WGA Gos Offline

August 25, 2007 Leave a Comment

So, Windows Genuine Advantage stops working. You know that little program that pings Microsoft every so often to see if your using Vista or XP legally. So what do you do if it go’s off-line? Don’t have it ping back to home right. Ok but most people don’t know how to stop that. Now lets say your installing XP or Vista and you have to ping home to get it to work fully, now what? You don’t get a fully working copy that’s what. When is going to be fixed? Microsoft support is saying not till Tuesday, August 28 – 3 days from now. And if you so get marked as non-genuine after it pings back don’t reboot. Then you have to call and go over all the crap just to prove you have a copy of Windows that you paid for. So how do you get away from all of this?

Ubuntu.

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Some facts about Santa Claus

August 22, 2007 3 Comments

No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total–leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house. Read more of this post

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Imagine a World With Two Dimensions

August 18, 2007 1 Comment

Back when Star Trek: TNG was on Fox every week I use to watch it all the time. Out all the episodes that I have seen there are two quotes that have always stayed with me. One is by Brent Spiner who played Data, an android who could feel human emotions. In this episode there is a dark cloud in front of the Enterprise. All sensors on the ship are showing that there is nothing in front of them but they can still see it. They can see that is has a shape, it has mass and there for must have weight but there sensors are showing that it has no dimensions. Thats when Data asked the question “Is no dimension at all a dimension within its self?”.

That in a round-about way led me to the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. Its the story of a square living in a two dimensional world (Flatland) when he is visited by a sphere from the three-dimensional world (Spaceland). The sphere tries to tell the square about Spaceland but the square doesn’t understand till he is taken from Flatland into Spaceland. From there the square starts to wonder if a forth, fifth, and sixth dimensions could be.

As luck would have it you can check out this book online with Google Book Search and many other places. But I would rather read the book with it in my hands then online and you can get it from Amazon for under $5.00. Not a bad deal at all.

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Tactical Gaming Done Right

August 17, 2007 Leave a Comment

I have been gaming for as long as I can remember. There are thing in real life that are never apart of games. You know the small things like it takes a full clip to kill someone. Health pack always have the red X on them and are everywhere. Lets not forget that every city in the world has far to many wooden crates so they must be left in the streets.

But lets say that it didn’t take a clip to kill someone. One or two shots and your dead. Health pack or a medic are nowhere to be seen and there isn’t a wooden crate for hundreds of miles. Now you must use tactics. Run and gun is going to get you killed quick. Thats tactical gaming and the best known for this is the Rainbow Six games (ok maybe not all the Rainbow Six games). But Rainbow Six isn’t the only tactical game out there. The list is huge ranging from First Person Shooters to flight simulators. Some do it better than others and some get it all wrong.

Thats where dslyecxi.com comes in. Dslyecxi has put together what I think is the best overview of tactical games out there. He covers everything from the impact of goggles on your vision to what effects obstructions should have on your weapon handling. Everything is covered here and there are many videos so you can clearly understand the points he is trying to get across. So if your into tactical gaming be sure to read his article Tactical Gaming Done Right and the follow up Best of Tactical Gaming: Infiltration.

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Pownce

August 16, 2007 Leave a Comment

Pownce is the web app/site made by Megatechtronium that is a small company with four people – Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, Kevin Rose, and Shawn Allen. The best known in that list is Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, and Daniel Burka, lead designer for Digg. What is Pownce? The best way to say it is Twitter on steroids. A mashup of a instant messenger program, a microblog and a file sharing app. Read more of this post

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The History of Prey

August 15, 2007 Leave a Comment

The game Pray has a history almost as good as Duke Nukem Forever. What started in 1995 and was released 2006 has seen many different versions. In 95 the story was you are abducted from Earth, and wake up with a biotech suit on and the suit is apart of you (something like the Borg from Star Trek: TNG). By 2006 it was on the Doom 3 engine and you a Cherokee named Domasi Tawodi (aka Tommy) trying to save his girlfriend Jen after being abducted from a bar in Oklahoma. Read more of this post

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299 Torrent Sites

August 15, 2007 Leave a Comment

I was going over all the stories I have Dugg over the past two years and cleaning out all the crap. Stuff like The iPod Flea Ad Spoof, links to the old, but at the time new, Longhorn wallpaper and the huge list of wi-fi passwords that has been posted to the site many times. That is when I came across a list at Zeropaid for torrent sites. 299 torrent sites to be exact. Now if you can’t find whatever your looking for on that list you don’t need it.

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BioShock Demo

August 13, 2007 1 Comment

The BioShock Demo came out last night so I let it download over night. Not a small demo at over a gig in size. I got home to night and wanted to check it out. Now up intill tonight I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. I’ve seen all the movies and read all the hype but not till I try something out will I get into it. And man am I into it now.

I check out Major Nelson’s podcast last night were he had an interview with Ken Levine, Creative Director of Irrational Games, creators of BioShock. He describes the demo as something of a directors cut were you start at the beginning of the game. You just lived through a plane crash and there just one tall building for you to swim to. From there everything pretty much is trying to kill you but the guy your talking to on a radio. Hes trying to get you to help him save his wife and kid.

The thing that really got me was the level of detail all over. From the 50′s posters and rugs to the music that plays almost everywhere. The architecture fells right. The lighting fells right. To me it just felt like everything comes together just right. The only thing that I didn’t like was the guy on the radio. My 360 is setup with optical out so I have 5.1 but for some reason he was really hard to understand at times. I don’t know if thats the way it is for everyone or just my setup. Other than that I can’t wait to check out more of Rapture.

Filed under BioShock, Gaming, Microsoft, Xbox 360 Tagged with ,

Thermal Expert Examines Xbox 360

August 6, 2007 Leave a Comment

I am liking Gizmodo more and more everyday. This time they have a story from Nikkei about a thermal design expert looking inside of two Xbox 360′s. One of the 360′s is from Nikkei’s IT Pro editorial office that was purchased at the end of 2005. The other belongs to a reporter in the IT Pro editorial office and was repaired in May 2007. Here is some of the things he found.

The cooler fan’s maximum wind speed was 1.1 m/s, only 1/2 to 1/3 compared with general desktop PCs. It may be partly because the fan rotation was reduced to lower noise. According to an expert’s analysis, “The amount of switched air is slightly in short considering the chassis’ size (309 x 258 x 83 mm3).”

“The heat sink on the graphics LSI is so small, I wonder if it can really cool down the board,” our expert said.

Microsoft apparently had no choice but to downsize the graphics LSI heat sink in order to locate a DVD drive above it. The DVD drive’s bottom surface covers the top of the heat sink and forms an air channel.

In only five minutes since we started playing the game, the temperature of the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 70°C (158°F). The thermal gradient was about 10°C/min (50°F).

In 15 minutes, the microprocessor heat sink temperature stabilized at 58°C (136.4°F), but the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 80°C (176°F), 57°C (134.6°F) above the room temperature.

You should go to there site and read it but in short the design sucks. But I am still playing with it.

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Checking for the Red Rings

August 3, 2007 Leave a Comment

Over at Gizmodo they have a post on how you can check if you have the new heatsink in your Xbox 360 with out opening it. You just take your camera and put the lens on the vent on the power side. Turn on your flash and take a few pictures. If you end up with a picture like the one below from my new system then you don’t have the new heatsink and might be a getting the Red Rings sooner then you think.

Checking for the Red Rings

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