Coredump

Gab is getting too fond of online games (Cartoon Network, Bandai, mostly kids’ stuff), so I used a little hack often employed by Trojans and other malware: I set the hostnames of the above domains to 127.0.0.1 in the /etc/hosts file. I know, I can be an *evil* tatay sometimes, but I had to curb his growing addiction.

But, to paraphrase Judith Milhon, there are clever ways to circumvent imposed limits. He googled [cartoon network], and clicked on the next working link in the organic results.

Lesson in online parenthood: if it’s on the web, it’s just a google away. Touché.

Our teams (Europe, Asia, and Australia) had bowling night at Paeng’s Bowl here in Eastwood.

My group won the first two games, but went away a tad bit behind in the final two. It was a close fight, though — only 15 pinfalls short. Heh.

I was switching between a number 9 and number 11 ball between frames, so maybe that took my game hand off. (Hay, excuses, excuses.)

Rematch!

The Da Vinci Code, that is.

(Yup, that crummy and cheesy title should serve as a dead giveaway — and a warning — that this is one of those TWOT posts. Heh.)

To get away once in a while from the dreary work of sifting through packets and making sense of server logs (Did I mention I have moved in to a new workplace? No? Oh well, I have. More later, that is, if I get to decipher the boilerplate NDA that came with the job.), I’ve come across The Da Vinci Code Quest on Google. It’s a series of puzzles to drum up interest on the film, which, by the way, will be showing in Metro Manila theaters next week (gawd, hope I can get away from the office by then).

Take this: 12,358 (Fibonacci, anyone?) puzzles, served fresh everyday, or at least once every browser refresh. There are lots of spoilers out there, but as I’ve said, if you’re looking for a worthy TWOT — or if you’re one of those puzzle nuts — this is for you. I think.

Via Boing Boing: Gloriously fun trailer of “bunny-hopping” soldiers:

If you are subscribed, like me, to the foremost Linux users’ mailing list in the Philippines, you’ll be amazed at the sheer volume of emails lately, mostly concerning the (immediate, urgent) switch to Linux because of the recent spate of BSA raids on establishments using pirated software.

And the running thread is, can Windows games work on Linux?

As I wrote in a previous entry, it bodes good tidings for Linux and F/OSS. But I can’t help but bear reservations. Among them: is Linux ready for primetime here in the Philippines, at least in the gaming scene?

I’m not much of a gamer myself, but I understand that there’s a market out there for that. One needs only go to the nearest neighborhood internet cafe to know. But how big is that market? One poster in PLUG says that it’s miniscule, if not insignificant. Well, not exactly like that, but words to that effect.

For game developers (the big ones in Korea, US and EU) to even think about porting games to Linux and other platforms for that matter, there must be a significant market out there. That’s free market for you: build enough demand and they will come.

Well, there’s always Wine and a new (?) gig called Cedega. But these are at most bandaid measures — they don’t actually port the games but make them run in a sandbox environment that emulates Windows, sort of. From what I hear, they’re not that hot neither.

So there are two choices: build that critical mass of users — the market — for big-time game developers to take notice, or, in the grand tradition of F/OSS, roll our own.

The first isn’t happening yet, and I don’t think it will happen soon. With net cafe’s owners’ tendency to get the most of their bucks (read: use pirated software to save on costs), they’re not about to pay for software they can get through illicit means, Windows or Linux. And since Windows is more conveniently available, they’d just as soon stick to it than switch to one with which they’re not familiar.

The second bears some interesting thought, but it would entail huge logistics. How do you farm out the production process required in game development? I’m not so sure there’s a bazaar equivalent for that — at least not yet.

So does the open source community have to admit defeat and lay down its ideological weapons? I hope not, because, as the recent raids show, there will always be people willing to switch. When the going gets tough, they will all switch to Linux and F/OSS. Heh. Or, Microsoft will take notice and lower licensing costs. Or, game developers will see the diaspora and join in as well. Or…

Just passing wind, I suppose.