More Time Wasters

I'm sure many of you have seen these reports lately that talk about how much time people waste at work each day. Well here's something else to help you waste your time. It's another flash-based game called Storm the House. Basically little stickmen run at your house and you have to shoot them down for money. Spacebar reloads your gun and you can buy upgrades at the end of each day. How many days can you last? I got to Day 7 on my first try with many work distractions to help. Buck sent me the link to this so he's redeemed himself, +300 points.

Also, the other rant will come soon. It's a list of sorts and I want to have at least a decent minimal amount of items before I post it. And it has nothing to do with computers Andrea! :)

More Addictive Gaming

I found this strangely addictive flash game while at work called Hapland 2. I probably shouldn't say anything about it and just leave you to your own devices. I don't know if I would have beat it without knowing what I was supposed to do. So I offer you this bit, but nothing more.

-------------------*PARTIAL SPOILER*-------------------

It's a puzzle type game where the objective is to open the round subterranean portal by lighting torches. The torches are lit by having the stick men walk through the castle doors on the level.

----------------------*END SPOILER*----------------------

Difficulty: Try beating this sucker without googling for the solution. I won't mention any names *ahem* *cough* BUCK *cough* *ahem*.

Rant, Part 2: No OSX for PC

So I started to write this piece and whilst writing it I realized I was incorrect on a couple of matters. A more accurate title might be “No Official Support for OSX on PC” but I’ll leave it as is. So with a little more research on the topic, here you go.

A month ago saw headlines on all the major tech sites talking about the recent Apple/Intel deal. At first glance one might think that maybe Apple is opening its doors to the more common PC architecture, but one would be wrong. The overly simplified reason for the switch to Intel is because IBM wasn’t able to provide chips that were up to Apple’s standards. Also, IBM was unable to produce a satisfactory mobile G5 processor which is why we haven’t seen a G5 iBook yet.

While the Intel processors that Apple will use will be x86 parts Apple has no intention of supporting PC hardware. I doubt they will ever change their stance on this either. Part of the whole Apple mystique is their knack for proprietary hardware. Plus if they did change their mind and open up the OS they would have to support legacy hardware and this would be a logistical nightmare for their tech support people and driver development team. If Apple hasn’t made it clear enough yet, they even threw out the idea that they may use a chip called a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) that would ensure that OSX would only run on hardware certified by them. Without it, OSX wouldn’t even boot.

We probably will never get official support from Apple for a PC-compatible release of OSX. However there have been reports of the Apple/Intel version of OSX having leaked out into the internet community. Furthermore, a few UNIX savvy individuals have been rumored to get OS X up and running on a PC. But before you get excited you should know that it’s without the GUI running and many other elements. I’d be skeptical that in the future we’d see someone getting the whole OS operational on PC hardware, including the GUI, Quartz 3D, and Apple’s Core components running, but I won’t preclude it from being a possibility.

So there you have it. If I got any facts or anything screwed up, as always leave me comments. I’ll try to get the third, non-technical rant up sometime early next week. It should hopefully be a bit more entertaining to read than this trash.

Redheaded, Step-Blog

I've been ignoring my blog lately like that redheaded, step-child that every family seems to have. I had three rants lined up that I was going to post but I just kind of lost my steam after having to come to Paraguay. So I'll try to get back on my bloggin' horse. Also, part of the reason I didn't post my second one was that: a) it was technical in nature and I'm not trying to turn this into a tech blog but I'll post it anyways, and b) after doing some more reading about the subject of rant #2 I realized that some of what I was going to say would have been wrong. So I will post the second part later today.

In other news...oh, wait...there is no other news because I'm in fucking PARAGUAY! There's just really nothing going on here or anything to do. Sure, there's a few bars and a casino but when you don't really know anyone to go out with those things aren't the greatest to go do. Plus, the one Marine that I do go out with landed himself in the hospital yesterday. Got real sick after he went running while it was cold out and now they're just keeping him for testing. Hopefully he'll get better soon. If you're thinking of coming to Paraguay voluntarily, and I've never heard anyone talk about such a thing before, don't. Just save yourself some money and buy some porn or beer, you'll have a much better time. It'll be good to get back to Brazil in a week. I miss my girlfriend and all my other friends there.