Newegg is by far my favorite electronics retailer. They have an extensive inventory, decent prices, super fast shipping, and responsive customer service. I’ve been using them for years now with no complaints. They announced this week that they’re going to be offering threaded discussion and forums on their site, and the forums section is up and running. On the surface this seems like a great idea, though tt will be interesting to see if they can maintain a level of objectivity. As far as I can tell they’ve done ok with their customer rating feature since it’s easy to find scathing reviews of products in them. I’ve been using the forums at places like Sharkyextreme and techreport to research purchases. We’ll see if newegg’s new system can measure up over the next couple of years.
Why no one should run Windows Vista
Friends don’t let friends run windows Vista. In that spirit, I offer up a link to this
exhaustively researched piece on the evils that Windows Vista does. I’m not kidding when I say you really should not run this OS – it runs counter to the whole conception of what a computer is . Rather than a machine you purchase which you control, Vista is a platform which a vendor controls, and that vendor is able to choose how the platform behaves. Imagine sticking a HD DVD in to play and discovering you can’t listen to the audio over your headphones, or discovering that your video drivers will no longer deliver video at a resolution greater than 640×480 because Microsoft has helpfully ‘patched’ them to protect against content theft – this and innumerable other horrendous ‘features’ are documented in the piece I linked to above. Anyone in a computing profession should read and consider this. It’s a lengthy but illuminating read.
It’s left with me with something of a dilemma. Gaming is my favorite pastime and thanks to the MS monopoly it’s the only real platform I can use, but there’s no way given the above that I will run Vista. I have about 2 years before this becomes a significant issue (it will take roughly that long before developers start releasing ‘vista only’ games) so I can be patient about it. I’m hoping that enough people are as pissed about this as I am that alternatives emerge. If not, maybe I’ll be a console-only gamer, or maybe a retro-only gamer, playing all the oldies to entertain myself. Who knows. All I know for certain is I’m checking out of windows-land over the coming couple of years due to this stuff.
Podcasts worth listening to: Pseudopod
Fancy a tale of terror delivered to your podcast client every so often? Check out Pseudopod, a horror themed short fiction podcast. It’s very similar to Escape Pod, which I mentioned a while ago (I think they’re affiliated somehow) but focusing on a different genre.
Gothic I movie
The Gothic series of action rpg’s on the pc have been some of my favorite games over the last several years. They released the third in the series shortly before Christmas this year and they’ve confirmed that they’re working on a 4th. Some fans spent the time to turn the cinematics and some in game clips from the first game into a ~45 minute movie that tells the full story of the first game. It’s an epic r-rated fantasy and worth checking out even if you haven’t played the games if you’re into the genre. The only downside is it’s only offered in .wmv, imo the absolute worst of the video file formats. You can download it here on the worldofgothic site – it’s about a 500mb download.
I signed, will you?
This news has been all over the net and has made it into the national news, but in case you’re not familiar with it, a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is putting streaming radio at risk, as the rate structure they’ve proposed to put in place seems likely to drive most or even all of the independent internet radio stations out of business. It’s pretty clear that this is simply the content cartel trying to destroy internet radio. Here are a couple of resources you can review and draw your own conclusions:
An article on the Radio and Internet Newsletter
A radioparadise essay on the topic
If after examining the issue you’re so inclined, consider signing this petition
For what it’s worth, here’s what I signed on the petition:
Crafting legislation to protect the business interests of existing proto-monopolies at the expense of innovative new business development is not in the consumers’ or artists’ interest. Please reconsider and craft sensible rate structures that compensate rights holders while facilitating business development.
It’s a Lord of the Rings weekend
Today’s the day folks – head on over to the official site and grab yourself a copy of the new Lord of the Rings Online. It’s entering public beta today and everyone is welcome to play. I was admitted to the private beta and I enjoyed it enough that I pre-ordered a copy and have been playing. If you don’t have the time to check the link to my old post, I can sum it up in a few words: the game is a very competent if slightly less polished clone of World of Warcraft with a few interesting gameplay elements to differentiate itself. It’s definitely worth checking it out even if you don’t like MMORPG’s, just so you can run around the Shire as a Hobbit or help Gandalf deal with invaders in dwarven halls. Join me in the race to level 15 (the open beta level cap) on the Windfola server. I’m Siven the Hobbit Burgler and I’m still trying to help get the Shire postal service get itself back in shape.
The secret to escaping long island is…
… use the orient point ferry. I’ve taken the Port Jeff ferry a bunch of times, and it’s great, but it drops you right on 91, and 91 is the major route into New England. It’s basically always traffic bound, sometimes badly so, and southbound they have this infuriating merge down to one lane to get onto 95 that is always congested. More generally, the Hartford ->New Haven stretch of 91 is just bad all around. If you’re willing to spend an extra hour or so in travel time in the service of a more relaxing trip, take the orient point ferry. You have to make your way off the north fork to 495 using the ~40mph route 25, which takes about an hour, but you pass through often picturesque wine country and long island coast, with beautiful old victorians, quaint old villages, and not much of the suburban sprawl that characterizes most of long island.
The CT portion of the trip is great too, compared to the 91 corridor – I used route 32, route 2 and route 395 from New London, and they were much less congested than the alternative. You end up deposited on 91 just south of Hartford, meaning you skip all the worst of the congestion because most all of the new england folks have skipped off to 84 and 90.
I’m not sure if I would be as pleased with this route if I was heading to my Mom’s place, since she’s another 45 minutes from where the Lords live (which is where I was recently, for Mike’s surprise 40th b-day bash), and I’m not sure how it will be in the summer when the city folk head out to wine country for the weekend, but I’m going to try it a few more times and see.
Fan of Battlestar Galactica?
Check out this mod of the superb Freespace 2 engine (thank you thank you thank you for releasing it as open source Volition!). It’s a three level demo and man is it great – they’ve done a fantastic job with the voicework and they’ve made enough tweaks to the engine that it feels greatly different from the default Freespace 2 combat. Right now only the PC version is out but Linux and OSX are coming soon, and here’s hoping the full game is as well. This is free, open source, and a self-standing installer.
Podcasts worth listening to: Librivox
These technically aren’t podcasts, but check out Librivox, which has a large and quickly growing collection of fan spoken, public domain audiobooks. I grabbed an Andre Norton novel and a Jane Austen novel and added them to my ‘to listen’ pile, and there’s tons more to choose from. There’s also an RSS feed for new releases which is worth subscribing to.
Windows remake of the Lords of Midnight
Lords of Midnight is one of those cult games from the 80’s that people my age talk about in reverant and glowing terms. It was originally released for the Amstrad so it didn’t achieve quite the same following in the US that it did in Europe and elsewhere, and I’ll confess I didn’t run into it in my youth despite having an enormous collection of C64 games. I did play it years later when C64 emulation became viable though, and I mention it today because I happened across a great windows port of the original game. The graphics have been spruced up a bit from the original, but the core gameplay remains. It’s aged pretty well considering how long ago it was originally released, and the central theme is strongly reminscent of the lord of the rings, featuring an epic quest, an ultimate evil, and a diverse roster of characters to encounter, ally with, or fight with. This is free for the download for Windows folk and worth a look for a friday diversion.
Dave's Place/Metamusing 