After seeing that Team Fortress 2 had an update I was excited. What could they have possibly added? Engineer update? Demoman update? My heart was pounding as I right clicked on “Team Fortress 2″ in Steam, and hit “View Update News”. What was it? Something remotely exciting? No, not exactly. More like anger inducing.

“Added Bill’s Hat for players who pre-purchase Left 4 Dead 2“. I have not pre-purchased Left 4 Dead 2. I haven’t even played the original Left 4 Dead (which entails an entirely other story). Yet, those of us who purchase Team Fortress 2 are left out. I had very hope that they release Bill’s Hat for all players after Left 4 Dead 2 is release, or… well, we won’t get into that now.

Almost a year back, I reviewed a pre-release version of SeaMonkey 2. In it, I described all the new features of SM2, which basically make it more “Firefox-ish”, including the newer rendering engine included with Firefox 3, and a newer add-on engine, just like Firefox 3. While I thought it was a decent browser overall, I found fault with it:

• Older versions of Windows are no longer supported.
• I hate the new default theme. I liked the older classic Netscape 4 theme better, but that can be rectified by simply installing a new theme.

Since Opera 10 no longer supports Windows 95, what modern, up to date web browsers are there for Windows 95? A web browser shouldn’t need all these fancy API’s, because after all, a web browser at its simplest form downloads and displays web pages.

It’s pretty well known that I have a dislike for Steam. I dislike it for many reasons, but I mostly dislike it because of the DRM, the technical problems (of which I discussed in the linked blog post), and… the users. The people who’ll defend Steam to their death. Why, I have to ask. Why defend a for-profit company that wants to take away the rights to use the product you bought? It boggles the mind.

Whenever I tell people my opinion on Steam, they’re always like “Steam works great, and if it doesn’t work it’s because it’s your fault. You can play your games offline using offline mode. Why do you need or want phyisical copies of your games? You think you’re going to resell them after your done with them!? That’s illegal! That’s hurting the game compaines!” Of course I went a tad over the top with it, but that’s basically what they say.

1. Steam can be, and IS, buggy at times. Don’t deny it. A lot of problems can be rectified with that “ClientRegistry.blob” file, but some of them can’t.

2. Yeah, sometimes I can play them. Sometimes I can’t. And can I play them without an Internet connection for weeks at a time? Or even a few days? Thought, not. So it’s not a true “Offline mode”.

3. I like having physical copies. It shows that I actually own the game. It shows that I actually have a thing that I can touch, and a manual that I can read.

4. I’m sorry, but I believe that I have the right to transfer ownership of a game that I do not wish to play anymore. That’s a big reason why I hate Steam. Lack of the ability to change ownership of a game.

I hate it when people happily give away their rights to major corporations, but I hate it even more when other people expect ME to give away those rights too.

After not only reading this (among other news sources) but also reading the comments of such article, I was amazed that people actually believed it. On a more serious note, why would people need 128-bit? Are there systems out there that need more than 1 TB of RAM? But, eh, I will never need more than 640-bits. It should be enough for anyone. And the amount of addressable RAm should be more than enough for anyone.

Can’t believe we’re finally at the 100th post. I also can’t believe I started this blog on November 29, 2008. Has anything really changed all that much? Yes. I’ve finally started “liking” GNOME (I like the Dust theme). A tweaked GNOME on CentOS (my new distro of choice), and I’m good to go. Plus, I can’t believe my rant back in January got 28 comments.

Yesterday I’ve obtained an IBM ThinkPad 600X. This paticular one has a Pentium III 650, 128MB of RAM, a 12GB hard drive, and a Linksys PCMCIA 802.11G card. Sadly, though, the battery doesn’t seem to work (it’s a known defect with 600 series ThinkPads), and the AC adapter doesn’t seem to want to work (and is rather flaky when it does). I’ve been thinking of purchasing a new AC adapter for it, and using it for something.

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).