I'm getting very VERY tired of spam mail. I remember a day when the internet was fast, and the mails were few, and generally worth reading. Lately all I get in my inbox is offers to make various body parts larger, or win millions of dollah in fabulous lotteries that no one has ever heard of. (Come on spammers, Ed McMahn turned me off fake schemes years ago, that bastard still owes me about 400 million in cash, and somehow I don't think I'm ever going to get to see it, damn him.) Anyhows, I went away for a few days last weekend, and when I got back I had 117 emails in my personal inbox. 6 of them were legit, or from mailing lists that I'd actually subscribed to. I seriously wonder about the posibilities of charging these spammers with harrasement, and billing them for my bandwidth that my servers use (and I get billed for) proccessing this garbage. I also wonder about the posibility of having spammers charged with something if a minor child were to see some of this disgusting crap that I get. I have parents complaining.. and I think it's illegal to give porn to kids... Maybe we need some lawyers to get off their worthless asses and do something usefull with their pathetic little lives for once, rather than chasing around Johny No Goodnick who dared to download an illegal .mp3 from Kazza, or has a ROM of pong posted on his Abandonwarez site. *sigh*

Speaking of Spam mail, I've gotten this one a few times. At least it kept me amused.

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003.
Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me.
Since nobody in this timeline seems to be able to deliver what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circuit to get where I need myself. While it might be hard to find parts in this time to build anything decent, I need easy to follow schematics from the future to build one which is safe and accurate that will not disrupt the time space continuum with both forward and backward capability accounting for temporal location settings (X, Y, Z, n), which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any plans you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use. Or if you have a dimensional warp generator available, and are 100% certain you have a (safe secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply with a secure way to contact you. Send a separate email to me at:
webmaster@custompaintshop.net

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You
Brian Appel

No way am I giving him any of my dimensional warp generator parts though, I need them to get back to my own dimension, and I'm a greedy sort.

More in a bit. :)

Well I thoroughly suck. I keep saying to myself I'm going to post more news and somehow I just never seem to find the time to do it. *sigh* I've posted a few new ICQ/IRC Madnesses, but that's about it lately. Hopefully I'll have up a review of the new Sunbeam Plexiglass cases in the next few days, if I ever have time at work to put one of them together one of these days. They look pretty cool, even if the gloves that come with the kit are really really REALLY tiny. I guess their meant for little Asian guys or something, not big hulking white fellows such as myself. Anyhows, here's a few pieces of news for y'all.

I can't even remember who sent me this, but this Russian guy has a hella cool little plinking pistol. I can hardly wait to see his rifle when he gets it done.

Dopper once again proves himself the king of the computer. If you're a tech (or not) and you've been cleaning Spyware from computers, you know that sometimes the damned computer won't surf the web (resolved DNS) after you've pulled all the garbage off. Well! Dopz0r has sent me a link that contains some excellent tools to fix this problem. I've tested all the ones listed on this page, and man has it saved a lot of Windows reinstalls at the computer shop I work for.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm just about ready to scream. So-Big.F is a total pain in the ass, and people without virus scanners should be publically executed after being beaten with a Linux driver installation guide. It's amazing how many people we see walk through the door at work who don't have virus scanners, and most of them have something nasty running around on their computers. In fact I'd have to say probably 50% of the people who come in don't have scanners, and that's another thing that makes me want to scream. *gasp*

Tumult just sent this in, and oh my. I just positively wet myself laughing, I damned near fell over.

Dman submitted a really, really neat little audio device. Check out the Audiopad, and make sure you download the little videos to see it in action.

More soon!

Something most unfortunate has occured. In a regretable late night swimming accident on July 25/03, one of our local gamers, Jon Macintosh - Better known in the CS community as Jmac - drowned at Bancroft, Ontario. I didn't know Jon very well, but he was a fairly regular visitor to the computer store I work at, as well as to our LAN Parties.Our hearts and prayers go out to Jon's friends and family in this time of need. One of Jon's buddies, Red Leader has put up a memorial site. R.I.P. Jmac.

I just found out about a hack for Extreme Beach Volleyball for the Xbox. Similar to what people used to do in tomb raider, you can change the textures of these women from bikini babes into nude girls. Nice artwork on the air strips! Now I just need to get an Xbox.

Sweet overclock, DDR 5200!

Doom3 may not be out this year. It looks as though it may be released sometime in 2004.

Bell Sympatico residential customers no longer forced to have telephone service from Bell.

Disgusting bug chasers who get off on the thought of taking the risk of aquiring the HIV virus. Is the world going to hell or what? What would make somebody want to die and put others in risk? Just the thought of this makes me sick, but unfortunately it's not just a thought, it's a sick reality.

Got Hair? Runezor sent me this humorous article about the history of razors. :)

EA recently released a new free Battlefield 1942 map, battle of britain. Download it now!

Woah sweet, a java based online nes emulator! Now we can play good old games like 1942 and

It seems like the newest trend is blacklisting IP's of companies prosocuting p2p users.

This is old news but incase you haven't heard there was a disastrous start for Xbox in Korea!

According to slashdot, Thailand has imposed a gamers curfew for students due to a korean game called Ragnorok.

Gezerman Caught Speeding !!!!
He got caught by a speed camera last weekend travelling back home from a trip just over the US border.

This fancy new police website even has a photo of the car so you cannot appeal it - dirty bastards!!!

http://www.i-connect.co.uk/speedoffence/default.asp

Username : ccpolice
Password : 999

Vehicle registration is BH51 NZH

If you view the photo u can see his face clearly - unlucky mate

guess that's 3 points on ur license d00d

Play the nintendo gamecube over the internet with gamecube online!

Sweet! It looks like runezor and I will be going to see ACDC at the Rolling Stones concert in Toronto. I've been to two of their concerts already so I'm looking forward to seeing them again :)

Want to find out today's top movies? Checkout the Internet Movie Database!

Got back problems? Skotos' wife, Taris introduced me to these special matresses created with foam designed by nasa. They're not cheap but they definately look like they're worth the money! If the entire matress is too much you can always get a topper that sits on top of your regular matress.

Sweet, I was just informed about an article posted by CNN earlier this month called 'surprising findings about video game players'. Apparently all video game players aren't the anti social type that are hyped to be by parents and the media.

Media Defender is a new app in the p2p fight (p2p is peer to peer file sharing such as kazaa) . It looks like the people who make the p2p software are cracking down on privacy for users to help stop identifying users. Check the articles on the media defener site for details...

I know there's still a lot of people out there who don't know what 'ftp' (file transfer protocol) is. I came across a good forum post that has a lot of good information of available FTP servers and FTP clients as well as additional file transfer related information.

Canada now has a best buy solution similar to the USA if you're looking for computer stuff. Of course I still recommend you go to www.vamcomputers.com first!

I came across a good poem for skeezix from slashdot called 'them modem linkers'. :)

About them Modem Linkers,
ain't they kinda odd?
Goin' on the net,
with they little baud.
Look at all those Modem Linkers,
what a thing to see.
Web sites come up really slow,
get's lousy Voice/IP.
Internet at low bit rates,
what a dawgon mess.
Load a web site, take a break,
while 'pache mods compress.
How to be a Modem Linker,
don't need a ticket.
Get a local ISP,
dial up and link it.

Another microsoft security flaw...big surpise...

Good news for lonely computer geeks without a woman...apparently masturbating lowers prostate cancer risk!

The newest Kazaa derivitives now offer an RIAA and MPAA blocking features!

Hey all, here's your absent Marauder, back again. I'm going to start posting news on a regular basis again. I've been just swamped with different stuff, and not really feeling up to doing much with yea old FRAGtopia site, but I'm going to try and do better in the future.

Figured sent over an interesting little read about the music industry. You know, the more money these guys spend on lawyers and lawsuits, the more like big jerks they really do appear. I've always seen these guys as big, stupid and annoying, but they just seem totally determined to prove me right over and over again.

Speaking of pirating, check these guys out. Apparently warez killz, and can destroy cities. Help the weasel, or whatever he is save the city from the nasty software pirates.

Iceman has way too much spare money, and no lights in his house. So he's purchased the mousepad from outter space. Admitedly, it's pretty cool. But that's a pile of coin to drop on a mousepad!

Heh. The guy who made up the "Weapons of mass destrucion" Google gag 404 error has another one. If you've been keeping up on the whole New York Times scandel, you'll find it amusing.

I've been neglecting my Penny Arcade reading for a bit now, and Rune sent over a link that reminds me why Tycho and Gabe are still the kings of the online cartoons. All hail PA!

I've been playing the Tron 2.0 multiplayer demo. (Well, I played it quite a while back actually.) I was so excited. I loved the movie, and I loved the old Disks of Tron and Lightcycle games. Um. I'm not even quite sure what to say about the demo, but the word "Horrible" comes to mind fairly rapidly when I think about it. Don't bother, it's not even worth the download.

Out!

The big annual shiningforce camping trip is this weekend at mount pocono. Planned for the weekend is a day of paintball Saturday and some good 'ol open campfire roasting Friday and Saturday night. Please come with me Marauder! I know you want to play paintball! :)

"Athlon FX is apparently going to be AMD‘s official name for the new Athlon XP Thorton core!

As you probably know, the Thorton core will be nothing more than a Barton core with half the L2 cache disabled. While the Barton is the successor of the Thoroughbred-B core, the Thorton looks set to be the new AMD Duron. However, since it‘s identical to the Barton (albeit with only half the L2 cache), it makes more sense for AMD to leverage the Thorton‘s similarity with the Athlon XP Barton core.

Using the Athlon name would enable AMD to market the Thorton core as a mid-end value processor, rather than a low-end processor that the Duron was. This would naturally translate into better selling prices for the processors and greater profits for AMD. http://www.rojakpot.com/

Also in other news that I find funny, Adobe systems announced they are no longer developing Adobe premiere for the Mac. The day they don't make photoshop for the mac is the day mac users have nothing left to brag about.

For those of you that don't like the idea of paying to register a full version of adaware, there are freeware spyware alternatives to the popular adaware program. Checkout Spyware Blaster and Spyware Guard. Freeware is good. :)

I discovered this interesting page that has compiled a blacklisted ip address webpage along with associated domain names and descriptions. May be worth looking into if you want to block everything based on what they do that you don't agree with.

I found this neat little web based nslookup utility for doing DNS lookups and reverse lookups. It could come in handy for people who don't like using the command line.

There's a new single channel Nforce2 chipset out from Nvidia. The thing that prompted this version is the higher costs associated with dual channel chipsets. Using the single channel version of the Nforce2 allows Nvidia based boards to be more comparable in price to the low end via boards.

Some people that try to help the world are probably just doing more damage than good. One of those websites contributing to making the world a worse place to live in is the Beer for the homeless website. If they really want to make the homeless feel like normal people then why don't they invite them over to their home and provide them some shelter and some warm meals. Giving them beer, taking photo's/video footage of them, and making them public spectacles is hardly helping their situation or making them feel more like good people. Sounds more like profiting from others misfortuntes. Sometimes humans can be so stupid.

Play games, win money! There are no limits to the amount you can play for or win. Checkout all the details at You Play Games. This is officially licensed by id software as well and is worth looking into!

Rats on drugs! After seeing the effects of stoned rats, maybe humans would be less reluctant to try it on themselves...

Voice over ip (similar to the teamspeak we all use and love) is becoming very popular in Africa for every day use.

For all you people that love microsoft and their windows XP OS, you probably haven't read their EULA now have you...

Interesting news from slashdot. Linksys caved to community pressure and finally released the GPL'd linux source code to their WRT54G Wireless-G Broadband Router. So the next time someone tries throwing you a sales pitch saying a linksys router is better than a linux router, just point them to this url. ;)

If you enjoyed the ebooks I posted yesterday then there are more free books as well as dictionaries available using the microsoft reader which has copy protection built into it. Apparently the copy protection old version of Microsoft reader was already cracked which is probably why they rereleased it. There's more books available at the Project Gutenburg website and if you want to help with the project then checkout the distributed proofreaders website.

In other news, MSI has just come out with a new card called the "Master" TV@Anywhere - MS8606 which they claim supports MPEG4. However I give it two thumbs down and recommend against buying any MSI TV Tuner cards after purchasing the MSI TV@Anywhere - MS8876 that says it as a unique feature: "MPEG4 Real-time encode TV programs". However they failed to mention on their box and later added to their website "(coming soon, please download patch)". This is a product that is well over a year old now and they still don't have mpeg4 working. The connexant controller on the card technically supports mpeg4 but msi doesn't have drivers or software to make it work. The drivers that come with it don't work with windows XP. Not only that but it doesn't work in linux or other windows applications. It comes bundled with a proprietary version of windvr with msi branding but oddly enough it doesn't work with with the stock windvr software or any other applications. Fortunately this card is inexpensive but you'd be better off spending a bit more instead of getting less.

In celebration of our neighbors birthday, here's some birthday presents for everyone! :) If you like to read, get your free ebooks and more free ebooks! And yes they are 100% legal to download, they're available free to the public.

It looks like we could have a winner for the infamous contest to hack the xbox! The CEO of the lindows OS (who was also the creator of mp3.com) had a $100,000 prize up for grabs in a contest to see who could hack the xbox to make it run linux on it without any hardware modifications. Here is the comments of the team who performed the hack and here is the technical details on how they did it.

Just for fun and a good laugh, try typing"Weapons of Mass Destruction" into Google and hit the 'I'm feeling Lucky" button and see what happens..... Then if you haven't tried this older one yet, try typing in "French Military Victories" hitting the 'I'm feeling Lucky" button. :) lol thanks Runez0r for the info.

Some of the upcoming games look pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to maxpayne2. Just look at the realism in these two juicy screenshots :) screenshot#1 screenshot#2

This Sunday there could potentially be problems with thousands of websites being defaced since there was a contest announced at www.defacers-challenge.com, which was forced to be taken down. However just because this contest has been announced doesn't mean that patching your webservers and backing up the data regularly should be ignored. It does however serve as a good reminder to make sure you do it if haven't...especially since any unknown software glitches could be exposed this Sunday. There is lots of discussion about this 'event' on slashdot, also sfgate talks about how the FBI is taking this seriously with quotes from FBI officials such as, "Hacking is a crime and those who participate in this activity will be investigated and brought to justice." The original contest page that was taken down can be viewed here. Apparently the award being offered is 500mb of hosting, webmail, email forward (limitless), Domain Name (that YOU choose). Hardly something worth going to jail over...

Ok I have to admit it really wasn't a fan that called in during the last news post in praise of Marauder. (Although there could've been had he been keeping the news updated) :) Anyhow I was just demonstrating how far some of the latest text to voice software capabilities have come. I mean just checkout this! You can't get much better than that now can you. ;) The one I used was the rVoice Interactive demo which features a number of accents and voices both male and female. Very cool stuff!

I came across a very good 3d art rendering today! Good job whoever authored that. Bill Cosby better be careful or there will be a new mascot for the commercials he does. Can you say, J-E-L-L-O!

Last time Runezor was here we were playing some tribes2. I reconfigured all my tribes2 scripts since my old ones stopped working in the new version. If you decide to get back into tribes2 the best place to grab your scripts these days is http://www.t2scripts.co.uk/.

Bill Gates commented on the linux os in an interview on usatoday. According to gates, "Linux is the current OS competition, but it's no more threatening than OS/2."

For any quake heads out there like me that still enjoy playing good 'ol classic quake multiplayer, there's a version called fuhquake that I just discovered that lets you play on quakeworld servers with a new improved graphics engine and tweaked network coding. Checkout the eyecandy in these screenshots. There are ports available for both windows & linux.

For bit torrent fans out there who use a windows based OS, there's a new bit torrent client called burst! that is reported to be faster that any other current clients. I have yet to try it myself but the screenshots look promising.

I don't know how but one of our readers contacted me instead of marauder about our site. It's nice to see that people are sending in their feedback. If you have any other nice things to say about the site e-mail us. To see what our fan had to say click here.

For those that didn't know icculus.org was hacked recently and has been down for some time, it is back up now and all the classic goodies to download are back up as well. :) If you don't know what icculus.org is, they have some really cool linux games and stuff including the linux gamers faq, quake2, duke3d, opengl wolf3d, descent2, americas army mirror links, rise of the triad, rune co-op, .

What a fine Saturday evening it is here in Orangeville, ON. I'm back from the grave to assist marauder in keeping the fragtopia site updated since he's obviously busy with other things. :) I've been busy lately making good use of various linux distros and open source software applications.

Yes that's right Linux rules. I've been using it a lot lately and am slowly trying to migrate to it as my primary operating system. It's the OS that seems to be getting the most hype these days. Why? It's open source, for the most part it's free, and every day there's better software packages being developed for linux to replace our favourite windows applications. I suspect by the end of this year or sometime next year linux will be on par with windows (arguable it already is) as a desktop platform. There's still a number of issues in my opinion that need to be looked after to draw in the windows crowd but they are rapidly being worked out.

One of the main features windows users say they would miss is their microsoft office suite. With the current status of the Open Office Suite, problems reading and creating documents compatible with microsofts current office suite is a thing of the past. OpenOffice.org is both an Open Source product and a project. The product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites’. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. Zdnet has a complete article up about the new suse desktop in the office.

But it can't run games you say? As linux gains popularity as a desktop OS it's putting more pressure on companies to release native linux ports of their games and we're seeing more and more games being released on multiple platforms. For our legacy games (and even newer games without linux ports), Transgaming has created a software package called winex that makes it easier to run our favourite existing windows games under linux.

I am currently working on a website that outlines some steps on how to migrate from windows to linux and which applications are available in linux to replace our current windows applications. Best of all, most of them are free!

Here's my favourite linux distributions I want to recommend to anyone interested in trying their hand at what linux can do:

Knoppix: An excellent fully featured linux distro that is bootable from a single cd right to a desktop. Automatically sets up hardware, assigns an ip (assuming you use dhcp), auto mounts windows partitions and places shortcuts to them on the desktop. Complete with tons of software including dvd & mp3 playback software.
Damn Small Linux: Based on knoppix, this is a stripped down distro made to be small enough to fit on a single business card size cd (50mb) and still give an xdesktop and provide completely useable applications (including a webbrowser capable of ssl/javascript/frames/cookies, word processor, gui text editor, email app, file manager, pdf viewer, spreadsheet app, instant messenger, & remote desktop viewer, woot!!!).
Smoothwall: Transform an old pc into a linux based firewall/router with this software. SmoothWall is a best-of-breed Internet firewall/router, designed to run on commodity Intel (or compatible) PCs, and to give an easy-to-use administration interface to those using it. No need for a monitor/keyboard or mouse. Access all functions remotely via a webbrowser once the software is installed. It's been built using open source and Free software, and is distributed under the GNU Public License, meaning you can download and install SmoothWall at no cost. Checkout these screenshots.
SuSE Linux: My desktop Linux distro of choice. It's relatively easy to use, secure, inexpensive, comes with tons of _useful_ preinstalled applications, it can run safely next to an existing OS, & it doesn't have the spyware, virii and intrusive software what windows users get plagued with. The Yast2 administration wizard gives windows users a familiar "control panel" feel as well as an online update function and the same ease as windows add/remove programs feature.

Following up from our favourite quake mod Qrally is a new battlefield 1942 mod, rallyfield. The rallyfield homepage says, "rallyfield is a rally racing modification to the game BattleField1942 from EA & Dice. It is focuses on high speed acrade action, with many popular cars, and different terrian maps". Checkout the screenshots.

Daoc fans will be happy to hear that there's a daoc server emulator being developed. Cleverly it's titled "COAD Server". I can't see them coming up with anything close to the pay service but it will be interesting to see if they can pull this off without any lawsuits ending the project early.

Checkout the screenshots of this free demo of a multiplayer racing simulation game called live for speed I've been playing lately. It's a blast and best of all it's free!

Another neat free game under development is an mmporg called planeshift. It's available in both windows and linux flavours. Checkout these beautiful screenshots. Pretty impressive for software still in alpha stages if you ask me!

Planetside comes out today and honestly don't know if I'm going to be buying it. It's one of those things that's actually alot fun to play... But is it worth the money? I'm not sure how long it's going to keep me occupied... I'm debating... I dunno......

You should all go download the Half Life 2 trailer/demo from Fileplanet. NOW. Right. Now.

I hate cheaters, so I went here and signed it. What the hell eh? Not of course that you can't just go sign up then cheat your lying little ass off, of course. Oh: You better have downloaded that trailer before you got this far by the way.

One last thing before I go for the day.... Thanks to Vaytan, I know what I'm asking Santa for this year. Oh yeah.

Not a whole heckofalot to report today... Just a few quick links for y'all to inspect.

First off, Breed looks pretty freakin' hot, they've got some screenies up over at Game Spot. Anything that has chainguns and Afterburner type air combat has me interested already.

I finally got my beta CD for Planetside yesterday. Most of my american friends have been playing for weeks now. Luckily ShadoWolf (whom I love with all my heart) hooked me up with a key a few weeks ago as well, or I'd be mighty pissed. The game launches in exactly 2 weeks, and BOY do they ever have to hurry their asses up and fix the CTF (Crash to Desktop) bug quickly.

We've got two links from the lovely and talented Dopper today. First off, I have to admit that this is quite possibly the most interesting "wireless' mouse I've ever seen in my life. Yes, I think the marketing guys need to do a little work. Secondly and lastly from Doppz0r comes a little something that Kingpin should be all hot and horny to get. 1.3 GB CD-RWs! woot. :)

About a dozen people sent this one in, but David via Email was the first, thanks bud..... Only Microsoft could come up with something like this. I won't even bother with the smart ass comments, because the jokes just write themselves. Uh OK.. Just one then... I hope the beta peroid goes better than it does with their Windows betas. Hah! ;) I almost think it's a joke, but the date is wrong.

Tons of people also sent in the IGN preview of Tribes:Vengance. Our much loved ShadoWolf was the first however, so he gets the nod on this one. I dunno... Tribes 2 was.... Well.. Disapointing frankly, although that was caused by the bastards at Sierra and Vendi I believe.

Chisel has sent in something that is quite possibly the coolest car ad ever... no... evar. Honda rocks, and this ad kicks some major ass. I love Goldberg Machines. (I think that's what they're called.)

Really bored? No life? Check out the camera at VAM Computers, my place of work. Yes and you can control it to your heart's desire. (Ohhhh.. Ahhhh!)

Our last link of the day is a rather interesting little game of 20 questions that Blue submitted. Stupid thing is actually pretty clever. I picked "Mars" and it guessed it.

Thanks to everyone who sent me emails and ICQs teling me that they wanted some new news and reviews on FRAGtopia. :) It's nice to know that people actually read the site and care enough to write in. I'm going to be working on it more from now on. I swear.

You hate popups, right? You know, those annoying little windows that spam all over your screen when you're happily browsing away on the internet. There's tons of popup stoppers out there, most of them rather annoying in themselves and generally quite ineffective. I've mentioned the Mozilla browser before, and it seems that more and more people are starting to use it. Another good reason pops up.... The fact that you can simply tell Mozilla not to allow popups. Yes, that's right. Download Mozilla and never see another popup, unless you open it yourself. Nice eh? What brought this up again? It was Dopper sending me this little article entitled "101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot." Have a read, it's pretty darned interesting,

Everyone loves the Iraqi Information Minister! You know, the guy who was on TV declaring that nothing was wrong as US troops ransacked the room behind him, basically. Well! You can now put your own words into his mouth! Check this out, and you'll notice that he's the new spokesarab for Comodore Computers. Yes, it seems that it was all an infidel conspiracy, and they're alive and well.... PRAISE ALLAH!

Speaking of Comodore, it seems that it's not just 3Dfx who gets ruined by idiots... The same moron that killed my beloved Comodore also had his way with Atari and almost killed them too.... Why doesn't natural selection work with these people?

Oh, I almost forgot. On the topic of IE bashing and Mozilla loving (yes, it appears that it's officially Mozilla day here at the FRAG!) check out this rather amusing way to crash IE for fun and profit, using HTML.... I'll have to try this one out. :)

As I've mentioned before, I've been playing Planetside, and it is indeed good. Messiah sent over a link to a character generator for it that seems to work pretty well. Not that making a character is really that complicated in this one. (PRAISE ALLAH!)

Anyhows, more when I have time. I've recently purchased "I was an atomic mutant' and "Postal 2"..... So you'll have some really bad reviews soon I suspect.

How's the internet feeling today? Tired for the most part. Check this one out, it's worth a laugh or two. Thanks Blue!

Interested in the future of gaming? Disciple has written up an interesting little article that Dopper submitted. He's got a few good points in there, especially the bit about the MMPORGs being the way of the future.

Been playing the Planetside Beta a little bit and.. Wow. Once the bugs and lag are worked out, it's going to be a hell of a good game I think. The concept is solid, and alot of fun once you find a squad to play with. If you're in running around, look for "themarauder", dat's me! :)

Whoa. Messiah just finds the coolest freakin' toys on the net. I can hardly wait untill I can get one of these bad-boys down a the 7-11!

w00t! I got on the Planetside beta. I'm SO SO very pumped for this one, it's basically massively muliplayer Tribes 2 from the looks of it, with no jetpacks and better vehicles. It's in open beta right now, so you might want to get your ass over and sign up!

Like your firewall? Worried about security on the internet? Apparently certain governments in the US of A aren't! Check out this link from Iceman, and weep at the stupiditiy that infects law makers. Nice to know that those making the laws regarding computers and telecom obviously don't know jack about it.

Don't you hate running a BF1942 server from a command line? God only knows that I do. Check out this sweet little utility, and enjoy!

I have previously mentioned the gloriousness that is Invader Zim. Goshwin is now a hardcore Zim fan as well, and wishes all to replace their Windows startup and shutdown sounds with 100% pure Zim!

Just Pretty space things. Gotta love e'm.

Praetorian must be so, so very jealous....... That's all I'll say about this one.... Thanks Rune.

I was seriously thinking about starting to play Shadowbane. But then I read this. Screw. That. What kind of crap is it that I have to wait 3 months to use all the races? That's 3 months I could be spending working on that character. Ahh well. Gezer tells me that the game "Isn't as bad as it looks." I'm not sure if that's a good recomendation or not. I'm leaning towards not.

Been listening to a new guy who's shoutcasting 1942 and Vietnam, Old Ironsides. He's hyper as all get out, and does a really really good job. Check him out here.

I'll be posting again soon. Just been totally swamped at work and with different stuff. Really haven't had the time or inclination to post...... That stops today I hope. :)

Happy Birthday to Rune. He's happily ensconed down in Pappy's bunker with the gang gaming.. and he's like OLD today! (26? 27?) Gawd, time for the old gamers home soon!

Happy Birthday bud, thanks for being such a great friend.

Invader Zim is possibly the coolest cartoon I've ever seen in my entire life. Krage sent me wonderfull links to download it, but since that's probably illegal or something I'll just recomend that you download them from Kazaa or whatever file sharing software you like.

Figured sent me an interesting link... Apparently people just argue about stupid things. Also, I'm glad I'm not anywhere near him.

I suspect that the USA may next be invading China to put an end to the threat they pose to Intel and AMD. Thanks Red. 'twould be very cool if this were happening. DEATH TO INTEL!

Me likes old sk00l stuff, and me likes the looks of this website that Dopper sent in, dedicated to old skool consoles and computers. Very, very cool idea.

I've been playing Freelancer with Kingpin and Belial lately. Hella good game, gotta love it. Check out the Screenshot on the right side ===> hah. :)

Why can't those idiots over at ASUS keep their stupid website up and running? You'd think that the world's "best" mobo manufacturer would be able to do that one tiny thing. That's all I ask of them. This is the third time in about a month I've needed a BIOS update for a customer and their service sites are all down. *sigh*

I'd like to take a moment and just confess that I've had writer's block and a sheer lack of inspiration regarding gaming lately. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, I just plain don't really feel like writing much in the way of news, and especially doing reviews. I've got party completed reviews for Splinter Cell, Road to Rome and Unreal 2 sitting on my hard drive, and I have no idea when they'll be completed. I've also been quite busy with work, and a complete redesign on my
beloved Forever Twisted site.... I will be attempting to NOT miss any more news posts, even if only to post that I have nothing interesting to say. I'd also like to thank everyone who sends me news, and entertaining links to post. I really appreciate you guys taking the time and effort to send that stuff in. (Heh. Alot of them don't get used due to their adult nature, but thanks for the chuckles. :)

Rune was commenting the other day that I don't really post a heck of a lot of news that specifically gaming related. Hey, he's right, I don't. There's some scattered in amongst all the other things I stick up. Basically I just post pretty much anything that I find amusing, and figure that you guys will too. I do try to get in some computer industry related news, and anything gaming that's cool.... Many of our readers sort of drop by once a week and go through what we've posted for their daily giggles and maybe learn a few things. I think it works out well. :)

Runez0r and Skeez0r are safely ensconed at the Smackdown 4 big LAN in London. No idea what time they'll be waking up to start gaming, but I imagine it'll be soon. Well. Skeez anyhows. Rune will probably wake up sometime tomorrow ;) Unfortunately I couldn't get out of work today, so I am forced to work. (Gah) For your personal amusment you can watch me work on the new VAM Computers webcam (tm) if you like and are very. very bored. Because I am such a rebel, I'm sitting here at 7:30 listening to really loud techno and doing the news update. :) phear me!

Speaking of Skeezix (If we were to clone him, would be then be "Skeezixs" or "Skeezi"?) He sent me an interesting little link to help when you're trying to communicate with those damned CS players. Doesn't seem they speak english? It's because they don't!

The 1.31 patch for Battlefield 1942 is finally out! w0000000000h0000000!!!!!!!! Stupid hallhack is fixed, thanks for finally getting around to it DICE. ;P Took you long enough. Not to run DICE or EA down, but... Well, it too far to long to fix a glaring and obvious issue that has caused no end of problems.

Remember I posted a link a little while ago to a news item about a possible Futurama game that was being considered? Well, here's some screenshots thanks to our good buddy Generator. Hopefully the game isn't ass. Not that I own a console so I'm not likely to ever find out! Also in from Gen... Have you ever wanted to own your own run down redneck town? Well! Now you can. Sweeeeeet. I'm packing up my 1.065 million US, my dog and my shotgun and moving south baby! Er...... Sowth, Bay-beh.

Our local scener D-Man sent over a link for the awards nominees page from Scene.org. Check it out, some wicked, WICKED demos in here.

Thanks to Rune for the news that Intel sucks. That's been an established fact in my mind for quite some time now.

Smelling smoke and feeling an odd heat from your IBM monitor when you're hard at work gaming? Could be a reason for it! Thanks Nol. :) /me refrains from nasty comment about being on fire, in game.