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I am a Culturalist
By greywar
Posted Tuesday, August 03, 2004 on The Word from the Geekside
Discussion: Politics
little whip had a very
interesting and provocative article here which I didn’t catch up to until
the thread had been Godwin’d
several times over. Frankly many of the hysterical screeds that people were
passing off as comments to her well written and honest article made me wish I
had more trolling ratings to hand out every day.
While I do most often find myself in
groups that consists mostly of whites (hmmm out of 9 people in my van 5 are
white, 1 is Choctaw, 1 is black, 1
is mixed, and one is Middle Eastern of some nature…still the group is mostly
white) I am certainly not uncomfortable around non-white folks. I have lived
almost half my adult life in Asia and have dealt with non-whites everyday of my
Army career with very little friction despite coming from an area of the country
that is damn near exclusively white (they don’t call it the Great White North
for nothing).
I remember distinctly having my
first real conversation with a black man at Basic Training, it went like this :
(honest accounting, but I will put on my flame suit anyways)
PVT McCune “Hey man, can I have that last piece
of fried chicken?”
PVT Greywar “Sure, I want the roast beef
anyways.”
PVT McCune “Cool, I can’t help myself when it
comes to fried chicken.” (looks at me expectantly)
PVT Greywar
“Why?” (had never heard the stereotype)
PVT McCune
“Because I’m black yo!” (puzzled that I didn’t get it)
I did have several encounters during
basic training with something that did make me feel uncomfortable though…. A
culture, not a race. The culture of Me-ism. The culture that said that no-one
else in the world has any right to any consideration whatsoever. These were the
folks who would not shut up at night after a long day of Basic with an early
morning the next day unless you got out of your bunk and beat their ass or at
least made a convincing threat to do so. This was the culture that said it is
ok to talk on your fucking phone during a movie, or to play your stereo
at jet engine levels in the barracks at 2 a.m., or to treat local citizens like
retards because you would be leaving the country in 12 months or less, or to
demand that they be allowed to do less work than other people in the platoon.
Who were the perpetrators of these
offenses? That hated group the Inner City-ites. Generally speaking these
folks were in fact non-white but only generally. I immediately ran into white
folks with the exact same problems from this same origin : the American Inner
City.
This exposure was greatly lessened
as I left Basic Training to attend language training at the Defense Language
Institute. This school was overwhelmingly white in the 1990’s and the
non-whites I met were by and large considerate of others.
By the time I was in my second Korea
tour however my larger exposure to this culture of Me-ism has once again
planted the seeds of doubt in my mind. These doubts were banished by my buddy
Roy and airframe mechanic for Avtel
(the maintainers for the RC-7 aircraft). Roy and his wife are from the Bahamas
(she has the accent he doesn’t) and are both black. He and I were drinking beer
and watching the news at his house when some news piece ran with totally
ridiculous commentary from a rapper about how he needed his “props” and that
the “man” was keeping his “peeps” down. Roy face screwed up like he had just
smelled something awful and he said “These goddamn American Blacks give all the
rest of the world’s blacks a bad name!” I took he opportunity to tell him that
I didn’t think it was the blacks exactly but the inner-city hip-hop culture that
was responsible. I pointed out that we both had American black friends who did
not act this way and eventually he agreed with me.
Am I more comfortable in the company
of whites? No, but I am more comfortable in the company of people who
are not self-centered retards. Little whip made no bones about this in her
article. She made it clear that it was not that all blacks were bad but that
the majority of the one she had met in the inner city were culturally
incompatible with her. For stating this honestly her blog was inundated with
half-witted replies and accusations of Nazism.
Let me make this clear,
anyone who Godwin’s
this article will be permanently blacklisted and the offending comment will be
deleted after getting a trolling rating. This is my blog and these are my
rules. If you feel the need to tell me I am a Nazi or to photoshop me into a
Grand Dragon of the KKK outfit do it on your own blog.
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More than you probably wanted to know...
By Draginol
Posted Monday, August 02, 2004 on Opinionated Techie
Discussion: OS CustomizationThe Windows Media Player team still just doesn't get it. Or maybe they get it but their managers don't. I'm playing around with Windows Media Player 10 tech beta and it still has the basic flaws that every skinnable version of media player has had: It can't decide what it wants to be.
 
Is it a regular Windows app or a custom one? Wow, two title bars on one app. And it's still confusing to a dumb guy like me how to actually select the skin. It should be way more obvious and those skins should affect the main app as well.
I keep finding myself back with iTunes even though it's technically not skinnable because at least it knows what it is. And as a practical matter though, it IS skinnable.
If you have the DesktopX 2.2 beta (available to those who have Object Desktop) just download the widget and you can just run it as a regular program. This is the part of DesktopX Stardock needs to really beat into people -- widgets don't have to be run as part of the DesktopX environment. You can install DesktopX and NEVER run it. You can just load up widgets like any other program. The widget infrastructure in DesktopX is pretty ingenious, it works basically as if you installed an OS upgrade framework. It's more akin to the .NET framework except it's much smaller and more targeted and has no overhead and it doesn't throw anything into your Windows directories. It's very self-contained. That will be the drum we'll be beating loudly when DesktopX 2.2 comes out. DesktopX widgets are EXEs. You run them like any other program.
Meanwhile the WinCustomize V4 stuff is coming along. At launch, each WinCustomize subscribers will be able to activate a home page. Amongst all the other goodies such as being able to upload personal images (albums) the site will track all kinds of stuff for users. Eventually Object Desktop users will also be able to activate home pages once we roll it out (i.e. having a WinCustomize domain will become part of the benefits for having an Object Desktop subscription as well but at first it'll be available only for WC subscribers). WinCustomize subscribers will get personal libraries to upload many more personal images.
Here are some of the incidentals:
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Statistics to be displayed for users:
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Downloads Total # (rank) Along with an itemization of each section they have something in (if 0 then don’t list)
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Article Points (rank)
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Tutorial points (rank) (tutorials being just a particular category of article)
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Forum Points (rank) (Forums being a subset of the articles : General + OS Customization + Personal Computing
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Itemization of Forums (and rank)
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Skin Comments # (rank)
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Average Rating (in stars) [Rank] (1 to 1.5 stars = “Harsh Critic” 2 stars to 3.5 stars “Reasonable Critic” 4 stars to 5 stars “Easy critic”
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Visitors to Home Page (rank)
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Number of Sites referring to <username.wincustomize.com> # (rank)
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Number of sites referring to articles # (rank)
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Number of referrals to all articles total # (rank)
Medals/AWARDS:
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Top 50,10,3,2,1 Skinner in Downloads
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Top 50,10,3,2,1 Skinner in WC downloads
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Top 50,10,3,2,1 Article Points
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WinCustomize Subscriber
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Top 10,3,2,1 Commenter
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Top 3 in various categories in downloads
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Top 10,3,2,1 in tutorials
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Top 10,3,2,1 in home page visitors
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Top 10,3,2,1 in subscribers
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Top 10,3,2,1 in referring sites
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Top 10,3,2,1 in referras
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Medals: yearling (1 year), veteran (2 years), Elder (3 years or more)
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Skinner: Has total downloads >1000 on skins.
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Featured Skinner: Has had skin featured.
In posts in forums or anywhere else their name shows up, IF they have a medal, of any kind, a single small 16x16 icon shows up with a link that says “Awards” that when clicked on takes you to an Awards page. |
Basically we will be doing a lot to try to give kudos to people who contribute to the community. As you can imagine, all these statistics and other technologies will require a lot of horse power. Which is why subscribers will get first crack at using all this and why we're doing it all in .NET. The development team has come up with a sort of multithreaded architecture for WinCustomize 4's .NET portions. For instance, normally when something gets uploaded or changed you have to wait for everything to be saved before continuing. Now, the site will come back to you instantly while it does its work in the background. We won't have the forums in .NET right away but that'll be where you'll see the benefit the most. Well, that's not really true, the biggest places you'll see it is in commenting on skins.
You'll notice that there's a lot of kudos for people who comment on skins. Those will come in the form of commenting points. Moderators will have the ability to tweak those points (i.e. if someone is spamming the system we'll be able to tweak it or if someone leaves really high quality comments we can boost their points too but in either case it'll only be in extreme cases, we won't generally be touching points ourselves but rather letting the system do its job).
The look of the site is going to be totally different than it is today (and that screenshot isn't necessarily what it will look like). Paul Boyer and the rest of the Stardock graphics design team are going to mockup what they imagine the perfect steam-lined but aesthetically pleasing looking content intensive site would look like and then the coders will run with it. BTW, for those who made it this far, as a little sneak peek, IconX is available.
Meanwhile, in the personal tech support area, in IE, my edit menu item is grayed out even though I use Front Page as my editor. No idea why it's no longer working but definitely very annoying. If anyone has any ideas (and I've checked in tools-options and Front Page is associated) comment here please.
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I only got 3 hours last night...
By Zoomba
Posted Monday, August 02, 2004 on The Random Thoughts of a Bored Geek
Discussion: PC Gaming
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id Software, Official Release
Aug. 3rd, 2004 |
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Introduction
id Software is the grandfather of the First Person Shooter genre. They're
also the pioneers of PC 3D graphics, always pushing the envelope of what
the home computer is capable of in terms of increasingly realistic computer
graphics. The Doom games hold a very special place in the hearts of gamers
around the world who were around for the early days of PC gaming, when
you had to know how to tweak the memory usage of DOS to squeeze out that
extra 5K needed to load a game. These games transported us into a new
world, one filled with evil demons that needed to be introduced to the
business end of a double barrel shotgun. We were seeing graphics and exploring
worlds that had previously been left to geeks in large machine rooms with
access to really sophisticated simulation software and very powerful computers.
Doom spawned Quake 1,2 and 3, the games whose engines launched a thousand
other titles... and whose violence launched a thousand angry protests
and attempts to make laws controlling video games. There's no doubt regarding
the influence Doom and id have had over computer gaming. Now, after four
years of development we have the next game from id, Doom 3, a retelling
of the original Doom story (well, there never was really a story to begin
with aside from "Demons are invading Mars, you are the ONLY one who
can stop them... here's a pistol and a armor vest, have fun") and
a brand new 3D engine for developers to drool over and purchase licenses
for to develop new games with. (I'm sorry, while the Quake 3 engine was
great, I'm tired of seeing games using it, I want newer visuals). But
the question is, is the game a stinker or a winner?
First Impressions
Doubtless by now you've seen the flood of screenshots, previews,
first impressions and wild speculation pieces that have been appearing
all over the 'net in the past few weeks, at least since the release
date was officially announced. And now that the official release
is but a day away (with many stores accidentally selling copies
a few days ahead of schedule we're seeing a flood of screenshots
and forum posts about the game. Doom 3 is being hailed as the savior
of the PC games market by some, ridiculed by others for just being
another uninspired shooter, but one thing everyone agrees on is
the fact that this is the most advanced graphics tech we've seen
in a game yet. Every screenshot and demo movie released has blown
viewers away. Even the early alpha build leaked to the net over
a year ago looked damn good (despite the fact that it wasn't optimized
and ran very slow on everything but the best of systems). So, after
four long years of waiting, what has id given us? Have they delivered
on their promises by giving us a scary, immersion singleplayer experience
that is reminiscent of a good horror movie, or is this merely a
tech demo for the new engine?
After playing the game until the wee hours of the morning, and
then again when I woke up after a mere 3 hours of sleep, what I've
seen so far definitely shows that what we have on our hands is an
actual game from id, and not just a demo for their new engine like
the previous Quake games seemed to be. What we have here is a fully
modeled and intricately detailed Mars base with everything from
mechanics working on broken pipes, to employees lounging in common
areas, to video units showing everything from company PR pieces
to full news broadcasts. Staff members go about their duties regardless
of whether or not you're there to watch, and there's a good chance
you won't see half of them in the introduction level as they may
just keep moving a few rooms ahead of you. Add in emails, video
discs and PDAs you pick information up from over the course of the
game, and you find yourself in a very believable world... it's a
damn shame that everything has to go to hell in a hand basket so
quickly. I wanted to explore more of the complex in peace and quiet
first. |
Yes, the environments look that good, no image trickery
here
Source: Official Doom 3 Website
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This guy scared the CRAP out of me the first time
I encountered him in game... I was so scared I forgot to shoot for
a second or two... It almost chewed me to death
Source: Official Doom 3 Website
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Word has it that id hired a professional
Sci-Fi writer to craft the story and dialogue spread liberally throughout
the game. It paid off in spades as we're given a narrative that
is woven into the game environment itself, only forcing you out
to watch pre scripted story moments on rare occasion, keeping you
immersed in the experience as much as possible. Add to the high
quality script the fact that the voice acting is also top-notch,
with a bad guy who has perhaps the creepiest voice I've ever heard
in a video game (he's the guy responsible for everything going to
hell... literally.. he's just crazy that way and the glass eye definitely
adds to the whole creepy factor). Combine this with the visually
detailed world and you've got a compelling, engrossing environment
that makes you want to just keep playing.
This brings me to scripted events. Normally, we look down on developers
that statically script events, saying it's a weakness in good AI
and creativity. We want games that react to us intelligently to
our actions, changing as we change our tactics. Having an enemy
come from the same direction at the same time every time you play
through a particular part of a level tends to bore us now. So you
would think the fact that EVERYTHING in Doom 3 is scripted and tightly
directed from enemy attacks to when and where you can go in the
game would be a major detractor. It's not. In the same way that
HalfLife captured us with its cinematic experience from the opening
tram ride into Black Mesa to the very end. The same holds true for
Doom 3. This game is seriously like taking part in a good sci-fi
horror film, where you're the lone hero running with gun in hand
to save the world from the minions of hell itself. (Think Aliens
meets Event Horizon). The events are well timed, and some of them
will make you jump out of your chair. This is a game that needs
to be played late at night with all the lights off for the full
effect.
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Graphics, sound, scripting, and writing come together to offer
us a game experience like we haven't seen before. In terms of game
mechanics, it's a FPS, no doubt about it and it doesn't do much
to revolutionize the genre at its core, but then again id Software
hasn't bothered with that for a while now, their talent comes in
further refining the expertly crafted formula they developed over
a decade ago. While it's a FPS, it's not a run and gun fight hordes
of enemies game like others on the market. The experience is more
tightly controlled and you rarely face off gainst more than a few
monsters at a time. This works well though as I'm sure even the
beefiest of machines would buckle under the load of a screen full
of moving demons in addition to all the environmental effects present
in every room of the game.
Now, it's not all roses and puppies, the game has some hefty requirements
and it can force even the best gaming rigs to choke at times. Initial
level load times can be long and drawn-out if your hard drive is
at all fragmented or if you're running on a slower speed drive.
You have to be very careful with visual settings depending on your
video card and system memory. While the game is built to run well
on lower end systems, you lose a lot of the eye candy that makes
this game stand out so much. I strongly suggest everyone looking
to buy the game checks out [H]ardOCPs Doom 3 Hardware guide to get
an idea of what thier PC will be able to handle. This is another
one of those games that will send gamers scrambling to upgrade some
of their aging hardware, and in this case you'll be well rewarded
for your decision.
Doom 3 is a solid game in all respects, it offers a tight experience
that is expertly crafted and shows immense production values. The
engine does things we've never seen in real-time on a PC, and promises
great things once other developers start to license the engine for
their own games. Can you imagine a Jedi Knight game with Doom 3's
visual splendor? It makes me weak in the knees just thinking about
it...
-Z
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For anyone who's wondering how it ran on my rig, here are my
specs and my thoughts on how it ran. I don't have specific framerate
numbers to share though..
Dell XPS Gen 2
Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT
1GB RAM
AT Radeon 9800XT 256MB
SB Audigy 2
I ran at high quality, 1024x768 res. Full AF, no AA, all the
other goodies turned on. On a few occassions I got a bit of stutter
when I was in a room that had windows viewing the outside landscape,
or if too much was moving on the screen at any given time. But those
moments were few and far between. Otherwise the experience was largely
smooth, I didn't notice any real performance problems, and even
the lack of AA didn't impact me much. I have what is considered
a mid-range setup for the game and I had a stellar experience and
was only excluded from using AA and the ultra-high detailed textures.
I may try upping the settings later to see how I fare.
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Obviously they don't have the Atkins Diet in Hell...
Maybe these demons are all misunderstood? Perhaps they're not here
to invade, they just came for their weekly Weight Watchers meeting
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Kerry's demands for rapid implementation of 911 commission should concern you...
By Draginol
Posted Monday, August 02, 2004 on Opinionated Techie
Discussion: DemocratKerry is demanding Bush implement the 9/11 commissions's recommendations immediately. This should scare you. Why?
Because under the commission's design, the new intelligence czar would be part of the President's cabinet and have an office in the white house. You sure you want that? You sure you want some combined FBI/CIA master ultra intelligence czar to be working in the white house with relatively little oversight? Because that's what Kerry is demanding.
Bush, by contrast, seems to be taking a more measured approach. Today he announced the support of the creation of a director of all intelligence but does not want it to be in the President's cabinet nor have its office in the white house. A pretty prudent move I'd say.
One has to wonder about the ethics of a man whose constinuents are paranoid about Ashcroft but is now pushing to rush the implementation of something that could, in the hands of the wrong man, be something that could do real harm to freedom in America.
When the ACLU and George W. Bush are on the same side on something, that should tell you something.
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U.S. Shows Persistence of Institutionalized Racism
By Robert Guinness
Posted Sunday, August 01, 2004 on Guinness Daily
Discussion: Current EventsInteresting article copied from my local paper:
Deal for black farmers falls short
By SHAILA K. DEWAN
New York Times
08/01/2004
Thousands miss out
on landmark accord
STARKVILLE, Miss. - R.L. Stevenson was bundled into a recliner, a bowl of prescription medicine bottles at his elbow. At 79, he can no longer work his farm here in Oktibbeha County, about 150 miles northeast of Jackson, Miss.
An African-American, Stevenson is a farmer who toiled for decades at near-subsistence levels - buying used equipment and dairy cows past their prime - with little of the government support that white farmers received.
"I've been farming now for 70-some years," he said. "And I didn't do too much progress in that time."
Stevenson expected to benefit from the landmark 1999 class-action settlement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which acknowledged decades of "indifference and blatant discrimination" against blacks in its lending programs. When the settlement was approved, the judge hailed it as the biggest civil rights award in U.S. history, estimating that $2 billion would be paid out to blacks.
The claims process was to be swift and "virtually automatic," the judge, Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court in Washington, wrote. Most of the claimants were to receive $50,000 each and $12,500 for taxes on that amount.
Five of Stevenson's sons received the money on the ground that they had been rebuffed by the Agriculture Department in the 1980s. But Stevenson, like the vast majority of those who submitted claims, was rejected.
His case illustrates the failures of a claims process that even the judge said had fallen far short of what he envisioned. Thousands of claims have been denied for a tangle of reasons including tight deadlines and late submissions, lawyers' bungling and, perhaps most significantly, the resistance of the Agriculture Department, which critics say has used technicalities to deny farmers a hard-won remedy.
To date, the department has paid $814 million to 13,445 of the 94,000 farmers who applied for relief. Most of those rejected missed the October 1999 deadline. Many say they did not learn of the settlement until too late.
A study by the Environmental Working Group and the Black Farmers Association concluded that the department had spent millions of dollars fighting the approximately 22,000 claims that were filed on time.
Ed Loyd, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department, said it was fulfilling its mandate "to provide information to the court-appointed operator." Even Friedman said he had not expected the agency to fight claims so vigorously - about 40 percent of the timely claims have been rejected.
Stevenson's claim, filed on time, was denied because records showed he had received government loans, he said. Yet according to agency and court documents, even when blacks got such loans, they received less than requested, were forced to provide excessive collateral and had their applications processed too late in the planting season to do any good - ensuring that black farmers would be in debt without benefiting from the money. "They just gave me enough to sink myself deeper," Stevenson said.
In Oktibbeha, many farmers say they did not hear about the settlement until too late. The plaintiffs' lawyers say they spent $500,000 on a national advertising campaign for two weeks in January 1999, before the settlement was approved. The lawyers say they also held more than 230 meetings.
Link: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Nation/CCE812F0662060C086256EE300073461?OpenDocument&Headline;=Deal+for+black+farmers+falls+short&highlight;=2%2Cdeal%2Cfor%2Cblack%2Cfarmers
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Jupiter...a dot but I can see the moons!
By Draginol
Posted Sunday, August 01, 2004 on Opinionated Techie
Discussion: Science & Tech Had a great weekend at my uncle's. I took my telescope which is a Mead ETX 125. I can never get the results with it that I see on-line.
After a lot of setup, I managed to see Jupiter and its moons. But let me be clear on what that means: Jupiter is a dot and its moons are tiny dots by it.
I am using the equipment that came with it which is the 73 magnification lens that came wiht it. I don't have a "Barlow" lens yet which I suspect I need to get that to have any real luck.
The problem really I have with on-line photos of user experiences is that they're nearly all touched up. There are various techniques such as sampling (stacking) hundreds of images together. No. I don't care about that. I want to know what I will see when I look through the lens. The ETX 125 is a $1k telescope so I really want to know what I'm going to see with it. Not what I could, hours later, see on the computer. At that point, I might as well just download an image. For me, and my kids, the whole point is looking in there and seeing all this cool stuff.
I've also not had terrible luck with the auto finder. I'll painstakingly sync it up and then go to some common star only to have it get close but not close enough to be useful. For instance, if I take the time to sync it to Arcturus or Polaris or some other star, I expect to be able to tell it to go look at the Moon and for the motors to get pretty centered on the moon. Instead, it gets..kind of the right way but the moon is not centered. Maybe I'm doing something wrong as I'm new at that sort of thing but it's pretty frustrating.
But for me and the family, being able to see Jupiter's moons, even if they were dots, was pretty cool. So I don't want to make it sound like we didn't have fun. Plus a good bonfire and smores and great conversations with my aunt, uncle, cousin, etc. make it all worth it anyway.
But anyway, if you're a newbie amateur astronomy wannabe like me, don't get your expectations too high when you plunk down the bucks for these things. It takes a lot of patience and meticulous setup to get the most out of a telescope -- regardless of its size.
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By Lenbert
Posted Sunday, August 01, 2004 on Random Abstract Thoughts
Discussion: PoliticsCorrect me if I am wrong, but isn’t the primary intent of a Democratic or Republican convention for each Party to “officially” nominate their presidential candidate? Does there have to be so much fanfare around the whole event? Can it just be a one-day event, and be done with it?
I remember being an early teen, and sitting with my parents, watching both the Democratic and Republican conventions on TV, on ABC, NBC or CBS. Apparently, they had never been to a High School pep rally or an Amway convention, because they were most definitely “into it”.
Since then, I have seen my share of high school and college pep rallies, not to mention Amway and Pre-Paid Legal rallies as well. I had thought that the Democratic National Convention would hold my interest on CSPAN. Unfortunately, the Dem. Convention held my interest for only a short periods of time.
The first conventions were held in 1856, prior to the threat of impending civil war. That was in the days before mass media. Obviously, that time period was before the internet, cable TV, television, or radio. Information simply did not spread through out the nation as quickly as by today’s standards. It may take days before a particular candidate’s or Party’s beliefs were made known to the voting public. For that time period, I can see where an individual Party would want to assemble representatives of their Party from individual States, so that the information could be conveyed live, in real time.
Today, information is conveyed in near-real time. The time in which information is conveyed to the public has shrunk from “days”, to a matter of minutes.
The primary reason why the Democratic convention only held my interest for short periods of time was bi-fold. First of all, a lot of the information that I was hearing from individual speakers, I already knew, from various news sources. Was there really a need to regurgitate that information a second time? We don’t need to reserve an entire week, at taxpayer’s expense, to re-convey information that is already readily available. Secondly, the whole “pep rally” mood, to me, was completely irrelevant. Geez, just nominate Kerry and be done with it already!
“…at taxpayer’s expense…”
The fec.gov site states “Each major party is entitled to a public grant of $4 million (plus cost-of-living adjustment) to finance its Presidential nominating convention.” That amounts to an $8 million grant for both Democratic and Republican conventions. Some individuals may make the argument that this money amounts to “pennies” for each individual taxpayer. Personally, I think that $8 million could be better used somewhere else….like say….education? We’re spending thousands of dollars for “falling balloons” and confetti, people!
Just nominate your candidate and be done with it!
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=49&aid;=68171
http://www.fec.gov/info/chthree.htm
LLS
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By joetheblow
Posted Sunday, August 01, 2004 on Anifanatic
Discussion: EntertainmentWhat, you thought this was just about cartoons? Video games are on the forefront of animation as well and this game is definitely something to take a look at. So your the wheel-man again? Making the criminals pay are you? 150 miles of city scape to browse through? You can make your own animated movie with this game! maybe a lovers quarrel, or a trip to the store and BANG! Action Galore!!!
From CNN Game Review:
Review: Late-model 'Driv3r' needs repair work
By Marc Saltzman
Gannett News Service
Friday, July 9, 2004 Posted: 11:55 AM EDT (1555 GMT)
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of Marc Saltzman, a freelance technology journalist whose reviews also appear on the Gannett News Service
If you enjoy the thrill of a good car chase, you might want to step behind the wheel of "Driv3r," the latest installment in the top-selling and award-winning "Driver" series of 3-D adventure games.
The new title, available now for Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox and Windows PCs, once again has you assume the role of Tanner, a tough undercover cop and master "wheelman" who pairs with partner Tobias to penetrate a global car-theft ring and identify a buyer who has ordered 40 stolen vehicles.
If you're familiar with the "Grand Theft Auto" series, you'll be at home in "Driv3r." It's packed with expansive city environments that feature 150 miles of highways, city streets, dirt roads and alleys to test your driving prowess. As in any major city, the roads are bustling with traffic and pedestrians, and more than 35,000 buildings are rendered with stunning detail. The game's three destinations are Miami, Florida; Istanbul, Turkey; and Nice, France
For more about this game and the CNN review, click on the link.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/fun.games/07/08/review.driver3/index.html
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My so-called life...
By Draginol
Posted Saturday, July 31, 2004 on Opinionated Techie
Discussion: Blogging I spent a lot of the day getting DesktopX 2.2 objects put together and testing. I'm trying to get DesktopX to respect it deserves. Here it is, the world's best, most flexible, lowest overhead, fastest, easiest to use "widget" creation application and yet there's still people anxious for Konfabulator for Windows or using Avedesk (which is nice) or Samurize or something else. So I've started assigning more engineers into creating content for it so that its coolness is more apparent.
But it'll still be another two weeks before it's ready for public release. Hopefully by next week it'll be ready for Object Desktop users and registered users. But clearly we have some work ahead of us to get people to migrate to its fully.
I also worked on the IconX page. It's not publicly available yet and the page isn't done yet. But it's getting there. At least today I was able to work on this stuff at home which is nice. Took an afternoon walk with my wife and boys around the block. It was muggy out but still decent walking weather. Came back to work on the web pages some more.
Rewrote: http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/brief.asp and http://www.stardock.com/products/desktopx/infoguide.asp to hopefully be a lot more to the point that the last versions. Previous guides to DesktopX would talk about OpenDoc and Taligent and such. I suspect that I'm about the only one left that still even cares what Taligent is. A couple years ago I was offered the domain Taligent.com but they wanted something like $2k. I was too cheap for that. I still think Taligent is a cool name. Pity nothing ever came of it.
Played some Spider-Man 2 for the Gamecube. I hate to say it but I guess I don't get it. The reviews say it's a great game but I just don't see very much game there. It's not nearly as interactive as I'd like and the controls make my hands hurt. It also has the abominable jumping puzzles that drive me insane. I'm at the part where this guy wants to prove Spider-Man isn't a real superhero and I'm having to go through this moving maze while avoiding his zap gun. I don't know what's worse, that I'm 33 and playing a twitch reflex game like this or that the game's controls are incredible sluggish for this kind of thing.
Been monitoring some of the bickering on JoeUser. Good grief, some people just live to be nasty to others. They need to get lives. Others need to not take politics so seriously. I enjoy a good debate of politics, as many of my articles are on that. But I am not passionate on it at all. Or I should say, I'm as passionate about politics as I am at playing Rise of Nations multiplayer. I enjoy it but I'm very mindful that since I've not been appointed emperor of the world (yet) that my opinions and those of those who disagree really have no bearing in the real world.
That isn't to say that I don't find people who can't put together a coherent extremely annoying. Nor do I enjoy the company of quasi-intellectuals who confuse arrogance with intelligence and their opinions for facts. I had one Canadian claiming today that the US didn't truly own California because Mexico never signed the treaty. To which I say A) Huh? B) Who cares? and C) Feeling bad for Mexico losing territory is like feeling bad for a car jacker who subsequently gets car jacked themselves. Canada, USA, and Mexico all stole/conquered its territory from the native inhabitants of North America. The US was slightly better at stealing the land than Mexico.
So tomorrow the wife/kids and I are going to my uncle's with my cousins. Very excited about that. I'm bringing the telescope so that hopefully, out in the country, we'll be able to see stuff.
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Megaman: Anniversary Collection
By Amitty
Posted Friday, July 30, 2004 on Gamer's Unite
Discussion: Console GamesThere are many, many games that I could yammer on about in the old school category. Those of you who actually read my gaming articles, which I don't think is many, might see that.
One of my all-time favorite videogames from the past is the original Mega Man for the NES. It was the first platform game I had a real problem with. Well, only in one area. But, I digress.
I don't have tons of room to set up all my systems, and therefore some are deligated to the closet until the supreme urge to play them rears up and forces me to pull out the old systems. The last time I did was the time I was trying to find Faxanadu for the NES. It has to be my favorite 8 bit game. Well, next to Final Fantasy.
When Capcom released info last year that they were bundling up previous Megaman games, I was excited, except for the fact that it was on the Game Cube. Later, they released it on the PS2, and there was much happiness. I picked it up and reveled in old school paradise.
This collection contains Megaman 1-7 for the NES, and 8 that was out for the SNES. Better yet, they offer a bonus. You can unlock two never before released in NA games, Megaman Power Battles 1 & 2. These are fun little fighting games that remind me of Marvel Vs. Capcom for some reason. The fighting games let you pick from Megaman, Proto Man, and Bass. they are addictively fun.
The original games are all here for you, the only thing changed was that you don't need the passwords to continue after you leave the game. That is what the memory card is for. I played through Megaman 1-4 and enjoyed every minute of it. It helps that these are some of my favorite games. And, they are priced lower new, and worth the money for 10 great games.
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Doom
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