An Early Retirement?

There's just a point in your transition from college guy to working adult that you have to give up on the things you used to enjoy. For me I suppose that thing is power gaming. Let's face it, I'm old by today's gaming standards. Eyes aren't what they used to be, reaction time is dull. Moreover there's just a lot of life to be living out there. There's my quests to become a great amateur photographer, expanding my work skills (Where did I put that pesky RHCE book...) and just getting healthy again (hello beer belly).

So perhaps an early retirement from gaming isn't a bad thing. Oh sure I'll still log in now and then to shoot something, but I think the good old days are just that, good, old and the past.

Here's to an early retirement... With rather shitty benefits.

Don't worry though, I'll still be reviewing games on the side and adding content and my own quirky style of reporting about the tech business here at Vraxxisms Live! and Vraxx.com

Apple And Intel?

Cats and Dogs, living together... It's Armageddon I tell you!

OK that was probably over the top. There's a lot of speculation that Apple and Intel are considering a partnership, driven mostly likely by difficulties with IBM as their supplier of processors and the higher cost associated with the PowerPC design. A few have also speculated that the real motivation is to kick IBM a bit to get themselves in gear. I can understand both sides of the house, but to a certain extent Apple is looking at becoming another PC maker or remaining a stand alone entity.

Since the early 600 series PowerPC's Apple as part of their alliance with IBM and Motorola manufactured their RISC based chips and began the 2nd generation of Macs (PowerMacs). With the difficulties of producing Portable G5's and the increasing heat/power requirements of the current 9xx series of PowerPC chips Apple is facing problems of supply and cost pressure. But what happens if Apple does choose to go with Intel? Where will throngs of loyal Mac users go?

Any transition will be fairly slow to adopt, most likely taking 2-3 years to fully wipe out their legacy PowerPCs. What Apple may gain in lower cost chips and perhaps better portable offerings may be offset however by an easier to penetrate design. Remember the days of the early Mac clones? The PowerPC design change was intended in part to eliminate Mac clones and it did a good job if it. As such this step-back as it were may be a double edge sword for the Cupertino company.

In the end it will really be up to Apple to decide which direction they take. Perhaps the answer will be a combination of alliances with Intel and IBM to ramp production. You never know.

Slashdot | Linux and OpenOffice save Microsoft Presentation -- Penguin Power

Slashdot | Linux and OpenOffice save Microsoft Presentation

There are some articles that you just have to grin when you read. This is one of those times. I'm glad to see they got their presentation out, but I think if nothing else, this little episode should show that Open Source and Closed Source and yes I suppose Shared Source initiatives have a place in this world. They can compliment each other... OK OK I can't help it *ROFLMAO* that's just some funny shit when a MS presentation has to be posted up on Open Office... The irony. What's interesting is the presenter already had that distro on his laptop... Hrm...
I'm sure the spin doctors will contend it was faulty hardware on that tablet PC, but those of us who harbor no love loss for MS will look at this moment and laugh... A lot.

Linux Zealots and The Media

I recently read commentary by John Dvorak of PC Magazine. Dvorak is a long time columnist and his views are usually to the point and worth a closer look. As much as I hate to agree with him the recent rumblings with LinuxWorld and O'Hara vs. PJ of Groklaw are the type of negative press that makes it hard to be a die-hard Linux user.

There seem to be a number of small camps that make up the Linux/OSS community. There are the ardent FSF proponents, I consider them the Stallman followers. There are corporate centric groups (Novell, RedHat, Mandrake) and then there are the radical groups (zealots). I have refrained from calling Stallman followers zealots because I think that many who really believe in the FSF/OSS movement are a bit more open minded. The zealot community however is the most vocal and often gets itself into flame war upon flame war about why closed source is bad and open source is superior. It is this myth that I think perpetuates the image of FSF/OSS community members as narrow minded elitists.

My own personal belief is that there are times when both types of software development is suited to a task. Closed source software is and I think always will be a boon to economic trends. They have a hunger and desire to create "the next big thing" which I think helps drive innovation. Open source development is a free thinking, unbound opportunity for people to learn, expand and also provide innovation. Do they have to be counter to one another? I don't think so. Where I do see people butting heads is in terms of standards. I don't mind what code you write in the underpinnings of something but if the digital age is going to grow by leaps and bounds, we need to agree to disagree on the creation method and focus instead of ways to provide open standards that everyone can COMMUNICATE with.

Be this in the form of open file formats (XML anyone?) or communication standards like the http protocol specs, we need ways to share information. Microsoft is considering starting up a new campaign centered around the slogan "It just works". How about we get past that, and look at "It just works together".

PS: I'm a long time user of RedHat and occasionally have been known to run Debian, SuSE, FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows (yeah yeah)

E3? You know in script kiddie land that's just EE

OK I couldn't think of a good title, so sue me. With E3 right around the corner (hell it's tomorrow) I've got a few colleagues that will be providing some information straight from the exhibit floor!

Sadly as I am a working stiff I will just be here as always writing weird ramblings. What has E3 really evolved into and what kind of buzz is really being generated to the consumer? Personally E3 is just a nice benchmark where I can get more information about pending releases. Do I feel a need to hunger for every iota of information from it? Of course not. In a lot of ways E3 is the "Demo version" of gaming conventions. For those fortunate few who can attend it's a chance to rub elbows and see the latest stuff first. But in the end it's just a trade show like any other. Those who attend and those who provide actual journalism on the subject are probably the only ones benefiting.

For the non-attendee E3 is much like the Oscars. You get to see who's wearing what and the big wigs but do you really get anything out of it? I never thought so, and in some ways I consider E3 to be a stake in the ground marking a time when games SHOULD be released. Call it cynical if you want but I just don't get that excited about trade shows these days.

My Dell Is Bigger Than Yours

Dell 19" Laptop

There's just something odd when your laptop has the same diagonal size as the average monitor. I'm a portable user I will admit, but I have some fairly practical limits. Dell's introduction of it's new 19" laptop is sure to have some people thinking "Great a media laptop" but I think people really need to reclassify these things.

A laptop is meant to be portable, I would say a maximum size of 16" is where the "normal" laptop scale should stop. Once you crest beyond that you've really ceased to be a lapotp and have gone back to the days of "Portable Computer". Does anybody remember the early 4" green-screened Toshiba Portable PCs? Going beyond the weight and battery consumption, there's heat. A 17" PowerBook or a similarly sized Intel based laptop will pretty much cook your legs and drain in around under 2 hours with media usage.

Don't get me wrong these types of systems make perfect sense for home users w/o much space. But I'm starting to get worried that soon we will have to have Magnum laptop cases for these behemoths. What's next? Ribbed for the laptops pleasure?

Great... Now We Know When To Lube

Microsoft to Provide More Warning

and...

RSOD!

You know there's just something about the way Microsoft does business sometimes that makes me wonder. OK not so much wonder as laugh hysterically to myself in the comfort of my home.

I'm all for disclosure but Microsoft's semi-empty handed gesture is not going to do much, other than provide CIO's a chance to bend over and lube just a little before their servers get reamed. I think the problem is MS is facing a PR nightmare. As security flaws (big ones) creep up in their product families they are left with the choice of how to disclose, when and how to rapidly get a fix in. Bug management is no fun for anybody (be you closed or open source).

As for the Red Screen Of Death, where do I begin? As if the blue was "not clear" enough that something is wrong, we have to now color code it? I'm going to go one step further, let's just make a whole friggin rainbow. So when I have a mauve screen of death? I'll know that it's an RPC fault rather than a memory dump.

OK that ends my ranting for the day... At least when it comes to MS.

A Microsoft-Red Hat warming trend? | Tech News on ZDNet

A Microsoft-Red Hat warming trend? | Tech News on ZDNet

I think I just heard a bunch of SCO executives fall to the floor... In all seriousness though this could be an interesting development. I'm not about to jump into a conspiracy theory tirade, but hopefully this is either a case of both sides wanting to know where the other stands. Or in a utopian world, they are interested in really getting down to the goal of interoperability.

Either way I suppose we'll have to see how this one plays out.

Behold... The Power of Cheese... And Dough

Interesting Article on CNN

Take a bunch of convicts, a hostage, and how is it all solved? Pizza. I guess there's times when you have to just whip out a shiv and get you some pan pizza. While I'm glad the hostage was released, these kinds of articles make you wonder if the world is wound so tight that just about anything can become a 'set off' trigger.

In honor of this event, I think I'm going to get some pizza ^_^

Has The World Gone All Wonky?

Let's look at the headlines for the week thus far. Pfc. Lynndie England's guilt plea is overturned by a judge, Jennifer Wilbanks runs to Las Vegas, then New Mexico and accuses latinos of abducting her to cover her cold-feet and a sunflower shortage is a headliner in the Science section of CNN.

Maybe it's just me but it sure seems like the headlines these days are just a mirror of wonky world we live in. It makes me wonder however if the craziness is the being passively reported or if to a degree the sensationalism of the media is helping to breed more of these types of cases.

OMFG, Sunflowers Are In Danger!

CNN.com - 'Big trouble' for sunflower growers - May 3, 2005

Oh my GOD!! Sunflowers are in danger of losing federal funding! What will we do without this treasured snack item! Yes, let us all forget the fact that across the globe people are dying of starvation, but never mind the huddled masses, we're short on sunflower seeds damnit! It's definitely a slow news day when stuff like this makes headlines for the Science and Space section of CNN.

I'll admit the American media tends to lose its journalist integrity when something like this is front page material. I mean granted that earth shattering news in every field of human studies doesn't happen every day but you'd think a journalist would be able to investigate something or expand on something other than sunflower funding...

Attack Of The (i)Pod People

So after having waited four generations I finally broke down and bought an iPod. In my case the 30 Gig iPod Photo. It made sense finally for me to buy something with that much capacity. Longer work schedule, the fact that I will be on vacation in a few months, and it works with iPhoto so I can carry around a small photo album from my vacation. There are drawbacks however.

Perhaps it's a cultural thing, maybe it's just the novelty of the iPod and its cult following, but once you own one, you feel compelled to ask others if they do too. Once you find those people (I'm going to call us 'pod people') you immediately need to know which model and what they've done with it. It's scary yet interesting cultural quirk I've discovered. Hopefully I don't become too much of a pod person.

Guild Wars: Or Would You Care for Some MUDLite?

Less Content, More Filling? These are the questions I was forced to ask myself while playing Guild Wars. I'm no stranger to NCSoft's interesting take on RPGs, and in the past I have enjoyed titles such as the widely popular City of Heroes. Yet often there is just something missing in their releases.

First let's look at the good things. Guild Wars is an interesting approach to the MMPORPG genre in that it is not centered around a subscription model. Instead players are interconnected using the same type of infrastructure as battle.net (no surprise given the origins of the development team). This means we thankfully have a relatively lag free gaming experience with a good amount of consideration to streaming world data in an efficient manner. Environment design is good, though lacking any ability to jump sometimes feels inhibitive. Playing style is simplified as a result of the very easy to learn skills based combat system. Some of the quirks include the limit of 8 skills which you may only modified when in a safe zone (City or other non-combat area). These nice design features make the game very easy to jump into for a novice user. This would tend to bear out to the design teams idea of "the Counter-Strike of Role Playing". Unfortunately this is both a blessing and a curse.

A side-affect of the direction taken by the game designers is that content is somewhat sacrificed for ease of play. Rarely ever do you find yourself too out matched (unless you really are asking for it) and quests are by and large "hunt this, and come back for your reward". Granted this is nothing new to the MMPORPG genre as a whole, but the simplification of skills and enemy AI means this type of questing gets old fairly quick. A small party size of 4 (you and three others) is also a double-edged sword. Unlike some games (WoW, EQ) this smaller party size means that it is inherently easier to find a group, though it also means that your party is fairly limited in diversity. Healer, Magic User, Fighter, Ranger/Fighter seems to be the standard grouping. The Primary/Secondary skills sets mean that you can technically get 8 types of characters but I find that the secondary skills are really more beneficial during solo play. On that note, Solo-play is interesting since you actually get to use NPC styled Henchmen (NWN anybody)?

Don't get me wrong, Guild Wars is a good game and provides novice users a great way to ease into the MMPORPG world. For hardcore players though I would advise caution, some of the lack of depth may not be your thing. For a more detailed review you can check out http://www.vraxx.com