Friday, September 17, 2004

Pondering the Imponderable -- 11:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I managed to finish DOOM via Doomsday. I think that is actually the first time that I ever sat down and played the whole game through from beginning to end. I'm now working on DOOM II. It's clear that id learned a lot between the two games and that gamers got better. The levels are much harder and contain far more dirty tricks than the original did.

Having said all of this, I'm beginning to get annoyed at the lack of Linux binaries for DOOM3. I bought the game on August 7. I didn't figure that I still would be waiting for binaries six weeks later. I'm hoping that there will be a big surprise and the client binaries will be out at the same time as the first patch/demo. I really would like to play it again and see if my framerate has improved. I'd also like to try multiplayer. Maybe if I keep telling myself to be patient, I'll eventually believe it.

Upgrade Your Mozilla! -- 9:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

In case you haven't found a reason to upgrade to the newer versions of Mozilla/Thunderbird/Firefox that were announced earlier (story), you have one now. Several vulnerabilities have been found in earlier versions. It's rather refreshing to find a fix released before the bug is known.

I've been pretty pleased with Firefox 1.0PR and Thunderfird 0.8. Thunderbird in particular is much improved. Many of the extensions have already been upgraded, so if you've been putting off upgrading, you have no reason to put it off any longer.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Bleh: Symantec Tech Support SUCKS -- 1:02 pm CST, Update by The Master

We upgraded our Norton AV to the 2005 3-user version this week, since both of our licenses either had expired or were about to expire in the next week. Installing it on Eeyore's machine was a snap, and everything is golden. Tried to install it on my W2K machine, and it blew up horribly. Every time I tried the installer it would throw an Invalid Drive C:\ error. This doesn't surprise me, since I don't have a C drive (I use a different letter for my root drive).

So, thinking I might actually get some help, I call Symantec. They now run all their support out of India, so I have a grand time giving all my info to the tech guy, since neither of us could understand the other very well. I get to the point of trying to describe my problem, and he goes through all the standard KB stuff that I already tried. No dice for him either. I tried to explain that I'm sure the problem is someone put a fixed drive letter into the InstallShield installer, but he hits me with a "we don't support drives other than C. Sorry." response.

I went through this same issue last year with Symantec's tech support, when I needed them to fix my lincense key for my signature updates. I swear, Symantec's tech support has gotten so horrid that you're better off buying a different product. Roar

NFL Week #1 Final -- 12:55 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I was gone almost all of yesterday and by time I got back, there was lightning all around. Thus, you had to wait with bated breath for an extra day to find out the results of this week's NFL games. I ended up 11-5 while Eeyore was 9-7. I'm thankful that my fantasy team didn't play anyone. Once the final scores were tallied, I would have lost to any other team in the league. Oh and Steve Smith, one of my receivers, broke his leg in the Monday Night game. Other than that . . .

Pondering the Imponderable -- 11:12 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Whilst wandering through Wal-Mart the other day, I happened to come across the DOOM Collector's Edition for just under $10. It includes The Ultimate DOOM (the original DOOM plus the "Thy Flesh Consumed" episode), DOOM II, and Final DOOM (aka The Plutonia Experiment and Evilution). There's a second disc with some DOOM3 preview material on it for those of you who have been living under a rock and have not seen any of it yet. I already had The Ultimate DOOM. At one point I had DOOM II as well, but I had long since given it to J.t.Qbe and he lost it. It's a nice value if you don't already have the games or if your original floppies have died.

J.t.Qbe comments: Guess what I found in the basement last week?

I've been playing it all quite happily using Doomsday and the Sycraft music tracks. Sycraft took the MIDI music and converted it to Ogg Vorbis so it works with Doomsday. Doomsday does allow me to play the actually MIDI tracks using ALSA, but unforunately it won't loop.

Some Quake IV Information -- 8:24 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Shacknews summarized the new information on Quake IV that has appeared in PC Gamer in the US and PC Zone in the UK. I'm really interested to see what the folks at Raven have done with the DOOM3 technology. I hope there's a Linux client!

UT2K4 3323 Patch Released -- 8:21 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic has released the 3323 patch for Unreal Tournament 2004. You can download the patch for Windows, Linux, and Mac from BeyondUnreal. I think this is the patch that will be a part of the Editor's Choice release. If so, we should expect the bonus pack content to be available soon. I have updated my unofficial ut2004@icculus.org FAQ with this patch information.

No Old News

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).