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Showing posts from February 8, 2004
And then there were two. With all the old bits and pieces I had lying around, I was able to put together a second PC for my wife to use today. That motherboard always used to have trouble with the memory and processor I had on it and as part of the rebuild, I reset the BIOS and flashed the latest build into it. Not only did it recognise the processor perfectly first time, but it's been rock solid ever since. Go figure.
I'm beginning to think Half Life 2 will never come out. It's already a year late and now Valve have said "some time this summer" which means "possibly Christmas, but likely 2005". Hey, Valve. Ever heard of Duke Nukem Forever ? Here's a tip. Don't show kick-ass finished game demos at a trade show, then get all snotty when people start complaining that the finished product over a year late. Show the demos when you're ready. Then release the game. Then make money. It's pretty freakin' simple really.
The leaked source code for Windows2000 and WindowsNT is proving to be not only a major security flaw for old Billy Gates and his merry band of idiots, but it's proving to be pretty embarassing too. Not least because the code is littered with profanity and shows what many have suspected for years; that many Microsoft programmers are less than mediocre and don't do a particularly good job. Apparently, when independent programmers that have deconstructed other Microsoft applications in the past have been shocked at what they found within the code. Rivals and critics will be able to see exactly how Microsoft staff do their work: sloppy. No wonder Windows is so full of shit holes.
The presidential race is in turmoil again. Seems John Kerry isn't as squeaky clean as he'd have us believe. He only had an extramarital affair, then paid the woman off and shipped her off to Germany. So I guess Kerry's out then.
Shit it's cold. The overnight low was -17°C. The projected high today is -6°C ! The PC re-fit went okay. My mistake was to think that an Athlon XP2600+ was a 2600Mhz processor when in fact it's a 2083Mhz processor. So each time I tried to set the frequency and multiplier for 2600Mhz, I was unwittingly trying to overclock it and it wouldn't boot. Now it's set correctly, the thing zips along. I've got a 3x improvement in framerate out of most of my games - easily into the 40-50fps bracket now for stuff like Train Simulator and Homeworld2. So I'm prepared for HalfLife2 to come out. Bring it on!
Wheeee . The motherboard, CPU and memory for the new PC are all ready to go. Perhaps tonight I'll spend a couple of hours cursing as Windows can't cope with another motherboard upgrade :-)
Awww crap. Wes Clark just dropped out of the presidential race. Dammit. The best hope for sanity, and he's given up. I guess we're resigned to El Busho "influencing" all the electronic ballots for another 4 wars then. Sorry. Years.
And so the wholesale rape and buggery of satellite customers begins in the USA. Not one month since Rupert Murdoch took over DirecTV, and he plans to boost the cost by 3.3% this year "tied to an increasing escalation of programming costs". Not that we predicted it or anything. After all, Murdoch's other satellite stations in the UK have been brutally assaulting British TV viewers at an increase of nearly 7% a year for the last 10 years. No. Of course that won't happen here. After all, it's only the same guy running the same service but in a much bigger country.
D'oh! El Busho produced a report today where he praised the practice of sending jobs overseas. Apparently, he views this as positive for the economy. Quite how, I'm not sure, but it seems he thinks that selling people's jobs to cheap Indian workers on the other side of the world is the best thing since sliced bread. What-ever.
Thanks to increasing sword-rattling by the RIAA, I decided to no longer poke the angry bull and took down my RIAA rant off my website. RIAA are still bastards though.
So we got back from our roadtrip to Las Vegas on friday. We actually came out slightly ahead - at least in gambling terms. If you include the cost of petrol, hotels and food, of course we came out massively behind :-) And last night we had another 10 inches of snow. That petrol-powered snowblower works a treat.