Intellidick.com - Pure Insanity

Occasionally in life, I am reminded of the reasons why I believe what I believe. I have always believed that UNIX and Linux are unstoppable server OS’es and the only choice for hardcore enterprise duties. Maintenance required is very little (if any) and they’re easy to manage remotely. Windows administrators will argue about the lack of a cool global policy editor (which is admittedly very cool) or a remote GUI tool as fast and usable as Remote Desktop/Terminal Services. Those are very valid arguments… but let me tell you about one thing they don’t have. A decent serial port administrative interface…

For those of you who didn’t notice, the ID server bombed out the other day. I was at a customer and unable to get to the internet to fix it. It was out for around 8 hours! When I finally did get to a machine with SSH access, the server was apparently down. I couldn’t ping it, none of the sites were up, etc… So then I SSH’ed over to the serial terminal server that’s connected to my machine. Sure enough, the machine is up and running, it was the upstream DHCP server that had given me the wrong IP address. Something went very wrong on that subnet and i’m not sure exactly what. The point is that I got to the machine via a serial port and fixed it. Everything but GUI is available via that serial port, not a reduced subset of commands.

Gotta love UNIX and Linux. The legacy of the serial terminal has saved my tail so many times it’s not even worth counting any more. Try that with your Windows box! You might also want to factor in that this machine has been down only twice in over 5 years. Once for an OS upgrade and once because of an upstream problem. How’s that for reliability and track record?

What did I do before Portal? How did I survive? Why am I at work when I should be playing Portal? I wonder if I can get away with playing Portal at work? Questions like these are in your immediate future once you purchase the Orange Box.

I recently bought the Orange Box from Valve to get Team Fortress 2. One of the crew who’s playing TF2 got me started playing “Portal”, a game that comes with the Orange Box but definitely did not get the hype that TF2 did.

Imagine, you’re in a “training center” with a sadistic computer that needs your help “testing” a new weapons system. Too bad that some of the “tests” can be fatal if you’re not careful. Take that concept, toss in the gravity gun from HL2 and multiply it by the ability to throw portals, toss in a physics engine and you’re at pure hysteria. That’s Portal. Slow at first but once you throw a portal on a wall and then another down the the bottom of a pit and then jump in, you’ll be hooked. You’ll have to take my word for it, but wow… just wait. The HL2 physics engine really shines in this one.

So here it is, your official ID.com bullet list for this game.

• If you have Orange Box and haven’t played Portal then you need to stop reading this blog and play Portal.
• If you have Orange Box and have played Portal, then you’re not reading this because you’re playing Portal and officially have no life now.
• If you don’t have Orange Box and need a reason to get it. Portal.

I have recently started reading iTWire out of Australia, in particular, the “Open Sauce” articles. I must say, i’m quite impressed with the articles i’ve seen so far. This one just adds to my liking of the posts. No need for my opinion of GNOME here, the following title says it all.

GNOME: 10 years old but did we need it?

After my recent FreeBSD experience, I came to the realization that a large part of my web experience depends on Flash. Not having a decent Flash player in BSD was a big turn off to the OS as a viable desktop environment. Oh sure, you can use the Linux binary emulator to run a Linux version of Firefox and Flash under the BSD kernel. That’s definitely neat, but just not practical. And what about other platforms that can’t emulate Linux or Windows? Are they just out in the cold? Well, not exactly. There are FOSS alternatives, like Gnash and others. Anybody who has tried to use these things knows they aren’t exactly a joyride. No offense to these guys, they’re doing the best they can with what they have to work with from Adobe, which is basically nothing. Reverse engineering something as complex as Flash can’t be easy. Hats off to the Gnash team and others for trying to help.

With this being said, i’ve come up with what I believe to be compelling reasons for Adobe to open up the doors to Flash for the rest of the world to truly embrace it. Now, when I say “open up the doors to Flash”, I do not mean give up the source code. That’s really not practical. No, what i’d like to see is for Adobe to open up the format for everyone to use. I understand that they can’t very well open up the full source code to the Flash player without giving up on some trade secrets, but would opening up the file format kill them?

Technological Reasons

• It’s old enough. The money has been made, adoption is at it’s peak. Give it away and allow it to spread it’s wings even further. Keep it proprietary and watch as people being to migrate away from it. (More on this later)
• A large majority of the web sites out there depend on Flash content, yet the player isn’t supported on all platforms. Support for some of those platforms is pretty pitiful. I know there’s not a lot of demand for commercial UNIX versions, I get it, but still…
• The FOSS developers would most likely provide support on all of the platforms. Leading in from my last point… hey Adobe, if you want Flash on all platforms, then give it to people who love their platforms enough to put it there.
• Alternative technologies (like Silverlight) will not stand a chance against a format that is applicable to all users with all browsers. The market is speaking out and buying alternative platforms and hardware. People are experimenting with their machines again.
• Applications will start to use Flash as a format for other things, not just web applications. Creativity will set in eventually and the Flash format will soar to new heights. Just imagine the amazing widget engine that could be built using Flash/ActionScript instead of HTML/CSS/JavaScript!
• SVG didn’t do so hot in the web world. (Makes for a great icon though!) It was misunderstood and poorly implemented in most cases. We’re sorry that didn’t go so well, but Flash is already seated. Just open up the format and solidify it’s position as a first rate content format.

Business Reasons

• The current Flash money making model is to sell environments to build high quality Flash content. Opening the format will open the door for competition in this arena, thus giving alternatives to those who don’t like the current Flash editor. This may be considering a negative by some, as Adobe will have to try harder to build the best Flash editor money can buy. In the end, competition will only drive these companies harder and the consumer will be the winner.
• Be the company that gave Flash to the world, similar to what Sun is trying to do with Java. Build products that use Flash and sell those, don’t hog the Flash format. Don’t be the company that drove us away from Flash. Remember, today’s computer geek is tomorrow’s IT lead.
• It’s cheaper to release a format specification and a reference player than it is to release a player for all platforms. Make the Windows/Mac player if you’d like, and let the FOSS guys handle the rest if you choose not to. Hey, here’s an idea… how about an open source version of the Linux player that can be extended more than the normal player. Maybe some alternate graphics engine support, similar to the current generation’s alternative sound engine support. (Which was a great move from Adobe). I’m sure Apple would like to get their hands on the MacOSX player to build a highly optimized version. I’m sure the Linux guys would love to as well.

Ethical Reasons

• People will sing the praises of the company that makes and supports open formats. Flash will become “a standard”. Not just a “we use it because they’re isn’t anything better out there right now”
• It’s a really nice thing to do. We’d really appreciate it. (Do I have to beg here?)

In closing… Adobe, please open up Flash. Take the lead here, give the Flash format to the world and let us build some amazing applications with it! Don’t make us invent something better. It can happen. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at how much Flash market share has already been lost to CSS.

I normally don’t do link articles where I don’t provide the meat of the story, but in this case i’ll make an exception. Just a few things I spotted on iTWire that were nice reads. If you’re looking for a HOWTO, neither of these will help but they’re both a good read.

Article 1 : Why people don’t switch operating systems

Article 2 : Migrating from Windows to Linux: the gentle guide

I’m done with *BSD (again). It was fun and all, but it’s just too cryptic for my tastes… coming from a guy who loves Gentoo Linux, that’s saying something. The *BSD guys need to realize a few things in my opinion.

It’s just not cool to be cryptic anymore.
Ports is old and beaten… quit flogging it and come up with something better. Gentoo’s packaging system may have been inspired by ports, but it’s light years better now. Most free distributions and even a lot of commercial *NIX distributions are guilty of this as well… although Ports is definitely ranked highly on the “cryptic and difficult to learn” scale.

The userland utilities are old and beaten, do what Sun did and slap it into /usr/ucb and call it a day. Just don’t follow Sun’s other example and never update their main userland utilities. If you want, create “long term” versions in a different directory and guarantee the user how long they’re remain there without change. That way, scripts and such can use the long term versions while users can reap the benefits of new, fresh userland utilities. RedHat accomplishes this by creating “Enterprise Linux” with long term support, while Fedora gets all of the new goodies. Take an example here guys. Break something every now and again. Backwards compatibility is great, but they need to lead, not follow.

Executing every script in /etc/rc.d/ and /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ and then using environment variables to determine which ones start is kinda foul. Sure, it’s neat in the fact that one file contains configuration for all services… but it’s kinda ridiculous that each script executes, regardless of whether or not it needs to. Granted, it’s based on the fact that you never have to reboot a UNIX machine, so I can understand the fact that it’s minimal considering that you don’t reboot often. But still, come up with something better. It’s dated and inefficient. I don’t have the answer either, but somebody does.

Same thing goes for that periodic cron job system… one configuration file to control what jobs run but still running them all in intervals? Ummmmm… no. Come on guys. Do better.

Elitist is bad.
Stop pushing people out with the “ur a n00b” attitude. We were all n00bz once. BSD was cool back in the day… now it’s quickly getting dated… fix it. Update it. LEAD, DO NOT FOLLOW. Do not “stick to your guns” because BSD was the best thing going 10 years ago. BSDi bit it and the *BSD free distros are falling behind what others are doing… anybody out there taking a hint? CATCH UP. STOP ACTING LIKE ASSES. Once again, i’ll say that a lot of distributions are bad about this.

The kernel is good. The rest is not. Apple figured it out.
The BSD kernel is an amazing piece of software. Stable and solid. Although it’s not lightning fast, it’s very solid and fast enough for most. The rest of *BSD is interesting, but not amazing. So, Apple took a CMU kernel (Mach) variant, some stuff from the BSD kernel, and some of the userland. Then they smashed it together with a new GUI. They prettied up the paths and tightened up the software installation in a way that only Apple can. Now, i’m not an Apple fan boy or anything, but they are the first company to successfully blend a UNIX-like kernel with a nice GUI. I’m not a big fan of the work flow of that GUI, but I have to respect the accomplishment. So, BSD team… take a lesson. The kernel is your strong point, most of the other stuff leaves a lot to be desired. I’d like to take this moment to point out that this is yet another problem that most *NIX free distributions have. I suppose that I can’t really say too much more about BSD here, except for the fact that they’re just as guilty as the rest.

Now i’m back to Gentoo Linux. Still not doing the “Gentoo ricer” thing. No aggressive compilation options, no bleeding edge packages or anything. Just Linux the way I like it. I stay with Gentoo because of the ability to customize packages, not to run the latest ones or try to tweak maximum performance with compiler optimizations. In my opinion, Gentoo is freedom without the costs of most distributions. It’s Linux my Way… all you have to do is be able to stomach the compilation time.

I’ve been a Linux zealot since way back in the days when even most tech people said “What’s a Linux?”. I’ve used that damned kernel for so long, I can hardly even remember what it’s like to run anything else. Oh sure, i’ve always various mixes of *nix (Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, SCO, SVR3/4, etc, etc) while at work and sometimes at home, but i’ve always been primarily powered by the penguin. Desktops, Servers, etc… the only thing left without *nix was my game rig, which was always something Win32 based… i’m too lazy to get into Wine/Cedega and all of that stuff.

After all of these years, why would I suddenly decide to switch? Well, the Linux kernel doesn’t love me anymore. I have an “oddball” machine, a Dual Processor Athlon-MP 2600+ built on the AMD-762 Chipset. From what I can remember, there were only three motherboards built on this chipset… so it’s kinda rare. Oops. Bad purchasing decision. The Athlon-MP turned out to be a heat factory and nobody bought them. Needless to say, drivers are scarce and never updated. Toss in one of the first generation RAID controllers from the Adaptec/DPT merger and you’ve got yourself a Linux disaster waiting to happen. Start with an IDE controller that fails to auto-detect most of the time, so you need to force the correct driver in the kernel or on the boot loader command line. Follow that up with a RAID controller that has TWO drivers in the kernel that will run it, now you have to force that as well. You end up with a machine that’s FLAKY under Linux and isn’t hardly worth running most of the time. Especially as your primary machine.

Is the OE the problem? Not really. It’s the kernel. Ever since kernel 2.6, i’ve had hell with this machine, it worked wonderfully under 2.4.x. The first sign of trouble was when the dpt_i2o driver didn’t get any love in kernel 2.6. I was patching the driver back in on day 1 of 2.6. That should have been an indicator to me that the end was near. I later discovered the new I2O system that would support my controller. “Ah ha! THIS is why the dpt_i2o controller driver wasn’t updated! I don’t need it!” Well, ummm… yes I do. I switched everything over to the I2O subsystem and hated life. It DESTROYED my RAID 1 mirror setup. You know, the setup I use to PROTECT my data. I2O exposes the SCSI LUNs of the physical drives as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, and the RAID device becomes /dev/i2o/hda or something like that. So, what happens when you run damned near any disk utility in Linux? It defaults to /dev/sda… because that’s your HD, right? Wrong… that’s the LUN of the physical disk, something you do NOT want to mess with in a RAID array. Bad move guys, after a kernel upgrade, my machine mapped the disk label to the physical drive during a reboot and DESTROYED the array b/c it was reading/writing to one drive instead of both. That’s just sad. I could see having those things as read-only devices so you could monitor your drives using S.M.A.R.T. or something, but read/write pointers to the physical drives when they’re part of a RAID array? Are you high? This is just dumb. I must not be alone in disliking the I2O subsystem, because the dpt_i2o driver got fixed back up and put back in the main stream! “Sweet! Now i’m back in business!” I was just so excited to have my dpt_i2o driver back. I wiped the machine and slapped on a fresh Gentoo build. (Yeah yeah, i’m a Gentoo guy) 2 days later when the compiling was over, I was happy… except for the fact that my array would just die every few weeks or under heavy I/O. It locks the machine up solid. This is NOT good. I’ve tried BIOS upgrades/downgrades, controller firmware upgrades/downgrades… no luck. Bang on the disks too hard and you’re toast. The machine locks and the array goes out of sync again. This is just horrid. It does it whether i’m in KDE, GNOME, or just at the CLI with no X running, so it’s not an environment. Lowest Common Denominator… it’s the kernel.

After over a year of fighting kernel 2.6 on my aging machine, I decided to give old Beastie a whirl. We haven’t had a go for years and I thought to myself “surely it’s come a long way in the years since i’ve seen it”…. Wow… Ummmmm… Errrrrr… Kinda? So here it comes, my official FreeBSD 6.2 review!

Download

Easy, hit FreeBSD.org and grab two ISOs, three if you want Docs. They even provide a “Boot Only” ISO for those with local repositories and such. Sweet. Nice packaging. Simple and to the point.

Installation

Boot on CD #1. Here comes the beast! … And that same old text mode installer … I’m okay with this. I’m a Gentoo guy where the installer is a new thing and most people still just bootstrap the thing and do it all from the CLI. The BSD installer was a welcome change from this, it made me quite happy to be online and running quickly instead of the 12h installation process. No offense to Gentoo, that’s good Linux. I miss it alot.

First Impressions

Wow. It’s ummm… BSD. I’m instantly thrown back to the days of borrowing shell accounts on a friends’ BSDi box… circa 1993. The beast still feels like it always has. No hyper fast response (no pre-empting that i’m aware of), but you can’t bog it down. I’ve commenced to putting a load on the box through multiple compiles over SSH, mega find commands for extra disk I/O, etc, etc… nothing. The beast tears it down just like it used to. If you can slow it down, everything degrades gradually, but it does finish. It doesn’t error… it doesn’t panic. It’s rock solid. Amazing kernel. Always has been. I’m so happy now. BSD’s kernel is running rock solid on my machine in the first 48h burn in. But wait… all of these packages are old… quite old. KDE 3.5.4, Xorg 6.9, and these wretched BSD command line utilities. I need my updated OE. I’m so used to the GNU versions of things, I can’t go back to BSD style. It’s just too far back, I use a lot of that new functionality and need some newer SUS compliance!

Post burn-in Software Installation - Ports

After my burn-in, i’m hitting that realization that this isn’t Linux… at all. It’s BSD. I truly had forgotten what it meant to run BSD. So, no problem, there HAS to be some way to load some newer utilities on my machine, BSD practically invented the concept of 3rd-party utilities through the use of /usr/local. You can do it on Sun, HP-UX, and Solaris, so you have to be able to do it here! Sure you can! It’s called Ports, the package manager that Gentoo’s Portage is based on. I ought to be right at home! Well… um… no. Note the use of the words “based on”, that’s very important! Portage uses a lot of the concepts of ports, but works completely different from a usage standpoint. Time to relearn everything.

So, after discovering that BSD’s Ports has lots of “options” for it’s use, I begin to get frustrated at even the simplest concepts. Being a Gentoo user, I know that step #1 is to upgrade the package DB via a snapshot or from the live repository. I choose a snapshot because, well, it’s easy. So, I go to the FreeBSD documentation and discover “portsnap”. I follow the directions and painfully get through this process. Wow, what a PITA. It’s a slew of commands. They’re documented, but it’s still a slew of them! In Gentoo, there is a single command to grab a snapshot, or you can download/untar it yourself (but why?). Anyway, so now i’m done… let’s upgrade those ports! Wait. How? Oh oh, portupgrade, that’s how! Oh wait, it’s not installed on the damned system. Hmmmm… how do I get that. pkg_add or by the ports method? Well, that depends. I go for pkg_add, it’s easy… and it works. Okay, thankfully the FreeBSD docs are solid and get me through this. Now, back to upgrading! I read the docs, which just says to run “portupgrade -a”… all kinds of stuff happens… compiling kicks off and i’m under the impression that were’ good. No. We’re *not* good. There’s a few in there that won’t survive the portupgrade process due to crazy dependency problems. Being a Gentoo guy, i’m used to things happening and I know that the move from Xorg 6.9 to Xorg 7.2 is a rough one… but MAN. I totally wasn’t ready for this. Too little, too late, I find the “UPDATING” document that covers how to upgrade your ports. *argh*. I’m unhappy. I crank up pkg_info and pkg_delete to get rid of all of the damage i’ve done, then start over. Too bad I couldn’t have gotten a warning/error message about that critical information. *sigh* So now, here we are. It’s 2 days later and i’m ALMOST done.

Ports is sub-par to Portage in a lot of areas. Portage is more complex at first but infinitely more powerful in the end. And it usually does a good job of warning you when you’re about to do something stupid. Ports tends to let you go ahead and kick it out. About the only difference here is that portage will let you uninstall packages to the point where you can’t boot anymore! In FreeBSD, the ‘core’ OS is in a different folder hierarchy, so you can’t really mess with it unless you get carried away with the rm command.

Here’s a quick rundown for people who have run Gentoo and are considering a run with the beast.

Portage vs Ports

Directory Structure
Ports : /usr/ports
Portage : /usr/portage

Naming Convention
Ports : category/package - You can tell that there was/is a transition going on here. Some categories have long names like “utilities”, some categories have abbreviations like “net-im”.
Portage : category/package - All categories have abbreviations like “net-im”.

Commands to Manipulate
Ports : Too many to list, lots of 3rd party is required to really get nasty with it.
Portage : emerge will do all primary functions, including searching. 3rd party is available for enhancements.

Dependency Checking
Ports : Nightmare.
Portage : Can be a hassle for large upgrades, like using a 2 year old base image and then trying to upgrade everything at once. It can be accomplished, but it’s definitely not advisable.

Pre-Installation Preview
Ports : None that I can find at this time. More research required.
Portage : ‘emerge –pretend’ (or -p for short)

Package Option Selection
Ports : It normally runs in Interactive mode… so that means that if you start a big install/upgrade and go to bed, you’ll probably wake up to it asking you to select what options you want for a particular package. You can negate this with environment variables and setting the install/upgrade run for batch mode. But you have to define all of that. Finding out what to define for what package is also a hassle… you have to know how to read make files. There might be a utility for this, i’m still searching. Per package flagging is done by a make trick. You basically check what package that you’re in via the current directory variable and then set variables. That way the variables only get set/unset if you’re in the right package. (I know, nasty isn’t it?)
Portage : Use flags. Emerge -pv will show you what packages are going to be installed and what use flags they support. Here’s where portage falls off though. In order to find out what those flags mean, you either have to go edit the build script (ebuild) or use a 3rd party program like ufed. Use flags are set in a single environment variable in make.conf. Per package use flags can be set in a separate file called packages.use (or package.use, can’t remember which right now)

Configuration Update
Ports : Backup Configurations, Update Packages, Merge old options into new configuration files. I think it makes backups of the old configurations, but I don’t know where they are so i’m not taking chances!
Portage : If the ebuilds are correct, portage has a “CONFIG_PROTECT” variable that protects all files in specific directories. (Like /etc or /usr/kde/3.5/etc) Portage will not replace files in any of these directories, it will simply copy the new file in with a different name. A utility called etc-update will scan the directories and find the new files, then allow you to merge them in or overwrite. It will also automatically merge trivial changes (comments, CVS headers, etc)

Snapshot Sync
Ports : A list of commands, well documented process though
Portage : ‘emerge –websync’ (manual is available)

Live Repository Sync
Ports : Via CVSup, csup, anonymous CVS, and others. CVSup/csup require configuration files to be built and an understanding of the repository. This process is well documented and samples of the required configurations are just a Google query away.
Portage : ‘emerge –sync’. There is one master repo. That’s it. All packages are in it.

Additional Repos
Ports : Unknown at this point, although i’m sure you could just add them in and remove CVSup’s ability to delete unknown.
Portage : Yes, they’re called overlays and can be managed manually or through “layman”.

Final Thoughts

So anyway, i’m just about done compiling KDE 3.5.7 and i’ll have more later. My experience at the command line has been the same as it always has been with BSD. It just feels old and outdated. The kernel is rock hard as far as I can tell. It handles every load I can put on it without really sweating. That’s fantastic! So, take the kernel and slap a nice OE on top of it and you’ve got yourself a product… and they’re probably call it OSX or something like that.

I’m going to give the beast a fair shake of at least 10 more days. Once I hit that marker, i’ll know if I have to switch away or not. Hopefully I can make the OE work, but i’m not sure if i’m ready to maintain all of this. Gentoo has to compile new updates as well and that can get annoying when Mozilla kicks out a new Firefox/Thunderbird every few weeks. At least portage is easily managed for that sort of thing though!

If anyone can she some light on my lack of ports knowledge, PLEASE do so. I’d love to fill this in and do a real comparison of ports vs portage with the help of a power user. The BSD kernel works like a champ on my machine, I just need the OE to work as well for me as Gentoo did and i’m set!

Based on the recommendation of a friend, I went out and purchased Battlefield : 2142. Yet another work of art… no pun intended.

As usual with EA games, something doesn’t work right out of the box, this time it was the registration utility. Oh sure, I only had to re-enter my serial number, but it was just a sign of the bad programming to come. That registration routine had a glitch in it that caused my serial number to get turned to garbage… it was one of those “hold the delete key for 30 seconds and then type in the right code” errors. No big deal… just a Testament of things to come.

On to the game! First, let’s see if there’s a patch… it’s been out for a while, surely there’s a patch. Ah ha, the 1.25 patch. 300MB?!?!?!?? For a patch? Oh well, I must get tons of new content with the patch. (Or maybe not)

Finally! Patch loaded and i’m in! Ready to game! Okay, pop in the clan tag and the player name and we’re rolling. Wait a second… no spaces in the names? Bummer. Another sign of the horror that awaited me.

Alright, first stop, options. Keymaps - Check. Video - Check. Audo - Wait a sec… the voice command won’t let me select a secondary sound card for voice input / output. Weird… TeamSpeak does, Ventrillo does… BF2142’s voice engine doesn’t. Bummer. True bummer. Well, i’m not reconfiguring my PC for one game, so, voice support off… moving on. Having done some DirectSound programming way back in the day, I don’t remember it being that difficult to enumerate the sound card list and display a choice to the user as opposed to just lighting up the default. I suppose that extra 20 lines of code was too much to ask. I’m sure it falls into the “Nobody will use this” category. Yeah, except all of the people with a Sound Blaster and an onboard sound card. Or a USB headset… which appears as a virtual sound card. Or a bluetooth headset, which also appears as a virtual sound card. But nobody has those, so we’ll just move on.

Okay, finally… let’s play! We’ll start with single player as i’ve never played this game before and a good bot match will get me used to the game engine. That way i’ll have at least played the game before I go out and get my few weeks of spankings as a new player online. Here we go! Single player, select maps, and start the game! Woot! After an excruciating optimization thing, the level loaded and now I can’t get in to the game. It shows the “kit” screen, I pick my kit and hit “Select Spawnpoints”. Nothing. That must just be a tab or something, even though it looks like a button. So, i’ll just click on some spawn points! Nope, nothing happening here either. Oh wait, I need to join a squad… Okay! Click the squad tab, here’s three… I click join. Good. Now i’m in a squad. I click the “continue” button (which looks exactly like the “select waypoints”, which isn’t a button.)

Game up! I’m in… no wait… i’m not. I can’t spawn. A few seconds go by and now the squad screen shows up. Okay, let’s see, let’s click all over the place and see what happens. Nothing. Nothing happens. I get a clicking noise as a conformation that i’ve done something, but no responses on anything except for leave squad, create squad, and join squad. I create a new squad with me in it, hit the manage squad button, and that interface doesn’t seem to work either. I must be crazy… it must be me… right?

I bust out the mighty Google and start running queries. Sure enough, others are having the same problem. Single player is broken in this 1.25 patch. Most people’s response in the help forums is something along the lines of “But why do you care? Single player sucks!”. Gee, that’s helpful. So now I have two options, I upgrade to the new “beta” 1.40 patch, or downgrade via uninstall/reinstall. This is just sick. I’ve also seen reports that the 1.40 beta patch has the same issue. So much for the QA process.

I fiddled around with the multi player and decided I didn’t want to bother. The spawn works in the multi player, but I die so fast it’s not even funny. I can’t get the good weapons b/c they have to be “unlocked”. Which can be difficult for those who have no clue how to play the game.

So, thank you again EA for a “pleasurable” game experience.

I’d also like to take this moment to say thanks to EA for not doing any further updates on SSX Tricky so I could play it on my Xbox 360. Oh sure, SSX 3 works… but SSX 3 SUCKED compared to Tricky. What I wanted was more tracks and some new riders for Tricky, what EA gave me was something less impressive than Tricky… and now it’s the only thing that will play on the Xbox 360. Thanks EA! This is almost as good as the C&C : Red Alert 2 thing… no updates for XP to fix any compatibility problems, but you’re sure as hell repackage it and re-sell it… bugs and all. What a crock!

So now I’m on my way to return BF2142… another disappointment from EA. I think i’ll just pre-order Enemy Territory : Quake Wars instead.

Okay, the whole “Draft Spec” is getting ridiculous. Now they’re saying 2008 to 2009 for the official spec release of 802.11n. Just a heads up guys… smarter consumers just aren’t buying it. We’re not going to buy your “draft” 802.11n gear just to temporarily get some faster speeds. Buying now will inevitably lead us into having to buy new gear when the next “draft” or the final release of the spec comes out. The more intelligent consumer has already run their cables in their walls and doesn’t mind plugging in for some real speed. I personally use 802.11g Wi-Fi to surf and such, but when it’s time to stream HD video or do some heavy data moving, i’m all about that gigabit copper connection in the wall. Oh sure, maybe it’s a bit overkill for what I do with it… but I never wonder if it’s the network… Never.

And the other thing… how many YEARS does it take to create a specification? I realize that this is some complicated stuff… i’m not doubting that or trying to downplay the complexity of Wi-Fi. But I have a feeling that there are now a lot of players involved and the spec is really getting held up more by political problems, rather than actual technical issues. This always happens. In the early days of a technology, it’s just a few smart guys in a room who build something neat and make a product out of it. Once it catches on, the big business gets involved and then the consumer sits and waits while everyone argues about what color the new logo is going to be.

So, let’s just hope that this spec makes the grade. Every review i’ve read for the original 802.11n Draft spec has been dismal at best. I have to be honest, I haven’t been impressed with wireless gear since the days of the early Cisco/Aironet 802.11b products. I’ll probably never have kids because of the waves those things put out, but man did they have some range! Then again, that was commercial grade wireless. I have yet to be impressed with consumer grade wireless. The signal is always poor, the antennae are always crap, and the features are always lacking. “Good enough for most people” is about the best I can hope for with consumer grade.

Good luck 802.11n! I wish you well and hope you’ll bring me some decent speeds… but after the recent announcement of yet another draft and yet another delay, my hopes aren’t exactly high. But hey, there’s a new logo out! That’s important when marketing a technology! Get the logo done!

One final note on this one… Nice trick here guys. Very nice. Two drafts and a final spec = 3 lines of products… that means there is potential for people to buy their gear THREE TIMES! Woo hoo! Good for you! You’ve figured out how to sell nearly identical hardware three times!

In a previous posting. I cited the past history of Nintendo and their unwillingness to allow violent games to be published on their systems in the US. They’re “protecting” us.

DailyTech published an article today that shows how Nintendo AND Sony have both decided not to allow the new Rockstar title to be published on their consoles. I bet Rockstar is PISSED because of all of the times they’ve given Sony the edge on previous titles.

I hate to say it (again), but it looks like the X360 is the only console vendor right now that wants us to buy games, even if they’re 100% for adults only. I can’t believe Sony and Nintendo would be this shortsighted with their consoles. But hey, I don’t have to buy them either.

Here is a link to the article on DailyTech.