A Few Changes

I actually changed my mind, I’ll just use the article break tag and leave the RSS feeds as is. I didn’t like how short the summaries ended up being. So the main page should be cleaned up but RSS feeds should remain unchanged.

Spore, huh, what is it good for?

So it’s no big secret that Spore released on Sunday (a strange day for a video game release, it’s usually Tuesdays) to great controversy. I’m for the most part not going to address the DRM, it is more draconian than I initially thought and will certainly keep people from buying it, there are no small number of comments on the Amazon page for the game.

DRM

Jeff is writing an article about the DRM. Jeff and agree for the most part, the DRM is crappy. We don’t agree on what should have been done and while it’s a deal breaker for Jeff it’s not for me. However, to be fair, I should say that I wasn’t fully aware of the DRM limitations when I bought the game. I would have made the same decision either way. Anyway, I disagree with Jeff on what they should have done with Spore. I think the creature creator is all the demo they need and they just need to drop some of the more draconian issues in the DRM. The one benefit of the DRM is no disk required to play. You could actually play on up to 3 systems. But many people would rather play from the DVD than be limited on number of installs and have the game check in every time an update comes out. In the end it’s not much of a benefit, especially since beyond the 3 you have to call EA to install, that includes reinstalls. That particular piece of the DRM definitely needs to go. Despite all the outrage Spore is selling like mad. So let’s get to a proper review of the gameplay shall we?

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Star Trek Online – You’re Doin’ It Right

Well, at least they’re doing some of it right. I’m sure it will come as no surprise to fans of Max Geek that I’m a big MMO fan. I follow the development of MMO’s sometimes years out. Star Trek Online is one of those games. I’ve been following the news emerging about STO and I’ve seen several promising things. Before I dive into the details, let’s dive into a little history.

The History of Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online shares several things in common with Lord of the Rings Online. For those of you who don’t know, Lord of the Rings Online was under development by a different company for several years, it was known as Middle Earth Online. Turbine bought the rights and started from scratch. The same thing happened with STO. Perpetual Entertainment recently went out of business, they had the rights to STO and were moving along with the development. When they went out of business Cryptic came in and bought the rights and started the game from scratch. The similarities don’t end there though.

Cryptic has ramped up development on Star Trek Online amazingly fast. The reason is Cryptic already has a game engine, the engine they built for Champions (a different engine from that used on City of Heroes). The same thing was true of Turbine. Two great licenses, mishandled then bought by companies with a solid MMO pedigree. I love LOTRO and I’m hoping the similarities bode well for STO.

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I Hate Fox

I resisted the urge to cuss in the title of this post, I don’t think I’ll resist that urge in the rest of the post, you’ve been warned. You see, Fox is seeking an injunction against Warner to stop the release of Watchmen. According a recent ruling Fox MIGHT not have given away all their rights to Watchmen in 1991, they MAY still have distribution rights. Then Fox had this to say.

 Via Comicbook Resources “Of course we are concerned about the fans; however, any disappointment from the core fans should not be directed toward Fox. What we are doing is seeking to enforce our distribution rights to ‘Watchmen.’ Legal copyright ownership should not just be swept under the rug and ignored.”

This is stupid and childish. “Don’t blame us they did it.” Good PR there Fox. Fox seems to not understand how little the average person cares about their fucking distribution rights. Of course Fox doesn’t care about the average person, they care about the bottom line, which they always assume has nothing to do with the average person.

We’ll see how this plays out, I’m guessing we’ll at least see a delay in the release. Which is really shitty.

Intel i7 Turbo Mode

OK all you relics of computing like me, reach way back into your memory and think of those Turbo buttons on the front of your 486 computers. Remember those? Well Intel i7′s won’t actually have those, but all the processors in the i7 family will have a turbo mode.

So we all know most computer apps don’t use 4 PC cores right? Well all of the i7 chips are quad cores. But what happens when two of those cores are just sitting there picking their nose? Well intel said “Hey, why don’t we take most of the power they would be using if they weren’t slackers and give it to the remaining cores?”. Thus we get turbo mode, the processor uses the same amount of power but when some cores are off it gets to boost the other cores. Actually this is some pretty excellent technology.

Things like this are why Intel now kicks AMD’s ass most of the time. AMD had to abandon a lot of their R&D in the wake of Intel kicking their ass in performance. Now they just struggle to keep up. Five or six years ago AMD led the way because they had the best research and development out there, it turns out that some of those developments were short sighted (on board FSB, really fast, but makes DDR2 terribly complicated to maximize performance for instance).

With the news of Nehalem delays to mass market people are worried, I wouldn’t be, AMD has nothing up their sleeves to fight Intel. It’ll take an entirely new processor architecture, one that’s revolutionary for AMD to regain the performance lead and some of their lost market share.

Follow Us On Twitter

Jeff and I have taken to Twittering, so keep informed on all kinds of stuff, like when I workout and what I had for lunch. Also sometimes Max Geek related stuff.

Jeff http://twitter.com/jeffkirvin

Josh http://twitter.com/tibbarerew

A Surprise From Intel

Part of last nights MG was some discussion over what this interesting tablet device teased at IDF was. Well it’s no longer a mystery, it turns out it’s a boring medical tablet. A Panasonic Toughbook to be precise. How exactly is this big news? I mean is it a Transformer? Does it become a kick ass robot to help protect me from the Decepticons? Does it make me pie? Can I say “Bitch, get in the kitchen and make me some pie” in my best Cartman imitation and a mere hour later have some delicious pie? I doubt it.

There is still some hope, maybe the tablet is powered by some super secret Intel processor we don’t know about. I mean there’s already an Atom powered medical tablet, so this would have to be something new. The problem is there doesn’t appear to be anything but Nehalem (code name for Intel’s new Core i7 processors) on the horizon. It seems most likely that Intel was trying to create some buzz just for the sake of buzz, stupid move.

Sprint Airave, The Good, The Bad and The WTF

So, I’ve been waiting for today. Launch day for Sprints big product that was going to keep me with them. The Sprint Airave. For those of you who don’t know, the Airave is basically a cell tower for your living room. It connects to sprint through your broadband connection and gives you very good signal inside your house. I drop calls in my house all the time, I was psyched.

Some quick details, I think the Airave is a bit overpriced at $99 to buy it and then $5 to $10 a month (per phone, $5 to use your existing minutes, $10 for unlimited when connected to the Airave). I was stoked even with the steep entry price of $99.

I showed up at my local Sprint store, credit card in hand. I called ahead to make sure they had it. So I tell the kiosk chick I’m here for the Airave, she stares blankly for a moment and then goes “Oh, those, we’ve got them, we’ll get a salesman with you soon.” Cue me standing around for 20 minutes waiting. The salesman is a nice guy (I worked with him on the whole Q9 fiasco) I tell him I want the Airave he says “It’s not out yet” I say “It came out today and you have them.” He looks a little confused then someone else tells him they do. He goes back and gets me my ticket to getting rid of my home phone.

Now I’m the only guy in the state apparently who knows this is launch day for the Airave. So no one has done an activation of one. This is where the WTF comes in. You see, I have a discount on my account, when Sprint switched over to the new billing system it flagged all accounts with any sort of corporate discount on it as a commercial account. Turns out the Airave isn’t available for commercial accounts (stupid fucking bullshit decision #1). Not a huge deal, 20 minutes later I’m fixed and an individual again. So now we go back to activate the Airave. It still won’t go. Cue Sprint Customer Service Rep Jeremey (nice guy, no complaints about him) calling for some tech support. I stand and listen. 30 minutes later they figure out that the Airave, from an account perspective, is treated like a phone, it requires an open line.

Now I haven’t been exactly good about paying on time, so I’m screwed, I can’t get a 3rd line added. Even though there isn’t actually a phone attached and it’s a whooping $10 a month difference, I can’t get a damn Airave because I can’t have another line. I DON’T NEED ANOTHER LINE, I NEED THE ONE I HAVE TO WORK. So Jeremy is a good guy so he tries calling credit, who promptly dismisses him saying “nothing we can do”. So what exactly is the fucking point of taking up a phone line with the Airave? Bottom line is it’s about equipment tracking and it’s complete bullshit.

So I’m sitting here, unable to use my Cell phone to talk to people because my house is a giant blackhole for all wireless signals. Yay. Fuck you very much Sprint, my contract is up early next year and I’m about to say bye bye. They need to fix some of this shit like yesterday, no wonder they’re self destructing.

Maximum Geek Delayed

Max Geek will be delayed until Thursday for, um, technical difficulties. It’s merely a coincidence that Lord of the Rings Online released yesterday, yeah that’s it.

A Note on Comments

Just to let people know, comments are working, just don’t expect to see them immediately. I’m monitoring first comments at least on all new posters. The forums got out of control with spammers, I don’t want that happening here.