• Finally, a good reason to use freenet - anonymous satire bordering upon slander. (Warning, you'll need freenet to view this) [Humour]
• Somewhat worryingly, my comic habits seem to be settling down to a few recurring ones. Anyone want to spark me again? [COTD]
• Dan still gives me links! Yay! [Humour - Display] [Details]
• Is there life after cat-toons? [COTD]
• Hide those radio streams [Developer - Download]
• OpenGl seems to have been getting the 'hush hush love love' treatment recently. Letting Nvida and creative define things alone, even things that carmack likes, is probably unwise. [Developer]
• Go on, go play whack a mole by yourself [Gaming - Download]
• Seems a bit stupid [Mainstream]
• Actually, vital is a little bit strong. Adding awful default skin, but more importantly 'what your site looks like on a handheld' and a decent email client. If I can figure out a way to get rid of the skin, I'll probably pay for it. [Vital - Download]
• Happy with classical theories of relativity? (Not general relativity, that makes everyones head hurt. Except maybe Dirac) Anyway, you ok with all that? Maybe it's time to learn more then. Not happy with that? You're probably too stupid to be reading catnews. Or maybe you did an arts subject. Better go learn it. [Vital]
• Space. The final marketing frontier. [Mainstream]
• Meaningless to me, but people like growly will probably either find it funny or explode. Either way is funny for me, so I link it. [Humour]
• NASAs budget. You decide whether I classified it wrongly. [Humour]
• DirectX 9 - Microsoft advises you NOT to risk this. Yet. [Gaming - Download]
• Look what we made. You can see the comics soon, can't you? {frame one, cat tail dissapearing off panel - legs of child in middle of frame, child in pursuit} {frame two - off panel 'Vweeee... KATHUMP'} {frame three - chile manically grinning over a smoking cat. Off screen: 'JIMMY! Stop jumpstarting the cat!'} [Humour]
• They found a way to charge people for forums and game matching and server monitoring and everything MORAT did. Barstards. [Gaming]
• oooh... shiny. But the basic unit is black, so what's the point? [Gaming]
• Medieval RTS. You care? Thought not. [Gaming - Download]
• Uplink is still doing the rounds. And I'm still waiting for their next game, their next five quid and my half hour of enjoyment. [Gaming]
• Would you support the electric chair for an old dear granny? If not, then I'm gonna chase YOU with the defib. [Mainstream]
• How much hyperbole can YOU load onto a tetris/snowdrop clone? [Gaming - Download]
• Or was this the tetris clone and that one galaxians? I can't remember - and quite honestly don't care. Download the wrong one, or both, or neither. I just couldn't care less. [Gaming - Download]
• Mmm... adapting quickly is good - and there ARE big problems with the maps being so damn huge. But the real problems I see are many. Firstly, melee weapons suck in a multiplayer game. Secondly, there is no way to play the game with less than six people - this makes it hard to START a game. Thirdly, the game is very obviously over well before the computer realises it - we need more victory conditions. Fourth - turrets which shoot through walls are somewhat cheesy. Fifth - it's unique point is the commander. Only one person can be the commander. The aliens NEVER get to be commander. The aliens don't even get a map. Give the aliens a commander, even if all they can do is see the map and tell other aliens where to go. Sixth - alien resource management is very hard to understand, and very important. The marines get teamwork forced on them, the aliens need it far more urgently. Seventh - can we have better default binds? Such as 'blink then switch to claws' and 'if you try to use a power chrage and are out of energy then do a normal charge instead' Eighth - Giant elephants and small coridoors filled with turrets. Bad mix. Ninth - turrets have too short a range. Tenth - turrets can easily be blocked by hiding behind whatever they are protecting. Eleventh - webs and mines, they should be possible, if hard, to remove with firepower. Twelth - you far too often get blocked when building. Finally - More hours in a day needed. A single round can last hours. And it's oh so fun. Please let the mod not have done an flf before I get some more free time to play. [Gaming]
• Humour average, art good - but hey look, muzak! [COTD - Destroy]
• Idiots. [Mainstream]
• Evil Idiots. [Mainstream]
• Stupid Evil Idiots. [Humour]
• Suspicion: Striking fire workers are dialling in false calls in order to make their job seem more difficult and thus improve their bargaining position. Probably NOT organised. [Mainstream]
• New disccovery: Sun does, in fact, NOT have its hat on. [Science]
• While I heartily agree that anonymity should be total - I estimate 95% of material on freenet ot be illegal - and much of it is 'KinderFlick' (guess) With great freedom comes stupid jerks. (And jerkoffs - don't think about that, you may lose all faith in the parts of humanity not currently being destroyed) [Politics]
• I have an evil evil plan. [Religion]
• What, this is a surprise to anyone? They were always gonna (try to) do it, and 'security' is the 'excuse du jour' [Details]

Today's news brought to you by: Bluesnews, The Register, various GSI sites, SomethingAwful and yes My.morat.net

• Did you know flash could do this? No? Then you've obviously never seen stick figure fighters. [Destroy]
• Things that make you wonder [Politics]
• Wonders that make you think [Politics]
• Another one. On the office newsgroup today "How can anyone find the office funny?" [Humour - Destroy]
• Uh - or I could lie, identify myself as a superdnode and your site would suicide by refusing to honour any further requests from supernodes? [Developer]
• Like, duh? [Politics]
• Strange links... [Humour]
• ...often come in pairs [Humour]
• Thankfully not always. Why you ask? Would YOU want another one? [Humour - Destroy]
• Still vapourware until it's in my paws and on my screen. Plus, a hint to all other game devs out there - NOT allowing lamespy to see it is more likely to make it popular. [Gaming]
• So, been listening to carmack much, have they? [Developer]
• Damnit - I want one of these for win32. Is that too much to ask? [Developer - Download]
• If you had one of these, you could rule the world! Well, maybe not. But you could make my life easier, and thus save yourself from being summarily executed when I rule the world. [Vital - Download]

Today's news brought to you by: Bluesnews, The Register, various GSI sites, SomethingAwful and yes My.morat.net

• Links! I have links for you! [Details]
• Feck knows where most of them lead, mind [Details]
• Crayon Time! [Details]
• I've never actually been on a drug trip, but now, thanks to the magic of the internet, I don't have to. [Details]
• Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down... oh damn, did I use that joke already? (Note, this link is an exception to my rule about not watching the things I link to. This one is GOOD)[Vital - Destroy]
• Game or lame? [Destroy]
• Oh I love their brand of vitriol. The get out clause is important due to freenet. [Politics]
• And here I was blaming massive storms [Details]
• Sadly lacking in usable howto level details. [Developer]
• Iraq attack II - Revenge of the warmongering president [Politics]
• They ran out of money, so they are going to destroy their legend. More, I mean. [Gaming]
• Presumably, BOTH players! [Gaming]
• Old, not funny [Humour]
• New, funny. Who said germans had no sense of humour? [Humour]
• You want flies with that? [Destroy]
• Why they have these studies, I don't know. [Details]
• Doncha just hate it when they don't give you the 'and here's what your answers should have been'? [Destroy]
• Be fair, they might have made 'castrodance' (go google, I strongly suspect they already did) [Politics]
• Oh right! I forgot - if you wait a few days for everyone to calm down and THEN do it, it makes you NOT a warmonger! Silly of me. [Politics]
• Uh huh. Let's see. Last time the inspectors DID act as spies and target-spotters. [Politics]
• A gravy train for its founders, who are spouting an obvious message which they don't even bother to detail on their webpage. Annoyingly their idea is a) right and b) a fad at this company right now. Joy. [Developer]
• Leicester university to asia: "Sort it out chaps, chop-chop" [Science]
• Carefully levelled to erode public support by offerring what many would see as "A damn sight more than I get this year" while not actually offerring enough to stop them striking. [Politics]
• Oh, good idea. Teach children to use bug ridden incompatible CRAP. [Developer]
• Aww.. honesty and wonderful games. What a mix. [Gaming]

Edited by Vitenka at 2002-11-11 20:37:54

Today's news brought to you by: Bluesnews, The Register, various GSI sites, SomethingAwful and yes My.morat.net

A Tale In The Desert Beta3 has eaten my soul.

That'd be the reason for not many links this week, as well. I haven't exactly been sparing time to read my usual bunch of rubbish.

Well, ATITD. What can I say? Gotta be in school in an hour, so I'll make this quick. It's enthralling. I'm now in a guild called the Scholars of Thoth, [SOT], who in Beta2 were by far the most advanced guild. We're well on track to continue this for Beta3, and we're already continuing SOT's old ways - answering "no comment" and "/me whistles" to questions about technology is always fun. We seem to have built up a little community about ourselves - newbies that I and others have been mentoring have set up camps around our larger camp and are helping us work towards research for the area. Still only nine members of SOT; Compared to other guilds who are recruiting fifty newbies on top of their existing twenty members for what is basically slave labour, we're definitely on track.

The peak number of concurrent connections to the servers is something like 250 now, more than double the Beta2 record, and over 140 people have each paid $1 to help test the billing system (and, of course, to take eGenesis, the developers, out to lunch) in exchange for a few non-functional in-game goodies. Also, the forums and the IRC channel have both seen a big increase in traffic. Things are looking up for the community.

Actually, earlier in the week (before ATITD started, which was on Friday evening), I did some fiddling around with the idea of a website. I bought some webspace with the excellent 34SP, and set about uploading PostNuke. Five minutes of fiddling around proved quickly that it was way over the top for what I needed. I've been recommended a few other similar systems, none of which I can remember right now, so maybe I'll try another.

Delay on the "new" old system and extra monitors, so no extra machine set up yet - again. I might just resign it to a Winamp and mIRC machine - it's got a network connection, so why not?

I was a little disappointed by Wobbl & Bob on MTV. I was expecting new content exclusive to MTV, but the first one I saw was just a directly recycled version of episode 14, the "Which Pie Is The Best?" Show one. In fact, the animation wasn't quite as bold and crisp, and the voices were redone inferiorly and recorded badly. Same with the second one I saw - also unoriginal and poorer quality. Reminder alarm removed. Mmmmm... 22/7!

Music this week: Radiohead, Underworld, Soulwax (again), Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album By The Way. Venice Queen is a great track. Pink Floyd, as goes without saying, continues to help provide meaning to my life.

> Science / Tech

• Two years, and what have they got to show for it? No catastrophies, blackouts, life support failures, crashes, collisions, meteors, nothing. Bah. [Details]
  
• So now they can create a supercomputer at will - but they're still Canadian. [Details]
  
• Never mind that the cost (materials, construction, crew, vast amounts of powerr etc.) probably cost twice the amount that repairing the damage would have cost - Woo! And yay! Lasers! [Details]
  
• Really - why bother with defensive lasers? Other than the obvious fact that they are great fun. Most human life on this planet really isn't worth saving. Military scientist should concentrate on the important things, like how to incinerate a single person from orbit.
• Well, about time too really. It can be a pain. [Details]
  
• NASA have commissioned an author to prove conclusively that the moon landings were not faked. But how they can hope to prove that when confronted with this evidence is beyond me. [Details]
  

• Well written guide to bandwidth vs latency from Ars Technica. Worth a read if you're interested. [Details]
  
• Wow - I figure, given that I already have an adequate graphics card, hard drive, monitor, speaker system, OS and assorted accessories and peripherals, I could build a system like this for about $350. [Details]
  
• This might be an interesting article. I don't know. It was Slashdotted last time I checked. [Details]
  

• Nothing in particular this week (see above), so I'll give you a whole load of A Tale In The Desert links.
• The official site. [Details]
  
• Probably the best fansite. [Details]
  
• One of my ATITD wallpapers... [Display]
  
• ...And the one that won the competition. [Display]
  
• Some maps of a couple of the new Beta3 areas. [Display][Display]
  

Today's news brought to you by: Bluesnews, The Register, various GSI sites, SomethingAwful and yes My.morat.net

Brain hurty. Too much worky.

Here, have some links. Some news, some comics, some games. Some chance you'll work out which is which. This should be familiar to some of you.

[Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils] [Deatils]

Today's news brought to you by: Bluesnews, The Register, various GSI sites, SomethingAwful and yes My.morat.net