And other notable mentions...

Before it fades away from my memory, I'd like to expand on my personalized list of morons found in the world of Guild Wars. It baffles me just how dumb some people are when it comes to playing the game. And while it may be just a game, there are times when you just gotta wonder if they are really that stupid.

For this entry, I engrave Mystic Fear (aka Peoples Killer) into the stone tablet of morons, assholes, pricks, fucktards, idiots, dumbasses, and whatever kinds of degrading adjectives you can think of. And with good reasons for doing so.

In a society where order and management needs to be maintained, there is a need to put someone in charge, a leader if you will, to ensure that things go according to the task at hand and to supervise the entire performance. It's a common idea used in many places like military and large corporations. Without this kind of hierarchy system, any group being sent out to do a task would easily fall apart. And as such, there needs to be someone to at least give the group some form of direction.

Upon entering the area labeled as the Fissure of Woe, it was mentioned beforehand that a certain individual will be assigned the task of making first contact with enemies and to lure those enemies into the group for an organized and structured attack. This, of course, is a common tactic used in the military as well, to bait enemies into falling into a common trap system where the soldiers will ambush them. However, it seems such a notion is never in the mind of the aforementioned individual, who continued on in attracting enemies when he is not supposed to. Repeated attempts to get the person to stop failed. Eventually, the group informally agreed to not assist him to minimize the risk of failure. That idea worked about one-third of the way to our destination when he died. However, the individual refused to leave and instead stayed where he would constantly harass remaining party members. While the harassment was in text and in compass pings and drawings, the group continued on, battling against the odds and surviving twice.

But while the group eventually died due to a mistake on my part, it was proven to that individual twice that he alone cannot falter a group whose teamwork made the trip most interesting. There was little to no communications between the remaining members and everyone knew what they are supposed to do. No voice communication software was even involved.

For whatever reasons there are, it's bothersome and tiresome that there are those who do nothing but bring grief and sabotage a party's run. Sadly, people have to live with this fact and try to avoid those who are like this. But perhaps the worst part of all this is the fact that nothing can be done other than simply avoiding them. The administrators cannot deal with them unless it is a serious matter. And while the problem is serious enough for the casual gamers, it isn't according to the administrators. I can only hope that parties I join in the future are sensible, as it is risky and is no guarantee the party I end up on is of any good.

Sabotage and Technobabble

This'll be technical for a bit so if you know nothing of computer hardware, you can skip this portion.

Lately I've gotten the upgrade bug and am seeking to upgrade the hardware. However, I ran into a problem when I could not find any hardware that supports a particular series of processor, namely the Athlon64 X2. At first it seem weird that only boards with nForce4 chipsets would be able to use the X2 processors from the start. But I later realize that, after visiting a technical forum, that this is not entirely true. In fact, some nForce3 motherboards are supporting the X2 series with, as AMD has mentioned, just a BIOS upgrade. This came as a great relief as I did not want to dive in that much into the world of PCI Express where the upgrade would then cost me more than anticipated. So far, the only hardware that will be replaced is the CPU and motherboard, along with the heatsink since I have no proper heatsink for an Athlon64.

I nearly panicked when I realize that I may be screwed over when I have set my sight on a motherboard make and model. But thankfully things are starting to look better. At the moment, the lowest price for a X2 CPU is $435. Combined with a motherboard would make the grand total of over $555, not including the heatsink to cool the CPU down. However, recent news say that there is a new CPU model being released to be slated at a price of $345 (in 1,000 quantities). This'll be a welcome thing for me as it'll make getting a X2 CPU more affordable and opens up the potential for overclocking. Hopefully the upgrade won't delay me by a lot. I'm anxious to get my hands on the lower-end X2 and will be relieved when I finally get it installed.

Now on to different matters. In my time in playing Guild Wars, I've come across players of varying types. Some good, some bad, some I've no opinions of. You pass by them every time much like passing by another person out on the streets. For this blog entry, I'll be focusing on a particular player whose beliefs does not work or blend with others. I have contemplated for a while as to whether or not to start publishing names of people who has shown intelligence lower and beyond zero IQ.

Enter "Ro The Rock," a warrior who believes to strike while the enemies are standing and waste no time to do so. He also expects everyone to come along and help him before he is killed, which is quite unlikely given the location the party was in. In the game, there are two high level areas called the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, both of which costs 1,000 gold to enter and features enemeies with levels no lower than 24. Upon arriving at the Underworld, the area is littered with Battle Aatxe, a minotaur derivatives set at level 29. Hits from these enemies range in the 150 and up, of which no player can single-handedly stand going against one of these creatures.

After virtually sabotaging the entire run for the whole party, the person left after dying. It was then that the person deserves no respect nor deserves any cooperation from anyone. He would resort to using foul language whereas I continued hassling the person via private message. If any, that person ought to live the rest of the gaming days without anyone else to assist him, ever.

So I hope this list will only be a small one and I hope that people may spread the word about this bad individual. In the game, it's more about teamwork than about being Rambo.

It's running a what?

On Monday, June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs basically dropped the bomb. The rumors that ran rampant throughout the various news and fan sites, it all suggested it. And it turned out to be true. Apple's going to Intel for the CPUs. All I could say is... 'wow...'

All that news really took time for it to sink in. The news of it, shocking everyone, surprising everyone, and placing everything to rest, it was so bewildering to me that I had trouble believing it to be true. But all it take was a little bit of time and some thinking. And that's when it hit me -- the hardware.

People who have been tinkering with PC hardwares for a long time know that the PC has some really great stuff yet, at the same time, has the most ancient and outdated code. I'd know this for myself personally having to deal with the workings of the BIOS, the very software that enables the PC to start up and initialize the hardware. It's old, legacy, and very outdated. Yet nobody notices them nor even realize that we're pulling an ancient code that emulates ancient hardware for no reason at all. Change is needed and it's hard to make that change unless hardware manufacturers do something about it. It's very sad to see this, as there is so much potential in making such a drastic change as overhauling the entire BIOS methodology.

The BIOS architecture basically emulates an old Intel CPU model, an 8088 or 8086 (which one, I forget). I do not know when the BIOS was introduced or extended to but it's probably during the introduction of the 286 or 386 line of CPUs. At that time, it was fine since it made PCs more modular and configurable. Sure, it introduced problems and limitations but it was good for its time... for... its... time.

The Apple iMacs, PowerMacs, iBooks, and PowerBooks, they all have some specific hardware that makes it all customized and more 'natural' to OS X. And what happened was that the BIOS those hardware uses is vastly different from the BIOS PC systems use today. There was no limitation in how big a HD can be. There was no problem when you plug in hardware designed to work on Macs. The aim and goal was to make it 'just work.' Well, the idea is great and sound but it also limits the peripheral market. Designing stuff around a specification to a niche computer market is very limiting and won't net you a lot of profit. Quite a problem that creates...

So Mac OS X will eventually run on Intel hardware. Steve Jobs was also using OS X on that very hardware at the WWDC. Yet, he is willing to take that risk, that chance, to jump ship and hop aboard on the Intel bandwagon, the x86 bandwagon. It's the greatest news for all PC fanatics everywhere who has ever yearned and wanted to use OS X. Well, the general idea is grand. That's the good news. But with every advantage comes a disadvantage. There's a downside to going with the x86 architecture. Above I have mentioned of an ancient code that runs upon boot time. The BIOS has limitations that may make it difficult for Mac OS X to live on. So the questions were raised as to whether or not Apple will make it usable on common commodity PC hardware. The question lingers and I've yet to see an official statement on the matter. But... there's always this particular speculation.

Intel has a project going on with a few other companies to develop a replacement to the ancient BIOS that every PC has today. Such project could very well become a reality. What does this has to do with OS X? It's the hardware. Apple may very well end up continuing their Apple designed/customized computers instead of using common commodity x86 hardwares. Using everyday common x86 hardware will save Apple a lot of money in building their own machines but the cost would be legacy hardwares being plugged into the system. That would be a bad thing. On the other hand, Apple can design and manufacture their own motherboard but have them loaded with a customize BIOS designed to take advantage of today's speedy CPUs. And Intel can help Apple achieve this by using that project to turn Apple x86 Macs into a very interesting series of computers. A BIOS replacement would mean faster boot time and you may end up seeing a computer show its OS logo in a matter of moments, not seconds.

I have seen projects that want to replace the current BIOS generation with something that takes advantage of today's CPUs. To completely elimiate the BIOS would mean systems would boot so much faster, it may actually shave a good 5-10 seconds off the average startup time for Windows. Why? Because hardware detection that has to go to the BIOS for access would be so much faster, initializing anything would be instantaneous and without limit. It's disheartening that the market doesn't see that though. And so we are continously tortured by the legacy software that sits on the very hardware that make our computers work.

An Apple x86 computer will be a very interesting piece of hardware. And I'd look forward to seeing what kind of changes there will be when we finally see a PowerMac come 2006. Then again, that's still a year off. And many things can change 'till then. However, because of this move, I'll happily say that I may very well end up getting an Apple computer very very soon.

A long, long time ago...

I'll make it simple. The days of Tribes is seeminly ending. Gone are the days we'll be able to fly into the air with the jetpack, shoot, snipe, mortar, or fire off that lucky shot for a mid-air kill.

It's quite disheartening that it has to come to an end. With Battlefield 2 demo already released, and the game being released in retail on the 22nd of this month, things are looking up who are wanting a team-based game that focuses on strategy and skill rather than simple run-n-gun. It's all fine and dandy. Meanwhile, I happily play along with my character in Guild Wars, building that character up into something worthwhile, finding rares, runes, and special weapons. Hopefully, it'll be worth the effort. And while the Player vs Player (PvP) aspect of it is no interests for me, the option is always there.

Nowadays, I find that this little place is being neglected, all due to the time spent on Guild Wars and possibly the BF2 demo. Eventually, and soon, I'll have something worthwhile to show. And maybe I'll jump on the PvP bandwagon. Then again, perhaps not. Who knows?

the road not taken

Or perhaps it'd be called the road less traveled. Either way, playing through Guild Wars has been quite interesting. Going through the various lands, areas, dying, living, and ressurecting, it's all been a great experience. However, I now wander the endless sand dunes of the desert where the enemies are tough, numerous, and a pain in the rear end. It is now nigh impossible to get by due to certain devices that won't work unless one has at least one human partner. In the end, I only ended up waiting as comrades catch up. The voice communication software used in coordinating strategies, attacks, and assists made the teamwork all the more rewarding, for certain areas where it is difficult to get by is now a little easier. Alas, due to the complicated layout of various enemy spots and groups, we were defeated numerous times. And so we broke off, to tackle the problem another day. It was needed, to ensure that we do not wear ourselves out.

It was refreshing that I was able to play with these people, where it's much more easier to get by spots where it'd take me a longer to complete due to the difficulty nature of the quest and mission.

And so another day ends, and a new one begins. My character will continue its quest for enlightenment soon, along with his comrades, hopefully.