Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

It isn’t often that you see a locally destructive worm anymore, but it looks like we’ll be seeing one soon. Mywife.E is set to begin corrupting files on the 3rd of every month starting now. It’s a good time to make sure that your AV software is up-to-date. Since this one is said to attack the popular types of document files, it might be a good idea to back them up on Thursday.

Experts say that Mywife.E’s impact should be low due to it’s limited circulation. However, if it strikes you, it’s impact could be devastating.

UPDATE:

It seems that this may be more prevalent than I originally thought. This Reuters article about the Kama Sutra worm appears to be a much better article about the same worm. You’ll want to make sure that you are protected.

Yup. Here we go again. Another anti-piracy nightmare is upon us. This time, Games protected by the Starforce anti-piracy stuff are causing headaches for legitimate users. It seems that the software installs 4 drivers without asking, that these drivers are required to play the game, they slow down computer operation, and that they will not automatically uninstall when the offending game is removed. The Starforce software is also blamed for opening vulnerabilities in Windows systems. Sony rootkit redux.

As usual, anyone who speaks out against the fallacy of copy protection is labeled a “pirate” and ridiculed in public by the company that sold the so called “piracy protection". I guess you can’t really blame them… the world has figured out that their product is useless, and that they should all be looking for jobs. What is the point of copy-protecting a product if someone is going to crack it and put it online anyway? About the only thing you are going to do is irritate legitimate customers. Pirates will just end up using the cracked version anyway. Does all of this sound like part of an old pattern to you?

There is a lot of talk about the Starforce thing out there. Apparently, it has been causing trouble for quite a while now. http://www.glop.org/starforce/#games appears to be a good place to research the problem.

The 2005 Razzie Award nominee list has been announced. This year, it looks like we Geeks have a little bit of a dilemna… there are 2 equally bad Sci-Fi performances that are up for the category of worst actor.

The first is Tom Cruise for his not-so-great performance in “War of the Worlds". In it, the producers found a reasonable way to update an H.G. Welles classic to match modern science. Unfortunately, they turned the lead role over to Mr. Cruise to be butchered. Tom’s performance was pretty bad, but I’ve seen him do worse.

The second is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s performance in “Doom", which I think should have been renamed “Duum". Dwayne looked more like a “the sack of pebbles” than “The Rock” in this one. I’ll never forgive them for what they did to the story… although I’ll probably buy the DVD anyway. (I know, I know. It doesn’t make sense).

I personally don’t have a favorite in this race. Whoever it is, I’ll end up laughing at them both. As for the other nominees, I didn’t see the movies, so I won’t offer any opinion. I’ll just say that it looks like a “Who’s Who” of bad acting.

Another week and another list of games coming out. Onto the list:

Curious George for the Playstation 2, PC, XBox, Gamecube and Gameboy Advance
Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d for the Nintendo DS nd Gameboy Advance
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X for the PSP
Neverend for the PC
Payout Poker and Casino for the XBox
Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop for the Nintendo DS
Ultimate Brain Games for the Nintendo DS
Ultimate Card Games for the Nintendo DS

A decent selection of games, no a list but a few games worth picking up in a few months when their price drops. Or if you are looking for a game to tide you over. My pick fort his week is: Curious George. I am looking forward to seeing how they translated the classic kids book Curious George into a game.

I’ve put up an experimental Counter-Strike: Source game server for those who like the game. I’m toying with the idea of making it part of an hourly game server rental site. This is a follow-on to the experiment last winter of running a CoD2 server, which I terminated because of all of the cheating I saw.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to rent the bandwidth for a few hours a week to help lighten the financial load of the server. I plan on keeping the number of simultaneous games to 3 or less, which should provide all players with a smooth gaming experience.

In the future, you may see announcements for additional games like BF2 and Quake4. I’ll also be putting the CoD2 server back on line, but it will remain private until Infinity Ward does something about the cheaters. If you have a request for any game that has a dedicated Linux server package available, let me know so that I can try to put it online.

Stay tuned for further details.

In case you haven’t noticed (I’m sure you did), ShamelessGeeks has fallen into a deep rut. Posts have been primarily from one person with one viewpoint and very little time to express it. I would like you (yes, you) to help me change that.

I guess that I never properly expressed the community-oriented nature of this site. It is supposed to be about Geeks posting and submitting stories of Geek interest, with other Geeks tossing in opinions on the topic. Ideally, it would have the technical posts of an Ars Technica, the reviews of a Tom’s Hardware or Firing Squad, and the front page blog of a Slashdot.

In the case of ShamelessGeeks, I wanted all of these features to be user supported and contributed, without any fees or obligations. The big difference is that this site is a moderated community site, and I’ll even help a little with article formatting and grammar. The moderation keeps the filthy-mouthed ranters from soiling the content, and the grammar assistance makes things easier to read.

BTW… I love a good rant. As long as you don’t go overboard and say something that can get me sued, have at it! I also love to see smartass comments. Give me all of those that you have!

If you would like to submit an article or a review, use the brushed-aluminum buttons on the far left of the site. If you would like to post any news articles, just sign up for the blog using the blog menu (directly to the right of the brushed-aluminum buttons). If you would like to comment on an article, just add your comment. The email address required by the comment script isn’t checked, so use a fake one if you wish to remain anonymous.

I’m currently trying to recruit new contributors for this site. If you have anything that you want to say, here is your chance. There is no pay, there are only a few rules, and you probably won’t become famous here… but the roar of the virtual crowd can be it’s own reward

– COJones

Intel claims that it has produced the first 45 nanometer chip. The new chip contains over 1 billion transistors, and is a 153MB SRAM chip. The current state-of-the-art feature size is 65 nm, and was put into production just last year.

Full scale production using the new process is scheduled to start in 2007. When it comes online, expect to see a jump in processor performance and memory density.

This should all be good news for consumers, even though it may end up as bad news for Intel’s competitors. AMD took over the performance crown from Intel a couple of years ago with their Athlon series of processors. Unfortunately for them, they are much smaller that the chip giant, and may not be able to push their manufacturing process forward as fast. The shift to smaller feature sizes may put the performance crown back on Intel’s head.

C-Net has a good article on Intel’s 45 nm process too.

China has experienced an upswing in adult diaper sales due to the upcoming New Year travel season. The diapers allow travelers to make the journey in relative comfort on trains so crowded that the bathrooms are stuffed with passengers.

It gives a whole new meaning to the term “going home". I don’t know if the trip is worth it, but the ride really stinks. Its a crappy way to travel. All of the passengers are in a pi$$y mood. I bet that train really moves! Someone stop me before I pun again.

The IDGA, the people who run E3, revised its E3 policy this year to remove sexually provocative models from the floor of E3. What this means is: no Booth babes at this years E3. The odd thing is this policy has been in effect for several years but this year IDGA decided to enforce it by adding a $5000 fine for those caught violating the policy. I guess there goes my main reason for attending E3.

As expected, ATI released its X1900 series based on the R580. I’ve dug up a few reviews online, and I find that there is a lot of opinion and a little fact. Of the ones I’ve read so far, the most detailed is the review Tom’s Hardware released today. You might also want to check out what AnandTech has to say about it, and FiringSquad’s take on the x1900.

It looks like ATI has taken the performance crown back from NVidia, although it cost them 378 million transistors to do it. It’s nice to see that there are actually X1900 cards available on launch day. Hopefully, availability will not disappear within a few weeks as has happened after some of the recent graphics card launches. Now if they can only do something about the price.

It’s interesting to note that the rumors of 48 pixel pipelines were only partially true. The chip actually has 16 pipelines but 48 pixel shaders. It’s too early for me to push an opinion either way about how the 48 shader architecture will benefit the consumer. As far as I can tell right now, there isn’t really anything out there that can take advantage of all of the shaders, but many experts think that games will be able to utilize all of that power in the near future. You can judge for yourself.

UPDATE:
Not to be outdone, the boys at ElReg have tossed their $.02 in about the X1900’s. Thanks for the pointer Rally.

According to the slashdotters, The upcoming release of Windows Vista will only allow digitally signed drivers to install. There are, of course, exceptions based on the unwillingness to update code for 32 bit versions of the OS. The digital signing will require a “free” license from Microsoft, which will require a digital certification that is currently priced at $500 per year.

Before seeing this as some kind of saviour mechanism that will stop the installation of rootkits, remember that it probably wont take hackers more than a week to crack the system. In exchange for that week of security, you will have to pay by seeing the end of open-source and shareware drivers, the loss of the ability to get around unfair DRM restrictions, and SERIOUS hardware compatibility problems.

I, for one, won’t believe any of it until I actually see it happen. Can you imagine Vista coming out to a large amount of fanfare, but only running on a small percentage of the installed PC base due to hardware compatibility issues? The whole thing would be so close to IBM’s OS2 fiasco that we would all end up with Macs running Linux. I think Microsoft knows that too.

Our weekly tradition continuities on, again this week offers a few nice games but again not much. Actual I am starting to like it that way. Onto the list:

GT Legends for the PC
Torino 2006 - the Official Video Game of the XX Olympic Winter Games for the Playstation 2 and XBox
True Swing Golf for the Nintendo DS
World War II Combat: Road to Berlin for the XBox

Not much of note this week. My pick for this week is: Torino 2006. You know it is a bad week when the game of week is Olympic game. Sadly since Epyx went under there has never been a good Olympic game since.

After a few scrubbed launches this week, the New Horizons spacecraft finally took off for Pluto yesterday. I thought it was a nice gesture for them to include some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the scientist who discovered Pluto in 1930.

It looks like Google has decided not to hand search records to the Bush administration. This action comes after some of the other big search engines (MSN, Yahoo! and AOL) gave in to the g-men and turned over unspecified search records.

I’m not one of the tin-foil hat crowd, but I think that there is something a bit nefarious about demanding search records. If, as promised, there is no personal information included in these records, exactly what information can be gained from them that can’t be found in other places? Usually, I’m a little suspicious of the actions of a big company, but this time I think Google is in the right.

AMD took a sizable chunk of the CPU marketplace from Intel last quarter. It’s about time that AMD got a large piece of this pie, considering that their chips have outperformed Intel for a few years straight. It’s always good to see someone rewarded for exceptional products.

As for fans of Intel… Don’t get too down. Intel’s latest releases didn’t beat AMD in performance yet, but they seem to indicate that chipzilla is back on track. It may not be long before they are back in contention for the performance lead.

This time, the planned launch to Pluto was scrubbed by a power failure at the MD lab that will be running the mission. Sooner or later they will have to launch. Hopefully, it is before I run out of jokes about Mickey Mouse’s dog.

Scientists in London have recently indicated that men actually enjoy seeing cheaters get a mild electrical shock. Men don’t have any empathy for the cheater, and indications are that they feel a little rewarded. They do, however, empathize with an honest player who is unjustly shocked.

Well, I could have told you the part about men enjoying the show, but the fact that women don’t is a bit surprising. This whole thing gives me a great idea for an add-on to punkbuster. Wouldn’t it be great to zap some guy who you caught with a wall hack? Unfortunately, it could never be applied to CoD2… the number of cheaters in that game would overload the power grid and cause a nationwide blackout.

Well, we knew it was happening, but here is a little data about how much PC game sales shrunk in 2005. The main culprit seems to be WoW, even though it sold more than anyone. The fault is being directed toward the fact that more and more people are spending large amounts of time playing online MMORPG’s, which leaves them less time (and desire) to purchase games on CD-ROM.

One other interesting thing: The other top games mentioned in the article are both Sims 2 titles, meaning that the top three doesn’t include any of the traditional macho FPS games. Maybe the gaming industry should take the hint.

Research In Motion tried to halt the upcoming injunction against blackberry by claiming public safety problems, but there hasn’t been any ruling yet. It looks like patent troll NTP will end up getting some sort of settlement from RIM, despite the fact that the USPTO may throw out the patents at the heart of the case. (and patent lawyers wonder why everyone equates them with toilet bowl scrapings)

Someday, the USPTO will come to it’s senses about what kind of damage the current IP laws are causing. When that day comes, I’ll ride my unicorn home, where I’ll use my bug-free version of Windows to play Duke Nukem Forever.

After years of development and testing, the F22A Raptor has finally been cleared for deployment. It’s nice to see the military spend 20 years developing something that they can actually use. It’s a far better outcome than what happened to the Comanche program.

The scientific quacks at Clonaid offered disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk a job. Much as that sounds like the punchline to a bad science joke, it actually seems to have happened. You remember Clonaid… The UFO cult that claims to have cloned humans but refuses to prove it.

My guess is that, since Clonaid has never offered any concrete proof of their assertions, they need someone to make it up for them. Who better than Hwang Woo-suk?

Researchers in Ottawa have found that web users decide whether they like the looks of a web page in less than a blink of the eye. or around 1/20th of a second. It really doesn’t matter how long they stare at it afterward, the opinion stays the same. It also doesn’t matter whether they are shown the same page a second time… the opinion stays constant. Now if only they would tell me exactly what I can do to avoid putting people off, I’d be happy.

Since you’ve gotten this far, I’ll take it that you like old pipes.

Today’s planned launch of the New Horizons probe bound for Pluto was postponed due to high winds. The earliest chance to try again is tomorrow afternoon, though the weather doesn’t look promising. If the probe isn’t launched by Valentine’s day, then the mission may get postponed until 2015.

BTW… You didn’t think I was referring to Mickey Mouse’s dog getting a bath, did you?

A bit more then last week but not as much as this time last year. Onto the list of games coming out this week:

25 to Life for XBox, Playstation 2 and XBox
Ape Escape Academy for the PSP
Ape Escape 3 for the Playstation 2
MVP 06 NCAA Baseball for the XBox, Playstation 2
MX vs. ATV Unleashed for the PC
Samurai Showdown V for the XBox (delayed from last week)
Zooo for the Gameboy Advance

Again not a lot coming out this week, however we have a couple of note.

Ape Escape 3 and Ape Escape Academy: For all you Escape lovers out there, all two of you, you get not one but two Ape Escape games. Ape Escape 3 is a platformer. While Ape Escape Academy is a collection of mini games. Ape Escape is played out so don’t expect much from either

25 to Life: Finally a game that lets you play cops and robbers online. Get ready for loud over cries about this game.

My game of the week is: 25 to Life. I have been waiting forever since Battlefield 1942 came out for a good multiplayer cops and robber game. Finally some one did it and it looks like it is fun from what I have heard. For all my readers in the Washington DC area, I have a gaming buy tip for you. The Toy R Us in Tyson Corner is shutting down and is offer video games at 20% off the list price. You are not going find a bargain like that for a long time again. I picked up a bunch of games today but they had tons and tons of games still on the shelves. Include some must haves like Killer 7 and the Bible Game.

In another bone head move, that disregards our first amendment rights, Congress has passed a bill that makes it against the law to annoy someone via the Internet. This bill would make flaming against the law. I guess also trolling is now banned.

It looks like the people of Minnesota will once again have a strange list of candidates to chose from. This time, they will have a a self proclaimed vampire running for governor of Minnesota. This vampire has also been a pro wrestler, just like the one they elected in 1998.

It won’t make much of a difference. Nearly all current politicians are leeches anyway. It’s really just a case of trading one blood sucker for another.

CNet has a story about people afraid that Windows XP support would end this year. It was always my understanding that Microsoft stopped supporting OS’s 5 years after they were released. This appears to have changed to “2 years after a successor is released".

When XP finally gets deprecated, I suspect that there will be a big outcry about the proliferation of viruses. It’s probably a valid complaint, but won’t do any good. Microsoft’s argument will be that they shouldn’t have to support a product forever… which is equally valid.

A Michigan man has been charged with intentionally sickening 3 people with a handshake while in court. Funny… I thought that the only way to get sick in court was to shake hands with a lawyer

Thunderbird 1.5 has been officially released to the public. This is a much better situation than what happened in November, when rumors of a release were far more real than the actual software.

I’ve used the Linux version of Thunderbird since the 0.8 beta many moons ago. It’s a great program if all you want is an email interface. I have no experience with 1.5 yet, but I’ll let everyone know if I find any problems.

It warmed my heart today to see an article about King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp recording sounds for Windows Vista. Is this a signal that Windows Vista will be geared toward a more adult crowd? It would be a welcome change from the targeting of XP (which I have been known to refer to as BarneyOS). Hopefully, they’ll get rid of that annoying little mongrel that slows down searches too!

You gotta give Candace Dickinson a lot of credit for cleverness and guts. She tried to get out of an HOV violation by claiming her unborn fetus as a passenger. Luckily, the judge was able to get around the whole question of whether a fetus is a person and avoid what is currently the most emotionally charged issue in the country. Can you imagine the whole abortion rights question being decided in traffic court?

This isn’t totally unexpected, but Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has won the People’s Choice award for best film. A lot of die-hard fans of the “original” trilogy have found ways to disparage this film, but I thought is was very good. I rate it as second best of all 6 films, right behind The Empire Strikes Back. Unlike Lester Haines, who wrote the article for TheRegister, I don’t believe that Episodes I - III are bad just because Episode V was so good.

Of course, this is only my opinion, and I welcome those who disagree to post their views.

The Story of the one-eyed kitten may or may not be a hoax, but the picture is so bizarre I just had to link it in. Go ahead and check it out. I’ll wait here….

Back already? Good. The only thing I can say is that I’m glad that the corpse of the unfortunate little kitten will not be appearing on eBay. I thought of a few other choice remarks, but none were fit to post

It looks like the USPTO is trying to do something about the indefensible mess that our patent system has turned into by requesting help from the OSS community.

Though I wish them all of the luck in the world, this initiative seems like it is doomed to failure.

First of all, you have an entire industry composed primarily of lawyers and other useless types who have made a fortune off of suing legitimate software efforts. These people won’t go away quietly. You can bet that they have already figured out how to use this to their advantage.

Second: What software guy is going to be able to sift through the mounds of legalese that compose a patent application to figure out whether there is anything like prior art? If you have ever had to read a patent application, you know what I mean. If you haven’t… try it some day.

Third: none of this will solve the real problem. Patents were originally an attempt to foster the advance of technology by giving the inventor and his backers a way to recoup development costs. Instead, they have morphed into weapons used to bludgeon any little guy with a new idea. The current advance of technology means that we can no longer continue to drag this IP anchor if we expect to keep up with foreign competition.

In what has become a tech industry joke, it looks like the yearly rumor about Dell and AMD is starting again. Some day, this may actually become true… but the “deal” has fallen through so many times that I would discard the fact quickly when thinking about the price of a stock. This seems to happen every time that Dell wants to re-negotiate prices with Intel… and it seems to work VERY well. It’s just a shame for Stephen Shankland that he was the one to fall for it this time. It would have been fine if he had mentioned all of the previous rumors.

This is the second C-NET article in as many days that contains a major rookie error. Yesterday, Joris Evers made a howling error by agreeing that the recent WMF bug was “a new breed of bug", then pointing out that it was similar to the problems with MS Office files in the past. Apparently, everyone has forgotten all of the DCOM and ActiveX bugs, Outlook exploits, image file exploits from the past, etc. Many of these were caused by features that include the ability to run code in “unintended ways".

What the heck is happening at C-NET? Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy.

According to the academic panel investigating it, Hwang Woo-suk fabricated data to support the findings of his stem cell research. This means that the man who became a South Korean hero last summer did so by hoodwinking the entire scientific community. It’s sad too see this kind of thing.

Woo-suk’s prior claim of creating the first dog clone seems to be true so far. After having contributed that much to the science of cloning, committing such an act is just a shame. He has not only destroyed his own reputation, his actions will be used to cast doubt on all cloning and stem cell breakthroughs for quite a while to come.

That is… the performance cooks, not the components. If you are looking for something completely different in a PC case mod, check out what happened when Tom’s Hardware immersed their FX-55 in 8 gallons of cooking oil. They managed to accomplish the task, but I notice that they didn’t publish any of the performance results. It also looks like the potential for leaks will scare away most potential modders. Still… it is certainly an interesting concept.

The dry period after Christmas is starting to thaw and finally we have a couple games coming out. On to the list:

Wild Arms 4 for the Playstation 2
Mega Man X Collection for the Playstation 2 and Gamecube
Diner Dash for the PC
PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient for the PSP
Samurai Showdown V for the XBox
Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS
Nicktoons Unite! for the Nintendo DS

Wow a total seven new games this week. A lot of note worthy games so onto my comments:

Diner Dash: I played the demo of this game last night. Enjoyed it but the gameplay reminds me a lot of the old an Apple game I used to play. It has been out on the web for a while and even has a clone. Hopefully Gamelabs will port it to the Nintendo DS. This game would make a great budget/casual game for the Nintendo DS.

Mega Man X Collection: At thirty dollars you are getting a huge collection of Mega Man X games that would cost you over $100 to $200 to collect.

Electroplankton: After reading the press release about this game I am not even sure it could be called a game. Most are calling it a music synthesizers, but Nintendo is calling it a new music instrument. It will be interesting to see what video game bands do with it but I doubt I will be able to do much with it. Still it is so novel that I am picking a copy up when it hits stores this week.

My pick for this week is: Electroplankton. I know it may not even be a game but it just may be part of the next evolution of gaming.

It looks like geeks and gamers are beginning to get more and more clout in the automotive industry. According to Reuters, Nissan has embedded an XBox 360 in it’s Urge sports card prototype. To make things even more fun, the steering wheel and pedals become XBox input devices when the car is not running.

Oh great. Go ahead and blur the lines between Burnout and the real world. Luckily, all of my cars are cheap enough to make poor targets.

The biggest High-Tech news for this week has to be CES 2006 now running in Las Vegas. Since our budget is too small to allow for cross-country travel (can’t afford anything more than a cup of coffee, and only if it’s free) I decided that I’d just post a link to C-NET’s CES 2006 coverage and be done with the whole thing. This way, readers can belly-up to the buffet and pick their own stories of interest.

Of course, if anything we see in there is worthy of a geeky wisecrack, we won’t hesitate to duplicate the coverage. In addition, all geeks are invited to post their own wisecracks, as long as they are no worse than PG rated.

Michigan Law Abuse Watch (M-LAW) has released it’s list of the wackiest warning labels. Though the site appears to be nothing more than an attempt to publicize an upcoming book, it might be worth checking out.

Unfortunately, my favorites were not in the running. You have to be a real geek to consider “Intel Inside” and “Microsoft Certified” as valid warning labels. Oh well, maybe next year.

Just thought you’d like to know… this is the 1000th post to Shamelessgeeks.com. That’s not bad for a couple of guys making occasional posts for 1.5 years. Now, If I could only talk a few more of you into making regular posts.

It has been a long time since I answer reader mail. Excuse me search strings since we do not get any reader mail. Except for that lady who wanted to know about fake Nintendo games. And the Stubbs the Zombie PR person. But the rest of you readers could not be bothered. So again I left answer what you guys searched for that lead you to this site. Still it would be nice to get some reader mail. So send me some to leakenova at yahoo com. Better yet just post something.

On to your questions:

wsyp video?
If you mean the We Share Your Pain video from Microsoft? Go here for that. For some odd reason I do not think Microsoft really shares your pain.

home shooting involving children?
Great another thing to blame on video games. I blame Barney for all violence.

tamagotchi secert code?
Give it up. You know you are going starve your pet to death once you discover Nintendogs.

gamestop trade-in value for gauntlet?
50 cents

harvest moon: a wonderful life special edition heart cutscenes?
Here is a little hint on how to see them, buy the game. Next!

ps2 tony hawk american wasteland glitch unable to finish mission?
Save your money and buy Tony Hawk Underground or Tony Hawk 4.

secret codes for marvel nemesis?
You had to go and point out that I have failed in my mission to save you from crappy games. For the love of god stop buying crap.

what is the cost of empireearth2 in kmart?
$50.00 like it is at ever other shop.

smurfageddon?
You mean UNICEF video that showed just how sick every boys childhood fantasy of watching a village of Smurfs being nuked is? And enjoyable too.

the last development in marxism?
They discovered a little thing called capitalism. You can now buy coffee mugs and T-shirts on their web site.

any xbox 360s available in sulphur springs texas?
I saw a few at this place called EBay.

be able to unblur the sims?
Go buy a Barbie doll you perv.

dave chappelle addicted to starcraft?
I thought it was his World of Warcraft addiction that set him into Rehab.

how to unblur naked people in the sims 2 for psp?
You perv just do not give up. Once you unblur them the Sims look like freakish Barbie dolls.

meijers bratz dance mat?
Why do you torment me like this with your constant requests for crappy games. Would you rather see a video of me watching a William Shanter poetry reading? Is that enough torment for you?

sims 2 gamecube unblur?
Good lord Jack do you give up. I keep telling you once they are unblurred they look like Barbie dolls.

sudoku electronic handheld game touch screen?
Good idea, I think Mastiff is working on one for the Nintendo DS. If not I am sure by years end someone will make a Sudoko game for the Nintendo DS. Just don’t tell my wife.

12 days of Christmas and yugioh?
Why does this sound like a real bad idea?

dog laughter mp3?
No clue, but I am sure you can find it in Nintendogs.

sims university how to unblur graphics?
Give it up you prev. Never mind the code is ……

cheats for sims 2 gamecube nude unblur?
Okay you win. Here is the code: “Call or email Jack Thompson and ask him.”

boycott gun activision?
Simple don’t buy the game. Better yet buy it used if you still want to play the game. This way you don’t give your money to Activision.

cod2 hacks?
You have serious balls asking us that question. COD 2 really needs a punk buster.

david freeman acp?
I think this will answer all your questions about David Freeman. His vintage collection of computers is one of the biggest and coolest on this earth.

rayman 64 tv commercial?
Finnally a question about a good game. No clue but I am sure the guys vga muesum could help you out.

2005’s goriest game?
2004’s was easy it was BloodRayne 2 hands down. This year it is a little tougher. I would have to go with Resident Evil 4.

zoo tycoon ds clues to deleting animals?
Turn your stylus upside down and rub the top screen of your DS for a minute. If that does not work, jump up and down doing the hokey pokey while singing into the DS microphone I am a little tea pot. If all else fails go to Gamefaqs.

best character dead or alive 4?
The one that kicks real high.

cod2 wall hacks?
Oh shameless I think we have found your cheater.

do the ducks lay eggs on harvest moon a wonderful life special?
Do bears take dumps in the woods?

do you need to swap discs for dynasty warriors 5:xtreme legends?
If you are having a problem any Dynasty Warrior game. Return it and get another Dynasty Warrior game. Any version is fine, they are all the same.

big torrent shameless?
Huh?

On that note, I hope that answered all your questions. Join us again in a few months when “We Answer the Search String.”

I thought CNET was supposed to be a “high tech” news outlet. So why are they warning about a practice that has been used for years?

In a recent post News.com.com brought up the evil specter of companies using blogosphere “shills” to promote their own products and pan the competitors. Anyone who has read more than 1 blog in the past few years knows that this has become common practice. Between the sweetheart advertising deals and the direct purchase of blog space, this whole concept has been done to death. The only problem I see with the whole thing is that CNET is just catching on. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide what that implies.

Intel has slipped out price lists for it’s new “Core” CPU lineup a few days ahead of the official announcement. Go ahead and check out the pricing, and we’ll see if anything changes when the chips are announced. I’ll post something after the official word is released.

There is a lot of buzz about the possible announcement of a Google branded PC. You can find mention on a few online rags, but they all seem to point back to this Jan. 1 article in the LA Times. We’ll see about whether this one actually happens. Seems less than likely, but I’ve been wrong before.

As far as I can tell from the widely varying articles out there, speculation is that Google will sign an agreement with a major distributor (Wal-Mart is most often mentioned) to distribute a very basic, Internet-capable PC running on a Google-designed Linux variant.

An intriguing idea, but not quite original. (anyone remember Lindows… er… Linspire?) Even if this rumor turns out to be true, it is likely to go no further than any of the previous attempts.

Games coming out this week: Nothing, zip, nada. Not even Dead or Alive 4 which Team Ninja manged to get on shelves last Thursday. Next week should be better with at least 3 or 4 games scheduled to come out.

I just ran across this year’s list of banished words as dictated by tiny little Lake Superior State University. The one thing I noticed about these words is that none of them are from the world of high-tech! C’mon… If any sector of this country has overused terms that deserve to be banished, it is the tech sector. Probably the next worst bunch would be gamers (pwned anyone?).

OK… That does it… Time for a list of banned techie words to come out. If you have any nominations, tack them on to this post as comments, or send them to webmaster@shamelessgeeks.com. Let me know why you think the word or phrase deserves banishment, and let me know who you are if you want your name included in the credits for the entry.

Early this year I was reporting to watch out for a FUD coming from Sony once the XBox 360 launched. Well the XBox 360 launch came and went and still no FUD from Sony. I was shocked this did not happen, until I saw this article from Kotaku. The answer is simple: the Playstation 3 is not yet ready for a March launch nor any of its games. Hence no FUD.
Also this article hints at what we here at Shamelessgeeks thought from the get go. The Playstation 3, contray to previous rumors, is hard as hell to program on. I was shocked to see it took industry people that long to figure that little fact out. Then again most Video Game programers, execs, bloggers and journalist are NOT computer programers. While we at Shameless are.