Monday, July 17, 2000

Where Are You? -- 10:19 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

When I got my Visor I wanted to enter my own city into the City Time applet, but I needed my latitude and longitude. I called the library and the best they could give me was, "Well, we're pretty close to . . ." I have since come across the Astrodienst Online Atlas and Timezone Database. If it can find my little speck on the map, it probably can find most any city. The main purpose seems to be to give you some astrology weirdness, but the lookup function is very handy.

KISS Quickie -- 5:39 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I downloaded the KISS Psycho Circus demo this afternoon. I played through the two Starbearer levels and a part of another level. So far I'm pretty impressed with what I see. The enemies are pretty cool. There's a lot of things you can "interact with" (i.e. "break"). I especially like how some of the weapons keep smoking after repeated firing. I am going to have to tweak some of the settings to give my TNT a break, but even at 640x480 with all the graphic options up, it runs quite respectably.

ATi Radeon Previews -- 10:27 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

ATi has taken the wraps off their latest 3D chip, the Radeon. Previews can be seen at AnandTech, Thresh's FiringSquad, GamersDepot, and GA Hardware. The basic specs: 366Mpixels/sec and 1.1Gtexels/sec fillrate and 30Mtriangles/sec hardware T&L. Interestingly enough, the GeForce2 GTS beats it in every Q3A test until you get to 1280x1024x32. Then the Radeon wins impressively over the GeForce2 and the Voodoo5. Of course, that was with a 32M GeForce2 against a 64M Radeon. I'm not sure how much the extra memory would have affected the tests. Thanks to The Shugashack for the scoop and the links.

nmap Ported to WinNT/2000 -- 10:21 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Our very own Wraith sends word that nmap has been ported from Linux to Windows NT and 2000. Because I'm a simple caveman and don't understand all this networking business, I'll just post his email:

eEye Digital Security (http://www.eeye.com) has ported that essential Linux networking tool, nmap, to Windows NT and 2000. Plus . . . they released the source. You can get the binaries and the sources at http://www.eeye.com/html/Databases/Software/nmapnt.html. I popped up an edited screenshot of my desktop while using it at http://www.thehaus.net/~wraith/nmap_web.jpg Heh. My initial feelings are warm . . . the Libcap packet driver installation (which is necessary, and included in the distribution zip) installed easy enough. Not as many options, bells, and whistles as the latest linux nmap beta, but still smoother than any network exploration tool I have ever used (hands DOWN) for any Windows platform.

J.t.Qbe comments: Just keep banging the rocks together, A.T., and you'll get there. nmap is one of the top, uh, network exploration tools (sure, that's a good term) out there. It'll tell you more about your system's security holes and potential security holes than you ever could have guessed. Just watch out where you use it. . .

KISS Demo -- 10:13 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamespy got their hands on a demo of KISS Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child (73M) from GOD Games/Third Law Interactive. Here's the scoop:

Included in this demo are five levels: two from the Water Realm, one from the Earth Realm, one from the Air Realm and one from the Fire Realm. The full game includes 47 maps. The demo is single-player only. Be sure to play through all five levels -- the first two levels are deceptively simple, aimed at getting new players involved in the gameplay. The other realms begin unleashing the hurt without mercy...

KPC: TNC (how's that for an acronym?) uses the LithTech 1.5 engine. It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against previous LithTech efforts, not to mention UT- or Q3A-engine games. You can download it from FilePlanet, Stomped, 3D Gamers, and 3D Downloads. Thanks Blue.

Sunday, July 16, 2000

Hey! A.T. is right! -- 9:49 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

It really is a slow news day! Even Linux Today is reposting old stuff. But old isn't necessarily bad. Today they linked a September 1998 article from Performance Computing/Unix Review by Thomas Scoville, titled The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature. This is a great analysis of the reasons why Unix is so appealing to literate, liberal arts types (like A.T. and me). This article is part of the reason why I'm a Unix administrator today. Highly recommended!

Pondering the Imponderable -- 4:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Just when I thought the news today couldn't get less interesting, it did. /me yawns. The only thing I even remotely thought about linking was a profoundly bad interview which managed to redefine the words "sycophantic" and "sophomoric" (time to bust out the dictionary). Makes me proud to be a webmaster.

Anyway, I plan on writing some more PalmOS-related stuff this week, which I'm sure you'll all be waiting for with bated breath. I recently turned off "beam receive" in the preferences in my Visor and my batteries do seem to be lasting longer. Unfortunately, I haven't done any tests to determine if it is a real phenomenon or just a figment of my imagination.

OK, this is pretty entertaining too: User Friendly lists British Columbia's Public Enemies Nos. 1, 2, and 3.

Past Two Days' News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).