Way Off Topic: Internet Taxes, November 1st 2007

If you’re an American citizen or resident and you’re not aware of this issue, keep reading. Otherwise, take action. Links follow.

The Internet is the “Information Highway.” It provides unlimited information, a myriad of free resources and some commercial resources. Due to an expiration of the “Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998” we might be hitting some toll-plazas along our routes. If you do not feel comfortable paying taxes for free information, sign up at DontTaxOurWeb.org to take some action. If you want to do more, write your senator, but do it promptly. We’re almost at November 1st.

id Software: bye OpenGL, bye Linux

John Carmack and the id Software company have always been great supporters of the OpenGL Graphics API. Alas, major development with the API stops here for the game developer.

id Software has been working on a new game engine that would “revolutionize” the gaming industry and provide many advanced features. One of its main features is that it can support a constant 60fps on console systems. It was also announced that their new engine will run on: PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Eh, are we missing something important here?

XNA Game Studio 2.0 Announced

Finally Microsoft has announced the second version of their XNA Game Studio. The best thing? It will work with all versions of Visual Studio 2005. Finally. Read the full story here.

DirectX 10: Is it worth upgrading to Vista for?

As a developer (and gamer) you always want the latest gadgets and DirectX 10 seems to be one of these gadgets that you just “need to have”.

But does it justify spending much money for an upgrade?

What does DirectX 10 have that DirectX 9 doesn’t? According to some technology demos - not so much. Ok, some special effects but what about the rest? A game isn’t made out of SFX (although it seems to become a trend).

Programmer's Block

I guess writers have this, but now I have it with coming up with new programs. I just can’t think of anything. I’ve been wasting my time reading many programming books on Agile, Design Concepts etc. but that didn’t give me any ideas either. Some knowledge, yes, but inspiration, no.

Bah.

Google Music Trends

This is probably one of the coolest ideas that I’ve seen on the Internet in a loooong long time. Google Music Trends is a small program that you download that interacts with your music player and uploads statistics to Google. At the moment the most listened to song is “In the end” by Linkin Park. Of course this has to change ;)

Again, participate!

ATi too slow or NVIDIA too fast?

In November of last year, NVIDIA released its latest flagship graphics card chipset, the 8800 / G80. This chipset featured the first full featured DirectX 10 support ever conceived and was (still is at the moment) the only DirectX 10 card on the market.

So when will the other giant, ATi, catch up? According to rumor, ATi is planning to release its latest chipset (R600) in the first quarter of 2007, more precisely an early March launch.

Microsoft.com’s Recent Update

Conforming with the Ajax/Web 2.0 trend, Microsoft has updated their Microsoft.com homepage to a sleeker looking page stuffed with DHTML goodies. Yet as with most media-rich websites it’s very slow on older computers (probably the one you have in your office also ;) ) so it becomes quite tedious to navigate through.

One good thing about all this is that the website works well in Firefox, you’d think they’d screw it up but they didn’t. Gotta give some kudos for that one.

Another Saturday: Firefox, Zune and more

First Alpha release of Firefox 3

And you can get it: Here from Mozilla.org if you’re interested in trying it out. I am, I’ll report on it later.

Zune Again

I was actually wondering if anybody has actually seen a “Zune” since the introduction on November 14th this year. I haven’t, and I’ve seen one commercial so far on the TV. Even on the internet, I haven’t seen many things yet (or maybe I’m just on the wrong sites). I have some colleagues that didn’t even know what “a Zune” is and didn’t bother to find out.

Microsoft's Autumn Marketing

Is it me or has this last season been the most productive one at Microsoft in a long time? First we get the new version of the DirectX SDK and now we finally have the final version of Internet Explorer 7, not to mention the plethora of CTPs that came out the last couple of weeks..

So, what’s going on? More marketing on MS’ side? Let’s hope so since free software is great - even though most products expire next year and it’s not free in the manner of beer and speech.