UltraPortable Laptop Computers.

While not a new idea, UltraPortable computers have suddenly become quite popular.

This is mainly because a whole new approach to the idea has been undertaken by
computer companies. ASUS was the first to bring out a cheaper model.

Now, I'm not sure where these people got their inspiration from, but I would take a
stab at the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) initiative that is being attempted in
Africa. Which came about from the idea of creating usable computers for a very
low price, and while that standard of computer wouldn't work in western society,
ASUS decided to vamp up the specs a little, and gave us the first UPPC.
The ASUS EeePC 701:



and to give you an idea of size:



now, to be honest, they didn't get everything right with the first model, but they
really did a good job on the follow up one, the ASUS EeePC 901:



It has a lovely 9inch screen, as you may have noticed with the orignial, they didn't
make proper use of the screen space they allocated themselves. but with the 901, it has bigger keys,
better battery life, and overall more features here and there.

They can run any operating system you want really, be it Linux, Mac OS X, or
Windows, without much issue if you turn off the unnnecessary services that some of
those systems run.

however, to get a good one, with enough RAM, enough space, and a nice screen, you would need
to spend at least about $550 Australian. Granted your paying for size, more than
anything else, but they are marvelous study helpers, as you don't need to lug
some massive laptop around with you.

Personally, I'm looking at getting a EeePC 901, or maybe a MSi Wind(one of the many
copy-cats that popped up after the ASUS EeePC was an arousing success).

And I will add another post when I do and let you know how it goes.

Fully Customizable Games rule

Alright, I am slightly Biased with these types of things because I happen to be running a server from home that hosts said genre of gaming.

The Genre being Sandbox, but it does go under various other names.

One of the most common games in this Genre is Garry's Mod, a mod for Half-Life 2, which started as one mans playful modding, and 10 Major releases later got Steam so interested that it is now for sale at $10 a pop.

I have been following this game since V8 which is about when it started getting more popular exponentially.

And I have recently re-made my personal Gmod Server for the 6th time, and decided to create a Trailer for it in my spare time while I was bored.

Enjoy.

Qbits and quantum computing

According to sources, the University of Michigan has created the worlds first quantum chip, but what's the difference you ask? No it can't teleport you to mars, but it could very well crack your neighbors wireless in less than a minute.

The immediate future doesn't hold this technology in it's hallways. But contrary to popular belief, it won't be that hard to mass produce as the chip uses a similar creation process to todays standard microship, what's the advantage of this? When the military's ready to release it to the public (they always take the good stuff first) Dell should be pumping it out with in months. Although I have to admit, it probably will take at least a decade to get the chip to gold state.

You know what, i'm not going to bother trying to explain how it works, i'd just confuse you to the point of annoyance and anyway, it's written better over at Vista. 

The other interesting point to quantum chips, is the related technology to manipulate atoms to form any atom on the periodic table. You can read more about it here and here.

I honestly hope I see the day these chips come to light.

...and I hope that was partially educational for those who new nothing about digital technology.

S60 theme uninstall

In response to the tens of people on Symbian Freak looking to uninstall themes:

I've decided that a majority of people using S60 can suck my balls. Obviously 30 people trying to figure out how to uininstall themes don't have the processing power of my brain.

To unistall applications and themes, go into >Tools>App manager>the program you want to unistall.

Twats.

Battlefield Heroes, It's Free, It's a cartoon, and it looks damn fun

Alright,

Most gamers reading this will be well aware of the EA Games Battlefield series, consisting of Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142.

Which have mostly been aimed at realism (or as realistic as people shooting beams of light at each other to kill them consistently can be.), but now EA has decided to try the new approach, a free game, which is paid for by the advertising that is placed around it on walls etc.

I guess it's their new approach to stopping people downloading the games illegally via Torrents etc, they still make money, and people download the games for free, everyone wins.

here's a little video to get you interested:


Looks like it's coming out later this year, I'm hoping it's going to be sooner than that.

(Did someone say Team Fortress 2 ripoff?)

Analogue VS Digital

There had been a quarrel among society for many years now, and epic battle which has been raging throughout the minds of audiophiles, the one big question. No, it isnt when is phillip glass going to release a new album and will he release it in Dolby 5.1? It is:
is Analog Better than digital?
The battle is similar to the Cold War, with technological advances and factions and revisionists and whatnot.
The Tube Screamers: Vouching for the warmness and unique sound of analogue recordings. They are sticking to their traditions and are quite opposed to any ideology other than theirs. They usually hang around the Electro Harmonix Factory in NYC and compare the dynamic range on each other's vintage amplifiers. They are usually quite upper middle class as they have to have thousands of dollars to spend on Neve Studio Consoles and old Fender Super Reverb Amplifiers and such. Analogue was the main form until the electronic music movement of the 1980s, which became more digital based.

VS

The General (digital) Population

Who do you know that doesn't own an ipod or some kind of digital music player?
All of the songs on these players are encoded digitally. And the majority of songs since the 90s are recorded while using digital technology. The use of digital software and hardware made recording an album possible by the average joe, and therefore helped create a bunch of independent labels and artists in the 90s.
This allowed people to express themselves musically without having to spend too much money.

The problem that many people have with analogue technology is that it is simply messier and harder to control, also technical limtations cause many analogue mixes to sound unpolished and dirty. In contrast, if a person is recording in a digital studio, they can record unlimited takes and really perfet the sound. The problem with this though is that many digital recordings sound too polished and cold, lacking the sonic warmth of an analogue recording.

Many artists nowadays look back on the early analogue recordings of the 40s and 50s and see great artists, struggling with technical limitations. Imagine if the Beatles had of had unlimited multi tracks! But then again, would this technical freedom have been daunting, like the open page of a book, and would they have died struggling for that perfect sound?
That question must be left to George Martin.

I was Liam, Good Night and Good Luck

Mac vs. PC, the age old battle...

Alright, now most people who know me in person will know me as a windows supporter, and that is that,

Truth be told, I'm really not, I have quite a genuine liking for Mac and their nifty designs, I don't however like how Mac owners can't SHUT THE FUCK UP about how much awesome their computers are because they have bigger wallets.

now, some simple facts:

• Microsoft owns about 90% of the market, while Apple owns about 10% (Linux obviously not really counting because nobody is stupid enough to charge for it).
• Microsoft is SOFTWARE ONLY while Mac is also hardware in a sense, so they have a lot more to protect.
• Microsoft does not make it against the license of their software to use it on anything but their computers (unlike Apple).
  

Right now while that is out of the way, Mac's can do anything a PC can do, but they just cost a lot more to do it, and even more to do it better (meaning gaming mostly).

Point in question being that Mac's can run windows, but to get the same hardware that's in a Windows PC that costs about $1500-2000, you would need to pay about $2500-3000. Don't bother arguing with me on this because quite plainly I don't care if you have another opinion.

In my honest opinion, Mac's are better for designing, and that covers ALL types, they are also better for music creation etc, they are not better for office stuff, they can do it, but they are not better or anywhere near as economic to use in an office environment. And they are not as good for gaming at all (minus the new expensive ones with the Nvidia 8 series cards which STILL need to be running windows to fucking play the games properly).

This is also why there are next to no virus's for Mac, there is like a 3 digit figure, that represents how many Mac Virus's there are IN TOTAL. I mean come on, who wants to attack artists and musicians right? While conversely with Windows, the mainly used operating system by nearly every business in existence, there is something like millions, possibly billions of Windows virus's, ranging from minor annoyances to the dreaded Cuddly Bear Virus. Windows needs virus updates every day to make sure you have a hope of staying clean, and even then sometimes that isn't enough, while Mac does not need an Anti-Virus program AT ALL, because if a virus is made, it is usually patched out within a few weeks maximum.

Okay, Mac's look better, have a more streamlined interface, and much less issues than PC's, but that's because everything is set in stone!

If you want to customize your Mac, you do it when you buy it, because afterwards there's no going back, unless you buy one of the behemoth Mac Pro's.

while on a PC, you can pretty much switch anything for something else, and it will still work after some tweaking or re-installing.

Now since Mac switched to Intel CPU's, the ONLY THING separating them from PC's (whether Mac owners admit it or not, frankly, I think they are just annoyed because they paid for something different, and now its not so special) was the software, and the shiny box/screen it was running from.

and even that is no longer unique, because I happen to be running OS X Leopard 10.5.2 fully functioning on my current PC without ANY issues whatsoever.

so the only thing left is a shiny box, which can be bought if so desired (or something that looks almost identical.

so, final thoughts:

Macs are better for music composition, designing, and art.
PC's are better for gaming/office stuff.

Mac's are no longer unique because of points expressed above, so stop being so stuck up, stop trying to put yourself above the rest of the world because you have a Mac, and just fucking enjoy it quietly!

Windows Games on Linux. Wait what?

At first the idea sounds silly, but in all honesty it shouldn't seem so far fetched.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I was not expecting such good results.

There is of course the WINE application for Linux which allows windows applications to run in Linux systems (Of course I'm using Microsoft's definition of RUN because there is a subtle difference between running and running WELL).

Normal WINE cannot play games very well, there are no performance increases or anything of the sort. However, there are variations, which perform quite well. Such would be a program called CrossOver (there is also a version for Mac, but I am unaware of the performance details of said application).

It is a modified version of WINE which is not free (Which unfortunately led to it no longer being updated because the people who released WINE for free, didn't want their work paying for other peoples pleasure). However, the way the program works is you install a game like you would in windows, it creates a small, system within Linux, allowing windows applications/games to be installed and played. This is not to say that there is 100% compatibility, but there is enough for it to be worth a shot.

I tried it with some steam games, like Team Fortress 2, Portal, and have tried it with some others, and as long as you have proper Drivers for your system, the results are quite nice.

I could run Team Fortress 2 at a higher frame rate than on XP (as in 1.5-2x better than XP) with a higher resolution and graphics settings. The only issue is that Directx9 is not supported yet (emphasis on yet), so you will be stuck with 8.1 (for the moment), but in all honesty, this does not make a difference.

The things I had a problems with, are running things in fullscreen, and fonts, just make sure that if CrossOver does not install the fonts for you (usually it will automatically), get them yourself, or it will be illegable or worse, there just wont be any text at all.

And instead of running in fullscreen, just run it in a window, this is good because you can multi task, and it wont mess up your desktop (this is not a consistant problem, majority of the time it works fine, but SOMETIMES it can mess up your desktop).

But see if you can get your favorite distribution of Linux (mine being Ubuntu or something easy like that)

And give CrossOver a try. CrossOver Site.

If your lucky, you might be able to run your windows games off you windows partition as well!

Just make sure your NTFS drivers are installed and fully functional, otherwise write permissions will be missing and you wont be able to play any of the games.

Worst case scenario you would just need to copy the game files to the emulated windows system in the Linux partition.

Nvidia 7 Series - "Good-Bye and thanks for all the fish"

It would seem Nvidia's 7 series was one of the best for sticking with it.

I remember when they first were coming out, oh say... more than 3 years ago, that's right, 3 years running and they still pack a punch.

I only recently upgraded from my Leadtek 7800 GTX (above) about 2 months ago. The reason that it lasted so long being, with a proper processor backing it up, (like say the Intel Core 2 series or the AMD equivalent) the card still managed to perform remarkably well (and it's not even the highest card in the series!).

It's the longest I have ever had a graphics card at one time (a bit over 2 years), and it is only now that it's power is starting to fall behind. I could play Team Fortress 2 at 1440x990 without any lag if I turned down the graphics a little, which was quite surprising honestly, but the problem being I can't stand lag, I usually only like an FPS of 60 or above (for stability purposes, having it at 30 is great until a lot of stuff happens and you get lag spikes). So I went for the 8800 GT, but the fact is, if you can play games without having to have everything set to high and can handle a LITTLE lag, that card would still be able to play ANY game that is currently on the market.

So I bid farewell to my Leadtek 7800 GTX (which is now in the hands of my brother, who will no doubt get my 8800 GT when I upgrade as well).

Usually I wouldn't make a bit deal out of such a thing, but considering the rate at which technology is advancing IS increasing, about 2 years running (and a number of different liquid cooling systems and coolers, and hundreds of overclocks) is pretty damn good.

The annoying thing is, this kind of reliability seems to be diminishing, I doubt my 8800 GT will last me the year, (which is good news for my brother I guess hehe).

Firefox 4 Alpha before Firefox 3 released? What?

Alright,

Anyone who uses the internet would be aware of, or at least HEARD of firefox open source internet browser.

It's the most customizable internet browser around with support for the three main operating systems in use (Windows, Mac and Linux).

Mozilla (the creators of firefox) have decided to take a leaf from Microsoft's book and start work on versions ahead of the next one to be released (Microsoft for example was already working on Vista's successor before Vista's release).

The result of this, is firefox 4.0 Alpha.

Now in most cases Alpha's are not very good, they are in early stages of development, and are in the early stages of the ladder:

1. Patent
2. Alpha "Alpha1"(normally more than one)
   
3. Beta "Beta1"(normally more than one)
4. Release Candidate "RC1"(normally more than one)
5. Release to Market "RTM"
   

As a result they are buggy as hell (such is the story with Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 1)

but this is not the case with Firefox 4, all of it's features seem fully functional, it's highly responsive, does not display ANY errors so far during my usage of it, and adds nifty features here and they such as Spell Check etc for the forum retards who can't spell.

It also has some interface/usability changes, some people find this ugly, I quite like them:






Of Course, a new nifty codename (Minefield) until the official release







Be aware however, as this is quite a recent release, there is next to no extension support, so if you are dependent on certain extensions or themes, then download this, take a look to see what's coming, but you probably wont keep it.

Firefox 4 Alpha 1 (click to download)