The obligatory late post

Hello again! I'm back (well while I remember this anyway). Various things to report: firstly I'm heading into a PhD so back to uni very soon (which is just awesome!) Also in a new flat (that's my excuse for lack of posts anyway) and finally loving the iPhone - if you use the net a lot while on the go get one.

Anyway on to something slightly less egotistical: interesting developments. The main thing of interest to me at the moment has been the prospect of building a CNC Milling machine (basically a computer controlled router - the type for carving). This is a project between me and a friend and we're hoping to start on it very soon. This will mean I should have access to an amazing carving machine: essentially plug in the information for what you want to build and it will (so long as it can be carved from a block of whatever).

Other cool gubbins that has been circling is that I've recently finished Iain Bank's "Crow Road" this is an amazing book if quite sad. Well worth a read.

Anyway looks like I can't think of much else to post and I'm ready to install Dawn of War II so I'm off to enjoy that

Just a warning - be careful of acrobat reader

Interesting story here about Adobe reader (the thing that opens those wonderful pdf files you get all across the net). Basically there is a critical bug in the software.

Critical bugs in terms of net stuff tends to mean that someone can hack into your computer and do lots of fun stuff. Proof-of-concept code already exists for this vulnerability so its likely that malicious code is already out there. This seems similar to another vulnerability found a while ago.

There are two simple things that you can do to make sure your protected from this. First option is to disable javascripts in adobe (under options i believe. The second option is to download a free adobe alternative.

either way be careful with which ever pdf reader and which pdfs you use.

Who ever says windows "just works" can sod off..

I have recently got the orange box. I love it. Well that's a lie. I love the copies of the games I've played on other people's machines as mine it seems to have a grudge against.

I can play 'counter-strike' and anything up to and including 'Half life 2: episode one' but beyond that it stops working. As in no error messages (not even a crash) it just stops. It sets up the loading screen and sits there, filling up my primary screen with hazy boxes (I'm trying to play portal).

I'm not sure what it is (as if windows was ever helpful with methods to interrogate start up of programs or even useful error messages) and I can't close it because it fills my primary screen where pop-ups appear. I can open the task manager and see that nothing much is happening and its not responding but if I try to close process it just sits there.

For anyone with a similar problem here is an exact run down of whats happening.

I'm running a Windows XP system
AMD 3500+ processor
MSI AM2 motherboard
2Gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS with a 24" (1920x1200) Dell as primary and a 17" (1200x1024) samsung as secondary
I have the latest driver (Nvidia 182.something)

I can run 'counter-strike'; 'counter strike-source'; 'half-life 2'; 'half-life 2:episode one'

but with 'half life 2:episode two'; or 'portal' it will run the valve video get to the hazy loading screen (ie the menu but out of focus with 'loading' in bottom right) and stop. I can move the mouse around, although when I move it over the loading screen I get an hour glass I can move it to the secondary screen (where I'm typing this) and work normally.

In fact it just seems as though it locks down that part of the screen and stops.

I have tried manually setting the width and height of the game with the:

'-width 1920 -height 1200'

launch options in case it was something to do with loss of the actual menu or weird graphics problems (none of the half-life games auto-detect my resolution). I have also tried:

'+mat_forcehardwaresync 0 +snd_async_prefetch_priority 1'

which should force the game to use the monitor's defaults. Neither have worked and I'm about to try the

-console

command to (hopefully) bring up just the menu options with out real graphics controls.

I will update with whether it works - or if I go mad....

UPDATE 01:52 26-04-09: well '-console' failed....

UPDATE 02:13 26-04-09: GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *~$£*%"£$%"$£% WINDOWS turns out that portal had been going full screen. This meant that when steam bounced stuff off a server somewhere zone alarm froze the game and wouldn't allow further loading until I clicked something in a pop-up. This pop-up was cunningly underneath the full screen window. GAHHHHHH. Those that are interested the useful launch command was

-sw

I hate windows.... wine + ubuntu can't be much harder than this...

Future history of Windows

This is a nice opinion piece on the possible future of computing under the "good enough revolution" in which (apparently) people will realise that they don't need all the gunk and extras that windows and new pcs offer and in fact buy to replace not upgrade.

This seems plausible as a general idea. The market share for Linux, while still not huge (less that 1% I think), is still slowwly growing. With netbooks making good use of the free and lighter running Linux it is possible that they will carve a niche for themselves. That being said the soon to be released Windows 7 marks is specifically targetted at netbooks and with most computers still pre-installed with windows I think 2025 quoted is a little optimistic for Microsoft's death.

Amusingly this is a rare time in which this is published from XP (I refuse to run F/Vista) although 7 does look nice. Every time I log back onto windows it annoys me now - in fact the only use I have for it now is gaming and I'm hoping that with some summer work I can shift to wine for this.

All in all the next 10 years may be make or break for Linux as a major OS (ie greater than 1%). One way or another it will continue but if it can't make it big during a recession its going to be a wait for the stranglehold of microsoft to lessen; which would be a nice thing if only because a computer hegemony is one reason viruses happen.