Most “self-proclaimed gurus” have determined that the only real difference between 64-bit OS vs 32-bit OS is the amount of supported memory… This is the most obvious difference, however this is far from the only difference. I was catching up on my digging this morning, and I came across an article at bit-tech.net interesing article that discusses 64-bit processors. I can’t that I went into the article knowing everything about 64 bit vs. 32 bit, but it seems to be a bit clearer now. It will be interesting to see how 64 bit computing affects us, and how the OS developers embrace the new platform. YAY FOR MEGABITS!

I found a funny blog article about programmers and programs being depicted in Hollywood Films. It’s pretty much true, I just wish movies didn’t depict computers in such a naive and complex way. Alwell…

10. Most code is not inherently cross platform
Remember in Independence Day when whatshisface-math-guy writes a virus that works on both his apple laptop AND an alien mothership? Bullshit!
If real life were like film I’d be able to port wordpress to my toaster using a cat5 cable and a bag of glitter.

What code DOESN’T do in real life (that it does in the movies)

I just really finished setting up the new server. This is a Intel Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, 40GB HDD running Apache2, PHP 5 and MySQL in Ubuntu. It was a challenge to set it up, just like the first time on the ol’ K6, but was certainly worth the time and effort. I always learn a lot when I spend some time with my servers. Anyways, I will post some more interesting content soon, but for now I am just troubleshoot/optimizing my server and doing homework… I think I might be having a little problem with gZip in Apache, so if you notice weird behavior like you have to load the page twice before it shows or anything like that, let me know. Now… if I could only get some more upstream bandwidth… Alwell. Peace out!

A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity (finally) to play the new Battlefield game’s demo, BF:2142. It is created with the same engine as its predecessor, and is an OK game. BF2 has, for some unknown reason, progressively run slower and slower on my computer. And I seem to not be alone by checking some of the Battlefield forums occasionally. 2142 also runs fairly slow on medium-low graphic settings… Needless to say, I am disappointed. Mostly, because the game runs like crap-o-la on my machine, and it probably shouldn’t.

Some have griped that 2142 is merely a large “mod” for BF2, which is I suppose, a valid argument. Hopefully some of the bugs from BF2 will be gone, but I would have really liked to see this game in a different light than what it has shown so far. I will have to say, I have no idea why a company would push a demo of a product the way they did. The two days that I got on to play the demo, the master server probably kicked me 8 times. Not to mention, 3 times it took over 5 minutes to login or time-out. If the demo is supposed to represent the final game, I sure as hell wouldn’t buy it, but Alex says that the game is better than how the demo played… Sometimes it feels like good games are just too few and far between.

Last week I had a project to do for my Computer Graphics class. This project required me to generate an image using ray tracing with POV-Ray, and provide animation for it. It wasn’t very hard, and it is a really neat way do render some 3D graphics quite quickly, with fairly little code required. Some of the images generated by POV-Ray are really amazing.

More POV-Ray Renders:

So my brother decided he needed a laptop, but of course he wanted one that would game too. So he decided to get on eBay and find one. On his first attempt, he ended up with just a e-mail that stated that the auction wasn’t valid due to the sellers account being compromised. After that mishap, he started to look for more believable deals. So he found a Dell XPS Gen 2 for sale in one of the 48 contiguous states. A few days and $1,200 later, the laptop arives. I’m a little worried it might be broken, piece of junk, or maybe just really used. Holy crap was I wrong! This laptop doesn’t have a mark on it. Windows XP MCE 2005 freshly installed, all we did was plug it in, start it up and away we went.

This XPS has some real horsepower too! It packs an Intel Centrino M with 1GB RAM and a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra into a quite beautiful package, not to mention the huge screen. It is only slightly less powerful than our desktop PC, which to me is quite impressive! I would have to say, even though it’s not my laptop, I will definitely be looking forward to playing some games (like BF2!) on this massive mathematics mauling machine with its pixel pushing GPU!

“Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you’ve made is worth the misery of having to review it.” -Federico Fellini

Well, two days ago, Apple had a press conference to show off the new products. Lots of hype was circling the convention, and Apple flew people in from many parts of the country just to see these ‘new’ products. Images surfaced on the internet about 2 weeks ago that were supposedly leaked from the Apple factory showing a full sized iPod video. Later then, a video showing someone creating the ‘image’ with photography and Photoshop. However, there were discrepancies between the actual image and the image in the video, so this gave new hope to the image actually being a leak. Then the day before the Apple announcement, AOTS admitted to creating the video of the faked image, and I believe the original also… “Way too meta…”

Well, the new products Apple did actually announce included the iPod HiFi, and the Leather iPod Case, and I suppose most importantly the Intel iMac and Intel Mac mini. For me, these didn’t really live up to the hype (that was mostly created by rumors). Besides, Apple’s jump into the iPod accessories market is about 3 years too late, and the products that were introduced, IMO are overpriced and not original.

As of today however, Apple has filed for a wide laptop touchpad patent from the US Patent office, Apple has a way of filing for patents that have anything to do with touch or interface. All we can hope for is a touchable iPod…

And for the last bit of Apple news the Mac II computer is 19 years old today. You could buy one of these in 1987 for $5,498 (1 MB of RAM, a floppy drive, and a 40MB SCSI hard disk).

FOTP: Digg.com and Wikipedia.org

Digg: “If you like tech news, you’ll love Digg.com”

Digg was created as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson (who serves as CEO), all of whom play an active role in the management of the site. This site is a where members choose what news stories belong on the front page by “Digg”ing a story. The more diggs, the story will stay on the front page.

Wikipedia: “The Encyclopedia for the Internet, if you haven’t used it, you need to.”

If you can think it, it’s probably on here (Example: Digg). This is the definition of Wikipedia, from Wikipedia, hence all of the links. Wikipedia is a multilingualWeb-based free-contentencyclopedia. It exists as a wiki, written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an Internet connection.

-Tom