Half Life 2 Delayed

Wed, 24/09/2003 - 1:12pm — Pete

One of the most anticipated games of the year has been delayed until the holiday season (Christmas) in a statement announced by the games developer Valve.

?The previously announced September 30th release date for Half-Life 2 is being pushed back. We are currently targeting a holiday release, but do not have a specific "in-store" date to share at this time. We will release that information as soon as we have confirmed a new date.?

The game was meant to ship next week on September 30th but only a week before this release date the game has been delayed. Less than a month ago Valve told the European press at the ECTS in London that the release date was unchanged.

Valve have not set another release date allowing for people to speculate when they expect the game to launch. The fall of this year is going to be very competitive for first person shooter games with Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament 2004 both being released between now and Christmas.

Valve will be hoping that the extra media coverage generated by the set back of the game will help drive sales in the end. While the set back may be annoying for some people looking forward to the game, overall its unlikely to make a lasting bad impression.

Mobile Phone Retailer Bans Email.

Fri, 19/09/2003 - 5:32pm — Pete

The mobile phone retailer Phones 4U says it will ban all of its 2500 employees from using email. The statement was released yesterday saying that the company will save about ?1 Million a month. The CEO John Caudwell, would rather employees talk to staff and customers rather then write emails, he said that he was fed up of seeing workers glued to their computers all day.

Apparently each employee should have an extra 3 hours a day free because of the ban. "I saw that e-mail was insidiously invading Phones 4U, so I banned it immediately," Caudwell said in a statement. "Phones 4U staff have been told to get off the keyboards, get face-to-face or on to the phone to colleagues. The quality and efficiency of communication have been increased tremendously in one fell swoop; things are getting done; people aren't tied to their PCs," the CEO said. While this may seem a bit extreme could we see more companies in the future taking similar measures or could we see the introduction of more voice typing programs?

ImAFish 7

Tue, 02/09/2003 - 9:43pm — Pete

For many of the people behind ImAFish University is only a few weeks away, which will split the community across the country. For most people this wont be a problem as they will have Internet connections in their rooms or within the University. Myself and Simon wanted to have one final version of ImAFish that would be the best so far and in some ways a final release.

While this is unlikely knowing myself it would mean that if we didn't want to update the design again it would still look good for months and maybe years to come. In concept 4 months ago ImAFish 7 seemed a long way off, the idea was to create a flexible professional web portal based around what ImAFish had been building on over the past 2 years ? its articles.

We now had over 200 articles on a range of subjects making it in some ways messy what was needed was different sections depending on the article type, while articles already had categories they themselves were getting in a mess. The idea was to split the site up more into different sections, after much debate they were decided to be: Entertainment Tech Gaming IRC News Each would be article based but would contain other information such as IRC would host xbot. The next step was to decide on a design, this I did while doing my A levels (which I did very well in), and more importantly a logo of some sort.

This went through many design stages and only after about 4 weeks was I happy with the final design. I had also been working on an overall design for the site which I was happy with in the end. The next stage was to start coding. In ImAFish 6 Simon had done 99% of the coding so for ImAFish 7 I was going to give it ago, I quickly learned CSS and put together a template using divs as the idea was not to use any tables. While this was ok for the overall design a lot of the page content still uses tables as simply tables are still best for displaying things in certain ways.

One thing I quickly learned about CSS is that getting it to work in one web browser does not guarantee it will work in another. Then getting it to validate is another problem however in the end validation was put a side for getting it to work right. Overall ImAFish 7 is the most complex and advanced version of ImAFish yet, making it even easier to use and attractive. Thanks to everyone that has made it possible and lets hope the site keeps on growing!

FBI Charges Youth Over Net Virus

Mon, 01/09/2003 - 5:42pm — Pete

Jeffrey Lee Parson of Hopkins, Minnesota has been charged with spreading the MSBlast virus that crippled thousands of computers in the past couple of months. The 18 year old is suspected of creating a variant of the virus which caused many computers to crash.

He has been charged under "intentionally causing and attempting to cause damage to a protected computer" and if found guilty could spend up to 10 years in prision and a fine of $250,000. John McKay, the public prosecutor in Seattle, said Mr Parson's arrest was a "significant step forward" in the hunt for the original culprit.

"The Department of Justice takes these crimes very seriously. We will devote all available resources to tracking down those who attack our technological infrastructure," Mr McKay told a press conference. Investigators searched Mr Parson's home on 19 August and removed seven computers for analysis.

If he is found guilty it could defer other people from releasing such virus' on the Internet. The FBI have not yet found the original writer of the virus however they are making progress on this and other similar virus'.

The virus targeted Microsoft Windows computer in a flaw in how files were transferred over the net. Once the machine was infected it looked for other vulnerable computers, with millions of Windows computers around the world the virus spread quickly. Anti-virus firm Symantec estimated that more than 500,000 computers worldwide were infected by the worm and its variants.

Terminator 3 ? Rise of the Machines

Sun, 03/08/2003 - 12:12am — Pete

For many the Terminator films are the ultimate in action films and Terminator 3 is no exception. The film is set 10 years after the previous where a new class of robot is sent back through time to take out John Connor and his future lieutenants.

However luckily the T-101, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is also sent back in time to keep John Connor safe. The plot involves a new intelligent super computer, called Sky-net taking over the world and things turn out unexpected in the end.

I found the film to be a lot more entertaining then the previous 2 especially the humor coming from Arnie. The little things he says and does clearly makes the film a lot better to watch. An impressive vehicle scene leaves a trail of destruction not seen in many other films.

The ending as I said before was unexpected however leaves the film open to what could be a quite interesting 4th film. Terminator 3 also shows that Schwarzenegger is still a great actor and that he still has many years left of possible films.

I never really liked the first 2 Terminator films however Terminator 3 is a great film even if you didn't enjoy or follow the first two. If you love action films then terminator 3 is for you.