Blizzard has shipped their latest cash-cow (right Billy) Diablo2. In-case you live in a cave that doesn't have a computer in it, Diablo2 is the successor to Blizzard's very successful 1996 hit game, Diablo. If you're into Role-playing games, I call 'em dungeon-crawlers, definitely check it out. It will most likely win many Game of the Year awards and probably win Game of Last-Year and next year too.

And if you're ready to purchase, I would consider buying from Dragon.ca. You get a big discount, cus they don't sell you the box (wtf?) and since they're in Canada, and we (the US of A) make Canada our b*tch (ha) we score on the exchange rate! I've bought from them before, they're legit.

For example, Dragon.ca has Diablo2 for $37.95US, at my local eb it's $55 (sold-out), at buy.com, it's $52 (back-ordered). Don't forget shipping, which isn't bad there, and rembember, you don't get a box (I know, what's up with that?) but you will still come out a few bones ahead.
Related links: (two of the best fan-sites around...)
diabloii.net
diablo2.com

New version of 2xExplorer available: Nikos Bozinis informs me that he has a new version of his program available. In case you didn't know, 2xExplorer is a "dual-pane file manager for Windows 95/98/NT." Go take a look.

SomethingAwful's guide to building a successful fps (first-person-shooter) game - (thnx HardOCP)
This is funny. I was thinking about building my own fps and now I have the blueprint to make it K3wl!

For the guy who runs "Tweak Central" - I haven't tweaked a damn thing in a long time! I've been busy... yeah... that's it...

Get your TWEAK on!

Tech-Review has a great little 3-page deal on how to up your connection performance. I always thought this MTU/optimization garbage was for modem-users, but you can see some serious gains here. If you're experiencing slow connection, even though you have DSL, cable, T1...etc definitely look into this!

SpeedGuide.net Wow! Talk about tweaking... There's a lot of good information as well as tweaks so you can understand what you're doing and why your pr0n loads quicker!

Brian Livingston article: Improve the speed... Brian Livingston always gives good advice: This article discusses a way to allocate more RAM to individual NICs? (side-note: this article is apparantly an XML (I say "zummel") - which means someone has actually learned XML).

A viewer who goes by the name Ringw0rm sent me a link to his page where he has a DOS bootdisk that actually works. If you're a tweaker, a good bootdisk is a must. Definitely check it out. I've been told that the bootdisk is actually free of w0rm5 and v1r11 (damn haX0rs)

Good ole' Tom. I actually read this entire article and I have to say he's like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Sometimes he comes out swingin' at whoever he doesn't like that day(3dfx). Other times (like in this article) he's level-headed and pretty impartial. This is a good read with a lot of information that isn't available anywhere else (yet). If you're in the market for a new CPU, you should definitely consider AMD's new babies.
Related links:
Ars Technica Duron review - Ars jumps on the Duron review bandwagon - they dig it.

Newbie guide: Re-installing Win98 - source: Overclockers.com
The guys over at overclockers.com show you how to start-over. Don't read anything into the correlation between overclocking and having to reinstall your OS. I do this stuff all the time. If I get some time, I'll put up a guide fer'ya.

I saw this over on Ars. I guess it's a troubleshooting database. I haven't had a chance (read need - ha) to use it yet but I think it's like picking your local techie's brain without all the sarcasm and condescension (ha ha).

Excellent Win2000 dual-boot / boot-disk page:
This is from that Win2000 performance optimizations site I linked to the other day. Very good info on how to set up your machine for dual boot(y) and creating those essential (well...) boot disks.

Wonderboy is at it again. This time with a 17-page review of AMD's newest processor, the Duron (formerly Spitfire). It's basically a low-end (read cheap) version of it's Athlon/Thunderbird processor. It was designed to go head-to-head with Intel's Celeron low-end processor. Spoiler follows: the Duron thoroughly whoops on the Celeron and in a few weeks you should be able to pick up a 700MHz Duron for about $140. If you're looking for a budget-box, you should definitely consider a Duron chip.
Related Links: Other Duron reviews
CHIP Online: Duron benchmarks - it's in German, but as AMDZone put it, "they speak the universal language: benchmarks and pictures"
CPU Review
Tom's Hardware
AMDZone

Which DOTCOM is going to die next games - source: TheRegister
F*ckedCompany(some swearing: not as much as this site)
DotComFailures
I try to keep a positive attitude and keep the jabs on a humorous tone, but these DOTCOM get-rich-quick bastards are getting what they deserve. Unfortunately, the people who really should pay have already gotten rich with OPM™ (that's Other People's Money) and it's the Venture Capitalists who trusted them who end up holding the (empty) bag. Oh well, hopefully poeple will learn to invest in companies that have what's known as a "business plan" and a potential for what is known as "profit."
The way I see it, it's like playing craps and betting on Don't Pass and Don't Come when the people rolling the dice are just jerks.

Father's Day: I hope you all had a wonderful Father's day. I got my dad a BoogieBass™! Christ, if this thing doesn't make you want to take a 12-guage to it...

Tweak3d: Tweakers tweak-guide for tweakers - source: Tweak3d
I think this is a 'tweaking' guide for tweakers... Kinda like a coffee drink for coffee drinkers or movies for guys who like movies for guys who like movies on TNT or whatever. They cover everything from pre-tweaking, to tweaking and even a little post-tweaking. Actually, I'm just jealous because they have actual content on their site. Check it out.

2 new Windows2000 tweak-sites added in links If you're into Win2k (and who isn't? besides me) You should take a look at Edgar(from Holland)'s Windows2000 Optimisers and Windows2000 Performance Optimisations (by Edgar's friend). I know, in Europe they use an 's' instead of 'z'. They're both great resources for you Win2000 junkies out there.

Intel P3 and Celeron overclocking: 1.5 times faster - source: iXBT labs
iXBT labs has a nice little article showing you how much umph you can get out of a puny ole' P3 550E. It's a great article, but I think they might be getting people's hopes up as I know of more than my share of people who have tried unsuccessfully at the 1.5 number. I for example have to turn my Celeron 400 down from 600MHz to 450 or less to update my web-site. I run the voltage as high as it will go (2.35V) and have a GlobalWin FDP32 fan (chez big). And if you want to run a P3 at greater than 133MHz (they run theirs at 150MHz) you'll be overclocking your AGP and PCI buses as well, not to mention you need high-quality PC133 memory. Just keep those things in mind: it's not as easy as picking up a 550E and kicking the fsb, as I like to say, up a notch.

Tech review has an excellent little article on how to back-up and restore your email. I wish I'd thought of that. The way they recommend is exactly how I do it. One thing I'd add: before you back-up your email, go through your old mail with your email program (ie outlook) and save any attachments you want to keep (like VBScript virii that your friends sent you) separately from your email. Then delete the attachments. When you back-up your email, it backs up the attachments as well, so you may have to back up 12Megs when really your mail only takes a few hundred KBytes.

According to these articles on Tech-Report and CNet News (JC's got links to all the articles), RAMBUS claims to own the patent rights to DDR SDRAM - which just happens to be the primary contender against RAMBUS' own DRD RAM. Oh! So you own both? I guess Toshiba and other semiconductor heavyweights have been filing patent suits against each-other, but this seems to show the Industry conceding to RAMBUS. RAMBUS (RMBS) stock is up moderately (um... 44+%) on the news.

Now RAMBUS intends to charge (is already charing) a hefty premium for the rights to produce DDR SDRAM memory over RAMBUS RAM.

My thoughts: Well we have two choices: 1. those fancy computers that don't use memory...er... or 2. use those handy ankle straps Bill got us.

Ars Tehcnica does a great write-up on the current state of the x86 architecture as well as a look Willamette and the future. Definitely a good read -only mildly technical.

Monthly hardware news overview for June - source: iXBT labs
iXBT labs has a nice article on the current goings-ons in the computer industry. You can tell how new these guys are. Their one-page article is on ONLY ONE PAGE! How do you expect to make ad-revenue? Other sites would have split this article up into at least 20 pages. rookies.

And fps (first-person-shooter you newbie) fans check this out: Wireplay is reporting on 'new' technology that lets you use a photorealistic scan of yourself as a skin for your quake3 (or other game?) character (or avatar - ugh, you've read too many Stevenson novels). Kinda cool tho. I predict that I would be that much better of a 'quaker' if I had pictures of my a**hole friends to shoot at. I'd be like shooting at their corpses and body parts and kicking and... after they were already... and.. nevermind. (thnx to slashdot for the link)

3dSpotlight has a guide on how to tweak Windows2000 services. Definitely worth a look-see. There isn't much out there on how to tweak Windows2000, so that makes this little tidbit that much more valuable.

Passed all my classes: two quarters to go...
Just got my grades: Passed all my classes. I had 4 400-level Computer Science classes, and they were pretty difficult for me. Besides, I wasn't able to devote enough time to them... but seriously, when is that possible? I'm just glad to clear another hoop and I have a clear view of the finish-line from here. I just have 4 more classes to take. Do me a favor, give me a little "WooHoo!" for passing my classes.

Apparently, this time the collection of personal data from users is "inadvertent," and was occurring because web-sites were not updating to the latest version of DoubleClick's software. Read all about it. Concerned about your privacy? Don't worry: everything will be ok soon. Congress will pass laws making the industry responsible for regulating itself and the fox can guard the henhouse or however it goes.

Speaking of overclocking: Our man JeffK does a step-by-step article showing you how to overclock. Keep in mind, JeffK is 1337 haX0r and is not to be messed with. You can tell he's new at the "how-to... article" business: Although he tries to take up more space, his 1 page article takes 5 pages. On Anand or Sharky's a 1 page article easily takes 20+ pages and generat 4x the ad revenue. rookie.

3DRage has put up a Windows98 tweaking guide. They mention TweakUI for Windows9x and don't seem to mention that there are two versions, one specifically for win95, and the other specifically for 98. Make sure you use the right one... I've heard of people having all kinds of problems with this. Remember, I use TweakUI, but I recommend XSetup from XTeq: it's much more capable than TweakUI. If you didn't know, these programs let you fiddle with all-kinds of settings inside windows. With them, you can tweak just about anything that can be modified (via the registry). They basically make modifying the registry as easy as checking a box. Btw: TweakUI: the UI stands for User Interface.
Note:
TweakUI for Win95: you download from the web as part of "powertoys" (there are a dozen versions of this as well - confused yet? - Make sure you get the right one.)
TweakUI for Win98: comes on the Win98 CD-Rom. It's probably available online as well, just don't get 'em mixed up.

I put some time into making this front-page a little more efficient. I should have some spare-time in the coming days, so I will try to update the rest of the site.

I test thoroughly (hah) with ie5, Netscape4.7 and Mozilla at various resolutions (yeah, 1600x) , but let me know if something doesn't look right. Ok, it looks like garbage in Mozilla, give me a few days...

The guys at TweakFiles know how to get it done. If you want to improve your system performance, let them show you the way... God knows I sure-as-hell won't...

Thresh's FiringSquad has a memory guide for ya. If you don't know your DIMMs from your RIMMs... go LearnYourAss™.

School's out for summer too bad school's not out forever. Soon though...
And concerning Judge Jackson's decision in the microsoft case, for all the people who bitch about, "this sends a message to entrepeneurs, don't be too successful, or the government will take it all away." GIVE ME A FRICKIN' BREAK. Scott McNealy, CEO Sun Microsystems put it best, "If you get a ticket doing 90mph, it doesn't mean there's going to be more government intervention." Don't break the law and you don't have anything to worry about.

How to install a Network Interface Card (NIC) and other interesting How-To's - source: TweakTown
This is the second in the series "obvious crap everyone already knows how to do, and even if you didn't, you could plug the damn card in, turn on Windows and it does it for you." This 3 page article is the follow-up to their earleier 5 page article entitled "How to turn on a computer." And ends with "stay tuned for next weeks installment, How to turn OFF your computer. Otherwise known as Shutting Down." I try to keep things on a positive note and not rip people new ones, but seriously, if you can't plug a NIC into the only slot it fits into and turn on Windows and click OK when it tells you that the install is complete and it has to restart, I mean, come on! I'm just joking... Their heart is in the right place...

Don't worry, Tom didn't write it. (thnx JC for the link!) An article about the Computex convention in Taiwan at Tom's Hardware points out a few interesting things about DDR SDRAM (Double Data Rate). Here's a snippet:

Mike Siebert from Micron projected an initial price premium of 3% for DDR SDRAM modules over [regular - Single Data Rate] SDRAM... He predicted the largest expense will be on the motherboard, totalling about $6 mainly for the 2.5V voltage converter.

How's that for next-generation memory. Incase you didn't know, DDR SDRAM will soon go head-to-head against RAMBUS (Direct Rambus Dynamic...) DRD RAM, but people just call it RAMBUS. Depending on who you ask, SDRAM outperforms RAMBUS RAM and RAMBUS costs up to and in excess of 6 times what SDRAM costs. Intel has put it's weight behind RAMBUS, but pretty much everyone else is backing DDR... we'll see what happens...
Take this with a grain of salt, you know how "impartial" Tom can be. And although he didn't write it, I bet if you wanted to write a piece of RAMBUS-ass-kissing fluff, he probably wouldn't put it on his site. Intel Willamette Pics - source: Insane Hardware (thnx again JC)
This site has a few pics of Intel's upcoming processor. Check out: kinda retro with the old pre-OLGA/FC-PGA packaging. In a related story, The Register (nice new look guys - how about some content ) is reporting that Intel is planning another solution to replace Willamette as early as 4 months after Willamette's release.

Other Stuff:
Overclocking the Kirby (thank you Cro0bar!) I thought this was funny. It looks like something I would do. Except I don't understand what this machne is or what it's supposed to do?
"haX0rfish" - (thank you Cr0bar!) This just busted me up laughing. It's for all of you who wish you could talk like a (1337 haX0r) hacker but just don't have the character sets or the time... I haven't tried this yet, but I think you type english in one box and it translates it to haX0r language for you.
While you're over on detonate (thank you Cr0bar!) - Make sure you check out Cr0bar's Star Wars parody (only if you're a nerd, otherwise you might not think it's that funny).

I take a 4-hour nap and look what happens. You can find news about this everywhere. Don't expect any changes soon, Microsoft promises to appeal any attempt breaking them up... (side-note: I heard that Microsoft is upset at people calling it a "break-up" and wants people to refer to it as a "divestigure" - ha ha ha. Yeah and Hill-billies prefer to be called "sons-of-the-soil," but it'll never happen! ha). But definitely keep your eye on this in the coming years as the appeal process drags on...
My personal opinion on breaking-up Microsoft is that consumers may get to experience what pr0n-stars have felt for years, dual... nevermind.

Diablo2 gold source: Blizzard
This time I personally received the news in the form of an email from Blizzard: We wanted to personally notify you that Diablo II has gone gold and the master CDs have been released to manufacturing. We expect the game to begin shipping to stores worldwide as early as the end of June. Diablo2 is the long-awaited sequel to Blizzard's 1996 role-playiing game Diablo. If you like dungeon-crawlers as they're affectionately known, definitely look into it.
Related Links: two excellent sites devoted to diablo2:
diabloii.net - I think this site is run by 3 women? It's the best diablo2 site out there - and they've kept at it for years - definitely check them out!
diablo2.com - Another awesome fan-site for Diablo2.

F*in school. Ok. I was working on this Computer Animation project all-day Monday - I was up until 4:30 AM. I woke up this morning at 10:30 AM. My class-mate showed up and we worked on it straight- no breaks all day and all night and I'm struggling to get it done. The damn Animation program crashes like it's from Microsoft (not often... ha ha ha yeah, right). And rendering takes FOREVER!!! We are supposed to render 640x480 resolution 30 frames per second, and 3 minutes long. But at 1 minute+ per-frame - that would take 90 hours! So my partner went home to render on his two machines, while I render on these two machines, and we can't get our animation to look anything like what we want, and we cut the rendering down to 320x200 resolution, 15 frames per second, and it's still taking 30 seconds per frame. So 1 second of animation takes about 8 minutes. Did I mention the project is supposed to be 3 minutes?

Oh did I mention I have a paper due tomorrow? I whipped that out while the machines were rendering. Was I glad to have three computers? Even if two of them kinda suck?

My advice, don't take CS 417 Computer Animation. And if you do, make sure you give yourself a lot of time...
Sorry to make this a bitch-fest but working on a crappy program for 18 hours straight will do that to a person. And to any of you smart-asses about to email me and tell me "to have started working on the project 2 weeks ago," what do you think I've been doing for the last 2 weeks?

AMD has released it's next iteration of it's Athlon (K7) processor. JC's got a great list of all the places with reviews. General consensus: good chip. Check out the reviews. You'll probably get everything you know from one, there's no need to read all 20+ or however many there are. And be warned: Wonderboy (aka Anand)'s review is 27 pages long (I know... you gotta get those banner ads in...)

This site I'm in the midst of finals and I have a big computer animation project and paper due Wed. and two finals on Thursday, so don't expect much until those are done. Actually, don't expect much from this site after that either. ha ha. I have a new layout pretty-much done, I'll mess with this site a bit over the summer...

A new worm has been found that utilizes Gnutella networks to propagate. This worm is written in (suprise suprise) VisualBasic Script (VBScript). Everyone already knows this, but don't open VBScript (.vbs) files unless you know what you're doing or know them to be safe. Here's a snippet from the ZDNews article,

Possibly malicious in intent, but benign in reality, the worm uses the Visual Basic Script language to store itself on an infected computer in 23 different files named, for example, Pamela Anderson movie listing.vbs, collegesex.vbs, Battlefield Earth.vbs, Napster Metallica Crack.vbs and NSync.vbs

Personally, if you're looking for any of those, getting a "worm" is actually doing you a favor.
Related links:
Symmantec Anti-Virus Research Center (update your antivirus software) - if you're a wuss and use... nevermind...
TrendMicro VBS_GnutellaWorm information page
What's the difference between a virus and a worm? Symmantec tells you what up.

AMD is poised to release it's next iteration of it's Athlon (K7) processor on monday (June 5th). The new processor brings the L2 cache on-die (some other improvements are made to the cache (don't ask me, I don't know what it does...). It's made on a 0.18 micron process and has copper interconnects (vs aluminum) correction: should'a known better: this Register article points out that some T-birds will be copper, others will be aluminum. - these enhancements should give it marginally better performance than Classic Athlons and allow T-birds to run at speeds in excess of 1 GHz.
This article's in german, so if you don't sprechen Sie Deutsch, call on the babelfish - it will show you the way...
Related links:
c't: AMD Thunderbird preview & benchmarks english translation (thnx JC) - I think heiss online got their info from c't.e.