The Linux Blog

A little while after FireFox 1.0 was released, Microsoft had this to say:

“Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it, but I don’t think that Internet Explorer is any less secure than any other browser out there,” English said.

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Apparently, though, many people are finding it less secure or lesser than Firefox. In the past month, Firefox gained a full percent (according to W3Schools), while IE6 lost .4% to other browsers. Mozilla-like browsers are at about 18% as of some time in November, 2004. This trend has held steady for quite a while and will probably continue for a very long time.

Something else to note is that Microsoft is doing a good job getting people to upgrade to XP, as XP gained 1.2% from October 2004 to November 2004. Macintosh users gained .1% (steady trend as well) and Linux users gained nothing in percentage, but there is a stready trend of gain.

It’s me again with another short look at a game. Today, we have World of Warcraft to be reviewed (short review).

World of Warcraft

Sadly, World of Warcraft Open Beta (North American) closes today (11/18/04), yet it is still online at the moment. It’s been a great beta, mostly bugless, the only complaint being lag due to so many people playing. This won’t change my opinion on the game, because it was a beta, it should have bugs, they will most likely resolve the problem by retail.

World of Warcraft is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game — I think), where you play a character of your choosing. There are many different classes (like in most MMORPGs) to choose from and many races. Races include human, dwarf, night elf, gnome, orc, undead, tauren, and troll. Classes include warrior, rogue, mage, warlock, paladin, preist, hunter, and more.

As you being your character, you meet a man hwo gives you your first quest, which is rewarded much more generously than Final Fantasy XI would reward. I won’t go off into FFXI’s problems with not rewarding enough, that’s possibly another blog post. Anyways, my character is a mage and he is currently level 11. In WoW, you gain levels just as you would in other ones. You fight. You have a health bar and another bar which varies in what it shows depending on your class. My additional bar displays mana, since I’m a mage. I can cast fireballs and missles at the enemy, both of which can be upgraded, are long range, and use different amounts of mana. There are also healing spells, which, surprisingly, the mage doesn’t obtain from what I have heard. However, the mage does have conjure food and conjure water, which do what they say. Water restores mana and food restores health (muffins to be exact). The one downfall to the two aformentioned spells is that after 15 minutes of being logged out, they disappear.

The interface is very nice in the game. Unlike FFXI, where you must go to the menu to find out how far away you are from the next level, you just need to look at the bottom of the screen, which displays shortcuts for spells, attacks, etc. which you set yourself by a drag-and-drop interface. Minor features that I depend on a lot are windowization and autorun, both of which it has.

Rating: 10/10 (note that I have not played the game but for only a few days, so I have not found many things that I dislike)

Well, here they are. My desktops for November (wow, I typed December about 3 times already when renaming the files and typing this, before erasing it), that is.

Windows XP Home:

Nothing special here. Wallpaper Just a Kill Bill (Linux look too) wallpaper with Gates on the end (added by me).

Gentoo Linux:

Now here’s something special. All (Super) Karamba themes found here. It’s a Gentoo Linux wallpaper with a nice theme also from the link above. I have a cron job set to do nightly updates.

Basically, it turns on automatically at 1AM (set in BIOS), the cron job executes at 1:05AM (gives it 5 minutes to boot, which is safe for if it has to do a fsck), which is:

emerge sync && emerge -uD world && rm -r /var/tmp/portage && mkdir /var/tmp/portage && rm -r /usr/portage/distfiles && mkdir /usr/portage/distfiles && shutdown -h now

So, it shuts down after it finishes updating. I’m working on getting it to only run if the computer is idle (I wouldn’t want it turning off on me once it finishes updating).

Next step would be to check for kernel updates, build them, and automatticly apply them.

Anyways, those are my screenshots for this month . If I find a cool new look before next month, I may or may not post it until then, so look out next month. I also might love the look so much that I keep it next month too .

Spike TV has launched the 2004 Video Game Awards. Vote for your favorite game.

Personally, I went with Half-Life 2 on every one it was nominated for as well as best new technology (why did they have NVIDIA’s new model on best new technology but not ATI’s? Pixelshader 2.0? Maybe). Final Fantasy XI received my vote for best MMORPG. (too bad World of Warcraft wasn’t out, it would have my vote then)