Wednesday, March 20, 2002

J.t. Claims Victory -- 10:14 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

When I got my new Athlon 800 system a few weeks ago, I installed Serious Sam to see how my snappy 64 MB video card worked. In the meantime I've gotten some far better games--Icewind Dale and Gothic to name two--but haven't been able to decide which to play first. So I decided first to finish up Sam and get it off my system.

I got burned out on shooters halfway through Quake and haven't been able to get into one since. I can't say that I've been able to get into Serious Sam either (you can't "get into" something which has no depth), but I've slogged my way through it and finally finished it a few minutes ago. I'll give Croteam points for the audacity of the thing (a 300' tall final boss; hundreds of enemies on the screen at once; some beautiful scenery and cool cinematics) but in the end it's just another twitcher and it has reminded me once again why I don't like shooters! And I hope I never see another Kleer Skeleton as long as I live.

You know, it's interesting to read the reviews of this game which praise it for its ability to let you fight hordes of enemies at once. Yet the Might & Magics are routinely criticized for the same thing. TANJ. Finally, bye bye shooters and on to something with depth and story!

HP Claims Victory -- 10:46 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is claiming that they have enough shareholder votes to approve the merger with Compaq. For the life of me, I still can't understand this merger, unless their goal is to destroy thousands of jobs. I cannot see either company benefitting from this and I have yet to hear a Wall Street analyst give any reasons why this is a Good Thing. I've a feeling this merger will become a case study in business schools on how not to do things.

J.t.Qbe comments: On the other hand, I've read that the Packard family is claiming that the merger hasn't been approved. It's been interesting to read about some of the tactics used to push for stockholder approval of this merger. You can be sure that SOMEONE will benefit from this (if it is approved), though they may not be saying so (or how much). . .

CrossOver 1.1 Review -- 9:22 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

MozillaNews posted a review of the CrossOver 1.1 plugin for Linux. This is the plugin that uses WINE to allow you to use Windows web browser plugins in Linux. I've been using it to use Quicktime, Windows Media (shudder), and Shockwave. It even lets me use the MS DOC reader for those idiots folks who insist on sending me DOC files. The article could use a thorough editing, but the point is good. Thanks Slashdot.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

XP333-R Review -- 10:33 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

HardOCP posted a review of the IWill XP333-R motherboard, the same mobo powering my new box (although I have the non-RAID version). It isn't the most glowing review in the world, mainly because they had a couple of boards that were DOA and they couldn't automatically overclock to a 166Mhz FSB like the board's name implies. The main problem is that IWill's marketing people should be beaten about the head.

Here's my personal experience with the board. 99% of the problems I had were fixed by flashing to the latest (January 17) BIOS and not running the ALi hardware monitor. Since then, it's been basically rock-solid. I do a lot of gaming on this box, but it is also my work box. If it doesn't function, I can't get my work done. I've been pleased with the lack of "issues" I've had with it either in Win98 or in Linux. The BIOS checksum error I had right after I got it (story) is not motherboard-specific. From what I've read on the newsgroups, just about every type of Award BIOS mobo has faced that problem at one time or another.

I'm not interested in overclocking (overclocking an Athlon XP 1800+ seems like overkill to me). The main reasons I got this board was to avoid problems with the VIA chipsets and because ALi actually goes out of their way to support Linux.

UPS Gets It Right? -- 10:11 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Wow! On Friday at 5:30 pm I impulsively ordered Gothic during Amazon's $9.99 sale. Projected delivery date was Thursday. It arrived this morning. Impressive! Another game to add to the queue (but maybe to the top of the queue).

The World's Biggest Idiot Award Goes to . . . -- 9:10 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Jerome Heckencamp, accused of hacking into eBay and other sites, for his attempts to defend himself in court. He's either clueless or somehow hoping that being belligerent will help his cause. Here's a snip:

During what was to be a routine proceeding to set future court dates, Heckenkamp challenged the indictment against him on the grounds that it spells his name, Jerome T. Heckenkamp, in all capital letters, while he spells it with the first letter capitalized, and subsequent letters in lower case.

Last week, Heckenkamp, 22, fired attorney Jennifer Granick, and co-counsel Marjorie Allard, in order to personally defend himself against two federal grand jury indictments charging that he cracked computers at eBay, Lycos, Exodus Communications, and other companies in 1999. It was the second time Heckenkamp fired his lawyers -- in January, he had a federal magistrate appoint him as his own counsel, only to change his mind the same day.

Nothing like adding "contempt of court" to your list of charges. Thanks Slashdot.

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