My OS NewsTuesday, February 24, 2009 1:59 pm
So its been a while, but I have some updates on my OS escapades.
First, I bought a new computer (well, my wife bought it for me), its an HP a6750y, Quad-Core AMD CPU, 8g of RAM, an onboard ATI HD3200 video card (which I replaced with an old ATI X1300 Pro from my old computer), and a 750g hard-drive. It came pre-installed with Vista 64-bit Home Edition, which isnt exactly my cup of tea, but honestly I just dont have the energy to try and roll it back to XP.
Anyways, I installed Kubuntu 8.10 as a dual-boot, along with the new Windows 7 Beta. I’m loving Kubuntu, and if I can find a way to get WoW and a few other games working I’m saying goodbye to Windows. However, there has been a slight hitch. I can’t seem to get the ATI/AMD proprietary drivers to activate through the Hardware Drivers program. For some reason it just greys out the listing for the driver and does nothing else. Oh well, the fight continues. Once I get the graphics working I’ll try to get the games up and running.
Until then, I’m having fun with Kubuntu.
Zune 3.0 Software: MixViewThursday, December 25, 2008 2:35 pm
Ok, so I got my 80gb Zune a while back and have been loving it. The Zune software I never really used for anything other than syncing until recently (today actually) when I got a Zune Marketplace card for Christmas. 2000 points to spend. I bought a few Six Feet Under albums (Maximum Violence and Haunted) as well as a sprinkling of some Kataklysm tracks to fill out the rest of the 2k points. Both of the artists I found using the Zune MixView feature they recently came out with, which I found to be really fuckin’ cool.
With the MixView feature, you select an artist or album and it generates other artists, albums, and other people who listen to that artist/album which are related by some way, including artists who influenced the current artist or simply by genre and rating similarities. Most of the other artists have sample clips you can listen to as you go along, which really lets you find new music that you would WANT to buy.
The one thing that I forgot to try was the ability to browse the Zune Marketplace and buy tracks from the Zune itself. Oh well, maybe once I get my actual Zune Pass subscription (which I’m still trying to find a pre-paid version, I keep hearing about it but can never find it) I’ll give it a shot, as well as take a look at the “Channels” feature.
Now, only if I can get Zune software and World of Warcraft (yes, I know, I’m a junkie) working on my Slackware partition, I’ll be giving up windows as soon as possible.
Oh, and by the way, Six Feet Under fuckin’ rocks! And my Xbox360/Zune tag is KazieKama, feel free to add me.
Listening to: Six Feet Under - War Machine
Using ‘alien’ to convert rpm packages to other formatsFriday, December 5, 2008 4:57 pm
Carthik over at Ubuntu Blog made a nice post detailing how to convert rpm files to deb packages as well as other distro formats.
Class Action Lawsuit against Creative LabsWednesday, April 30, 2008 6:27 pm
I received the following email from Creative today regarding a class action lawsuit filed against them due to the amount of storage on their HDD MP3 players being misrepresented by about 7%.
SUMMARY EMAIL NOTICE
To: gviscardi@gmail.com
From: Settlement Claim Administrator
Subject: Notice of Creative Hard Disc Drive MP3 Player Class Action and Proposed Settlement
SUMMARY EMAIL NOTICE
If you purchased in the United States between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008 from a retail store in the United States (including Creative’s and others’ on-line retail stores) a new Creative brand hard disc drive MP3 player (“Creative HDD MP3 Player”), a proposed class action settlement may affect you. A hearing has been scheduled in United States District Court, Central District of California to approve the settlement. Under the settlement, you may have the right to make a claim for a discounted MP3 player or a discount certificate. You also may choose to exclude yourself from the settlement. Alternatively, you may file written objections to the settlement or seek to intervene and appear (or have your own attorney appear) at the court hearing. If the settlement is approved and you do not exclude yourself, you give up the right to sue for the claims the settlement resolves, and you will be bound by the terms of the settlement. To learn more about or exercise any of your rights, please read below and visit www.creativehddmp3settlement.com.
The lawsuit is Talwar v. Creative Labs, Inc., United States District Court, Central District of California, Case No. CV 05 3375 FMC. In the suit, plaintiffs allege that in the sale and marketing of its hard disc drive MP3 players Creative stated that purchasers of the drives would receive approximately 7% more usable storage capacity than they actually received and misrepresented the number of songs and number of hours of music the players could hold. Creative has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiffs’ claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation. The Court has not made a decision on the merits.
You are a member of the plaintiff class if you purchased in the United States between May 5, 2001 and April 30, 2008 from a retail store in the United States (including Creative’s and others’ on-line retail stores) a new Creative brand hard disc drive MP3 player.
As part of the settlement, Creative will make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its hard disc drive MP3 players.
In addition, if you submit a valid claim, you will receive either a 50% discount off the price of a new 1 GB MP3 player, or a discount certificate good for 20% off the price of any single item purchased at www.us.creative.com. To receive the discount player or discount certificate you must submit a claim form available at www.creativehddmp3settlement.com by August 7, 2008. You may submit a claim for each Creative HDD MP3 Player you purchased.
If the settlement is approved, plaintiffs’ counsel will apply for an award of attorneys’ fees and expenses not to exceed $900,000, plus incentive awards for the two representative plaintiffs in the amount of $5,000 each, to be paid separately from and in addition to the relief available to plaintiff class members.
All claims of plaintiff class members which were or could have been asserted in the litigation, based upon the facts alleged in the litigation will be released. This means that if you do not exclude yourself from the plaintiff class, you will give up the right to sue for the claims the settlement resolves, and you will be bound by the terms of the settlement.
You need not take any action. If you wish to exclude yourself from the plaintiff class, you must submit an exclusion request to plaintiffs’ counsel: Brian R. Strange/Gretchen Carpenter, Strange & Carpenter, 12100 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1900, Los Angeles, CA 90025. If you exclude yourself, you will not receive the benefits of the settlement, and you cannot object to the settlement or intervene.
If you wish to object to the settlement, intervene or appear (or have your own attorney appear) at the hearing, you must file your objection with the Court and serve it on the parties’ counsel, as follows: Brian R. Strange/Gretchen Carpenter, Strange & Carpenter, 12100 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1900, Los Angeles, CA 90025 (counsel for plaintiff); and Daniel K. Slaughter, Stein & Lubin LLP, 600 Montgomery Street, 14th floor, San Francisco, CA 94111 (counsel for Creative). To exclude yourself, object or request to intervene, you must follow the detailed instructions set forth in the Long Form Notice at www.creativehddmp3settlement.com.
All objections, requests to intervene and requests for exclusion must be received by June 9, 2008.
DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT OR CREATIVE CONCERNING THIS NOTICE OR THIS LAWSUIT. If you would like more information about this notice or this case, please visit www.creativehddmp3settlement.com. If you do not have internet access, you may request additional information by mail from counsel for plaintiff, as set forth above.
I’m still trying to figure out if this is real or if it is just a scam, as the headers seem to be valid (but of course, we all know how easy it is to fake email headers.) I’ll post once I find out more.
Bioshock… anasaywhahuh?Monday, April 28, 2008 9:20 pm
Ok, so I bought Bioshock the other day (I know, about 6 months late) and started playing it after hearing nothing but how intense and deep the story is and many other great reviews of the game. Well…I don’t get it. I played for about 3-4 hours, finished the first boss, halfway to the second before I stopped playing. All the while I was expecting to see something that was really revolutionary and mind-blowing only to be really let down. I gathered many of the recordings and got three of the plasmids (out of 11 I believe) and a few other power-ups, but nothing really great. After reading about it online and returning the game, I see that you get trip wires, landmine’s, RPG’s and such, but it still doesn’t seem like the great game that everyone is raving about.
As far as the story goes, meh, I figured that after at least an hour or two you would have some sort of information, even in the slightest amount, about what’s going on with your character. The first thing I noticed was the fact that after getting into Rapture and seeing the side effects of the plasmids via the crazed population (that seem to know exactly who is and who isn’t one of them somehow) your character decides to go ahead and just pump himself full of ‘em…yeah. After reading more on the net about the game I find that your character is more or less being controlled by this ‘Atlas’ guy by using the phrase "Would you kindly…" to push you in the direction he wants you to go, which suggests to me that the game is basically you doing all this stuff for this guy, then at the very end you finally regain control and do whatever it is that you feel you should do. Kinda lame if you ask me.
The "monsters" in the game were way too repetitive and predictable to me, they just seemed like the same 5 models (barely repainted) thrown at you time and time again. The AI was so-so, I didn’t find the enemies doing anything great, just a lot of kamikaze-type behavior.
It all just seems like re-hashing old game concepts into one game, nothing too ground-breaking. All in all, it was a very disappointing experience after hearing all the hype. Just my 2.3462 cents.
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