WOW may go free to play?

And here is the link from toms.

So it is just a distant possibility. Anyway, just yesterday I was thinking if WOW could have a offline mode I would be play it from time to time.

If it really went free to play, I might spend an hour or two per week and buy some stuff to boast my abilities.

Microsoft meeting

My co-worker has finally pushed me to our local Microsoft meeting, and I have to admit it is a good experience. Relaxed and fun, free food and items. I win a MS T-shirt (which I always want to have one). The presenter showed some cool lambada moves and some general coding styles. Best of all, I saw a few former co-workers :-)

So if there are MS group meetings at your locale, I strongly encourage you to attend.

Two cool starcraft matches

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCDD80UBlZk&playnext_from=TL&videos=igu6aFom048&feature=sub

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wbNKHZu-M&playnext_from=TL&videos=CyMK_kP30i4&feature=sub

Yes they are starcraft original, and yes I love protoss :-)

The oil leak (again)

It is still not resolved. I am very pissed off by BP and The US President.

BP is definitely at fault, despite all the awards it got.

And Obama should have done much more!! He could have summoned the CEOs and experts of other companies and solve this. Even the Iranian president offered help. TAKE IT!!!!!! Mr. Ahmadinejad probably can do this much quicker.

And all the related US Government agencies. If they can't prevent this, can't do anything about the spill, can't offer any good ideas and all they do is point to each other, that means they are useless and should be trimmed.

Big companies and big government is the same, all should be break up.

Unreal Tournament

I had the game back in 2000, and love the game play (especially the one where you can snip on top of a tower and the last one).

Recently during a conversion with a friend, we talked about unreal and he wanted to play. So I promised that I will give him the CD. Well, turned out that CD is lost forever and somehow I wanted to play again as well.

So I went to GameStop near my home and bought unreal tournament 3. The graphics is better than the original, and I am going through the levels right now hopping the great levels in the original is still present in this new version.

It is great to play old games for cheap, my copy is only $10 :-)

Boobs and talents

I was reading a blog about some new movie Megan Fox started in and the author was talking about how no movie will show case her talents.

Will, unfortunate for her, big boobs cover up whatever talents underneath.

Economic Enlightenment Survey

A very interesting Survey on Economic Enlightenment. The link is http://econjwatch.org/articles/economic-enlightenment-in-relation-to-college-going-ideology-and-other-variables-a-zogby-survey-of-americans, which contains more info on how/what kind of people did on this Survey.


1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

And all the answers should be of type "Generically speaking", or "statistical" nature.

And the answers are:




















1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
Yes
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those
services.
Yes
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
Yes
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
Yes

5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
No
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being
exploited.
No
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
No

8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.
Yes



So how did you do?

Phenom II X4 940 first impressions

My Phenom II x4 arrived today, got it installed and here are my impressions.

1. consumes much more power than my old athlon X2 4800+. the 4800 boots at 150W, idles at 80W, max out at 160W. The Phenom II x4 boots at 200W, idles at 110W, max out at 260W (during video encoding).

2. Faster. Twice as fast during video encoding. This I really cares because I need constantly upload videos from my camcorder to youtube, and the encoding speed is killing me.

3. Windows experience index jumped from 5.5 to 7.4, and my other scrolls (memory, video) also jumped from 7.0/7.1 to 7.4. My disk score didn't change.

Starcraft videos

Jaedon vs Baby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghxOPQtQA_k&playnext_from=TL&videos=iO3wEEiQusQ&feature=sub

And, Starcraft II, this is a really great one, massive toss power:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1LBC3FHh4M&feature=channel

Enjoy!

Still Waiting for Starcraft II

I always thought I am a very responsible adult, have the ability to not over spend, save for the future and when spending, spend rationally.

And Starcraft II kind of affected my mind. It is like a drug. I just bought a quad core cpu to replace my aging Athlon X2 (even though it should be able to handle Starcraft II just fine), and I will buy Starcraft II at the release (instead of wait for a used copy for half the price).

And the waiting is burning me from the inside. I feel like a drug addict.

BARACK PETROLEUM

Yes I am really pissed, and I steal that headline from drudge.

This oil leak is not supposed to last this long. Even if they keep pouring heavy stone and concrete on that thing the leak would have been stopped by now (because the bigger the area the smaller the pressure).

The US President did nothing. He could easily offer a xx million reward to anyone who could solve the problem. He had the entire Navy/Army/air force at his command. I am sure just dump 1000 tons of stones will make the leak slower. And, NOTHING!!!

MVVMSAQ model for Silverlight

MVVM is the base coding style for Silverlight, and I am adding a Synchronized Action Queue to it.

Silverlight can get data from server via WCF or Asmx (also javascript of course), but neighter WCF nor asmx supports synchronized data mode, which can make the code a bit hard to maintain when multiple operations are required for a single action.

the SAQ model (Synchronized Action Queue) will fix that. Basically we fake synchronized action via a thread, and all actions will be queued for the thread to process. It has no advantage when a single action is required for any operation, but when you need combined actions for a given operation, the synchronized command will make the code much easier to read and maintain.

The oil leak

I can't believe they haven't stopped it yet. Initially I thought it is because it is deep and hard to get near, but now I saw the SAW right on the pipe??!! If they can get a saw that close, they can get anything close.

What they should do is, make a pipe with a valve that is bigger than the leaking pipe, stuck it on to the leak, seal from below (I know we can seal iron together under water). Now you have a leaking pipe with a valve on top, just close the valve.