Looking through the news, I’m simply embarrassed by what is making US headlines these days, considering what’s knocking around in the world these days. And yes, who’s the blame? The media? Not entirely. We let them get away with it. We – as US Citizens – are just as much to blame because we thrive on shitty, US-centric, beat-on-Bush news.
Need an example? You shouldn’t, but I have some to share, just the same…
Continue reading State of Things
fosfor gadgets: If someone would have presented a XBOX 360 for me and my friends 20 years ago, I’m pretty sure we probably would have fainted. When you compare similar games from the mid-eighties with today’s top notch video and computer games, the difference in graphics is quite amazing. Here’s an interesting comparison of 9 games from the 80’s with todays killer games
This has been circling the web for over a week now, true but I saw it through different eyes today… instead of “Then versus Now” this could have also been a case of “Game versus Box Art”. Old school gamers can attest to this first hand: the box art in the 80’s was always wow and the game was a square dot. Not that we cared because it was still fun, but now a days, you actually play the game that is shown in the box art.
Wild.
For a while now I’ve been forwarding select addresses from @randyrants.com but I never bothered to change the blog with the new address. After all Hotmail was always convenient because I could access it everywhere – low maintenance and the like. However, while shopping over at the Windows Live beta site, I noticed a beta for “Custom Domains“.
I’ve already got this blog hosted in one place and the DNS in another: Internet magic. What do I need Custom Domains for? Domain-based email routing? I guess, but I could have been doing that already via the DNS hosting people. Well, Hotmail Window Live Mail will play well with Windows Live Custom Domains, sure… so much so that my domain-based address would be a Passport…? !! Well that’s pretty neat actually; I didn’t expect that. Looks like I can use the new addy for IM as well, not that I’m ever logged in with it. Either way, I signed up for the best.
randy@randyrants.com is the “official” email address going forward. For those of you that care about such things.
All two of you. *points* I saw that.
Major Nelson: A new backward compatibility update is now available for the Xbox 360. You can see the complete updated list here.
This is rocking: Black and Star Wars Battlefront II are now supported on the 360. Black has been a lot of fun so far, even if it is a single player game (which mean I’d usually thing it was boring) and I bought Battlefront II the week before the 360 launched, knowing that I might only be able to play that on the original Xbox…
Very good indeed.
MSNBC: EU: Microsoft’s Vista may break antitrust rules […] He highlighted Vista’s integrated Internet search, digital rights management used to protect copyrights and software that would create fixed-document formats comparable to Adobe’s pdf.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: where is the fucking public outcry for oppression caused by Apple’s OSX? OSX that ships with its own media player, IM client, search engine, DRM system, and spits out PDF’s? OSX that has been “guilty” – quotes because there’s no guilt here – of these issues for over three years now? Why is it OK for OSX which has been in the mix for years and not for Vista which hasn’t even been released yet?
Where? Where’s the outcry for it? Where is it? Tell me that.
Tell me.
Now.
I track about 20 different symbols on my stock list. Aside from the two indices, the rest of the symbols are things that I am currently invested in or things that I know other people are invested in. It’s a throw back to when I used to work for a company that delivered real time stock information but I believe it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on your investments… This morning I looked at the list and noticed the entire thing was showing green, meaning that every single symbol was trading at a higher price this morning.
What would you think? Would you instinctively think:
a) “wow I’m rich! How do I spend it?”
b) “Whoa, the markets doing well, that’s good news”
c) “there must be something wrong with the application, lemme check another site and see what they say”
Continue reading Are You A Tester?
Xbox.com: Friends Management Comes to My Xbox. Accept or decline requests.Xbox.com has always been the place to find out about new games and hardware, learn about your fellow gamers, and check out upcoming events. With the launch of My Xbox® in October 2005, Xbox.com became your second Xbox Live® place. You can now check your gamerscore, compare achievements with friends, and keep track of your forum posts, all right here on Xbox.com.
Sweet!
I don’t often spend time in FeedDemon during the weekend… most blogs take the weekend “off” and I figure that I can play catch up for the extra 10 minutes on Monday morning. And it’s on that morning that I try not to post anything because I already know that 50% of what I read makes me cranky. Like hearing that “60% of Vista needs to be re-written”. How in the hell can people actually believe that? Especially after the last two CTP’s… Pft.
Another classic comment came from The New York Times, saying that Microsoft should do what Apple did: orphan users by “not worrying about backwards compatibility” and fling a VM at them. That one makes my ass twitch. Not because Microsoft would do it. Hell, if the tech reporters were to be believed, that’s what the original Vista plan was, before the 2004 “shake up”… and the reporters freaked when they heard that which caused the public to freak. That’s what makes me twitch: if Windows PC’s are 90% of the marketplace, what should Windows users do if we just said “Oh, you need a new version of your applications on Vista”. Riiiight. That would be smart business. Snort. The only reason why Apple could do it is because they had 2% of the marketplace at the time. Meh.
But that’s not what got me to break my silence this morning… oh, no. I was willing to let that go, until I stopped by TUAW.
Continue reading My Head Hurts
SharpKeys is a Registry hack that is used to make certain keys on a keyboard act like other keys. For example, if you accidentally hit Caps Lock often, you could use this utility to map Caps Lock to a Shift key or even turn it off completely. The official release includes support for up to 104 mappings, an extensive list of available keys, and a “Type Key” option to help when managing mappings. As it relies on internal support within Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista you must be running one of these OS’s for this Registry hack to work.
Version 2.0 includes a newly design UI and it has been recompiled to use the 2.0 release of the .NET Framework. There is no new bug fixes or functionality in this release: it is simply a refresh to move to the newer Framework and update the UI with a new look.
Download SharpKeys 2.0: EXE | MSI | ZIP
Download: .NET Framework version 2.0
Read: SharpKeys FAQ
SharpKeys 1.1 is also still available, using the 1.1 version of the .NET Framework – read this post for more information.
I’ve been a Geek for nearly my entire life. I remember fiddling with pinball machines, in the days before Pac-Man hit our shores… and I needed to stand on a milk crate to do it. Throughout the years I’ve always tinkered with technology – leading to Memoirs of an Italian Geek – but it’s not often that you realize just how far back your memory goes…
…and when you do, it feels like a kick in the dick.
Continue reading You Are Here –> .
The Godfather comes out for the Xbox, PS2, and PC tomorrow. No 360 version though – at least not yet. What makes me go “WTF?!” is that the 360 version might not be available until Christmas. At least that’s the latest from Kotaku. Fat chance in hell that I’m waiting that long to pick up this particular game.
Truth is that this supports my argument about “backwards compatibility” on the 360: my original Xbox didn’t blow up when I bought a 360. A lot of people kept going on and on about it, when the 360 shipped – I still say it’s no big deal. Because, how do you offer backwards compatibility on games that hadn’t shipped yet? And talk about staying power for the Xbox – how many people were making PS1 games after the PS2 shipped? I mean, I bought Battlefront II for the Xbox a couple of days before the 360 shipped. Bought Black last week. I’ll probably buy The Godfather tomorrow, particularly because I’m Italian. Er, I mean, because it won’t be available on the 360 for a number of months and waiting for games is not one of my virtues.
Ah, the pain of being a Geek these days…
Huskies versus Huskies in the Sweet Sixteen. Washington versus Connecticut, more accurately.
Glad I didn’t go to either school, or I’d be conflicted something awful!
I just spent the last ten minutes playing around with the Technical Refreshed release of Beta 1 of Office 2007… most specifically, I was poking around PowerPoint, of all things. I know… it’s not the typical application for a Test/Dev type to be playing with, but I spent a lot of time with PPT when I was teaching and I wanted to see what was different.
My reaction? Wow. Just… Wow.
I’ve had enough of supporting multiple feed types, so I’ve said “screw it”. I mean I had 0.91 as index.xml, 1.0 as index.rdf, 2.0 as index2.rdf, and ATOM as… I don’t know what ATOM is because I haven’t publicized it. I think it’s atom.xml.
To subscribe to this blog via RSS, please use this link: https://www.randyrants.com/index.xml in the future.
I’ve also left out the old files with “stubs” telling you where to find the new link, but it’s hard to say how well that will get picked up by Feed services: right now, NewsGator is only offering me really old articles via index.xml so it could take a few days for it to properly pick up all the changes…
Blah.
Politically Correctness sucks.
The other day I’m walking down a hall at work and someone is walking towards me. She sneezes. I instinctively say “Bless you.” I’ve said that for years whenever someone sneezes. It was even a running joke in Singles. But I’m at work. Now I start thinking “was that right? Should I have said that? What if she’s an atheist? What if she’s offended? What if HR was monitoring this hallway, waiting for just this kind of slip up? Is there a non-religious way to ‘excuse’ someone for blasting germs at you in a sneeze? What’s proper???” All this thought, just for political correctness? Fuck that.
If you sneeze near me, yer getting blessed, dammit, so shup about it.