http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ allows you to test if a website is down, or just not working for you i.e. you have a problem with your connection.
A great domain name, and will help with those many forum posts that we all encounter, asking the exact same question.
Sun’s VirtalBox is a virtualisation application similar to VMware workstation that allows you to run an operating system inside a virtual environment. So you can run a virtual instance of Linux on your windows desktop, which is great for development or maybe you just want to experiment with a new operating system without risk of wiping your main OS.
What more can I say? You can’t beat free, and the only other comparable free virtualisation software is VMware server which is quite good, but not ideal for the desktop, VMware player which lacks the fancy control panel, QEMU which I have not used for a while but was slightly complicated to set up, and Virtual PC which is just OK.
Imagine running Windows XP and Linux applications side-by-side on your desktop! Well, that’s what they are aiming for and I think it’s a fantastic idea but not quite there yet. The basic idea is that the desktop of the guest OS is transparent and the taskbar is placed on top of the host OS. On a windows host, you must have the guest OS taskbar on the bottom, which is not that great, ideally you would want windows at the bottom and the guest OS taskbar at the top. This doesn’t work because all of the windows in your guest OS are treated as one window in your taskbar. i.e. You’re just running virtualbox, but with an invisible desktop background, but it’s resized itself to sit above your windows taskbar.
I’ve seen screenshots of people running Gnome on a Ubuntu host, and windows as a guest with one taskbar on the top and one on bottom of the screen, a Linux host probably provides more flexibility.
Virtualbox seamless desktop (obligatory random piece of code and lots of windows)
With VMware you must activate the guest window before the mouse and keyboard inputs are registered, virtualbox can automatically grab the mouse when you move over the guest desktop and will release when you move off the virtualbox window. This feature can also be disabled if you prefer. This feature really makes it effortless to use two operating systems side-by-side.
To resize your Guest desktop, you merely resize your virtualbox window on the host, and the guest display is resized automatically. A great idea, because sometimes you don’t want to run fullscreen on your guest OS, and having to scroll to reach the taskbar gets annoying, you can instantly set the desktop to the size you want.
Here’s a screenshot of a mini desktop:
Virtualbox Mandriva desktop
From using it, I’ve noticed that it is much faster at resuming a paused machine than VMware is, it’s just as easy to use as VMware workstation, has most of the features you need, it supports intel-VT but does not support SMP. Overall, this is a great piece of software.
ZoneAlarm Forcefield is free until 6AM PST/ 2PM BST (today is 13th August), so grab a free key that’s valid for one year while the going’s good. It might be rubbish, it might be useful but who cares, it’s free.
Someone has uploaded hundreds of Battlefield Heroes Screenshots of them playing the beta. Some are a bit dull but it’s nice to see some more of the game for us who haven’t yet been quick enough with F5 to Win a Beta Key.
Battlefield Heroes
Recently I have been keen to try the Virtualbox Seamless desktop mode, which allows you to run a virtual machine and have it integrate with your host OS’s window manager.
After installing it, removing the default Guest additions on Mandriva 2008.1, and using the updated GA, I was unable to select any screen resolution higher than 1024×768. I’ve found lots of forum posts asking about how to fix this problem of Virtual box limiting the max res, but not many answers (apart from checking xorg.conf).
The answer lies here in the 1.6.4 changelog
Linux additions: accept every user-defined guest video mode in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
After updating my host machine (windows) and the guest additions to 1.6.4, I am able to select 1280×1024.
Fantastic Contraption is a great little game where you build a machine to transport (or throw) an object from your “workshop” to the goal area.
The best thing is you can share you solutions with other people; check out the forum for different solutions.
Someone even made Godzilla.
- Fixed several security issues.
- Fixed several stability issues.
Hopefully Firefox will now play nicer with Kaspersky, but the virtual keyboard still crashes it, so i’m guessing Kaspersky is still going to keep causing crashes untill the patch is released (some time this week according to the Kaspersky forums)
This is a handy little Addon, one thing that annoys me is having to navigate folder download locations when I want to save a file, e.g. i want to save some things in a c:\download folder, some in c:\images, some on desktop, some in deep directory trees.
Save Link In Folder allows you to create menu shortcuts, so you can just select (for example) images from your download dialog, and the file will automatically be saved in C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\location\of\your\images\folder or whatever you specify.
A Quake style game that features some different modes of play and instagib, cel shaded graphics and basic deathmatch style maps. Very fast paced, but a bit of a dated game style in my opinion.
A First-person shooter with great graphics and a handful of different game modes. It does require lots of resources to run well, but you can tone it down slightly to improve performance but this game is all about the graphics.
Savage: the battle for newerth is a free full game, it used to be sold but was then given away for free! The game involves 2 (or 3) teams, each having 1 “commander” which can use team resources to build structures and research upgrades for the players. Everyone else plays the game in first or third person.
Gameplay
The game is fairly easy to pick up, and your character will gain experience (exp) that provides certain upgrades like added HP or stamina, but XP is reset at the end of each game and xp does not have much of an influence on game balance. Much of the game is dictated by the decisions your commander makes, which technology tree is taken, where to expand etc. but games can suddenly swing if someone pulls a crafty move!
Graphics & performance
The game is fairly old, but is still fairly pleasing to the eye and runs surprisingly well on older hardware, turning off grass can really improve performance!
Spring is an open source RTS game engine, on which people build different mods and maps. The units looks fairly basic, compared to games like Red Alert but it is truly three dimensional; you can rotate and angle the camera pretty much however you want and can even go first-person and manually control a unit. You can play against the AI opponents or you can play online via the Spring lobby.
The catch is that the most popular mod (Balanced Annihilation) requires some content from the original TotalAnnihilation, so you should own the original game if you use this content. (more info @ the FAQ).
Gameplay
The game has many tactics and counter tactics, a good amount of advanced controls; e.g. you can tell an air transport to pick up all units within one area and shuttle run them to another area, but this depth also means it’s not easy to pick up quickly. It’s even possible to draw on the ground to provide directions for your team mates, genius! There are regularly 10-12 player games, with a few 16 player games.
Graphics & Performance
The units/vehicles are quite square-looking, but recognisable. The landscapes are also quite basic, but are deformable. Most of the time the game runs fairly well, however in larger games it can really slow down and the pace of the game will be determined by the slowest person.
This is one of those games that really flys under the radar and I don’t really know why it never gets any publicity, maybe because of it’s legal reliance on the original game? Saying that, there is a regular following of players.
Quite an addictive racing game (not a simulator), a Cut-down version of Trackmania United Forever, with only 1 car but almost an unlimited number of tracks and plenty of players online.
Trackmania United Forever (TMUF) is the full-game that includes all previous Trackmania games rolled into one.
Trackmania Nations Forever (TMNF), which is free, only has the Stadium cars and tracks, however this is by far the most popular game type.
Everybody drives the same car so you don’t need to spend ages playing it to unlock better cars, the only thing you can change about you car is the appearance (TrackMania Carpark) and the sound of the horn. You can play offline in time-attack mode and attempt to beat the computer to unlock more tracks, or you can play online against others.
Gameplay
The most popular mode of play is a time-trial, the track plays for usually around 5 minutes and you must get the fastest time you can, you can restart at any time. Most tracks involve jumps, loops, and plenty of speed. There are a few servers playing race mode, where you race in real-time against others and must be the fastest to complete around 4 laps, a few of these servers run mock Formula 1 circuits. Cars are able to pass through each other so there’s no need to worry about crashing into someone else (some servers have over 100 players) but this means there’s no real over-taking as such, just passing through!
Graphics & performance
The graphics are very clean and vibrant, there are 4 different lighting conditions, and two different track surfaces (tarmac and dust). The default cars come with different decals, for each country and are fairly detailed. The game performs very well on my modest system (e6420, x1950xt, 2gb) If you do experience any slow-down you can always choose to not draw any other cars, or turn off some of the fancy graphic features.
Overall this is a great game to just pick up and instantly play, there’s plenty of people playing it and plenty of servers running different tracks.
It doesn’t use sticky pads, claws or magic but a technique called Electroadhesion (It’s basically a static charge, like you get from rubbing a balloon on your head) which allows it to climb pretty much any flat surface.
It looks quite cool and it would be awesome if it could suspend itself from a ceiling, but I doubt it could support much weight.
There’s a video over at bbc.co.uk and more information at SRI international
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