One Step Below

Metro 2033 review

2010-12-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

So I have finally set up my new PC and gotten used to it. Might publish my worklog on how I built it at some point if I get around to it. Anyhow, I built it as a gaming system, so I thought I will do some game reviews as play them. Can't promise timely reviews, but I will do what I can.

One of the top games on my Steam library that I was eager to play was Metro 2033. It promised S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like atmosphere and much more story driven gameplay. Overall I was not dissapointed as got what I was expecting.

I will start of with graphics. Can't say they were bad, but I was expecting something more. Maybe it just me, not being able to play on full graphics at high resolution for so long I was expecting bigger leap. Especially seeing all the videos on small Flash player windows makes it look so much better. I suppose the biggest gripe was with the look of NPCs and how they interacted with level design. Sceneary was quite nice though, especially surfice level ones.

That said, you have very limited options to explore it all. The game is packed with invisble walls and small fences or other structures that restrict your path. While at times it is nice and needed in a story driven game to provide the expected narrative, there were times that it was limiting. Most notably I felt limited around (currently or once) populated areas. For example, there was a second floor to which you could not get to in couple of stations. If you are an explorer then enduringing restrictions in already restriced and enclosed space is not something you would expect.

I did not experience any of the AI glitches I heave read about, and for the most part combat was great. I played on Ranger mode - easy, but that is by far not an easy difficulty. In every combat I had to make every shot count as had no spare bullets. Especially towards the end of the game when enemies took more then one to take down. I did like how it added more tension to the game.

Weapon management for me was a bust as well. I really wanted to use one of the pump action guns, but they took the slot of shotgun of which I had the most ammo. In addition it was the best close combat weapon. This is something they should think about for the sequel.

Turns out the game had an alternative ending as well, but it was not something I was going for. I really enjojed the game and would recomend it to anyone, especially if you like FPS games. While the ending was interesting it left me with a huge question burning at the beck of my head... how is he going to get back? (you will know what I am talking about if you finish the game!)

The Christams Graphics Fight

2010-09-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

According to Fudzilla, Nvidia is working on a refresh for it high end chip.

I have always thought that the 480 is a big behemoth of a chip that runs hot and power hungry. Something that I personally do not want in my PC. 460 on the other hand was something that turned a leave for Nvidia. Considering that is the same architecture, then they should be able to apply all the benefits to the next refresh. While the outcome might not be that much more appealing to me in terms of power and termals I believe it could really push the performance envelope for Nvidia.

ATI has been doing good for now but it seems that they are about to do even better. The Christams time is heating up as mainstream perfomance specs of the new 6000 series have leaked so we can expect the top end single chip card from them to be even better. This really looks to be exciting time for cutomers because closer the perfomance will be cheaper the prices should be as well. Given the ATI chip history this might be something that they could win at. They tend to have smaller die size, and hence lower costs, so we will have to wait and see how this pans out. At the same time, they will try to milk it for as long as Nvidia hasen't launched the refresh.

Source (Nvidia)
Source (ATI specs)

Wireless display, Nvidia, Intel fight

2010-09-26T07:38:00.000-07:00

Nvidia has announced that they are working a wireless display technology. Something that Intel has been doing for some time as well. Unlike Intel there is nothing specific yet or a working sample shown to the press, but considering the ambition I am sure that one thing they will push for is 1080p transfers. AFAIK Intel can only push 720p. In the end, once it hits the 1080p the fight will start on price and latency in high end. The mainstream market should be OK with a small lag, where as gamers will want lower lag. If this is done right small nettops might have a serious competition, as the Wireless Dispaly should be cheaper and should allow more options as the machine powering it will be more capable. This is really exciting technology.

Given a second thought, I think the fight will be won not necessarily by the best tech, but the best salesman where it counts, the TV manufacturers. If the TVs start coming out supporting one standard, that will be huge boost. Why would you buy another box if you really can be wires free!

Is PhsiX going open market (proper CPU support)?

2010-09-22T01:37:00.000-07:00

Nvidia have announced that they will enable CUDA on CPU. Even though the reasoning behind this move is more aimed at data centers, I cannot wonder what it will do to the PhysX market. Reviews have shown that running PhysX of CPU at the moment results in a significant frame rate drop. But that has a lot to do on the the bad implementation of the PhysX on CPU. As it uses CUDA, which is coming to CPU I would expect the CUDA implementation to improve where as the implementation of PhysX should therefore be better implemented for use on CPU. If the load could be balanced on all cores, then it should result in lower frame rate hit for no Nvidia gamers which is good news for gaming market in general as PhysX might make its way to more games. :)

Sources:
TC magazine
TomsHardware

Acer looking to conquer home media crown

2010-09-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

Acer has announced the latest offering in its Revo product group, namely Revo View. From all that we can see I would have to say that the Revo product range are shaping up to be great option for home media hub. Whether you want more versatility with Revo nettops or just a plain media player with View, the options are there.

Revo 2

The new Revo offers something of a great package, with size and performace, but there is one thing that makes it stand out and should position it as an incredible option for media PC. The Revo Pad, that will replace mouse and keyboard in a nice and handy package that will not spoil the look of your coffee table. Windows Embedded might be a turnoff for some but I think it looks and works great for a media PC that connected to TV.

RL100 and Revo 3700

Are more mainstream machines and should arrive in shops in near future. They will be and act as the regular PC, however they should also offer great home media centre options. To an extent they could be more than just a box that lets you watch TV and movies. While 3700 offers updated Atom experience of true and tested nettop, RL100 will show of in AMD flavours. And that is not all that will distinguish it as that should also laucnch with RevoPad!

Revo View

View seems to be a competitor of WD Live series and similar, but with optional? HDD and really attractive price point seems like a great offer. As long as they get the interface right and flawless playback of 1080p it should be a great package. As it notes it will have spare USB ports and network LAN connection as well as optional WiFi (there is me hoping for an internal solution and n flavor). It would be great if the internal HDD could be managed from the main PC through the network. That indeed would make it an outstanding package.

Sources:
Engadget (Revo 2)
NetBookNews (Revo 3700)
NetBookNews (RL100)
We Got Served (View)

a touchy feeling

2010-09-19T00:09:00.000-07:00

Windows Mobile 7 is around the corner and UI videos have been emerging.

But watching them all I somehow feel that the interface and functionality is all flash and not much more. I can't say that it looks bad, heck no, it looks amazing. But is it usable. I really wonder how much testing have been done with the end user for extended usage periods?
I will not lie and say that I love the iOS, but I see the appeal as it is clean and very simple to use. One of the things Apple advocates is that it just works and is simple. No setup or anything is needed. Android on the other hand has completely customizable home screens which enables user to have exactly experiece that he/she wishes.
I have hard time seeing where exactly WM7 tiles fit in there. And more importantly how will they succeed at targeting people that are more of the social grid.

HTC Desire impressions

2010-09-04T04:11:00.000-07:00

I have had my Desire for over a month now and I thought it is time to write up a little review and my impressions of the phone. I should note that I am not really a power user or a connected person. By that I mean that I do not use Facebook and Twitter as much, but we'll get to that.

The Hardware

My impressions of the hardware are good overall. It has a powerful internals that drive the performance. The build is good. There is nothing falling of or sticking out where it shouldn't. It is not metal, of course, so it does feel less rugged. I do feel that the cover, even though it feels rubbery, does not offer enough grip at times. I have never dropped it but it makes holding it uncomfortable at times. Taking off back cover reveals that it is not that sturdy and do offer much support on its own. Every time I take of (peal of) the back cover I have a feeling that I will snap of few of the 'legs' that hold it in place and will not be able to fit it back again. Luckily that has not happened yet.

The screen is definitely not scratch resistant. In less then a month I noticed small scratches on the screen. So I recommend getting a screen protector along with the phone. HTC's screen protector fits great on the screen and has cutouts for the sensors on the screen to make sure they function correct. I failed to put it on correctly and now I have a small bubble between one of the holes and the edge. The weirdest thing is that they made a hole for notification light in the screen protector. There might be some sensor there but it does seem strange. I should note that the protector I got is a huge fingerprint magnet. But that is not something that bothers me.

The Software

The software is a broad field, and very much down to individual preferences and usage patterns. Overall I am very happy with the use of it. It goes back to what I said about not being a power user. The phone comes with HTC Sense interface, that I have grown accustomed to by now and find it hard to switch. Even though Sense does a good job of offering great deal of user friendlyness out of the box, I found that Android Marketplace will have to be your friend to make the phone work for you. There are some thing which many might look at as basic that are not available out of the box, and sometimes are only available after the root access is gained. The biggest annoyance for me was the inability to remove preinstalled applications. As I said earlier I do not use Facebook and Twitter much so I would have loved the option to get rid of these applications among many others.

I found SlideScreen to be a great app, but after removing all the unneeded slides, I was left with only few Slides and half of the screen unused. Another home screen alternative I tired was LauncherPro, which was great to the point that I was already too used to Sense. I kept looking for things that were not there. I have not given up on it yet, as I might try it again at a latter stage, especially because it let's me hide all the apps that I do not use.

Valve's three secrets

2010-09-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

According to various Gaming news portals Valve's Gabe have said that we can expect three big surprises from them within next 12 months.
It has brought up lot of speculation and so on, but in the end the big question is - does this include HL2 - ep3?

One one had everyone expects them to release it in near future anyway so when they announce it it more likely be a sigh of relieve then surprise.
On other hand the fact that they announce the game will be surprise, as I am starting to give up hope that it will get released.

Personally I would like to see them update the engine. It has served well over the years and is a scalable engine, but it is still DX9 and DX11 looks like something that might stick or at least have brought enough to the table to warrant an update.

On some sick level I have a feeling that one of the surprises will be HL3. Essentially that the EP3 has taken so long because it have actually turned into HL3.

I would really like to see them announce another big new IP. Portal was great, L4D is good, but I still want more.. :D But we should not forget that adding another IP to the mix will mean that it will take even longer till next HL. It is a tough world we live in!

DLC vs episodic gaming

2010-08-31T14:07:00.000-07:00

It has been a long long time.. Even too long.

Either way, I was thinking about the DLC as that seems the fad of the year or even the last couple of years. All the big games need to have one. At some point people were talking that episodic gaming might be it and only Valve really ended up doing it and burning bad doing so. I am not going to repeat the old news, but 4 years on and we are still waiting for just ep3. Sure Valve puts in the effort and delivers great experience at the end, but this is time frame I would like to wait for a full retail game.

Now looking at DLC I see all the unfulfilled expectations from episodic content realized in these DLC packs. Or at times just lazy developing (or eager publisher). Borderlands seams to be a good example to the former, as the game was one would expect out of a retail game and some of the first DLC packs improved and extended it to some lengths, while the best is that we see a pack year after the game launched. And let's not forget that all the newcomers to the game will have to buy the full retail game which should be cheaper by now so this is a great way to stimulate the second sales wave of the game.

On the other hand something that really gets in my pants are modern multiplayer FPS games. While the games are great and so forth, they come with choice of 3 weapons, and 3 maps. A week or month later, whenever you get tired of the choices, you get a DLC that gives you that little extra to keep you playing and paying. I miss the day when games came with multitude of options. Also, I do not want to say that the mod community has died down, but the developers really should embrace this by offering more community maps in these updates.

computex '08 girls

2008-06-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Cause I wasn't there, there are no pics from me, therefore here or some links to girls of Comutex:
Tech ARP - have multiple galleries
VR-Zone - 1, 2, 3
Expreview
The Tech Zone, 2
ZOL
TweakTown
Future Looks
MadSrhimps

External laptop graphics

2008-06-05T04:05:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to reflect a bit on not a new concept but a concept that soon should be come a real product and has working prototypes available. Product at hand is external graphics solutions for portable - laptop computers. As you should know, laptops are not know for their graphical capabilities and most outstanding gaming performance.
While there are gaming laptops out there they do not match the performance of todays higher end graphics cards for desktop PCs. While CPUs are also not on same performance they do seem to be closer to their desktop counterparts.
To solve this problem and bring more joy of gaming to laptop owners 2 solutions are expected to be on the shop floors by end of summer.

ASUS XG Station. The concept and the prototype has been around for some time, but it seems that is finally reached the point where it is ready to be launched soon. It is to use Nvidia Geforce 8600 GT card as the power behind it. While 8600 GT is not the beastliest of things out there ASUS had to work around the limitations of existing ports on laptops.

Other solution comes from AMD -> ATi XGP, which means that it should bring more power behind it. From what I can see they use a new port that offers PCIe 2.0 8x speed with it and therefore should allow more powerful solutions then 8600GT. Fujitsu already have a box out there which uses mobility Radeon HD3870. Since there have no benchmarks out there it is hard to say what is the performance. I can see this becoming the dominant solution, as long as the newly developed port is not AMD laptop only port. PCIe 2.0 8x port should be enough to bring really high end graphics to laptops in near future.

The biggest problems about these solutions (not usre about ASUS one) is that they will require an external screen. What this means is that if you wanted a LAN gaming system, then you should get a desktop or hold out for a while longer. As Fudzilla reports (including picture) ATi in their solution plans to have it some time next year.

I would say that what we need now is to wait and see how these things stack up with each other... I can see this being a future as long it will allow to use laptops screen for gaming :)

British piss-take trilogy

2008-04-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you how have seen Shaun of the dead and Hot fuzz and liked it..
It has been reported that creators of those two movies are working on third installment. One thing that brings all these movies together is apparently ice cream.. :)
me likes ice cream....

More here

Nvidia and VIA joning forces

2008-03-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

The rumors of Nvidia buying VIA are turning out to be false, however have some ground to them. It turns out that Nvidia is going to be producing chipsets for VIA chips. A move that should be beneficial to both sides and possibly bring a third condender in desktop CPU market... One can only hope! ;)

Soure - the Inquirer

Triple ATi HD3850 in one card setup!

2008-03-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

Nordichardware is exclusively reporting that ASUS have prepared a custom design HD3850 card called: ASUS EAH3850 Trinity, which in fact as name suggest feature 3 graphics cores on a single card!
To see couple of pics and read more about it, head on over to Nordichardware.com

Releases to note

2008-03-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

Shacknews have some stories about few game releases to note for 2009.
3 most notable ones Mafia 2 and Bioshock 2 and Borderlands.... should be a good year for gaming.. For PC at least.. ;)

More action coming to screen near you

2008-02-27T02:39:00.000-08:00

Reading up on some news I came across some interesting news.
Filmschoolrejects.com seems to be bringing most of the fun to the table for me. Big news about J. Statham and 2 of his upcoming movies - Crank 2 and Transporter 3.
While Crank 2 might be a bit unnecessary to the table as the original was great and story seems to be finished I wouldn't mind the second if just for the action. And as it seems that it have similar budget... it should be a great movie to pass time with.
On the other hand Transporter 3... I loved the first one, so I hope this will keep to the roots of it as the second one it seemed that someone is trying to hard which made the movie a big disappointment for me. It had some good action, but the story was not that good and action scenes and CGI didn't go too well together...
Another great movie Underworld 3 is on its way as well... and that is something I don't want to miss either if for nothing else than tight leather outfits .. ;)

On the other things nice and shiny - Fast and Furious 4 is set to bring back Vin Diesel and Paul Walker... so one can hope that this will bring some entertainment and quality back to the franchise...

Update: It seems that Kate Beckinsale is not returning to Underworld any time soon... Andthis leaves me wondering if it will be worth watching the the new movie...

DX11 gets the sack

2008-02-07T05:25:00.000-08:00

theinquirer.net is reporting that MS has decided to cut DX11 mandatory support form Windows 7. While this might seems as a big thing I believe this will benefit the industry more than having DX11 locked in Win7 on release. The benefit this an bring is that DX11 should be available for Win Vista, just as DX10 should be available for Win XP. Granted that MS claims XP and DX10 are incompatible, and XP has lived for 2 DX releases already - 8 and 9, so it is time to move on, but it would be a mistake to make DX11 Win7 exclusive. People like to have choice and forcing people to upgrade is not a way to go - especially when u see falling market share and have good products from competition out there.
Another big question is when is it coming out... If 7 comes in 5 years... well nobody wants to wait that long for DX11, while on other hand if it comes next year... well it will be simply to early as the games are not even mature for DX10 yet and forcing everyone to upgrade is not a way to go.

Either way.. whenever a new DX comes it has to be open and not force users to upgrade to new software. It would have been much better incentive for gamers to upgrade to Vista if XP had DX10 support while at the same displaying the DX speed improvements in Vista over XP... then at least someone could say - buy Vista, it is faster than XP!

Portal turrent party....

2008-01-18T15:17:00.000-08:00

Portal is such a brillaint game... and this video is even better...

Free Vista Ultimate

2007-12-11T07:42:00.000-08:00

It seems that Microsoft has decided to give away free copies of Vista ultimate and Office Ultimate amongst others (Only one can be selected per participant). Although it sounds very peachy and innocent, it does have a price. MS want to be able to monitor your every move on PC and your time to fill in some surveys. Although the monitoring is not that long - only 3 months... I am not that sure I am that excited about it... If I had a spare computer and I lived in US, I surely would go for this .... just boot up the PC every day or every other day for couple of hours... check you mail and watch some stuff online and after 3 months Vista Ultimate is yours... pretty sweet eh?
On the other hand if you do this on you main machine it might be a bit annoying knowing that someone is looking at everything you do on you computer... Not sure on how deep they are planing to look, but I would say unless you have backup PC to put this on... better stay away...

Some Movie rumors

2007-12-04T05:34:00.000-08:00

Michael Mann is thinking about teaming up with Johnny Depp for a period piece about FBI and crime in early 30's... Although I have bit of trouble imagining Depp as 30's character, it could come out to be great movie...
Another period piece this time from 50's is coming from Scorsese. Set on an island, a mental hospital and missing patients.... Sounds like some nice thriller is coming and I can't say less knowing that it will star DiCaprio and Kingsley
Two great directors... and few great actors and hopefully two great period pieces are coming our way some time soon...

UT3

2007-12-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

Just got try out UT3... not really in time of release but still... Keeping at mind that I do not have a high end rig to run this on, for that matter it is actually quite low end... Anyhow, I played some good old decks level.. and my first impression is.. if you have low end rig.. stick to the previous ones, as you will be able to enjoy better graphics and you are not loosing out on much... in essence it is same game with prettier graphics if you have good enough rig to handle it!
That asside... if you do have a good enough rig... man, it is fun..

missing door

2007-11-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

some funny shit...

Missing Glass Door Prank - Watch more free videos
I would probably fall for it as well.. :D

Far shit is Crying

2007-11-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

GamesRadar reports that developers of Far Cry 2 will put lot of shit in the game as that was the first thing they noticed about African savanna when they went to Africa looking for inspirations... should be fun stuff, and would be even cooler if it had some purpose in game as well other than esthetics's!!

Max Payne Movie

2007-11-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

So it seems that Mark Wahlberg will be playing Max in an upcoming movie.... It has been a while since we heard anything about the Max Payne but this sure sound to be good and I think the storyline is also very good for the movie, not like many other movies coming out... such as Hitman for which even casting (lead) sucks to say the least!
Wouldn't be too bad if they released another game in time for the movie as well... :D

more on Joystiq and hopefully soon on IMBD as well

Making drugs

2007-11-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

Keeping on the subject of drugs, here is little tutorial of how to make hashish!

Seen some other vids of this dude, and credit where it is due... he great...
PS sorry I do not know who he is, but if do stumble upon that I'll let you know...

Legal drugs...

2007-11-04T04:27:00.000-08:00

Populist America has an article - what if all drugs were legal?
I find it to be big peace of bullshit. Well maybe that is an overreaction, but lets look at it. It fails to neglect so many things in it and makes it all so rosy and peachy...
it talks about cheap market prices, and save ones with no more dealers with doggy stuff... but if you think about it... if drugs were legal they would be heavily taxed and people would look to make most money out of them, so they would by no means be cheaper than they are now... Making them legal would possibly cheapen the transportation costs also for smugglers and that would mean cheaper and better illegal stuff - same stuff all the junkies will be using. Alternatively this could go the other way and junkies will have to go with shit stuff and that aint gonna be pretty either...
It says that because of these free market prices junkies will stop mugging people... but it fails to mention where will they get the money for the next fix?? It is not like government gonna pay for them...
I do see crime going down and lot of people becoming legit rather then criminals... but it makes it look too nice to be anywhere near the truth.. maybe in long run, but it ain't gonna be easy..

iPhone invention of the year??? WTF

2007-11-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

Times Magazine has named iPhone invention of the year. It seems to me that they are bunch of caveman who have been smoking crack for last 20 years or so and recently have came out of the cave... I mean WTF have apple invented with iPhone. OK maybe multitouch sceen on a phone is new thing but what else? They have names 5 reasons for their decision:
1. the iPhone is pretty.
I can hardly see this as an invention and if at all a subjective one at that. They should have entered it in beauty contest for that...
2. It's touchy-feely.
I have never used one so it would be hard for me to judge, but I hardly see this a greatest inverntion... from what i have seen HTC Touch has similar touch interface and at the end of the day it is just an touch screen with some eye-candy and nothing more.
3. It will make other phones better.
Will in now? It might make some more competition in its class but there are enough good phones and better phones out there already and I can not see how iPhone is gonna make $100 phones better... Only thing I can see iPhone will bring to industry is wider touch screen adaptation. And I am not so sure it is that great of a thing. I hear u leave them in a sun and they are baked....
4. It's not a phone, it's a platform.
So and by this for some reason we should forget that MS Windows Mobile that has been around for much longer, and is less restrictive, in essence you can do so much more with it... and it works with bunch of phones not just one...
5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come.
And how does future iPhones relate to this year and being the best invention of this year...

Is iPhone a bed phone? Probably not, but is in invention of a year? I can't see it being there..
All it did was take things that been around for some time, put some Apple polish on them and shipped them to mainstream... Could this have been phone of the year... probably but by no means invention of the year!

Hamilton moving out

2007-10-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

In an recent interview Lewis Hamilton said that he is tired of all the paparazzi in UK so he is going to move to Switzerland... So this brings up a huge question for me and should for you as well. Is he really going there to escape paparazzi or he is going there for same reason M. Schumacher is living there? Simple fact that for foreigner income tax is set to only 2% - might have changed since last I looked into this but hey... Switzerland!!

Harlem Gangstas...

2007-10-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

So we just got... or about to get American Gangster which tell supposedly true story of a Harlem gangster and also there will be Mr. Untouchable that takes a look on roughly similar time period, yet I believe slightly later... but still the same story... seems like Hollywood is moving from Bronx mob to Harlem gangsters...

next year seems to be good year for portable gaming...

2007-10-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Seems that in coming year laptop gaming is gonna heat up!
And Things might come sooner than expected. While ATI says that they are working on some great cards that will see the light in near future - mostly next year, the Inquirer reports that Nvidia is planing to bring out 8800M GTX before December. Article says that it will launch when Clevo will have notebooks ready, and as it is MXM module I sort of fell the pain for all those who bought new Dell 1730...

Menace to ad revenue

2007-10-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

Some time ago there were some reports such as one here, that called for blocking Firefox due to its adblock extension which leads to lost revenues.
While I do not intend to say anything about the adblock extension as such and argue why blocking Firefox is just stupid, I do intend to look at why the decision was irrational and nowhere near the solution to the problem.
It is important to distinguish that problem is not the adblock and that people use it to ignore ads but that ad generated revenues are going down. It would be natural to seek answers if you would see that your user base is growing however you revenue is not. This is exactly what has happened and I believe that adblock got all the blame for no reason - well... undeserved blame at least.
To see the true reason one has to look past browsers and into internet usage trends.
I should say that I read my fair share of blogs and news sites every day and more there are, harder it is to keep up whith which ones you have read already and which you still need to read. sometimes I just forgot about some and later had too many things to go through and I believe this in a way is a problem for many readers out there. One of the best solutions for this is using a feed reader. Most of the sites nowadays support some for of feeds so it is easy to switch to them and many people do so. I would not say that I personally have signed of for incredible amount of them but enough of then to see a connection prior mentioned problem.
I have not seen a single ad on a feed.
When I looked at my trends on in Google reader, I look at about 13% stories and I go the page even less - mostly for feeds that only give headlines as rest of the stories I read on the feed. So here we are - the ultimate threat to ad supported sites is its readers best friend - feed!
Another important aspect to look at is that even you have headline only feed (maybe with first paragraph) you still loose on people not opening main page and spending time on site to browse it rather than just read the story.
I was also weary impressed with Google reader as I have not seen any ads on it so far... impressive knowing that that is how they make money!!

We are not dead yet...

2007-10-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

So BBC reports that mafia has a turnover of $120bn. Not really sure is that worldwide or just Italy, but those are some amazing numbers...
I thought in change of career coming....

is iPod killing music sales?

2007-10-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Inquirer has an interesting article about iPod killing industry. Although I did own a Walkman back in a day I can not agree with with writers opinion that Walkmans were so much better devices, even though he raises some good points.
One of which is:
"Sure, you could store a zillion albums on it, but you never will. Firstly you only possess a copy of Queen's Greatest Hits, The Best of Steps and James Blunt's Bluntastic! What are you going to store on the remaining 39.5GB of space?
Well. It's going to be stolen music, isn't it?"
Even though it has nothing to do with Walkman around which most of the article is based - this I believe is the best point he makes. Going by the estimates of my music collection an average album takes 75MB on my hard drive. so on an 80GB iPod or Zune you will be able to store round 1000 albums! That is very big number and if you bought 1 album a week it would take almost 20 years to get that kind of collection... legally at least.
Yes you might argue that large storage space can now be used for movies which have even less of a legal presence in digital market, or general storage or file transfers.
And even if you plan to use it as storage, what will you store on it? Sure it will be more media of some kind.
So in the end we have large amounts of storage on these devices with an urge to fill it up as soon as possible and for most people only way to do so is by illegal downloads that are easily available that legal options will have hard time catching up and competing with price.
On a little side note, iTunes Plus songs now going at same rate as normal ones should have come long time ago, not so much for DRM - free media but for being better quality and larger file sizes to help fill up those iPods with legal music and leave less room for P2P stuff...

Making names easy

2007-10-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Seems like both ATI and nVidia are being on same page in way that both have chosen to hopefully simplify their naming schemes...
While ATI has decided to to dedicate last two digits of name to signify performance, nVidia has gone different way by drastically changing it. If I got it correct than there won't be any 4digit codes any more but letter digit combination. will start of with D or NB - desktop/notebook - following by a digit to signify generation I suppose and one last letter at the end to signify segment - E for enthusiast, P for performance, M for mainstream and might be something for value as well..
Sources here and here

Some Intel stuff...

2007-10-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

I will start of with sort of the boring bit....
here is a look at models Intel has planed for near future:

Nothing too surprising there... just to see that new socket is coming and that dual core seems to be no more aimed at enthusiast market as there are no Extreme dual cores... which I suppose makes sense as quad is the new thing...
Also as the new dual model is only E8500 I would say it is safe to say that there will be E8600 and E8700 at least, which could bring frequencies up to 3.4 to 3.5 Ghz area looking at trending in E8xxx series... sure would look forward to those as most of the games yet no fully profit of quad core.. while have to say that it still new tech!

And here come the sad new for me and many out there.
OK they are not that sad but not great either... rumor has it that now mobile processors on Penryn base will not be full Santa Rosa refresh - not really compatible with current socket. It seems that with some modifications it will be usable, but as I was looking into getting new lappy early next year.. seems I will have to wait at least until Q2 when the Cantiga chipset comes out, which will bring full support for Penryn!!
more here

keyboard cooling

2007-10-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that one of the biggest things on laptops exterior is keyboard... and Intel has decided to use it size and relative openness to mod into a cooler.. and I really believe that it is a great idea.. Plus they have also made it water resistant so you can drink some while working on you lappy quite safe... While on the other hand there are enough hole near keyboard as it is to be relatively useless...
more at Fudzilla

Extreme

2007-10-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

simply WOW...
when I did bungee jump I thought it was wicked... but this... just takes the cream...

I know I would be scared shitless to do it.. but hell I wanna try it!!!

Game Mashup

2007-10-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

I would not say that I am a fan of any of these two games - Halo and Meteroid... but this is nice none the less...

Love the ending...

mixed influences...

2007-10-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

While watching the new Kayle Minogue vid

I could not stop and wonder... is it just me or is there lot of similarities with Marilyn Manson work? looking at all the artwork and the whoooo... in the song... Did not strike me as one particular Manson song but his style in general!!!

Jumper..

2007-10-11T13:01:00.000-07:00

This one seems to be like a nice movie and has some nice actors in it...

gonna look forward to this:

graphics battle

2007-10-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

It seems that lately ATI has been making some headlines and suggesting that ATI vs nVidia battle is again on the horizon..
As ATI has managed to shrink to 55nm it seems very promissing for new mobile GPU and that is something I am waiting for. It seems that with nVidia dominance nothing much has happened in mobile market in last year.. and I really need a new lappy.. :D
link

iPhone comercials

2007-10-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

So here are 3 iPhone comercials:

After watching these.. All I can really say that Apple is at it again... just putting blind bullshit on the table to get people to buy its product.
The one about 4 devices... common... we don't live in past.. most phones at that price range today deliver all that... well maybe without texting experience...
I can in a way see maybe how the voice mail be cool and all but personally I turn it off as I find it irritating to listen to all the messages... I prefer to get a message saying who called while I was busy... and the internet... well.. maybe useful....

fall season...

2007-10-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Seems like the coming fall season will bring some nice hardware to us.. All four major brands are cooking something up... Intel got the 45nm processing where AMD got it's native quad processors on its new K10 architecture... sure lot of performers expected...
Also ATI and nVidia are bringing new stuff out... and it also seems that ATI might be coming out stronger in mid range.... this should be good fun...
Yet a thing I am looking forward most to is what will AMD will bring to mobile market... It seems that it has nothing there for performance... I would love to have some choice when I come to buy my new lappy...

Are we really that LOST?

2007-10-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

To be completely honest I must say that this sort of blindsided me...
It seems that all so popular TV show Lost is changing or maybe adding a direction to it by entering the gaming scene.

I am sure they will make loads of money considering the huge fan base of the show! One thing that leaves me wondering is that since there are 3 more seasons of Lost coming, is this not too soon? Or does that only mean that there will be more Lost games?
Source

Hard Drive in different direction...

2007-10-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

Latest thing in Hard Driver market is switch to the SSD drives... However Slashgear reports stat company in Utah believes that SSD is not enough and there is need for more.... They propose to install HD via PCIe interface. This seems to make it really fast and I can see this really taking off as this eliminate lot of wiring that no one likes.... hope they do good and looking forward to see more of this concept!!!

Serenity coming...

2007-10-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Cinema Blend is reporting that Universal is thinking about making the sequel to Serenity. I know that many people including me would love to see this happen... It would be even better if they brought Firefly back as well... but even Serenity 2 would be dead good. Only saddening fact that the article points out is that since Serenity did badly on Big screen... sequel might be straight to DVD which would mean lower budget... but lets hope for the best!!!

keeping up with Russain drikin..

2007-10-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I posted a vid of dude drinkin 0.5L bittle in one go... so here is what happens if you are unemployed and have been drinkin for some time now... enjoy

overhype

2007-10-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

With all the hype from Halo 3 watching this video made me feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing that I am not the only one thinking that it is shit!

More here

Microsoft taking care of things..

2007-10-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have been using Hotmail for some time and find it relatively good, but that is not the story.
Some time ago MS opened a promotional campaign/site 'site of the champions' . It had some mystery to it.. and I hoped it will be like the alternate reality thing MS had going in Jan 2007 if I remember correctly to launch Vista! Wonder how is the space trip going there... Anyhow. I signed up for the champion newsletter with my Hotmail account. Because I do not get much mail in that.. I tent to check my junk mailbox as well as sometimes filters are trying too hard and get some good stuff mixed in there... You might already see where this is going... Hotmail moved the mail straigt into Junk folder... like it should as it was to advertise 10% off to MS SideWinder mouse....
Good Job MS... Next up to get those msn newsletters in Junk by default..!!!
Sorry I got no screen of this.. already deleted the mail as a habit...

Jolly good fun....

2007-10-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

I have been catching up and watching some game vids... most notably FarCry 2 which I found out got award of best new game in Leipzig Games Convention... and form what I have seen so far... it looks amazing. I like the idea that they are getting rid of percent health bar in favour of 3 level health... good - damaged - terrible... should be good with all the healing animation

Also the vegetation should be very nice.....

Although Crysis is receiving most of the hype at the moment as next big thing... I really think that this should not be neglected because it can well turn out to be even better game... well might not beat Crysis is all the spectacular graphics but gameplay... who knows... who knows...

Just on a sidenote.. Unreal Tournament 3 looks bloody awesome as well.. I really like that they are going for a darker and grimmer look and feel compared to 2004 one... imo it was too colorful and bright for my taste... at least the outside vegetative levels...

Undressing quickly...

2007-10-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

This might come in handy in those intense situations when you need to get naked quick...

Are linux mith really debunked?

2007-10-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

I do not intend to look at all the miths about the Linux and it users, but I recently saw this article debunking 5 common misconceptions about Linux. I also do not want to dispute all that is written there as I agree with the last 3 points. Linux is compatible with lot of software, It is enterprise ready/ people use it, and It is professionally developed.
However what I can not fully agree yet is that Linux is easy to use and it is ahead of time. Let me start with it being with time or ahead of it. Article mentions many features that Linux had before Windows as default and I am not going to dispute that, however most of them are power user / security related. When I tried Linux (might be just my experience) I find it that there are many things for every day user that are behind times and that are overlooked in the article. For example install wizard. I downloaded some software for my Linux and I could not get around how to install it. And when I did get it installed I had hard time finding where... What Linux desperatly needs is to get rid of terminal and more to the GUI stuff...
At the end of the day how many of you have left a website shortly after opening it because it had late 90's design feel to it? I know I have many times and it has noting to do with the product. People live I candy! I suppose point is that I candy needs to be consistent. Which brings me to the next point. Linux is hard to use. Here we come to point... once you have used Linux for some time and know basic commands and where what is - it is easy to use... but as long as average joe will need to know any command line and there will be no on screen instructions for the basic and slightly advanced features... Linux will be hard to use. Period.

US vs Japan gaming

2007-09-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

Gametrailers.com in their Bonus Round segment look at differences of two largest gaming markets in the world at the moment - US and Japan. It is very interesting to see how Japan tends to reject western games for their lack of good and compelling story and FPS games in general. Yet western world takes so much from the Japanese gaming market and so many top tier games today are Japanese. Follow the link here to take a look and let me know what you think, but I believe that many games today really should do better on the storyline...

The Crossing

2007-09-29T13:43:00.001-07:00

The Crossing is a game that expects to merge multiplayer skirmishes with single player missions...
What I have understood the idea is called CrossPlay and it features single player which is connected to many multplayer skirmish games. so when user ventures in one of those maps he is no longer playing against AI but real players...
I must say that this sound very interesting and I really hope they can deliver. Although I hope that multiplayer as such will also be very engaging, this will make the game to be a fresh new thing... This should eliminate 'there is a enemy around the corner' and many other stupid AI things...

more here and here

Pointing the flash..

2007-09-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

one of the best sim games ever - Operation Flashpoint is expecting a sequel some time in 2008.
Here is a small preview of the game.

must say that it looks amazing and even better is that it is set in today, rather in past of future. Also looking forward to trying out the driving part as it will feature engine developed for DiRT racing game...

Extreme Graphics

2007-09-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Nvidia is planing to introduce 3-way SLI configuration later this year. This configuration will only be available on high end cards, which brings me to wonder about why? I could see this beeing needed for designers or something but there are no games out there that are not maxed out already by Ultra in SLI... so why there is a need for a third one?
So here comes one of the possible reasons.. Ultra hi-res gaming and multiple monitor arrays. Not many people have these perks.. but for those select few these seems to be good news... as long as they do not get the same fate as quad SLI which is not supported in Vista!!
One would also would want to say that this high spec setup will also last longer but i realy doubt that. for a simple reason that tech is advancing too fast and also for a fact that in 5 years when dx 11 or even 12 comes... this will be out of date specs and will not support the games....

Intel's rebranding scheme

2007-09-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

Some time ago Intel announced that starting next year they will rebrand all their processors. This is due to many different names that apparently can be confusing to the customer. They intended just to settle for Core / Core 2... and so on.
Now aparently do to many complaints particulary form OEM's they have abandoned that idea. In my opinion that is a good idea, otherwise how will I know if it dual or quad core? Even though Core branding will remain the same they have redisigned the Centrino stickers to have unified design and Viiv brand to be under Core branding with little Viiv under the Core logo...
Good for them IMO!! :P

Source

News...

2007-09-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Must say that news are not the best show on the TV... Of course they supply us with the information but it would be much more engaging if all people on TV looked like this:

http://view.break.com/371824 - Watch more free videos

Unplugged street...

2007-09-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

If you ever wonder why there are no street lights on... late at night that is....
This might be the reason:

Gold Orange Box

2007-09-27T12:12:00.000-07:00

Shacknews report that long awaited Orange box from Valve has gone gold.
This is great news and I am looking forward to trying out the Portal game... I must admit that I thought it looked a bit childish and simple but now it seems like very compelling game... As for new Team Fortress 2.. I really dig the cartoony look... think they have done an amazing work on that.. :D
And of course HL2:EP2... no comments there...

Kane & Lynch

2007-09-27T10:38:00.001-07:00

As it starts off...:
From creators of Hitman... which I find to be brilliant game comes this:

As the story goes... if you owe someone lot of money... you better have no family and a damn good place to hide... So obviously this guy didn't and now he and his 'stalker' are on a mission to pay back money...
So it brings the question.. Why this senseless violence? Is that the only way they can make games nowadays? And please do not think that I have an issue with fps as such. It just that is seems like most of the big name games are about run and gun all that moves theme. What gets me is that it seems that it is not much different from so many games out there already... take away many things such as cars and it is like GTA and for that matter... how much different it is form reservoir dogs game? Take STALKER for example. It has a nice theme where you are looking for yourself and you become to understand different factions and their reasons for fight to control the area. That game has a meaning... but what this one has ???
As you can see in the trailer, which I am sure is for console.. gameplay does not seems so brilliant either... you seem to be only one to know how to aim.. and physics are shit as well.. look at the point where car crashes through the door...
I do not know... it probabbly is very nice and engaging game but it seems that it will not be the one that will impress me to bather trying out...

Silence Kills....

2007-09-26T14:59:00.000-07:00

Assassins Creed is one of the games I am intensely looking forward to. As most of the new games I expect stunning visuals but most of all I look forward to the gameplay.

As can be seen in this trailer it will incorporate lot of nice gameplay feature... nice action, sneeking and stalking... using the environment to the fullest... what else one could want!!

Branded World

2007-09-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

I have written before about the computer market becoming more about the looks rather then performance for majority user here. This time I wanted to take a broader look about how we live in very branded world. Because of the recent announcement by Samsung and Giorgio Armani of their collaboration to release phones and TVs in future. This goes hand in hand with what Lg did some time ago by teaming up with Prada and also Motorola D&G branded V3. All these high design brands are considered to be luxury merchandise, but here is where the problem comes in. They might cost some more but they are not that great and only thing making these pfones bearable is the branding. Of course there are lot of people out there that will carry any weight just have the branded life but I never expected to have such a low standards form such brands. I really hope Armani one will have something more to stand out from crow than just the name.
Going off from tech perspective I really see that D&G as a brand is selling out big time. I might be living in the past or something but when did luxury merchandise needed extra advertising by putting big self logos on all merchandise?? Not only that but also that you see people wearing it on every corner... I suppose people are maybe earning more... but i find it hard to grasp that they would rather go sell to gen pop than keep up the image and stay in lux...
Either way... Life Is Worth Living Only By Brand

spy with chewing gum

2007-09-24T16:41:00.000-07:00

A new micro camcorder has come out see some sunlight and it is dubbed the smallest camcorder around. It is small enough to fit nicely into an empty pack of chewing gum. Only problem is that it costs almost 300 USD and it not a cheap price by far... but on the other hand you can get quite nice quality videos and best of all tape them well.. very discreetly.. ;)
On the technical side it is stated that the 1GB memory will be sufficient for 33 hours of video only with a slight problem of only 2 hour battery life. Uses 3gp encoding and can be played on phones as well as PC. Uses of course USB interface for file transfers and charging.
All this gadget reminds me a lot of one I read about earlier - 0.3 Mpixel camera hidden in lighter (link).
I hope they make good on this and to be hones I would love one as well... as long as the video quality is not too disappointing.
More info and purchase info can be found here.

Shoot 'em up cameras....

2007-09-24T15:58:00.000-07:00

DARPA apparently have developed a some cool kind of cameras which can withstand high velocity impact on deployment effectively meaning that they can be shot from a gun.. well shotgun to accommodate the size I would imagine. Also planned to be shout out from an aicraft if not possible to get in shotgun range.
These cameras are expected to be used to create as hoc networks for surveying an area for an attack and or better coordination. I would also expect these to be good way to gather information for surveillance. Unfortunately there is no word on how long the battery holds up on this little gizmo. For some reason I would imagine it is not too long but it still seems very neat if it can be adjust to be easy to use in combat conditions.
[Source]

Hyperdistribution

2007-09-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

So many can argue that current model of advertising on TV as well as the current distribution model is well out of date and this guy has some nice ideas how to turn all the downloaded content in to advertising money!

rest of the lecture can be found here - Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7.
I really hope this makes some headways and becomes a reality... would be happy to get my content sooner and ... well legally for that matter..

Anti - Piracy

2007-09-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Posted some time ago about the IT Crowd's take on anti piracy warnings on legal DVDs...
just came across this video promoting piracy:

I even like the title of this - "Sharing is caring". I think I can agree on so many levels that sharing and copying to the some level has been source of lot of great things... There are numerous companies out there that are only successful now because they managed to copy someones work and improve it over time... but I suppose that is actually not the issue here... We all know how Hollywood like to copy other successful movies... sometimes directly and sometimes not so... And it is good that one can take ideas and develop them further... so of course sharing is caring and inspirational for the growth and common good...
One small thing though... how does this promote downloading of movies in a good way?? I am a bit puzzled about that.. but well it is a good effort nonetheless....

American Porn

2007-09-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

We all more or less know American Pie series... and the first few movies were ... well ... nice.. but then it sorta went down the hill from there... and 'The Naked Mile' as well as 'Band Camp' I believe never really featured any of the original cast... Ok except Jim's dad... but he never really was the focus of the story or anything... although he was in all 5 movies so far and he has always been a funny kinda fella... :D
And not to be forgotten that the mentioned last two installments had not only different cast but also different crew and and they were straight to DVD ... no silver screen!!! So where are we left?
American Summer!!!
As it says from creators of American Pie... I hope it will bring something good this time... yet after seeing the whole trailer I am left wondering... is American Pie going into porno business??? And a quick check shows that apparently only the director was working as assistant on first American Pie.. so is it really reasonable to put a label from creators of American Pie??
Either way... I will probably watch this movie just for the titties... but would not expect it to be anything worthwhile....

Russians know how to drink... sometimes...

2007-09-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

So here is a video of seemingly Russian dude drinkin an entire bottle of vodka in one go.... that man is SICK!!! and I am suprised he is still alive... well I hope he is cause this should inflict some serious alcohol poisining... !!

http://view.break.com/209752 - Watch more free videos
Nevertheless... I must say that it is pretty wicked and that it is some good vodka... had some good times.. :D

iPhone and clone mess....

2007-09-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

Recently Meizu have unveiled the screenshots of its upcoming M8's GUI. They can be found on Meizu forums and a fair comparison can be found on Engadget. Here is what it comes down to... Since the iPhone has such a hype around it... every touch screen phone will pretty much be compared to it. I mean off course there are and will be knockoffs...
The phone making some headways is Meizu M8 and it looks very similar to the the iPhone... both from design and GUI perspective... As it was stated before somewhere (sorry don't remeber where) that all the touch screen phones will be very similar to the iPhone as it was arguably the first in class. by first in class I mean that all other touch screen phones have at least few buttons and most have also stylos for input, which I find useful if you want to cram more info on the screen. And here on a random off thought I can see another reason why I don't seems so fond of iPhone... Although it has big screen it is not efficient... well maybe for pensioners it is....
Anyhow... I wanted to take a look how come M8 user interface so much resemble iPhone... I mean they have had enough time to make it better or do they really believe that iPhone is such an awesome device that it can not be improved??
If you look at the post on Engadget you can see that there are big resemblances to the iPhone but at the same time I there is the question ... are there that many different choices for GUI at this kind of phone? If you think about it .. the are icons and as they need to be easy to understand they will look similar across different products if not for all else then for at least consistency... and then there are the message list in which you also can't be much different.... And what is up with the keyboard layout with M8?? where is the consistency... should have been qwerty or something?? I really hope they change that for the Western market...
And where does that leave us? Chat screen... they do look awfully similar and it might be just me but i still would prefer the Skype type of chat screen rather than it being on the sides.. and I must say that for some strange reason I find that to be only real similarity with the phones... But who am I to stop dull iPhone admirer from seeing the obvious...

Reality check...

2007-09-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

So here comes another Crysis video preview...
As I have said before I am looking forward to this game... and the promised graphical goodies... so just keep up with our expectations Crytek have released another preview and it seems that it is one from multilayer again...

As you can see it looks pretty promising as always...
But there are things to work on for the next release...
As the video starts of with scene in beach.... I can't help but think - Ok on right there is a sandy beach.. on the left it is clear it is nice looking water... but what it lack terribly is that very shallow bit... in which you can clearly see where is the water and where is the sand.... it all sort blends in there in the game... but does it really do that in real life? I mean maybe I haven't traveled to tropicals but every place I have been so far... you can tell where the water starts by looking at it rather then drowning first!!! Don't get me wrong... it can be seen and the effect looks good from distance... but I think it is something that can be worked on.... and while we are at it.. later in the video the boats... well they make waves!!
And what about the physics sorta things here....????
When that dude get frozen and falls down.. what happens to half of his body? I mean once he shatters there should be a bit more ice... and maybe some red one... just to say that he was human... just maybe.... was expecting a bit more from that!!! and what is up with the sand bags?? you can see near the end of the video a dude being killed and he falls on the sand bags which just fly way like they were some fucking pillows... what is up with that... those fucking things are heavy and would not be moved that easily by dead body... enough said

All that is left to say is that this seems to be some nice team play experience ....

Pretty things...

2007-09-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

Looks are starting to become more and more important for everything that we use. At this time I want to look at different computer hardware and see how much does it really matter... well in my opinion at least!

Most visible part of any system is the case .. it goes for desktops and laptops... and it seems that HP is going all in.. releasing new - great looking cases for both markets.. And I bet this will benefit them a lot as for sales go, because many people out there that are not that tech savvy will go for the better looking one and this is where early models will win big. If we look at Dell... it can offer good quality, great performance at a good price, but this is what it lacks... the image of being cool... good looking.. and that one extra thing - tangibility before purchase. I know few people that have bought their laptops on how they look rather then what is inside them...
Although ascetics are important I somehow feel that people are just being blindsided here... look at my similar article about marketing bluff.. If for laptops I can see a relative need good looks, especially if one travels a lot, then for power houses and desktops I hardly see the need for it... I might be terribly wrong here but I believe that majority of us that have desktops keep them under the table and therefore they are not visible... so what is the point of having a groovy looking one if no one will really see it... and well of those of us who keep it actually on the desk or whatever... I suppose it will bring some fun once in a while... maybe sometimes you can even show it off to your friend or two.. :D
So at some point it is nice to have a good looking case, but what about the insides of it?
laptops are not meant to be opened so there is not much good looks there... but when it comes to graphics cards for desktops... well that is whole different story... most of us will never open the case and if you are a moder... well my guess is that you will keep the case closed most of the time and let the cooling system work its magic... so why do we need shiny looking gfx cards? I mean, hell, if you end up shelling out 600+ bucks for one of the top end cards.... you are clearly into how it performs rather that what is on it... and the vendors could save some money on it..
But I suppose it is also the first impression that counts and when you get a great looking shiny new card out of the box... u might not care any more how it performs - U are sold on the looks... maybe

Just on a footnote - HP seems to be the one diving in this most heavily with different models and all but it is not the only vendor doing so as Sony cases look pretty good as well as LG's.I believe others will follow soon and Apple will no longer be the only kool kid on bloc!!!

USB 3.0 comming

2007-09-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

This is going to be so good..
They are planing to have speeds 10x those of today where you would bet 4.8GBit/s which sound to be just awesome...
I mean 2.0 is not that bad, but at the same time when I found out that my external HD have to be reformatted in ntfs ... backing that bitch up was a pain... 250 GB ... backed up on my friends external... well lets just say that we had enough time to go watch a movie and it still wasn't done... I mean there is default Windows function to go from fat32 to ntfs without loosing data... but just in case backup took so bloody long so i really hope that this new 3.0 come soon... before i get my new laptop... it was stated that it will be finalized by mid 2008 and devices in '09 but i hope the devices start appear earlier.. I do not want to wait that long.. :D
Here is just another problem right here... so it is said that speed is 480MBit/s on current one... but a 700MB movie more then 40 sec to copy so there is some discrepancies in the speeds and I am concerned that it might be due to read/write speeds on both ends of the storage... so this brings me to the ultimate question - what is the point? I can see it being used in some type of arrays but at the end of the day how will this benefit regular user in near future??

gotta love cats

2007-09-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

cats can be so damn cute and funny.. just check out the video:

Back to TV

2007-09-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

Finally the prime time season of all the good tv shows has returned!!
got my copy of prison break and gonna watch it in coming days as well as starting to enjoy some of the new shows such as Californication.....
nevertheless really looking forward to see the new season of hearos to begin.. :D

My bungee trip

2007-09-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

this weekend I went on a bungee jumping trip...
the jump was from a big cave in Pyrenees and it looked amazing...
I wanted to take a video as I am falling down but anfortunately due to my cameras terrible design i do not have such video... and none of the other people took a video of me jumping so I only have pics of the Cave and the setup...
Vids of people jumps might also come later.. :D

gotta love NHL

2007-09-17T09:23:00.001-07:00

Just one of the reasons why ice hockey is one of the best games out there...

perverted drawings...

2007-09-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

This guy has some insane drawing skills..
check it out and see how he draws something pornographic into awesome drawing...

love to have his skill...

Gotta love Japan

2007-09-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Just came across one of the Japanese TV shows called human tetris!!!
It is so wickedly cool... I wonder how come we never get anything like this in western world??

And at the end of the day this is not the only brilliant funny TV show out of Japan... for those who remember Takeshi Castle!! and there have been many more but how come most never make it western world?? I even heard that they wanted to Takeshi castle remake in UK or maybe it was US and it was forbidden because it neglected safety issues!!! I must say it might not be the safest of the shows... but it is not like all the landing places are with spikes and errors carry death penalty or mutilation... I mean common... why not let have sensible adults have some fun?? No wonder that people are getting fat as it seems that all the physical activities have become unsafe unless u are a professional.. and so all people can do is be couch potatoes and eat and get fat.... dammit!!!

Happy 10th birthday!!

2007-09-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

So it seems that most popular internet search engine - Google has turned 10 years old today!!
All I can say is all the best to them and at least 10 more years of such success...!!!

Rambo Rrr....

2007-09-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

John Rambo.. some badass combatant... :D
Saw the trailer for the movie... the R rated trailer...:

Rambo Is Back And Still Pissed Off - Watch more free videos
I mean it looks pretty good!!!
For some reason all that slushing and blowing things up makes me think about some kind of gore flick with lot of action...
Nevertheless I am very much looking forward to this movie... and you should as well!!!

Robin Williams

2007-09-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

OMG... This guy is absolutely brilliant.. !!!

I have always thought of him as this lovely family oriented guy... I mean if you look at his movie career - Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji, Flubber, Bicentennial Man - he seems such a nice guy and all... of course those are not the all of his movies, but few of the best known...

But surprise surprise... he is actually bad ass.....
and to my surprise he also does stand up comedy!! Check these out:

Boiling Point 2...

2007-09-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

Boiling point - or those of you out there that are familiar with this game and have played it on patched up version know how awesome it is!!!
Of course it had some issues and letdowns but the game generally rocked with the nice micro climate and and relation building with different factions... Totally non linear game play although it had only one possible ending, but the the whole experience was just great...!!!

Anyhow... everyone will be pleased to know that sequel will be released in not so distant future. Deep Shadows (Official Site) is planing a release date for late 2007/early 2008... I will be patiently waiting for that!!!

They have decided to give the game a different name - White Gold: War in Paradise (Official Site, Wikipedia) I really hope they will have polished this one out much better than the original and that gameplay will be just improved.... One of the worries is that it will also be released on xbox 360 ... so let us hope that it is not turned into console game and lacks the complexity and appeal of PC game!!
I still remember Deus Ex... and how much did the sequel sucked... It just shows how easy it is to go from brilliant to rubbish!!
And here is a trailer for those who are interested:

Where is the sense... ?

2007-09-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Just watched this video of Crysis multiplayer:

And don't get me wrong.. it is great game and all.... just wanted to bring ur attention to some annoying things here...

I mean yes it beta and all that, but there are few things I hope they will sorta make sense of before releasing...
when you get about 2.40 into the video the guy there shoots the tires of a car, which.. you know - why not, but then they simply explode!! wtf!! I could see it being a case in moving car, but if it is standing still? oh common.... and it does not end there either.... He goes on to shoot up some non flying chickens... or whatever they are supposed to be... uses same gun... but when shot they just lay down!! i mean common.. it ain't a tranquilizer... the blast should blow them away or like the tires blow up.. but no. They just like fall asleep and that is all... at least there are some feathers at the end.. :D
and just out of random... why would you go on rampage to kill chickens? are they really that annoying??

Marketing bluff...

2007-09-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

gotta love the marketing people...
making up products and then convincing us that we need them... and just putting all that bogus information into peoples heads...
All this just stirs me up... and because came out because of my friend..
the focus here is on the computer industry at the particular... as he was boasting about his new processor with these for cores and how he as speeds of 9.6 GHz processor and all... and I was like ... where the fuck did u get that number... they don't really make processors above 3 GHz any more...
so it turns out that all the hype about all these new multi core processors seems that people seem to think that you can just multiply cores and the frequency to get the total one... I mean so lame...
And all this hype about direct X 10 cards and all... all I have seen with dx10 mid-level cards says avoid them unless u go and get high end one... i mean the performance is like way below the expected... but hey... i guess people that care about that will know it and get what they want while the majority of users will just perish in land of uselessness...

Sports crazyness

2007-09-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

End of the summer has come along with some major sports events, such as World Rugby Championship and European Basketball Championship. So it is all good... but on the other hand they are at the SAME time... so it is hard to be able to catch all the games I would like to on the telly or whatever...
so the point is why the fuck are they on the same time?? I mean they could have differentiated the time a bit... for fucks sake...
Here in France where I am it is all about the rugby... no basketball at all and for me to be honest... don't give shit about rugby... more into basketball
I mean it is not like France has a bad team in basketball... and seems like nobody even knows it is going on.
It is so frustrating... hearing all about rugby and nothing else... especially if you don't care about the sport...

say what???

2007-09-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

So here we are... totally blank mind... and someone says that how he loves the public transport....
I mean I can dig that... I have to take it every day as well to get to work, but hell it could be so much better... I mean what is up with the fact that when I take bus in the morning it will have air con on even if there is no need for it, but in the afternoon when it is packed and sun is hot... they of course keep it off... I mean WTF... I don't want to be boiled... chilled... why not, but boiled in no way...

Piracy

2007-09-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

ahh.. the sweet piracy... don't we all love it??

video

this just takes the piss.... of the apparently new anti-piracy ads in US... video

so lets look at which one makes more sense... the original one is very annoying... the sound track is not the best one... it is like for the some suspense bit in the movie, but nothing... no action... just some bullshit..
I would not say that one should not educate people.... but you do make people watch it all over and over again just for the kicks.. It is like we don't know that....
but at the end of the day.. DVD costs like what... 10, 15, 20 bucks.. somewhere around that area.. but than you can go and get pirated one for what? like 5er i believe.. correct me if I am wrong... but anyway it is half the price or less.. and let us not fool ourselves here.... they make profit, otherwise why the fuck would they do it?
so we come to the question why such difference in the price?
and of course it is safe to assume that pirates have almost no overhead... no expenses other than price of a blank DVD... and it is true... in a way... but at the same time aren't all big DVD pressing/burning places where they burn all the movies supposed to be so productive as to beat the pirate in per disc cost? isn't that the point of having such?
otherwise why not have many people popping DVD in the drive and burn them that way?

So the production is not the issue... according to common sense...
Of course reason to release a DVD is to make money and offset the cost of making the movie... but that much of price difference? doesn't seem fair... but on a second look it is all clear... they need to make money to pay for licenses to use copy protection, for someone to fight on their behalf to protect them and make such stupid and silly ads like this...
so what to do they gained? higher prices, consumer aware of alternative - piracy. and increased use of piracy.

but than there is the parody one... it is silly and enjoyable, so you can have a laugh when watching and still the point travels across very clearly as well... don't pirate...

so anyway.. hope this made some sense and choose the option that you like the best.... limited usage legal copy or free of bullshit pirated one... or just use more internet.. :D

VMA show...

2007-09-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

and here it was again.. the Great and Brilliant MTV awards show... and I missed it... :D
and for what?

.... shit know... wasn't even aware it was on... :D

so anyway... What DID i miss... seems that there were some bad performances, some fights and all round fun... :)

Saw the Britney's 'performance' in youtube... man that looked shit.. I mean wtf is she thinking??
baby hit me in the head again... 'big comeback' and such a shit performance... I was surprised to hear that people actually applauded to that...

and than we go to the big white-on-white fight... Kid Rock punched Tommy Lee... OMG this is the end of the world... in the video flowting on the net it seemed like too schoolgirls kissing rather than two man fighting... where is the blood... and fists... I mean common...
Oh yeah.. and we can't forget that police even started investigation... like what is wrong with the world today? can't two man have a fight and see whats what without someone going to jail for that??

And to finish of on somewhat happier note was the Sarah Silvermans performance... or whatever it was... she had some nice jokes about Britney... some pretty funny actually, but to think bout it they were all very rude and insulting... not like I give a shit and I think they were well deserved for most part... but i thought VMA was supposed to be family kinda thingy... well relatively... when did we forgot about our kids???

the video links:
fight
Britney
Sarah