By Vermouth , 6th August 11:00 pm
I recently spent a bunch of time in the market for a new laptop to replace an aging machine that I had up running Linux. My old Pentium 3 had finally bit the dust, and it was time to trade up to a newer model. Not only that, but I was also switching operating systems from Linux to either OS X or Microsoft Windows. I bought myself a Macbook, which has been amazing. Shortly afterwards I helped my parents pick two shiny new Toshiba laptops. They were on sale at CompUSA for such a rate that I couldn’t steer them towards a Mac, as the price was just beautiful for a Core Duo machine. But I digress, this article isn’t about laptops it’s about operating systems.
» Read all of “Bundling Up“…
By Vermouth , 31st July 1:49 pm
About freaking time! I was actually really surprised to see how many people were freaking out over the announcement that E3 was going to be cancelled and replaced with something of a great deal smaller scope. I know I don’t speak for everyone on this note, but it’s about time that this bloated show went away and didn’t come back. E3 had developed a gigantic cost both from the standpoint of putting on a show and from a standpoint of everything getting lost in the shuffle as the show had just gotten to be too big. If this report can be believed the announcement is set for Monday July 31st, the day the party stopped for business reasons.
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By Vermouth , 25th June 3:29 pm
Television about technology is an atrocious, unsalvagable heap of dung. The two fields are just not meant to be married - as sensible as the pairing would seem. If there can be a network for golf or cooking surely there can be a network devoted to the world of gaming and technology? Well the sad answer is no - what television management want and what tech enthusiasts want are completely incompatible. Fortunately for me and all us other nerds out there, just as one medium is proving unsatisfactory a new medium is on the way.
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By Vermouth , 16th June 2:22 am
I recently moved into a new apartment half-way across the country from my family. I knew I’d need to make a lot of calls across the country in order to talk to my folks. Traditionally doing something like this would involve calling the phone company and signing up for some kind of deal on long distance. Well either that or signing my soul over to a cell phone company in a package deal where I’m committed to them for a lenghty contract. Not so fast, I signed up for Vonage and it’s really one of the best deals I’ve gotten in years and if something similar is available in your area I’d highly reccomend trying it.
Vonage is a telecommunications company that could not have existed until very recently. Rather than having to lay down lines from point to point, or even tap into specific lines already down, it uses the internet to route all your phone calls. All the calls are handled as Voice Over IP traffic. You get a box, plug one end into the phone and another into the router; after that everything else is just like working with the phone company. Once it’s plugged in you just pick up the phone, get a dial tone, and you’d never know the difference. The sound is clear, the installation painless and the price is wonderful. It’s a flat rate of 25 dollars a month which is less than half of what I would have had to pay the phone company for unlimited local and long distance phone calls.
This is a really easy service to use, it’s perfect fo the average Joe to use instead of dealing with the phone or cable company. Never once did I have to sit on hold for 40 minutes like I always do when my cable modem needs installation, nor will I ever get a surprise phone call because I called my mom for a little bit longer than I expected. Of course the big Tel-coms aren’t going anywhere, they for one thing have a great deal of inertia and broadband penetration rates are dramatically lower than telephone penetration rates. But just as MCI took on Ma’ Bell and managed to lower prices for consumers, VoIP phones are giving consumers even one more option, one we really should consisder as it’s a good one.
By Vermouth , 10th April 7:47 pm
I was recently chatting with a friend about micro-transactions as a model for game development. I had the idea to look up the real world value of gold which I’d spent on some particular items in WoW. It came back expectedly high when converted at gold farmer rates, but the real shocker was to come. I took a good look at a section of accounts for sale and clicked on the first one to examine the available accounts. For $250 US dollars a rogue was available. The kicker is that it wasn’t a particularity well geared rogue. I scrolled down a bit, browsing until I found a hunter which was geared in the range that I was also geared in. I saw the price of $750; and thought to myself if I ever wanted to quit playing. The funny thing is I’m probably the fourth or fifth best geared priest in our guild which isn’t one of the super elite guilds on my server. This whole event drove home to me the remarkable gap between the World of Warcraft players who raid and everybody else.
» Read all of “The War over WarCraft“…
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