Deadhouse Gates

I read a news announcement about a new freeware program that does some cool stuff. I check it out and it is vastly superior to an existing freeware program. Yet when I read the comments, the new, superior freeware program is being flamed. Why? Because the guy making it also offers a for-pay version that has more features.

I check out the forums of a game I enjoy playing. Normally people are singing the praises of this game. Now, the forum is full of flaming and angst. Why? Because the developer started offering optional premium content for players if they want.

Let me tell the whiners a truth about life: Money is exchanged for goods and services.

Before the current generation of vocal “free beer” people started taking over forums we had a concept called shareware. Someone would make something cool and offer a version of it to try. This version might time out or it might have fewer features or it might just work on the honor system. If users liked it, they bought it. End of story.

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I have currently installed a new plugin called Lighbox, which have caused some conflict with my Arthemia Premium theme installation. Well, I am a little unsure if it is the Arthemia Premium or my previous installed image plugin Shadowbox JS. I had no conflicts or mishaps when testing the upgrade on my test platform, but like Murphy’s Law (“Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way”) this of course has to happen on the live installment.
I apologize to the people currently viewing my site for the lack or wrongful looking images. I should hopefully have everything back in order in a couple of hours (hope I don’t have to go through every single post to fix the images…).

YouPlayer is a Firefox extension which doesn’t only lets you play and view videos but also save the URLs as a play list in Firefox. The play list includes URLs which has a video embedded in it.

It supports videos from YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe or MySpace. Just drag the URL link from the address bar into the playlist and the URL will be added into the playlist.

You can drag and drop a video link to a browser window or tab or right-click it and have it opened in a new tab. You can also add/drag other links, thus the playlist will work as a bookmarker.

Further more, you can also download the videos. Just right-click it on the playlist and select ‘download’. So in short, here are its features:

1. Drag and drop playlist creation
2. Instant video download!
3. Easy playlist editing/saving

Download YouPlayer 0.9.8 at Mozilla

This is a must for a video-site fan

The future of storage is heading away from the spinning magnetic disks inside most of our computers and towards solid state drives. Besides the advantage of being much more reliable and durable, solid state drives (SSD) also have the advantage of being quicker to deliver data. SanDisk detailed today a new technology that it hopes to cement SSD as the performance choice, coupling it with new metrics. SanDisk explained its new file system technology for SSDs, which it calls the ExtremeFFS, at WinHEC 2008 in Los Angeles and boasts that it could boost random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems. The “FFS” in the brand stands for Flash File System (not the other use of the acronym) and the Extreme, of course, relates to SanDisk’s brand of premium flash products.

SanDisk appears to have geared its technology towards the needs of Windows Vista. ExtremeFFS operates on a page-based algorithm, which means there is no fixed coupling between physical and logical location. SanDisk explains that when a sector of data is written, ExtremeFFS puts it on the SSD where it is most convenient and efficient. This should result in an improvement in random write performance by up to 100 times in best case scenarios. SanDisk products with ExtremeFFS are expected to ship in 2009.

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President-elect Barack Obama is already targeted as the subject of a malicious malware campaign designed to steal information from infected computers. Following Obama’s presidential victory Tuesday, malware authors were quick to create a Trojan exploiting the high volumes of Web traffic surrounding Obama, security experts said. And so far, researchers say that spam capitalizing on Obama’s victory has experienced a sharp upward spike, comprising about 60 percent of all spam messages in what has become a globalized attack. “The hackers are taking advantage of Obama-mania,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for SophosLabs. “So many people have been excited or interested in (the election), that they might be susceptible to it.”

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Today the 9Rules Network opened the 8th round of submissions of blogs. It’s not often that they accept new entries, and when they do, its only for 24 hours. That means today only (00:00 AM to 23:59 PM EST). Head over to their site and submit your blog for review!. Tyme has also written a blog post that you should look through before submitting as well. It gives some very valuable tips and hints for your blog/site.

I have submitted my blog as well, but only time will tell if I get accepted. My site is still in Beta stage, and I still have some finishing up to do, but I thought I should submit anyways. And if I don’t get accepted, maybe I’ll get a few “hinters” on how to better my own blog/site. I’ve had 9Rules on my daily reads for the better part of a year now. Especially the technology and anime section. Even with just following 2 sections, I get more than my share of valuable and interesting information. I never really dared until now to submit my blog/site for a review with them, always felt that I was maybe missing something. But unless I try, I might as well never find out. Cross your fingers for me :)

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama cheer as CNN announces his election on November 4, 2008 at Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois. Democrat Barack Obama made history Wednesday morning (CET) with a decisive election victory over Republican John McCain, becoming the nation’s first African-American president-elect after an epic campaign that saw him rise from relative political obscurity to claim the world’s most powerful political office.

The 47-year-old Illinois senator, who will become the 44th president, was propelled to victory after capturing the battleground states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, wins that dealt McCain’s hopes of becoming president a back-breaking blow.

No Republican has ever won the White House without winning the Buckeye State and its 20 electoral votes.

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True, everyone probably learned this tip a hundred years ago when XP came out but if you’re a Linux user like me that’s running XP on the side you’re probably as annoyed as I was with those stupid little balloon tips popping up in your taskbar every five seconds! Next will be to remove them on my Vista test machine as well.

Here’s how you get rid of them….

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.

Alienware’s new M17 features a Core 2 Extreme processor, ATI CrossFireX graphics, dual hard drives… and prices starting at $1,399. Dell subsidiary Alienware has announced its new M17 gaming notebook, marking the first time an Alienware notebook has offered ATI CrossFireX technology, offering dual ATI mobility Radeon HD 3870 graphics controllers to push those pixels around. The system also sports a Intel Core 2 Duo or Intel Core 2 Extreme QX93000 processors, DDR memory, and a 17-inch 1,920 by 1,200 pixel display. The M17 is available in a wide range configurations to satisfy gamer cravings, but the highlights are either Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors, up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory, single and dual-graphics options using ATi Mobility Radeon HD 3870 controllers, single and dual hard drive options, ATSC TV in with an optional TV tuner, HDMI and VGA video output.

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We treat them like a rare species, but really, women who game are not that uncommon. Recent polls have put the figure between 35 and 40 percent of women, a minority but not a scarcity. Negative Gamer’s Chelsea — aka Nintendoll — spotted something elsewhere that set her teeth on edge, and she wants to set the record straight about the reasons women and girls game. Because in her view the experience risks getting cliquey and catty, like high school.

Female gamers separate into two groups, Chelsea says, that are pretty easy to understand. “Girl gamers” do it for the attention — “a feeling of security and control from her social circle” — while “female gamers” just want to have friends who share an interest in games. “Since these “gamer girls” get their self-esteem from the praise and adoration of men who play video games, they become dependent on video games as something far more than entertainment.”

How does it get to that point?

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