Friday, March 3, 2000

OpFor Demo -- 7:09 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Gamecenter has managed to get their hands on a demo of Gearbox's Half-Life: Opposing Force. It comes in two versions: a 70M version if you don't already have Half-Life, or a 30M version if you do. Here's the scoop:

In Opposing Force, you're Corporal Adrian Shephard, one of the many heavily armed Marines sent into the Black Mesa facility shortly after a mysterious explosion opened a door to another dimension. It's up to you and your squad mates to neutralize the invading aliens, but it won't be easy. Your Osprey transport is shot down before it can drop you off at the base, and now you must regroup and investigate what's going on.

The Opposing Force demo features a montage of the levels and areas in the expansion pack. You'll get a feel for the story, as well as meet new friends and enemies. You'll be able to unload into your enemies with some exotic new weaponry as well.

Whaddaya waiting for? Thanks Blue.

DoubleClick Double Take? -- 12:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

OK, I can stop coming up with bad DoubleClick headlines now. It seems that, in a rare moment of lucidity, DoubleClick has backed off its initial plan to start a database connecting people with their online shopping and surfing habits.

Kevin O'Connor, DoubleClick's chief executive, said in a statement, "I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards."

Let's not kid ourselves. DoubleClick had a change of heart because there were six lawsuits brought against them, Michigan's Attorney General threatened to sue, and their stock price plummeted 33% when the news got out.

It may be safe to turn cookies back on now. It's still a good idea to delete them (disabling cookies in Netscape deletes the cookie file) periodically for anonymity's sake. Thanks Slashdot.

Beware of "Pretty Park" -- 11:25 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

A couple days ago I got an email from a colleague with an attachment called Pretty Park.exe. I never run email attachments, so I promptly deleted it without a second thought. A few hours later, I got an email from him saying that it was indeed a virus (actually, a worm) that will send this .exe to everyone in your email address book every 30 minutes if you are using Outlook Express (one of the many, many reasons I do not). It also will try to get on an IRC server, so it may also be a Trojan Horse. This one is bad news and it is spreading like wildfire.

The folks at Ars Technica got caught up with this one too. If you have this virus, check McAfee's site for removal information. And remember NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER run email attachments, even if they come from your mommy!

Willits on the Mean Arena -- 10:55 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Mean Arena has posted an interview with id's Tim Willits. Topics include mapmaking secrets and ways to get into the industry. The reviewer does seem a bit sycophantic at points, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. Thankfully, it's not one of those "send a bunch of questions, get a bunch of answers" interviews where some answers really beg for a follow-up that never comes. Thanks Blue.

Mozilla M14 Revisited -- 10:41 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been using Mozilla M14 since it was released (story). The Gecko layout engine seems to be much faster and displays pages more correctly. The mail reader still GPFs too much. I haven't fiddled with the HTML composer at all. It's getting to the point now that I could use Mozilla as my browser 24/7. There are still some bugs (it's alpha, after all), but none of them are catastrophic. Gecko is much faster than Netscape 4.x's renderer and, dare I say, even better than Internet Exploder 5.x. Plus, it won't crash my entire system when it crashes like IE will :)

New WinAmp -- 10:31 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm surprised I beat The Master to this one :) There is a new version of WinAmp out, 2.61. Here's a list of fixes:

• SuperPiMP installation is cleaner and has more options
• Winamp Advanced Visualization Studio 2.0 (in Full Version only)
• Support for .wsz files in your skin directory as well as .zip files
• Bookmark playlists and SHOUTcast streams
• Massively improved CD Audio support (enhanced CD support, etc)
• Updated Mjuice and Audiosoft

"SuperPiMP installation"? Give me a rather large break.

Daikatana Preview -- 10:28 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Game Gear has a preview of Ion Storm's much-delayed shooter, Daikatana. After reading the eleven page preview, I can see why the game is taking so long to get out. The back story takes up six pages of this preview! While it does offer a lot of information of what to expect from the game, I get the feeling that the previewer is basing most, if not all, of his comments on conjecture instead of hands-on experience with the game.

In some strange way, I am looking forward to playing Daikatana. It does sound like there could be a lot of cool features to set it apart from other first-person shooters. Whether or not they can deliver remains to be seen. Whether or not they can ship remains to be seen. Thanks Voodoo Extreme.

Thursday, March 2, 2000

UT Server Under Linux -- 10:57 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I did it! I got an Unreal Tournament server running under Linux! Special thanks to THoP's own J for hopping on the server (even though it's on my 56K connection) so I could test CPU/Memory usage. Now I just need to get those patches . . .

More On DoubleClick -- 2:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This article on CNet should be enough to convince those who haven't disabled cookies on their browser to do so immediately. DoubleClick is watching you.

In the case of Intuit, information that users were typing into Quicken.com's mortgage and credit-assessment calculators, including a person's annual salary and total assets, were being sent to DoubleClick.

Nice, eh? Fortunately the Feds are beginning to investigate DoubleClick's "practices".

The Federal Trade Commission is currently holding an inquiry to determine whether DoubleClick is unlawfully collecting data on consumers' surfing and shopping habits on the Net and then selling the information to third-party advertisers.

If charges are brought and they are found guilty, who else thinks they should bring back draw-and-quartering for such an occasion? I thought so!

M$ Revisionist History -- 2:00 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In the "you've got to be freaking kidding me" department, Slashdot has linked to this article on Microsoft's site about a revolutionary new feature in Windows 2000 called "Single Instance Store". Basically, they answered this question, "why not save operating system disk space by storing duplicate files as links that point to a single file housed in a central location?" Obviously they never heard of the concept of a symbolic link. You know, it only took them a year and a half to implement it! And then we wonder why it takes them forever to address security issues . . .

Update! OK, SIS seems to be kind of an "automatic" symbolic link, but still. I'm not sure I want the OS doing something else behind my back that I may or may not want.

Gotta Get Me 1 Of These! -- 12:13 pm CST, Update by The Master

OMG. A 4gb+ portable MP3 player. Is that awesome, or what?!?

Happy Birthday Justin! -- 12:01 am CST, Update by The Master

Well, the happy day of my first (and only right now) son's birthday is today. Justin is now 1 year old-and his mother is depressed :-)

A.T. Hun comments: My younger boy just turned 10 months old on the 29th. The older one is 2 1/2. Ain't we just old married folk?

J.t.Qbe comments: My son is 9 months soon and I don't know where they've gone. At least I haven't missed them. I've been awake the whole time.

Past Two Days' News

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