Thursday, July 18, 2002

ATi Radeon 9700 Revealed -- 10:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In case anyone was worried about someone keeping the pressure on NVIDIA with 3dfx out of the picture, they needn't have worried. ATi revealed their Radeon 9700 today (formerly known as the R300) and it absolutely crushes the GeForce4 4600, the current king of the hill. With 4xAA turned on, the 9700 outpaces the 4600 by nearly (gulp!) 300% in the UT 2003 demo. Wow. Absolutely amazing. Kudos to ATi! Mind you, this is the technology that id was using to run the DOOM3 demos recently. The Carmack gives it his seal of approval. You can check out all the goodness at places like Anandtech or HardOCP.

Ren and Stimpy Confirmed -- 10:05 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

E! Online confirmed the story we ran earlier that TNN has picked up the rights to my favorite cartoon, Ren and Stimpy. In addition to broadcasting all of the old episodes uncut, they also hired R&S creator, John Kricfalusi, to do six brand-new shows. The episodes will appear in 2003. Thanks Blue.

I remember in one of the XWing series of games, you encountered a ship called the Stimpsonj'kat. That of course is Stimpy's full name, Stimpson J. Cat. Very silly indeed. Everytime I read Kenn Hoekstra's name, I think of how in some of the R&S episodes various characters pronounce Ren's last name (Hoëk) as "Hoe-Hick." Everytime I type a .plan update news blurb about him I want to type Kenn Hoe-Hickstra. OK, maybe it's just me . . .

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

Happy Birthday AC -- 3:23 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

While checking the local temperature (hot) and prospect of rain (forget about it), I learned that air conditioning is 100 years old today. Cool!

A.T. Hun comments: Yep, I don't know what I'd do without central air. Especially with my 17" monitor, Athlon XP 1800+, and GeForce 3 Ti200 warming up my office. Having all three of those running is great in the winter though :)

Hoekstra .plan Update -- 11:45 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan with help for JKII: Jedi Outcast server admins who are still seeing their servers show up as 1.03 servers after applying the 1.04 patch. He also announces that Raven is hiring and that there will be a SoF II chat on GameSpy at 3:00 P.M. U.S. Central time today.

Coffee = Brain Food -- 10:35 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Or so some new research may indicate. It seems that people who drink 3-4 cups of coffee per day might reduce their risk of Alzheimer's by 60%. No doubt geeks everywhere (not to mention Starbucks) are rejoicing over this news. Thanks HardOCP.

Like most new research, this should be taken with a grain of salt. But I think it helps prove that people shouldn't be skittish when a new study comes out saying everything you like will kill you. After all, something's going to get you eventually, whether it is old age or the grill of a Mack truck.

Handspring: A+ -- 10:24 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just got my latest issue of PC Magazine. In it they have their annual service and reliability report. For the first time, they include PDAs. Handspring received the best overall grade with an A+. They did note that half of the Hanspring repairs result in getting a new PDA. Having said that (and having dealt with Hanspring when my Visor Deluxe had the 8M problem), I think that Handspring would just as soon replace a PDA rather than jump through repairing hoops.

When I discovered that my Visor Deluxe had the 8M problem and the software-based solution caused it to eat batteries, I called Handspring. Even though the policy was technically not to replace them, after describing my situation, they sent me out a new one. After that, I just had to return my old one in the same packaging the new one came in. Handspring even paid postage. Since then, my new Visor has performed like a champ. I'm quite satisfied.

Static and the Palm m50x -- 10:16 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Palm is offering free replacement cradles for their m500 and m505 PDAs. There is a potential problem where static electricity could "scramble the synchronization software," requiring a reset of the Palm. If you have one of these PDAs and your cradle matches the affected designs, go to the link above and get a trade-in. Better safe than sorry. Thanks Ars Technica.

I had heard of people complaining about problems like this, but I thought they were either insane or doing something very stupid. Apparently, that wasn't the case.

MS Admits to FUD -- 9:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In a rare moment of lucidity, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer admitted to using FUD against Linux. Specifically, their argument about Windows being cheaper than Linux simply couldn't hold water. Of course, we knew this all along. Thanks Slashdot.

The Master comments: Just don't read that page they link on Microsoft's website. It's just as full of BS as any of the other FUD that M$ has released in the past. I tire of hearing "integrated this and that" and "more secure" and "easier to manage" and "supports hotfixes" -- which in context is all marketing crap with no basis in reality. Lemme tell ya, I have a heck of a lot less to worry about maintaining this Linux server than I will ever have with Windows servers.

A.T. Hun comments: My favorite part on that page is the licensing info. It gives the example of the NVIDIA engineer who knowingly or unknowingly used GPL code in their closed-source driver. They were reprimanded and had to remove it at a "substantial cost". Apparently MS believes that they make this much simpler by not giving you access or rights to code you bought at all. Therefore, they reason, the GPL is bad because you can't steal code. MS is much better because you don't have the code at all. Ummm, yeah. I'll have to see if I can get the authors of that page a gig on Comedy Central. Nevertheless, it is somewhat refreshing to see Ballmer admit that a good chunk of it is garbage.

Past Two Days' News

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