Jan 31, 2006
Oct 14, 2004
Halo 2 Has Been Pirated
In the news today is the fact that the PAL version of Halo 2 is make its rounds on the Internet. One of the comments to the Slashdot post says it best:
I have spent so long waiting for Halo 2 to come out that another few weeks won’t make a difference to me. The true diehard fans of Halo will not download the game. Rather, they will buy legit copies of Halo 2, and pay the developers the respect, and money, that they deserve for producing such an awesome game. People who steal from Bungie are not true Halo fans.
That’s my sentiments exactly. It takes a lot of effort to make a great game like Halo, and even more effort to make a sequel to a great game. These developers have spent about three years of their life working on this product, show them some respect.
Oct 13, 2004
CherryOS, Myth Or Not?
A lot of buzz has been generated on the Internet lately around a product called CherryOS. It’s claiming to allow you to run Mac OS X on an Intel x86 platform at fairly decent speeds. A lot of the buzz surrounding this product is whether it’s real or not. Some people are flat out saying it’s a hoax, while others are saying it’s a copy of the open source project PearPC. PearPC is another emulator that aims to emulate the PowerPC architecture that the Macintosh uses. Of course the CherryOS developers are claiming that their product is all original code. To add to the skepticism is the fact that you can not actually buy CherryOS yet, it’s only in a beta release for selected users. It’s easy to make claims when no one can verify those claims. I’ll continue to watch how this plays out.
Oct 12, 2004
Programmer Fired For Using SETI@home, Manager Says Something Stupid
I agree with the disciplining of an employee who installs unnecessary software, such as SETI@home, on a computer designated for server use only. However, I think it is very unprofessional for the manager of such an employee to go and poke fun at the employee who was disciplined. According to an Associated Press article, the manager of a 63-year-old computer programmer who was fired had the following to say:
I understand his desire to search for intelligent life in outer space, because obviously he doesn’t find it in the mirror in the morning…I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.
What was this guy thinking? Did he just wake up with a desire to be unprofessional and possibly open himself up for disciplinary action? Or did he just think that this was his one opportunity to get his name in the papers so he said something inappropriate to guarantee that he was quoted? Mabye that manager needs to look in his mirror to see if there is any intelligent life there as well. And I’m not the only one who thought this was a bad thing either.
Oct 11, 2004
A Windows Users Experience With A Mac
AnandTech recently posted an article about a Windows users experience switching to a Mac for a month. It’s a little long, but definitely worth the read if you are either interested in switching or are a switcher like I am. It’s been over two years since I switched my primary computer to a Macintosh, and I can relate to some of his experience. I’d like to comment that some of his negative feedback is due to inexperience with the platform and disappears once you start thinking in the Mac world as opposed to thinking in the Windows world. However, it is an accurate representation of a Windows user would perceive a Macintosh.
The one thing that did bother me about the article was the authors constant obsession with the speed of the Macintosh. I own a machine that is similar to the one he tried out for a month, with the exception that I have more RAM and a faster graphics card. Now while the additional RAM and faster graphics card will affect my system performance, I don’t believe that I bare bones G5 is as slow as he is saying. I also have a dual 867 MHz G4 and I don’t seem to have any of the performance issues he has. Now, I’ll be the first to suggest a new Mac owner to get more RAM, but I’d do the same for a Windows user. More RAM just makes everything perform better, and the same goes for a graphics card.
Overall it is a good look at a Macintosh from the eyes of a Windows user. I recommend reading it for anyone interested in the Macintosh platform.
What About Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas?
One of the most anticipated games of the year is Halo 2. And as I’ve previously mentioned Halo 2 has gone gold. However, I’m wondering about another highly anticipated game of 2004, the next Grand Theft Auto game. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is supposed to be released two weeks before Halo 2 and yet I haven’t heard a “gone gold” announcement for it. Hopefully every thing is on track and the game will ship as expected on the 25th of October. I preordered it at the same time I preordered Halo 2 and I’m almost more excited about it than I am about Halo 2.
Halo 2 Is Golden
Last week I noted that Bungie had said Halo 2 was basically done. Well Bungie has announced that Halo 2 has gone gold.
I’m Over One Hundred Posts
While posting last week about Halo 2 being done I didn’t realize that it was my 100th post. I know this isn’t a big deal to some bloggers. But I’m glad to have reached that milestone and hope to continue for several hundred more posts.
The Browser Wars, Part 2
I saw on Slashdot last week that Marc Andreessen is saying that the browser wars are back. Andreessen put down the foundation for today’s web browsers by creating Mosaic and then going on to cofound Netscape. At the Web 2.0 conference last week, Andreessen had much to say about the current state of affairs in the browser market. Stating that Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox could be enough to make Microsoft stand up and start paying more attention to their stagnating Internet Explorer.
In the mid to late 90s Microsoft pulled out all the stops to stifle the Netscape browser and supplant their own Internet Explorer as the dominant web surfing client. However after IE was the number one browser they stopped the innovation and left it out in the cold. Since then Netscape spun off the Mozilla project to develop free open source web browsers and what has resulted is a much better browser. I’ve previously raved about Firefox and Safari, and I’m not the only one who is taking notice of the alternative browsers. A PC World article about Andreessen’s comments point out that IE’s dominance has started to decline. This is due in part to Firefox and the highly publicized security issues with Internet Explorer. Using a differenet web browser is now a common solution for all Internet Explorer security vulnerability notes put out but the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.
Another issue that has lead to the rise of alternative browsers is standards. Several years ago it wasn’t uncommon for popular web sites to use Internet Explorer only features making it impossible to use their sites with other browsers. However more sites are shifting from using Microsoft standards to using the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium. This is making it easier for users to switch to alternative browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
Andreessen also said that all this new browser innovation might cause Microsoft to do some nasty things to regain the top spot. While Andreessen is no doubt a little bitter from his previous experience with Microsoft, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft does anything to counter the decline of Internet Explorer and the threat of alternative web browsers
Oct 06, 2004
Halo 2 Is Done
The news coming out of Bungie is that Halo 2 is basically finished. That’s good news, since we are about a month away from the release of this highly anticipated game. Scoble says that it lives up to the hype. I can’t wait, I’ve preordered my copy and I’m ready, are you?
