Thursday, May 4, 2000

History Today -- 4:16 pm CST, Update by The Master

• 1886: Haymarket Square Riots in Chicago-rioting was caused when a peaceful labor demonstration for 8 hour workdays was disrupted by a bomb blast.
• 1927: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.
• 1932: Al Capone enters Atlanta Federal Penitentiary after being convicted for tax evasion.
• 1942: Battle of the Coral Sea begins.
• 1945: German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwestern Germany surrender.
• 1970: Kent State shootings-National Guardsmen opened fire on an antiwar demonstration at Kent State, killing 4 students and wounding 9.

Sweeney Q&A -- 2:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Voodoo Extreme has slapped up another Q&A with Epic's lead programmer, Tim Sweeney. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but it's kind of like reading a John Carmack .plan update (not surprisingly, since they are probably the #1 and 2 3D engine programmers in the business). If you REALLY want to know what goes on behind the scenes in a 3D engine, check it out.

Hun-Speak: Solving the MP3 Crisis -- 11:44 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I was right! The news item on Metallica going after Napster and its users (story) prompted me to write a new Hun-Speak column entitled Solving the MP3 "Crisis". I tried to deal with the issues in a way that even the densest record executive could understand them. Of course, I did use some polysyllabic words so that might throw them for loop :)

J.t.Qbe comments: Good stuff from A.T. Hun! Read this article, and then pass it along to everyone in your address book and you'll be guaranteed good luck for the next 3.2 million years. Oops, sorry, that's the next M$ virus. . .

Ban Metallica? -- 10:33 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot's JonKatz waxes philosophical on the recent attempts by the rock band Metallica to go after literally hundreds of thousands of people downloading their music on Napster. His solution? Shut Down Metallica, Not Napster. Here's a snip:

Step One: Let's Shut Down Metallica's attacks on computer users, not Napster. Stop buying the band's music. Urge everyone you know to do likewise until Metallica calls off its legal Rottweillers, leaves kids downloading music alone, and agrees to slug the issue out in court and other venues where it belongs.

Hmmm. I feel a Hun-Speak coming on . . .

J.t.Qbe comments: Ok, normally I think Katz is a dork but he did make a good point: once Metallica portrayed themselves as rebels; now they've become the establishment. What do ya think, A.T.?

A.T. Hun comments: I thought that was the best point of the whole article. I've been following Metallica since my high school days in the early 80s. I can't imagine them doing something like this in the Ride the Lightning days. How the mighty have fallen!

Mac Q3A Issues -- 9:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

MacGamer is reporting that there are "issues" with the recently released Quake III Arena 1.17 patch on the MacIntosh. Some how id managed to use an expired installer and the patch itself is causing some major performance hits. Expect a fix soon. Thanks everyone (again).

Beware: I Love You -- 9:49 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

No, J.t.Qbe isn't stalking you, but the latest virus/worm is. The I Love You virus appeared on the scene today, and it's nasty. Here's a description:

An e-mail virus which sends an e-mail message with the subject line I LOVE YOU and an attached VBS module called LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs is circulating commercial and IT companies worldwide and causing major damage to their email systems.

If you get an email with this VBS module attached, watch out! This virus has been taking down networks and has been causing a lot of trouble in Europe this morning.

Of course, if you're not running Outlook, you're safe. Tell me again, Micro$oft, why is it such a good idea to give every application a VB interface? Here in Unixland we call VBS a great VDS (Virus Delivery System). Just wait, folks--the viruses for M$ products are only going to get worse.

A.T. Hun comments: This is the #2 reason why I use Forté's Agent as my mail and news reader instead of Outlook. #1 is that I think Outlook just plain sucks canal water, but that's me. Let this serve as a reminder of the old truism--always treat email attachments with suspicion!

The Master comments: Looks like this one got past the mail server scanner at work today. Ouch. Now they get to update and check all 150 PCs one at a time. Amazing. Half of MIS is away for a day to a seminar and this happens :-)

Q3A Mission Pack = Team Arena -- 9:37 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GA Source is reporting that the new Quake III Arena mission pack from id will be called Quake III: Team Arena. The article also has a bit more information than we've seen before. I'm sure we'll know a lot more after E3. Thanks, um, everybody for the link.

Wednesday, May 3, 2000

New NVIDIA XFree 4.0 Drivers -- 10:28 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA has release version .92 of their XFree 4.0 drivers which I just got installed. The new version contains the following changes:

• fixed problem initializing TNT w/ SGRAM
• fixed GPL copyright violation in nv.c
• better logging and messages everywhere for tracking problems
• dynamic allocation of client data in kernel, rather than static
• incorporated *unsupported* 2.3 kernel changes for completeness
• Makefile updates - add -D_LOOSE_KERNEL_NAMES, and default to 'make install'
• Improved mode switching in quake3 (still see occasional crashes)
• Changed installation name of libraries. We now have a .1.0.1 revision name in the libraries.
• temporarily force disabling of AGP fast writes for all chipsets

UPDATE! Wouldn't you know it, the .92 drivers caused my system to throw up in some rather amazing ways. I'll see if I can't get to the bottom of it. Fortunately .91 reinstalled with little difficulty.

GeForce 2 GTS on Shelves -- 10:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

NVIDIA announced today that cards based on their new GeForce 2 GTS chip are available for purchase at places like Best Buy, Fry's, Electronics Boutique, etc. Who would've thought that NVIDIA would have gotten two new chips out the door before 3dfx got the V5s on shelves?

New Gamespy -- 9:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Version 2.20 of Gamespy has been released and is available for all users, registered or not. This upgrade includes support for Soldier of Fortune, Rogue Spear: Urban Ops, and Daikatana. You can snag it from the freaks on a leash at FilePlanet. Thanks Blue's News.

More SoF Sound -- 9:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan with news that the new/old A3D and EAX files are available on SoF Operations. Here are the direct links to the A3D file and the EAX file.

New Q3A Point Update -- 3:09 pm CST, Update by The Master

Robert Duffy updated his .plan with word of a new point release of Q3A. This one is pretty important:

We have just released a new point release for Quake 3 Arena, version 1.17.

This patch fixes a fairly serious security flaw in Quake 3 Arena. Internet Security Systems identified the flaw and notified us with reproduction details as well as an overview of the exploit. The basic nature of the exploit is that malicious server operators could overwrite any file on a client system. This type of thing is always possible with DLL based mods ( which is why we strongly recommend VM based mods ) but with this exploit, it was possible within the VM system.

To help facilitate a rapid transition to the new codebase we have also bumped the network protocol version. This means 1.17 is not network compatibile with any prior version.

The install also includes all 3 PK3 files, because the original "pak1.pk3" was not included in the final 1.16 release for Mac and Win32 builds. This will address some pure server connection issues. You will have to have all 3 pak files present to connect to a pure server.

In addition to this security fix, we have also fixed the following:

• Callvote to single player game type causes the server to crash.
• Crash in bot initialization on some systems.

SOF Sound Issues -- 3:05 pm CST, Update by The Master

Jake Simpson updated his .plan with word on how to fix EAX and A3D sound problems in Soldier of Fortune. If your one of the unlucky people having these problems-check it out.

There ya go Jake-always happy to help out another Doctor Who fan :-)

XFS Solution -- 12:29 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I mentioned in my article on installing the NVIDIA XFree 4.0 drivers that one casualty of my upgrade was that I could not use the X Font Server (xfs) any more. The problem was that the initialization script for xfs was not in my init.d directory. As it turns out the problem was not mine, but the fault of the person who put the XFree-xfs-4.0-0.6.i386.rpm file together. He forgot to include the xfs start-up script. Doh! I am now downloading XFree-xfs-4.0-0.8.i386.rpm from RPMFind which should nip that problem in the proverbial bud.

UPDATE! That took care of the problem! I have xfs back and my fonts look quite a bit better. Whew!

T&L on the Savage 2K -- 9:42 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Savage2000.com has posted the final installment in a three-part series (here are part one and part two) exploring the new drivers for the Savage 2000-powered Diamond Viper II which theoretically enable the chip's hardware T&L. The long and the short? The new drivers are actually slower than old drivers, plus with T&L enabled there are nasty texture problems that crop up. So much for the other T&L enabled card. Thanks Shugashack.

Let this be a reminder of the universal truth: caveat emptor. Ignore the marketing hype surrounding a new video card or chipset. Wait until tests are run on actual shipping boards with actual shipping drivers before making a decision.

Past Two Days' News

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