be circumvented by holding the shift key down? THEY’RE BACK! Check out this article at TheRegister.com for the story.

If a company is reckless enough to release a product like that in the first place, then compound the error by filing a lawsuit that calls attention to their blunder, would you take them seriously?

A DRM scheme that blocks copying but still plays in old CD players is never going to be secure. A simple LINE-OUT to LINE-IN patch cable gets around that. If you’re looking to hack it while it’s still digital, look at sound card filter drivers. Any way you slice it, this kind of DRM is meant to keep the general public from making backup copies, but does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop the pirates they claim to be chasing. The only thing this technology does is to keep honest people honest… and that doesn’t require DRM.

Now that I’ve stated the common sense of the subject, is there a lawsuit in my future?

According to TheRegister.com, a recent attack on www.jabber.org was far worse than expected. An audit found that initial compromise was done by a root kit more than a year ago. If you have had any dealings with www.jabber.org or JabberStudio, you may need to validate your code.

Linus, in his own way, has added his opinion of software patents to the growing number of experts expressing concern about them. As usual, he doesn’t say much more that “it doesn’t help".

Current patent processes have lost much since 1994, when my name went on an application for a hardware patent. I was put through the ringer about “common practice", “prior art” and “reduced to practice". 3 different examiners objected to a section of the schematic as prior art because it used the term “double buffer", even though “double buffer” can’t be any more proprietary that “chip". Now you get a patent if you pay the fee and spell your name right… and the spelling part may be overlooked.

Tom’s has posted their 2004 Readers Choice Awards. It’s not surprising that AMD’s Athlon 64 got the award for best CPU innovation. The surprising thing is that it won by a 7:1 margin! Obviously, we geeks have been paying attention. Another notable thing is that ATI walked away empty handed. This is furher evidence of their decline this year. Lets hope they make up for it in 2005. Consumers need the competition.

AMD’s processor market share increased to 16.6% according to this ExtremeTech article. I’ve been a fan of AMD CPU’s since I got my first 500MHz Athlon at work. The one Intel-based desktop that I bought since turned out to be a disaster. Go AMD!

According to Bluesnews, A Star Wars: Republic Commando demo is now available. At 421MB, dialup users should probably avoid it. If anyone has an opinion on it, post a review here.

MS and Belgium have teamed up (?) to integrate electronic ID cards with MSN Messenger. Slashdot has some reactions. Just lovely. Now Belgians get the chance to have their EID exposed to IM hackers.

This sounds like the premise for a really bad SCI-FI movie where a mega-company run by a meglomaniac gets complete control of everybody’s identity, and erases all memory of those who get in the way. Sound familiar?

I’ve turned comments back on for now. I won’t let bottom-feeding, lawyer-like, nausea-inducing, low-life scum effect my ‘blog any more. I’m going to beat the comment and trackback spammers somehow… Honestly I will.

I’ll leave the comments off in anything older that last week, but I’ll allow for everything else. I encourage everyone to have something to say, as long as they follow the basic rules against bad language and hate speech.

Flamers of the world, IGNITE!