Thursday, September 23, 2004

UT2K4 ECE Content Released -- 10:14 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The extra content from the Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition has been released for current UT2K4 owners. You can download the 84.4M pack from BeyondUnreal. It includes new maps, new vehicles, and new characters. You know you want it . . . go get it! Make sure you have the 3323 (or higher) patch installed first. For us non-Windows users, the file is just a self-extracting ZIP file. Unzip or some similar program should take care of everything, just ignore any .exes or .dlls. Otherwise, LinuxHardware put together a bzipped version to make things easier.

IE Updates are XP Only -- 11:13 am CST, Update by The Master

According to several articles online (including Slashdot), Microsoft has stated that any further updates to it's IE browser are going to be for XP or newer OS releases only. My take: Microsoft is a huge, greedy, monopolist that has discovered how to control its destiny via controlling government officials via the infamous lobbyist method. An announcement like this is just more proof of that. Time to switch browsers. Firefox is looking REALLY good to me right now.

A.T. Hun comments: Quite honestly, I wondered how long it would take before they would use IE's vulnerabilities to force users to upgrade. Unfortunately, since IE is so tightly integrated with the OS, simply upgrading to Firefox might still leave you vulnerable.

Fun with USB 2.0 -- 10:20 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Not long ago, I bought a VIA-based USB 2.0 card and a SanDisk ImageMate hi-speed card reader. Unfortunately, whenever I have the reader plugged in, my box will randomly lock up hard. I have to hit the reset switch to reboot it (thank God for journalling filesystems!). I unplugged the reader and my box was crash-free for a week. I plugged it back in today and rebooted. My box froze within 15 minutes. I'm trying a newer kernel (2.6.8.1) to see if that helps. If not, I'm not sure how to fix this.

Unfortunately, the USB 2.0 card demands three (count 'em, three) interrupts: one for EHCI and two for UHCI. It was trying to share the EHCI (aka USB 2.0 hi-speed) interrupt with my video card. That just screamed "bad news" so I moved the card in my box. Now the EHCI one is free, but one of the UHCI ones is still shared. I long for the old days when I could set a jumper and force the card to use a certain interrupt. Actually, I really long for the days when I won't have to worry about interrupts anymore. Obviously the card location wasn't the main problem because it still locked up. Joy.

The good news out of this is that I figured out that it's not my hard drive or mobo going south on me. I've also learned that the ext3 filesystem is very robust. Upon rebooting it recovers the journal and continues merrily on its way. It adds virtually no time to the regular boot-up process. I've heard that ReiserFS is faster, but I've been pleased with the simplicity (and backward-compatibility to ext2) that ext3 provides.

Update! Well, that didn't take long to figure out. The 2.6.8.1 kernel didn't help at all. I wonder if this card just doesn't like my mobo or what the problem is.

The Master comments: My machine has been very flakey lately as well, but I think mine is due to a degrading hard drive. It's a Western Digitial and it's been acting very odd for a couple months now. As soon as I can get a 160GB Seagate at < $100, I am so rebuilding my box.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Linux NWN and DOOM3 Clients in Beta -- 11:23 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

LinuxGames posted news that Neverwinter Nights and DOOM3 both have Linux clients that are in internal beta testing right now. The NWN client will be version 1.64. The DOOM3 client will be the first version publicly available. No ETA on either one. Hopefully "darn soon."

Past Two Days' News

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