With the latest World of Warcraft patch to 2.2.0, everyone was surprised (some, like me, pleasantly surprised) to see that Blizzard had decided to completely rework the audio engine for the game! Now, instead of hardware acceleration, they're using FModEX to provide a new software-level engine.

This, of course, reached the ears of Creative Labs. According to a very biased article at a place called WoWInsider.com (I mean, look: "So it seems Blizzard treats other hardware vendors the same way they treat their own players..." What's that supposed to mean? You think Blizzard treats their players poorly? Well, 8 million subscribers say you're entirely wrong, my friend.)... Creative had very little advanced warning in the matter (as if Creative thinks they need to be told about something like this) and they're hopping mad, trying to incite all the Creative sound card owners to riot against Blizzard for daring to do such a thing! (Okay, maybe not riot, but they're still trying to get players to speak out.)

As a not so proud owner of an Audigy 2 ZS Notebook sound card, I can honestly say that I think Blizzard is doing the best thing they could've done. Vista has been out for what, almost a year now, and Creative's drivers are still the horribly stripped drivers they are. You can barely get the microphone working. I was okay with some drivers acting up when Vista was released, but this is 12 months later, people. Everyone else has flawlessly working drivers... Everyone except Creative, who has been known to drag their feet on drivers. Now, they're complaining that Blizzard didn't consult them when Blizzard decided to rework the game engine in Blizzard's own game. Creative thinks they need to be consulted before anyone touches their sound card engines. Hmm...

Basically, it's this... FMod is new to Blizzard and there are some bugs, naturally. These bugs aren't huge, but they're annoying to some people. So far, the major issue is that the channels of sound have been cut down for the time being, so people are noticing some sounds cutting out when they're in an area with lots of sounds. Somehow, this is worth getting angry over. There are some other issues, sure, but Blizzard is trying to answer, correct and update any and all problems.

Some short-sighted players are asking why in the heck Blizzard decided to strip out a perfectly working engine for one that doesn't work anymore. To which Blizzard replied: "Understand that we have the source to all parts of our sound engine now, and will be working with the developer to continue to find improvements, a handful of which were checked in here just today for an upcoming patch (probably not the first patch to 2.2.0 as that one is already in mid testing, but very likely the one after that)."

Meaning, the engine they used to use did NOT give them access to all source code for it. Meaning what, exactly? Well... Clearly they couldn't do what they wanted to do, so they thought it was cost-effective enough to start using a NEW engine. One that they can change to their heart's desire... One that they can fix, by themselves, all the issues they may or may not run into! So, wait... What's this? Blizzard is trying to do something GOOD in the long run?

This is what humanity doesn't get... patience. Good things come to those who wait, but most people want everything RIGHT NOW, NOW, NOW! They complain when games are delayed, they complain when games are released with bugs, they complain the bug fixes are delayed, they complain about other bugs when old bugs are fixed. This new sound engine is for the better. Even now, on Vista, the OS that doesn't allow hardware acceleration because Creative hasn't bothered to fix that for Audigy cards, I've noticed a positive difference.

But, in short, only Creative sound cards are broken... Hmm. What does that mean? Does it mean that Blizzard is an idiot for changing sound card engines and breaking Creative cards, or possibly... just maybe... it means that Creative's drivers are crappy and don't work with software that other cards have no problem with? Hmm.

Think of it this way. If, say, a web browser decided to interpret things on it's own, disregarding what other browsers handle the same way, and you expect everyone else to cater to your programming anomalies... What would you, as a web programmer, do? Would you program for the web browser that interprets things non-standard, or would you program for the browsers that display pages properly and in a predictable and standard way? Hmm... I think I recall a massive amount of people NOT wanting to cater to Internet Explorer for this very reason.

But it's bad that Blizzard is inconveniencing you in the present, in an effort to make things perfect in the future, for this very reason? That Creative isn't good enough to just make their cards work? Kinda got some raging double-standards there, if you ask me.

I enjoy Creative. They're good cards. I'll probably buy Creative cards in the future. The drivers? Not so good... They'll get fixed, sure, but not very quickly at all. For those of you with Creative cards, don't bug Blizzard... Do what Creative is asking you and apply that force to CREATIVE. Make them fix their drivers! They have plenty of money... I think they can handle churning drivers as stable and as quickly as nVidia can.

The Wii nay-sayers are going to start having their comeuppance in the next few months, and I say... It's about time. Maybe everyone will shut up about how slow the Wii game market has been and how they're so bored with their Wii and how they're sick of bowling. (But aren't willing to actually sell their Wii for a hefty profit, I might add, seeing as how retail Wiis are still sold out, almost 12 months after release.)

I started college, so I was completely unaware of the fact that Mario Strikers Charged was finally released in the United States! I was aware of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption coming out a few weeks ago, though. But in addition to these two amazingly fun looking games, Super Mario Galaxy is slated to come out on November 12th, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl is coming out on December 3rd.

I am in a... very odd predicament. I am raising money for a new PC, while having preordered Halo 3 Legendary as well. In addition to that, I have four Wii games on my list, plus the Orange Box from Valve that's going to come out soon, too.

Brawl is a no-brainer. I may even preorder that soon with my new handy-dandy Amazon certificate I got in the mail a few days ago. I want Mario Strikers, too, but I have a feeling that nobody else will, and I'll be playing that alone. Metroid is high up on my list, but I didn't realize that all three Metroid Prime games were to make up a trilogy, so I'm going to have to find Metroid Prime 2 and play that. Mario Galaxy is pretty low on my list, though, much to the very oddly placed chagrin of Edrick. (What does it matter to him if I buy a single-player game at release or 2 years later? )

But anyway, the games are coming, people. All you need is some patience for just a little bit longer! Mark my words, after this year, more people will start announcing and releasing far better games. Remember! Nobody expected the Wii to do so well and they're all scrambling to make the next blockbuster for it.

Ah, what fun it is to wake up in the morning all rested up and looking forward to a new day and getting online to check up on the latest news... And get a screen full of typical humanity upset at some incredibly unimportant thing.

Case in point: Valve fails to deliver Team Fortress 2 Beta to Paying Customers, via tomsgames.com, through the respective Digg submission.

The general history of the article is this: Valve opens preorders for their long anticipated "Orange Box", which includes Half-Life Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and an awesome game called Portal. With the preorders, Valve told people they could save 10% and get into an exclusive Team Fortress 2 Beta on September 17. (Yesterday.)

What happened? Well, apparently, the beta wasn't released as quickly as all the impatient gamers wanted. What does this mean? Oh, well, it means Valve just stole everyone's money, of course! Valve clearly lied to everyone, promised something they weren't going to deliver, and now everyone's upset and wants their money back, and some are just far too upset to do anything but curse at Valve for wasting their the time they took to not go to work or school so they could stay home and play the beta all day. Seriously.

Not only do I think these people need to be put in their place, with the proper perspective, but they also need to get a life... And I mean it in every sense of the word! Who, in their right minds, takes a day off of work and school for a BETA TEST. I can maybe understand taking a day off work for playing the final product, but I understand the vast importance of school, and can't understand not going to school because of any form of entertainment.

The main argument, though, was the fact that people say they paid money for the Beta, which is a lie, plain and simple. They paid money early for the retail games, and, as a FREE added bonus, were allowed to play the beta of TF2. It surprised me with all the people who bought Crackdown just so they could play the Halo 3 Beta. If getting into a beta test is that important to you, you need a severe reality check. No beta access should ever be charged for, and if you're too stupid to realize that, you deserve to lose your money.

Not only that, but the very definition of the term "beta" in the software industry is supposed to mean a program that is more or less finished, but the developers want to distribute the program to a large number of many differently configured systems so they can find all the special bugs that they couldn't find on their own. Guess what! They found a bug that prevented them from starting the beta.

Imagine the outcry from players who would attempt to start this game had they allowed everyone to get online with the bug still there? Actually, you don't have to... Just look at Digg. If they experience a game-crashing bug, they'll complain. If they experience a delay due to fixing a game-crashing bug, they'll complain.

The multiple posts saying they're canceling their preorders for something as paltry as a delay of a few hours for a silly beta test is just shocking. However, I say good riddance to them. It's like the whiners on the World of Warcraft forums who get upset at something Blizzard did or didn't do. Those of us who are intelligent enough to realize it's not important just wave and say our good-byes, because we all realize that the game is now a better place without that one player who takes offense at everything.

After all this racket, the beta has been released and everything seems to be working normally... Other than, of course, the fact that it's a beta, and there will be bugs all over the place that you're supposed to be reporting. Just remember that, people. You're supposed to hunt for bugs, first and foremost, while having fun at the same time. You're not supposed to have fun, first and foremost, while reporting whatever bugs you might happen across.

Go explore, do stupid stuff! Try to break the game! I'm sure that Valve has already picked up most of the bugs during a normal game. Try to climb out of the map and crash the server! That's what you're there for... It's not a demo version.

I just wanted to say something I've been thinking for a while, before SP1 actually comes out and I can no longer make a prediction...

All these anti-Vista antagonists all whine about all sorts of things, and complain that Vista simply isn't worth upgrading to, and they won't use it until SP1 comes out for it.

I just want to make a prediction. I would hazard a guess to say that 90% of the people who say this are only using this phrase to dodge the bullet. They're not going to try Vista, but they don't want anyone to snap at them for complaining about something they haven't used yet, so they say they'll try it when SP1 comes out.

My prediction is this: When SP1 finally comes out, most, if not all the people who said they'd try Vista SP1 will still not try Vista, and begin to say they'll try Vista SP2 because, after all, "XP wasn't worth it until SP2"... Because they never had any plans to try Vista, but they don't want to get called out for making up their minds before trying it themselves.

So there ya' go. Just thought I'd say this now before SP1 comes out and then I have some post to quote when I say "hey, I knew this would happen before it even came out!"

Since Ed enjoys my daily updates:
Day 3 of 50 complete. $210 of $3250, 6.46% raised. Finish: November 1st.

So while everyone's been concerned with the menace of a Windows Automatic Updater that automatically updates itself without telling you (which, as the real techs understand, only happens because people were too ignorant to actually turn OFF the automatic updater), Apple pulls a fast one and has successfully locked out current generation iPods from any music player besides their monopolizing iTunes. (Nikiski was right. iTunes wanted a reboot because it was installing new iPod drivers... Not necessarily with locking out in mind, but with new technology in mind.)

This largely affects Linux users, since iTunes is obviously not available for that platform. This also affects people (of who I am beginning to consider joining) who despise iTunes and want to use another application to synchronize their iPod.

It looks like folks are trying to reverse-engineer this new "feature", which is made possible by some sort of special encrypted lines in a file that's stored on the iPod that nobody has been able to decode yet.

And people tell me Apple is better than Microsoft. No. No... They're really not.

So the world is feigning shock during these last couple of days after learning that Microsoft is automatically updating Windows even when people turn it off... Sadly, everyone's caught up in the age old pastime of railing on Microsoft to actually do some fact checking.

The article being used as "confirmation" for the "rumor" is some idiot from ZDNet. He goes through all the whiny drivel of explaining why Windows is downloading stuff even when told not to. But there's a critical error in his process of explaining. His copy of Windows is NOT set to "Do not automatically update"... It's set to "download and notify", a very, very key fact in this whole charade.

Here's the original rumor from the same guy at ZDNet, and here's the alleged confirmation. He yaks about how some people want to keep Windows at a certain patch level for development purposes and don't want Windows going around updating without knowledge. (Fine, but I have a question. If you don't want updates on a development machine, why are you telling Windows to download the updates and notify you they're ready for installation? You realize you CAN disable automatic updates completely and manually check for updates yourself, right? I would think that's far more controlled than getting notifications.)

In both cases, he lists the files that are being updated "without permission". See how they're all prefixed with the letters "WU"? (Except for the first listed file for XP.) Well, I don't know about you... But that kinda looks like it's a Windows Update component and not a critical system file. In the confirmation article, he shows screenshots of the updater in action! First shot is the Event Viewer... What happens? "The Automatic Updater service entered the running state." Okay, the updater is running. Since you set this to DOWNLOAD AND NOTIFY, this is NOT unusual. It's got to check for updates to download, after all.

Second screenshot: "Installation Successful: Windows successfully installed the following update: Automatic Updates". Okay, so even with download and notify, it installed an update! GASP! What is Microsoft tampering with without our knowledge?! Oh, wait... It's just the automatic updater and no version-whacking critical component? Ooops, my bad.

Third screenshot shows the file properties for "wuapi.dll", which is simply the Windows Update Client API. I think he's trying to show that this was a file that was indeed updated. But, honestly, who cares if the Automatic Updater is updating itself? What, are you developing a program to distribute that... automatically downloads updates? Sounds like you need to focus on a new project, seeing as how Microsoft kinda already has an automatic updater. And if keeping the exact save version of Windows is SO CRITICAL for you? Disable the updater completely! It's just another button on the configuration window!

Microsoft responds to this sudden baseless uproar, and a product team blog post is made to explain exactly why this occurs. Read it. It explains everything and reiterates the fact that if you truly disable automatic updates, then no updates will happen. The thing is, when at any time the WAU is set up to download things... It had to update itself to properly list new patches for you. Microsoft is always tweaking Windows Automatic Updater (WAU), too, and they release new versions! Remember several months ago when Windows XP suddenly had to download a new release of WAU?

Basically, the updater updates itself periodically. Just like any other widely used server/client service! Ever play an old Sierra game with the online updaters? Guess what you downloaded first, before the game? That's right... an updater update. So it could properly detect new updates for you programs!

The way I see it, these Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt spreaders break down into two groups. Insanely private people who are going nuts that Microsoft DARE automatically update the updater service that the people HAVE TURNED ON... And the daft programmers who are going nuts because WAU is somehow screwing up their development platform. (Seriously? If your program, whatever it is, relies so much on the WAU files? You need to fix something, unless it's an alternative to WAU, in which case, nobody needs it, sorry.)

If you people are so upset that Microsoft DARE tamper with your system without your knowledge (when you're too dumb to notice you gave "permission" for Microsoft to "tamper" with your system by selecting the "download and notify" option), then hey! I have an idea...

Turn off Automatic Update! Here! I'll even help you people out:

In Vista, click the pretty little Windows logo button in the lower-left corner of the screen, click on "All-Programs", and in the main list, find and click on "Windows Update". The screen will pop up, where on the side bar you click "Change settings". Look at it VERY CAREFULLY... There! See it? The flashy red shield with an X? That's the "Never check for updates" option. You want that. Click it, go ahead, it won't bite you. Be sure to click OK when you're done or it won't change! There, did you click it? Well! You're done! No more Microsoft spying technology operating without your knowledge!

In XP, click the ugly Start Menu button on the lower-left corner of the screen and click Control Panel. Click "Switch to Classic View", if that shows up in your side bar, to get a long list of things. Near the top of the list is an option called "Automatic Updates". Double-click that. Oh, look! There's that flashy red shield with an X again! You guessed it! You need to click that and press OK.

There. You have now actually disabled Automatic Updates and WAU will no longer keep itself updated to correctly list the updates available to you. Be aware that since it no longer updates the client, you will most likely have to do that next time you connect.

That wasn't so bad, was it?

I mean honestly... the guy on ZDNet is whining his precious over-paid little butt off about WAU keeping itself current when it's on the SECOND most automatic process. The download and notify option... Not even the "Notify, but don't download" option. He said himself it's the "DOWNLOAD and notify", as in... check for updates, download them, and tell me they're ready to install.

This has got to be the overreaction to end all overreactions...

...I thought I'd post some revised specs for my computer. And... Well, yes... I'm bragging. I think this is the final configuration. I keep reading and researching and checking reviews and I always come back to this. At first, I read a lot of reviews that said "hey, you know, if you're a gamer, you should go for the Core 2 Duo Extreme series", but not only are they uber expensive, but they're uber hot and not quite as future proof as a Quad Core. I think the main thing is the Extreme has a 1333MHz bus, and the Quad Core only has 1066MHz... Still, it's not a huge issue for me, since I'm not going to be using it ONLY for gaming. I've got some serious parallel processing in mind! Video encoding... 3D rendering... Ohh, yes.

Main system:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Processor
(2x) Kingston HyperX 2GB SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Memory
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Motherboard
(2x) EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB Video Card
Thermaltake Toughpower W0133RU ATX12V / EPS12V 1200W Power Supply
(2x) Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB SATA Hard Drive
NZXT Zero Black/Silver Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case
Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series Sound Card

Monitor:
Dell 2407WFP-HC Ultrasharp 24 Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor

Input:
Microsoft PS/2 Wired Standard Keyboard 500
Microsoft USB + PS/2 Wired Optical IntelliMouse Optical 1.1

Also, I've been toying with the idea of trying my hand at third-party CPU heatsinks! Therefore, I have picked out these two possibilities, reviewed to cool a Quad Core by anywhere from 10 to 30 degrees cooler than the stock fan you receive with the CPU:

Air Cooling:
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
ZALMAN CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan with Heatsink

Yes, the Zalman fan is huge... Gargantuan, even. And expensive for a fan. But the desktop I have right now gets hot during a load in the summer, so I think I'll try this. Somehow, I'll have to check if the fan will even fit inside the case I have picked out. I'm guessing it will... Maybe... I may have to remove a side fan. Maybe not. I know it works with the motherboard I have picked out, though, as the EVGA forum has proved many times.