I recently decided to install and use the Firefox 3.5 release candidates. Now, I won’t go into great detail to describe it, but it’s faster, more standards compliant and advertises the tab bar by default (with a ‘new tab’ button). But, the one thing that caught my eye was the new icon (as shown in Figure 1)
Figure 1: Firefox's new icon
What was wrong with the old one(s)? The new one seems too shiny. Thankfully I can overwrite the icon and replace it with the identifiable classic.
I know Crysis has been out since late 2007, but it was only now that I’ve had a “Crysis capable” computer. I downloaded and installed the demo (the download weighed in at 1.8GB). I played it at low settings, though by default it suggested medium settings. I ran through the entire demo and saw no significant loss of frame rate. All I can say of the admittedly small portion of Crysis I ran through is that it’s basically a retooled version of Far Cry with better graphics and a better story.
I finally installed the Windows 7 RC. As with the beta, it’s a fine operating system. A far better OS than Vista (anything is far better, even CP/M). My only gripe with it, which is because of my hardware…
Such a low number for the RAM is most likely because I’m mixing DDR2 800 and DDR2 667 together.
Earlier today I ordered replacement parts for my blown motherboard and CPU. Although they aren’t exactly modern anymore, they’re a real improvement over this C7 I’ve had to use as a temporary replacement or the old Socket 939 Athlon 64 3000+. The CPU of course is an AMD Athlon X2 4050e, which I feel was an absolute steal at $35 (with free shipping). The motherboard is an ECS (you might have heard horror stories about ‘em but my last motherboard was a PCChips, which is owned by ECS) with GeForce 6100 integrated graphics and features a PCI-E x16 and x1 slot, with 2 PCI slots. Hopefully this machine wull last a few years, as there future capable upgrades (ala Phenom II x4).
After I read on Slashdot (Direct link to article), I’ve never hated Microsoft more as much I do now. This rant isn’t about open source vs closed source. Or Windows vs. UNIX(like) operating systems. This is about the dishonesty of corporations against the American people. I just hope that none of you purchase (or pirate, or use in any way) Windows 7. Heck, I hope most of you are thinking about finally migrating to another OS. Be it that that OS is OS X, BeOS, FreeBSD, OS/2. It can be anything, as long as it isn’t Microsoft (MS-DOS, Windows 9.x/Windows NT).
Months back I commented that the Internet, or at least the portion of the Internet I frequent, seems to have died. What’s happened since then? If anything it’s gotten worse, not better. My IRC channel has gotten even more dead, Slashdot has started to suck more, and Usenet? It’s all file downloads these days. The blog? Dead too. A few months ago it had insight, and some witty-ness. These days? “Oh, do I have to post another blog entry?”, and I fill it with random crap.
Want a free TechNet account for one year? Then check this out from ArsTechnica. I’ve completed the instructions and did indeed get the account. It’s really cool to see all the crap TechNet subscribers get. Maybe this is a mess up? Maybe this a ploy from Microsoft? Maybe. Maybe not. Get it while you can, however.
Update: This was an invite only thing.
Some guy on IRC gave me a link to Omegle, saying that I’d have fun for hours, or perhaps days. And he was right. I have had fun with it for days. Basically the site pits you with another random person. That random person may be your neighbor, or some weird guy on the internet
Since it’s all random you’ll of course have the trolls, and the sickos, but once in a while you’ll find an intelligent person to chat with about random things. You’ve been warned.
Fellow blogger Andrew Turnbull is contemplating if he should stop updating his blog. So have I. I fell that the quality of the content has gone from decent to mediocre to plain ole’ garbage. I also used to post blog entries almost everyday, but these days I don’t. The front page (as of now) contains posts from June 1st to April 3rd, while the 2nd page contains posts from April 2nd to March 3rd. In other words, I’ve been slacking off on content and quality.
Should I throw in the towel and be done or should I attempt to reinvent my blog?
Since my default machine (an Athlon 64) decided to go get fried, I’ve had to use my fallback machine, which is a Via C7. This C7 in paticular is 1500MHz, has 128KB of L2 cache, and features the MMX,SSE,SSE2, and SSE3 instruction extentions, while my Athlon 64 was 1800MHz, had 512KB of L2 machine and featured all the instruction additions that the C7 does plus 3dnow and x86_64.
Compared to that machine.. this thing is slow. My old CPU counted PI to 1 million digits in around 40 seconds. This bad boy? Over 360 seconds. Now that I’ve got the fact that is slow drilled into your head, you probably wonder if this CPU’ll handle 7. It does. But not extrodinarily so. It seems XP is the best [Microsoft] OS for this beast.
