Monday, 30 April 2012
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Crytek agreed the second hand games market should be killed.
Saddening really. I could live with games publishers opting for a take in the second hand biz but to completely rid them selves of it would be annoying to say the least. I doubt they would be happy to bring the wholesale price down on the games in expectation of higher sales?
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/25/crytek_calls_anti_used_games_measures_awesome/
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/25/crytek_calls_anti_used_games_measures_awesome/
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Vodafone buys Cable and Wireless Worldwide
Very wise move on the fibre backbone architecture. They'll be needing that for their 4G network. http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5184-vodafone-buys-cable-and-wireless-worldwide.html
Monday, 23 April 2012
Friday, 20 April 2012
Adding IPv6 access to your blogger blog.
I've switched my blog (domain poijnting at Blogger hosted site) to provide AAAA / A records to DNS requests no matter which resolver makes the request. Google currently only provide IPv6 AAAA records to whitelist DNS resolvers on their default ghs.google.com and thus if the resolver is outside of this it will only be given an A record.
Using ghs46.google.com overrides this and that is what I have changed the CNAME on alpagot.co.uk to.
For more info, see the link: here
New Sky DSL connection.
My new connection was put in yesterday.
Having checked my postcode on thinkbroad's map against the closest telephone exchange (straight line distance about 500meters) I was hopeful of fast speeds on ADSL. When the connection went live I connected locally into the Sky phase 3 router (Sagem) via a web browser using the internal IP of 192.168.0.1 . On the maintenance page you will find a show statistics button at the bottom which gave me the following:
Here I could see the downstream attenuation which I could put into a attenuation calculator to see if I was near the theoretical maximum. 21,344kbps was suggested as the absolute maximum so I wasn't massively off.
It's likely that I could improve on my downstream sync speed of 17.7Mbps with a couple of tweaks such as going directly to the master socket's test socket, removing other devices from the line such as the phone and trying a different DSL filter / shorter data cable.
Next up was to try some speed testers which test throughput (Note the sync is the connection to the telephone exchange, throughput is what is passing through that connection and is effected by anything else that maybe using the connection at the same time as the test).
The results were not bad either, 14Mbps during the day is very decent. I'll take some evening reading as well to update the blog but I'm very happy for the time being. FTTC is in my area but I can't really justify the cost with these speeds having some from a long line where I had a sync of 4Mbps. It's a shame Sky don't offer static IP's but at least they have put dynDNS.org functionality into there routers which I'm told is a lot of hassel on Virgin Media who I almost had to sign up to.
Here's hoping for IPv6 functionality as well.
EDIT:
An evening speedtest result around 9pm
Having checked my postcode on thinkbroad's map against the closest telephone exchange (straight line distance about 500meters) I was hopeful of fast speeds on ADSL. When the connection went live I connected locally into the Sky phase 3 router (Sagem) via a web browser using the internal IP of 192.168.0.1 . On the maintenance page you will find a show statistics button at the bottom which gave me the following:
Here I could see the downstream attenuation which I could put into a attenuation calculator to see if I was near the theoretical maximum. 21,344kbps was suggested as the absolute maximum so I wasn't massively off.
It's likely that I could improve on my downstream sync speed of 17.7Mbps with a couple of tweaks such as going directly to the master socket's test socket, removing other devices from the line such as the phone and trying a different DSL filter / shorter data cable.
Next up was to try some speed testers which test throughput (Note the sync is the connection to the telephone exchange, throughput is what is passing through that connection and is effected by anything else that maybe using the connection at the same time as the test).
The results were not bad either, 14Mbps during the day is very decent. I'll take some evening reading as well to update the blog but I'm very happy for the time being. FTTC is in my area but I can't really justify the cost with these speeds having some from a long line where I had a sync of 4Mbps. It's a shame Sky don't offer static IP's but at least they have put dynDNS.org functionality into there routers which I'm told is a lot of hassel on Virgin Media who I almost had to sign up to.
Here's hoping for IPv6 functionality as well.
EDIT:
An evening speedtest result around 9pm
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Monday, 16 April 2012
Friday, 13 April 2012
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Everything's now $1 BILLION DOLLARS!
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Google's project Glass.
Ok so by now you've probably heard of Google's project glass. If not then basically it's a pair of augmented-reality glasses you wear.
See video:
Although there has been some rather amusing doubts about how well it's functionality might be..
Although there has been some rather amusing doubts about how well it's functionality might be..
Games for Windows requirements.
If you ever wondered what the criteria was then click: here
Its an interesting read for any game developer. I seriously wish Microsoft would push this more while taking some of the pressure off the developers so they can still release on other platforms (Mac and Linux really arn't that major a competitor). A fantastic target would be someone like Activision Blizzard to really kick things off! Especially with Windows 8 and Xbox coming to PC. They have a good follower in Capcom but need a few more big names signed up.
If more PC only games had the integration of Live I think they would rally a much bigger market for their live platform and could potentially up-sell other services to PC users as well.
Although people complain about Live on the PC and the DRM used I've found that once your past it and into the game, the games have been of a much better quality than none GFWL PC games. Some good examples are BioShock 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. The only exception was Fable 3 with had shocking frame rates.
For a list of current and upcoming titles see the Wikipedia article: here (The big ones being Street Fighter X Tekken & Resident Evil 6
Its an interesting read for any game developer. I seriously wish Microsoft would push this more while taking some of the pressure off the developers so they can still release on other platforms (Mac and Linux really arn't that major a competitor). A fantastic target would be someone like Activision Blizzard to really kick things off! Especially with Windows 8 and Xbox coming to PC. They have a good follower in Capcom but need a few more big names signed up.
If more PC only games had the integration of Live I think they would rally a much bigger market for their live platform and could potentially up-sell other services to PC users as well.
Although people complain about Live on the PC and the DRM used I've found that once your past it and into the game, the games have been of a much better quality than none GFWL PC games. Some good examples are BioShock 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, and Batman: Arkham Asylum. The only exception was Fable 3 with had shocking frame rates.
For a list of current and upcoming titles see the Wikipedia article: here (The big ones being Street Fighter X Tekken & Resident Evil 6
Friday, 6 April 2012
Webcam programmed to capture your face while playing Xbox: gauges your excitement
Engadget:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/05/webcam-programmed-to-capture-your-face-while-playing-xbox-gauge/
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Technical books and corrections
Todd Lammle is considered a bit of a god to some networking engineers but even good teachers (I do consider him a good teacher ) make mistakes. I'm going through his CCNA book currently.
So when you get that occasional question wrong that you were dead certain was right you go exploring for the truth....
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470901071,miniSiteCd-SYBEX,descCd-ERRATA.html
I guess it keeps you on your toes...
Lesson: Always check the publishers website for corrections!
So when you get that occasional question wrong that you were dead certain was right you go exploring for the truth....
http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470901071,miniSiteCd-SYBEX,descCd-ERRATA.html
I guess it keeps you on your toes...
Lesson: Always check the publishers website for corrections!
BT Wholesale want to look green, I call it cost cutting.
See the think broadband article here .
From a diagnostic standpoint it's a potential nightmare without well formatted readouts from diagnostic tools, Root cause analysis will not just involve simply looking at the individual line, but more increasingly their neighbouring lines as well to see if there power state changes are effecting your customers line.
Yes it is green and good but if it's causing a bigger headache then I feel it'll not be worth. Think about all the petrol consumption of those SFI (Special faults Investigation) engineers. With the switch to fibre surely they should be concentrating of reducing power output there with increase performance instead of tampering with what will hopefully be a redundant technology in the next 20-30 years.
http://www.broadband-forum.org/technical/download/TR-202.pdf
From a diagnostic standpoint it's a potential nightmare without well formatted readouts from diagnostic tools, Root cause analysis will not just involve simply looking at the individual line, but more increasingly their neighbouring lines as well to see if there power state changes are effecting your customers line.
Yes it is green and good but if it's causing a bigger headache then I feel it'll not be worth. Think about all the petrol consumption of those SFI (Special faults Investigation) engineers. With the switch to fibre surely they should be concentrating of reducing power output there with increase performance instead of tampering with what will hopefully be a redundant technology in the next 20-30 years.
http://www.broadband-forum.org/technical/download/TR-202.pdf
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
BT SIN 470 External NTE
Virgin Media’s updated Traffic Management policy
I'd be pretty annoyed at Virgin right about now, The no restriction policy is what made those premium costs half decent value on their products. To be honest they'd be better looking at improving functionality such as static IP's, reducing jitter & increasing the stability of the service.
Virgin Media’s updated Traffic Management policy
Virgin Media’s updated Traffic Management policy
RasberryPi has been ordered!!!
Woo hoo, I got my e-mail to advised I could now order my RaspberryPi.
Now just got to wait for stock allocation :)
Now just got to wait for stock allocation :)
Bohemia Interact sale
I was a massive fan of Operation Flashpoint back in the day. This wasn't your Modern Warfare sort of game. This was serious! Serious as in one shot and your dead serious... I loved the planning, the intensity and the refrained approach to it! If your the sort to run in all guns blazing then your in for a shock with this.
Well Bohemia have a sale on and you can get all the games or just the more modern ones. Also you better have a very well specced PC as these are benchmark games and with test your system at the higher settings.
Well Bohemia have a sale on and you can get all the games or just the more modern ones. Also you better have a very well specced PC as these are benchmark games and with test your system at the higher settings.
Monday, 2 April 2012
Engadget review the HTC One X
Getting a bit bored of my iPhone 4S.. Coming from a Windows Phone 7 device (HD7) saw improvements but I missed the size and quality. This has me looking at what's on offer at the moment.
The smartphones I really like the look of at the moment are the Samsung Galaxy note, the nokia Lumia 900 and this HTC:Link
The smartphones I really like the look of at the moment are the Samsung Galaxy note, the nokia Lumia 900 and this HTC:Link
GAME UK gets a small lifeline.
Looks like OpCapita has agreed to buy the remaining stores and deal with a large potion of the companies debt.
I personally think the publishers should be doing what they can to help out (obviously if they get certain financial assurances) as this has the large benefit of retail space providing free advertising for them. GAME will need to focus on competitive pricing though as they really flag there.
BBC link: here
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