October 1 - 15, 2001

Thursday 11 October 2001

Hi again! More from the demented! Not much more to say today but I'll try to give you a bit of news to keep you all happy! Read on!

It seems that e-mail has turned 30 sometime about now! Looking back on the past few years, isn't it really amazing the impact something like that has had on our lives. Personally, I wouldn't be without it and the net. I keep in touch more now with my friends than I ever did before I entered the tangled Web! If you want to know more about our beloved electronic mail friend, then click over to this story, and read on!

Well the planned Case Mod is coming along nicely now. I have just about everything ready for the final assembly, except the mother board! Waiting on that new VIA KT266A chipset to be available on a board in Australia before I commit to a final design. The grand plan is to produce a water cooled Athlon 1.4GHz with DDR RAM and a GeForce 2 Pro Video Card, and then crank it up to 2 GHz if I can get it there! It may not get anywhere close to it but it is worth a try! I have already got all the cooling gear and the chip and RAM, case (Lian Li of course!), video card, drives etc., but no MoBo! I have poked some air holes in the front grill of the facia of the case thus increasing the airflow to the twin case fans already in the system. Next step will be to work out exactly where I want the windows to go and then get it cut. After that will be to get some neons or cold cathodes along with some glo-wire and then mount them. Hopefully I will have it up and running before the dreaded Christmas price hike! We'll see how we go with it. More to come on this, with pictures included!

Looks like there is a new patch for Operation Flashpoint coming out on the 12th of October (hopefully)! This patch is set to fix up the netcode and over 20 other bugs in the game! Roll on the patch!

Here is a really cool site that provides you with an insight into your real form! I ended up as this! which is kinda interesting for someone who likes Star Trek! Just click on the picture and find out what sort of robot you really are!

Now this guy is persistent! Check out his driving record!

Well that wraps it up for another day! See you all tomorrow. Ciao!

Wednesday 10 October 2001

Wow, back again. That makes it two days in a row! Things should be starting to get back to normal now and regular updates should be possible.

KiM, the resident newshound, has discovered another stunning article over at Mystique Magazine! All you have to do is go there and look under the headlines for October 6th. Here is a snippet from the article:
A Swedish web site plans to quell the ardor of men who surf the internet for porn by bombarding them with squeaky-clean images and anti-exploitation messages. The site urges concerned internet users to turn the tables on aggressive web porn merchants by creating hundreds of mock sex sites with names like "super sluts" and "horny schoolgirls."
"By making fake porn pages and placing them way up high in the search engines ... we can trick surfers to click on our pages instead. And when they do, they're in for quite a surprise," reads the manifesto of the site.
Go check it out!

For those of you who may be new to the computing scene, or have people like me who you ask to fix things when they go wrong, there is an article over at OnMagazine that you should really go and have a look at. The article deals with tuning and servicing your PC. As they say. you wouldn't drive your car around for a year without checking under the bonnet, would you? They also give some sage advice - know what is in your PC and what it does! Unfortunately the site caters exclusively for Windows PC users but if you want to check out how to tweak up your Mac check out MacFixIt or the support pages over at Apple. Go read this one, it WILL help you with your computer!

Here is a very interesting open letter from a computer journalist to Microsoft about their new anti-piracy practices in their forthcoming OS, Windows XP. He asks the bosses at MS to relax their restrictions on multiple computer installations for home users. Now I know that nothing will happen about it but it is good to see someone standing up for the ridiculous enforcement in home machines. As the journalist rightly points out, few home users can justify the expense, $100 - $200 in the US $400 - $500 in Australia, of purchasing a copy of the OS for each system running in their house! For me that would run into the thousands of dollars. Actually with 6 computers running the cost would be about $3000 to upgrade! Now you can all probably guess what I am going to do. Yep, not buy the OS. Not one single copy of it! Microsoft has just lost revenue from me as I always upgrade to the latest OS, but now that has changed. But, anyway, go have a read and see what he says for yourself!

The crazy dude's over at Gamespy have just started a week of articles on the ubiquitous act of overclocking! So if you have a bent for speeding things up or even just simply saving money on upgrades, go over and check this article out as it will help you extend the life of that flagging PC!

Looks like the latest add-on for Red Alert 2, titled Yuri's Revenge is now ready for release, sans the burning towers on the box top! So for all you Australians out there waiting for it, it should be out here in a couple of weeks! Oh, and if you are still waiting for Commandos 2, it's out and available in stores right now! Just don't forget to turn your computer off before you leave............. I still don't know what the hold up here was but the distributors are blaming an invoicing problem for the 2 week delay from the official release date!

Well it looks like the terrorists associated with the Recording Industry Association of America are set to infringe upon our privacy and freedoms once again, if we let them! This article from The Register details a meeting between the Music Companies and the PC hardware and software communities. The result looks really bad! It seems that the only reason CD sales are down is because of file sharing! Now the general downturn in the global economy, with mass layoffs occurring everywhere and a rapidly looming depression just couldn't have anything to do with it at all! Well the RIAA are simply using this to increase their strangle hold on the music industry and aim to stop file copying at all costs. Now that cost will impact directly upon the consumer and I can see that the consumer will lash out and simply stop buying CD's. Thus crippling the economy even further. While I disagree with mass file sharing without purchase, I also strongly disagree with the strong arm tactics of the RIAA. Surely there must be some middle ground here? It seems that the RIAA are simply not interested in it at all. In fact they want it their way or not at all! Sounds like Microsoft or Osama bin Laden to me! Go read the article and be disgusted!

Well that just about does it for the news today. Probably update again tomorrow morning sometime if there is anything much to report! Cheers!

Tuesday 9 October 2001

Well it has been a long week since I last updated the site. I am sad to say that the reason for the delay is sheer slackness on my part, mixed with a portion of really slow news worthiness. Anyway, Here I am back again, so lets get on with it!

This story is a bit old now, but apparently people are using skins in games that resemble bin Laden, and then killing him with extreme prejudice! Check it out here.

It seems that the US are a tad concerned about their new legislation on eavesdropping! They were so concerned that the bill had to be rewritten and now contains an expiry date. It will expire two years from the the time of enactment. Check the full story out here.

Now here's one way to boost slowing birth rates - have a war! It seems that as a result of these uncertain times the US will probably experience a baby boom in about 9 months! It seems that people are more likely to have sex and produce offspring in these times. Now I can understand the need for comfort and bonking, but why will it probably mean a baby boom? Particularly seeing that the AIDS threat has greatly increased the use of birth control devices? Very strange, or do the researchers just forget things like that? Anyway the article is over here, go check it out! Thanks to KiM for that one.

How sad and depraved is this? It seems that even before the second tower of the World Trade Centre had collapsed, people were rushing to register domain names that reflected the tragic incident! Read this story for the sad news, that some people are simply more worried about money and a competitive edge that about other people! A fine example of capitalism and corporatism at work! I am disgusted!

Now here is an interesting article that actually looks outside the normal scope of things and analyses the recent music and file trading wars and compares them to terrorists networks! Basically what they are saying is that the terrorist networks are going to be just as hard to close down as the file trading sites and programs! Go read it, I guarantee you will find it interesting.

Here is another interesting article about the recent Copyright wars. It seems someone has released a book about how bad the laws relating to copyright really are! Hooray! Now the author really questions the ideals of copyright law and how they are impacting on creativity and "Free Speech"! Go read the article and if you see the book on the shelves, pick it up, buy it and have a good read. You might just learn something about the way the world of business really works!

Well looks like the music industry is now going after the companies that make the file trading program Morpheus! Dejavu anyone? Read about it here.

Well it looks like French Telecom are bastards as well! Check this story out here for the full details. Thanks KiM.

Well that is all I have time for at moment. I will get some more up later today or early tomorrow and hopefully that will catch me up with the news! Go, enjoy and play games while the world burns!

Tuesday 2 October 2001

Well, it's October already! Wow, hasn't the year gone so very quickly! Not much has happened over the last couple of days but I'll try to update you a bit on what has. So it's on with the show!

Commandos 2 has mysteriously failed to appear in any store locally yet, despite it's release date being for last Friday. I know of several people who are very annoyed at the fact, so annoyed that they are seriously considering downloading a "slightly used" copy for sources unnamed! It is a real shame that the programers work so hard to bring a game to the people and then the people who loyally support the products are let down by the distributors! It is a sad state of affairs indeed! Eventually they will lose business to the pirates who can distribute the games with more speed and reliability than the so called legitimate distributors. Who is fooling who here? Anyway, I hope the game is as good as the last one, but I will wait and see if it is worth the dollars before I get caught up in the buying frenzy!

Now here is a story that will make you really sad. Sad for the state of our world! It seems that in Melbourne (Australia) they now have a smog watch web site! This site predicts smog and pollution patterns up to 24 hrs in advance. The thing I find sad is that we watch it but do little to change it. We change our lives in accordance with the environment that we have created from our past behavior. Instead we could work to change the environment so that we could all live without the pollution and it's effects! Anyway, here is the link to the story!

It seems that this is a soapbox day for the site! I just finished watching the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, declare WAR on the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden. I was impressed with his speech, but I am afraid that this is only the beginning of a very long conflict, that the west may not win! He impressed me further in his speech by admitting that in the past the west has walked away from countries like Afghanistan and left them with their problems. He went on to promise that the UK would stay after the war was over and help rebuild their country and economic standing! Fine words, only time will tell if they are real!

The Official Operation Flashpoint website has released a stand alone server patch that will allow you to run the game on a server without the need for a CD in the drive, thus allowing for a small cost saving at LANs! Download it now while it is hot!

Well that is all for today. I hope you enjoyed it and come back for more. See ya!