Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

The Game Critics Award announced their nominations for Best of E3 2005. The Game Critics is an independent group made up of journalists from 33 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry, The Game Critics Awards are the most respected of all E3 awards (which is not saying much) and will be announced on June 7 on Spike TV. We will see how much respect they have after airing on Spike.

In a move that has been delayed for way too long, the FCC has recommended internet cutoff as a viable response to spam zombies. Though it will inconvenience a few of the clueless who have let their systems get hijacked by spambot programs, it may help to cut back on the huge volumes of junk mail being sent. Now we can only hope that these measures are enacted in short order.

I understand the reluctance to cut off grandma’s net access because she has become a victim of something that she doesn’t understand. However, it seems as if there are a lot of grandma’s out there who are completely unaware that they have been infected. I think that ISP’s should get strict about net cutoff, but balance the strict measures with assistance to those who cannot rid themselves of the bots.

Despite the obvious controversy incitement attempt, here is an article on how Windows is increasing it’s enterprise market share. Windows is pulling ahead slightly as companies continue to invest more in their infrastructure. However, the conclusion that Windows is “wiping the floor” with Linux is FUD of the highest order, and isn’t based on any facts mentioned in the article. It sounds a lot like the idiots who said that Linux would make Windows extinct by the end of the decade. I guess poor reporters have to generate controversy somehow.

The increase in Windows usage seems to be an indicator of two things:

1. People are beginning to trust Microsoft after they finally fixed the security issues.
2. Standard Unix systems (Solaris, etc) are extremely expensive, and no longer give an adequate return on that investment

The swing isn’t away from Linux to Windows, it is away from higher-priced Unix systems to Windows. A lot of this is due to the fact that the Unix world has been slow to move away from the world of six-figure server systems that they lived in for years. It’s hard to convince people to spend hundreds of $K on a whizzbang super system when you can get nearly the same functionality from a souped-up high-end PC. Now that Microsoft has improved security, the final argument for large systems is getting weaker by the day. As the justifications for big systems shrink, Windows is the logical choice for many companies.

As expected, AMD released their dual-core X2 chips to the public today. As mentioned here before, the X2 is a much better performer than Intel’s dual-core offerings, but also suffers from a much higher pricetag. In the game of CPU wars, the ball is still in AMD’s court. I’m hoping that they make some kind of reply before August, when I start building my new system. A $200 dual-core version of the fx-55 would be really nice.

A district in Japan deiced last week to classify Grand Theft Auto III as harmful. This will force retailers to move it in the bins with porn and it can not be sold to anyone under 18. This restriction would have made sense if they had bothered to do it when GTA III first came out two years ago, but now it is kinda of senseless. I wish American censors acted this fast to restrict sales of a game.

This is a follow up to the Gamer Graffix review I did last week. It has been a week and it was time to check if the Gamer Graffix is truly leaves no residue and see how well it held up. After being on the Gamecube for a week it was hard to peel off the Graffix off but once it was off it let no residue. I then stuck it to something else, left it there for a few minutes, peeled off the new object and re-stuck it to the Gamecube. It went on with no major issues with no peeling once it was on.

Time Magazine has a good article about a new growing geek hobby of posting to Wikipedia and the whole growth of the WikiWiki movement. Wikipedia, for those who do not know about it yet, is the largest open source encyclopedia on earth. I love how academia challenges its validity instead of embracing it and making it better. A lot of the entries I have read seem to be very valid, dead on, and well written… all the trademarks of a successfully person in academia. It was also kinda funny to find out when doing a search for Leake on Wikipedia, that any Leake who has run for political office has died in office.

Another week comes to end and we have another list of upcoming games for this week. For this week we have a few good, a few bad and a few well…
On to the list:

Advent Rising for the PC and XBox: Part one of an epic Sci-fi trilogy from the minds of Sci-Fi author Orson Scott Card and GlyphX Games, comes this intergalactic adventure.

Boiling Point: Road to Hell for the PC: Delayed from last week comes this Shooter staring a Legionnaire pushed to his limits.

Digimon World 4 for the Playstation, XBox and Gamecube: Yet another Digimon game, who the heck is buying them.

ER for the PC: Live the adventures of the doctors from the TV show ER.

Another short release week, actual back to the levels it should be compared to last few months.
Pick for the week: Digimon World 4,no I meant Advent Rising.

I was surfing around the website Something Awful that Attack of The Show on G4TechTV had recommend, when I cam across this picture. Whatever the gender of the person is, if the Jedi knights had more like “it” then maybe the clone troopers would not have wiped them out.

According to an interview with financial website TheStreet.com, Microsoft Vice President J. Allard dropped the hint that the XBox 360 will be “in the the neighborhood” of $300 in the US. I am glad to see that Microsoft is starting to come clean about the price point of XBox 360 but I still want to know how much will games for the XBox 360 cost?

Video game blogger Dubious Quality recently posted a marco view of E3. Dubious was able to do this since he did not have a media badge and was able to take a more marco view of E3, instead of the normal micro view that the media focuses on.

One real interesting point that Dubious brought up was the real lack of anything PS3 related at E3. Yes, there where signs everywhere for the Playstation 3 at E3, including a sign at the airport. Yes, the media was treated to some neat displays of the Playstation 3. But the actual convention goers, as Dubious points out, saw very little of the Playstation 3. That is other then some pre-rendered Playstation 3 footage. On the strength of this footage alone Sony was able to wreck the XBox 360 at E3, which has all the tell tale signs of a classic FUD.

I am not surprised to see Sony trying to pull off a FUD or even this style FUD. Sony did the very same type of FUD, that is using pre-rendered footage, to wreck the Dreamcast last generation. It just saddens me that Sony is doing it again and the media not call them out on it. It also sadden to see Sony’s FUD is still able to wreck a console before it has a chance.

Mozilla is getting ready to release a Firefox alpha. Though that is not usually something that the average geek would care about, the eWeek story that brings the news also has a peek at the updates that it will contain as well as what’s in store for Firefox 1.1.

There is big controversy right now raging amongst gamers: Was the screen footage of Killzone 2 for the Playstation 3 in game or was it just a cut scene? Well someone managed to get their grubby paws on some “rumored” in-game footage. It is amazing how much the footage looks like Castle Wolfenstien 3D.

Since we never get any reader mail, I decided to answer the questions that you enter in search strings that some how ended up pointing to ShamelessGeeks.com (yes someone entered these in Google and somehow ended up on our site. In some cases more then once):

1) control center will not be fully operational until smartgart?
Okay Dr. Evil we will get to work on it right away. Anyways since when is an ATI graphics card so vital that it could bring a control center down?

2)drm key for leisure suite larry magna cum laude?
You are kidding me you want to pirate this piece of junk. People Leisure Suite Larry Magna Cum Laude blows serious chunks, it is not worth even stealing.

3) geeks e3?
You have to ask that question, the whole damm E3 is one giant geek fest. Everyone at E3 was a geek.

4) how to finish chapter 6 in paper Mario the thousand year door
Go to gamefaqs.com, I have no clue. I stopped playing Paper Mario 2 after the fifth level.

5) is psp worth it?
Yes, if you want to look damm sexy and get girls. Otherwise save your money and wait till the price drops.

6) man from nantucket?
Alright who posted about Nantucket. No, none one who posts on this site is from Nantucket. We are all from a place we like to call the sticks.

7) stella deus reviews by christians?
We are geeks people, not christians, get it straight.

8) are sony excited at the prospect of tomb raider on psp?
You are kidding me, some actual thinks Tomb Raider is a good game.

9) booboo the pig?
Yhea I am fat and have been called a pig. But I have never been called booboo.

10) evil rednecks?
I see you have meet my neighbors.

11) jack thomson attorney bully?
Some say, yes he is. The questions sounds like a great TV show title.

12) location to graffix shop for ds?
Maybe the gamer graffix guys will be polite enough to tell you where you can. Just go to Gamergraffix.com and ask for Guy.

13) nba legends 50s-90s?
What part of geek do you not understand? sports != geek.

14) pssst. hey kid wanna buy a letter q sesame street?
Okay, excuse me while I place a call to the police.

15) shameless geeks?
Yes we are and damm proud of it too.

Here one for the books. Doris Self, of Fort Lauderdale, may be a grandma and in her 80s but she is not giving up on her quest to regain the world highest score ever in Q*Bert, which she held until 1985. In addition she plans to regain the title of the oldest person to hold a world record score, which she held until 2002. She plans to regain both titles when she sets the highest world score on Q*Bert. Since scoring a world highest video game scores require a judge, Doris plans to do all of this on the weekend of June 2-5. There will be witness from Twin Galaxies present for an annual gathering of classic gamers at Funspot in Weirs Beach, NH. All I got say is you go grandma.

In the latest issue of Time Magazine is an article about the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and their conference in Florida. SSE does very serious scientific explorations into areas like UFOs, Bigfoot, and Loch Ness Monster. In other words, the more fringe and questionable elements of science. Before you laugh off SSE, the group is made up of several high ranking members of the scientific community, who feel we should take the time to look outside the box, and in doing so, question proper science.

Yesterday on Matrix-Online, Morpheus was killed by a mysterious assassin. This is a big deal because what happens on Matrix-Online is cannon. This means any new movie or book/comic book that is set after the Matrix movies must reflect the fact that Morpheus dies shortly after the movies. In fact anything that happens in Matrix-Online must be reflected in future Matrix movies/books/comic books/video games set after the trilogy.
The death of Morpheus was a planned thing, done with the approval of the Wachowski brothers (or is it brother and sister). This was not some random player killing a big character by accident, like when a player “accidentally” (okay he did on purpose, but he was not suppose to be able to) killed Lord British on Ultima Online. However what happens after Morpheus’ death is up to the players of Matrix-Online and should make for an exciting time.

The New York Times posted an article (registration required) about game developers who make Christian themed games. Right now it’s a small and very independent and underground group, but it is growing. The article did have one mistake, there will soon be a Playstation 2 and GBA Bible Trivia game coming out from Crave.

I ran into this Forbes article about Larry McVoy’s defection from Linus Torvalds, and I have to agree with a lot of what he says. Unfortunately for him, he only has about half of the story.

The point about Open Source not being as lucrative as commercially written software is well taken. If the world were to switch exclusively to an OSS business model, software developers and the companies that employ them would probably have to take enormous pay cuts, causing a mass exodus from the industry. Fortunately, most sane people aren’t really suggesting this. His final point about an eventual balance between OSS and traditional business models tends to say that he isn’t suggesting it either. That’s good, but he is only about halfway there.

His point about OSS folks not being able to make innovative software while making a profit is almost, but not quite correct. It certainly hasn’t happened yet, but that’s mostly because OSS companies haven’t hit their stride yet. They still face huge bills for legal battles and FUD control that could easily wipe out any small company’s IRAD budget. In addition, most of the OSS companies out there either make their profits by creating distributions or selling their expertise to others. Distribution companies have their hands full just incorporating the changes introduced by others. The “expert” companies, which McVoy calls “loss leaders for hardware companies", are the ones who do all of the innovations… becuse that’s what they are paid to do. Interestingly, McVoy gets the “loss leader” part right, but seems to think that it is something to be ashamed of. It’s something that many companies have made a living off of for decades.

The assertion that traditional companies are the only ones who can afford innovation is just a big load of bunk. Who can afford it is irrelevant… who actually does it is important.

Innovation in a stodgy old traditional company can cost several times as much as in a small, reactive company. If you add the fact that innovation is always risky, you will find that the traditional companies are completely uninterested in innovating. Take the example of Microsoft. You are unlikely to find anything truly new that was invented there. All of the so-called innovation was actually acquired from little companies after the viability of the technology was already proven. Big companies don’t invent, they acquire.

In the end, OSS is probably here to stay, but it won’t wipe out the traditional software industry. We’ll end up with some sort of balance, and there will be plenty of innovation to go around. We should listen to McVoy, but we should always remember that he’s is a bit miffed when he projects the amount of money he may have lost by giving his product away. Some of the companies that contribute to OSS will lose out, just like with any risky venture. Consumers, on the other hand, should be grateful to OSS. It’s the only thing keeping the “big boys” honest.

In what has to be one of the biggest computer hardware switcheroos of all time, Intel and AMD have completely switched market segments. This is based on the announcement that Intel has priced it’s new dual core CPU’s at half of what AMD has projected for the X2. It now looks like AMD is in the high-performance high-price category, while Intel has taken over the budget segment of the market. Now the ball is in AMD’s court. I’m hoping to see a nice price war start.

If you would have suggested a few years ago that this could happen, most IT people, me included, would have laughed at you. Color me amazed.

The Scooba, a robotic mop from the makers of Roomba, is due to be released to the gadget-loving public some time next year. Is it just me, or are there other people who are a little nervous about buying automated home appliances from a company called IRobot? I guess if they are like the Asimov book, we’re relatively safe. Lets just hope they aren’t like the completely unrelated movie.

The CIA’s Internet war exercise that we’ve been hearing so much about for the past few days is winding down. No word yet about whether Joshua found all of the launch codes. It’s nice to see the white-hat hackers practicing their craft, but any technical knowledge gained from a simulation has a shelf life of a few weeks, and is only as good as the team that wrote the sim.

It looks like someone over at TheRegister.com has come up with a justification for suing spyware removal vendors. As we all know, once someone finds a justification for it, the lawyers will start swarming. Luckily, there is no argument that would allow the “stealth” downloading that happens on some sites, only the spyware installed as part of a downloaded program with an honest-to-goodness EULA.

Thanks guys… Big help. Not happy about their lack of foresight in releasing this article, and not happy that they are advocates for the spyware houses. However, it shows ho any lawyer can make anything beneficial look illegal, while making anything shady look pristine.

Here’s a novel idea: stop downloading spyware!. It’s usually pretty obvious which application will load spyware on your machine. If not, then it is information that you will find all over the web. Here’s the first clue: If what the software is doing is something that is illegal, immoral, or shady, there is a good chance that it will have spyware in its payload. People who have no problem justifying one slightly illegal or immoral thing are unlikely to have a problem justifying another. Examples: P2P apps, DVD rippers, and anything downloaded from a porn site are likely to have big spyware.

The AP wire posted an article this morning about the impending strike from the voice actors that do the voices for video games and are part of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union. The voice actors main beef is, now that video games are highly successful in part because of their efforts, they should get a share of the video game’s profits instead of an upfront fee for games that sell over 400,000 copies. While on paper this sounds like a very noble idea, it is in fact a stupid idea, that could cost the union voice actors their jobs. The reason is, voice work in video games is a very small part of games and union voice actors can easily be replaced by non-union voice actors, without the consumer noticing or complaining. This strike also makes the voice actors look very greedy. Right now they make $278 per hour of voice work and the gaming industry agreed to up their pay to $375 per hour of voice work, which is a lot for being such a small role in games. To put that in perspective, the artists and programmers who do make a difference and play a huge role in video games get no where near that pay scale and often do not get a share of the profits.
The voice actors are right now voting whether to strike or not. Hopefully they come to sense and vote to not strike.

This is a thorny question that tends to evoke passionate answers. USA Today has a pretty fair analysis about teen blogging, though I think their report missed a few options. I’ve actually allowed one of my teens to blog from my server. It gives her much better control of her own page, as well as someone to turn to with technical questions.

I’m aware that most people don’t have root access to a server. An alternative is to pay for a site on one of the many low-cost website servers out there. The teen will end up with a better web page, giving them access to a much better range of services. The parent will have easy access to the teen’s web site without having to sneak around behind the kid’s back. Everybody wins.

The most important thing is to let your teens know how bad things can get if they give out personal information. I’ve spent quite a few years lecturing my kids on the unspeakable dangers of the internet. I think it’s had the desired effect, but only time will tell.

The XBox 360 was just announced and what do you know, it is already for sale on EBay. I wonder if this “legit” XBox 360 is made by the same company that makes Nintondo games?

The man with political bent
makes even the guiltless repent.
From poor men he’ll steal
and make rich men to feel
entitled to every cent!

The demo of Metroid Prime Hunters at E3 was only setup for multiplayer and it only featured one map. It looked just like the Metroid games for the Gamecube. It played just like them even though the DS lacks an analog stick. It did this by mapping either an analog control, like turning around, to a field on the stylus or via pressing different button combinations and using the arrow keys to do looking around or actual moving. Once you got use to the control it was fairly easy to move Samus around.

Metroid Prime Hunters single player story is, that you and bunch of other bounty hunters are after a set of magical artifact for some mysterious great being. Once an artifact has been found, if you found it, the other bounty hunters will try to steal it from you or if you did not find it, you try to steal it from the bounty hunter that has it. This creates a non-linear story as you chase bounty hunters from planet to planet trying to steal away artifacts from them, while protecting your artifacts and trying to find new artifacts.

I am not a huge fan of the Gamecube versions of Metroid. This may be why I found Metroid Prime Hunters multi-player to be just another shooter with a bland multi-player. I wish the story mode was available for demoing, because it sounds exciting and may have change my opinion of Metroid: Primer Hunter. Alas it was not and the best I can say is right now is, Metroid Prime Hunter is shaping up to be a bland shooter.

It looks like someone has figured out a way around the Microsoft Windows anti-piracy tools. Read this one yourself… When you are done laughing, come back to ShamelessGeeks. Better yet, don’t wait till you are done laughing, that may take too long.

Microsoft already knows that piracy is directly proportional to price. That’s why Linux is never pirated

Check out this story about a drug deal next to a squad car. I can’t really find a geek angle for this… except that I’ve never met a geek that stupid.

It looks like those geeks who have gone to the dark side of programming (and I’m not talking about management this time) have a new way to steal your money. Its a form of extortion that has been dubbed “ransomware”. It involves a malware infection that encrypts your files and demands that you pay to have them unlocked.

Actually… this sounds like it could be a hoax to me. It seems unlikely that a criminal genius would actually have you mail him a ransom payment. Of course, I have seen dumber schemes that have hit people up for millions of dollars… but I’m accustomed to seeing them come out of Washington DC.

With a wonderful flourish and an intensely passionate statement of the obvious, the US Senate passed a bill that declares spyware illegal. I’m not one to argue with Congress when they declare that crime is a criminal act, but I would really prefer if they would spend more time enforcing the fraud and privacy laws that covered this in the first place. To make a second law against the same thing seems like a waste of government money.

I guess that my only response would be a soft sigh and an unspoken DUH!.

Infineon if forming a team to explore a new type of computer storage called Phase Change Memory. In this type of memory, the material changes from amorphous to crystalline in order to store a 1 or 0. Sounds like a cool technology. We wish them luck.

Geek On Stun posted their feelings about E3, and how horrible it was. I agree with Geek On Stun on most of his points about E3. However I totally disagree with him about his assessment of Starcraft: Ghost.

At E3, I played the Gamecube version of Starcraft: Ghost and it was not a train wreck. It’s far from finished but from what I saw it looks like it’s starting to shape up into a good game.

Correction, Geek On Stun is parietal correct, if Blizzard published today what I saw at E3, Starcraft: Ghost would be a mess. The big issue I had with Starcraft: Ghost, which makes it look like a mess, Blizzard is packing way too many features and things to do into the game. In particular the bullet time or matrix slow mo like feature, which just needs to go away.

The difference in opinions, between the two of us, may be because we both played a different version of Starcraft: Ghost. Because of a glitch with getting the E3 builds of Starcraft: Ghost to work on the Gamecube, I was able to play the latest build of Starcraft: Ghost. Geek On Stun and everyone else at E3 did not play my build but an older version. That is the only reason I can see why we had a difference in opinion on Starcraft: Ghost.

For the rest of his comments, I fully agree on the rest. Particular on Shadow. All I want to do every time I played Shadow is throw up. He was correct the lines at E3 where insane for everything. I had to even queue up for Shadow.

After posting gamergraffix’s press release two weeks ago, I decided to check out their product while at E3. They had a lot of selection and for a little bit more money you can get your own custom Gamergraffix. The woman at the booth was kind enough to give a free set of Resident Evil 4 Gamer Graffix for the Gamecube. which now resides on my Gamecube. Gamer Graffix comes in a small blue and black box with a cut out showing what the Gamer Graffix looks like inside. The actual Gamer Graffix looks like those puffy stickers you collected as a kid and comes on sheets of paper in pieces which you attach to various sections of the Gamecube. Figuring out where each piece of the Gamer Graffix goes is easy since each section of the Gamecube that the Gamer Graffix goes is on its own piece of paper. You simply peel off the stickers and stick them on the section of the Gamecube it suppose to go on. It was fairly hard to get all pieces on the Gamecube straight and neat but Gamer Graffix peels and re-sticks with no issue. The glue for Gamer Graffix was very strong but when I peeled it off it left no residue at all. After it was all done it did make my Gamecube look better and kinda of cool but it did not blow me away. Gamer Graffix is great if you want to spice up the look of device or you can stand the color it comes in. Now I am just waiting for the week to end to see how well it re-sticks after being peeled after being on the Cube for a week and if it does not leave a residue after being on the Cube for a week.

According to this article from CNN, scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories are attempting to build the worlds most powerful laser. The scientist are building the laser to be the first to achieve fusion ignition, which is what occurs at the heart of the Sun and when a hydrogen bomb explodes. If the laser is successful at achieving fusion ignition it will allow scientist to test nuclear bomb theories out with out having to set off any nuclear bombs. All this sounds like the perfect tool for would be world conquers like Dr. Evil.

Unless you’ve been under a rock since Thursday, you’ve probably heard that Google is opening a portal service to compete with Yahoo! and MSN. Those who have been spouting venom about Google taking over the WWW should remember that this has happened long after MSN decided to intrude on the search engine sector. We are now back up to 3 major search/portal providers on the web. It almost feels like the 90’s never went away.

Here’s a geek who’s even worse than I am: a Vienna, Austria politician wants to use DNA analysis to ID dog droppings and use the info to run down the dog’s owners. I think I have found the only geek in the world who watches CSI shows more than I do.

According to Reuters, Apple is talking to Chipzilla about using Intel chips in Macs. No word in the article if this would be the CPU, or peripherals. If Apple is really going to try to build a x86-based Mac, AMD would be a better choice.

It’s all just speculation, but it’s a little scary to see a near-monopoly increase it’s market share.

UPDATE: If you care to hear why some people put very little stock in this rumor, check out the Forbes.com view of why Apple is unlikely to go with Intel. Sadly, I have too little experience with Mac’s to form an opinion. I just think that IF they went x86, AMD would be a better deal.

E3 is now over and I am back in the DC area, I saw a lot while at E3 but on to the new release for this week.

Area 51 for the PC: The Xbox first person shooter alien killing machine moves onto the XBox.

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana for the Playstation 2: The newest strategy RPG in Atlus huge library of strategy RPGs.

Boiling Point for the PC: Fight as Legionnaire in the jungles of South America who is pushed to his limits.

Classified: The Sentinel Crisis for the XBox and PC: Budget action game delayed from a few weeks ago.

Deep Sea Tycoon 2 for the PC: Manage an underwater kingdom to create a underwater paradise.

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for the Game Boy Advance: The next RPG in the Fire Emblem series.

Hidden Stroke II for the PC: Budget RTS that you fight as the British, French and Italian for control of several locations.

Madagascar for Every major platform: Kiddie platform based on the upcoming animation movie Madagascar.

Metal Slug 4&5 for the Playstation 2: Two ports of the classic 2D arcade shooter Metal Slug.

Restricted Area for the PC: An action RPG with a heavy emphasize on action.

Still Life for the XBox: Long delayed budget adventure game set in 1920’s and modern day Prague and Chicago.

WarioWare: Twisted for the Game Boy Advance: Next series of mini games from the wildly popular WarioWare.

After last to weeks list we are starting to get a lot of games again post E3. The pick for this week: Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, I a huge fanboy for Atlus strategy RPGs.

According to InfoWorld, you can expect AMD to Launch Dual-core Athlon 64 chips on May 31. This comes on the heels of Intel’s Dual-core P4EE release last month. Initial tests show AMD’s running faster and with less power consumption than the Intel offering, and do not require special motherboards. Most comparisons so far tout the Athlon X2 as much better than the P4EE. Whether AMD can actually turn this into a market share gain is yet another matter.

Estimates of the cost of people calling out sick for Star Wars Episose III: Revenge of the Sith are around $627 million according to this article.

… And Bill O’Reilly said that Star Wars fans are “Stoned Slackers”. Here’s a clue… Stoned Slackers wouldn’t cost a red cent. In fact, their admission price will go back into the local economy instead of into the underworld economy. What say you now Mr. O’Reilly?

Found this Reuters article that points out how the gaming industry is losing it’s less skilled customers because games are no longer fun. There is an element of truth in that statement that is hard to ignore.

One of the problems is that the gaming industry has been self-absorbed lately. Only big-time gamers get to rate the games, so only the biggest, baddest, most complicated games get good reviews. A secondary problem seems to be that the game manufacturers exercise too much control over the game reviewers. Reviewers are loathe to pan a big, expensive game for fear that they will be taken off the list of “friendly” reviewers by the manufacturers.

Luckily, you won’t find anything like that on ShamelessGeeks. We don’t make any money, we don’t get any free games, and we don’t appear on the game manufacturers radar scopes. What you get here is honest opinion. We don’t have anything to lose by annoying Sony or MS or anyone else.

Today at E3 I had an appointment with Digital Blue the makers of the American Idol Camera, and boy was I totally wrong in thinking it was a stupid idea. The camera was a very good idea and rocks. The camera is totally wireless and comes with a very powerful suite of simple video editing tools. The tools allow you to add effects, transitions, graphics, cut up the footage and add canned footage to movie. Right now the software tools only allow you add canned footage, effects and graphics that came with the software but they plan to soon make able to upload your own stuff to the camera. The camera is built around the Intel video chips. This is because the company Digital Blue is spin off from Intel and has on staff several Intel hardware engineers. Digital Blue is also hard at work on a boy version of the camera that will be the first 100% wireless helmet cam.

I got a chance to play the upcoming FPS Delta Force: Blackhawk Down today at E3. The game is set in Mogadishu during the 1992 time frame when the movie Blackhawk down took place. I sampled the single player mode only, but I was told the multi-player mode is fairly good. The first mission I played was the classic escort mission, which broke with tradition and was actual fun. At the start of the mission you manned the second Humvee’s machine gun and the AI drove you down the road as the enemies swarmed your Humvee. What made this mission fun was firing the machine gun felt like you firing a real machine gun. For example if I fired the gun in bursts I found it easier to hit guys, but if I just held down the fire button I found I could not hit a darn thing. The thing I really like was if you put a burst into a bad guy he went down real fast like he would in the real world. I also liked the random guys firing RPGs at you who could not hit the backside of the barn, just like it happened in Mogadishu. All of this combined together to make me fell like I was Ranger battling the bad guys in Mogadishu.
After we reached our objective for the first mission I was required to get out of the Humvee and take out an enemy compound. You could play this mission had multiple ways you could play it out, you could go in guns blazing or you could sneak around and take everyone using stealth. I tried both ways and both ways where fun. What I loved the most about this mission when I started firing on the bad guys, a lot the bad guys fled instead fighting to the last man. Again making this level feel like how it would really happen if you where a Ranger in Mogadishu. After I defeated the bad guys, a Blackhawk touched down and we hoped a ride on it back to the base. While on the helicopter you manned a Vulcan machine gun (the one with rotating barrels) and had to again fight off swarms of bad guys. This time was even scarier as they where in trucks firing RPGs at you, forcing the helicopter to duck and weaving to avoid all the RPG the bad guys where firing at us. Again I loved this level because the machine gun was fun and felt very realistic to play with. Another thing that was really cool was during all the mission you had you had squad mates who actually offered support. The only downside I found about Delta Force: Blackhawk Down was that the graphics looked very poor. For example all the character’s face made them look like goofy. The most annoy thing graphically was that the Mogadishu bad guys where looked like ghosts and looked like they where hovering through the air. I am looking forward to seeing Delta Force: Blackhawk Down in stores, but I am going to wait till it drops in price to buy it. The game was fun but from what I saw in the preview it is not a must buy for. The above preview was for the Playstation 2 version.
For the XBox version ignore everything I said about the graphics, it looks alright but it is a lot crisper and cleaner then the Playstation 2 version. Also in the XBox version in the same mission I had to do more stuff. Going in guns blazing on the second mission got you killed and it was a lot harder. I would also rate the XBox version worth buying at launch day if you are FPS fan.

Alright E3 is just wild. Yesterday it was running around in the dark. Today I am in the press room working on an interview with Magic the Gathering R&D and some guy next to me shoots out and purpose to his girlfriend in. All the journos heads pop up and then jump right back into work. I guess it is a new form of gophering. On the plus side the power stayed up the entire day.

I got to play Battlefield 2 for the XBox today at E3. The demo I played was 30% finished. They had the basic functionality and multiplayer done, but are still working on the single player campaign. Battefield 2 is set in Kyrgyzstan and you play as either the Chinese or NATO. When I asked the head game producer about why he picked Kyrgyzstan, he said, “Because it has oil and stuff, is near China and has all the environments we need to make the game. It was not because it may be a hot spot in the near future.” The level I played was the a winter level set in a village. The graphics where okay, on par with a high end XBox game. The new innovation is the ability to hot swap between characters at the press of a button. The hot swap works this way: A white x appears above all of the friendly characters in your nearby area. If you press the x button on the XBox controller, you switch to the last character that you were looking at. It was fairly intuitive and it was fun switching from character to character and vehicle to vehicle. EA has fixed all the issues with flying helicopters and it was fun to fly around and blow up guys. Tank combat has been improved, but I felt it was a little over powered. Overall from what I saw of Battlefield 2 I loved it and can not wait to get my hands on a finished copy.

Oh Boy. Shameless is ticked off again. This time at something Bill O’Reilly said about Star Wars fans. Check out his response in his open letter to Bill O’Reilly as we watch the battle of Shameless Geek vs. Shameless O’Reilly.

By the way. I sent a link to the post to O’Reilly himself. Anyone want to post the odds on whether he’ll reply?

It looks like the staff of a certain LA gaming convention has something to learn about logistics. According to Reuters, E3 had a power outage this morning, and the power hasn’t yet come back on. I guess that they didn’t count on all of those multi-core gaming consoles being turned on at the same time.

I wonder if leakenova got caught in it. Poor guy. He was looking forward to E3 sooooo much.

… well, maybe not, but soon your gas company may be able to give you broadband. This Forbes.com article takes a look at the prospect of broadband-over-gas that is expected to roll out soon.

I think Forbes got one thing wrong: they expect that the fact that 85% of people have broadband available to them means that there is no market left. I disagree. That won’t happen until more than 90% of the population has a choice between broadband alternatives. Currently, many of us are stuck with choosing between an unreasonable provider and dial-up. If I had any choice in the matter, I would dump my current ISP for just about any other one out there.

Microsoft has been kind enough to put up the footage from the pre-E3 conference (requires Windows Media Player) that occurred yesterday. It shows lots of cool features of all the upcoming games and some neat details about the XBox 360. I also misspoke when I said that the XBox 360 will backwards compatible with all XBox games. The Xbox 360 will only be compatible with Top Xbox games. What the heck that means is anyone guess. Enjoy.

Nintendo showed off the Revolution at a pre-E3 conference this morning. Vagusnet has posted the Revolution details from the Nintendo Press conference. Also shown off at the conference was a new micro gameboy advance, DS online plans, and new details about the upcoming Zelda game. It looks like the next Zelda will be Zelda: the Werewolf.

CNN posted an article today talking about all the big things that should take place at E3 2005 this year. They are correct when they say that the big thing for this E3 will be the new consoles. At the end of the article they highlighted some of the bigger games at E3. These games would normally get a ton of press coverage but won’t because everyone and his cousin is releasing a console.

Mircosoft revealed all the details about the XBox 360 today at their pre-E3 press conference. During that conference Microsoft also revealed that the XBox 360 will be fully backward compatilie with the orginal XBox, and that 160 games are in development for Xbox 360, with 25 to 40 games slated for release by end of the year.

Here are the offical details of the XBox 360:
The Xbox Platform - Powering the Xbox 360 Games and Entertainment

Xbox 360 is designed with a singular platform vision that fuses high-performance hardware and intelligent software and services so the player is always in power. Offering the greatest value in entertainment today, Microsoft detailed more key platform experiences that come standard with every Xbox 360 system:

An IBM PowerPC-based CPU with three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each, packing the most advanced AI and physics processing available

A custom ATI Graphics processor and more than 512 MB of memory for high-definition games and entertainment applications

All games optimized for 16:9 aspect ratio, HD output (720p and 1080i), multichannel surround sound output, and full-screen anti-aliasing

Detachable and expandable 20GB hard drive to download demos and trailers along with new game levels, maps, weapons, vehicles, skins, community-created content and more, to rip music for playback and to listen to custom playlists in every game

A wireless controller with Microsoft®-patented wireless technology; Xbox Guide Button on every controller to instantly connect gamers to their games, friends and music, and to power on or power off Xbox 360 without their having to leave the couch

Gamer Profile software that remembers what players have achieved in games

Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live , including a built-in Ethernet port for connectivity; Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content; a Message Center to receive voice and video messages from friends; functionality that lets users talk to friends, even while watching movies or listening to music; and an Xbox Live Headset

Three USB 2.0 ports for Xbox Live Camera peripheral, to plug in wired game controllers that are also common for Windows®-based PCs; to stream media from a portable media device, digital camera and Windows XP-based PC

Progressive-scan DVD movie playback out of the box; DVD and CD music and photo playback out of the box; support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, Windows Media® Audio CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD

Media Center Extender built in to access recorded TV (including high-definition TV) and digital movies (including high-definition film), music, video and photos stored on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PCs through any Xbox 360 system

Support for up to four wireless game controllers and an optional Universal Media Remote with Windows XP Media Center Edition Button for Media Center Edition functionality

Support for Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter via 802.11b, g and a

Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

Two memory unit ports to save data on portable memory units, starting at 64 MB

Detachable Face so each console can be personalized

Parental Controls to help restrict the games and movies that are played; Xbox Live controls to manage Friends List, voice and video communication, and Gamer Profile sharing

Kotaku has posted the full specs of the Playstation 3. All I got say is the Playstation 3 looks sexy inside and outside.

The geeks at HP tried to get into the fashion game with Gwen Stefani branded camera. You can guess the tragic and funny results of this one. Maybe HP would be smarter to go back to making good electronic gadgets, like they did years ago.

Forbes.com has this nice little comparison of Star Wars and Star Trek that should add fuel to the rivalry. I’m a fan of both, but not to the point where I’ve waited in line for more than 30 minutes for a ticket. Being a geek with a job tends to put limits on that kind of thing

It’s sad to note that both franchises have come to an end this year. Star Wars is ending because George Lucas has way too much money to do any more movies, and Star Trek is finally completing the slow demise that started with the death of Gene Roddenberry. I’ll miss them both… but at least I’ll always have the DVD’s.

Its E3 week so the release is very light. Most of the game press and publicists are right now gathering in LA. In other words if you release a game this week it will get lost in the noise that is E3. Still some games companies do not care and so we a handful of new releases. On to this week releases:

Finny the Fish and the Seven Waters for the Playstation 2: Play as Finny, who happens to be a fish, who’s aquatic world is out of whack and now Finny must solve puzzles and dodge evil fisherman to return balance to his aquatic world.

Garfield for the PC and the Playstation 2: Odie has trashed the house and now you must help Garfield to clean the house up before John gets home.

Imperial Glory for the PC: Fight in various 19th century battlefields in this turn based strategy game.

MVP Baseball for the PSP: EA hit baseball series remade for the PSP and the last MLB baseball game from EA for a few years.

Outlaw Volleyball Remix for the Playstation 2: Same Outlaw Volleyball game you loved with new features and online play.

That is it, not much to choose from for pick of the week. My pick of the week: Finny the Fish and Seven Waters. What can I say I am sucker for games that let play as a fish.

I’ve posted two articles that I previously released for preview. The first is a new Shameless article titled What I Learned About Life from Video Games, and the second is a rewrite of the PowerNow posting from a few months ago.

The re-posting of PowerNow is in advance of my releasing a source code snippet that does real-time monitoring and control of Athlon-64’s running Fedora Core 3. Surprisingly, the code was not difficult at all, but the explainantion isn’t as easy.

Video Game Ombudsman posted a response from Gamespy editor chief John Keefer about the little matter of a Gamespy altering game review of Donkey Konga 2 to make it look better. According to Keefer all the changes where a miscommunication between Gamespy’s staff and the freelancer who wrote the review. They normal communicate changes with the reviewer before they make them. He added that the editor in question who did the edits “feels really bad” and Gamespy does not alter reviews or give extra coverage to any advertiser on the site. Keefer also played up that he comes from print world and that level of ethics from that world is in effect at Gamespy. Yhea right, the only correct answer is:
The editor in question has started working on his resume, here is our new ethics policy so that this will never happen again, and the freelancer in question has been hired as a full time staffer.

In this article about the technologies that George Lucas helped pioneer, it is easy to get a sense of why he has become a Geek hero. I already knew quite a bit of what is in this article, but seeing it all in one place brings the man’s history into perspective. It’s always nice to see someone whose main ambition in life is to perfect his craft, not just to get rich.

Sony has created a billboard in New York with a giant PSP that plays videos about the PSP all day. That is until Microsoft showed them who was the boss and crashed the display.
(Thanks to Kotaku for this one)

As previously mentioned on ShamelessGeeks.com, Microsoft unveiled the Anti Virus subscription service that we have all been expecting. Unfortunately there is no news about the fee yet. Since the initial rumors started late last year, other players in the AV market have seen their stock prices decline considerably.

The viral marketing game ourcolony.net has been solved and the final video has been posted to the site. The video is really good and wroth the download. The video is presented by Allard and the XBox 360 crew as they go over all the neat gory details of the XBox 360. It is was what I was expecting the MTV special to be. Is it me or is J. Allard look like way out place amongst the very geeky looking XBox 360 staff?

I just saw the first showing of the MTV XBox 360 special, and all I got to say about is uh, not worth the hype. The XBox 360 looks sexy and the games look good but nothing that really blows your mind away. The special was weak on actual details, they did not talk about the camera, the headphone, backwards compatibility, hard or not, actual specs or multimedia features other then HD. Okay they did reveal that the XBox 360 will have wireless controls and it will be customizable. But who cares if you can change the front cover or not, how many people actual buy gamer graphix? They did talk a little about XBox live, particular the stuff you can buy on XBox Live. The whole bit about creating an EBay like market place for in-game items spooks me. Didn’t Sony recently get attacked (darn now I wish I had posted about it) for doing it with Everquest II? The whole special to me felt forced and rushed. The bits particular the one with the pro gamers going to Rare where lame. Companies enough with pro gamers, they DO NOT sell games people. They are just jerks who are full of themselves. Also did they play a feminine hygiene product ad during the commercial set?

Another goofy press release, this time it is from Mountain Dew. Kinda cool that they want to use me as Guinea pig to test their new Mountain Dew out, but how in world do I give press coverage to a soft drink. Does Mountain Dew want me to write a review or just mention I am drink Mountain Dew as I write my reviews?

	FROM MOUNTAIN DEW Welcome! We’re developing a new beverage here at Mountain Dew and we’re inviting you and a select group of other gaming experts to participate in a beta test. Right now, the working name for the product is Mountain Dew X [variant 516]. It’s not available to the general public, but we’re going to hook you up. We want to send you a beta version of the test product so that we can get your input on Mountain Dew X [variant 516]. You’ll be helping us optimize the product formula. Maybe you’ll even come up with a cool name for it. If you want to give us a hand, please follow the link below to the Dew website and find out how to receive your beta product. We know you’re slammed getting ready for E3, but it’ll only take a second. As you may have heard, Mountain Dew is the Official Soft Drink of E3. You’ll see us there! Thanks for your help. The Mountain Dew Team
censored
	Please do not punt this e-mail to anyone – you’ve been individually selected to receive this message. Please respond by 5-31-05

“In the Groove", a Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) clone and one of the games that is scheduled to be released this week will most likely not be coming out on schedule. Normally this is not news (delays happen all the time), but “In the Groove” is not delayed because of the normal reasons. It may be delayed because its maker Roxor is being sued by Konami for trademark and patent infringements against DDR. Wow! I did not realize that the little arrow DDR uses was a trademark.

CNN posted a good article about two Department of Homeland Security gadgets to find money. One finds money by smelling the air around it, the other is an X-Ray scanner that filters on the metal elements found in money. Neat stuff.

Mozilla punched out a quick Firefox update (1.0.4) to patch the recently discovered “extremely critical” flaws. It is strongly recommended that everyone upgrade ASAP.

Still pretty ticked off that FrSIRT released an exploit without helping with or waiting for the patch first. Maybe the web community should start shunning those with such poor, poor judgement.

Bill Gates, in an interview published today by German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, said that he felt Apple was going to lose the portable mp3 market to cellphones. During the rest of the interview Bill did his normal Apple bashing (he also bashed Blackberry) and talked about Windows Mobile 5.0, Mircosoft’s upcoming OS for cellphones. He did let out one fact that shocked me:
“
He admitted, however, that Microsoft had made mistakes in the past, for example with the first version of its XBox games console.
“

Wow. I did not realize that Microsoft considers one of the best game consoles ever a mistake.

Someone posted on their blog that Gamespy made the score better and added glowing references to a review of Donkey Konga 2 they did for Gamespy. In response to the posters complaint, Gamespy pulled the questionable review off their site. I wish I could say I was shocked but I kinda of suspected it (see early posts about Jade Empire). Still this is very sad for the state of video game journalism. In real world journalism when something like the above happens, heads roll. The editor who altered the article is fired and added to the list of shamed journalist. The website posts an apology and promises it will work to make sure it won’t happen again. Did Gamespy do this? No, they just simple took down the review. This just saddens me.

I found this gem about Star Wars flops on the Forbes.com website. It is definitely worth checking out… and don’t forget to watch the slide show of the actual flops. It’s plenty of fun.

In a step toward the stuff of bad Scf-Fi novels, Cornell Geeks have created a self-replicating robot. It’s at a very crude stage, and it is the only thing that the robot can do, but the implications are pretty big. It’s not an inconceivable jump from here to a robot that can repair itself and other robots.

Bad Sci-Fi novels tend to portray self replication as the last step before robots discover that they no longer need us. Good Sci-Fi novels are much smarter, focusing more on the time when toasters learn how to turn themselves into six-packs.

In what has to be one biggest doh’s, during the annual meeting the CEO of MoSys, who will be providing the RAM for the Revolution, let it slip that the Revolution will be out by Mid-2006.

The hacker group Pandora has cracked the copy protection scheme on Sony’s PSP UMD disk. The hackers where able to burn the data on the UMD disks onto CD-Roms and DVDs and view the data via an ISSO browser. Other than the aforementioned, they were not able to do much with the movies and games found on the UMD disks. The hackers, however, are working on a way to play games via a memory card.

After a little drought of goofy press release we are finally getting some more. This one has me scratching my head, since when do Christians and gamers get a long?
Last year at E3 the big trivia game was the sexual trivia game “The Guy Game” that featured naked under aged girls. This year at E3 the big trivia game is a Bible trivia game. Guess the rise of the Blue states is even effecting E3.
One other funny thing, the press release that followed the Bible Game was a press release for Championship Poker 2 from the same company. Enjoy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Think you know your Bible?
Crave Entertainment Announces The Bible Game for PlayStation 2
and Game Boy Advance

Groundbreaking, innovative games provide fun for all ages

Los Angeles, Calif.-May 10, 2005-Crave Entertainment, a leading
publisher of console videogames, today announced the upcoming release of The
Bible Game for PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and the Game
Boy® Advance handheld system. The first titles of their kind on current
console systems, both games combine wholesome family fun with a
engaging challenge of Biblical knowledge.

The Bible Game for PlayStation 2 casts players as contestants on a game
show with fast-paced, “beat the buzzer” action and a comical off-screen
announcer as emcee. 20 mini- and micro-games with 1,500 questions
reinforce inspirational Old Testament teachings such as Jonah and the Whale,
David and Goliath, The Tower of Babel, and many more. Multiplayer mode
for up to 4 players encourages family members of all ages to play
together, and provides a fun alternative for family game nights.

The Bible Game for Game Boy Advance combines action/adventure play
style with trivia challenges. In their quest to protect the Armor of God,
players may choose to play as either Billy or Jenny across seven levels
including forest, snowy tundra, desert, and tropical island
environments. Along the way they must answer questions from both the Old and New
Testaments. Either the New International Version or King James
translation may be selected, and three levels of difficulty keep the game
accessible for all ages.

Scheduled for release in October 2005, The Bible Game will be available
for the PlayStation®2 computer entertainment system and GameBoy®
Advance handheld system for a MSRP of $19.99.

About Crave Entertainment
Based in Los Angeles, California, Crave Entertainment is a privately
held publisher of videogame entertainment products. Crave produces games
for the major console platforms including Nintendo DS™, Game Boy®
Advance, Nintendo GameCube™, the PlayStation® game console, PlayStation®2
computer entertainment system and the Xbox® video game system from
Microsoft. For more information about Crave Entertainment, please visit
http://www.cravegames.com.

Monty Python’s Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is leading the pack with 14 Tony nominations. The most noteworthy Tony nominations are best musical and acting nominations for Tim Curry and Hank Azaria. Monty Python had no comment on the Tony nominations but wanted to remind fans to catch Spamalot on Broadway while they still can.

It looks like Big Huge games has decided to opt for a Rise of Nations cousin instead of a direct decendant. As they are describing it, Rise of Legends looks interesting, but not entirely new. They claim to be putting magic armies up against technological armies in this one. It’s more or less a new wrinkle, but not a new game. Still, it might end up being good.

I wish them luck. Creating armies with different types of abilities with an even potential can be difficult. No matter how you try, the losers will always whine, and the will demand you do something to strengthen their favorite race. Case in point: the 12 versions of starcraft that tweaked the strengths of the units in an attempt at leveling, only to end up at just about the same levels that they started.

If they pull it off, this one could end up as game of the year material. If not, it will be released almost directly to the clearance bin. I’ll be watching and waiting.

RSA, Ethereal, and smail-3 have all been flagged with exploitable security holes that allow execution of arbitrary code. The RSA flaw is in the authentication agent for IIS, so you only need to worry if you have a Windows web server. Ethereal is a network analyzer that is used by ubergeeks to decode network traffic, so hackers better upgrade before they get hacked. Smail-3 is a somewhat obscure mail transfer agent. If you don’t know whether you are running it… you aren’t. Check out the techworld link above for patches to each of these apps.

Kotaku does it again! They have posted more details about the upcoming XBox 360. According to Kotaku these details came from the Team XBox website, which has already taken them down. Thankfully, before Team XBox took them down someone posted them to Gaming Ages forums. Just in case Kotaku and Gaming Ages take them down again, they are printed below:

2 types of Xbox Live:
Xbox Live Silver (no subscription required)
Xbox Live Gold (subscription benefits)

Features for Gold service
* Also for Silver
# Also for Offline

- Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360
- Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply) *
- Free Xbox Live weekends *
- Multiplayer online gameplay
- Avatar for gamer profile * #
- Motto for gamer profile * #
- Personalized look for Xbox System Guide * #
- Offline achievments * #
- Online achievements *
- Access to other players’ Gamer cards via Live *
- Cumulative gamer score * #
- Location/language profile * #
- Reputation *
- Enahnced matchmaking using above
- Skill level matchmaking
- Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
- Recent players list *
- Free and premium download game content *
- Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv *
- Downloadable demos/trailers *
- Microtransactions *
- Custom playlist in every game * #
- Play music from portable devices * #
- View images from digital camera * #
- Strem media from Windows XP * #
- Interactive screen savers * #
- Track info for CDs * #
- Communication with voice, video or text *

360 HW:
1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
- 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
- 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance
- 9 billion dots per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz
- 10 MB embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines
- unified shader architecture

Memory
-512 MB GDDR3 RAM
- 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
- 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
- 21.6 GB/s frontside bus

Audio
- Mulitchannel surround sond output
- Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels

Rockstar games announced today a new game that allows you to take revenge on the tormentors of our youth, the bully. The game is aptly named “The Bully” and yes you will play as a geek but now you will have the power to defeat the bullies. Yes!!! Finally a game where you can shove all the bullies into their lockers.

Firefox and Mozilla users are being advised of a pair of extremely critical flaws that can allow an attacker to run code on your machine without user intervention. Mozilla.org is scrambling to release a patch. Until then, the workaround is to disable Javascript, and disallow other web sites from installing software.

Thanks to FrSIRT (French Security Ignorant… er, I mean… Incident Response Team) for leaking the exploit code before the patch was available. Maybe we should charge those geniuses for all of the cleanup. Geez… some people don’t care who they hurt, as long as they get to claim their pointless victory.

Geek on the Stun has a funny retrospect about J. Allerd various looks over the years. When we first meet him five years ago he was an overweight, balding geek who gets it. Now he looks like all those retards in management who just do not get it.

Gizmodo is reporting that the geek quest of having Linux booting on anything is going strong. They report that the Nintendo DS is now capablable of booting to BASH prompt. Following onto the DSLinux.org site they say that you can play some text games as well. You definitely are a Shameless Geek to buy a dual display game system and then play text games. Go Geeks.

With E3 on the horizon, most publishers and press are busy getting ready for E3. Hence short list this week and next week. Onto the release for this week.

Cold Winter for the Playstation 2: First Person Shooter set in the world of spy’s. Plays and looks a lot like the classic N64 FPS Goldeneye.

Donkey Konga 2 for the Gamecube: Get your bongos and get ready to bang the night away with the next Bongo game in the Donkey Konga franchise.

Haunting Ground for the Playstation 2: An adventure horror game set in a mysterious castle.

In the Grove for the Playstation 2: The home version of DDR Arcade clone In the Grove. In the Grove is famous adding new types of step moves to genre and having a killer soundtrack.

Knights of Honor for the PC: Delayed from last week comes this medieval action adventure RTS.

Need for Speed Underground 2 for the DS: DS version of the popular racing franchise Need for Speed.

Smart Bomb for the PSP: Delayed from a few weeks ago is a puzzler that requires you to use your mad bomb defusing skills to disarm bombs.

Supreme Ruler 2010 for the PC: It is 2010 and the world is chaos and everyone now must fight to protect their country. Supreme Ruler challenges you to take charge in this chaos and take over the world.

Wow a semi short list for this week (thanks E3) my pick for this week: Cold Winter.

According to an article on Endgadget, visitors to Google for part of the day where redirected to SoGoSearch instead of Google’s homepage. Google is claiming that where not hacked, just having unexplained DNS issues. So Google what where those DNS Issues?

Cubed3 has posted a photo of the XBox360 that was secretly taken during the MTV special. It looks the XBox will come with a camera (bottom right). Not sure what is on top but it looks like a some attachment, could it be the rumor hard drive attachment(top center)?
Please note, I can not very if this is picture is real, but the author of the article is not know to post fakes (correction they where getting pictures from EndGadget).

Last night MTV taped the XBox 360 unveiling that which MTV will broadcast on May 12. The first leaks from the special have started appearing on Kotaku and the web. The logo has been leaked and looks like an egg with an X breaking out on top and XBox under it in a box font.

This weekend MIT will be holding the first conference geared toward time travelers. So far no time travelers have registered for the conference, but the organizer are still hoping some travelers do show up.

If you are a time traveler the conference will be on MIT East campus courtyard at 42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west. Please also leave a comment about yourself and time here on Shameless Geeks.

Another silly tech patent. This time, Google is attempting to patent news article ranking based on the “quality” of the source. Of course, it’s a good thing to implement in theory, but it shouldn’t be patentable. It’s about like patenting the use of the color red to indicate danger. And the theory breaks down after a while… quality based on what? someone’s opinion? the number of published articles? the number of times that the publisher is read? All of these would probably mean that someone like foxnews.com would outrank extremetech.com or shamelessgeeks.com when it cane to tech articles. Some things are nearly impossible to do fairly.

After weeks of no real news from graphics chip makers, there is finally something new to say, although it is admittedly only a rumor at this stage. Hexus.net has an exclusive look at ATI’s upcoming dual-card technology. Unfortunately, we can’t yet confirm that this is anything more than a rumor, considering that ATI has not made it official yet. The cool thing about the technology (if it is real) is that you will be able to buy the Mobo and a single graphics card, using your old graphics card as the second GPU. An easy upgrade path like that could go a long way with gamers on a budget.

Now if only these guys would get around to some reasonable Linux support.

When I first got this email this morning I thought it was spam. I am glad I read it first before deleting it. Free booze and hot woman what more could a geek ask for. Maybe while I am getting drunk on their buck and drooling over the Vivid porn chicks, I will ask them on how they plan to market Playboy skins to Walmart. Small hint btw, the red font you used screams class.

It appears that Zodiac has given up on the current version of the Tapware portable handheld. Tapware was the first portable handheld PDA. It was really neat but it never really caught on. Zodiac has decided to cancel the Tapware and chang its business model to one similar to the ancient 3DO console and Disk One (console that can play PC games). The business model: to provide the design and tools that are then turned in co-branded products by other major named vendors. I wish Zodiac luck.

As most of you are aware, Shameless Geeks is going to E3 as a media guest. Today our mailboxes started getting flooded with press releases from some of the smaller vendors desperate for E3 coverage. Some of the press releases are very good, very legit (hint: we are suckers for RTS games) and hopefully we will be able to give them some coverage. The rest… well, lets just say they are goofy. Since they are so goofy we decided to post them over the next few weeks as we get them in.
So, without further ado, here is our first one from the Great Kat. We have only one question for the Great Kat: what the heck does this have to do with video games.

Continuing with our goofy E3 press release series, here is one we recieved from Digtal Blue. After reading this one, I really want to see how the American Idol camera works. Yup. Thats right. A camera that allows you to look like you are singing on American Idol, even when singing in the shower. Enjoy:

MEDIA ALERT~MEDIA ALERT~MEDIA ALERT~MEDIA ALERT

Discover Digital Blue’s 2005 World of Creativity and Innovation at

the electronic entertainment expo (e³)2005

May 18th-May 20th at the Los Angeles Convention Center

CHECK OUT HOT NEW TECH TOYS LIKE THE HELMET CAM & AMERICAN IDOL CAMCORDER

meet CEO Tim Hall and VP of Marketing Julie Gibbons

WHO: Atlanta-based Digital Blue, founded in 2002 by CEO Tim Hall, is a leading
developer and marketer of interactive electronics for use at home and school. They
make award-winning products including the American Idol Camcorder, the Helmet
Camcorder, the QX5 computer microscope and others.

WHAT: Hot new products that empower kids, teens and young adults, by making
technology fun and accessible.

American Idol Digital Camera

The only officially licensed camcorder for American Idol, licensed by FreeMantle
Media and TV 19, the American Idol Digital Camera has a 640x680 resolution and 60 MB
memory. It records four minutes of video when not connected to the PC and unlimited
recording when attached. The software is the real magic of this item, loaded with
video right from American Idol! Users can edit footage of themselves performing and
add real footage from the show including background music, special effects and wild
audience applause-even a standing ovation!

Helmet Camcorder

Now skateboarders, bikers, snow boarders and all sports enthusiasts can capture
their extreme sports feats on video. The Helmet Camcorder is a cigar-shaped video
camera that straps to any size helmet and comes with a 32MB memory card recording up
to 20 minutes of video and sound. The Helmut Camcorder weighs less than ½ lb and
uses just two AAA batteries.

Mixman LoopStudio™

A powerful suite of software, hardware and sound tools, the LoopStudio™ is the
first integrated audio-DJ-production tool that enables home producers and “beat
twisters” to get the musical job done with ease and complete control.

Newtonian Reflector

The 70 MM Newtonian reflector telescope comes with software and a camera that easily
attaches to the eyepiece. Software includes celestial navigator guide. The 1.3 mega
pixel digital still camera features 16 MB built in memory, plus 1.5″ view screen.
Kids can add animation, special effects, music - even aliens and flying saucers - to
create movies right on their own computer!

WHEN: Wednesday May 18th, Thursday May 19th and Friday May 20th

WHERE: E³, Los Angeles Convention Center: Kentia Hall (under South Hall-Activision);
Room 7040

For more info, go to www.playdigitalblue.com . For
advance interviews, product images or samples, or to schedule an appointment,
contact:

As reported by Reuters, many municipalities are embracing free, city-wide wireless connectivity in an attempt to patch up their poor broadband coverage. As expected, large telecoms and cable companies are lobbying for protective legislation that would stop the practice. Eweek has a related article.

I’m curious about why the companies would get so upset about seeing free wireless provided to areas that weren’t “cost effective” to cover. Well… not really, but I find it ironic. If they had actually provided the service, there would be no reason for the free wireless push. The municipalities would then have the option of taxing the broadband instead of watching their tax base wither as businesses migrated away from their low-tech towns. Seems like the free wireless push is poetic justice.

Orson Scott Card has a few choice words about the demise of the Star Trek franchise. Card is right about the poor writing and shallow acting, but I think he misses the point completely. Could it be that he’s suffering a bit too much from sci-fi snobbery to see what’s just past the end of his nose? Probably.

Well… here it is… its called: *drumroll* Pulp Sci-Fi. History has always shown that the best selling entertainment is anything bland that allows for an escape. This applies to fiction, comedy, music, writing, and yes, Sci-Fi. Star Trek was immensely popular because it was entertaining, and it slowly lost popularity as it lost it’s entertainment value. Card’s theory that we outgrew Star Trek is only partially true. The franchise could easily have grown with us, but instead, it started to decay.

I tend to gravitate more toward hard sf when I choose a book, but I have no problem with something that has a little bit of a logic problem. I’ll even watch Roland Emmerich films. I was one of those geeks who loved the movie Independence Day even though I winced a little when Jeff Goldblum did his famous impossible upload. So what… It was still fun. It was the Sci-Fi equivalent of a car jumping 500 feet over a canyon and landing on the other side unscathed. Neither event will ever happen, but I wouldn’t be able to turn away from the screen when they happen.

The only response I have for Card is: Loved your books, hate your attitude.

Today, during the annual meeting of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Bill Gates stated that the next gen XBox will be more of a media hub than the current XBox. He revealed that it will allow the player to see when his buddies are online, chat with them, listen to music and look at pictures. I thought the current XBox did all that. So, Bill, how is the next gen XBox a better media hub than the current XBox?

Surprise! Surprise! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy topped the box office charts this weekend. That’s not much of a shocker to the Geeks of the world, but it wasn’t expected by Hollywood. I’m happy to have contributed to that feat.

If you think about it, there wasn’t much chance that Hitchhiker’s would flop. The movie is based on a Geek classic that many people, including me, wouldn’t dream of missing. I was going to show up at the theatre whether the critics panned it or praised it. Here’s another news flash: It will do really well as a DVD too. All that the movie had to do was make a reasonable showing to be considered a “must” for Douglas Adams fans. It did much better than that.

On a personal note: I liked the movie. I thought that the new parts (parts not in the book) were very well done, but was a little disappointed in how the familiar parts were presented. That’s probably because I’ve read the book several times, and there was no way that many of the things I love about it could be captured on film. I took Shinnite along, and she seemed to love it… but I’ll let her tell you firsthand.

What is coming out this week? As usual, lots and lots of games again:

Advent Rising for the XBox and PC: Sci-Fi epic that has the press drooling over it. It looks very pretty and the story looks really good.

Asheron’s Call 2: Legions for PC: Add on for Asheron’s Call 2. I thought Asheron’s Call 2 was a dead MMORPG, guess not.

Beyond Blitzkrieg for PC: The ancient (pre-2000) MMORPG World War II Online returns to the PC (hopefully bug free this time). How is this game different from the free Battlefield 1942?

BloodRayne 2 for the PC: Voted by XPlay as one of the goriest games ever, it moves it’s gory action from the XBox to the PC. While it will mostly like keep the same level of gore and T&A, I hope they improve the story and gameplay with the PC port.

Dungeon Lords for the PC: The RPG by the creator of Wizard and Warriors and Wizardy is delayed for another week.

Dynasty Warriors DS for the DS: Nothing has been released about this game other then it is part of the Dynasty Warrior franchise and it ships tomorrow. It is fairly easy to guess what it will be like. All of the Dynasty Warriors have been the same.

Egg Monster Hunter for the DS: Square Enix RPG that makes heavy use of the Stylus in the combat sections. Looks like standard Japanese RPG fair.

Enthusia Professional Racing for the Playstation 2: Exclusive racing game that features lots of real and fake world racing tracks and 40 manufacturer’s licensed cars.

Forza Motorsport for the XBox: Racing game created by Microsoft to be a Gran Turmiso killer. Just like GT it features ultra realistic cars (that you build) and race tracks.

Hot Shot Golf: Open Tee for the PSP: Comedic golfing game moves off the consoles and onto the handhelds.

Killer 3D Pool for the Gameboy Advance: Pool game delayed again. How the heck do you delay a fairly simple game by three weeks?

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed for the DS: Jar-jar’s race makes an appearance on the DS. Excuse me, just got a memo from Shameless. According to Shameless, Gundam are not part of the Star Wars Universe but a mech from a Japanese Anime game.

Necromania: Traps of Darkness for the PC: Play as the bad guy in this medieval style strategy game. The basic idea of the game is that you are on a quest to free your evil lord by getting the keys from “good guys". Sounds like an interesting game and it is a cheap buy.

Pac-Man Pinball Advance for the Gameboy Advance: Delayed from a few weeks ago, it is pinball using the Pac-man characters.

Pariah for the PC and XBox: From Digital Extremes, one of the makers of Unreal, comes their next FPS.

Puyo Pop Fever for the DS: Delayed from last week is Sega’s next version of the puzzle game Puyo Pop Fever.

Scrabble Blast! for the Gameboy Advance: Okay these delays are getting ridiculous. This game has now been delayed for three weeks and it is just Scrabble on a Gameboy.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for everything: Live the next upcoming Star Wars movie and watch clips of the upcoming movie before Revenge of the Sith hits theaters.

Star Wars Galaxies: Episode III Rage of the Wookiees for the PC: Expansion for MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. This one focuses on changes to the Star Wars universe brought on by the upcoming Star Wars movie.

Still Life for the PC: delayed adventure game from last week.

Track mania Sunrise for the PC: British racing game that has a lot of buzz over in the UK. The game allows you to race on normal tracks or stunt tracks like the ones you built with your Hot Wheel race sets as a kid. Actually you can also build the tracks too.

Lots and lots again this week, when the heck will there by an easy week with no releases.
My pick for the week: Advent Rising for the XBox and PC.