Thursday, May 11, 2000

Return to Wolfenstein Preview -- 11:58 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

PC.IGN has slapped up a brief preview of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Gray Matter's follow-up to id's Wolfenstein 3D. This title is really generating a lot of buzz at E3 from the reports I've been reading. The thought of being able to use chair/other items is pretty cool indeed. This one is on my "want badly" list. Thanks Blue.

We WERE Ripped Off -- 7:19 pm CST, Update by The Master

According to Music Giants settle CD charges, an article on E! Online News, the music companies have been setting minimum prices on CDs for the past bunch of years to overinflate the cost of music CDs. I THOUGHT I was getting ripped off when I last bought a CD. Guess I was right :-/

A.T. Hun comments: Gee, now THERE'S a news flash. I guess they will just have to suffer with 1000% mark-up instead of the standard 1700%. What a pity. Please direct all donations to:

Food For Starving Record Executives
P.O. Box 345
Bloated Suit, CA 90090

IE Cookie Visibility -- 6:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot is reporting that the Windows versions of Internet Explorer allows any website to read a user's cookie files (this site has a demonstration of this vulnerability as well). The only workaround right now is to disable Javascript until M$ releases a fix sometime in the next century.

More Obi-Wan -- 3:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Information about LucasArts' Episode I: Obi-Wan is flowing in fast and furious with the beginning of E3. Gamespot has an interview with the development team. There are some brand new screenshots sprinkled in. Well-Rounded Entertainment also has eight new screenshots. Thanks JediKnight.net.

Microsoft Goes After Slashdot -- 11:06 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Microsoft has gotten a little hot under the collar regarding some posts made under a Slashdot article entitled Kerberos, PACs And Microsoft's Dirty Tricks. M$ has fired up the lawyers to get Slashdot to remove those comments. You can see the full text of M$'s email here.

If I understand the gripe semi-correctly (which I doubt) parts of the Microsoft Authorization Data Specification v.1.0 for Microsoft Windows 2000 Operating Systems were posted and links were given to full copies of the text. M$ had it available for download, after agreeing to a EULA. I guess the lesson learned is that, following the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you'd better watch what you say or Big Brother will sue your pants off. Especially if you make a big company with lots of cash look bad.

J.t.Qbe comments: The real issue at hand is that Micro$oft has taken Kerberos, an open and standard authentication protocol, and made proprietary adjustments to it. Thanks to that, if you want to authenticate W2K desktop machines via Kerberos to use network services, you have to have a W2K server as well (=big buck$). There's a pretty good description of the issue here.

Once this became known, it made M$ look bad and for good reason: it's tying the desktop OS to one particular server. Once the pressure started to build, M$ "graciously" published the details of it's extension to the standard. However, you could only download and read the document if you agreed not to use it in any way to duplicate the protocol. IOW, they revealed the details but made them useless. Then Slashdot got into the act, and the idiots who post there made the data generally available, and naturally the Redmond overlords didn't like that. . .

The Master comments: And those self-same idiots have given Microsoft the legal ability to destroy one of the popular Anti-Microsoft forums, because (1) MicroSoft's EULA and Copyrights WERE violated, and (2) SlashDot is going to try to resist this-illegally.

New ICQ -- 10:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There's a new version of ICQ 2000 out: v4.30 build 3141. You can get it from the ICQ download page or one of many mirrors. As always, it's extremely difficult to figure out what's new with this version, but I'm sure it's something :)

UT 418 Release Notes -- 9:06 am CST, Update by The Master

The UT Patch 418 release notes are available for review over on PlanetUnreal. There's a bunch of fixes and other stuff in there.

Q3A Team Arena Reviews -- 8:28 am CST, Update by The Master

There are two reviews of the New Quake 3: Team Arena Mission Pack up on PlanetQuake and GameSpy.

A.T. Hun comments: I'm kind of surprised that they only will be having two new models. Neither of the ones I've seen in the screenshots look like the "Fritzkrieg" model that Steed was showing off earlier. Maybe Fargo's information was incomplete--or they just dropped it.

History today -- 8:24 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1943: U.S. forces land on the Aleutian island of Attu, which was held by Japanese forces. U.S. forces took the island 19 days later. This is the first U.S. territory to be recaptured from the Japanese in WW II.
• 1946: The first CARE packages for Europe arrive in La Havre, France.
• 1949: Israel was admitted to the United Nations. Siam changes it's name to Thailand.
• 1996: Atlanta-bound ValuJet airliner catches fire and crashes into the Everglades shortly after takeoff from Miami. All 110 aboard are killed.
• 1997: "Deep Blue", IBM's chess playing computer defeats Gary Kasparov and wins the 6-game "Man Versus Machine" contest in New York.
• 1998: India detonates 3 underground nuclear devices, it's first tests in 24 years.

Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Q3: Team Arena Shots -- 7:55 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Action Planet has 32 screenshots, GameSpy has 10, and PlanetQuake has three different screenshots (click each word for a different one) from id's forthcoming Quake III: Team Arena mission pack. GameSpy is planning a full preview tomorrow. Thanks Blue's News.

Raging.Com = Altavista Lite -- 7:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Slashdot sends word that Altavista has registered the domain name Raging.com. Raging is a web searching site that uses the same engine as Altavista, but it doesn't have all the portal garbage on the pages, making everything faster. Simple, but slick.

J.t.Qbe comments: You mean, it's like AltaVista used to be?

Episode I: Obi-Wan This Fall -- 6:03 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

LucasArts has announced that its new first/third-person hybrid shooter, Episode I: Obi-Wan, will be available this fall! Here's a snip from the press release:

Obi-Wan captures all the complexity of lightsaber battle through an innovative and intuitive glyph combat system, which relies on intuitive gesture-based movements to allow players to control the Force in ways they’ve never imagined. As players traverse the highly detailed interactive environments, Obi-Wan moves with incredible Jedi agility using realistically-animated flips, rolls and jumps.

One challenge that very few games have met adequately is using a melee weapon like a lightsaber in a first-person shooter. Here's to hoping Obi-Wan does it right.

LucasArts usually doesn't announce dates for a game's release until it is just about done, so it would seem very likely that this game will actually be on time. Thanks JediKnight.net.

Win2K Game Fixes -- 5:57 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Windows Update has a list of compatibility fixes for those poor souls who were foolhardy enough to install Windows 2000. Most of these fixes are game-related. Thanks Blue.

Even More i820 Problems -- 5:11 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

CNet is reporting that Intel has discovered a problem with the memory translator hub (MTH) that allows i820 chipset motherboards to use older memory instead of RAMBUS. The flaw could cause computers to lock up or reboot themselves. Intel is offering to replace all the mobos with this problem. Thanks Slashdot.

Hook on Pixels vs. Texels -- 1:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

When reading a video card's spec sheet, do you ever find yourself asking "What's the difference between pixels and texels in a card's fillrate?" Brian Hook has the answer at VE. Go and read.

Shockwave Classic Video Games -- 12:49 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Macromedia, in conjunction with Midway games, has made several classic arcade games (including Defender and Joust) available to play online in Shockwave format at Shockwave.com. Joust was always one of my favorite arcade games. It's a little tough to play with the keyboard, but I'm going to try with my Gravis Gamepad and see if that works better. The games are ports of the original ROMs so they are very true to the original. Definitely worth a look.

History today -- 12:49 pm CST, Update by The Master

• 1775: Ethan Allen leads capture of British fortress at Ticonderoga, N.Y.
• 1865: Union forces capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, GA.
• 1869: Union & Central Pacific Rail lines are joined at Promontory, UT, with the driving of a golden spike.
• 1924: J. Edgar Hoover becomes FBI director.
• 1933: Nazi and Nationalist students and professors burn books written by authors that Adolph Hitler calls "un-German".
• 1940: Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister of Great Britian following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.
• 1941: Rudolph Hess is capture after parachuting into Scotland on a "peace mission".
• 1945: Soviet troops occupy Prague. Allied forces defeat Japanese forces at Rangoon.
• 1994: Nelson Mandela sworn as first black President of South Africa.
• 1995: Great Britain lifts ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 9:07 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Everybody and their dog are heading out to the west coast for E3 so gaming news is more than a little bit slow. I'm sure that will change once the expo actually starts. Of course, the only titles that really seem to interest me that will be shown at E3 are id's Quake III: Team Arena and LucasArts' Episode I: Obi-Wan.

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