Nospin-L - March 2006
Drew Dunn
NOSPIN-L
Computers - without the spin
Welcome
to issue number one of NOSPIN-L, a monthly newsletter devoted to interesting
computing, shooting from the hip. No marketing spin, no sales spin, maybe
just a little personal spin - and a healthy dose of fun.
This issue opens up with a look at some of the peripheral action around
Blizzard's massively multiplayer online game World
of Warcraft, takes a look at Apple's new Intel-powered Macs and finishes up with a couple of must-have free programs.
World of Warcraft: Is this the new Golf?
World of Warcraft launched last year with a lot of fanfare, and not a few
complaints from users who thought that Blizzard may have jumped the gun by not
having a stout enough server infrastructure to handle the load of hundreds of
thousands of rapacious elves, orcs, trolls and others. The idea behind
the game isn't all that original, but the execution is actually quite well
done. "Warcrack", as a friend of mine calls it, is a US$50 game
(look around, though, and find it for less) that charges another US$15 per
month for online play.
And online is your only choice. This entry into the MMORPG (Massively
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) doesn't have a stand alone option.
It does, however, include a free month of play, just to hook you into the
habit - or, at least, so that you can see if the game is for you. But be
warned - the first-rate graphics, well-designed user interface and excellent
social interaction tools can quicly turn this game into a huge time sink.
It may also be the 21st century version of golf - Joi Ito, a Japanese venture
capitalist has been playing the game since June and, in what seems to be a
truely bizarre turn of business events, has formed a WoW guild (called We Know) that has seen investment tips and
schmoozing in one of the strangest venues that any financier could imagine.
The new Internet meme floating around on blogs is that World of
Warcraft is now the new golf. Will the same power deals made on the links
be made in a computer world dedicated to destroying kobolds, dragons and
wraiths? Time will tell.
Not Your Great Grandfather's Gold Mine
Couple a hugely popular game like World of Warcraft with online auction house
Ebay and you get....gold mining. Oh, but it's not all hard work, friends.
All it takes is a little cash and you can be a rich...um...dwarf...in
your online game. And gold mining isn't entirely popular in the online
world. It's a peculiarly polarizing trend - either you like it because
you can get online cash to buy the things your character needs without spending
every waking hour toiling away in battle or you hate it because it destroys the
spirit of the game and penalizes those who have the time to spend in said toil.
World of Warcraft isn't the only game with miners. Virtually any virtual
world that has some form of transferrable currency picks up these
entrepreneurs/opportunists. The disturbing part of WoW's gold mining is
that it tends to bring out some rather distasteful behavior in the online
community. Without linking to the details (even though I like to wallow
in the mudslinging, too much is enough), it appears that some of the most vocal
opponents of the practice feel that the biggest "offenders" are
located in Asia. Alas this seems to
bring out the closet racist in many of the most strident critics. The
bottom line? It's just a game. Don't forget that!
The Big Switch
What's going on in Cupertino,
California these days? If
there wasn't a huge lightning bolt from the sky blasting down on One Infinite
Loop, it's news to me! Apple is making the move from PowerPC to Intel!
Late last year, shiny new iMacs and MacBook Pros started shipping with Intel's new Core
Duo chip. Last week, Steve Jobs announced that the Mac Mini would be the
next convert to Intel-ism.
All kidding aside, the news is mostly good. While it does seem to give
away Apple's cachet as a "different" computer, the change puts more
power for less money into some very well designed hardware. Now, I do
have to say that in saying that, I may have a little bias - I'm typing this
newsletter on a Mac Mini (the PowerPC version). But the worry that comes
with this switch (at least for Apple evangelists) is that the line between Mac
and PC is starting to blur. What differentiates a Mac from a PC?
I'm not going to try to resolve that issue - but I will point out that Mac and
PC both use PCI-X buses, DDR or DDR2 memory and ATA or SATA hard drives.
A USB keyboard and mouse work equally well on a Mac or a PC.
Nothing special about monitors, either (although, to be honest, I think
that Apple's Cinema displays are to die for).
However - OS X is, at least for me, the easiest to use, although not the most
widely supported, operating system out of the box. But even that may be
less of a distinction. Despite Apple's best efforts, the OS has been cracked to run on
non-Apple hardware - although Apple's legal department casts a very wide net to
keep that sort of thing at bay.
Free Software You Can Use
Two very powerful and very free programs this month: Nvu and Open
Office.
Without getting into an in-depth review of either, both packages replace some
pretty pricey software out there. Open Office does a very good job as an
office suite, duplicating most of the functionality of Microsoft Office - even
doing a very capable job of reading and writing Microsoft's proprietary
formats. Nvu does a workmanlike job as a graphical HTML editor - I wrote
this month's newsletter with it. Now, neither is a perfect replacement,
particularly in the case of Nvu. Nvu is a fork of the graphical HTML
editor that was included with Netscape's browser. The interface should
look familar to anyone who has used Netscape Navigator. It's easy to use
and very intuitive, but, for the html purist, the code that it generates is not
the most graceful in the world. It's no FrontPage in that regard - the
code is readable, but certainly not what would be done by hand.
Open Office ought to be installed on a lot more computers that it is.
It's a very well executed office package and, unless you're using some of
the more esoteric Microsoft Office features, will be far more than adequate for
your needs.
Both programs run on Windows, OS X and Linux.
Nvu can be found at www.nvu.com.
Open Office can be found at www.openoffice.org.
Thanks for reading this far! See you next month!
Drew Dunn
NOSPIN-L
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