Saturday, December 6, 2008

The dumbest and most faulty sentence ever in a tech-article

Taken from this article on Forbes.com:

Google employees not using the secret OS are employing various versions of Unix, such as Linux or Ubuntu, and some older operating systems, like X11, he says

And "he" being "Vince Vizzacarro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing". That sentence is riddled with enough erronous information to make me cringe.

One, Ubuntu is a version of Linux, which in turn is a Unix-like OS. If I was gonna nitpick I could also state that Linux is in fact not an OS - it's an operating system kernel and operating systems based on it are called distributions. But never mind...

Two, X11 is not an operating system or anything close to it. X11 is windowing system software used by most desktop system for Unix-like OSes, like KDE, Gnome or XFCE for example.

So now I wonder who the idiot here is. Is Vince Vizzacarro with his fancy title as completely misinformed as he seems or has he been misquoted by the writer of the article? Either way it's a disgrace.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Why I'll never buy a high-end PC ever again

Although I've been a computer geek since forever, until two years ago I'd never really forked over the bigger bucks for a PC. I've always bought the model or the parts that were not great but did the job acceptably well, almost never the cheapest junk though.

About two years ago it was time for a serious upgrade, i.e. a new PC, and this time around I decided it was time that I owned a really high-end machine. So I did some research, bought the right parts - some of them released no more than a week earlier - and built a pretty awesome PC based on a nice Intel Core2Duo CPU, sporting dual 17" TFT-monitors with the appropriate Nvidia-card to drive them, three hard drives (two of them in RAID1) and buckets of RAM. The box set me back about 19.000 SEK (which is roughly $2600 with today's rates). Granted, this was not a crazy ass machine but on a scale of 1 to 10 in awesomeness, with 10 being the most insane gaming rig money can buy, I believe it was at the time a solid 8 at least. Since I hardly play PC-games at all, I'm a console kinda guy, it was more than sufficient to satisfy my needs and much more.

Well, two months ago I bought myself a 20" iMac and consequently had less use for my monster-PC. So I decided to sell it.

I read somewhere that a PC supposedly loses about half of it's worth in a year so in two years a PC is worth one quarter of it's original price. Since originally buying the PC I'd upgraded it a little bit with some more RAM and better cooling so I thought that I should be able to get 4.500 SEK for it right? Wrong.

It seems the second hand market for complete PCs really doesn't exist. PC-parts is a whole other thing, but a complete box just isn't worth anything at all it seems. I've been trying to sell my PC through multiple channels (auctionsites, ad in the newspaper, etc.) for weeks now and the interest is really non-existant. I've gotten a couple of e-mails from people asking me to lower the price or asking if I'll sell it for less with this or that part taken out, but no one has taken the bait for real so far.

I'm completely dumbfounded here. What is it that makes the second hand value of a PC virtually zero? The only machines that seem to have any real second hand value are Macs. I mean, there are old G4 MacMinis with half the horsepower and a quarter of the storage going for almost the same as I'm asking for my monster-PC. Are the Apple-fanboys the only ones that have money to spend or what's up with this? It's just crazy.

It's not like I thought I'd make my money back selling my two year old PC, but I thought that in a world where the majority of people use PCs there would at least be somebody enticed enough by the prospect of owning said machine. I guess I'm just really surprised that my assumptions were so wrong.

I discussed the whole thing with a friend and we came to the conclusion that most people don't really get the quality of hardware that's in my machine, all they see is a two year old computer that costs as much as a low-budget Dell that's brand new, so they go buy the Dell instead because it's, well, new, although it's way crappier than my machine is. Also, the people that do understand the real value of the machine would probably rather buy new parts and build their own rig so they pass on it for that reason. So basically, once again, the market for second-hand PCs (and high-end ones in particular) is shit.

However, the market for second hand PC-parts seems to be a little better so if my PC still has no buyer by next week I'm chopping it up and selling the bits and pieces individually. That should make me enough money to buy me and my girlfriend a decent sushi dinner at least :-P

So lesson learned, never buy an expensive PC again unless I really, really need that much juice. From here on any PC I buy will be just enough to get things done. No more, no less.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Authorize buddy? Not so much


Seriously, who the hell authorizes a request that looks like that? Epic fail fuckhead.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Eee used to be a sweet brand

Seriously, what's up with the people at Asus and why are they so thoroughly raping their own brand? I'm talking of course about the Eee.

What started with a small revolution in the notebook-market, the tiny but nice EeePC, has now become pretty much a farce. First of all, what's up with the millions of different configurations of EeePCs? Can even Asus keep up with all of them? Secondly, it seems that every other new piece of hardware coming out of their factories now sports the Eee-logo. Every week there seems to be a new model or a new product called the Eee-whatever. It's getting a bit much in my opinion.

The original EeePCs were made affordable partly because they ran Linux, a modified Xandros-based version that provided a super-simple interface that even your grandma could use without much trouble, making them a good buy for the computer novice not only because of the small price. But it wasn't long before market forces pressured Asus enough to start offering new models running Windows XP. Fine, if people really wanna run Windows XP let them. I just think it kind of defeats the whole point that the original EeePCs were making with their sleak Linux-powered and almost idiot-proof interface. An EeePC running Windows XP is just like any other cheap laptop, only smaller and with inferior hardware. Plus, the EeePC-models running Windows XP are more expensive than the ones running Linux. The ones that are the same price and model-number although running varying OSes have differences in their hardware specifications, i.e. smaller and cheaper harddrive to pay for the Windows XP-license.

There are now desktop-PCs wearing the Eee-logo popping up on the market. First there was the EeeBox, which I kind of see how it would be useful. It runs Windows XP or Linux, just like many of the netbooks of the brand. And now there's a all-in-one touch screen PC called the Eee Top. I don't know much about it yet but apparently it runs Windows XP infused with something that looks like the Easy-Mode UI on the EeePC netbooks. Judging by this video it doesn't run all that well though...

Too me it seems that Asus are a bit dizzy by the success of the first Eee-branded products and now they think that anything wearing the Eee-logo will become a money-printing machine and by drowning the market in different models and products they may actually kill their own brand in the end.

I'm personally aching a bit for one of the EeePC 901s running Linux and I already own one of the original EeePCs, a 701 4G (with touch screen installed), but this flood of Eee-products leaves a bit of a foul taste in my mouth none the less

Monday, August 25, 2008

Mine is bigger than yours

My storage space that is ;-) My Drobo kicks ass. And Firewire 800 is the shit.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Where are the chicks?

Here's a pretty cool project that was sent to me by a co-worker. Being a complete and utter geek everything robotic naturally arouses me in every way possible. Just kidding, not in every way, but still plenty enough.

However, one thing about this projects saddens me a bit, and by no fault of the project participants I might add.

Take a look at the list of credits at the bottom. Three men, the people that did the building and programming of the robot, and one woman. What did the woman do? "Robot costuming"... But of course, since she's a woman she couldn't have done anything engineering-like, right? It had to be something with clothes (although calling it clothes might in this case be stretching the term a bit). *sigh*

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not blaming Fannie White for anything and I'm sure she's capable of doing lots of things that have nothing to do with costumes. I just find it a bit sad that when I for once see a woman mentioned in a project like this, her assignment is very stereotypical for what the male-dominated world we live in typically thinks women are good for.

Any female engineers out there? I hope so. I really, really hope so. Just like I wish they'd be featured more prominently than they are.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Fire! Fire! Cool!

As reported on Digg today, Google Street View caught a house on fire with their cameras. The picture linked from the article on Digg has however been removed. But the fire is still viewable if you just approach the house from a different angle. Neat.

Oh, and here's a screenshot:


Friday, July 25, 2008

Things I learned from "WarGames - The Dead Code".


  • Terrorists love to play online games, and they're really good at it too.

  • If you play a war-themed game really well, the government will think you're a terrorist.

  • Supercomputers can talk and their insides light up and flash when they're processing data.

  • When something is written to or displayed on a computer screen, it always makes some sort of beeping noise.

  • When a user is denied access to a remote computer system a deep bloopy noise is made and the screen goes blank.

  • Articifical intelligence always equals hostility towards the human race.

  • The more powerful computer, the more unrealistic and crazy 3D-swirling graphical user interface.

  • Computer-savy teenagers can do anything even remotely imaginable with any and all pieces of information technology hardware, especially if there's a cheap joke involved.

  • You can use Photoshop to make fake passports. Really. You can.

  • If you're gonna make a movie that really sucks, be sure that the title and absurd story at least does a good job of raping the legacy of a real classic piece of cinema.

This has been some of the most loathsome ninetyfive minutes of my life. The only thing that could've made this movie any worse would've been an appearance by Steven Seagal. Oh well, maybe he'll appear in the sequel...

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Yes! Yes! Make with the awesome Master Whedon!

Serious ass-kickering awesomeness courtesy of Joss Whedon coming soon...

More info here, and here.

Friday, July 4, 2008

The importance of good acting

I was watching "Equilibrium" with Christian Bale last night when something struck me. Imagine if a REAL actor like Christian Bale, who is by far one of the greatest actors in modern time, had played Neo in the "Matrix"-movies instead of Keanu "I have no facial expressions except the one that looks like a zoned out pothead and the one that looks like I'm taking a difficult dump, and I can't act worth shit" Reeves?

The first film was an amazing movie despite Keanu's abysmal performance and the two sequels have grown on me with time, but if Christian Bale had been given the opportunity to portray Neo, damn, the trilogy may have been one of the most epic ones ever, right up there with "The Godfather", "Trilogy of the dead" and "Lord of the rings". Now it's just a runner up with some really cool science fiction ideas and an interesting philosophical spin.

Oh well, at least they didn't give it to Will Smith as originally planned. That's always something to be thankful for.

And this reminds me that I gotta get "The Prestige" on blu-ray real soon. Wolverine AND Batman in the same movie, how can it be anything but awesome? Trust me, it IS awesome :-)

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Maybe they're not all bad after all

Or at least they're getting better, Microsoft that is. According to a recent announcement on their website they're finally releasing documentation for their horrid binary file formats. The ones used up until 2007 at least.

This is a good thing, a very good thing even. Granted that the documentation is accurate this means it'll get easier for developers to interoperate with Microsoft's proprietary technologies and that's great since they have such a huge percentage of the market when it comes to wordprocessing, spreadsheet and presentation software (i.e. Word, Excel and PowerPoint). Good news for data portability in other words and maybe now the OpenOffice-team won't have to reverse engineer stuff until they're blue in the face to make Microsoft Office documents work flawlessly within their own applications.

I'm calling this a good day for interoperability and open development.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Hell yeah! PS3 firmware v2.40 makes dreams come true

In game XMB! Finally! And playing music from the harddrive while gaming - awesome! Now just release the damn thing already :-D

Monday, June 23, 2008

Face the pain



Two of my favorite things, the UFC and the PS3, united at last. This is going to be awesome. I'm sure of it.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Are we there yet?


Yes, we are.

Linksys router tutorial with boobies?

WTF?

Unfortunately I haven't had time to actually watch it yet :-P

Friday, June 13, 2008

Woz hacking Kathy Griffin's iPhone

I couldn't help but chuckle at this. Also, this is a little what my relationship with my girlfriend is like. Maybe that's why I found it so amusing.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Getting down with my EeePC

I've been playing around a lot with my Asus EeePC 701 4G lately. Actually, I've possibly been playing a little too much even since I've had to restore it to factory settings three times after being a little too adventurous with it.

With great help from the excellent wiki and forums at eeeuser.com I've played with and tweaked my EeePC plenty. I've activated the full KDE desktop, modified many of the shell scripts controlling the hardware, overclocked the CPU (which also included installing new kernel modules and playing with the fan-settings), compiled new kernels, done some network-hacking with Wireshark and aircrack-ng and much more

Last night I took a shot at enabling some 3D goodness by installing Compiz on the little beast and, low and behold, it actually worked!

As you can see it does indeed work, and pretty well at that! Very impressive for the modest hardware of the EeePC.

However, with a screen resolution of 800x480 the wobbling and bouncing windows get pretty annoying, and transparency doesn't seem to work (the thick black lines around all the items on the screen are because of this). The cube desktop switching is both cool and very usable though.

I have lots of neat projects lined up for my EeePC, one being installing a touch screen (I've ordered the needed hardware already) and other being using it as a wireless access point. It's a great machine to play around with and the Xandros Linux OS running on it by default is based on Debian which means I have access to a huuuge amount of pre-packaged software - very nice!

I'd recommend this machine to anyone in need of an extremely portable and moderately priced notebook PC for basic computing (e-mail, websurfing, word processing, etc.), or to any fellow hacker or gadget-freak that just wants an awesome new toy. Although it weighs less than a kilo and has pretty modest hardware, it still packs enough of a punch to fulfill most computer users needs.

The EeePC is simply awesome!!!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Haha! Suck eggs Steve!

This totally made my day:



From another angle:


Saturday, April 26, 2008

Getting older is a bitch

I just had my ass handed to me by what I'm guessing is a 14-year old kid.

During five grueling minutes I was utterly humiliated in an online game of "Mario Strikers Charged Football" on the Wii. I was run over, dazzled and crushed by this kid with the kind of lightning fast reflexes and tremendous skills that only someone that has yet to finish puberty and has too much free time on their hands can ever possess.

I'm not a bad gamer in any way. I've played endless hours of various games, both online and offline, on my own and against others, with great success. But being over thirty with a job and every day life going on, I don't have six hours every day to devote to every new game that hits the market. I'd like to, but I don't and I never will. This is why from here on as soon as a new game comes out and I decide to play it against others online I'll surely find myself being destroyed by teenagers again and again.

I'm pretty much at peace with this fact though. I just wish that there was some secluded area online where us old timers could graze and play amongst ourselves without having to deal with the angst of combatting hyperactive teeny gamers. Maybe there is such a place, and I just don't know about it. If so, someone please enlighten me.

Too me, it's no longer as much about winning as it used to. It's more about experiencing the games and enjoying them for what they are - exquisite works of digital art. If I get my ass handed to me by another gamer, I don't mind as long as it was a fair fight and I enjoyed myself.

Speaking of which, I just bought "Warhawk" for the PS3 and I look forward to getting my ass kicked time and time again.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Look everybody, I'm Vista certified!

One of our cats thought it was a good idea to eat through the cable connecting my keyboard to my PC the other day. So consequently I had to buy a new keyboard.

Lucky for me I found the exact same Logitech keyboard at an online retailer and although it was 100 SEK (that's about $15 I think) more than I paid for my original one I went ahead and ordered it because I really loved the feel of that keyboard.

When the keyboard arrived the other day I noticed that it said "Vista certified" on the front of box. "Vista certified"? Isn't every keyboard "Vista certified"? And in what way could this keyboard that on the picture I saw online appeared identical to my old one differ from said demised keyboard (which I bought before Windows Vista was even out) thus making it "Vista capable"?

Here's a picture of both of them (old one at the bottom):

Spot the difference? No? Take a closer look. They changed the look of the "Windows-button" giving it a slightly close resemblance to the Vista-logo. That's basically it! Awesome huh? That certainly warrants an attention-grabbing note on the front of the box doesn't it? And yes, that was sarcasm. This is so silly.

Here's a close-up of both keyboards (old one at the top):

Now that's just some friggin' brilliant stuff that is! LOL

Monday, March 31, 2008

Awesome Kevin. Welcome to the 21st century.

I was watching the latest episode of "Diggnation" and Kevin Rose was talking about the latest iPhone rumours. Apparently there's gonna be a 3G iPhone pretty soon and it will have two cameras, one of them facing the person holding the phone, so that you can do video-chat.

While Alex Albrecht goes "I'm not so hot for the video-chat because I don't even do that on my computer" while Kevin, stoked out of his mind, goes like "but how cool would it be to have a friend call you up and do video-chat on your phone?". Haha, priceless.

Dude, people here in Europe have been doing that for half a decade now. My dad, who's almost 60, does it. It's not bleeding edge anymore and it hasn't been for years. Welcome to the 21st century. I hope you'll like it here ;-)

It just makes me laugh, how a big nation like the US can be so far behind in some areas. 3G is not something new, it's just that the US hasn't implemented it with any real success yet. The fact that Apple adds 3G to the next generation of the iPhone doesn't make it new and exciting. It just means they're catching up to what Nokia and SonyEricsson have been doing successfully for years.

Personally I'm pretty stoked about a 3G iPhone though, and I'm hoping it turns out real good.

I think the current iPhone is pretty much a waste of hardware since it lacks many of the features my Nokia N80IE has (3G, MMS, video-chat and Bluetooth that isn't crippled for example) and many of these things I actually rely upon every day. But if they had those features on the iPhone I'd get one for sure.

Also, being the owner of an iPod Touch I know that the touch screen user interface is more than a gimmick. It's actually pretty usable and neat once you get the hang of it, and the big screen is awesome for watching video podcasts, movies and TV-shows. It's a really awesome gadget and well worth the $299 it set me back.

So if I could have all of the coolness of the iPod Touch plus the useful features of my 3G-phone naturally I'd go for that. But that basically means ALL of the useful features of my Nokia N80IE, not just a couple. Otherwise I'll wait until Apple gets it right. If they ever do that is ;-)

Monday, March 10, 2008

GlaDOS - pwned!

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Gary Gygax 1938-2008

Thank you for the endless hours of fun you brought me and millions of others. You will forever be remembered as one of the greatest creative people that ever lived. I for one can testify to the fact that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons forever changed my life and helped shape me into who and what I am today. You will be missed.

Rest in peace.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Die chimera, die!

And they did...


Yes, you guessed it. I finished "Resistance: Fall of Man". Awesome game. I'm so coming back for more very soon!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Two becomes one

I've decided that running more than one blog is too much work. I simply don't have the energy and both blogs suffer (you may or may not have noticed the decline in action from me lately..).

Therefor I am moving all of my efforts to this one and this means that things that used to belong in my other blog will now appear here, possibly along with some stuff that previously had no place in either of my blogs.

You see, blogging to me is primarily about venting and just narrowing down all my rants to be about just one or two things (video gaming, computers, whatever) is simply not constructive and kind of defeats the purpose of me blogging at all.

So in the future, expect more ranting than before in this space. But also, expect different kinds of rants. Just like before it will mostly be incoherent babbling about technology, video games and such, since those are my main interests and what I spend most of my cerebral energy on. But there are no holds barred from now on. And now you know.

Yes, that is a picture of the movie poster for "No holds barred", the movie starring the immortal Hulk Hogan. Yes, I'm a wrestling buff. You dig?

Monday, February 11, 2008

Done, and done

I finished "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" this past Friday, and I'm almost sad I did so. That game has been so much fun to play it's unbelievable, and it's sooo beautiful. Definitely HD-gaming at it's prettiest.

Finishing the game unlocks a "challenge mode" which is basically the game all over again but you get to keep all of the weapons and gadgets you've collected while playing it through the first time, plus there's now a bunch of new weapons and a lot more monsters. So, it looks like I'm far from done with this game after all. Fun, fun, fun!

As if that wasn't enough, two hours ago I finally finished "God of war" unlocking plenty of nice extras, such as "Challenge of the gods" and "God mode".

There's still more to unlock though, but in order to do that I need to finish the game in "God mode", and that'll certainly take me a while. So maybe I'm not so much done with that one either when I think about it.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Praise the demo-downloads!

One feature that I've found very nice on the PS3 is that I can download playable demos of games from the PlayStation Store. When games cost as much as they do these days it's really a great thing to be able to take them for a little test drive before forking over my hard-earned cash for the real deal.

Yesterday I downloaded the demo for "Conan", and oh boy am I ever glad I did. You see, if I'd paid actual money for this piece of crap I'd be livid!

First of all: the graphics. Hello? Isn't this supposed to be an HD-capable console? I've got PS2 games several years old that look way better - "God of war" and "Killzone" to name a few.

Secondly and probably most importantly: the gameplay. You have basically no friggin' moves and the game seems to respond very slowly so combat is both frustrating and a bore. The minute elements of puzzle-solving that was featured in the demo was also laughable.

Thirdly, the demo is way too short for an action-adventure game. I mean really, I played through it completely in minutes and afterwards I wasn't one bit interested in seeing more since the demo left me thinking that this was what the game was like, only longer.

So thanks Sony for helping me steer clear of this turd of a game.

Demos I have been enjoying though and that made me wanting to play the game for real are "The Club" and "Uncharted: Drake's fortune". Now those left me salivating slightly and definitely wanting more!

The free download of "Lemmings" (full game!) also put a big smile on my face. What an awesome game in all of it's simplicity and how missed it ever since I played it ages ago on the original GameBoy.

I've also download "Kane & Lynch" and "Stranglehold", but I haven't gotten around to trying them out yet.


Sunday, January 6, 2008

66.666%

The following is taken from the latest newsletter from J!NX and makes me even happier that I went for a PS3 and not an Xbox360:

As a public service, we'd like to provide this brief rant: Nine people in the J!NX Office ponied up a hefty wad of female deer for an Xbox360. Of those nine, six of us now have a broken Xbox360. For the math-impaired, that makes 66.666% (repeating, of course) bitter J!NX gamers. So sad... We have consoles from 20 years ago that still work perfectly, apart from a few cartridges that need a blow now and then... (heh, blow...)

The Xbox360 has the largest amount of awesome games of any of the next-gen consoles, but this whole thing with them breaking is just embarrassing. There's no other console in history that has as bad of a track record from breaking as the 360.

And now when I think about it, I've never even heard of a PS3 breaking without someone doing something pretty stupid to it.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Eating my own words, and loving it!

Yes, it's true. Only a couple of month after my latest spewing of foul language over the PlayStation 3 I went and bought one for myself and you can view it in all it's expensive glory to the right of these words.

So what made me change my mind? Well, a couple of things. First and most importantly, the games are finally starting to pop up. That has been my main problem with the PS3, the lack of good games. But now there's plenty of games worthy of my cash out there; "Resistance: Fall of man", "Uncharted: Drake's fortune", "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" and "Call of duty 4: Modern warfare" to name a few.

Secondly and also very important, there are even more awesome cames on the horizon. I'm speaking of upcoming masterpieces like "Dead space", "Killzone 2", "God of war 3" (OK, it's set for release in 2009, but it's "God of war 3" doggammit!!) and "Metal gear solid 4: Guns of the patriots".

Also, it's looking more and more like Blu-Ray is kicking HD-DVD in the ass and killing it slowly but steadily. So I decided that for my HD-needs, I'm taking my chances with Blu-Ray.

What finally tipped the scale completely was that I got quite a big lump of cash back on my tax returns so suddenly the high price of the PS3, which has been my second biggest complaint, was no longer a problem.

On top of that, I managed to procure one of the last remaining 60GB machines available in Europe. One of the many perks of working for a large retailer of music, movies and games I guess ;-)

I've only had my PS3 for about a day but I have no regrets what so ever. I've already played several hours of "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" and "Resistance: Fall of man", downloaded movie trailers, game demos and such and am enjoying my new expensive toy very much.

Unfortunately I'm not having much of an HD-experience so far since it turns out that the single HDMI-port (which has never been used before) on my Samsung LCD-TV is broken! I still have a year to go on the warranty on the TV so it's not a huge problem since I'll get it fixed for free. But while it is being fixed I'll be without a big-screen TV and have to settle for the 23" LCD-TV in the bedroom (which actually has a functioning HDMI-port) for several days, maybe even a couple weeks, and that sucks a bit of ass.

But on the upside of things, until I get my big-screen TV off to the repair shop "Ratchet & Clank: Tools of destruction" kicks some serious ass in 576i too I can tell you!