Saturday, March 4, 2000

Daikatana at Best Buy! -- 12:29 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ok, maybe not. According to Stomped, this Sunday's Best Buy flyer will advertise Daikatana on sale for $29. Of course, there's one small problem. Daikatana hasn't gone gold yet, much less been sent for duplication. You'd think the Best Buy execs would know better than to guess when THAT game is going to be released. :)

J.t.Qbe comments: Hey! I just got it on sale for $19.95! Ok, maybe not.

Quake III on a Palm? -- 12:20 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, maybe not. But some people are trying to port OpenGL to the Palm OS. Now to port an OpenGL version of Doom! Thanks Slashdot.

O'Reilly and Amazon's Bezos -- 10:29 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Tim O'Reilly has posted the gist of a conversation he had with Amazon's Jeff Bezos regarding Amazon's recent patent of 1-click shopping. This is a follow-up to his February 29th article on the same subject. It's an interesting read--even if the matter isn't resolved. Personally, I think that if Amazon needs to file patents and sue to maintain a competative edge, they've already lost that edge. Thanks Slashdot.

Friday, March 3, 2000

OpFor Demo -- 7:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamecenter has managed to get their hands on a demo of Gearbox's Half-Life: Opposing Force. It comes in two versions: a 70M version if you don't already have Half-Life, or a 30M version if you do. Here's the scoop:

In Opposing Force, you're Corporal Adrian Shephard, one of the many heavily armed Marines sent into the Black Mesa facility shortly after a mysterious explosion opened a door to another dimension. It's up to you and your squad mates to neutralize the invading aliens, but it won't be easy. Your Osprey transport is shot down before it can drop you off at the base, and now you must regroup and investigate what's going on.

The Opposing Force demo features a montage of the levels and areas in the expansion pack. You'll get a feel for the story, as well as meet new friends and enemies. You'll be able to unload into your enemies with some exotic new weaponry as well.

Whaddaya waiting for? Thanks Blue.

DoubleClick Double Take? -- 12:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, I can stop coming up with bad DoubleClick headlines now. It seems that, in a rare moment of lucidity, DoubleClick has backed off its initial plan to start a database connecting people with their online shopping and surfing habits.

Kevin O'Connor, DoubleClick's chief executive, said in a statement, "I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards."

Let's not kid ourselves. DoubleClick had a change of heart because there were six lawsuits brought against them, Michigan's Attorney General threatened to sue, and their stock price plummeted 33% when the news got out.

It may be safe to turn cookies back on now. It's still a good idea to delete them (disabling cookies in Netscape deletes the cookie file) periodically for anonymity's sake. Thanks Slashdot.

Beware of "Pretty Park" -- 11:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A couple days ago I got an email from a colleague with an attachment called Pretty Park.exe. I never run email attachments, so I promptly deleted it without a second thought. A few hours later, I got an email from him saying that it was indeed a virus (actually, a worm) that will send this .exe to everyone in your email address book every 30 minutes if you are using Outlook Express (one of the many, many reasons I do not). It also will try to get on an IRC server, so it may also be a Trojan Horse. This one is bad news and it is spreading like wildfire.

The folks at Ars Technica got caught up with this one too. If you have this virus, check McAfee's site for removal information. And remember NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER run email attachments, even if they come from your mommy!

Willits on the Mean Arena -- 10:55 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mean Arena has posted an interview with id's Tim Willits. Topics include mapmaking secrets and ways to get into the industry. The reviewer does seem a bit sycophantic at points, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. Thankfully, it's not one of those "send a bunch of questions, get a bunch of answers" interviews where some answers really beg for a follow-up that never comes. Thanks Blue.

Mozilla M14 Revisited -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been using Mozilla M14 since it was released (story). The Gecko layout engine seems to be much faster and displays pages more correctly. The mail reader still GPFs too much. I haven't fiddled with the HTML composer at all. It's getting to the point now that I could use Mozilla as my browser 24/7. There are still some bugs (it's alpha, after all), but none of them are catastrophic. Gecko is much faster than Netscape 4.x's renderer and, dare I say, even better than Internet Exploder 5.x. Plus, it won't crash my entire system when it crashes like IE will :)

New WinAmp -- 10:31 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm surprised I beat The Master to this one :) There is a new version of WinAmp out, 2.61. Here's a list of fixes:

• SuperPiMP installation is cleaner and has more options
• Winamp Advanced Visualization Studio 2.0 (in Full Version only)
• Support for .wsz files in your skin directory as well as .zip files
• Bookmark playlists and SHOUTcast streams
• Massively improved CD Audio support (enhanced CD support, etc)
• Updated Mjuice and Audiosoft

"SuperPiMP installation"? Give me a rather large break.

Daikatana Preview -- 10:28 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Game Gear has a preview of Ion Storm's much-delayed shooter, Daikatana. After reading the eleven page preview, I can see why the game is taking so long to get out. The back story takes up six pages of this preview! While it does offer a lot of information of what to expect from the game, I get the feeling that the previewer is basing most, if not all, of his comments on conjecture instead of hands-on experience with the game.

In some strange way, I am looking forward to playing Daikatana. It does sound like there could be a lot of cool features to set it apart from other first-person shooters. Whether or not they can deliver remains to be seen. Whether or not they can ship remains to be seen. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Past Two Days' News

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