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AP has published a list of Katrina-related web links. In this list you will find links to various types of organizations from the Louisiana Governors office to the Red Cross. If you are in one of the area’s affected by Katrina, you may want to check this stuff out.
Another week and another list of game coming out this week onto the list:
Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt for the XBox: Budget Xbox game staring the Animaniacs delayed from a few weeks ago.
Dynasty Warriors Advance for the Gameboy Advance: Another Dynasty Warrior and only change is this time it is for the Gameboy.
Jetfighter 2015 for the PC: Take a standard airplane fighter formula toss in a couple of terrorist add a few drug dealers and you get Jetfighter 2015.
Mario Superstar Baseball for the Gamecube: Another game that I spent a good deal of time with at E3. Basically Nintendo took its hit Baseball series tossed in a few Nintendo characters and called it a new game. It is fun but it is not different then any other Baseball game.
Moto GP Ultimate Racing Technology 3 for the XBox: Third in the popular motorcycling racing game.
Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary Arcade Collection for XBox, Playstation 2, Gamecube,PC, PSP and Gameboy Advance: Single largest collection of Namco arcade games. Instead of the normal 12 that most collections contain this one has 14 games that everyone already has if they bought the earlier collections. Namco here is a subtle hint 2 more games does not make this a must buy try more like 30 or 40 more.
NASCAR 06: Total Team Control for XBox and Playstation 2: Taking the Nascar to next level by taking a page from FPS and adding Squad combat to the mix.
NHRA Championship Drag Racing for the Playstation 2: Another budget drag racing game.
Pump It Up: Exceed & Dance Mat for the XBox and Playstation2: DDR game that adds in diagonal arrows and moving backgrounds with videos.
WWE Day of Reckoning 2 for the Gamecube: Another Wrestling game that use the same formula started back in the day on the Nintendo 64.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour for the Nintendo DS: Play Yu-Gi-OH! on the Nintendo DS, yhea.
That is it, pick for this week is: Mario Superstar Baseball. Yes it is derivative but it was fun to play baseball with all the Nintendo characters.
Here’s one that could easily be put in the “I don’t want to know about it” category: A University of Georgia poultry science professor has developed a method of turning dark meat chicken into white meat. The process involves grinding, soaking and spinning the dreaded chicken parts until all the color and flavor are removed. The end result is then a barely identifiable bio-mass suitable for fast food restaurants and school cafeterias everywhere.
Just to put things in perspective: here’s a story about a postcard that took almost 50 years to find it’s destination. This must be the same route my checks take when I pay my bills… Yeah, that’s the ticket… They get there late because of snail mail.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I’ve submitted a story about the trials I encountered while building my dual-core system. I’m now the proud owner of a computer that is quite a bit faster than I need (there are even those who think it is faster than I deserve). I’ve gone into some detail about my hardware choices and some of the logic (or lack thereof) that went into the decisions. I also have a report on some of the glitches I found in the system when I took it on its maiden voyage to a LAN party. I’ve shied away from the posting of performance numbers because they require too much work, and you can find them at a million other sites.
If you are interested in a tale of heartbreak and triumph, a classic tome for the ages, or a heartwarming story of a boy and his dog, go find a chick-fic site. If you are interested in getting a geeks tour of dual core, check out the story.
Comic book blog Comics Are Good has recently posted an article explaining the comic book/gaming hierarchy. Basically it boils down to this: Indie comic book fans look down on Superhero fans who look down on roleplayers who look down on Magic player who all look down on furries. The author forgot to add Manga fans who rank below Indie fans but who look down on the Superhero fans and the Roleplayers who look down at the live action roleplayers particularly of the Vampire vien who still look down at Magic Players. Confused yet? Here the chart with my additions:
Indie Comic Fans look down at Manga Fans who look down at Superhero fans who look down at Roleplayers who look down at Live Action Roleplayers who look down at Live Action Vampire Roleplayers who look down at Magic: The Gathering players who all look down at Furries.
I guess I am the super geek since I read Indie Comics and Superhero comics, play role playing games and Magic the Gathering. Then again I hate Manga, deny ever playing Live Action Roleplaying games and only have pity for Furries.
As a followup to my previous post, Intel’s CEO Paul Ottelini wimped out on AMD’s server CPU challenge. Booo! The fact that Intel doesn’t really have a dual-core server chip yet shouldn’t let chipzilla off the hook. I would love to see a challenge between the two chipmakers in any CPU arena. Let’s not limit things to dual-core servers… Lets enter everything!
You have read the review and now take the quiz. Shameless Geeks and Gamer Graffix are teaming up to give one lucky reader a chance to win five Gamer Graffix skins for the console of their choice. In order to win you must answer one simple question: What job did Shameless recently apply for? (hint it is in the comments of something to do with Google and the moon)
Send your entries to: contest@shamelessgeeks.com. All entries are due by Sept 10, 2005 at 11PM Eastern Standard time. The winner will be chosen from all correct (or close enough) entries and announced on Sept 12, 2005
It looks like AMD has challenged Intel to a dual-core server duel. Normally, AMD’s marketing department looks intellectually challenged, but this might just be a good move. While the spotlight is on Intel at IDF this week, they will be unable to dodge AMD’s challenge without serious damage to their rep. If Intel refuses, there really isn’t any excuse that will get them out of it. If they accept, AMD will most likely kick the chips out of them.
Though all of the experts seem to agree that AMD is a shoe-in for this one, don’t count chipzilla out. Nobody is really sure what they have up their sleeve yet.
I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.
Update:
Here’s AMD’s challenge in the form of a press release.
A house sitting robot named Roborior is now selling in Japan for the bargain price of approximately $2,600. It comes with IR sensors to detect break-ins, a cell phone link to notify the homeowner that he is getting robbed, and a cell phone camera to show him what he was robbed of.
If Roborior is able to prevent a major theft in your home, it might be worth the asking price. If not, it’s just one more expensive item to put on the long list that you give to your insurance company. (You DO have insurance, don’t you?)
Harvard scientists have figured out how to turn skin cells into embryonic stem cells, according to this AP story. This would be good news for all concerned. It would allow embryonic stem cell research to continue without all of the controversy.
The only catch is that the technology is in the embryonic stage (pun intended). Though current results look promising, nobody can really call it a ‘done deal’.
The drought is over, get ready for lots and lots of games coming out each week over the next few months. On to the first part of a very long list:
187 Ride or Die for the Playstation 2 and XBox: Gritty Urban game meets gritty street racer without the really cool cars.
Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the Nintendo DS: The classic Gameboy RTS Advance Wars moves onto DS, the perfect platform for it.
Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance for the Playstation 2 and XBox: Battle your way through the mean streets as a fugitive from the law seeking revenge.
Big Mutha Truckers 2 for the PC, XBox and Playstation 2: Part two of the budget Redneck truck racing game.
Inuyasha: Feudal Combat for the Playstation 2: Another fighting game based on a popular anime series.
Juka and the Monophonic Menace for the Gameboy: Action adventure game with lots of mini games and monsters.
Metal Slug 4 & 5 for the XBox: The classic arcade shooter is delayed for another week. If you really want this game the Playstation 2 version has been out for a few months. For all you collector types this is a must own.
Namco Museum Battle Collection for the PSP: The standard collection of classic Namco that has appeared on ever platform since they started the Namco Museum back on the PS One.
Nibiru: Age of Secrets for the PC: Adventure game that combines the cold war with Nazis and Mayans.
Nintendogs for the DS: This game took Japan by storm and pushed the DS to the top of the charts in Japan. From what game play I seen the game is just another virtual pet on that you cruel little fanboys will just kill in the end when you neglect it.
Pac ‘n Roll for the DS: Guide Pac-man through 3D mazes using the stylus.
Pump It Up: Exceed for the XBox and Playstation 2: Another Dance Dance Revolution clone.
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction for the XBox, Gamecube and Playstation 2: Hulk smash!!!!
The King of Fighters 2002 & 2003 for the XBox: Collection of two classic arcade fighting games that is appearing on the XBox six months after it appeared on the Playstation 2.
World Series of Poker for the XBox and Playstation 2: Another poker game based on the newest spectator sport in America.
That it for this week and my pick for the week is: Nintendogs. Any game that allows your virtual pet to hump other virtual pets is a must buy in my book.
If you are still using the stone age Microsoft browser, you may want to check out this report about a new Internet Explorer vulnerability that attacks msdds.dll. Although Microsoft points out that it doesn’t ship with Windows, they neglect to mention that is does ship with Office XP and Office 2003.
You probably want to fix this one ASAP. There is already an exploit available, and it could potentially take over your system.
If you want the unofficial, ShamelessGeeks recommended patch, just click on the Get Firefox button at the top of this page 
A high school in Arizona has eliminated paper text books in favor of Apple laptops. It’s not just a statement about the advance of technology, but also one on how the notebook computer has become a commodity market. If you think about it, a single laptop issued to each student and loaded with electronic copies of textbooks is probably less expensive than a half-dozen paper textbooks per year for four years.
MacWorld is showing a picture of what they claim is the worlds first interactive 3D display. It looks like it could be a cool thing, but the company website is slammed, and I can’t get any more info. I’ll post as soon as I see something.
Well, we all expected this to happen. NASA has pushed the next shuttle launch back to no sooner than March 2006. The space agency intends to avoid the problem of 14 postponements that they experienced with the most recent launch. Hopefully, they will have enough time to find all of the foam problems with the shuttle.
Also:
A minority report from NASA’s Return To Flight Task Group is unkind to the culture of the space program. This unofficial report is an opinion of 7 out of 26 panelists that is not reflected by the majority. Basically, the report blasts the attitude that if a glitch hasn’t hurt a prior launch, then it is acceptable. The main report is much kinder, crediting NASA with meeting 10 of it’s 13 goals. I don’t know about anyone else, but this tells me that they missed about one-quarter of their goals.
Anandtech has detected the presence of an ATI Radeon X800GT in the wild. The X800GT looks to be a competitor for the Nvidia 6600GT, though it is a touch more expensive. The shame about this is that the first one released is a Powercolor card. You probably won’t ever catch me buying another one of those. Yuck!
Scientists in Singapore have developed a urine powered battery that is cheap and easy to manufacture. The intended use is in low-cost disease analysis systems that would use the urine being tested as the power source. Now thats what I call using your head!
Maybe I can take advantage of this kind of thing. If I drink enough beer, I can generate enough urine to light a small city! … and it is a much better use of the energy than trying to spin that little spinner in the men’s room urinal.
It looks like there are a growing number of worms designed to exploit the recently announced Windows 2000 vulnerabilities. I’m not surprised at the ‘gloom and doom’ predictions coming out of all of the computer security firms. After all, there hasn’t been a good AV justification outbreak for around a year.
The fact that all of the scumbags out there are writing the same worm to exploit the same vulnerability means that they have been hungry for something to do for a long time. This alone speaks volumes about Microsoft’s recent security push. I don’t often compliment the beast of Redmond, but you have to give them credit for doing exactly what they said they would. Now if only they would come up with a reasonable licensing model for their software…
I guess my Dad was right. There is no honor among thieves. According to Reuters, some of the worms in the recent rash of malware have the ability to remove competitors. This is leading to a ‘bot war’ with several rival gangs of virus writers competing to create the largest zombie army. It really doesn’t matter who wins the competition… Everybody will lose the fight, even the virus writers.
According to this article post by Game Industry Biz, the gaming industry is planning to target India as its next big game market. The article also touched on a growing new trend in the game industry, that is outsourcing development and animation work to India. The article also points out the major flaws with outsourcing to India, that is: a culture that does not play video games, very hard to travel too, lots and lots of job hopping and in reality only 10% to 20% savings in salary. However these negatives are not stopping companies like Red Octane and EA to start looking into outsourcing to India.
A panic broke out today at Richmond Speedway when residents of Henrico attempted to purchase $50 4-year old iBooks that the county school system was selling off. People were so desperate to purchase the iBooks that they wet themselves, smacked each over the head with lawn chairs, and in one case tried to drive a car through the crowd. I guess they love iBooks in Henrico county because I sure wouldn’t riot over something that outdated.
Reuters is reporting the existence of a nasty new virus called ZOTOB, which can cause serious problems in a system with Windows 2000. According to FSecure, those with Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server aren’t affected yet, only those with NT, 2000, ME, or 9x versions. However, they are still subject to future worms based on the same vulnerability, which Microsoft labels MS05-039. It would be a good idea to follow that Microsoft link and download the patch it indicates.
A couple of things to note about this one:
UPDATE:
It looks like there is a little confusion online as to which OSes this bug afflicts. The best I can get out of the available sources is that the flaw exploited is in all Windows versions, but the fixed offsets used are only present in Windows 2000. If that is true, then even a somewhat inept hacker could modify the original code to use new offsets to attack different MS operating systems. If there isn’t an exploit for XP yet, there will probably be one available within days. It is best if you just apply the patch, whatever version of Windows you run.
Another week and another great list of upcoming games. This week has a couple real winners. Onto the list:
Board Game Classic for the Gameboy Advance: A collection of all those board games you played as a kid.
Darkwatch for the XBox and Playstation 2: Vampires meet cowboys nuff said.
Death Jr. for the PSP: Finally a good game for the PSP. Death Jr. is an adventure game in the style of the old Lucasarts games.
Dungeon Siege II for the PC: Dungeon hack
Eye Toy: Play 2 for the Playstation 2: Another collection of Eye Toy games. I am not a big fan of the Eye Toy but if you love goofy mini games this is a great buy at a high price.
Giest for the Gamecube: I wet my pants when I saw this was coming out this week. I played Giest at E3 and loved it. The game is weird - the main way to get around is to posses stuff - but it was fun and innovative. Even the multi-player rocked. Too bad it is for the Gamecube.
Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue for Gamecube: I also played this one at E3 and loved it. Yes for the serious gamer it not a great game but for a kiddie game it rocks. A must buy for anyone with little girls.
Lizzie McGuire 3: Homecoming Havoc for the Gameboy Advance: Another licensed game for girls.
That’s So Raven 2: Supernatural Style for the Gameboy Advance: Another licensed game for girls.
Madden NFL 06 for the PC: It Madden do I need to say anything else. It is not like there has not been a Madden released every year at this time for the past ten years.
Metal Slug 4 & 5 for the XBox: Classic arcade shooter makes it second appearance on the XBox.
Centipede / Breakout / Warlords for the Gameboy Advance: Three classic 2600 games one platform at a budget price.
Millipede / Super Breakout / Lunar Lander for the Gameboy Advance: Three classic 2600 games one platform at a budget price.
Pong / Asteroids / Yar’s Revenge for the Gameboy Advance: Three classic 2600 games one platform at a budget price.
Gauntlet / Rampart for the Gameboy Advance: Two classic arcade games at a budget price.
Spy Hunter / Super Sprint for the Gameboy Advance: Two classic arcade games at a budget price.
Paperboy / Rampage for the Gameboy Advance: Two classic arcade games at a budget price.
Marble Madness / Klax for the Gameboy Advance: Two classic arcade games at a budget price.
Connect Four / Perfection / Trouble for the Gameboy Advance: Another collection of classic board games at a budget price.
Risk / Battleship / Clue for the Gameboy Advance: Another collection of classic board games at a budget price.
Sorry! / Aggravation / Scrabble Junior for the Gameboy Advance: Another collection of classic board games at a budget price.
Sigma Star Saga for the Gameboy Advance: RPG set in space.
Sonic Gems Collection for the Gamecube: Part two of the classic collection of Sonic games. The highlight for this collection is the remake of Sonic CD and Sonic R.
Wow lots and lots of budget Gameboy Advance games but there is a lot of great games coming out this week. This game of the week choice is another hard one with Hello Kitty, Sonic Gems and Death Jr. as all must buys but hands down the game of the week is Giest.
Self proclaimed Uber Geek Daniel Guermeur is marketing a blank keyboard for geeks. That’s nice, but I dispute his claim to being an ‘Uber Geek’. First of all, anyone who calls himself ‘Uber Geek’, isn’t. That would be a paradox. In addition, ‘Uber’ should only be used in conjunction with the word ‘Dork’. Lastly, he’s probably a ‘Major’ Geek, but you have to be a lot more shameless to get any farther than that. Anyone who had an idea in 1989 and is just now bringing it to market is just not shameless enough.
To his credit, it looks like he chose the right keyboard to model, and the blank keys are certainly geeky enough to win him an honorable mention. Conclusion: the product looks good, but the ‘Uber Geek’ title is an offensive marketing ploy.
NASA launched another Mars probe today with the mission of finding evidence of water on the red palnet, and therefore, evidence of life there. I’m not sure if I want to know if there is life on other planets. Though it would be cool to try to communicate with an alien life form, I’m afraid of some of the other implications. If you’ve lived in the tech industry for the past couple of years, you know that as soon as life is discovered on another planet, someone will try to outsource to it.
According to Reuters, Intel will be announcing a major philosophical shift at the next IDF. It’s about time! AMD had been stomping Intel in performance and efficiency for a few years now. This was triggered when AMD abandoned the MHZ wars in 2001 in favor of general quality. Since then, AMD CPU’s have consistently beaten Intel CPU’s in every category except Multimedia encoding/decoding.
It has taken a while, but it looks like even chipzilla can be trained. The announcement that new chips would be more like the Pentium-M than the P4 is no surprise. The P-M is far more efficient and stable than the aging P4 line.
According to this article posted by CNN, the federal government is looking for a few good hackers to lead the war against cyber crime. I am still holding out hope that the government needs a few more good Python programmers.
Kotaku is reporting that if you download the latest patch for the game “SWAT 4″ instead of just fixing bugs, it also adds ads to the game. The ads are added in real time when the game loads a level and sends a request out via HTTP and XML to an ad server running Apache. The ad server sends back to the game DDS files that contain the ads and where the ads are suppose to go in the game. All interactions with ads including how long, how far and at what angle the player looked at them is sent back to ad server. What makes this all so slimly is that SWAT 4 publisher Vivendi is forcing players to download the ad stuff just for bug fixes without giving them any more maps or new features and snuck it in via a change to the End User License. Luckily there is a fix that simply requires the player to alter his host file to redirect all the ad server traffic to his localhost.
I just finished watching G-Phoria and I all I have to say is: “please G4 Tech TV, do not make any more!” For that matter… MTV, Spike TV and any one else, don’t even think of it! Please, please stop making these game award shows! First: they are lame! Second: I could care less about what celebrities think of gaming. I do not want see a bunch of celebrities giving awards for things they had nothing to do with. Is it so much to ask for them to show the creators? Oh… thats right… they are too geeky for G4 Tech TV. Third: the extreme attitude withbottle smashing, drunk video game icons, slicing Oprah in half, and whatever Ron Jeremy did, do gamers no favors. Try showing how mature we really are. If Jack Thompson ever needed something to show the world how violent and degenerate gamers are all he would have do is show them a video of this years G-Phoria.
Also, get rid of all the female hosts except Sarah Lane and Morgan Webb. They come across as phony shills who could not tell you the difference between Doom and Super Mario Bros to save their lives (if you do not believe me, watch the video of a certain G4 Tech TV host at Nintendo’s E3 press conference talking about Nintendogs). Also, what was the deal with William Shatner? He looked way too drunk and had to be high on something. That was not the worst moment, however. The worst was when, right after giving Ralph Bhear a lifetime achievement award for inventing video games, G4 Tech TV did a skit where Master Chief shot a drunk Pong line. This was the very thing Ralph Bhear created. Nice. Keep giving Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton ammo.
Marvel Comics announced this week at Wizard World Chicago the return of artist Joe Madureira to comic books. Joe Madureira got his start drawing comic books like the “Uncanny X-Men” for Marvel Comics. During his time at Marvel he became one of the hottest artist of the 90s. In 1995 he left Marvel and started his own comic book, “Battlechasers” for the creator owned label Wildstorm/Cliffhanger. While working on “Battlechasers", Madureira moved to doing art for video games. After many delays of “Battlechasers” and false promise Madureira decided to cancel his book in the middle of the story and focus all his artistic talents on video games and left comic books for good. At least that was till this week and it appears Joe has sworn off video games for comic books. While I and many fans enjoyed Madureira work, he burned many bridges with the fans with all the tactics he pulled on “Battlechasers". Many fans may not welcome him back. Personally I will take a wait and see but I am still upset with way he left us hanging with “Battlechasers".
I think I have a new hero. A South Korean man died of a heart attack after a 50 hour gaming session. If ya gotta go, I can’t think of a better way.
I didn’t hear which game he was playing, but in South Korea, it’s a good chance that he was playing Starcraft. If so, there may still be hope for him. That game has a habit of bringing dead heroes back to life. If you’ll remember, Fenix came back in the shell of a dragoon and Kerrigan came back as the Queen of Blades.
Sorry. Couldn’t help geeking-out over one of my favorite games.
Update:
It looks like my guess about Starcraft was correct. It’s nice to be right once in a while. I will have to remember this rare and special moment.
Thanks to Nunzalod for the pointer.
How do you cause a geek to have mixed feelings? Show him a story about Microsoft winning a lawsuit against a spammer, even if it is technically just a settlement.
Geeks are almost universally anti-spammer. But then, who isn’t? A vast majority of geeks also believe that Microsoft has too big of a stranglehold on the software industry, and that handing them windfall profits from litigation is a bad thing. Hence the mixed feelings.
So… It’s lucky that Microsoft got this settlement. I was afraid that they wouldn’t make any profits this year, and that Redmond WA would become a ghost town. Yeah, right.
The Space Shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base this morning. Welcome Home Astronauts!
Nobody really knows when the next shuttle flight will be. There is one scheduled for September, but that seems unlikely at this point. All shuttle flights will be held off until NASA engineers find a solution for the foam insulation problem that was the root cause of the Columbia disaster.
Someone has posted a guide on how to play Doom on your IPod. The person did the port using Doom source code, a version of Linux made for the IPod and cross compiler (cygwin/gcc). Is there anything left to port Doom too?
Another week and another list of games coming out for this week. Again the drought continuities but at least this week there is something major coming out. Onto the list:
Advent Rising for the PC: Delayed and delayed again, I hope Majestco is using all this delay to fix all the issues from the XBox version of Advent Rising so that it will be a killer PC game.
Dragon Ball GT: Transformation for the Gameboy Advance: Yet another Dragon Ball game.
Gumby vs. the Astrobots for the Gameboy Advance: The first and most likely only game staring everyone favorite Green eraser head Gumby, beside it’s Gumby Dammit!!!!!
Madden NFL 96 for well all formats including mobile phones expect for PSP (which is due Sept 20): Do I need to explain Madden NFL, it is the longest running and now only new NFL football game in town. This will also most likely be the last Madden game ever since EA has picked up the ESPN license.
Rhem 2 for the PC: Pure puzzle adventure game like the old school Lucas art games.
A lot more this week but nothing compared to a few months ago. My pick for this week: Gumby vs. the Astrobots. I do not know why but I have looking forward to this game since it was announced in March. I also not a big Madden fan.
If I may, I would like to publicly thank one of your members, Cleake, for sharing his knowledge and helping me with some questions on Game boy games.
I am a mom that knows enough about computers to go bye and work with them, but zero about games.
I was navigating the Internet looking for an answer on pirate Taiwanese games, so I could answer a question on the games I am trying to sell, when I found your website. I thought I should venture to write and perhaps I may get an answer from these group of people that know so much about the world of computers.
Mr. Cleake gave me not only the answer I needed to be honest when selling my games but an array of explanations to very unusual things written in the boxes of these Japanese Version games. Now, everything makes so much sense, for a while I thought I was breaking the law by owning such games. As I told him, I have learned more about this subject in 3 days that in all my life and for once I feel I know more about a subject in game boy games (pirate copies) than my kids. Thanks again for having these website. Regular people like me may not understand most of what you guys/girls are saying in your website but it is very reassuring to know that you guys are willing to help us. Thanks Mr. Cleake again.
Ari
Recently C|Net wrote an article that Google felt went a little to published to much personal information about Google CEO. So in response to the article Google has deiced to ban it employees from talking to C|Net reporters for a year. I guess Google is starting to developed a bit of an ego.
If you are thinking of enjoying the fine art of Player Killing in video games, and you are under 18, you may not be able to play video games while in China. That is because China has banned underaged players from playing any games that allow Player Killing. I wonder when Jack Thompson will post his praise of China?
I’m really not sure what to make of this… but the non-profit Mozilla foundation has spawned off a corporate stepchild. It isn’t without precedent… Apache and Cygnus are similar concepts… I’m just worried that a big, public switch from an Open Source ideology to a corporate mentality will result in further mass defections to the dark side.
Just to be clear… nobody in the Open Source community has suggested that the “Open” adjective be removed, but I fear that it is coming. As these folks get more and more profitable, and thus more and more accountable to stockholders, the concept of exclusivity will get more and more attractive.
If you need any examples of this type of thing happening, just take a look at Microsoft. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, it was common knowledge that Microsoft would “never, never, ever copy protect their software". Though that is, very strictly speaking, still true, is it really true in practice? The original concept was that joe everyuser would take home a corporate copy of the software, install it on his machine and get addicted. It’s not a new strategy. It has been used by drug dealers for ages. The strategy worked… only too well. Now most corporations are so addicted to Windows that they can never break free.
Linux, Mozilla, Apache and other OSS packages were created by a dedicated community that had the high ideal of providing a publicly owned code base that everyone could build on. It would be terrible if big money started exercising control over something like that. It would be even worse if we found out that we were just fooled by a different kind of drug dealer.
The repair of the Space Shuttle Discovery appears to have gone very smoothly. All that was required to remove the strips of protruding filler was a gentle tug from a gloved hand. It would have been nice to see the astronauts show their “hacking” skills, but it is probably a lot better for everyone that the repairs turned out to be so easy. There is a remote possibility that there will be another spacewalk later this week to repair a thermal blanket that was ripped during takeoff. If that happens, I’ll be sure to keep you informed.
In true hacker fashion, astronaut Stephen Robinson is scheduled to repair the space shuttle with the tools at hand, including forceps, scissors, a hack saw, and duct tape. Lets hope that he is able to do the job without damaging the thermal tiles on Discovery. I know that everyone wants to see them have a nice, smooth return to earth.
Looks like Jack Thompson has changed targets from EA back to Take-Two He’s taking them to task over the upcoming Rockstar game “Bully". While I agree with most of the critics that bullying is a real issue and something which should not be made into a game, I still feel Rockstar has a right to make it. Just like, as consumers, we have the right not to buy it. I would also like people to just ignore the game so it gets zero press and flops.
AMD has finally announced a reasonably priced X2 as well as several other price adjustments. Hooray! Now I can look into the prospect of buying a new dual-core desktop.
Scientists in California believe they have detected the tenth planet in the solar system. According to a few web sources, The new planet has already been informally dubbed Xena, though the name and the discovery will have to be approved. You may want to wait on that name though, just yesterday, web sources were calling the new planet Sedna.
There have been several attempts to claim a 10th planet before. There was even a push to find the hypothetical planet of Vulcan, which was believed to be inside of the orbit of mercury. If this discovery turns out to be real, we’re all going to have to get used to a new solar system model.
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