It’s interesting to see what the top download from Microsoft’s Open Source code sharing site Codeplex is.
No it’s not the excellent AJAX control toolkit … nope it’s a character comparison application for WOW. At least people have their priorities straight!
Go Open Source … Go Microsoft!
I got my first real PC in 1994, quiet late some might think, but I was more of a spectrum boy in my formative years. It’s sad day though when the credit crunch and recession kills off the manufacturer. In the early 90’s there were lots more people making PC’s than there are today and in the UK Evesham Micro’s were one that made lovely glossy adverts (I still have one I think it might be a collectors item now). I needed a PC for starting my Masters (honest it wasn’t to play endless games of Civilization on although that’s what it might have ended up doing..) and I remember going with my girlfriend (now wife if any one cares) to the Milton Keynes office of Evesham in my parents Micra. It felt like miles away from south east London, but they actually had a show room where you could look at all the machines. I had been working all summer at University so I had a bit of cash and I remember splashing out about £1000 for a Evesham Vale AMD AM486DX40 Machine with a 14” monitor, 1 MB Ram and a 120Mb hard disk.
It was really amazing… so it’s sad when you read stories like this. Bye Evesham.
Does anyone ever get confused when names in reality sound like names in 1990’s computer games. Take this article Rival mobile Linux consortiums smoke peace pipe, consolidate. now it’s a fine article written by a good online technical magazine, but when you start reading about the protagonists it really does sound like some sort of futuristic space game, here they are in no particular order:
Now if that isn’t due to people wanting to be members of some futuristic mega-corp with people growing up with Star Wars and Judge Dredd I don’t know what it. Now when the next wave of companies with names based on anime characters I shudder to think what’s coming!
Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that someone has made a great list.
If you ever needed a list of nice free software this one has it all….
The Famous vbMark Big List of Freeware Alternatives
Very nice indeed……
I have a nice shiny HTC S730 phone. It sucks. For many reasons. The first of which is my own fault. I really wanted it to have GPS built in. The pre-production models sent out for review had GPS, you can see links to it working here:
An in Reviews here:
http://www.coolsmartphone.com/article745.html
Even though everyone knew it wasn’t going to be supported we all hoped that as it was there on the pre-prod then we would have GPS glory on our phones too…
WE WERE WRONG
It seems like HTC in their wisdom decided to disable or cripple the on board GPS, the software can see it but can’t use it. Oh well, I accept that the HTC specs didn’t have it in so I was just hoping 
Unfortunately HTC also decided to include a woefully small amount of memory. Many people have been seeing issues with memory running out all the time, with only 17mb available even after reboot of the device. Obviously this is just rubbish and hopefully will be fixed soon by HTC.
until then if you are thinking of buying one…. DONT, stick with the S710 or something, which is a cool phone and has enough memory to not have to reboot it every few hours….
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Don’t Buy Me !!! |
Not a game related post but sometimes you have to promote a bit of good fun writing. Although some people might have you think otherwise, there are some people in Microsoft that have a sense of humour. This is a great article about how Architecture and how it has evolved from big mainframes to the current SAAS and S+S confusion….
A Planet Ruled by Software Architectures
Personally I moved to the ‘People’s Republic of the Online World’ about 10 years ago from the ‘Great Duchy of Enterprisia’ …. I wonder if I will be there in another 10 years time. I definitely know my game playing is much more fun there
A group of us recently decided to try some old school online gaming circa about 1999 with StarCraft. I think I must have missed the wave of hysteria about the game when it came out and was keen to give it a go. The main problem I found was getting hold of it, especially at reasonably short notice.
Whilst I might have been able to break out bittorrent and get a not-so-legal version of it I actually wanted to buy a kosher copy, if for nothing more than being to play online. I like the idea of being able to download games without actually going out to personally purchase them from a shop or having to get a company to package it up and sent it to me (like I can here). This saves not only allot of packaging, but also fuel and save me having to clutter up my house with a box that I will only look at a few times and a manual that will be next to useless in a few days (don’t get me started about Prima guides). Unfortunately StarCraft isn’t a game that you can do this with (well not that I can find anyway) so I’m forced to get it delivered if I want to play it.
I find it quiet strange that companies with a back catalog of games that many people might like to play, don’t allow people to download it from a source such as here. I’m sure not only would it allow for a company to maintain a revenue stream (in a long tail sort of way) but also would allow people who would rather not have a load of printed material, that is effectively just waste, cluttering their houses and landfill. I’m sure this will be the way people get games in the future, indeed whilst I was looking for StarCraft I actually grabbed a copy of Supreme Commander from the latter site (effectively the same game no?), something I might do for other games which I like the look of.
Doing this promotes the casual browser who doesn’t want to run into their nearest Game store who cant even work out how to sell a PS3 to someone (now that’s another tale of credit card fraud and losing cars in car parks) and will inevitably give me a paper receipt and a plastic bag which will add to my game clutter which I just don’t need. So long live game downloads IMO!
We have just had a table football installed at work (go go!). Whilst my skillz are quiet good (I specialize in 10-1 demolishing’s of opponents), they are not yet this good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjH-DDa2xSs
Pity our table has a glass top otherwise I would give them a go
You can see that there must be money ‘in them there games’ when a company as straight laced as IBM write a comprehensive article about designing MMO games.
Massively multiplayer online games, Part 1: A performance-based approach to sizing infrastructure
I’ve always loved the technical detail of IBM articles, usually at the right level between techy and business to make them readable. This one is a good start to artcles about designing and running a massivley concurrent system. Good Read! (if a bit long).
