Friday, May 12, 2000

Free RAMBUS? -- 11:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I missed this one the first time around! RIVA 3D pointed out that not only is Intel offering to replace the i820 motherboards with the faulty memory translation hub (MTH) (story), but they are also offering to swap users SDRAM with RAMBUS at no charge! This CNet article has the whole scoop. Of course, whether or not you want RAMBUS memory is an entirely different story . . .

Mechwarrior 4 Shots -- 6:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Evil Avatar got his hands on 11 screenshots from Mechwarrior 4 coming from Microsoft. I especially like this shot. I wonder what kind of mammoth system you'll need to run this.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 1:32 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

How can gaming websites afford to fly all their news hounds to E3 only to have them NOT post any news from the floor? The sites that HAVE posted news have mostly posted stuff that we already knew with one little factoid or the other thrown in. Either there really is nothing "new" being shown at E3 or everyone is wasting too much time shooting pics of the booth models. Billy Wilson over at Voodoo Extreme mused about how he was able to get E3 news up faster staying at home than by actually attending.

In other unrelated news, I yanked the Voodoo2 out of my computer. Yes, it gave me a lot more FPS in Unreal Tournament than my TNT, but the image quality is so poor it is intolerable for me. It was especially bad with smoke and ambient lighting effects. Ugh. Well, I'll just deal with the slow down until I can afford a find a cheap GeForce or TNT2 Ultra.

Q3:TA Preview -- 1:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Daily Radar has posted a brief preview of Quake III: Team Arena. The most interesting revelation in this preview is this:

[I]n what could be the coolest new feature in the history of Quake, you can jump into the bodies of any bots on your team, just in case you're a control freak who can't trust one to return the flag without being blown to smithereens.

Coolness. I could have used this last night when I was playing online with some particularly mentally-challenged bots.

CGO on Obi-Wan -- 1:18 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

CGO has a preview of LucasArts' Episode I: Obi-Wan online. Among other things, this article reveals that Obi-Wan will be using a client-server multiplayer system instead of Jedi Knight's peer-to-peer system.

No Alice Multiplayer -- 9:22 am CST, Update by The Master

According to PR at E3, American McGee's Alice (based on the Alice in Wonderland books) will not have a multiplayer. My personal opinion is Rogue and EA shouldn't spend time on a multiplayer game for Alice. What's the point? The more time spent on Alice DM, the less time is spent on making an excellent single-player game. And, boy, do we ever need a good SP game right now. . .

Thanks Loonyboi.

Master of Orion III -- 8:55 am CST, Update by The Master

YES! Oh, boy oh boy oh boy. MicroProse has announced at E3 that they are developing Master of Orion III! The only downer to this that I can see is that the original studio that designed the first two MOOs is no longer operating to do the third. Hopefully Quicksilver Studios won't drop the ball.

History today -- 8:52 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1937: Britain's King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
• 1943: Axis Forces in North Africa surrender.
• 1949: The Soviet Union announce the end of the Berlin Blockade.
• 1965: West Germany and Israel establish diplomatic ties.

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.

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