E3 Downsizing

E3, the conference for video games, is going to be downsized. I can't say I'm surpised. It used to be you have to depend on game shows like E3, and various magazines both domestic and overseas to track the trend. But that was so 90s.

Today I can't even begin to count how many game designer have blogs and podcasts. Any scoop that is supposely being announced at shows, are leaked out weeks before the show. Blogs and online game sites have pretty much killed off magazines. Heck, these days I don't even read that many printed magazines anymore. By the time the news reach me via that medium, it's 8 weeks later.

New Toy From Bargain Hunting

So I went to Microcenter, and saw that they put the SN26P on sale for $400. I couldn't resist and bought it. I then went through the closet and found a bunch of stuff to put in it. 2 gig of RAM, 2x 320gig SATA2 Seagate HD, AMD X2 4200 CPU, Samsung 16X DVD DL burner, and a Nvidia 7800GT.

Now all I need is a name for this new toy.

The Almost Retirment Of My Dell Laptop

So last time, when I was about to start working on a project. I open up my Dell 15 inch laptop(Arcueid). I move my finger around, the mouse pointer doesn't move at all. No matter what I do, the heatpad just won't respond. So I tried the thumblina, and the mouse pointer started moving around. Except I hate thumblina. But I was like "Ok fine, I'll work around this for now." But neither the buttons assocciated with the thumblina or the heatpad would respond at all. So I can move the mouse pointer around, but I can't click anywhere. Plug in a USB mouse, that works fine. So I quickly copy all the data out.

Today I pulled out my 17 inch Powerbook(Izumi), getting ready to copy all the data over. It's fairly easy for me. Since I use Firefox and Thunderbird. I have MS Office for both Windows and OSX. I open the Dell laptop, and guess what, the heatpad started working perfectly again. So putting away the 17 inch powerbook for now.

AMD Buys ATI

AMD buys ATI for 5.2 billion. I think this move can lead to very interesting sitution. It may even reshape PC as we know it. Do you remember the Math co-processors in the 80s? You buy 386, and then you buy 387 for the Math co-processor. Intel even had two different 486. the DX vs SX.

The graphics card has gone completely out of control. With new $600 videocard coming every 6 month, and both ATI and Nvidia's next videocard most likely requiring over 300watt at peak usage. It's time to think outside of the box. If you can say move the first two stages of the pipeline into one of AMD's core. You effectively would have a Graphics co-processor. It can preprocess the vertexes and maybe even do hidden surface removal before sending the data over to GPU via PCI-express bus.

Sounds unlikely? Well, people thought AMD was crazy when they put the memory controller onto AMD64 too. Look how good of a move that turned out to be. Meanwhile, AMD has done their day after Core 2 Duo price cut, basically everything is 50% off. Chip that cost $400 on Sunday, now cost $200. I saw AMD64 X2 4200 for $199 on New Egg. Hope Intel ship their Core 2 Duo soon. That cpu is selling out so fast New Egg has increased the price back up by $20.

ACLU Lawsuit Vs AT&T Dismissed

The ACLU lawsuit against AT&T over NSA's gathering of phone records has been dismissed by Federal Court.
The EFF lawsuit is still going forward. But It's a dark day.

Apple Market Share Back to 4.8% *UPDATE*

Apple's market share has gained 1% compare to last year, so they are back to 4.8%. Maybe they'll be back to 5% range next year.

If you follow the link, the article's title is misleading. But then again, it's MacWorld with their postive spin and all that.

Update: Apple's Laptop marketshare has climbed to 12%.

PowerPoint The Weakest Link?

So I guess PowerPoint is the window to your PC. This is like every manager's worst nightmare. What will they do without PowerPig?

Loot From Origin

This year at Origin, the dealer room's presence saw a bit of reduction. Noteable absences are Wizards of Coast, Upper Deck Entertainment, NCsoft, Eden, and Guardians of Order. AEG's booth is also a mere shadow of what it was, after the mass layout from last October. It was very sad to hear most of the people I know got the axe last Oct.

Somehow, this didn't prevent me from buying lots of stuff anyway.

• Privateer Press: Witchfire Trilogy Collected Edition, Five Fingers: Port of Deceit
• Hero Games: Asian Bestiary, Vol. 1, Asian Bestiary, Vol. 2, Masterminds And Madmen
• Archaia Studios Press: Artesia, Artesia Afield, Artesia Afire, Artesia: Adventures in the Known World
• Green Ronin: Mastermind's Manual, Freedom City Second Edition, Lockdown, the M&M GM Screen, True20 Adventure Roleplaying, True Sorcery, True20 Bestiary, D20 Future Player's Companion, Cosmo The Blue Monkey
• FanPro: Runner Havens
• White Wolf: Exalted Second Edition, Exalted Second Edition Storyteller Companion
• Indie RPGs: Polaris, Mountain Witch

Polaris is interesting in that, it's the first diceless RPG I've ever bought. G made me do it, if it sucks, I blame him. The game does look interesting so far, it reminds me of many nights of endless debates I used to have with M. The game heavily draw on rhetorics.

I'm also quite curious about Mountain Witch. Can't wait to unleash this on my group.

This is also the year that I started looking at indie RPGs. In the past, I've always played mainstream stuff. But this year, I got three indie games: Artesia, Polaris, and Mountain Witch. In fact, Artesia won Origin's Best RPG of 2006.

Domestic Call Record Started Before 9-11

According to this, NSA was going after domestic call records even before 9-11. This poses two problems.

1. Doh, it didn't work.
2. So NSA/Whitehouse is breaking the law even before 9-11. 9-11 is just a good defense for this program.