GA-Source heeft een interview met Richard Vanner, producer van Rally Championship '99, gepost. Hier een stuk over de extreem vette graphics van RC'99:

Gary (GA-Sports): With the plethora of graphics hardware available today, it

seems that the graphics engine can make or break a game. What is unique about

your graphics engine and do you expect that it will raise the bar in comparison to

what's available currently?

Richard (Europress): To start with we have 24 bit textures that look

photo-realistic, this in itself raises the standard over other rally games. The

3D engine analyses the available 3D card and makes the best use of any

extra on-board memory. We've used many blending modes to create the

most realistic environments. Dual texturing has been employed to create

shadows cast by trees across the road or mud patches merge with the

tarmac surface.

There's a sophisticated lighting engine that allows us to create many

effects. The car has many different lights, on the front (dips, main beam

and spots), at the rear (brake, reverse and fog lights). When a car points

towards an object (like a house for example), the engine works out which

face(s) of the object are being lit and calculates the correct brightness for

them.

Street lamps and house lights cast light into the stages and also affect the

car (both externally and internally) – providing a dynamically lit

environment.

Gamer's Alliance heeft nog veel meer info, inclusief een paar mooie screenshots. Check ze hier.

Slashdot heeft een stukje over een alliantie tussen Sun Microsystems en Netscape:

America Online, Inc. (NYSE: AOL - news), the world's leading provider of branded interactive services, and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - news), a leader in network computing products and services, today unveiled more details of their vision and strategy for the strategic collaboration between the two companies, now referred to as the Sun-Netscape Alliance. In the first in a series of announcements expected over the next several months, the companies provided details of their product strategy in the E-commerce infrastructure and application software areas, as well as organizational structure in sales, services and support.

Hier lees je de rest

The Register heeft de hand weten te leggen op de roadmap van de Alpha chip.

He says that the Alpha 21264 EV6 delivers blistering speed and the EV67 will be available shortly. He thinks that it will clock at 700MHz for TurboLaser and 767MHz ins for WildFire, attaining an estimated 36Specint95 at 667MHz. By the end of the year, the EV68 will arrive at speeds of around 833MHz, and possibly 1GHz by year end.

Bij BXBoards hebben ze een review van de Gigabyte GA-BX2000

Gigabyte return to the BXB testing lab after a 3 month absence with a board full of innovation and new features designed to take motherboard design into the new Millennium. The Gigabyte GA-BX2000 follows on from their excellent GA-6BXE. Indeed the boards are very similar to look at, and only close examination of the board reveals the extend of Gigabyte innovation. Meet the world's first review of the world's first Dual BIOS motherboard.

Volgende maand gaat Office 2000 de deur uit bij microshaft.

Office 2000, the latest generation of widely used business programs including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, will be available to large corporate customers in April and is scheduled to be in retail outlets June 10, Microsoft said.

Het complot van de serial ID nummers eist z'n eerste slachtoffer.

Thanks to a controversial serial ID number, researchers seem to have found the virus writer. Two software engineers have extracted information from the Melissa virus that appears to lead to an account on America Online Inc. and a Web site that, if matched with a person, could lead law enforcement officials to the author of the prolific virus. The key is a controversial serial number, called the Global Unique Identifier or GUID, which is included in files created with Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT) Office, as well as some other applications, including Visual Basic. The serial number raised the concern of privacy advocates just a few weeks ago for its ability to be used to trace certain documents back to their creator. That's exactly what two software engineers have done. Using the unique number, Richard M. Smith, president of software tools developer Phar Lap Software Inc., and Fredrik Bjorck, a Swedish PhD student at Stockholm University's Department of Computer and System Sciences, have tracked down the virus writer to at least one specific Web site.

Lees verder hier

De hele VS is op dit moment in de ban van dat leuke nieuwe virus/worm geval Melissa. Op Coolinfo zag ik een stukje staan over hoe je jezelf ertegen kan beschermen:

Although Melissa is one of the most "successful" viruses ever, you don't have to be a victim. Melissa messages come with a subject header that starts "Important Message From," followed by a name. The name may be a familiar one to you, especially if it pulled your address from a computer of a friend or business associate. The message text says, "Here is the document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)."

If you open the attachment, your PC will be infected. If you delete it, you're safe. And if you don't use Microsoft Word 97 (or the prerelease version of Word 2000), breath a sigh of relief: Melissa can't infect your computer. If you use Word 97 or Word 2000, but don't use Microsoft Outlook, Melissa can't grab your e-mail addresses and propagate itself. But it can still infect your computer, and while it doesn't appear to do more than send out more such messages, its other potential effects aren't completely understood yet.

Whether you have antivirus software on your PC, you can disable automatic macro execution in Word 97. Select Tools, Options, General and make sure the "macro virus protection" box is checked. All major antivirus software companies have updates that handle Melissa. If you are running antivirus software, you should update it immediately.

If you don't have antivirus software, consider downloading the free trial software offered by many companies. To make sure that your PC hasn't been infected by Melissa, go the Trend Micro's HouseCall site.

Jaja, een wereldkampioenschap Gaming. Dat kan nog leuk gaan worden:

The WDT Team unleashes the first World Championship in Online Gaming.

This event will involve the soon-to-be-released 3D action game Quake3:Arena from id Software.The tournament will consist of national teams admitted by their respective national associations. 30+ countries are expected to attend the event.

The event will be held in the convention halls of the exhibition center Palexpo, located in Geneva, Switzerland, which can hold up to 1,500 contenders. The WDT is still organizing sponsors and is also open for further talks with other interested parties. The tournament is due to be held in the first quarter of the year 2000.