Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

Project Gotham 3 developer Bizarre Creations has posted the wire frames of last week picture to prove the screenshot was not fake. They also have posted other screenshots from the level to prove that the level of detail is accurate throughout the game. I will wait until the game is released to show how true the graphics are but from what I saw my opinion on the graphics for the XBox 360 just changed to the better.

According to a Gamespot article, comedian Dave Chappelle admitted to being addicted to World’s of Warcraft during a San Francisco nightclub appearance. This may explain why Chappelle quit work on his Comedy Central show.

Intel finished it’s transition to 64-bit CPU’s by releasing the 64-bit Celeron D yesterday. That’s not bad for a company that once said that there was no reason to go beyond 32-bits yet. With the release of a scaled-down version of the EMT64 architecture, Intel has also completed it’s transition to a company that offers value-priced versions of a CPU with an instruction set initially released by AMD. My how times have changed.

It looks like DVD Jon has cracked the Google player this time. A quick trip in my wayback machine reminds me that DVD Jon was the Norwegian guy who cracked DVD scrambling and posted it on the web.

Based on the fact that it took less than a day to break, it doesn’t seem like Google took a lot of time securing it. Well… that’s better than the thought that they did spend a lot of time on it… or that they allowed Sunncomm to handle their DRM .

UPDATE:
I wasn’t going to say anything about the ease of hacking players, but I bumped into this pointer to the source code right on Google’s website. Not only was it an easy hack, but he was also given a monumental head start. Even my kids could have done this hack with this kind of assistance. I suspect that someone at USA Today was desperate for a story on a slow, slow news day and found a willing publicity seeker to help. There is no reason to lionize some guy who modified a few lines of source code to keep it from checking the source of a file.

In a story that looks like it came from an Adam Sandler script, a Morristown N.J. Zamboni operator was charged with DUI after his blood alcohol level was found to be 0.12 percent. Kinda makes you wonder if they gave him a few field sobriety tests first. I think I would have trouble standing on one foot and touching my nose on an ice rink. I might not be able to stay on my feet if they asked me to walk a straight line either.

According to this CNN article, the the undersea cable connecting Pakistan to the Internet has developed some issues that has lead to Pakistan’s main internet connection crashing down. I guess that explains why we lost our five readers from Pakistan.

The US Supreme Court was obviously in a big-business friendly mood when they made a ruling that Internet file sharing providers may be sued for encouraging copyright infringement. This is likely to bring a flurry of lawsuits against P2P companies throughout the Internet. In an industry that is almost entirely dependent on using lawsuits to protect it’s monopoly, you can bet that they will be all over this decision.

The entertainment industry is one of the last holdouts of the 50’s, with it’s exclusive contracts and a legally enforced monopoly. Despite their complaints about how P2P rips-off artists, they are really just protecting cushy executives who are primarily sleazy promoters. Considering that a scant 5% of the cost of a CD is given to an artist, maybe they should be a little more honest with us. Maybe they should tell us what percentage of this money is used to fund lawsuits, advertising, and the white powder that they chop on the mirror.

It looks like AMD has filed an anti-trust suit in Delaware charging Intel with coercing various customers into avoiding AMD products. Though many of us in the industry have suspected such practices since the release of the first Athlon, It looks like this is about to be introduced to the general populace.

My biggest hope is that the end result of this litigation will be an increase in competition between the two chip makers. If Intel truly has been arm twisting, an end to that kind of behavior will probably give large PC manufacturers like Dell an opportunity to sell AMD products.

My biggest fear about this suit is that we’re seeing another attempt to cover a slumping business by way of litigation. AMD makes superior CPU’s, but they will continue to lose market share if they don’t find a way to cut their prices. That last statement seems odd because undercutting Intel prices was how AMD got as far as they have come.

Sorry I was late posting this but all of Shameless Geeks staff has been away on vacation without Internet access this weekend. So better late then sorry here is the belated games of the week:

Advent Rising for the PC: Sadly the XBox version did not live up to expectations but maybe the delay gave Majestco time to clean up the frame rate issue.

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana for the Playstation 2: Atlus next Strategy RPG game and this installment is part of the long running Atelier series. That is long running in Japan.

Bejeweled 2 for the PC: The next Bejeweled game all gussied up in 3D.

Dead to Rights: Reckoning for the PSP: Gritty cop fights the bad guys on the mean streets of Grant City.

Fantastic Four for the XBox, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Gameboy Advance and PC: If you go by the track record of the previous Fantastic Four game or movie (yes there was one before this summers blockbuster) this game (and movie) should go down in the books as the greatest Fantastic Four game ever. However that is not that hard to do.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition for the PSP: Rockstar’s street racing game moves off the console on the to PSP.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam for the Playstation 2: The next game based on the Gundam anime series. A must buy for all you Gundam fanboys, for the rest of you…save your money.

Realms of Illusion for the PC: Budget puzzle adventure game.

Riviera: The Promised Land for the Gameboy Advance: Fight demons in this RPG for the Gameboy Advance.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory for the Nintendo DS: The handheld version of the great spy series Splinter Cell.

My pick for this week: Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. I have weakness for Atlus’s RPGs.

More and more large companies are using the Internet equivalent of vermin to spread their message. It’s an alarming trend that is a bad omen for those of us who spend a great deal of time online. The cost of this type of behavior just keeps on going up, as the spyware vendors make their annoying wares more difficult to remove from a PC.

Personally, I think that the most appropriate way to handle this kind of thing is to fine those who create AND those who use this type of advertising. Make the fine approximately the same dollar figure as the projected cost for a consulting company to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, there are too many lawyers in the world for such a practical remedy to be legal.

Until the lawyers and politicians come to there senses, the best course of action is to boycott anyone you see mentioned in a spyware ad. Period. Minimum: 1 year. Google into spyware? go with Yahoo. Yahoo into spyware? go with MSN. Since we know all of these guys have been implicated, how about Alta Vista? Just remember that there are always alternatives.

The real solution is to shortchange those who will sell their integrity for a few bucks, and the best way to do that is to make a major dent in the wallets of the cowards who pay them. Boycotting is only the first step in an effective anti-spyware campaign. Step two, which is something that is caused by the boycott, is to sell off stock in companies who advertise via spyware. Make the spyware campaign a net loss to the suits and they will pull their money out within nanoseconds. If the money goes away, the spyware goes away.

…And for pete’s sake NEVER click-through on a spyware ad.

One last thing… Don’t take “plausible deniability” as an excuse. If a major company tries to tell you that they are unaware of their involvement in spyware because they don’t track every dollar they spend on advertising… call them liars, or extremely bad businessmen. An advertising campaign that doesn’t track Return On Investment is something that just shouldn’t happen. I would make sure that I sold off any stock I had in a company with a management that stupid.

In the end, the government isn’t going to help. Politicians and lawyers will make speeches and arguments, they’ll pat each other on the back and tell you to vote for them, but the spyware won’t go away. This situation calls for a real people’s revolt, and I’m hoping one starts soon. Only by speaking with our wallets will we be able to kill this scourge off.

According to this AP News Feed, Microsoft intends to build RSS into all of it’s new operating systems. For the uninitiated, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way to monitor news feeds and other online content to see what has been updated at your favorite sites. If you want an example of what RSS feeds look like, just click this link to see the RSS feed for this blog. If you are looking for an application that works well with RSS, I recommend a Firefox extension called “sage”.

Increased support for RSS is something that I look forward to. However, I share the opinion of one of the experts quoted in the above article: I don’t see how Microsoft intends to monetize RSS. Lets face it… Microsoft isn’t known for doing things just to be nice. Even when they give something away for free, it is only so that they can force others out of the market. I’m wondering when we’ll get hit with the price.

The tech community lost another icon this week when Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit, died at age 81 on Monday. Though credit for the IC was often said to be shared with Intel founder Bob Noyce, Jack Kilby and TI held the official patent. In addition to the IC, Kilby went on to obtain a total of 60 patents, and has been credited with inventing the hand-held calculator.

Next time that you are fragging your buddies at a LAN party, or maybe when you reach into your pocket for a calculator to compute your waiter’s tip, give a thought to one of the men who was largely responsible for your ability to do so… Jack Kilby.

A 73 year old Kenyan Grandfather killed a leopard with his bare hands after it attacked him while tending his crops. Ripping the animals tongue out may have been a violent and disgusting way to do it, but you have to admire the cool-headed reaction to impending death. Faced with this situation, I would probably do the same thing that 99.9% of the population would do: become lunch. Hats off to a real survivor.

By the way, despite the brutal way the leopard was killed, PETA has been silent about the matter. I think the term is “biting their tongues". Can’t really blame them… I’d be afraid to open my mouth around this guy too.

This Reuters post quotes a study on the effects of violent video games that found that the human brain may confuse simulated violence with real violence. As usual with these studies, there seems to have been an attempt to equate the playing of video games with aggressive behavior. Also as usual, there was no real link that could be established. Jack Thompson would be proud.

The daisy-sniffing, gun-hating, folk-song-singing, wussy crowd couldn’t use actual statistics to prove that video games were bad for society, so they have resorted to psycho-babble to try to sell their views. Sometimes, I just wanna nuke them all. Damn wimps.

Well… maybe not. Check out this AP article if you haven’t heard about Snapple’s not-so-frozen ice pop. So what kind of slogan will they have for the new ice pop treat this PR disaster was supposed to call attention to? I have an idea or two. How about… Melts in the truck, not in your hand? or… Made from the best stuff on the street? or possibly… So good, you could swim in it.

Just when you thought the video game voice actor strike was over, SAG has decided to reject the proposed contract with the video game industry, that they had agreed to earlier in the month. SAG video game voice actors where happy with the contract but the non-video game voice actors where not and pressured SAG to back out of the contract. SAG is riding a dangerous line and could see its members locked out of the game industry if they are not careful. To make the situation even more dangerous for the SAG video game voice actors is that AFATA, their sister organization, has agreed and ratified the proposed contract and it will go in effect July 1 for its members. All I can say to this is the hubris of a few SAG members is going to wreck the livelihood for a lot of people -who where happy with the situation- for no other reason then greed.

It is that time of the month, time to answer the search strings, since we do not get any reader mail. On to your search string questions:

1) man from Nantucket?
Shameless finally told me what “man from Nantucket” means. You guys are are bunch of dirty old men.

2) god of war hang pirated?
While Jaffe (designer of God of War) did include undead in the game, I don’t think he had any undead pirates in it. I guess I will have to play it again just to make sure there are none.

3) brain damage from a nitendo ds?
Not sure if the Nintendo DS gave you brain damage or not, but next time you play your Nintendo (not nitendo) DS you may want to wear a tin foil hat. This way at least you will be protected from the evil brain damaging waves caused by your nitendo ds.

4) does putting a psp in a microwave fix dead pixels?
I understand your pain about PSP’s dead pixels, but sticking a PSP in a microwave will only get you added to the Darwin Awards.

5) fatal1ty gets pwned?
(big smile)Yes he did.

6) is psp worth it ?
Wow you guys keep asking this question and the answer is NO. I just got one and discovered that there are no good games for it and none coming out any time soon. To make it even more of a no, I went to buy a memory stick and discovered I could buy an IPod for the price of one memory stick. If you really want a handheld, save your money and buy a DS, several games and an IPod.

7)rann thanagar torrent?
When did BitTorrent add downloadable comic books in print form?

8) reality show idea?
Lots, but you Hollywood types would never understand them.

9)resume producer (xbox or playstation or gameboy)?
Okay, seeing as none of them have a keyboard or a word processor you may have trouble there. You might want add PC to your search.

10) star wars airsickness bags?
While flying to E3 this year, I did enjoy puking on Jar-Jar Binks.

11) 3d realms rumors?
Secretly, 3D Realms has been trying to take over the world while claiming to be working on “Duke Nukem Forever".

12) a geeks resume?
See Shameless over in the employment section. It is the geekiest resume I have ever seen.

13)advent rising reviews xplay?
If it is anything more then two, XPlay has sold out. Never mind they are just going to give it the same 3 out of 5 that they give all games.

14) alien hominid ps2 gamecube differences?
Different controller maybe, but other than that, I was too busy dodging FBI bullets to notice any differences.

Slate has posted a review of the Broadway play Spamalot done by a huge Mighty Python fan. Be warned the reviewer felt Spamalot did not capture the spirit of Mighty Python and gave it a poor review because of that. I can not say if Spamalot does or does not capture the spirit of Mighty Python. This is because I have not seen Spamalot and will have to default to the author of the review on this issue.

Gamespy has posted an interview with clothing designer turned game designer Marc Ecko. The interview is not as arrogant or boastfull as the keynote speech he gave at this years Game Developer Conference, however it still shows how arrogant and wonderful a game designer Marc Ecko thinks he is. After playing “Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure” at E3, all I can say is that Marc Ecko should stick to designing clothes.
For me the worst part of “Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure” was the gameplay. It played like Tony Hawk meets Grand Theft Auto except without the fun parts. Which is not the hallmarks of a great designer.

For all you COS players out there, pimp productions has posted the art book for the woman’s wrestling video game Rumble Rose. For what I saw the Rumble Rose art book is a good buy with lots of character sketches and computer models with lots of details to get the girls costumes perfect. The rest of you stop drooling.

The New Times has posted an article about “V for Vendetta” the next movie from the Wachowski Brothers. (registration required) “V for Vendetta” is based on the Alan Moore comic book that came out in 1998 and is set in the year 2020 in England.
In “V for Vendetta” England is ruled by a totalitarian government styled after the Nazis and various right wing governments. The story follows the story of one woman who rises up against the British government with the aid of the masked hero V. Alan Moore wrote “V for Vendetta” as a response to the growth of the right wing in England during the rein of Marget Thatcher in the 80s and what I always assume he felt would happen to England if that movement was left unchecked.
The Wachowski Brothers on the other hand have come up with a different interpretation of the what “V for Vendetta” was about and have taken the movie into a different direction. They are focusing more on the morality of using violence to fight oppression and how far would you go to fight oppression. The book was fairly open ended as to what Alan Moore was trying to say but I think the Wachowski Brothers have missed the main points. I believe Moore also shares this view since he has public stated he wants nothing to do with the “V for Vendetta” movie.

Mark your calenders! TODAY is the day that science has FInally revealed the key elements for male dominion over the SUBTLER, SUPPLER sex.

I present for you a dramatic foursome provided to huMANity on this singular day - June 20, 2005 - by none other than LiveScience.com:

• Bigger Brains Make Smarter People,
• Brain Areas Shut Off During Female Orgasm,
• Human Embryo Cloned From Immature Eggs, and
• Grapefruit May Make Women Seem Younger.

This far surpasses Einstein’s Measly Miracle Year. Heck, that was a mere three items in a whole YEAR.

It is time then for us - well, around 50% of us - to rejoice! My WIFE will soon be surprised to find Parfum de Pamplemousse on her bedside stand. This will get my heart a-thumping. I might even work a little at it, leading to a shut down of her worrying BRAIN, making IT smaller, thus HER STUPIDer. I have my doubts about that grapefruit trick working on her EGGs, so I may need to find some other, younger, small-brained crop to reap if I wanna replace my LIVER some day. Heh heh heh.

Ah, with all technologies there comes a cost. Say I find me a HEARTY 20-year-old and apply the GiFT (GrapeFruit Technology, TM). Will she or won’t she have eggs for my later Liver Replacement Therapy? SOMEONE’s gotta do the science. If I must, I MUST! It’s In the Name of Science!

After last weeks lackluster releases, we get a good week packed with a ton of A list release. In fact this week is mostly solid A lists and a big ball of singing poo. Onto the releases:

Battlefield 2 for PC: The great Battlefield series is moved away from the battlefields of yore to a more modern battlefield in some former Soviet Republic. From what I saw at E3, EA has cleaned up the combat and made vehicles easier to control. Look for this one to be tearing up Lan parties soon.

Bomberman DS for the DS: (played to the beat of Donkey Konga drum) Ah the classic multiplayer game Bomberman, you have faired poorly in the 3D world, but now comes a system tailored made for you. Please oh Please, cries the masses. Sucketh yhea not oh Bomberman DS. For yhea have multiplayer WiFi and now voice activated bombing. So go forth and bomb may the masses because the greatest Bomberman is here. (end bongo playing).

Codename: Panzers - Phase II for the PC: I have no clue what this game is about other then it is set during World War II and is a sequel.

Conker: Live and Reloaded for the XBox: Rare took a children’s game icon, left him all cute and fury but added a bit of a potty mouth. Yup thats right the foul mouthed icon of the Nintendo 64 is back. It is still the same game from the N64, with cleaned up graphics and the same piss poor gameplay. So if you like foul mouthed children’s icons or singing balls of poo, this game is for you. Just be warned it plays just as bad, with the same storyline, as the N64 one did.

Destroy All Humans for the XBox and Playstation 2: Grand Theft Auto meets Planet Nine from Outer Space. Yup that rights your a badass alien who is invading earth while jacking cars.

Herbie: Fully Loaded for the Gameboy Advance: Kid game based on the upcoming Herbie movie.

Mega Man Battle Network 5 (two versions) for the Gameboy Advance: Yup another Mega Man game. Oh the horror, when will Capcom kill the damm franchise or at least take a break.

Pyschonauts for the Playstation 2: I loved Pyschonauts on the XBox it was a quirky fun platformer/adventure game from Tim Schaffer, one of the greatest video game designers on this earth. The Playstation 2 version looks to be the same as the XBox version. A must buy for all you non-XBox owning Platformer loving types.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms X for the Playstation 2: Delayed from last week is the next epic in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series.

RYL: Path of the Emperor for the PC: The newest MMORPG on the block with a focus of online Virtual reality and a tournament for one million dollars. What is with all these games all of sudden offering one million dollar prizes?

Bard’s Tale for the PC: Why oh why did this not come out when the Bard’s Tale came out for the consoles. For the few that do not know The Bard Tale is a Gauntlet like RPG that is perfect for the PC market. Instead of doing the smart thing and release it first for the PC. The publisher released it for the console first, where it was not a big seller and became a forgotten treasure instead of an instant classic.

Lots and lots of good stuff, making this weeks pick difficult. For this week I pick for game of the week: Battlefield 2.

I do not know what pact with the devil Atari founder Nolan Bushnell made to keep Atari alive but no else seems to be able to keep Atari alive. CNN columnist Chris Morris brought up the issue that current Atari is once again heading for doom. Sad as this may sound this is not the first time, nor last time Atari is on the path of doom. At least this time it was not branching out into crazy things like Medical products that doomed Atari, just crappy games. At the current path Atari is heading down it will soon be back on the auction block. For who ever does end buying make sure you hire Nolan Bushnell, otherwise I you are cursed to fail.

According to this article, McDonalds is planing to make it possible in a few select restaurants to burn cds and access the Internet via a WiFi connection. All I got a say is I am loving it, now I can have a Big Mac instead of drinking an overpriced coffee when I want to do some free WiFi web surfing.

Wired Magazine has posted an interview with Mario and Zelda creator Miyamoto, where he talks about how modern gaming is heading down a dangerous path. The gist of the interview is unless the video gaming industry abandons the current trend towards catering towards hard core gamers, the gaming industry could crash in a few years as the hardcore gamers give up gaming. Which is currently going on in Japan. Miyamoto also said the cure to all this is to make games that appeal to everyone, in other words games that are fun like gee Nintendo’s hit DS game Nintendogs. Miyamoto also confirmed that Mario -128 (a tech demo that stared 128 Marios for the Gamecube) will not be a Gamecube, but a Revolution game. He also dodged the question on what the heck the Revolution controllers will look and how they will function. The thing I love most about this interview is how all the gaming websites rephrase it (gee I am doing that) and post several articles about it (*cough*Gamespot*cough*).

According to an article on CNN, the Air Force turned up no traces of a nuclear bomb that was dumped off the shores of Savannah, Georgia in the late 50’s. Before you get all Tom Clancy on me, the bomb is not in the hands of terrorist or even usable. It is most likely buried beneath 8-to-40 feet of water and 5-to-15 feet of mud and sand and lacks the plutonium capsule needed to trigger a nuclear blast. Still I wonder if any three headed fish have appeared along the shores of Savannah like they do along the shores of Springfield in the Simpsons.

LA Times has posted an article about online poker playing robots and an upcoming robot poker championship. With the growth of online poker has come an explosion of people cheating with robots designed to play online poker. Most of these robots are written by bored programmers and most of the robots stink at poker. That is because poker is game that is built around faking out a person to get them to do the wrong thing. This fairly easily done to poker playing robots once a person has figured out robots program.
The online poker companies are obviously against the robots (they not against robots, in fact they have bunch of them spamming the web as I speak) but still I find it laughable that it is an issue. Then again losing to a poker robot must stink.
All this makes me wonder when someone is going to paint a picture of Robots playing poker.

1UP sent one of their editors to various game stores possing as a clueless girl to see how good the advice is at game stores. The results are hilarious, particularly the Toy r us clerks, and the advice borders on wrong for all of them except the Gamestop clerk. The irked EBGame clerk was also funny in how he dodged giving any advice. This is definitely something we need to try, but sadly all our girls on staff are way too smart to play bimbos.

Forbes.com has an article about OpenBSD pioneer Theo de Raadt that includes a lot of Linux bashing. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve looked into some Linux code and exclaimed YUCK! in a closed room. The charges that Linux is somewhat of a rats nest of code have merit, but it sounds a lot like sour grapes.

Here’s a clue to all of those who believe in the perfection theory of design: Users of boxed software really don’t care how clean the source code is. That may be difficult for a developer to swallow, and it may not fit into their view of how the world should be, but it is the absolute truth. If you take an ugly piece of code and test it thoroughly enough, you will end up with something that works as reliably as the immaculate work of art, (which should have been tested just as thoroughly). Thats as far as the user is likely to ever see. Period.

OpenBSD may very well be better written than Linux. The problem is that users never know or care… and isn’t the user the important one?

Yesterday, Intel Corporation dedicated an exhibit to Robert Noyce, one of their co-founders and a co-inventor of the integrated circuit. Robert Noyce has also been dubbed “the Father of Silicon Valley” by some, and is given credit for a large share of the boom of the computer industry. No matter how you view the company that he helped found, you must admit that his work had a profound effect on most modern geeks.

GameIndustry posted an article recently about how the MMORPG Guild Wars managed to become the number MMORPG in April and continuities to dominate the charts. Guild War’s publisher NCSoft did this mostly by charging a user fee of 0.00. Other tactics NCSoft did to make this big was to stunt its beta test periods to get hype each time a new beta period started instead of just one and allowing the players to not have to do the grind to get into the action. One other tactic that NCSoft did, that the article missed, was to force ever Gamestop and EBGames employee to hype the game for them by buying floor space and telephone time.

An upcoming government study asserts that cell phone use and other similar distractions are the number 1 cause of accidents and near-misses. It’s also good to see in this study that someone has figured out that hands-free sets do next to nothing to alleviate the problem. I’ve been saying for years that the distraction is the problem, not the holding of the phone. If driving with one hand were dangerous, wouldn’t standard shift cars be illegal by now? Just remember… it isn’t the phone, it’s the phone call.

That burning sensation you get when using your laptop may not be something you need penicillin for. According to TheRegister.com, Fujitsu has recalled 250,000 laptop batteries because they could possibly overheat. I can only begin to speculate on how many jokes will float around the net about geeks with flaming laps.

I downloaded and installed both the i386 and the x86_64 versions of Fedora Core 4 yesterday as a prelude to testing it on several machines. Let me tell you that I’m certainly not impressed by the quality of this release. This is the first time I have ever had to abandon an install and revert to a previous version.

Let me start by saying that I understand that Fedora has essentially been an experimental proving ground for Red Hat… until now that is… I don’t think anyone is quite sure what it is anymore. I also understand that I’m not paying them for it. Be that as it may, I think they need to take a closer look at their product. I expect bugs, but I don’t expect to see a version that is essentially the same as the previous, except with more flaws.

Here’s my experience.

First Machine: an old Dell SmartStep 250N. Installation seemed to go OK on this machine, but once it booted up, I found that I couldn’t get some of my favorite software to run, most notably Thunderbird. I also noticed some strange graphics effects with KDE (which the Fedora crowd seems to despise anyway). Beyond that, it had pretty much the same versions of everything that I had been running for months. Disappointment, but only a small setback.

Second machine: Intel 865G system with 2.8G P4 and 512MB RAM. This one was a disaster. I was able to boot from the CD, but when I tried to run any of the installs, it would forget where it put the RAM Disk and panic the kernel. Couldn’t find any online help for this either. I ended up reverting to FC3. This was a huge disappointment because I had been waiting to install a new disk for the last 2 months, thinking that I could kill 2 birds with one stone when the next Fedora release cane out. This one was irritating.

Third machine: A64 3200+ with 1G RAM. This one seemed to go OK once I got a good burn of the DVD. Haven’t tested this one as much as the others, but it crashed once in it’s first 15 minutes of run time. Note that this machine probably hasn’t crashed once this year, even when running Windows.

I really don’t see any advantage to installing FC4. At this pont, it looks like installing FC3 and running “yum -y update” will get you the same features and a more stable system. My next install would have been on my LAMP server, but I think I might stick with FC2 on that one for now. Color me disappointed.

Space shuttle Discovery was transported back to its launch pad today in preparation for it’s return to space. If you’ll recall, the space shuttle program has been on hold since the tragic destruction of the Columbia in 2003. In preparation for this launch, the shuttle has been fitted with an upgraded fuel tank and an additional heater to keep ice chunks from forming. Hopefully, this will greatly enhance the safety of the crew.

U.S. astronaut John Phillips made history when he became the first astronaut to testify from space in front of the U.S. House Science Space Subcommittee. Part of his testimony was a litle bit of zero-g floating around just to show off. Leave it to a geek to show off in front of Congress like that. If it were me, I’d have spun around until I got dizzy enough to be sick. It would be cool to see the effects of zero-g on a technicolor yawn.

According to Reuters, Microsoft has announced 3 critical flaws that could allow an attacker to take control of an unprotected machine and “steal data or launch other attacks". If you have automatic updates turned on, then you should get them in this months security patch release. If not, then try www.microsoft.com/security.

Slate has posted an article about the proper techniques of spitting wine into a bucket, and the author’s struggles to master it. Wine tasting may not sound like a geeky hobby, but after reading the article it has all the hallmarks of one. It has obsessions that border on the unhealthy, long debates on pointless subjects, and a pastime that most normal people think os as really weird. I also find it funny that two guys would lock themselves in a room and spend hours trying to perfect spitting in a bucket.

This US government has opened up the high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee to private tours. Y-12 was the plant that made the enriched uranium for the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. The tours do not show the entire plant but they do allow you to see the cauldron and machines where the uranium was made. Still, it is neat seeing all of the gadgets and toys, but it also scary to think a bunch of 18 years old were at the controls. I think the best line in the article was at the end when one of the controllers, Gladys Owens, found out she was making a nuclear bomb (she had no clue what she was doing back in 1940): “Mostly, I thank God the state of Tennessee is still on the map,” she said, with a laugh. “Because I was right here at the controls. At 19 years old.”

Better late than never? I’ve finally moved some of Leakenova’s E3 posts to the gamers’ page. check out the permanent versions of:
Hands On with Metroid: Prime Hunters for the DS
Review of Gamer Graffix
Hands On with Delta Force: Blackhawk Down
Hands On with Battlefield 2 for XBox

As of today, interested Geeks can download the release version of Fedora 4 either straight from the Fedora download page or from one of the many Fedora mirrors. You can also get it from the torrent.

Among the new features of Fedora 4 are Gnome 2.10, KDE 3.4, and a preview of GCC 4.0.

The release of Fedora 4 comes on the heels of the announced separation of Red Hat and Fedora. Though I’ve seen lots of stories announcing the breakup, I haven’t seen any that actually talk about when it will happen, or even if it has already happened.

According to ExtremeTech, Intel has added 64-bit architecture to all of it’s Pentium 4’s. The new numbering scheme creates a 64-bit version of each of the 6xx models and numbers it 5x1. As the article states, the 64-bit versions have the exact same price as the 32-bit versions, so it appears that 64-bits is for free. This is likely the last nail in the 32-bit coffin. The future of these older CPU’s is probably going to be limited to the embedded market.

A post at the NewScientist.com reports on the up swing of urban gaming. This is for those Geeks who want to get some exercise.

It is that time of the week, time for new release of the week. This week we have a new whole patch of fun. Onto the list:

Arc The Lad: End of Darkness for the Playstation 2: The next in the long running RPG series for the Playstation 2. I wish Working Design was doing this instead of Namco, so I could get a matching collector set to go with my Arc Lad collection for the Playstation.

Army Ranger: Mogadishu for the PC: Is Blackhawk: Down becoming the new Vietnam? This is like the third game I have seen set in Mogadishu.

Batman Begins for the PSP, Gameboy Advance, Playstation 2, XBox, and Gamecube: Newest Batman game based on the upcoming Batman movie. I wish I could say my confidence was that this game would be an instant classic, but with the long track record of poor Batman games and movie games in general leaves me with little confidence.

Capcom Fighting Evolution for the XBox: A 2D fighting game that combines all the characters from several hit Capcom fighting franchise but is mostly made of characters from the Street Fighter series. Capcom Fighting Evolution has been out on the Playstation 2 since Christmas.

Disney’s Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey and Donald for the Gameboy Advance: Kiddie game staring Mickey and Donald on another magical quest.

Goldeneye: Rouge Agent for the DS: For some odd reason a lot insider have been talking about this one. The console version of the game was rushed mess which now sells for $15.00, but the DS version was delayed and it looks like this may be the true sequel to the N64 Goldeneye.

Juiced for the Playstation 2, XBox and PC: Ah… I talked about this last week when I announced the PC version but this little Street racer is one of the few games to be review twice. See two weeks before Juiced was due in stores, it publisher Acclaim went under and so we thought the game. However it looks like THQ picked this one up during the Acclaim fire sale and now we get to enjoy it.

Kirby: Canvas Curse for the DS: The little pink guy who can suck is back in his next platformer adventure game.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms X for the Playstation 2: Wow I remember buying the first one for the NES and know four platforms latter we are on the tenth one. 15 years ago this series was cutting edge, now the series feels very dated. Still the hardcore fans love the series and Koei will keep pop them out.

Yoshi Topsy-Turvy for the Gameboy Advance: Platform gaming staring the every lovable Yoshi. The neat gimmick about this game is you tilt your GBA back and forth to control Yoshi.

With summer coming up the gamelist are getting shorter with more focus on handheld games, which guess what, thats what this week list looks like.
Get ready to see a lot more list like this as the summer continues on.
My pick for this week: None, there is nothing on this list I want to play. I guess if I had to pick one it would be Arc The Lad: End of Darkness

Motherboard manufacturer Abit was forced to pay out $125,000 to a Chinese player named Rocketboy after ABit spokesman Fatal1ty lost a match to him. To make matters even worse for “the fatality", ABit was quick to signup Rocketboy as spokesman and renamed the Fatal1ty Motherboard to the Rocketboy Motherboard in China. This whole sordid affair started when ABit and Fatal1ty bragged he was invincible and would payout $125,000 to anyone who could prove them wrong. I do not know if it is more satisfying to see Fatal1ty getting pwned or seeing ABit rename his motherboard.

It seems that the debate over paid inclusion on search engines is beginning to heat up again. The problem never fully went away. It was just masked by the dot-bomb explosion and the browser wars of the late 90’s.

For those uninitiated or too young to remember the days when Netscape was ubiquitous, paid inclusion is pretty much what it sounds like. Web sites pay a fee to be included at the top of the results page for certain keywords regardless of rank. In the old days, this kind of thing was done regularly and without any indication of which sites had paid the fee. As net surfers ended up with search results that were less and less relevant to their queries, they began to complain.

Nowadays, Google has added the “sponsored links” sections at the top and right-hand side of the results. Like most people, I have no problem with this as long as they are clearly marked. The complaint is that Google has been marking these less and less clearly lately.

We’ll keep an eye on this debate here at ShamelessGeeks and let you know of any further developments.

On a recent addition of MTV show “Pimp My Ride", the host Xzibit spoke out against cheap video games. Guess with all his money Xzibit would rather spend his time fighting the scourge of cheap video games, instead do doing something like fighting poverty in Africa like Brad Pitt does.

The New York Times is reporting that the Universal and Fox have agreed to a deal with Microsoft to make the movie version of Halo.(registration required) The script for the Halo movie and the deal to acquire the rights was delivered by Master Chief wearing deliveryman on Monday to the studios. Most studios passed on it due to Microsoft excessive demands. Some of those demands include $10 Million dollars upfront, 60 first class tickets for Microsoft execs to attend the premiere and no merchandise rights. In the final deal Microsoft did not get all of the things they demand but close enough for them to be happy. The one sticking point that may end this deal is the rights over creative control. Microsoft wants a lot and studios do not want give much. Gee I wonder why Microsoft is demanding so much creative control?

According to an article on Gamespot, Sony has shipped 100 PS3 developer kits to developers and is running out of the parts to make more. Hopefully this issue is just with parts for the development kits and not a larger parts issue that will cause the actual Playstation 3 to ship late or ship in short supply.

Video game voice workers and the video game industry have reached an agreement averting a strike. The voice actors union and video game companies have signed a 3 year contract where the voice actors agree to take a 36% increase in pay, increases in benefit contributions and greater protection, instead of profit sharing which the voice actors had been original seeking. The agreements is subject to the voice actors’ unions SGA and AFTRA for final approval. I am glad to see both parties came to agreement but I wonder if we are going to see this again in 3 years when the contract ends.

Milestone Zero has posted the next installment of Carinval of Games on his site. Lets see if this round can lead to another massive geek fight like the last one did. For all of you that came to this site via Carnival of Games, welcome, fell free to read and comment on anything and if you really want to post something. Just make sure it something a geek would like.

AnandTech has published a look ahead at the next few versions of the Catalyst software. I like the way that ATI is looking ahead with their .Net interface, but they seem to have completely forgotten about Linux support again. The last few versions I’ve seen haven’t been able to do anything more than trash my RPM database and forcing me to backtrack to older versions of X windows.

Needless to say, I’ve been VERY disappointed in their support for the alternative operating systems… and have I mentioned lately how disappointed I was in their 9600Pro? These factors will probably drive me toward Nvidia when I build my next system in August.

…Well, at least parts of one.

Don’t follow this link if you have a weak stomach. If you are a geek like me who watches reruns of CSI, then this is the perfect story for you.

Here is a Reuters article about a stowaway attempt that ended with parts of a man bouncing off of a suburban New York garage roof.

I guess you could say the guy failed because his methods were all over the place, or that maybe his heart was in the right place, but his head wasn’t. Would this be the first guy to win Darwin Awards in more that one country?

Someone stop me before I pun again.

At Wizards Philly last weekend DC comic Representative Dan Didio revealed that at the conclusion of the upcoming mini-series Infinite Crisis, the entire DC Universe will reset. Most comic book fans know this, however the little tidbit that made it news was that all the current DC comic books starting February (around the time of issue #5 of Infite Crisis) will be set “One Year Later…” relative to what was seen in their February issues. DC then plans to tell the events that occurred during that one year in flashbacks and through the remainder of Infite Crisis mini-series. Also all the comic books will experience major changes that when they make the “the one year later…” leap. No word was given what they will be but they will be major changes that will send shockwaves through out comic book fans.
Two comic post in a day yup it’s Wednesday and I just got a huge stack of new comics and I feel like talking about comics.

Normally we do not talk about comic books (even though it’s the geekiest of geekiest hobbies) but the current RANN/THANAGAR WAR mini series from DC Comics is really good and worth a read.
DC comics has a long tradition of telling wide spanning space epics, but in recent years has moved away from that. DC plans to bring back the cosmic side of the DC universe with the Rann/Thanagar war. Basically the store main plot is the planet Thanagar (homeplanet of Hawkman) was destroyed when the planet Rann was teleported next to Thanagar and changed its orbit. The bird like inhabits where forced to relocate on Rann. An evil (is there such thing as a good cult) cult Thanagarians, who where also behind Thanagars destruction, start a war with the inhabits of Rann to bring back the evil cosmic entity they worship. Thanks to a WWWI style of alliances a war spreads across the galaxy.
The Rann/Thanagar War mini-series is selling out fast at most comic books shop, but thankful DC is reprinting. It is a great read if you are looking for an epic sci-fi war and must buy for all comic book fans.

According to some scientists, although populations are getting older, people have more time remaining. I’m hoping this means that I can postpone my mid-life crisis indefinitely. If I can delay it forever, will that make me immortal? Will I be allowed back into Chuck E. Cheese? Will I eventually go all of the way back to an embryonic stage?

I believe the part about people acting younger. In fact, I have watched grown men devolve to a state of childhood with no more to trigger the event than seeing a nice sports car drive by.

Rumor has it that Apple will use the Pentium M for it’s Macintosh line. As of this moment, it is only speculation, but it is the only speculation that makes sense. If Apple remains true to their nature, they will go with the only current Intel chip that can hold a candle to AMD. If they try to jump on the MHz bandwagon, they will find that it is broken down.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata today trounced the popular Internet rumor that Nintendo planned to distribute their back catalog for free on the Nintendo Revolution. Okay… he sort of did. Iwata also said that Nintendo has not yet figured out how to distribute games from the back catalog, but will most likely give them away when someone buys another game, or as part of a promotion. So… yes, you will get them “sort of” for free but not 100% free with no strings attached. All I can say to the rumor is DUH, Nintendo never gives anything away for free without expecting something, you silly bloggers.

Tonight during a very brief special on Spike TV, the Game Critics Awards announced the best of E3 2005 awards. The Game Critics Awards is an independent group of video game journalists from 33 leading North American media outlets that hand out the awards for Best of E3. The big winner was Spore with 4 awards including Best of Show and Best PC game. The other big winners where Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess with 2 awards including Best Console Game and the Playstation 3 with 2 awards including Best Hardware and Special Commendation in Graphics for the Killzone 2 video.

During a business strategy conference today in Japan, Shigeru Miyamoto reveals that the Nintendo Revolution’s controller functionality is still being worked on. This may explain why the controller did not appear at E3, instead of the lame Nintendo excuse that they where worried about everyone else ripping them off. Satoru Iwata added that “We expect that you will be surprised with the Revolution’s controller". Nintendo I am waiting for you to blow me away or at least surprise me.

Pointless Waste of Time has posted the Gamer’s Manifesto up on there website. The Gamer’s Manifesto is basically a rant that points out the flaws in games today. Hopefully they will continue to add to the list because one thing I want to see add to the Manifesto, is the price and amount of games need to go down. I also hope all you game developers out there read this Manifesto and take it to heart.

Microsoft yesterday shiped around to all the Hollywood studios a movie script based on the game from Halo. In true Hollywood style all the messengers delivering the Halo scripts where dressed as Master Chief. Even with all the theatrics involved in the deliver of the scripts, it looks like the Halo script will not be picked up since all but one major studio has already passed on it. This is because according to Kotaku the reason is Microsoft is demanding $10 million upfront for an unsure property. Got to love Microsoft’s hubris.

The geek fight last week between the video game magazines and Blog, has moved onto Video Game Ombudsman when Ombudsman posted his 10 cents on the issue. In addition to his comment on the whole geek fight, Ombudsman also posted a good recap of the whole fight. All I got say about the whole geek fight is YAY INTERNET!!!!

The New York Post is reporting that a handheld game “Laden Vs Bush” (registration required) has gone on sale in shops in Conney Island that allows players to crash planes and bombs into the World Trade Center. The game is being marketed on the box as a boxing game. However when The New York Post fired it up it featured scenes of planes dropping bombs as they crash into what appeared to the Twin Towers. The box of the game also features pictures of the Twin Towers in the middle with Bush on one side and Bin Laden on the other. Not only is it sicken that someone would think something like this up, but worse sell it in New York City.

After Bandai announced last week that they where working hard on a new version of Tamagotchi for cell phones, Bandai announced they where also working hard on a version for the Nintendo DS. Evidently Tamagotchi is the middle in of minor comeback amongst young school girls and Tamagotchi manufacturer deiced to cash in and create a new batch of Tamagotchi while the iron is still hot. No word if the DS version of Tamagotchi will hit the states, but for fans of Tamagotchi can settle for the upcoming Tamagotchi like game Nintendogs from Nintendo.

Monty Python’s Spamalot won best musical at last night’s Tony Awards. Spamalot also won the Tonies for best director (Mike Nichols) and best featured actress (Sara Ramirez for Lady in the Lake). Now for something complete different….

After years of rumors and speculation, Apple has decided to switch from IBM to Intel for CPU chips. This is a major architecture shift, and will eliminate one of the few alternatives to a Win-Tel machine. I’ve never been much of a Mac user, but I was always glad to know that there was an alternate architecture out there.

Fear not PowerPC fans. You can always find your favorite CPU in one of the new game consoles.

Microsoft is issuing warnings that there will most likely be XBox 360 shortages when it launches. Microsoft added that these shortages will be caused not from the lack of supply but from consumer demand. In other words Microsoft is trying to create a fake shortage like Sony tried and failed to do with the PSP.

Another week and another batch of games is coming out. Onto the new games for this week:

Area 51 for the PC - Moving off of the XBox and onto the PC comes the gun shooter turned into a First Person Shooter.

Battle of Britain II: Wings of Victory for the PC - Battle as the Germans or Brits in this recreation of the first WWII Air War: the Battle of Britain.

Combat Elite: WWII Paratrooper for the XBox and Playstation - Budget WWII shooter.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the XBox and PC - six months after it came out for the Playstation 2, the long (100+ hours) gangster playground, or as one G4TechTV Filter Journo said “Your own personal evil little playground” moves onto the XBox and the PC.

Juiced for the PC - Saved from the dead comes the street racing game Juiced. Juiced was canceled a few weeks before it hit store shelves last year, when its producer Acclaim went under. Thankfully THQ picked it up and re-released it. Also… one of the few games to have reviews written about it twice.

Medal of Honor: European Assault for the XBox, Gamecube and Playstation 2 - The next game in the long running WWII FPS Medal of Honor series. This time around they are focusing heavily on squad based combat and a huge open map that allows you to go anywhere.

Samurai Western for the Playstation 2 - It’s a samurai game, no it’s western, actually it’s both.

Still Life for the XBox - Budget adventure game that is delayed for another week.

Another short list, My pick for this week: Medal of Honor: European Assault.

The new Star Wars airsickness bags on Virgin Atlantic flights are just the latest in a long string of Star Wars exploits. At least one thing about this one… If it makes you sick, you still have a use for it.

… and you thought the worst part of Episode III was the acting.

The legislation to ban violent video games in California had stalled due to lack of support. This is just one of the many legislative attempts throughout the country to limit sales of violent games based on the perception that they are injurious, and that they incite people to commit crimes. When legislators get a clue, maybe they will try to pass laws that hold poliicians accountable for the crimes they incite.

GameDaily.biz has posted a feature about the next seven big gaming events for the media and which media outlets will most likely will get the exclusive on them. The big ones on the list I will be watching for and blogging about are the Playstation 3 screenshots, Duke Nukem Forever, The Nintendo Revolution and Mario 128.

If you think we have it bad, try being a gamer in Britain. The British have always gotten the shaft when it comes to new consoles and handhelds but Sony is taking it to whole new levels with the PSP. Normally when a console comes out in America before the Brits can get it, all they had to do was import it from America or Canada. Well Sony did not like the fact that Brits where doing this with the PSP and has sent out ‘cease and desist’ letters to all the major and minor video game importers.
The thing is, however, Sony forgot to tell their employees not to import PSPs. They have been importing like mad men with their Sony company credit cards. Why do I have feelings this whole “import ban” is so a couple Sony guys can look cool, by being the only guys on the block with a PSP?
The ban is bad enough, but things look like they are going to get worse for PSP loving Brits. The PSP launch date of Sept 1, 2005 may be delayed. This is all thanks two things: Sony’s failure to register the key PSP technologies, trademarks and software correctly, And a pending trademark fight with AMD over the UMD trademark, which AMD feels is too close to their name.
This all leaves me wondering if Sony loves the British?

A report at NewScientist.com tells of a “Self-wiring supercomputer” being built at Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre. Now if only they can invent a machine to take care of Shameless Geeks that does not require constant attention, so that they can move out of their parents house.

Just in time for a Nintendogs, the newest form of virtual pet, comes the return of the original virtual pet the Tamagotchi. This time around it will be for cell phones only, and not in the egg form it use to come in. So for all of you who forgot to feed your virtual pet last time, Tamagotchi makers Bandai is giving you a second chance. They even toughed the little guy up so he can last a little longer when you neglect him. Before you say you will not, you know you will but this time it will take you longer to starve his ass.

Game developer and game blogging superstar Costik has posted an article about gamers’ vocabulary to language magazine Verbatim. Most of the terms are well know to gamers and (ab)used like crazy here, but there a few that I have never heard of before (mostly the MMORPG terms). It also a good article for all you non-gaming geeks, to guide you through some of the cryptic language we use. Then again any geek who does not game has no business calling himself a geek.

Someone in New Zealand took the overheating issue to the next level and built a computer case totally made of cooling fans. Yup thats right, over 70 fans went into the construction of this case and they all work too. I still say even with all those fans he would still have overheating issues during Shameless Lan parties.

Josh, of Web blog Cathode Tan, and Matthew Gallant, of Computer Games Magazine, are right now going at it over Matthew’s review of Carnival of Games on Cathode Tan. Josh started this whole fight when he posted a response to Matthew’s bad review of the Carnival of Games. The main issues Josh had with Matthew’s review was: that he judge the Carnival Games to be horrible after reading the first line and not bothering to read the rest of Carnival of Games. Matthew’s poor use of the English language and Matthew’s insistence on calling the Carnival of Games a Blog. When in fact the Carnival of Games is just an article that focus on various gaming blogs.
Instead of ignoring Josh, like a good journalist does. Matthew (person writing the review) posted an almost indecipherable response to Josh’s post over getting free games. Josh (person writing the response to the review) then responded to Matthew’s post, holding him to task over what he said. Matthew then threw off the gloves as other poster started bashing the hell out of him. Right know it is an all free for all geek fight. And boy do I love me some geek fight.

Microsoft will release SP5 for Windows 2000 this month just prior to stopping mainstream support for the OS. This will be the final security update for the 5 year old OS, and signals the end of an era in personal computing.

Microsoft hopes that pushing Win2k onto the deprecated pile will push business toward XP. I think that the main reason for the reluctance is more of a prohibitively expensive license agreement than security concerns, but who am I to say so?

Swiss Scientists have identified a hormone that can cause a subject to become more trusting after nasal exposure. Thats just wonderful. I can guess what will be found in the AC ducts at every political convention from now until the end of time. The fake smiles and limp handshakes were bad enough… now these guys have a way to trick us that we can’t catch them at.

It looks as though Microsoft has decided to make XML standard in the next version of Office. This has been hinted at and suspected for quite some time, but now that they have announced it to the press, it looks official. The use of an open standard like XML as a default is new teritory for Microsoft. This looks like a step toward abandoning the proprietary formats that were used to lock out competitors. Lets hope that they continue in that direction.

Yesterday, ATI announced their Crossfire Multi-GPU technology. Crossfire is ATI’s answer to Nvidia’s SLI technology that was released about 6 months ago. Although this is the latest in whizzbang gaming tech, I’m always hesitant to waste time talking about anything that is prohibitively expensive. If you don’t mind paying for a ultra-high end motherboard and a pair of $350+ video cards, you may want to check out these options.

Pretty boy Ashton Kutcher and WB are running Geek and Beauty, a new reality series where seven geeky males are each teamed up with beautiful women. The teams of geek+beauty are then suppose to work together to solve tasks that test their intellects, fashion savvy, dancing skills and social skills for a $250,000 prize. The show is being heralded as a “social experiment” but it sounds more like the popular people making fun of us geeks.

Because the cops were on his tail! Apparently, the police in Ridgecrest CA are giving tickets to chickens who cross the road, ending a tradition that has been in existence for centuries, and eliminating all of the humor from the lives of 4 year old children.

This is a dark, dark day for cornball humor. Life will be very boring if we can no longer wait in anticipation for a chicken to happily cluck it’s way across a major highway. One thing is for sure: The officer who wrote the ticket needs a sense-of-humor implant.

Thankfully, the charges were dismissed on a technicality.

EBGames has started offering up XBox 360 and games for it for pre-order on their site. Normally this not news but the listing leaked a little tidbit that XBox 360 games will be selling for 59.99. Yup thats right, the price of games is going up. Add in the “mirco market” that M$ is creating for the XBox 360, that will require you to spend another wad of cash to get the actual game to play, and we are looking at some very expensive games next gen. Well at least next gen we will be able to enjoy the picture of game publishers/M$ swimming in their money like Uncle Scrooge.

According to this AP report, Tom Delay has indicated that NASA will receive adequate funding for Moon and Mars missions. This strengthens the promise made by President Bush that he will push for a mission to Mars, which will be preceded by a return to the Moon. Always good to hear that our government is going to finally pick up it’s space exploration program again. Many of the technical advances made in the last half-century were directly related to the space program.