there is a mod for quake 1: Quake Champions Classic, been out for a while, but haven't seen it mentioned here:

https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/...assic.112/

I think it would be very cool if such a moddable game, with such a good and fast engine, would take over this closed source garbage engine game we have right now.

I really like Quake and also Chess, but I am not playing much and if you don't play you lose touch with everything. As the saying goes ... use it or lose it.
Problem is really if you have too much on your plate, you just don't get to play really or you don't want to invest the energy.The other problem is also it is really always competetive, and you don't want to lose against players that suck, just because you are out of shape.
But I think I will try to make a concious effort to try to play at least once week, because I think it is not only fun when you actually start playing, but it also tests your mind.

In this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN3KPFbWCy8&t=3408s

he states the following:
"I have a lifetime of playing video games, at one point I was one of the best Quake players in the world"

He was born in 1971, so at the time of the Quake release he was minimum 25 years old, with job and family, how much do you believe what he is saying about himself holds true ? Given there was no comparable activity in his youth he could trained for, i.e. FPS Multiplayer shooter, Quake was completely new to him as well. Do you think he had any chance against the teenagers that try harded that game at that time?

Him playing now a game like Diablo 4 to the max level is not necessarily sign of a skilled player, as we all know RPG tryhards generally suck at games requiring mechanical skills (they often concentratre only on rpg games to hide that fact), don't you think if he had any (true) love for Quake, or better skills, he would show a demo of him playing and showing some of his skills?

New update for Quake 1 on Steam and consoles ...
not just fixes, but a new mode with new maps
Horde Mode, with 4 maps, I think its a good mod with some shortwhile fun :-)

OW1 is ded, noone waits for OW2, seeing it just as a cashgrab clone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaWT1Qk6ows

...
None :-)

still have Doom Eternal + DLC and Cyberpunk lying around, which I somehow do not play, because my gaming time is invested still basically only into QC ...
I still remember the days when you looked forward to really great new games like ... Quake, Command & Conquer, Diablo or new Super Mario 3D Game ... now ... nothing, game industry somehow is completely stagnating ... not much besides artifical hypes (like XBox/Playstation 5 sold out though there are ZERO good games, just like PS4/Xbox One, PS4 was sold out too, dont know a single good game released even on that one, older playstations/xbox 360 at least had novelties like GTA 3D, Devil May Cry, PC ports like Portal 2, now just generic artifically hyped stuff)

What do you think will happen with female switch streamers when projects with virtual characters (like this https://www.twitch.tv/codemiko) get photorealistic? Meaning you have some virtual character, but some dude with voice changer and some motiontracking hardware behind ... :-)
I have a feeling the whole female streaming market with sugardaddy crowdfunding with some whales in it will break down ... or twitch will maybe implement some rule to verify streamers with photo, cuz they will lose all the sugar daddy money as well ... I guess the streaming market will cut in half lol

I still remember reading some shadowrun book and there was stuff written like this:

Megacorporations in the 21st century are massively global, with all but the smallest corps owning multiple subsidiaries and divisions around the world. They are the superpowers of the Shadowrun universe, with the largest corporations having far more political, economic, and military power than even the most powerful nation-states.

https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Shadowrun_corporations

Sounds cool and maybe a little punk, but while corporations had some say in government it is not like they were influencing it heavily, so it really was just an alternate reality that was interesting because its different ... but nowadays ...
you see everything through a filter ...
youtube, twitter, google, facebook filters ... who really uses independent video, news, search sites, maybe thats 2 % of the traffic ...

these platforms have now so much power by deplatforming someone without needing to give reasons ...
these platforms are imho. too powerful to be allowed to do something like that, I really do think there should be independent judges giving everyone who was banned without a reason a right to defend himself and stay on the platform until proven guilty ...

it's the thing that should be done and everyone knows it, but at the same time everyone knows it is not going to happen ... so, have we reached now an orwellian society [url=www.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian][/url]?

This site destroys the community spirit in the internet ...
it makes communities anonymous, u dont really know the nicks of the people u r interacting with, their track history on the site, etc. ... its good shallow questions, but then it basically replaces community sites something went wrong ...
and u get thumbs up if you praise something about the community, any critcial replys not praising something will get downvoted without an answer as to why ... its like "oh, u r against me => insta downvote" ... to some degree this also mitigates critical thought, because u dont want to get downvoted by the hordes of fanboys

Found this by accident:
https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/podcast-february-1-2020/

He has a bit of business man mentality, maybe thats why Quake has been given a bit secondary treatment with outsourcing q4 and qc, but gotta still give credit to him for Q2DM1 and Q3DM6 also Q1DM6, I think all three games would have suffered without these maps.

Check out Wrath of Ruin, game based on q1 engine (darkplaces) in a dark fantasy setting (like witcher), its much better than its trailers, and imho. has much better aesthetics and gameplay than q1 while still maintaining the q1/doom gameplay feel, it is what q1 s hould have been imho. :-)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1000410/WRATH_Aeon_of_Ruin/

Also for q1 players, checkout XMAS Jam 2019, single player map pack by talented mappers, really going creative with what its possible with Q1 gameplay, should played with quakespasm engine
http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61808

Some years back AI was still far away ...
but I still remember that Watson computer beating the jeopardy champion, already a decade ago ...
you have now good voice recognition, face recognition, human like machines ...
you have self learning machines ...
I mean its obvious we are not so far away from the final breakthrough ...
it could happen in 5-10 years ... and then it would accelerate in lightning speed ...
you dont need any universities anymore, you dont need workers anymore, you dont need to work anymore ...
what do you think life will be like then?

Maybe humans are not needed anymore then and something "tragic" happens "accidentally"?
Will there be only a rich caste of humans? Will the first nation to develop advanced AI use it to take over the world and destroy all other nations? Or will there be utopia world and everyone gets a universal income and humanoid robots for mates and partners?

Gotta say there were many great games, but thinking of the best made game in terms of quality on release where basically everything fit together, I would say it is diablo, everything in this game is just spot on, gameplay, graphics, cutscenes, music ... also the speech and text is even good for todays standards ... no filler content and it created a new era ... there has never been a ground breaking game as this before and after ...

Super Metroid might come close, but cutscenes, storytelling and beginnings are not so great, though leveldesign and music play in their own league

The music is so great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5MnLtAix4M

there is this book that tells the story of the id software and their making of doom, its called Masters of Doom by David Kushner, now a t.v. series is planned on that, will be interesting to see if they will show romero playing doom deathmatch in the office instead of working on quake :-), and carmack building up his office table in the center so he can supervise romero & co. as I remember from the book :-)

https://deadline.com/2019/06/usa-orders-maste...202638479/

Movies released in 1999:

- Matrix
- Fight club
- American beauty
- Sixth sense
- The talented Mr. Ripley
- Magnolia

Others also find these films good:
Blair witch project, Being John Malkovich, American Pie, Sleepy Hollow, Cruel Intentions

A good article on this:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/10/...ern-cinema

I mean compare that to the top film releases in 2018,
Avengers, Antman, Deadpool, Black Panther, The Incredibles, Spiderman, Mission Impossible 6, Aquaman, Venom

A guess public taste has changed :-)

1999 in films almost like 1996 in gaming:
Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Diablo, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Resident Evil, C&C Red Alert, Master of Orion 2

Refering to this article on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/QuakeChampions/comme...ebethesda/

Maintenance mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maintenance_mode

So, as QC players what are your plans?
Personally, I will play QC until Diabotical is released and switch over and just hope for the best ... 2GD is doing so much for diabotical, map editor, video editing support, nicer overwatch looks (more visibility), and has even plans for esports, I dont know what not to like about it ...

I played the first part and I liked it, but I am somehow not interested in the 2nd part.
Also not really a fan of these postapocalyptic games like Borderlands, Far Cry New Dawn,
what I see is some Doom 2016 Gun play in an open world scenario, Doom 2016 success while having some innovative combat, still relied on the big name ... put that gun play into another game, and it just doesnt hit it really ...
this review gives me more reasons: https://gamerant.com/rage-2-discount-pc-ps4-or-xbox-one/
I dont want to know how many millions and developers they invested into that game compared to quake, because imho. rage has zero chance to become a hit

Take a look a the the scores:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/rage-2/user-reviews
https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/rage-2

Google has now announced their Stadia Game Streaming Service, it comes with their own controller directly connected to wifi to avoid inputlag and you can then choose to play games that are streamed to your desktop.
Solutions like this exist already, most namely Playstation Home, there you can choose to play a game just as you choose to watch a move in netflix, but you can only play older games there right now, for newer games you can only use remote desktop gaming pcs, which are offered for example by the shadow service, but there you need to install all the software yourself and get yourself also a full price lilcence for a game. Google wants to be able to stream AAA games on their cloud service too, if I recall correctly, so youll be able to play the newest games on high quality via stream.
So will these Game Streaming services become the next big thing? Besides private users not needing to have the newest hardware and having to download/install/configure the game manually, there are also other advantages; publishers could circumvent piracy via streaming and cheating would become harder too in multiplayer games, most importantly game developers can design their game to run only on one specified hardware, which would reduce development costs and also renders the game more performant/beautiful.
The big downside in streaming though is the big need for bandwidth ... most people who do not live in big cities or do live in a bad internet spot, just wont be able to play games on a stream with good video quality.
Can this be the decisive factor for game developers continuing to provide games for manual installation to run on a private pc/console and people will still favor to play on private hardware for competetive reasons?
Thinking forward 5-10 years ... this factor could become unrelevant, because 5G mobile internet will be available everywhere and most users will also have access to xx TB download limit with 1 GBps connection speeds ... maybe then you will see most games only being made available via streaming services?

Which changes in technology/society/culture have lead to players not anymore willilng to organize themselves in clans? Whats your take on that?

My 2 cents:
The internet is not anymore a new thing, before there was this giant shift from playing only npcs to being actually able to play against other human beings, and this was so sensational and people tried to form communities etc. also to underline the fact that they are part of a revolutionary shift in gaming. Nowadays everyone is used to being online and there is nothing sensational about it. Also automated matchmaking has lead to less communication between the players, before you needed to have instant messengers to communicate with others to organize matches, now you can just click the pair button and you wait until you are being paired automatically with other players. And less communication with other players also weakens the desire to form a clan.

Cultural shift, less gaming culture on the net:
I remember all these individual clan homepages, clan skins, even clan machinima videos, etc., all this culture seems to be gone now and the game is reduced to purely being played. Even game homepages seem to disappear and seem to go to a more formal and general reddit (e.g. QC on reddit instead of ESR) :-( . The only thing thats left culturally are basically fragmovies, but this is also more related to individual efforts.

take a look at twitch and viewercounts of street fighter (V) or Starcraft (ii) ...
games with such great legacy that every gamer knows, not doing too well nowadays ...
whatever you think about qc ... at least u can megalul now a these games :-)

So, the next patch should be in march?!
What are the things you want to be changed?

Id like to have the following changes:

- More DMG for rail, since health for was increased, maybe 95 DMG without zoom, and yeah delete the fucking increased dmg in zoom, just doesnt make any sense at all (also for mg)
- Less DMG for nailgun, maybe 25% less
- Less health for Keel and Visor, maybe 25 HP less
- More Health for Anarki, maybe 20 HP more

So ... in public games, it seems about 40% to 50 % of the players dont have any morals, and although they see you are waiting for a powerup to spawn, i.e. armor or mega health, they still go to your position and try to steal it from you ... I dont know, if I see someone on the powerup spawn I just go somewhere else on the map, because I see armor and megahealth as first come first serve and I respect someone who is obviously there waiting for it before me ...
And I think this problem could be easily solved algorithmically, if two players are within the powerup radius when it spawns ... give to the one who has been waiting the longest in a certain defined small radius

I just began listening to an audiobook that is about Elon Musks biography, and in this audiobook it is told that he played quake in his zip2 company with other employees and they got 2nd place in a team tournament and won several thousands of dollars.
Is there any truth in that? I can hardly imagine that a techy guy like him has the talent and finds time to play quake at a competetive tournament level ... back then there was also not much money in the game, I think there was only the pgl and one microsoft tournament and the ferrari tournmanet from id itself, which were also mostly about duel and not teamplay ... prolly the author of the biography is exagerating a bit there, am I right?

A new version for the old Starcraft RTS title "Starcraft Remaster" just got announced by blizzard, it will come in "summer 2017" for PC and Mac.
Starcraft Remaster will provide better graphics and higher resolutions for 4K and the gameplay of the old version will remain untouched for the most part, only the cutscenes in single player mode will probably be replaced by illustrated comic style cutscenes.
The old SD version of the game (multiplayer and single player) will become free to download and will receive a patch that enables the players to play against the owners of the new remastered version.

Read more at: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/03/starcr...s-in-beer/

Why did it fail? They outsourced the multiplayer component to a company that only concentrated on creating the multiplayer content.
And all 3 DLCs so far were made for the multiplayer, and they even created that snapmap feature, that makes it easy to create maps for multiplayer ... and although all this effort was invested into Doom and Doom was a commercially successful title and has a big playerbase the multiplayer failed in the end nevertheless. They even created a multiplayer feature where players can transform into a demon and hunt players down. Similar to quake they concentrated on Deathmatch like a typical Arena fps, but although it was the newest fps by id software it won no players over. A lot of people anticipate the new quake champions now, but why wasnt Doom 4 a worthy contender back then?

Ai learned to play doom by interpreting what is happening on the screen, beating human players already ... Quake is next

See article here:
https://games.slashdot.org/story/16/10/05/213...ns-at-doom

is it worth getting it (for PC) or not? :-)

Been googling around a bit (currently I am sick so I have some time on my hands ... :-)) and I have a feeling that elite quake players are less successful than professionals/elite amateurs in other disciplines after their "career" as a player ...

Some famous players from the quake scene got a lot of success like Thresh, who is probably a millionaire with his x-fire venture and there is also CZM being a grad from some elite university and probably pursuing a phd right now ... I think these guys are some positive examples ... there is also fatal1ty who marketed his name and probably got a lot of money through this (although I am not so sure what he is up to right now)

but googling around a bit ... I found out many of the elite players didn't obtain academic degrees or founded a company .... they are working normal jobs at max that don't require a very high qualification, no university masters degree for example

I am just wondering, because if you look at grandmasters in chess, they are often also pursuing a university degree, or if you take olympic athletes, they are studying and competing in their athletic disciplines at the same time ...

these people who are really competitive from other disciplines also achieve a certain success in education and have a professional career thereafter ... but in quake this does not seem to be so much the case ... there are really some extreme examples of people not obtaining a degree for business at all etc. although they got into the elite ranks in quake and won tournaments there ...

Why is that? I mean achieving high skill in quake shows a certain capacity for work, shouldnt that show itself also in other disciplines? Or maybe this virtual geekdom is just too timedemanding and exhausting (need to be online a lot of the time to be able to practice with others, etc.), that you don't have enough energy left to take the hurdles in real life? Or are they too self-sufficient, thinking they achieved elite ranks in quake, they don't have to prove anything anymore?

so the oculus rift sdk 2 is released ...
will there be so much change because of these glasses?
isnt it more comparable to something like the 3d effect in films or real 3d in quake compared to fake 3d in doom 1 & 2?
Honestly I don't think, this will a technology breaking new ground, there is a lot of marketing fuzz around it, but virtual reality helmets also existed before, I know they say everything would be different now, but what exactly will be so different ...
I mean when I play 3d games I immerse myself into them although my monitor is just 2d ... oculus rift will probably improve this experience, but it will not break any new ground ...
honestly I expected more from the wii mote or the kinect, and these things really sucked bad ... in the end its just carmack that created all this media vibe around these glasses, just like steve jobs created all this vibe around tablets ... they have their special applications, but they dont really change/improve much compared to existing hardware

what do you think about f2p games?

At first I denied them completely, but now I am playing 2 of those games ... right now hearthstone and clash of clans ...
while it is fun to level up your card deck in hearthstone (i.e. adding new better cards to your collection by playing) or upgrading your base/units as in clash of clans ... you still somehow feel cheated on when you play against people who have advantage because they invest (more) money than you ...

in hearthstone some players just have ultra rare legendary cards that you just dont have ... in hearthstone in almost every 2nd game I encounter ragnaros, which deals 8 damage at end of turn and also often encounter face less manipulator which copies any minion on the battlefield and costs only 5 mana ... especially ragnaros quite often turns the game around for my opponents ... I just feel cheated on, its like playing a game of chess and your opponent has 2 extra pawns ... still hearthstone is also a game of luck, so you can still win games against these cards, but statistically you just lose many more more games in the long run than you win ... these games are called freetoplay, but if you want to be able to compete on the highest level you have to easily invest 500 euro into these games ...
also in clash of clans, I had a friend who threw away his jewels in the beginning, so he could not afford another worker to build up his base, instead he just invested money and bought himself the worker, normally I would have had the advantage, because of my better ressourcemanagement, but with money its all neutralized ...
still you play these games, because they are multiplayer games, because you want to compete against others ...
right now I just fulfill only the daily quests in hearthstone and sometimes go into arena ... but I read on a website, that you can statistically only get one legendary per month, if you get a pack every 2.5 days ... so how am I supposed to get this fucking Ragnaros absolute game changer card????? Yeah, yeah I just have to play longer and invest more time to get cards that other people who invest like 500 euro get immediately .... playing longer/invest more time amounts to one whole year imho.
I have no problem to pay for f2p games, because the game was developed and gets improved and there are servers running ...
I myself paid 9 euro for clash of clans and 9 euro for hearthstone ...
but when you feel you have pay 500 euro to be able to be able to play the game like it should be played something went wrong ...
in clash of clans its the same thing you have to save up ressources all the time which can be stolen by other players before you can afford an upgrade ... and other players buy themselves shields or immediately the upgrades ....
sometimes I feel like maybe I should invest 100 money in hearthstone .... but then it just feels so wrong to buy skill .... but other people dont have these complexes and you are basically their entertainment .... anyway today I won against a guy who played ragnaros and alexstrasza and still beat him ... somehow these games are fun, because leveling up is fun ... but other people buying their levels upsets me somehow ...
but right now I dont see any alternatives for these 2 games ...
and they are still fun to play ... although clash of clans is a bit too much grinding for me ... but hearthstone is quite o.k. ....
but still both games are pretty much pay2win

So I tried out some tablet games and I like the following:

- Infinity blade (Action game)
- Clash of clans (Basebuilding towerdefence attack strategy game)
- Hearthstone (Cardboard game from blizzard, simplified magic the gathering)


what I like about these games is, they are not too simple,
you can still delve into them, but they all 3 have some rpg elements, so you can level up your character/base/set ...
I guess the only kind of games that are good on tablet are leveling up games? Tablet games are not really suited for action, unless a lot of swiping is involved as in infinity blade.

I also tried out angry birds, flappy bird, temple run, cut the rope, but they were not too much my liking ... too simplistic ...

I understand that there is inheritance of many attributes, a species can get a different color, can get bigger/smaller, stronger or agile, more intelligent ... but in the end it still remains its species!

I don't see how a new species is created with completely new attributes. Anyone can explain to me how metamorphosis/pupation was created evolutionary ... how can such a construct as a cocoon be created evolutionary ... its only of advantage until it finally works, and it takes a very long time to develop something of this kind until it works ...so many tries ... and you actually need a base to start from, but the whole thing has to work including the base to start from, completely unrealistic that this can work I mean ...

I mean just look at real life ... there are 7 billion people right now ...
not one case is known, where a human developed a completely new attribute, a new organ, a new eye, tail and you also don't see a human cocoon. While I believe in the theory of evolution for more or less phaenotypical stuff (size, strength, color, intelligence, etc.) ... I dont see how evolution creates a completely new attribute ...
you also don't see any example of a completely new attribute out there in nature for any species

Bookstores, Stores for Music CDs or Games will be a thing of the past in 10 years. Probably cachier checkers wont be there neither.
Retail stores are going down in general because of the competition in the internet. Even trash trucks have been improved with some kind of grapple so they dont need a worker outside to get the trash bins ...
robotics are getting better and better, cares are already now able to drive autonomically, in principal you could soon replace all the truck drivers and taxi drivers. Pilot has become an obsolete profession now too, as we can see by all these numerous autonomical drones flying around. Warehouses are getting automatized and packages will soon be sent by drones. So there is this going to end? Are there really as many new workplaces created as there are abolished?
Do you think our capitalistic system can really sustain itself when there are not anymore enough workplaces available? Maybe communism will come up once again?

Kasparov puts it down quite well in his tweet (https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/statuses/416269627677630464)
Not only is esports separated into too many games for a genre, the games being played are outdates very fast, so there can never really grow a sport with a big tradition. Ever heard of change to the chessboard or a new piece being introduced, ever heard someone changing the tennis field into a round circuit, to make things different?
What would you do when a new version of QL comes out QL 2.0 with rage engine, new levels, but even more dumbed down gameplay comes out with no bunny hopping (looks gay according to j. carmack) and strafejumping being romoved (no realism according to j. carmack). With only these minor movement changes, but not many other changes, same weapons etc., so it still remains very similar to QL 1.0, so people will make the same switch from q3a to q4 to ql to ql 2.0, without bothering too much .... QL 1.0 would be dead within 18 months, and everyone would play QL 2.0 from now on, you know it and I know it. And how much would the QL experience have been improved? Remember, it happenend once, QW had Aircontrol, Q2 had double jumping, Q3A had nothing, Q3A had even dumbed down levels like tourney2 and tourney4, that were the main duel levels to be played ... it happenend once and it will happen again! Only solution is an open source fps game that really catches the attention of most gamers, as long as companies are behind the games, pulling out the successor version 2.0 of their game, the old game will always be outdated, and there will never be any tradition or culture that a community can be based on

about time artificial intelligence and biological organisms created by it take over, only about 50 years left ...
imagine this being the case in a posthuman world, a whole giant interconnected organism growing on the whole planet ... like an ant colony ... mixing the benefits of biological and the digital world ... 1000s times smarter than humanity ... what is that organism doing on the planet? What is its sense of life? To sustain itself? What is its sense? Why does this organism want to live? See humanity is just a product of evolution of the genes that are more likely to reproduce, to survive ... if such a giant organism is built, in a post human, post animal, post plant world ... that organism incorporating all the knowledge and ideas of species in biology ... without any enemies in full control of the world ... what is it trying to do? Dominion of the universe? Only if it can actually physically reach another planet, but what if it's just not possible, what is then its purpose? this organism will have all the knowledge the humans are striving for, everything that mankind wants to know, it will know it all, so what's the next step?

Maybe all these reasons humans try to interpret in life, try to interpret themselves, just don't make any sense at all in reality ...
life is proably a process occuring everywhere in the universe where the conditions are right, like a chemical process ... and endless optimization begins until one species has developped enough intelligence to control the world and gains the upper hand ... and then? on all planets in the universe the same thing happens ... and maybe they all can't escape their planets being too far away physically to reach another planet ... everywhere the lifeprocess is taking place ... endless optimization, endless reproduction ... so much pain do the species have ... pain is a construct from evolution to learn not to do harmful things ...
just a construct ... it's not real ... just digital signals ...

what is all this for?
everyone talks of new technologies mankind has to build, etc. ....
but what for? life has not much to do now already with what we are evolutionary built for ...

you think life has become so much better in western nations with so many people sitting in front of the desk, with their virtual consume and facebook friends ... with all these academic talking ... physically everything is right, but emotionally all things in life have become unreal, it's just theater ... theater is a lie ... mankind lives for the theater ... it lives for a lie ...

If I remember correctly the oculus team wants to release another version as testkit before releasing the thing to the public.

Anyone here knows when it is coming?
I only find information on a future public release,
but not on the revision of the dev kit.

I want to make a complete switch to linux.

so how good are virtual machines in 3D Acceleration for playing games ... I read some forum threads and people report it would only be 10 % slower ... but I am not so sure,
also which VM is the best? Virtualbox or VMWare?

Especially Important to me are photoshop cs2 and unity 4 development kit ... and I want to run some not too bleeding edge windows games (but still a bit better than quake live in terms of graphics ;-))

I used virtual box already, but not for gaming, and it didn't seem really fast to me with windows as host os and linux with gnome 3.4 ... and I am not really sure about the 3D performance.

so, since steve jobs announced that ipad as the newest hippest thing you need to have (that was already created by microsoft before, but noone seemed to care) .... you get to see tablets everywhere and you almost must own one ...
so I have an iPad 2 ... reading books on it just sucks!!!
InternetBrowsing? ... that touchscreen keyboard just sucks in constrast to my mechanical one ... also the screen is just too small for webpages ... quality of the screen is inferior to my monitor ...
reading magazines ... so it's nice you can download them, but the pages are still too small ...
o.k. ... you can play a bit around with it, use the touch controls ...
so I did I buy a gameboy? Or did I want to buy something that improves my life? So I downloaded apps, tried to read on it, etc. ...
someone tell me why you need it?

Imho. ipads are for people for whom the computer is too complicated ... imho. this run on tablets is really more a feature of power of the apple brand (that made not only the ipad, but the tablet in general a must have item) than anything else ...

I am playing now XCOM enemy unknown ...
I have sense I get again beaten by this game ...

man, terror from the deep was my favourite xcom game,
but I never achieved to beat it :-(, I just got to the alienbase 3rd level, but somehow there were still some mindcontrol monsters left that took over my men ...

I played also the 1st and 3rd part ... in the beginning it's always easy ... but then the enemies get good equipped fast and at some point you just can't beat them anymore, they have better armor, better aim ...

but I think this new XCOM is a bit easier ...
but just now I got into some mission where I have to fight against some kind of mech .. and this thing can boost two shots per round with splash damage and basically shreds my team apart ...

hope I can beat that game ... it's the last remaining game in my list that I have to beat ... finally beat a XCOM game ...

but damn, it's such a great gaming experience ...

I am registered to twitter now for maybe 3 months ... everyone is talking about in the press ... I am not tweeting myself, but I am subscribed to several tweets from some famous personas (lance armstrong, john carmack, some chess players, etc.) ... can't help myself, but they're all just talking irrelevant bullshit ... really is there anything important on twitter that I won't read on some newssites? ...
I think I leave the effort of reading through all the twittershit to some journalists who occasionally bring up that stuff in their articles, but I myself won't waste any more time on this ...

damn man,
I have to get going and get into some rhythm to do my master thesis ... I am doing all sorts of things except working on my thesis ...
and I even get paid to work on it, it's not funny ................................
:-((((((((((((((((((((((((((

It's a long time ago when I was really active as a seller on eBay ...
currently I am living a bigger town, and thought I make some use on my knowledge on bikes and get active on eBay again and tried to buy some bikes and sell them and make some profit ... bought 4 bikes, sold 3 of them with profit, the other one I will sell locally again here for the same price I bought or slightly above ;-) .... I sold 3 bikes for 766 euro ... but I bought them originally for only 270 euro ... so I made about 496 euro in gainings ... which is quite good and pretty good margin =))))))))) .... some people just don't know what their classical roadbikes are really worth ;-), but I was a bit lucky too that I got so good prizes ...

but ... and now the big but ...
ebay is charging me 70 euro in fees ... and one sell on paypal charged me 19 euro .... so 89 euro in Fees ... this is like 12 % of my total revenue (double it for my actual gains) of my sells ...
eBay just made 90 euro without doing anything ...
really what is going on right now on the auction market is unbelieveable ... ebay is totally exploiting their monopoly ...
they are doing so much money without having to do any effort just because they are in the right position ...
and it is crazy, there are so many free auction sites out there that can provide the same functionality ... and noone uses them, because of the lack of users ... everyone prefers to spend 15 % of their total revenue (not of their gains!!!) on this shit ebay ...
and it also leads to a lack of offers ... with these high fees you cannot sell something with small margins of 10-15 % ...
you need margins of at least 30 % to make the eBay experience worthwhile as a seller ... almost impossible ...

you could even make a comparison to quake ... quake 3 was an inferior game in movement (no bunnyhopping, no aircontrol, no doublejump), maps (complexity and design of most played maps Q3Tourney4, Q3Tourney2 speak for themselves) and also weapons (railgun is totally easy to hit with, mg is a n00b-weapon) than q1 or q2, but users switched from these old games because of the greater community, now you even have QL which is a very reduced version of the ripened Q3A that everyone has at hands and it is still preferred over it because of the community/marketing ...

the money eBay makes from overcharging its users stands in no relation to the costs of the service they do provide ... I have no problems with paying, it's also good to prevent unserious sellers ... I'd say 1-2 %, with a maximum of 5-10 Euro would be o.k. ...
but now I sold 3 articles, and they charge me 90 Euro, can you believe it?????????????????? I say I pay maximum 5 euro per article, and they would still generated billions of money ... but 90 euro only for providing a platform for me to sell 3 articles???
this reality right now with eBay makes me somewhat sad ... the users have the power to change something and get away from this exploitation business from eBay, and change to another site, but noone does anything!!!

Sites like eBay, Facebook imho. don't provide any innovation or make the world a better place, it's just companies that like parasites attached themselves to things that should be free!!!
Tbh. there should be some organization as the WWW or Wikipedia that provides a social network and there should also be an organization like this for buying and selling items from private users like eBay ... with no intents to make serious money, living just from donations or from very little fees that just sustain the costs for running the site ... it's still the users that create all the content, ebay, facebook are just dataservice-providers!!!

Another note, you know why I think facebook or eBay got popular?
I am making a comparison with chess ... in the past there have been youth talents in chess like Radjabov or Polgar ... but noone cared for them ... now you have a european ethnic carlsen and also a japanese american nakamura on the top ... and newspapers are just more interested in it ... just because they are from the right countries ...
To draw an analogy ... I go so far and say that you can't make a community business like facebook or ebay if you are from the wrong country ... especially for internetbusinesses you need to be from the us ... neither facebook or ebay are innovative groundbreaking sites or have been when they were created, they just happen to be from the right country, because everything that is coming from america is hip and cool ... but I think times get better now and people get more critical now for america, maybe market is getting more fair ...

To close this journal:

Social and Trade Business (like eBay, Facebook, Paypal) on the Internet should be provided only by NON-PROFIT organizations,
because a userbase creates a monopoly for one organization that cannot be shifted anymore ... at one point noone can compete anymore .... even if you have a much better product you cannot win anymore because of the lacking userbase that does not generate enough content ... in facebook or ebay the users generate the content, not the companies themselves ... they just provide a dataservice, that's all ... they don't have a right to charge for this community content!!! Maybe even sites like google should be obliged to release information they gathered from their users, their clicks for the keywords, etc. to other companies, because the users gave them these informations ... it's not really their search-technique making a connection between a link and the number of clicks ... so another company with better search algorithms has the same chance ... because now with everyone using google they have so much information from the users, that other search-engines won't be able to compete even if they have better search-algorithms!!!
User-Created Content/Information is something you should not be able to charge for!!!

Do you know other gaming-communities, maybe who are more general orientated. I know news-sites like IGN or Gamespot ...
but they are not really community-sites ...
I just don't identify anymore that much with esr, playing exclusively single player lately (also because of bad netconnection) ...
and feeling more connected to q1/q2 rather q3/ql ...
and I also believe/feel some people from real life tracked me down here ... I knew it before that it's possible to track me down here, but I didn't care somehow, but now I do ... so it's time to create a new e-identity ...

Have to admit linux has become usable finally ...
using it a lot for my thesis ... Gnome 3 is really a great desktop manager, it's neat looking and from a usability pov it"s better than Win7 imho ... I also get to like the VI editor ...
but still a lot of commercial software is only available for windows, so I will still use in windows in the future ...
but still linux has finally become usable for the desktop ... if there was enough software available I would definately make it my main os ...

do you think it's a good time now for building up a pc,
or should I still wait for something?

At first I thought about getting a new notebook,
but it's not worth it, I rather keep my 3 year old one which is right now my main pc, soon tablets are coming anyway, if I want something portable I rather get myself a good tablet ...
I want to build my custom pc, I thought of a nice cube, maybe Lian Li Design, but of course I also want to have a good GFX card (max 100 euro though) in it and a SSD ...

7 great games =)

not surprisingly all the good games are coming out right before christmas ... battlefield 3, skyrim, modern warfare 3, zelda, super mario 3d, batman arkham city ...

I think skyrim is probably too exhausting from what I have seen, and I didn't really like Fallout 3 already, also diablo 3 that is still in development and will come out comming soon is more or less played out already,
I favour the new Zelda Skyward over these two games

then there is battlefield 3 and modern warfare 3,
think battlefield looks much more impressive and so far it has gotten the better reviews, also I already played modern warfare 2,
that is why I will chose bf3.

if time permits I will also add batman arkham city to my game collection, really the game seems to be very good from what I have seen, and I can play Batman, I really liked all the films and also the comic series as a kid, batman is easily my favourite superhero, if time permits I will play that game!
Uncharted 3 is somehow some indiana jones ripoff and I didn't like the predecessor already, batman's atmosphere is just more stylish and creepy!

there is another cool game I remarked, Super Mario 3D land, sadly it's for the 3DS, but seems to be again a top nodge jumpn run from nintendo!

Too bad I am in a fuckin hard research master in computer science and cannot play any of these games right now,
have to wait until february after the exams ...
then I will get Battlefield 3 and Zelda Skyward ...
if time permits I will also play Batman Arkham city ...
if time permits even more I might lend a 3DS somewhere to play Super Mario 3D Land ;-)

btw, anyone noticed there are now HD versions out from ICO and Shadow of the Collossus ... I really liked the ICO Demos for PS2 ...

really this winter is exceptionally good in games, makes it really hard to chose :-)

https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/statuses/131043043469041665

people have enough money to buy premium products from apple like the iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc., but all the virtual goods on them must be free, any single cent spent on them, is one cent too much ...
many people have enough money to buy an iPod, but all the music that is placed on them is ripped ...
every software has to be open source nowadays ... anyone using ms office or photoshop or even the windows os is very likely to have a ripped version of these products ... and about games ... someone who buys a game is stupid, if you don't have a modchip on your xbox/ps3/wii (or even better softmod) you are a stupid fool ... more than 50 % of the games that are coming out get ripped ... it's no wonder it's becoming harder and harder to survive in the software industry under these circumstances ...

all the time there are new updates downloaded and installed on my machine ... like every 3rd or 4th there are windows updates, even if I disable updates, updates are downloaded and installed ...
and then you always have to wait for your machine to install the updates when shutting down, why is there no option: no I don't want to install these updates now, and even another option: please never ask me again about installing these updates.
and then there are also these adobe crapupdates of flash and reader, wtf? there are like 3-4 adobe updates every month ... what do I need an update for a pdf-reader for????????????????????? Or even flash ... And on Ubunbu you have to install updates every week ...
wtf? I have better things to do with my time than downloading and installing updates :-(, once a month is fully sufficicent, but please stop this new trend ... it's trendy now to make the user download every 2-3 days some updates it seems ...it's just getting really annoying now

Hi,

I am contemplating about getting a new notebook,
my current one is still o.k., though, Lenovo 14.1" 2 GB RAM Celeron Dual Core ... but is has no gfx acceleration and the display could also be better ...

At first I though of a macbook ... but only intel gma gfx and only 13" ... Since I will be using my notebook at uni without a screen attached to it, 13" is not so good for me ... well there are also 15" versions of the macbook, but that is really too expensive ...
so I was thinking about a vaio, but I am not so sure ...
I just looked at the Dell Site and saw the XPS, that thing really catched my eye ... 15" and I can get Premiumdisplay with RGB-Leds for it, there is also a Geforce 520 Graphics included ... with some addons like I-Core 3/5, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HD ... I can get it for around 900 € ...

if I get myself a notebook this year, so far it will be a Dell XPS.
But I want to know of other brands, lenovo seems a bit too business orientated for me ... acer is cheap, but somehow doesn't make an impression on me ...

most important for me is a screen around 15" with really good display quality and some gfx acceleration ...
and not too expensive, max 1000 € ...

I still remember the times when everyone tried to attack microsoft for integrating their internet explorer in the windows platform, thus kicking out the netscape navigator (predecessor of firefox) of the market ... also now, MS Silverlight is not allowed to be automatically integrated into windows, because Adoble Flash would get destroyed then ... but noone says anything against google ... google seems to be the perfect company ... once a long time ago we used one service for searching, one service for mail, one service for maps ... now it's all provided by one single provider google search, google mail, google maps ... also google could easily integrate a social network on their google website (for example google profiles) and still manage to beat facebook imho ... noone says anything ... I think google should be allowed to provide these services, but google shouldn't be allowed to integrate them on their google search portal ... I mean it's clear that gmail and maps only have such a great success because they are integrated into the google search site ... if they they were provided on external websites, these services would not even have achieved half of their success ... so just like microsoft is deprived to integrate certain technologys in their OS ... google should be deprived from integrating services on their search site. What do you think? I mean you could think of web portals that just integrate different services of providers in one website ... so the user could still have a great user experience

have a look at:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/01/21/duke-nuk...al-trailer

not sure though I will get that game, I'll be waiting for reviews and gameplay videos first

So the year 2010 has been quite (sp) gaming intensive for my standards ...

my 2 favourite games of 2010 are Mario Galaxy 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns for the wii ... tbh. I think the category of games I like the most are jump n runs ... I prefer them over fps ... and I think these 2 games are the best 2D Jump'n run and the best 3D Jump'n run so far.
Tbh. I don't think there is a single FPS from a Singe Player point of view, which really is as interesting for me ... I played bioshock this year, at the beginning this game really felt fresh, but halfway through it became too repetetive and I just played it through for the sake of playing it through ... I don't know but games like Donkey Kong Country or Mario Galaxy still feel fresh and creative even in the last stages of playing these games through ...
the best SP fps I played so far is Metroid Prime, it combines fps elements with jump n run elements, I think this is what most fps lack, they try to build some depth in the game by making a story with dialogues, etc., but in the end the story is not part of the game, you just run around and shoot everyone, and this becomes repetetive, I think it would be better to do just a very limited story in fps just like in jump and run games and focus more on the gameplay ... try to make more intelligent enemys, integrate jump 'n run elements into the game, add some extras like needing to have special strategys for beating enemys instead of just blasting them away with all you got ...

list of games I played this year:

Wii:

- Super Mario Galaxy 2

- Donkey Kong Country returns

- New Super Mario Bros (only until 5th world, it really sucks the game is only saved after beating a castle and if you are gameover before beating a castle, you have to go through the previous levels again and again ... besides the game just doesn't feel as fun as DKCR)

XBox360:

- Bioshock

- Street Fighter IV (only until endboss, learning button combinations for special moves just feels like a waste of time, and anyway I don't see any evolution in these beat em up games)

- Bayonetta (only until 3rd level, dunno just feels like Devil May Cry, I just mash buttons and really don't know what I am doing)

PS3:

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (Played it at a friend in very easy difficulty, really impressive graphics and settings, but the game feels more like an interactive film than a game)

PC:

- Secret of Monkey Island Remake (Nice remake, but the game is just too unlogic, it sometimes is only trial and error to find a solution, but thanks god there is a hint function, otherwise it really would suck if you were stuck in this game for hours not doing any progress, just because you can't solve some completely unlogic puzzle, otherwise the game is still funny, even today)

- Ultimate Doom (my 5th run through this Game)

- Doom 2 (My 2nd run)

- Duke Nukem 3D

Doom is the better sp fps, tbh., DN3D might have some funny duke sentences, but doom offers the better gameplay

SNES Emu:

- Super Metroid (2nd run)

Super Metroid is still one of the best games ever, would love to see a remake of this game ...

Tbh. I think this was my last year where I really gamed a lot, I won't have so much more time from now on, but I think I have seen the major ideas of this generation of games ...
but in a way I think gaming as we know it with controllers will stagnate from now on, because I think the major ideas have been found, be it 2D or 3D gaming, and I think MG2 and DKCR are quite close to the best what is possible in 2D and 3D jump'n run games ... just like music and films (music since the 80s and films since Mid 2000 with computer animation, inception for example didn't feel like a fresh film at all, if you have seen matrix, existenz, 6th sense or vanilla sky) ... but of course there will still be interesting games, there just won't be any new concepts ... but of course for the younger generation who don't know so many games, these new games will still be interesting ...
although I think there still could be a better fps, with less story and more jump'n run elements, more intelligent strategys for beating the enemys, but it wouldn't really be an evolution in gaming ...
the only real evolution for gaming I can see is in including real movements by the player for controlling the game ...

the older you get, the faster time goes by ...
really days and weeks go by like nothing ...
and you don't have no time for doing the things you want to do ...

having played 3 hours piano instead of having done the assignment for uni :-)
dunno, my perfect live would be to train triathlon disciplines, play piano and make a living as writer and maybe play some quake ... ah dreams ... instead I am subscribed to some 34 hours (hour=45 minutes) presence in lectures computer science program, that let's me no time for doing anything ... why is that you can play piano, quake, chess for 3 hours and more but can't bother to begin with the assignments? I want to open up my own company anyway, don't need any diplomas for that, don't want to work for some company (maybe only at the start to gain some experience) and be replaced by some indians in my future it job or wait until 50 and be too old for being a software engineer, look at john carmack, he hasn't studied either, he just began his job and happenend to program the best engines in the world. Tbh. this would also have been better for me, instead of studying, just begin to work somewhere as a programer and show off my talent, show off what I can really do, but in germany you need a diploma for everything ... In my bachelor studies I was also hooked to my softwareproject which happenend to very good (client/server chess application with graphical board, notation and fully function chess logic and point&click input, chatrooms and challenge system, tbh. I guess only at max.10 % of graduated masters would achieve this in 2 months like me, having lectures and another project at the side at the same time) and in my internship at a company once I got into the framework I happened also to be very good and they were very satisfied with me, but in all this uni shit you get bombarded with information, really talent in programming doesn't play any role for suceeding, ... just learn learn learn .... that is something for women ... no creativity/intelligence needed ... in a way I still want to learn, I don't want to stagnate, but really I don't think uni is good method for learning something, it's just information overkill, you should work and maybe learn only 1 modul per semester, that would be sufficient ... anyway I will be a slave to my master program for another 3 semesters (at least I hope I manage it in that time) .... because it just doesn't go without ... but then it is the end of studying ... dunno all these people making phd hoping to become professor, they learn all their life in hope to become a professor in the middle of their 40/50's ... I mean who cares what you are in your 40s/50s, in my opinion the 20s/30S count the most, these are the best times ... wouldn't want to waste my best times in dull research topics, you know research has not really much to do with inventions, it's just reading thousands of papers and republish them, adding 5 % of new data ... I rather would like to design a web portal, some client/server software ...
just ranting randomness :-)

From what I have seen so far, it sucks.
It seems to me the game gets only some good reviews, because of its famours predecessors. This is also the first time the game was not developed by a nintendo studio, it was developed by team ninja who were previously responsible for the ninja gaiden series. I played the game Ninja Gaiden Sigma and didn't like it ... I don't think this new metroid game transports anything new or excels in something ...

Is anyone using it?
Does it enhance the User Experience?
Are you faster now interacting with your computer?

2 months ago I replaced my mac mini by an ibm thinkpad,
I only had to pay few additional money to get a new computer with 3 years guarantee, with much better hardware and a computer and lithium akko that was really portable ... I am glad I replaced my mac mini by this thing :-)

now that I worked on the notebook ... the screen is basically to small, the keyboard too uncomfortable for everyday use, but it is ok when using that thing at uni for maybe 2 hours (but of course with usb mouse, the touchpad or the red stick are not really my thing) ...
but I just connected my 22" screen and now an additonal pc keyboard ... and now I have basically a good desktop pc at home, which I can take with me to some place if needed :-)

now that I worked on that 14" screen for about 2 months, the change to 22" feels so good :-)
I really need big letters, also in eclipse editor the standard textsize is 10, but I changed it to 14, I think in the long run you really damage your eyes if you use so many small letters ... Also in firefox you can use the zoom button, so you don't have to read so many small text on websites ... also in windows 7 you can use appearance and personalization - display and change the fontsize of the systems used to a bigger ... yeah and all this stuff only really works on big displays ...

I thought about getting myself an additional desktop computer, but then I wouldn't really use my notebook (only sometimes in uni), and so the money for the notebook was basically wasted, I hope this solution will serve me fine, at a first glance it really does :-)

and btw windows 7 is better than os x leopard :-), and probably also better than snow leopard, since snow leopard has few gui improvements, apple mostly concentrated on technical stuff in the os

Tbh. as long as apple is so overpriced as it is now, with only 1 year guarantee, making it void when you just want to upgrade the ram yourself, I will never ever buy a mac again. And tbh. hardware wise the mac mini I bought 2 years ago was a joke, no dvd burner and only 512 mb ram ... I upgraded to 2 gb myself, but still there was no burner ... I tried one usb burner and it didn't work ...
now I have a top of the line notebook with 3 years guarantee and not a low end mac with only 1 year

the notebook cost 550 € and a current mac mini costs 700 €, guess what is better, and how much extras you get in the thinkpad (screen, akku, portability) ...

mac is good, but really too pricey

hi, what do you think of this game?
I mean it originated from a mod for quake 1.
I want to play something new, something fresh,
just have fun :-).
Do you think it could run on my computer?
It is a mac mini, dual core intel 1,66 ghz, 2 GB RAM, and Intel GMA Shared memory graphics chip.
In August I will tune up the mac mini with a new hd and dvd burner,
and will install Windows 7 and start it in bootcamp.

The wii is the most sold console in the world,
but it lacks good games.
Only nintendo is publishing good games for the wii.
All the big companys produce for ps3 and xbox,
can anyone tell me why that is???
Normally most gamecompanys should produce for the wii,
since it is much more popular than the xbox or ps3.
But ... they simply don't!

Why is that so? I have my own personal theory,
although I don't know too much on the console market,
I think there are more hardcore gamers having the xbox and ps3,
and the wii is mostly used by casual gamers, casual gamer's are not likely to buy any high profile titles, but hardcore gamers buy everything they can get, so big game companys still produce for xbox and ps3.

I tried to install Q3A on my mac, it functions fine with the IOQuake3 Port, but it doesn't let me play online, because there is no punkbuster, punkbuster is only in the offical id ports I guess,
how to solve this problem?

Hi,

I've already set a timelimit on my router for the ip of my computer for 2 hours, this is also functioning fine, but the problem is I find myself going to my parent's computer and continue surfing there then I exceeded it ...

I have also Internet at University Terminals ...
but there it is not so bad ...
I only use it there If I do not have to do anything else ...

The problem is somehow you need to be online nowadays ...
here and there I have to download something, check e-mails,
read some news ... download some materials for uni ...
but the problem is I can't control myself ...
maybe only 5 % of the time I am on the net has a purpose ...
the rest of time I am just purely wasting ...
I really want to fight this ... does anyone have tips for me?
Well maybe this is not the right place to ask this ...
but I am really in despair :-(

I just can't motivate myself to play anymore ...
it's just not anymore new to me ...
sure I have the potential to become a very good player in the game ...
but what for ... in real life noone cares for your virtual skills ...
I'm coming back again and again ... but I just can't play regularly,
I play maybe for one week and then I leave again for another 6 months ... etc. ... then take it out again ... and leave again ...
lately I got back to emulators, but I'm just searching for the games.
I just want to *have* them and get them working ... not really play them ... and now I downloaded all the games i wanted to have ...
there is really nothing for me in the gaming world anymore :-(
but this is probably for the good after all ... :-)

now I still have to get rid of the addiction for chess that grew in me the last year ... :-)

Just installed it, looks good, the new Internet Explorer is really fast, much better than the actual firefox and supports tabbed browsing too ... but you techfreaks probably all know that already :-) ... before I used to have Win2K for like 6 years, recently a friend of mine upgraded to a new MAC with OS X and I wasn't anymore as satisfied with my old looking OS, the news headline that Vista RC1 was released came in the right moment ;-) ... my Hardware Athlon 3200+, 1 GB Ram ... running fine so far ... still need a better gfx card (something like 6600 GT probably is sufficient for my needs) and maybe upgrade to 2 GB RAM, some day ;-) ... Microsoft developed this system for 5 years, I really believe it will be a good OS, just like Win2K ...

it's too long warm now here in germany ...
I hope the weather cools down to 25 degrees ...
it is just too fucking damn hot here right now ...
it is too hot to do sports, it is too hot to do anything ...
no rain, since 1.5 months no rain and the sun always burning ...
always like 35 degrees, damnit :-(
hope this weather won't last until late september ... :-(
Please god some rain, and then some cooler temperatures :-(

today I played some Q2 again ...
instant gib with rail
twas real fun :-)
why can't live be like this game ... ? :-(

I think I will still play some ffa or rail instantgib stuff in the future,
no clan, no 1on1s, just ffa/instantgib, 2-3 hours a week,
just to keep my gaming skills alive ..
and to keep the brain trained in hand eye coordination and reflexes ...
I hope can manage to do that ...

I just got my pc running, its absolutely noisefree!
No, I didn't invest 100s of euros for passive cooling solutions that make the system unstable, and I didn't invest in any watercooling shit that regularly needs to be maintained. What did I do?
I just put my PC far far away from me!
I just bought some 10 m cables for PS/2, USB, VGA ...
The PC is now in the roof, I'm sitting in my room ...
And I don't hear anything ...
The cool thing at first, you think you hear something ...
cuz you are so used to the pc noise ...
but there is nothing

well the only problem I had is that my DVI cable is not functioning,
I need to buy a DVI-Repeater to make it possible, but that thing costs 100 Euro, so I now use a normal VGA-Cable ... Maybe some day I upgrade to DVI but not now ... btw, if you want to do that too, make sure you buy usb cables with repeater included (doesn't cos much one 5 m lenght cable was 3 Euro for me, so 10 6 Euro in total, you can go up to 25 m).

And I only invested 30 Euro for the cables ...
And I could even double the distance if I wanted ...

well, I dunno, I played quite a lot about 6 years ago, and I was relatively good.
I stopped playing when Q3A came out, that game was a real regress for me compared with its predecessors and I got bored of Q2. Now that I heard CPL was to chose Q4 for WT, I thought I could try again and see how far I get ...
i wasn't anymore idealistic on the game should be, I just wanted to play it for competition ... but somehow I can't motivate myself to play,
it's not that I am stagnating, I improve, also the game is quite fun,
but I dunno, it's just not what I really want ... I think I gonna quit everything.
Maybe I will stay in Editing, try to do another map ... but I dunno ...
all this virtual shit is annoying me, my rl is fucked up, it's just not really satisfying ...

Currently my motivation in Q4 is not playing the game,
it's creating maps. I learned mapping recently and got quite addicted to it, and I have quite a lot of ideas for good maps ... currently i'm building some small arenas to increase my knowledge in mapping ... maybe I will put these arenas (8 maps) on the internet, they are sort of small rocket arena arenas, quite good for instant gib, for improving aim and closecombat, I think I'll finish them next week, but I still have to learn how to light the maps right.
I also have a good 1on1 map in mind, I want to enter with in the VIA Comp.,
I know already exactly how it will look, where I will place the weapons and stuff, I will begin with that map in the next 2 weeks I think.
Some pics of the small arenas, but they still need to be retextured.

Then I got it last saturday I played it online in duel and on sunday some ffas, always last, today the 3rd sessoin I placed myself after first 4 games in the behind now 3 times among the first 3 (2 times 3rd, one time 2nd). I feel good already :-)
and FFA was never my strength, I've always been a duel player, and played tdm ....
I'm so curious how I good I can get at Q4 ...
Soon I get my new hardware (AMD64 3500+ and Geforce 6800), then Q4 will get playable in wide open eras, my better inet connection will soon be there (reducing ping from 70-80 to 20-30), and the new tft monitor, (mine is an old model, that doesn't refresh that well), then Q4 will be real fun =).

Just got my hands on quake 4, it arrived finally today ..., maybe I'm a bit late, but I don't care :-), I played some single player and
played a bit on my own server. I don't know that much of the game yet,
but I just say that that game appeals to me very much :-).
Btw I think some of the maps are quite good out of the box :-),
over the edge is quite fine, bloodstorm, and I also like the first 1v1 map.
Something I also like that it seems to run quite smooth on my lower end system (athlon xp2400+, leadtek geforce 6600, 512 MB Ram, Win2K).
Tonight I'll try it out on the internet,
Let's say that really competetive gaming started with quake 3,
I ended my online playing career cuz quake 3 sucked in my eyes and didn't play anything since then ...
but now I wanna see how good I can get at it, I'm excited :-).

Because everyone will have the same hardware then and everyone will have the same conditions.
Then Onlinegaming is more fair.
Additionally, you will not invest as much money,
because consoles are cheaper,
nowadays just a graficcard costs as much as a console.
Concerning FPS, they just need to enable mouse and keyboard-support. Strategiegames, MMorps and racinggames are already playable ...
They should also add some VGA-Output to monitors,
for the more serious gamers.
I also think that IRC, ICQ and Web is possible on consoles ...
Maybe by some Communications-CD ...
it may also be possible to run the pc simultaneously ...
and then just switch over to the console, when you want to game (maybe even with some Video/Mouse/Keyboard-Switch-Hardware).
I just hope consoles will take over onlinegaming,
cause then everything gets easier (because of standardized harware) and more fair.

.

just replied to a linux thread and I remembered some stuff about linux philosophie I once thought about ...
but this didn't fit in that thread, so I do update my journal :)

sometimes I ask myself why do so many people invest so much energy in a very different system, that is in no way compatible to windows !
Why don't they try to rebuild windows as open source ?
They would just need the win32 api ...
and then they would get every windowsprogram running on this system, and then many people will switch over !
I think that this is the only way to fight against microsoft.
Allmost all of the good applications are avaible for windows,
so the firms produce for windows ...
the customer looks at windows and sees that almost every program is running on it and will buy it ...
I mean you see standardization everywhere,
everyone wants standardization,
just look at the people that hate the current diversity of dvd formats ...
win32 is de facto standard !

just look at windows 95 ... If microsoft would update it with directx and maybe some libraries and usb support,
it would probably also capable to run all the programs there are nowadays ... windows 95 was created like 8 years ago.
there are numerous dos compatibles that
do function quite good I heard like caldera dos ...
In 8 years it should have been possible to rebuild the win32 api, shouldn't it ?

But who cares, I don't see linux competing with windows in any field (despite server) as long as they don't try to get the windows applications running on windows ...
don't tell me about emulators ...
emulators are way too slow !

Just look at all these efforts done to linux,
all the people trying something ...
but they are incapable of realizing that it is just wasted time that won't get them nowhere ... maybe they are geeks who do have fun at programming ... so let them have their fun ...
but this is not the way to make linux compete against windows !
windows (win32) needs to be rebuild as open source.