Blogtown, PDX

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

News Late Morning News!

Posted by The Unpaid Intern on Wed, Aug 15 at 10:03 AM

It’s a good day when my belief in professional sports can be destroyed even more.

1. NBA REFEREE GUILTY OF GAMBLING ON GAMES

I remember when I was watching the Bulls in a playoff against the Magic in… 95, was it? Anyway, the Magic were still a hard physical team back then when they still had the Shaq Attack. Chalk this up to me being a Chicago fan, but I always felt there was a conspiracy against the Bulls in these games. I paranoidly believed that the NBA didn’t want to let the Bulls get another championship—which I believed they would get with MJ back. I kept believing that the Magic were fouling Bulls players and not getting called on it. Especially when Shaq was near the basket. The Bulls, as most of you may well know, lost. The Magic went on to the finals, where the Rockets (then with Hakeem Olajuwon) toasted Orlando.

What’s my point? Well, learning that a NBA ref cheated justifies the sort of paranoid fantasy I had during that playoff series. It drags the NBA’s rep into the mud and kicks it in the groin. Cause if this guy was doing it… how many more are?

2. OH, AND RESCUERS ARE STILL SEARCHING FOR SURVIVORS OF A BOMBING THAT KILLED 200 PEOPLE IN IRAQ

Did I mention the 2008 election was coming up? Can you read in-between the lines here?

3. HOMEGROWN TERROR GROUPS UNRELATED TO AL-QAEDA ON THE RISE

Another fun ramification of the War on Iraq! Did I mention that the 2008 election was coming up? I did? Oh. You better GO VOTE THEN shouldn’t you?

4. VIRTUAL PEOPLE JUMPING OUT OF WINDOWS!

Apparently Second Life, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game or MMORPG for short, suffered a virtual financial system crash. Bizarrely, the virtual money does have real monetary value due to circumstances I’m not going to devote any page space to here. (I’ll just say Ebay et al. and you can probably figure it out.)

Does anyone play Second Life here? Anyone? For all the news focused on it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a single player. Please leave a comment talking about this incident if you do!

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Comments

favorite quote from a news story this week on the subject of "homegrown terrorists":

Individually, "they don't have the courage to do it, but collectively they do," said Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer and psychiatrist who is credited with articulating the "bunch of guys" concept. Sageman consults law enforcement agencies worldwide on how to identify the groups.

WOW! This guy built a career on the "bunch of guys" concept. How come nobody wants to fly me around the world and pay me money for my "bunch of fucking idiots" concept?

Posted by rico | August 15, 2007 12:02 PM

Because you didn't kiss enough ass at Yale.

Posted by The Unpaid Intern | August 15, 2007 12:43 PM

I actually tried to do the Second Life thing, especially because there are weird fashion happenings on it, and it sounded like it might potentially be fun. I got as far as choosing a name, which is interesting, because there are so many dang people on it that only the really bizarre ones are left. So I'm, like, "Zich Ulch" or something. But when I tried to do anything more, the program totally froze my computer. Twice. So I figured it was just as well. I don't even have time to stay on top of my email as it is.

Posted by Marjorie Skinner | August 15, 2007 3:54 PM

NERD THREAT LEVEL ELEVATED

Just a guess, but it's probably graphics card related. Many games these day require dedicated 3-D graphics cards to run. If you're using any Intel Mac that doesn't have the word "Pro" in its title, chances are you're using the hated Intel integrated graphics chipset (Intel GMA 900/950/etc). The low power (due to shared memory) and lack of software support tends to prevent you from running any non-children commercial video game.

The use of IBM/Motorola Power PCs (G3/G4/G5) in personal computers (Powerbooks, iMacs, etc.) was very small compared to sales of PPCs for use in consumer products (cars, for example), so there was little reason to create a motherboard with an integrated graphics chipset in-house. For Apple, the only cost-effective option was to let ATI and nVidia handle the integrated graphics work. Therefore, some old Power PC Macs will actually run 3-D games better than the Intel ones simply because they generally use the commonly supported GeForce/Radeon chipsets.

Intel, unlike Apple, could make an integrated graphics chipset because x86 (Pentium, Centrino, Core Duos) cpus are generally sold for computing use rather than embedded use. So when Apple switched over to Intel, the work no longer needed to be farmed out to ATI and nVidia all the time.

So, what did that long-winded explanation all mean?

In short--if it looks any better than a Playstation 1, you probably can't run it on any Mac that's less than 1.5 grand.

Posted by The Unpaid Intern | August 15, 2007 6:09 PM

*Current Intel Mac less than 1.5 grand.

I'm a dork.

Posted by The Unpaid Intern | August 15, 2007 6:11 PM

if you have to spend 1500 dollars to get a decent gaming PC then you arnt really much of a PC nerd, sure Apple can overcharge $500 for their computers because the people who buy them are more concerned about their computer looking pretty rather than actually performing, but it is quite easy to build a gaming PC in the 600-700 dollar range

Posted by Taco Bueno | August 15, 2007 6:22 PM

Hey, I'm just saying. I'm pretty certain my boss is using a Mac laptop, so that's why I was clarifying that point.

If you want to play games on your computer? Of course you should get a PC.

Posted by The Unpaid Intern | August 15, 2007 10:25 PM

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