Thursday, November 16, 2000

Brandon Reinhart .plan Update -- 11:08 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Realms' Brandon Reinhart updated his .plan with a vitally important political message.

The Master comments: Okay, I'm going to make my one comment on this whole mess. #1: Mrs. Florida SecState is a Republican. #2: She gets to decide if the recount stands. #3: That's exquisite BS.

Personally I prefer some of Bush's policies, but I don't like his environmental stance. Both of these men are a horse apiece. But this whole election has gone so stupidly into the can that I feel sorry for whichever one of these people ends up in the White House. One mistake, get burnt at the stake, which would be political suicide. No thank you, I would be begging the other guy to take the job at this point.

Shogo Linux Fix -- 4:35 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I've been in email contact with a gentleman working with Hyperion Software on the Linux and Amiga (and, as I recently found out, Mac) ports of Monolith's Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. He said that in their talks with NVIDIA, the problem seems to be a bug specifically with the NVIDIA Linux drivers and the TNT2/TNT2 Ultra. He said that the bug should be fixed in the next release of the drivers "in a few weeks." I'll believe it when I see it, since I've heard "in a few weeks" from NVIDIA for a while now :)

Special thanks Ben Hermans (Hyperion's managing partner) for contacting me on his own to help with this problem. If only all game companies were so helpful . . .

3dfx Clarification -- 4:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Register, among other places, got clarification from 3dfx that the statement that are ceasing making boards is not entirely true. They are selling their board manufacturing plant, but they are going to get third parties to make the boards for them. They will be sold as 3dfx cards. The long and short of it are still the same, it's just that they won't be looking to Creative or others to make cards for them (as if Creative would).

New Winamp 2.7 -- 10:33 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I'm rather surprised that The Master didn't get this one. There's a new version (2.70) of most everyone's favorite MP3 player, Winamp, available for download. This new version contains lots o' bug fixes.

Now that I think about it . . . since I have this new 128K pipe, I should check out a few Shoutcast servers. Hmm.

The Master comments: Actually, I've downloaded and installed this already. Just slacked on the update last night. My bad. The new revision is pretty nice-it includes a sweet tag editor which has been very handy for me.

A.T. Hun comments: Actually, I just downloaded and installed it. As soon as I try to play an MP3, it GPFs. Oh well. Back to 2.64 for me.

What Went Wrong with 3dfx? -- 9:58 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

GlideUnderground posted an article taking a look back at history to see what happened to 3dfx. It's an interesting article and does a relatively good job of covering the main things that put 3dfx in the situation they are in today. One thing that they didn't mention is any board from Rendition. Back in the day, Rendition's Verite chipsets were the only ones giving 3dfx any real competition (a little VQuake anyone?). Thanks Shugashack.

Wednesday, November 15, 2000

RAMBUS Reprimanded -- 8:12 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

ITC Administrative Law Judge Sidney Harris busted out the legal whuppin' stick on RAMBUS, accusing them of "judge shopping" while attempting to defend its SDRAM patents against Hyundai. Here's a snip:

In documents filed in the case, Rambus denied it was guilty of judge shopping. The firm said it withdrew the complaint based on confidential strategic factors. Judge Harris rejected the Rambus response as vague allegations of litigation strategy, which is not described in detail and not even mentioned in the original motion to withdraw the case. It constitutes a failure to rebut the strong inference of judge shopping, he ruled. The claim of "privileged" litigation strategy is highly improbable, the judge added, saying that "Rambus has engaged in impermissible judge shopping."

Harris ruled that if Rambus in the future ever filed a new synchronous patent infringement case against Hyundai, or even any other firm, such a petition must be assigned to his court if he is able to hear it.

All I can say is, "What goes around, comes around." Thanks Slashdot.

3dfx Formally Drops Out of the Card Biz -- 8:07 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Blue's News got a hold of a press release from 3dfx formally announcing what we knew already. They are getting out of the board manufacturing business. There's a bunch of business-speak in the pr, which throws a bunch of nebulous numbers out there almost as if to cry out "please don't make our stock price plummet any further!" It almost sounds like it's conceding to NVIDIA to focus on other markets. Oh how the mighty have fallen . . .

On 24 on 3dfx -- 4:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

On 24 talked to a market analyst who is of the opinion that since 3dfx is dropping board manufacturing, they become a prime target for a take-over by NVIDIA or ATi. 3dfx stock is currentlt at $4 a share. I expect that will take a beating when they announce the hit they will take from closing the board manufacturing plant in Mexico.

Naturally, all this is pure speculation, but it does make a lot of sense.

Requiem 0.83 for Q3A released -- 9:15 am CST, Update by The Master

The Requiem team has released Requiem version 0.83 for Quake 3: Arena. I was a huge fan of the original Requiem for QuakeWorld, and A.T. has had good things to say about the Q3A version. This mod, like all others, requires Q3A version 1.17, not the beta .25 version that id released a while back.

MechWarrior 4 gold -- 9:13 am CST, Update by The Master

According to the MechWarrior 4 Developer Diary posted over on GameSpy, MW 4 has gone gold. Hopefully the price is right, I'd like to pick this one up.

Past Two Days' News

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