Rockwell Automation’s Retro Encabulator

Duke Nukem 3d a classic first person shooter game from 1996. I remember playing it up on the computer labs on Friday afternoons back when I was a lab aide. Multiplayer was IPX only, everyone had to start at the same time and if one computer crashed every one in the game did, good times.
Some years ago I bought the Kill-A-Ton collection which included everything Duke up to that point. Duke Nukem 1,2, 3D, Duke It Out in DC, etc..

Recently I had been thinking about playing Duke Nukem 3d again. Problem is it doesn’t run too good under XP, especially if you want to do multiplayer. I played with setting up a DOS or Windows 95 virtual machine for Duke that we could use in the office, but the performance just wasn’t there. I was about to move on and forget about Duke when I ran across JFDuke3D. JFDuke3D has native Windows support for Duke. Install Duke 3d, install JFDuke and run. Duke never looked so good and runs great on a current OS. There is even network play support over IP, haven’t tried that yet though.

What makes Duke great is the attitude and the guns. Duke’s witty one liners are great and the weapons are classic. The shrink gun has to be my favorite. Hit someone with the shrink gun and once they shrink down to itty bitty step on them to squash them. Freeze gun is great too. Hit someone with the freeze gun to literally freeze them and then a good kick breaks them into shattered pieces. The pipe bombs also cool along with the Laser Trip Bombs. When playing multiplayer Laser Trip Bombs are great when placed right around a corner. While not a weapon the HoloDuke is also great with multiplayer. Setup the holoduke out in the open go hide near by and wait for someone to come by and be fooled by the holoduke.

It took me a couple weeks to get through all 4 episodes trying to get to all of the secret places. It really surprised me how in depth that game was. I was able to setup my keys and mouse similar to what I use in UT. W-A-S-D for movement and mouse look worked decent enough.

It is really sad that 3dRealms has dragged their feet as long as they have in releasing, if it will ever be released Duke Nukem Forever. DNF has been in development for almost 10 years now with little to show for it. I feel if they would have just taken Duke3d, updated the graphics to make it look pretty, updated the controls to be more responsive and updated the network play for true IP support, the game would have been a hit. But unfortunately that hasn’t happened.

If you have Duke Nukem 3d lying around, download JFDuke3D and give it another go. You will be impressed on how fun it still can be and at the same time sadden at how 3dRealms has literary killed Duke with their incompetence.

Over at Terminally Incoherent Luke tries to stereotype users who use specific web browsers. At least for me none of findings work, at all.

What Luke has to say about IE 6.0

You probably don’t know what a’browser’ is and you think Internet is IE. You have no clue about technology, and you are generally afraid of computers. You also use your machine only for IM, chat, email and myspace. Your friends keep telling you about that ‘Fried Fox’ thingy but you don’t really understand this stuff and never really had time to look into it.

There isn’t a single piece of truth in any of that. I use IE 6 for sites that require it.

I have also used IE 7.0

You consider yourself to be on the cutting edge of technology. You think that Microsoft is the greatest company on the earth, and that this evil ‘Lenoux’ operating system is made by terrorists. You have a poster of Steve Ballmer on your wall, and you want to be like Bill Gates when you grow up. When you think about Vista you get goosebumps and shiver with excitement.

Again not a single piece of truth. I use IE 7 one to test my sites to see how they look and two to check out the features of IE 7 since at some point I will need to support it.

I also use Firefox 1.x which is the browser I use most of the time.

You are most likely a little bit geeky and proud of it. You are a strong supporter of the Open Source movement, and you think that RMS is ‘the man’. You really don’t care if FF is faster, or safer than IE - you would use it even if it performed 10 times worse. You are just happy that you have a free, open source browser with a huge community that is supporting it. At any given time you have installed at least 7 extensions that you couldn’t live without.

Finally some truth, yeah a little bit geeky and proud of it, but that’s about it. And if FF performed 10 times worse than IE I wouldn’t touch FireFox. I use FF for the tabs, once IE 7 is released that might become my main browser again.

On Terminally Incoherent Firefox is the most popular browser, but on HouseofMike IE rules. Web browser breakdown for the month of August for HouseofMike, this doesn’t include my browsing or any browsing from my work place.

MS Internet Explorer 76.5 %
Firefox 14 %
Unknown 3.6 %
Safari 2.8 %
Opera 1.6 %
Mozilla 0.7 %
Netscape 0.2 %
Camino 0.2 %
WebTV browser 0 %
Lynx 0 %

The fight for net neutrality.

http://www.wearetheweb.org/

I am totally in favor of net neutrality. I already pay my ISP for internet access and also pay my webhost for this site. Why should I have to pay extra for my site to reach your computer? I shouldn’t, no one should. It makes sense unless you are a telco trying to make another buck.

In regards to the video, pretty funny. I didn’t think Peter Pan would sound like that.
They even worked in the dancing baby. I remember when he was first ‘born’.
Man, I’m so Internet old.

Friday July 28 is System Administrator Appreciation Day.

This is the day you give thanks to your System Administrators.
Give thanks for keeping the network up, for doing upgrades during your vacation and at night so your work is not affected and for answering all those questions that could have easily have been answered if you had just clicked on help.

Food seems to be the best way to show your appreciation.
Just remember….

While I have had houseofmike.com for several years today is the 1 year anniversary of houseofmike running WordPress. At some point I got bored with the previous CMSs I ran, geeklog, xoops and whatever else I played with. I got bored or couldn’t figure out how to do something with it got pissed and dumped it.

I have been very happy with WordPress and the available plugins for it.
Hopefully the site will make it to 2 years.

Yeah thats good.

Kids these days might not even know what vinyl records are.
Its been years since I have actually had a record player.

There’s been plenty of debate lately that maybe with the release of Windows Vista, we might be able to get away with not using antivirus on our computers. Well I’m about to make an even bolder assertion, that running antivirus or even additional third party security software such as firewalls on your computer makes you even less safe! Now before you start the flaming, hear me out first. [.continue.]

I am not that familiar with this so called expert George Ou, but I must take exception to most of his rambling. First Ou starts by saying antivirus programs are bad since ‘virtually every Antivirus vendor had their share of remote exploits’. This seems to be true with the link he gave. Curious as I am, I checked out the McAfee exploit since that is the product I use. There it is on March 17, 2005 a Library Stack Overflow for the engines prior to version 4400. The thing is version 4400 had been available since December of 2004. So yeah McAfee had an exploit and you would be vulnerable to it if you didn’t keep the software up to date. I really don’t know a piece of software where this would not be the case. Would this make all software programs bad that had exploits? If so, your choice of OS and programs would be rather limited.

The software firewalls are also bad because they also at some point had exploits. I have not seen any data but I am sure just with the antivirus programs that these programs have helped a hell of a lot more than they have hurt. This continues to be the case in my organization. You know seatbelts save lives, but they have also been the cause of deaths in accidents. Should we also stop using seatbelts because of a miniscule percentage of deaths? (more…)

Apr 23, 10:56 AM (ET)

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - Del Mar College students now have to use computers outside the school’s system if they want to visit the popular Web site MySpace.com.

The community college has blocked the site in response to complaints about sluggish Internet speed on campus computers.

An investigation found that heavy traffic at MySpace.com was eating up too much bandwidth, said August Alfonso, the school’s chief of information and technology. Forty percent of daily Internet traffic at the college involved the site, he said.

“This was more about us being able to offer Web-based instruction, and MySpace.com was slowing everything down,” President Carlos Garcia said.

MySpace.com - a social networking hub with more 72 million members - allow users to post searchable profiles that can include photos of themselves and such details as where they live and what music they like.

Paul Martinez, 20, is a frequent visitor to MySpace.com and finds the site to be addictive. Restricting access to the site could be a good idea, he said.

“The library is pretty much full with people on MySpace, and with them banning it you won’t have anything to distract you,” he said.

Some though, disagree with Del Mar College’s decision.

“We pay for school and the resources that are used,” said Zeke Santos, 20. “It’s our choice, we’re the ones paying for our classes. If we pass or fail, it’s up to us.”

Thats nothing a simple packet shaper wouldn’t fix.
I am curious though where they got the stat that 40% of the bandwidth was myspace related, how they are actually blocking it and what their internet connection speed is. Our packet shaper gives us those stats and we could easily give myspace lowest priority so it wouldn’t interfere with college related traffic.