Logo by Tom Purves

1:34 AM
StarCraft beta signup woes
The Blizzard web site has been down for most of the beta sign-up period.   It's 1:35 AM EST here and the site is still down.  I understand the beta sign-up wasn't even working for about the first hour.  I woke up around 11:00 and got in...it went very quickly for me, actually.  I wonder if they are going to extend the application period or just say, forget it, we have enough applications.

New SB16 Win95 drivers
Released yesterday.  Get 'em below.

Download sbw95up.exe

Video CD creation
I'm thinking about creating a guide to making your own home Video CD.   Should be pretty fun, and I'll probably have time to do it over break.  How the hell am I going to update this page without FrontPage 98 at home?  I'll figure something out.  Actually, I'm probably going to install a remote control application so I can do a limited amount of stuff on my computer from here.

4:50 PM
Judge does a little homework
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has given Microsoft until Dec. 23 to respond to the contempt charges filed by the DOJ.  The DOJ then has until Dec. 29 to respond to Microsoft's claims.

A rather unusual twist...Judge Jackson, who is not a very technical guy, described today how he went into Windows 95 and uninstalled IE in 90 seconds.  Complexity and the effect on the operating system are major points of contention.

I don't know about you, but I think Microsoft is f****d.

2:49 AM
RAM prices
I'm thinking about buying some more RAM, although not really seriously.   But at around $40 for 32MB, the stuff is so damn cheap right now I can't believe it.  I have 80MB right now, I'm not sure how big of a jump an extra 48-64 MB will give me.  I don't really feel like I need it though, so unless I figure out a way to use the extra RAM I'm probably not going to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

StarCraft beta signup today
Don't forget, 6:00 PM PST.  James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies and Titanic are coming out today too.  Titanic might be good, but the trailers and commercials make it look like a sappy love adventure.  It's not going to do well unless it's actually good and word gets out.  I always liked James Bond but this latest one is WAY too commercialized.  Makes me sick.

Happy birthday
Today's my birthday!  Now I'm old enough to...wait, that was last year.

11:26 PM
More Microsoft shenanigans
I don't know what Microsoft is trying to pull, but there are really asking for it this time.  In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft is offering vendors three options.  One, a 2 year-old version of Windows 95.  Two, the newest version with IE integrated into the operating system.  And three, the newest version of Windows 95 with IE removed, along with certain files so that the operating system won't even work properly.

I don't have anything against Microsoft, but what kind of crap are they trying to pull?   If they get the $1 million fine, they will definitely have earned it this time.   Several magazines have already debunked the "no IE will render Windows 95 non-functional" theory.  PC Magazine changed four lines of the Win95 install script to get rid of it.  TechWeb removed the IE executable and a desktop shortcut.

I really have no idea what Microsoft is trying to prove this time.  This is not even what could be called questionable monopoly tactics; this is just plain stupid.   Especially playing games with a judge that just rendered a very ugly decision against you.  Whatever.  Let's see what happens.

ZDNet's story
TechWire's story

2:53 AM
South Park
OK, that episode was pretty screwed up.  Especially the commercial.   Go Kenny!

MPEG-2 AAC
AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding.   As part of the original MPEG-2 audio standard, it was originally called MPEG-2 audio NBC, for Non-Backwards Compatible before being changed to AAC.  As you might imagine, AAC streams are not compatible with Layer I, II, or III decoders.  However, tests with AAC appear to claim CD-quality sound in around 50-75% of the space that Layer III needs.

A preliminary form of AAC appears to be in use at http://www.a2bmusic.com, which is some weird AT&T music site.  It's pretty useless since I can't compare the songs with the original source or other forms of encoding.

Supposedly there is reference AAC software available, but none of the documents I've seen say where to get it.  An ISO standard, 13818-7, is also available, but you can't get those without paying hundreds of dollars to ANSI.   Ack!  I'd love to get my hands on some source to see what the heck AAC does that's so special.  I spent a very long time today looking for information and there's almost nothing that I can find anywhere.  I was even hoping that maybe my library would have the standards, but no dice.  And you thought Layer III audio was impressive!

Falcon 4.0 demo
I remember being really excited about Falcon 3.0.  I was really hyped about it because it would be using a math co-processor to achieve amazing flight realism and what not on my new fangled 486DX/33.  Well, that was a long time ago.   Anyhow, here's the new version with 3D support, I believe.  I'm a little late with this, but if you haven't gotten it, get it now.

FTP from Microprose (File 1: 20MB)
FTP from Microprose (File 2: 22MB)

1:49 PM
Comparing MPEG encoders
First of all, LSX Player and Encoder both handle MPEG-2, which is very cool.  Now for the weird stuff.  First of all, LSX-Player is horribly slow at playing back MPEG-2 streams on my system.  Granted, I do not have MMX, so this is probably an issue.  Encoding MPEG-2 streams takes FOREVER, and furthermore, you can't multiplex the video and audio into one stream so it's highly inconvenient as well.   Finally, after comparing the output from LSX, MegaPEG, and Xing, I have to say that Xing actually looks better in most cases and occasionally worse (on fades mostly).  Since Xing is by far the simplest and most easily configurable program, I'll stick to it.

One thing that kind of sucks is that I can't run two copies at once on my computer in NT because when I try to run a second copy, Xing Encoder detects that it is already running and simply brings the existing instance to the front.  I might be able to get around this by installing two slightly different versions.  But then again, I might not.  I still have to do most of the encoding in 95 anyway, so it isn't all that big of a deal anyway.

New South Park episode tonight
Don't miss it, or you'll be kicking yourself!  I'm working on my second South Park VCD right now.

333 MHz Pentium II's
Did I mention that these are supposed to be coming out around January 28th?  That's pretty close to Intel's traditional round of price cuts, too.

Of course, a lot of you savvy overclockers already have 333 MHz Pentium II's.  :-)   I can't convince my friend to try 333 MHz...he seems to be happy at 300.  I guess I can't really blame him.

TV show triggers sickness in hundreds
Really weird.  A very popular cartoon based on those Tamogotchi handheld games triggered mass nausea in hundreds of children.  And just so you know this is for real, later rebroadcasts of the offending scene on local news reports triggered the same reaction in kids.

What does this all mean for people, anyway?  Sounds like it could be used as a weird kind of weapon.  Or maybe it could give us better insight into how people's minds work.

Nando Times's story

4:34 PM
LSX MPEG player/encoder
This is a new encoder which claims to run faster than other MPEG encoders and provide higher quality output using a special algorithm for motion estimation.   At only $99, it seems like a good deal compared to other encoders, and educational pricing is available.  There a downloadable version available, so I'm going to try to compare the quality with Xing to see which comes out on top.  I've recently read a couple of posts saying that Xing produces inferior output to other encoders, so I'm very curious to see which will win.

Oh yeah, Ligos has a free MPEG player, too.  I believe that the player does software playback of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2!  If that's true, we'll just have to take a closer look.  Same with the encoder...MPEG-2 support.  Could this be the beginning of low-cost support for MPEG-2/DVD video?

http://www.ligos.com

Heat problems
I've been having problems recently with my CD-R but I didn't really know why.  Now I do.  I borrowed my friend's SCSI CD-R, a Plextor 4X, and it was overheating my CD-R drive.  Those discs did feel pretty toasty after I took them out of the CD-ROM so I figured that might be the problem.  For the moment, I am without CD-ROM, until I find a better solution to this.

2:18 AM
SB16 NT 4.0 full duplex driver info
Remember how I've been having problems with those drivers?  I read a post from a guy who got confirmation from Creative Labs tech support that those drivers are unstable in an SMP configuration.  Whether or not that's the fault of the hardware or the software doesn't seem to be public knowledge.  See, I knew I wasn't crazy!

By the way, I finished all three papers.  Man, did that suck.

1:30 AM
Land TCP/IP fix
This fix got released a little while ago but I don't think I noticed until recently.  What the Land attack does is spoof a bunch of SYN packets to a target computer that makes it look like the SYN packets are coming from the target computer itself.  Then the target wastes a whole bunch of time trying to send acknowledgement packets to itself.  Weird huh?

I found a great place for a comprehensive list of fixes for Win95 and NT at http://mirc.stealth.net/nuke/index.html.

For the x86/NT fix, download landfixi.exe from Microsoft.

3:56 AM
A little more USB modem info
I'm liking this modem more and more.  It has USB and serial ports built-in, so you can buy it now and use the serial port.  When USB support finally arrives in, say, NT 5.0, you can switch over to USB without having to go out and buy a whole new fancy modem.

I have three papers due Monday.  Ugh!

U.S. Robotics 56K Voice-Fax Modem