One of the little hobbies that I indulge in a bit is contributing to Wikipedia (Geekopedia).
Anyway, I just came across this humor page with a plan to stop vandalism on the WikiMedia projects.
One of the little hobbies that I indulge in a bit is contributing to Wikipedia (Geekopedia).
Anyway, I just came across this humor page with a plan to stop vandalism on the WikiMedia projects.
A few things I’ve found worthy of pondering in the last couple of days:
Apple has a new two-button (or really more) mouse. I can only say it’s about time. One problem I have with Macs in general, is that while Apple is happy to innovate and do new things, they are loathe to imitate the successes of other companies. It’s very nice to be cool and different, but a computer is a machine, and practicalities must be paid attention to.
Of course, Apple does do its best to do everyone one better with the scroll ball and the touch-sensor buttons. The last seems technically interesting, as I’d think you could technically split up the area into any number of ‘buttons’ you wanted. The former probably won’t matter much to a lot of users, but should be very handy in graphics applications.
Unfortunately, they stuck with the bar-o-soap design. This is slightly more ergonomic than sticking your hand in a blender….
Apple has sent out developer boxes for the new Intel-based Macs. Apple originally promised that while they would not be trying to keep people from installing Windows or Linux on the machines they produced, they would keep people from running OS X on machines other than their’s. I thought that would be a pretty tall order….
However, it turns out that Apple is using a new style of security chip on the motherboard. The OS will refuse to install if it is not detected. Chips like this have been popular with manufacturers like Intel for some years, but are constantly rejected by informed users (i.e., the fanatics who follow the release of every new chipset and motherboard…) who don’t like the possibilities for tracing particular machines. So now Apple has them pissed off about going along with Intel. I can’t say I blame them.
It should be noted that this chip is not unique to Apple; Intel is already using it. I might presume there is some difference enabled so that the Intel-OS X won’t install on just any machine with a TPM chip. But I wonder if would be possible for someone to hack around that, or otherwise work around it (like how a $20 I/O card could be turned into a $100 RAID-controller by soldering on a 5¢ resistor). This would be far too much work to actually effect the market in any real way, but might still raise the hackles of the hardware-jealous god of Apple.
SquareEnix is considering going multi-platform. They have traditionally stuck with whatever console has the majority of the market (although, one could accuse them of a certain amount of king-making). The president of the company started by pointing out that the Xbox has been a lot more successful in the US than in Japan, and then pointed out that the numbers look like the Xbox and PlayStation2 are currently selling in equal numbers here.
He then hypothesized that the next generation consoles could easily: a) split the world into different regions of who is on top, or b) split into a dominant ‘high-end console’ and a dominant ‘low-end console’.
I’ve wondered for some time if Microsoft might manage ‘a’ for a while. It’s obvious they’ve targeted themselves at the market they know, and are more-or-less showing the flag in Japan. I can’t see Sony or Microsoft settling for a (b) result, they’ll battle each other for total marketshare with prices, features and games all the way down. Maybe Wata knows more about Nintendo’s plans for the Revolution than he can tell…
I’ve just finished off A Clash of Kings, the second volume of George R. R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy series. I’ve got some thoughts on the books, so click on the link to see them:
They’ve been very popular, and I’d say deservedly so, but there is the fact that it shouldn’t take me five months to finish two books.
Admittedly there was a couple weeks where I was worn-down and busy enough that I basically didn’t read at all. And they are big books. But really…!
Were they bad books? No. Martin’s writing is quite good, I like his characters, I have a couple of nagging problems with the setting, but I like what he’s doing with it.
I just couldn’t motivate myself to read more than a minimal amount in either book, except for a few occasions where I gulped down a several chapters at once.
A Game of Thrones presents a fairly typical medieval fantasy setting. The background history is nice with a long-established dynasty having been overthrown about a generation ago, and the kingdom plunged into civil war over problems with the succession (a popular reason for wars in the actual middle ages). The politics are well done, I can believe the intrigue, and it’s handled well (I get tired of webs within webs within webs pretty fast; a good thing I’m not involved in court politics). The war quickly turns into four separate factions, with a permanent breakup of the kingdom likely. There’s also a mysterious (and magical) menace starting to move in frozen lands to the north, and the last survivor of the previous dynasty plotting her return to power.
So, lot of things going on, all powered by good characters and — individually — handled well from a plot point of view.
The problem is that there’s so many disconnected plots going around that the books never gel as a whole, and therefore don’t hold my attention. The beginning of the first book more-or-less makes it look like it’ll be the story of the Starks of Winterfell in these troubled times (and they are focused on them more than anything else), and if the books as a whole stuck with them and one of the major plotlines, I’d be very happy. As it is, it’s too unfocused, with too many disconnected plot fragments not really impacting each other for me to really get into.
Thanks to a very nice coworker, I’ve got a copy of the new Harry Potter book. So I’m eagerly diving into that. After that, I’m not sure what I’ll read, I’m kinda low on new things, and I’ve gone through some of my more favorite books lately….
‘Tis a puzzlement.
Well, tomorrow was going to be an afternoon of blowing up spaceships.
A couple weeks ago, Mike had to cancel out, fine, that left two of us. Now I find out that Mark has to cancel.
It’s not entirely unexpected; I know that last weekend, extending into this week, was apparently really crazy for him. And I figure a certain amount of sudden changes in plans from a new/recent father. And he told me as soon as he knew for certain: today.
sigh
But that means no wargaming for the entire month of July. Darn. Unless Dave isn’t too tired/stressed for a round of what Baron calls ‘GDP to the Bottom’ this weekend.
At least it makes tomorrow evening’s foray into Gnomeregan easier to schedule.
Well, we’ve had a secondary machine (Sunshine) set up for scanning for a bit now. We took it off the switcher and gave it it’s own workstation so we had a second machine that could play WoW. This involved taking an old ViewSonic 17PS out of storage and putting it back to active use.
It had gone into storage a few years back when it started having ‘ghosting’ problems. So it wasn’t entirely surprising when it popped occasionally and flickered a bit. Recently, it had gotten more worrisome as it was popping more, and was starting to need more adjustments to the screen controls.
Today, shortly after I turned the machine on, it gave a large fizzing *pop*, I think I noticed a flash of light from the grills in the corner of my eye, and the screen suddenly just had a bright line running down the middle. The magnetic plates that controlled the horizontal sweep of the electron guns were dead.
So, we went out and got Sunshine a brand new LCD monitor. It’s a NEC 1770GX. Not the cheapest thing we could have done, but the most useful. It’s a pretty nice monitor, and we plan on taking it to shows so we can have a video display to catch people’s eyes.
Oh – and if you’re aware of my equipment – my personal ViewSonic 17PS is still hooked up to my computer and seems to be as solid as a rock. (Still, all things considered, I have to wonder how much longer it’s good for….)