Die ICANN Die
I’ve just read that ICANN has approved the plan to allow anyone to register their own generic TLD’s. Okay, there is still a very expensive process involved and you need to pass all sorts of technical examinations, but still. Those TLD’s may be up to 63 characters long, how ridiculous is that
Seriously, all this is going to cause is a flood of new exotic TLDs that nobody really wants to have. And in the end it’s only going to confuse people. Now a website can be .com, .net, .org, .info, or some country specific TLD - easy enough. But what happens when .thistldissolongitsclosetothelimitandyouwillneverrememberit is approved, along with dozens of other stupid TLDs? Sure, a good ones will probably be called into existence, but just allowing anything as long as it’s not offensive, the technical infrastructure is okay, and whoever requesting gives ICANN enough money is just ridiculous.
Apparantly one of the lame excuses for this is that the pool of available internet addresses is running out. Well ICANN, I have some news for you: IPv4 addresses are running out. Not DNS. Not IPv6 (which is FINALLY starting to show up a bit on the Interwebz).
Die ICANN, die.
Supreme (part 2)
As I promised in the last post, I made a couple of pictures which can be found here. The pictures have been online for a few days now but until now I was just too lazy to post the link.
Among other things, I’ve been exploring the subject of overclocking, which up until recently was a complete mystery to me. It turns out to be much less complicated than I previously thought, that is unless you want to really push your hardware, but getting a decent gain compared to stock settings is good enough for me and I don’t want to risk burning out my expensive hardware anyway. Using my newfound knownledge I’ve been playing with the settings on my desktop, and moved the AMD Athlon 64 X2 2000+ CPU - with a default clock speed of 2.1 GHz - up to 2.7 GHz without any problems. It runs perfectly stable and doesn’t exceed 40 degrees under full load, with my rather cheap Arctic Alpine 64 cooler. I guess it could easily be pushed to 3 GHz or more, but for now I’m happy with how it is.
Also I finally took out a 512 MB memory module, leaving 2x 1GB in place. This costs me 512MB of rarely used memory (except when doing stuff in VMware lots of memory is useful), but allows the remaining RAM to operate at 800 MHz dual-channel instead of 667 MHz single-channel.
There’s a lot left to upgrade on the system, but apart from some minor things the next that I’m planning to get is a 2nd monitor (another Samsung Syncmaster 943NWX, of course). A third is definately planned, but before that can be accomplished a whole lot of other stuff needs upgrading. 3 screens means I need a 2nd videocard, which means that I need a motherboard with more PCI-Express x16 slots, and I’ll definately need a new power supply too (current one can’t support such a set-up, it’s 400W and doesn’t have the needed connections, and besides it makes too much noise for my taste).
Also, I’ve installed the expansion to Supreme Commander (Forged Alliance) today. Currently I’m not impressed by it. The units (and everything else) is almost the same as in the regular game, however the interface has been changed and I really really really dislike it compared to the classic one. It’s too tiny and too much has been moved to other places, you just have to look around where a particular button is way too much. I’ll probably just stick with the regular game I guess 
In the meanwhile, CampZone 2008 is drawing close and there might be a LAN at my place once again soon, and to both of those I’m looking forward a lot.
On a completely unrelated note, I watched the videoclip from At the Left Hand ov God from Behemoth today, and that video definately pwnz you.
hav funz0rs
Supreme
Since a couple of months, two of the five computers in my room are ones that I use on a daily basis. One is the laptop that I’ve got since a couple of years, the other one is a desktop system which I put together a while ago and I’m expanding it with new/better components from time to time. Today (or by the time I finish writing this, yesterday - it’s 23:57 now) was one of those days when I upgrade something.
I have, obviously, a motherboard in my desktop system, and among other things it has an on-board graphics chip. It’s not that bad actually since it can be conf igured to use up to 1 GB of memory - and I havn’t seen that many 1GB graphic cards if any at all - and it actually manages to run Supreme Commander pretty decently. Also, it has 2 outputs so you can actually run dualscreen with it, but one of them is DVI-D and I only have VGA monitors so that’s not really useful. Anyway, as even a basic graphics card outperforms an onboard chip and tomorrow (or by now, today) a new monitor will arrive, I decided to buy a video card.
This card had to fulfill a couple of basic requirements. Obviously it must be an improvement that is worth the money compared to the onboard chip, it has to be a PCI-Express x16 card, at least two outputs, and it must be able to run without an extra power connection from the power supply (nor draw too much power) since I currently use a cheapass 400W PSU which doesn’t have any 6-pin PCI-Express connectors. I found something that fits those requirements and within my current budget, so I placed an order and picked it up at the store.
At the first attempt to install the card, it didn’t work (except that the fan was running). Not on the next couple of attempts either. Once it worked, I screwed the card into place and then it stopped working again. After an hour or so searching the Internet and taking out and re-inserting the card a dozen or so times, I found how to make it work: don’t push it in all the way. Seriously: if it’s in all the way the system completely fails to detect that it’s there, if its out of the slot just a tiny bit, it works. I have no idea why, but judging from the stuff I read it appears that it’s an issue on the motherboard itself and that it happens to other people as well (I might just e-mail the store where I bought it about that). Either way, it worked, so I put my huge, old, ugly, sucky CRT on my desk next to the HP vs17 flatscreen which I ‘borrowed’, installed the drivers, and behold, I have dualscreen
For the motherboard slot issue, I may try it with any of the other 3 identical motherboards that I have here, but it’s likely that I’m too lazy for that. Instead I might just buy a new motherboard at some time when I have money to spare, but then I am sort of planning to go for a dual socket motherboard right away (dual quadcore CPU ftw?).
I tried out Supreme Commander in dualscreen. It’s kind of nice, but also a bit buggy. You can’t queue up orders on the 2nd screen like you can on the 1st (which is VERY annoying when trying to build stuff), the mouse cursor is kinda bugged on the 2nd screen, and probably a couple of other things I forgot. Still, having a minimap which is bigger than the actual main screen is both nice and useful in it’s own ways 
Also I finally got the e-mail to tell me that my new monitor has been shipped, so I expect it in today. It’s a leet new Samsung panel, 19″ widescreen. I could have gone for a 22″, however since I’m planning to get another two of them sooner or later that’s just too big. Three 19″ wides next to eachother already resembles a private fortress (minus the siege weapons) when standing on the other side; 22″ would require me to extend the size of my desk, and my desk is already pretty huge.
IfI don’t forget to charge a couple of batteries for the camera - and I have to admit that’s a pretty big if - I’ll try to get a few pictures of one or two things soon.
Bronze
A couple of days ago the movie National Treasure 2 was released, and since I sort of enjoyed the first part, I downloaded it the day before the release. And I must say, I’m not impressed. This sequel is almost twins with the first part: a LOT of what’s going on is pretty much the same and very predictable.
The general storyline is pretty much the same. The main character gets vague information on a treasure, finds a clue which points to another clue which points to another clue (etc), they have to do some things which seem pretty much impossible at first but succeed after all, and while they’re looking some people are forced to join the team, and one other group is looking for the same treasure but eventually one of them is forced to join the ‘good guys’ on the final steps to the treasure.
And then of course those parents who were separated, but are forced to join together on the final hunt to the treasure, and eventually fall back in love again. Gee, I’d never have expected that.
It’s the same. It’s predictable - like most of modern television. The good guys win, the bad guys get kicked in the face, and probably that goes hand in hand with some tight situations that the good guys barely escape from. Even when the good guys are facing “certain” death, you already know they will find a way out, simply because it’s not the way of television makers to kill such characters.
If you’ve seen the first National Treasure, seriously, don’t bother watching the sequel. It’s identical in almost every way. They could just as well have taken the first movie and put a 2 on the cover and release that.
Television would be so much more fun if for once it wasn’t always the “good” guys who always win (and “good” is in quotation marks because what is good or evil is always completely subjective).