Sierra Kilo

On the heels of the KOTOR Online rumor comes the World of Starcraft rumor. This is an unlikely option, though, for a couple of reasons. First, Blizzard wouldn’t want to lose WoW subscribers. Why compete with yourself? Second, Sci-Fi MMOs just never seem to own the market. They’re difficult to get right because of the combat mechanics. Third, to do Starcraft justice, they would need to add vehicles. So far, vehicles have yet to be implemented correctly in an MMO. It’s more likely that they’ll do a Starcraft 2 RTS or even another WoW expansion. I used to enjoy RTS games, but they’re the most fun (as with most games I play) when you’re playing with friends. Is there still a market for RTS games? How is C&C3 doing? How would RTS games play on a console such as the XBox 360? Guess I’ll have to download the C&C3 demo to find out.

The newest project on my list is organizing my electronics. Laura’s got a ton of wires on her side of the bed that always results in a tangled mess. We’re running out of outlets because they’re either stuck behind furniture or taken up by a charger of some kind. So, I want to make a couple of boxes with a built-in power strip that’ll house all of the power bricks, the wires, and the gadgets. I’ll need one for Laura’s stuff, one for my stuff, and I’d like to make one for our external hard drives and one for the routers and cable modem. Not sure of the best approach, though. At first, I was thinking a stained wooden box with a hinged lid. That would look very nice, but what about the heat from the drives and routers? That might work well for our small gadgets, though. I might make a trip to the Container Store this weekend to find some cable organization supplies and hit up the CompUSA liquidation for some power strips.

http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/Rumor_Alert_New_KOTOR_MMO_In_The_Works_105305.asp

This would be excellent news, if true. BioWare Austin could take the fresh-yet-relevant-to-the-original-license KOTOR setting and go just about wherever it wanted. That makes perfect sense as an MMORPG. There are more Jedi available, there are more Sith available, you’ve got the Mandalorians, and you’ve got more freedom within the setting.

How would that work with Sony Online’s Star Wars Galaxies, though? I’m sure SOE would be pretty upset if LucasArts yanked it away from them (or would they?). Maybe nobody would miss SWG.

I, for one, loved the old (pre-combat update) SWG. The avatar customization was the best there has ever been (on par with Oblivion, and that’s a solo RPG). Even the skill tree system was fun. Until everyone started racing to be a Jedi, it was pretty fun.

If this is true, it might actually get me to play MMORPGs again. I know BioWare Austin snatched up a few ex-SWG people, so maybe it’s true. Maybe Damion will drop a few hints someday.

Microsoft filed a patent for a new interface. Gizmodo is questioning whether it may be for the “Zune phone”. I’m questioning why this hasn’t made its way to desktops yet.

It looks like the application icons might be “live”, meaning they give live application information without showing the full interface. So basically, the icon is like a widget. The icon for the calendar application, for example, could show the current date (like on Mac) and, perhaps, the time. The icon for a news reader could show the number of new headlines. Another example of how this could work is when you receive a call, the caller’s picture and/or number could replace the default “phone” application icon.

I downloaded a script for iTunes that replaces the Dock icon with the album art. This, combined with a GeekTool script that shows the track info, keeps me from having to switch to the window to check the song. This is much better than flipping over to a Dashboard widget because I get “live” information without being forced into the main interface. When you minimize applications in Mac, it shows a small thumbnail of the window in the dock along with an overlay of the application’s icon, which is excellent for multitasking.

Raph mentioned a podcast related to MUSHes (multi-user shared hallucination - a text-based game like MUDs). I subscribed to it in iTunes. It’s actually pretty cool. Check it out if it interests you.

The new BMW Concept CS looks pretty sweet. It’s like a sedan version of the 6-series. The interior is a bit sparse, though.

Rush has a new album coming out next week. Linkin Park has a new album next month. And, Nine Inch Nails’ new album sounds very interesting, too. I’m planning on heading to Best Buy with some birthday gift cards this weekend to start getting some new music to add to the collection. For those who have not experienced My Chemical Romance’s new album, “Black Parade”, I highly recommend it. If you’re a fan of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” you will probably get a kick out of it.

I just watched the latest trailer for Live Free or Die Hard. It looks to be the best Die Hard yet. Not sure how well Timothy Olyphant fits as an evil mastermind, but Justin “I’m a Mac” Long does pretty well as a sidekick. The saying-what-just-happened thing might get a little old: McClane hits a car with a semi, sidekick says “Did you just see that?” to McClane. Hmm. But action looks great and Bruce Willis is definitely in his element. I might actually have to go to the theater a couple of times this summer instead of waiting on Netflix. Transformers is looking good, too (although not true to the nostalgia).

Gizmodo has a post where Jack “Guns don’t kill people, video games kill people” Thompson is blaming Bill Gates for the VT shootings:

Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill.

So, because roads were built by the Department of Transportation, they’re “potentially legally liable” for all traffic accidents. After all, if it weren’t for the roads being conducive to driving, nobody would drive around, and therefore no traffic accidents would occur. It’s not the self-centered yahoo in the brand new Corvette that’s the problem, right? After all, if it weren’t for the roads, he wouldn’t know the thrill of driving. It’s not the drunk in the pickup, right? After all, if it weren’t for the roads, he wouldn’t be driving home from the bar, he’d be walking a beaten dirt path.

As much as I hate to give this idiot what little publicity my site provides, I had to comment on it. If you are eating what he is shoveling, please take a second and reconsider the source of what’s on your spoon.

I just stumbled on this project. It looks like it has a lot of the features I’d like to see in a web-based MMORPG (er…PBBG?). I’ve signed up to test it, so we’ll see how that goes.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles: This sounds like it would make an excellent series. I only have a few comments on it. First, what’s up with taking a license and “going Smallville” with it? (By that, I mean, take a good license and do a prequel TV series with “hot” young actors and try to fill in backstory while wrecklessly risking the continuity: see BSG Caprica, Flash Gordon, possibly the Star Wars TV series, etc) Second, why place it between T2 and T3? When I first saw the headline, I thought: Sweet, we get to find out about her time in Mexico and how she got put in the nuthouse! Instead, we get to watch John Connor be a high school troublemaker with a possible Terminator love interest.

Make Your Own TV Pilot: XBox Live is having a contest where you could win your own short TV series. You create a 5-15 minute comedy pilot and submit it to Microsoft. I have a secret desire to write a script. I’ve even thought about buying some software for it (Montage). I actually had an idea pop into my head recently about doing a series of shorts about a normal guy who gets caught up in some international conspiracy and recruited by the CIA. I kept thinking about the movie “Gotcha” that was based on the paintball guns.

My new work PC should be arriving sometime today. It’s a Dell 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM. We contemplated getting the AMD 64-bit dual core 2.4GHz, but it’s fairly old (2 years), comparatively. It comes preloaded with FreeDOS (since we’ll use our MSDN versions of XP)!

This is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, my current PC is at least 4 years old (P4 1.6GHz) and starting to show its age. Plus, just recently, I’ve been having troubles authenticating on the domain, which I think might be caused by a faulty NIC or the all-too-common Windows bug. The extra RAM will help speed things up a bit, plus I’ll keep the old girl around for a test lab machine.

On the other hand, it’ll take a good day or two to get everything installed and configured. That’s always a beating, especially with all of the Windows updates. Plus, a coworker is also getting a new box, so we’ll be competing for some disks and bandwidth. I’ll let him do his first, though, because Celebrian (my Mac) and I work so well together, I’m in no hurry

I might build a new Parallels virtual image at the same time. Virtualizing the Boot Camp partition is great and all, but it uses dedicated disk space (30GB). With a virtual image, disk space would be dynamic. I thought I would need to go native into Windows at some point, but I was mistaken. Parallels has done its duty well.

I wasn’t going to bring any Apple news up, but here are some tidbits…

OS X Leopard (v10.5) is delayed until October “thanks to the iPhone.” Or, maybe they are just using the iPhone as a cover story to justify spending more time fixing bugs? In either case, more time is a good thing. It’ll allow the final product to be more stable (although that wasn’t really the case with Vista, was it?). Plus, I’ll feel better knowing my MacBook Pro purchase wasn’t premature. I still think that the “Leopard” moniker means there’s a big surprise in store. A leopard never changes it’s spots, but what if this one did? Could they be secretly building native Windows compatibility into the OS? Doubtful, but there’s still that faint chance.

iTunes with a subscription service? $20/month all you can eat audio and video? Normally, I’m not big on renting music, but I could probably trim $20 off my cable bill if I was able to download shows from iTunes for the same price.

Bethesda is next in line for the Fallout license.

I wonder if that license is like musical chairs or Russian Roulette? Hopefully, Bethesda will make something good from it. Sure, an MMO would be nice. An Oblivion-like RPG would be nice, too. I think, though, that the license has almost become the bastard child of the industry. Is there too much baggage, or is the bar set to high?