Monday, June 26, 2000

Xian TargetQuake Map -- 10:46 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

id's Christian "Disruptor" Antkow has released a map for the new side-scroller mod for Quake III Arena called Target Quake (story). You can download his map from the official Q3A site. While TargetQuake looks very cool, I'm finding gameplay to be more than a little annoying. I'll keep trying though.

History today -- 10:07 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1541: Francisco Pizarro, the governor of Peru and conqueror of the Inca civilization, was assassinated in Lima by his Spanish rivals.
• 1843: Hong Kong was proclaimed a British crown colony with Sir Henry Pottinger as its first governor.
• 1862: Battle of Mechanicsville, Ellerson's Mill, (Beaver Dam Creek), Virginia.
• 1870: The first section of Atlantic City, N.J.'s Boardwalk was opened to the public.
• 1900: A commission that included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against yellow fever.
• 1911: Frederick Williams, inventor of an early form of computer memory, was born. An electrical engineer who had worked on code-breaking systems during World War II, Williams also made important contributions to the development of radar.
• 1917: The first American Expeditionary Force troops arrived in France during World War I.
• 1919: The New York Daily News was first published.
• 1925: Charlie Chaplin's classic comedy, "The Gold Rush," premiered at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
• 1945: The United Nations charter was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco.
• 1948: The Berlin Airlift began after the Soviet Union cut off land and water routes to the isolated western sector of the German city.
• 1959, President Eisenhower joined Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in ceremonies officially opening the St. Lawrence Seaway.
• 1963: President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: "Ich bin ein Berliner" (I am a Berliner).
  
  A.T. Hun comments: Except that it was a bad translation. "Ich bin ein Berliner" means "I am a jelly doughnut" (ein Berliner is a type of jelly doughnut). If he wanted to say "I am a (resident of) Berlin" he should have said, "Ich bin Berliner." I'm certain that the Germans understood what he meant, but I'm also sure that a few of them smiled quietly to themselves. Interestingly enough, Ronald Reagan repeated JFK's words upon a visit to Berlin. (See this page on the Urban Legends site for more information.)
  
  Reminds me of another great translation snafu. President Carter told the Poles through an official state department translator that he was "pleased to be grasping their secret parts."
  
  
• 1968: Chief U.S. Justice Earl Warren announced his intention to resign.
• 1989: A Soviet nuclear submarine carrying atomic weapons was crippled off the coast of Norway when a pipe burst in its reactor.
• 1990: President Bush, who had campaigned for office on a pledge of "no new taxes," conceded that tax increases would have to be included in any deficit-reduction package worked out with congressional negotiators.

Shogo Linux and Amiga Update -- 10:01 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Hyperion Software posted an updated status report on their ports of Shogo to Linux and the Amiga. Here's some highlights from the report:

• They are moving the transformation code to OpenGL to take advantage of hardware T&L (like the GeForce's--although I don't know if the .93 NVIDIA Linux drivers support hardware T&L or not. I assume they do.)
• OpenAL will be used for 3D sounds (hey, Creative, get those Linux Soundblaster Live! drivers out one of these years!)

Sounds like some good stuff! Thanks, Blue, for the heads-up.

Sunday, June 25, 2000

Requiem .7 Released -- 7:31 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Requiem team has release a non-beta .7 version of their Quake III Arena mod. Requiem is a personal favorite of The Master and me, we highly recommend it. (A personal note: Flamethrower! Burn! Burn! Ahem, sorry.) Here's a list of the changes since beta3:

• Many freezebomb changes to balance out the game more
• Minor balance-changes to flamethrower and touch grenade
• ESD doesn't knock back people who are still in fairstart mode
• Disable-runes option was broken. Fixed.

Silly -- 11:38 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

If that Rambus article makes you mad, just check out this online comic strip and you'll feel all better. At least I did, but I've got a weird sense of humor.

Rambus Hates You -- 11:14 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

As if it weren't bad enough that Rambus memory just plain sucks, the company has found another way to make money and make consumers bleed until their white. According to this EBNews article, Rambus is going to use their patent arsenal to raise SDRAM and DDRAM prices to the point where Rambus can be competitive. Don't believe me? Here's a quote:

[Rambus VP Avo] Kanadjian said that as Rambus hammers out licensing deals with other companies, it will charge less for access to SDRAM than for emerging DDR SDRAM, which is perceived as the most likely competitor to the Direct Rambus interface.

"We will seek smaller royalty amounts for conventional [single-data-rate] SDRAM, but greater fees for DDR," he said.Asked if the payment plan was designed to head off a potential rival to Direct Rambus, Kanadjian replied, "I wouldn't argue with that conclusion."

So basically, we have a crappy technology but we will use our lawyers to ram it down your throat or, failing that, any other available orifice. It's one thing to be a total b@$t@rd, but it's another thing entirely to be smug about it. Thanks Slashdot.

Carmack on PS2/DX8 -- 9:51 am CST, Update by The Master

John Carmack has posted this blurb and this one over on /. on his feelings on Playstation 2 hype and on OpenGL/DirectX8 directions. Interesting port. Thanks Shugashack.

UPDATE! 3:45 P.M. by A.T. Hun Blue adds links to a couple of choice comments from Verant's Brian Hook on DX8. You can view his comments here and here.

Just a side note: if you visit Slashdot a lot, set up an account and set it to filter out all posts moderated lower than 2. The information will be much more useful and you won't have to mentally filter out all the dreck.

History today -- 9:39 am CST, Update by The Master

• 1788: Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution.
• 1862: Seven Days Battles begin at Oak Grove (French's Field), Virginia.
• 1868: Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were re-admitted to the Union.
• 1876: Lt. Col. George A. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.
• 1942: General Dwight D. Eisenhower first showed his skills in coordinating Anglo-American forces in North Africa. On this day Churchill and Roosevelt placed him in charge of European operations. In addition, ~1,000 British Royal Air Force bombers raided Bremen, Germany.
• 1950: Forces from the communist North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War.
• 1951: CBS transmitted a one-hour special from New York to four other cities in the first commercial color telecast.
• 1956: The last 1956 Packard automobile was produced, marking the end of production at Packard’s Connor Avenue plant in Detroit, Michigan. Packard would continue to manufacture cars in South Bend, Indiana until 1958, but for those familiar with Packard, the last 1956 model is considered the last true Packard car.
• 1962: The Supreme Court ruled that the use of an unofficial, non-denominational prayer in New York State public schools was unconstitutional.
• 1973: Former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee.
• 1975: The People's Republic of Mozambique came into being, ending nearly five centuries of Portuguese rule.
• 1988: American-born Mildred Gillars, better known during World War II as "Axis Sally" for her Nazi propaganda broadcasts, died in Columbus, Ohio, at age 87. (Gillars had served 12 years in prison for treason.)
• 1995: Warren Burger, 15th chief justice of the United States, died in Washington of congestive heart failure at age 87.
• 1998: The Supreme Court rejected a 1997 line-item veto law as unconstitutional, and ruled that HIV-infected people are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Ranting -- 1:28 am CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

I've been a PC Gamer reader since '95 or '96. Back in the early days, you could buy the CD-ROM edition and count on getting some good demos. That changed. Nowadays, you can spend $7-8 on the CD-ROM edition of PC and you have a good chance of getting a defective CD. I've been getting defective CDs since late 1997, and have seriously cut down on buying the magazine at all. My last issue was in December 1998.

Well, I was tempted by the July 2000 issue, in which the CD-ROM is purported to have free copies of a dozen classic games--good stuff too, like Ultima Underworld and X-Com. I bought it and took it home, expecting that the CD wouldn't work. Sure enough, it didn't work. I wrote to PC Gamer to request a new CD. Haven't seen one now after 2 weeks of waiting. I've exchanged the magazine four more times and still don't have a working CD. I've tried the CDs in 3 different computers, and none can read them. Numerous others have had the same problem, and PC Gamer doesn't seem to care.

This is inexcusable. It's disappointing to miss out on some of these good games. It's infuriating to spend $7-8 on a magazine primarily to get a CD-ROM which doesn't work (the magazine itself certainly isn't worth that much). It's disheartening to see the lack of concern PC Gamer shows toward its readers. I'll never again buy any copy of PC Gamer. They've lost me for good. And I'm sure they don't care.

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