That game is fun. I like how you can hit them multiple times to loft them back up in the air. This thing sounds a lot like PAX.

For laptop... the Intel stuff is looking pretty good. For desktop, I still like the AMD64x2 stuff. It's cheaper and is really fast. Of course Skype doesn't run as well on AMD :-)

Hmm, playing to my guilt huh? Well I'm a long standing AMD fan. All the machines I've built since, well at least 97' have been AMD machines. My only Intel boxes are used computers I got dirt cheap and my laptop which I bought before AMD had a decent mobile solution. AMD has not always been the performance leader, but they have always led it price / performance. But for me it's been about giving support to the little guy. Intel needs competition to keep it in check. Without it their prices get really unreasonable real quick.

Now for the guilty part. I just ordered up a new laptop with an Intel Dual Core chip instead of AMD. Sigh, it’s not like I wasn’t looking hard for an AMD chip. I really had my eye on the top of the line Ferrari AMD 64 Turion notebook. But in the end I went with the new Intel Core Duo processor. I chose it not so much because it is kicking out some serious performance with decent power management (which it is) but because I got such good deal from Dell. Some times it just comes down to cash. I’m getting a system that is pretty comparable spec-wise to the high end MacBook pro for about half the price of one (or the Ferrari for that matter). Crazy Dell, they always have some deal going or coupons that can be stacked together. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased anything from them for list price. Speaking of which, articles like this one don’t take into account that Dell’s list prices don’t apply to bargain savy internet consumers like you and I.

I used to be an Intel guy primarily because I was worried about how well the x86 asm layer would work on AMD (this was circa 1998 or so), primarily MMX extensions for games. Totally doesn't matter today though, so my 2004 desktop machine, which was built to play HL2 and Doom 3, has an AMD processor (3500+) and likely so will my next (non-Mac) PC.

For a laptop, I'd be more concerned with performance than battery life since I'm likely to bring an AC adapter with me if I do extensive mobile stuff (although at work, all of our conference rooms have loads of power adapters for Mac and PC, so I don't need to bring mine).

As a side note, do you think that Tom's Hardware could squeeze a few more ads onto their pages? I think I saw some whitespace there...

Also, Steve sez MacBook Pros are bitchin'...

I buy whatever J tells me to.

About that Dell...

Yeah, probably best to pave it right away.

Do you think this will ever become a released game? I'm getting tired of waiting around for these cool 'concept' games and engines to be released. I'm still waiting for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. That game promised all kinds of sweet goodness something like a zillion years ago and it still isn't released. We won't even speak of that other super ultra cool game that is taking 'forever'.

Another reason to keep my PC: Spore!

Project Offset is looking for Xbox 360 programmers... interesting.

Flash memory. :-)

Keep that thing away from the airport. I almost got taken to the 'special' room for a full strip search because of one of those. On the way back from my recent trip to Fresno I decided to try and carry on my garment bag instead of checking it. When it hit the scanner all kinds of commotion broke out. They ended up searching my entire bag and found a leatherman in a bottom inside pocket. I hadn't used that bag since before 9/11. I wondered where that knife went.

Definitely not bringing this to the airport! My last trip to Seattle, I forgot to leave the little ziatech knife at home, so I had to mail it to myself from the airport. Luckily, I remembered before trying to go through security.

That's funny, but in a troubling way. These FireFox fanboys are getting worse than Apple fanboys.

SHUT UP!

That firefox character is just mean. I mean the other browers aren't hurting anyone.

I don't know, I think the IE character is sucking IQ points each time that comet flies by.

Bring back the Mosaic icon!

I don't believe the rumors, but I like the idea. I currently watch movies on a 4" screen. I think they need to do something like this.

Not sure I like the concept. I would prefer tactile feedback with the controls. And the screen will be a finger print magnet. Maybe if the controls were on the edges of the case.

I'm not sure about that. There is not much tactile feedback with the slider wheel now. Except when you press down. Maybe they will find a way to make the screen click when you press parts of it. They need to so something though. They have created this cool user interface, but it takes up a lot of space. So either do something like this, or make the whole unit larger.

I would put some sort of touch pad on the back. I could imagine having a web page, image or book or something on there. Moving a finger along one axis changing pages and moving along another axis operating a zoom. Or for movies, fast forward, etc. Double click for a menu. Then when a menu is shown you could use the touch screen for the menu.

Well the that interface isn't much different than a regular scroll wheel. I guess you could put a mechanical scroller on the side of the device with a press to select interface.

Oops, source code is here.

There are some very interesting things happening in this space when you consider Intel and AMD building in hardware virtualization support soon as well as Microsoft licensing some tech to XenSource. The competition with VMWare is really heating up.

More news on this.

These were very interesting articles. We've been using MS VS 05 here for about a year and a half. We just built our first VMWare server and people like it. Much more OS independent.

This was the first that I had heard about the CPU optimizations coming though. That's good to know and will be highly anticipated I imagine.

Now's the time for a group to gobble market share though. I know we're ready to jump on something. It just needs to be stable and have the proper performance characteristics. Previous to MS VS 05 R2 Microsoft was just not taking advantage of the available hardware.

Also, R2 will support some Linux flavors...

Link Here

Article on virtualization for the Mac. This is the first report I've seen that talks about virtualization for desktop users. Seems like you'd still install the dual boot stuff to get the drivers for Windows on the Mac, and then just use virtualization to boot into both at the same time.

Furrygoat has a little post about Mac/XP virtualization. XP boots in under 5 seconds!

An article about Linux on the Intel Mac.

What makes you think we are not alone? Who have you been talking to? I need names.

I find your lack of faith disturbing...

No seriously, I need names.

My first computer was a PCjr. I wanted an Apple but my dad was an IBM XT man. I paid for the whole thing myself with paper route money with with all the extra's was around $800...in 1984!

Eventually I got an AdLib sound card for my 286. I couldn't believe that I was hearing such great music from my computer.

Thanks for the link to Darwinia, it looks sweet!

AdLib sound, I had forgotten. I bought an original SoundBlaster 1.0 (rev -) and it was backward compatible with AdLib.

Relevant link:
History of Adlib.

A cool article on Introversion Software, the makers of Darwinia.

They are coming out with a new game, Defcon which looks like a lot of fun.

I ordered Darwinia last night, so I'll post a review once I've played that a bit. Here's a write up on Introversion's trip to the US, including some photos inside Valve plus some sweet shots of San Francisco.

An interview with one of the Darwinia devs.

About time.