Archive for the 'Internet' category

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, the game prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (FPS PC game we appreciated a lot last year here at Roumazeilles.net) is now available for download at the Steam video game distribution web site of Valve. More, it will only be available there (no boxed DVD on the shelves).

It seems that this is proving the success of Steam as a distribution media (Valve did not limit it to its own games) and the efficiency of the channel (for the producers, it allows near immediate correction of bugs, removal of packaging-shipping, and coordinated distribution in all parts of the world; for the customers, it simplify the process and offers immediate pleasure - on the condition that you have a broadband connection).

When will Steam be considered as monopolistic?

I wanted to thank 2007 readers and visitors, so here are the 2008 Roumazeilles.net awards:

Best Guest Post Thanks to xo-fashi0n-x0 for her post of “La Cigarette“. A welcome poetic distraction from the routine of this web site.

Best Commenter This one was easy since ted is a persistent commenter with interesting insight and providing detailed information and feedback (both for the author and the readers). By the way, his web site is quite interesting too.

Best Linker Delphine Dumont, while staying attentive to what is happening on my web site, has been providing some significant and meaningful links and trackbacks. And all french-reading people should try and stop to read her blog.

Thanks to all readers, linkers and posters who made it possible. 2008 is certainly going to be even better and this will be reflected in the 2009 Roumazeilles.net awards.

We already knew that Englishmen prefer porn to sex. Now, this is the turn of Chinese to fail getting interested in one of the human activities we thought was really attractive

This is the conclusion of one comparison study from Google. They observe that their Chinese search engine is used for terms like names of Chinese banks or “stocks”. Contrary to the US Google, the word “sex” does not even make it into the top 10.

Source : The Inquirer.

It was about time! I had previously wrote here that Sony was now the last major music company not having announced any plan to offer its music catalog in MP3 format without DRM (without digital rights protection). This is about to change.

Sony, like the other disc producers/distributors, finally figured it out: Consumers are actually ready to pay MP3 files to Apple and Amazon if the protection is not included (or very limited). Instead of staying behind (and off the sales increase for online music) disc producers come back to reason.

About Sony, I don’t know yet if the move will immediately cover the full catalog or a part only, but this is already going far enough to say that this is only a matter of time.

The door is opening wide onto the online sales of legal MP3 files but without silly protection.

Source: Business Week.

As you may have noticed (because of the unusually long time it took me to do the upgrade), I upgraded Roumazeilles.net to the newest version of WordPress 2.3.2.

You should see no significant impact (except some security improvements and in the administration part, if you want to propose an article). But if there is something, feel free to tell me.

While installing the new forums software on Roumazeilles.net (bbPress) [it was only an evaluation that will not be followed immediately by a full implementation], I noted a few of the details I needed to do in order to reach a conveniently installed package. Since bbPress is only lightly documented, it may be helpful for other.

Aim

The first objective was to install two sets of forums (in French and in English, as for the news blogs) in their respective URLs.

• English forums
• French forums

The locations have an influence on the rest since I still wanted to have a good integration with the wordpress blogs. You are expected to install the forums inside the blog.

So, here is how I did it.

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Thanks to all visitors! This year 2007 saw a near-doubling of the number of visits and the start of new article categories. Arguably, you were pleased, but we’ll try to make it even better. I start immediately.

Happy new year 2008.

Visibly, in 2008, scammers and spammers start early: The sheer number of emailed wish cards seems to have increased to very high levels. Only one advice: If you receive a “best wishes” electronic card from somebody that you don’t know, don’t even spend time (and computer security) checking it. It’s most probably a mean to insert a worm, a Trojan horse or a virus in your computer.

And, keep your anti-virus software updated.

As the US dollar drops in Stock Markets, there are some unexpected victims. As many other companies whose customers pay in US dollars, many bloggers using advertising services are being paid in US dollars (or in Euros converted from US dollars). While the green bill currency was dropping through the floor, bloggers earnings dropped too because unit prices of ads did not climb as fast.

Some are said to have lost 20% compared to last year.

Thanks to LifeHacker, and if you have the following, you will be able to use your iPhone to access Internet from your laptop.

• A computer with Wi-Fi capable of creating an ad-hoc computer-to-computer connection (yours is)
• A jailbroken iPhone (If you don’t know how to jailbreak your iPhone, the easiest way is to make sure you’re running 1.1.1 firmware and then start here.
• The OpenSSH iPhone application
• An SSH client on the computer you’re using. If you’re on a Mac or *nix machine, you should be fine. Windows users should check out how to install OpenSHH with Cygwin.

Source: LifeHacker “Use Your iPhone’s Internet Connection On Your Laptop [Feature]“.

A backup, this is nearly nothing. But it can help you, it can save you, when disaster will strike. Since when didn’t you backup?

Some ideas:

• Remember to copy the contents of your Flash memory card (even more if you store a lot of JPEG images on your big Flash card)
• Copy the data files from your PC onto an external drive
• Send yourself your important data on a separate email account (and let them there)
• Use WP-Database-Backup to backup your WordPress web site database
• Use free DriveImage XML to backup a full-drive image of a disk drive

It’s time to prepare yourself for a better-backed-up year.

Sometimes, you make a heavy use of a FTP server. But it is tiresome to go to a separate program in order to copy files to and from this server. There is an easy solution under Windows: Add a FTP server onto a disk drive letter.

For this, thanks to CyberNetNews explanations, you can map a networked drive.