Jun 21 2009

Left 4 Dead Authoring tools/SDK Finally Coming Out

It seems that the guys at valve are finally going to allow community content to be played by the mainstream user. Along with a non beta version of the sdk that is said to release next week the l4d devs are also going to be overhauling the matchmaking system to support “Add-on Campaigns” which will allow you to select campaigns that you have installed.

Because of the recent announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, a lot of fans are wondering whether it’s worth the trouble creating any custom content because the it may not work with the new game. I found this quote from one of the writers for most of Valve’s games which addresses the issue.

Chet_Faliszek wrote:One thing we do know for sure is we want to make sure that everyone making a Left 4 Dead 1 map now or campaign now it’s still going to work in Left 4 Dead 2. You will be able to start Left 4 Dead 2 up, you will have the new creatures automatically, you’ll have the new weapons you will have all of that in the world, if you want to do some of the new director stuff or some of the new ways we control item placement you can go re-do it and add that, but you can also just leave it the exact same way and it will work.

When I was first reading about this on the Left 4 Dead Blog I started thinking of playing de_dust with hordes of zombies which was apparently done in the demo but never released. But then I remembered that I only have the game for XBOX 360. In the few news reports that I’ve read I haven’t seen any mention at all of XBOX changes. If you read that blog Yasser Malaika talks about how easy it will be to install the add-on by double clicking the VPK file. More than likely Microsoft will make me pay for every custom map that is freely available for the PC version.

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Jun 20 2009

Canadian ISP’s Soon To Be Logging And Sharing

Last week the Public Safety Minister, Peter Van Loan, introduced a bill that could force ISP’s to allow police access to all our network data without a warrant. If this were to pass then all the internet service providers would save all our private data and give it up anytime the cops want to have a look at it. This seems to be pretty common practice in many other countries but I was always proud to live in a place where your every action isn’t logged and processed.

Read More

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/nr/2009/nr20090618-eng.aspx?rss=true


http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4069/125/

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Jun 1 2009

Bing VS Google Bandwidth Comparison

With the unveiling of Microsofts new search engine Bing I was curious to see which site uses more bandwidth per load and query. These results are taken from the firefox plugin firebug’s Net feature. This plugin will tell you what files were downloaded and how big they were along with how long they took. It’s a great way to see how fast your site is going to be.

Google Main Page 20 KB
Search for Cody Taylor 38 KB
Search for asdf asdf 10 KB

The search for Cody Taylor was so large because of images displayed at the top of the pages.

Bing Main Page 109 KB
Search for Cody Taylor 22 KB

Over 5 times the data of Google. The search for Cody Taylor on Bing didn’t show any pictures but was still twice the size of a normal Google seearch. If we take into account the New Ajax onMouseOver event on Bing for each search result it becomes 27 KB still without any images. Remember those articles that went off about how much energy every google query uses? Looks like Bing more than triples that amount.

Of course both these sites are much more effecient when we take into account that after the first visit most of the large data is already cached in our browser. For this test I was clearing all my cache between each transaction.

Bing does have quite a few redeeming features and for a first impression it looks like it may be a serious contender but it still lacks the simplicity and speed of google.

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May 14 2009

Lawyer challenges Mulroney's 1996 testimony during Airbus lawsuit – CBC.ca


National Post

Lawyer challenges Mulroney's 1996 testimony during Airbus lawsuit
CBC.ca
Brian Mulroney testifies at the Oliphant commission, which is looking into business dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and the former prime minister.
Mulroney in hot seat over selective answers The Canadian Press
Oh, cry me a river, Mr. Mulroney National Post
Globe and Mail – Toronto Star – CBC.ca – CBC.ca
all 696 news articles  Langue : Français
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May 14 2009

Caregiver advocate questions Dhalla's story – Canada.com


CTV.ca

Caregiver advocate questions Dhalla's story
Canada.com
By Juliet O'Neill, Canwest News ServiceMay 14, 2009 7:21 PM Brampton Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla during a press conference in Toronto, Friday.
Dhalla lawyer hints scandal was politically motivated StarPhoenix
Dhalla lying, advocate implies Toronto Star
Globe and Mail – The Canadian Press – Winnipeg Sun – Brampton Guardian
all 69 news articles
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May 14 2009

Domestic abuse – Ottawa Citizen


CTV.ca

Domestic abuse
Ottawa Citizen
There's blood in the waters, and the sharks are circling for Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla. As fascinating as the spectacle might be for political junkies, the importance of this episode will ultimately be measured by whether it has any effect on the lives of
Dhalla abuse charges 'false' Edmonton Sun
Dhalla a victim of campaign: lawyer National Post
Globe and Mail – Toronto Star – Toronto Star – Toronto Star
all 545 news articles
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May 14 2009

Google suffers major failure

Google Search and Google News performance slowed to a crawl, while an outage seemed to spread from Gmail to Google Maps and Google Reader. Comments about the failure were flying on Twitter, with “googlefail” quickly became one of the most searched terms on the popular micro-blogging site.


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May 14 2009

Xerox Solid Ink Printer Cuts Waste by 90%

Ink toner cartridges are expensive, wasteful, and energy-intensive. That’s why Xerox’s new ColorQube 9200 printers are so innovative. Instead of using traditional cartridges, the printers use solid blocks of ink that melt when heated. Xerox claims that its ,500 machine–meant squarely for corporate customers


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May 14 2009

Make High-Impact Backgrounds for Your Designs with Photoshop

In this Photoshop web design tutorial, you’ll learn about creating dynamic and high-impact backgrounds that you can use on your own web layouts. We’ll go over color/gradient techniques, lighting effects, and using textures and patterns.


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May 14 2009

You Don’t Need Pro Gear to Take Great Studio Portraits

While it’d be great to have a spare 10k to drop on a nice lighting setup – you don’t really need it to get some pretty good results.


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