I love my new desktop wallpaper.

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Sleep... *gurgle*... need sleep...

The GPU that will be running on my next video card has arrived. Impressed w/ the GeForce 3? Think a 20-30% performance increase across the band, and more accurate and efficient anti-aliasing techniques, all packed in a feature set capable of rendering Monsters, Inc. like graphics in real time.

Sweeeet...

nVIDIA's newest brainchild: GeForce 3 on crack.

In case you actually have a life and haven't been following the consumer video card development industry, nVIDIA basically has no competitors right now. 3dfx is now owned by them, Matrox has dropped out of the 3D scene, and S3 fell off the face of the map. Only ATI is putting minor dents in nVIDIA's dominance. Their Radeon series hangs with the GeForce 3 in the benchmarks, but only through some cheating (i.e. dumbing down the quality of a scene as it travels through the pipe). And let's not even broach the subject of their inconsistent drivers.

nVIDIA's motto must be "Hungry yet humble", because they sure haven't been resting on their laurels. Since the introduction of the original GeForce 256 in '99, they've released:

* GeForce 256 DDR
* GeForce 2 GTS
* GeForce 2 Pro/Ultra
* GeForce 2 Ti
* GeForce 3
* GeForce 3 Ti

And this is not counting the MX budget series or the GO laptop series. Rumor has it that the nVIDIA engineers are so far ahead of the pack that they had the GeForce 4 prepped and ready since December!! But marketing strategy required them to shelve the product until their competition caught up.

Yeah, I am an nVIDIA fanboy. Their stock rises and splits like a fleet of hotair balloons regardless of how the current economy is. I blow a mental gasket everytime they release a new product. So sue me.

(Slap self) Anyways, back to the GeForce 4, there are varients up the wazoo. There's the Ti4600, the Ti4400, and the to-be-annonced Ti4200. In the budget sector is the MX460, 440, and 420. The price ranges from $399 to $99, respectively, catering to all possible market niches.

Thanks to AnandTech, I pilfered a couple of their benchmark graphics to comment a bit on the State of Affairs of graphic cards:

In the legacy test section, these video cards are put through the venerable Quake III Arena. Now I know most of you are probably too lazy to dissect the chart above, so I'll just put this plain and simple: 160 FPS at 1600x1200 High Quality.

Sweet heyzeus... pass me a chair...

Note that while the Ti was blowing everything out of the water, the MX models are hanging around the low-end GeForce 3 sector. Keep this in mind as we progress onto the next chart:

This graph represents the performance of the video cards on a DirectX 8.x powered Unreal Engine. This is NOT the old Unreal / UT engine. This next generation baby will be featured in Unreal Tournament 2, and utilizes all the fancy vertex / pixel shaders that is supposed to transform today's faux 3D into tomorrow's Pixar-esque 3D. Here you see the GeForce 4 is trimmed down to a more human 85 FPS at a standard 1024x768 resolution.

As usual, the Ti is tearing up the top of the chart, but look at the bottom where the MX models reside. It's worse than the GeForce 2. TWO!! That's the card in my dinosaur of a computer right now! The reason why it's such a gutter dweller is because nVIDIA castrated the bell and whistle circuits of the chip. It has no hardware support for DirectX 8. To put it bluntly, the GeForce 4 MX line is nothing but a beefed up version of the GeForce 2. You're better off getting any GeForce 3 model or a low end GF4 Ti rather than the GF4 MX.

Start saving those pennies, guys. Next generation PC games will start trickling out soon. We'll be seeing the new DOOM, Jedi Knight II, Unreal and Unreal Tournament 2, and if 3D Realms gets their act together, Duke Nukem Forever. So many awesome games on the horizon, and so little time!

I am rather disappointed w/ the NBA fans of Philadelphia. As you all (should) know, yesterday's NBA All-Star game took place in Philly where Kobe was thoroughly booed throughout the weekend. Not cool, Philly fans. And this is the city that coined itself one of "Brotherly Love".

There should be no jeering in an All-Star game, where players put on a show and fans are just supposed to have fun. It's the eye of the hurricane that is the NBA regular season. A placid moment in the middle of competitive fury. I have less qualms w/ the fans booing during crucial playoff runs, but during an All-Star game?? And it's not as if Kobe wasn't putting on a show. He won the game's MVP deservingly, for crying out loud. What in the name of David Stern were they booing about? Last year's finals? The Sixers were beat fair and square! Show some sportsmanship!

It was the Kobe Bryant show Sunday.

Philadelphia fans ought to be ashamed. It was Kobe's hometown. It was his night to shine. To get booed like that is just wrong. Despite it all, he still put on a good face and said all the right things. But I saw Jim Grey's sideline interview, I saw Kobe's sad and bewildered reaction at getting such a negative vibe, and I sympathized. It was just plain wrong.

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All-Star Saturday was mildly entertaining. Rookie/Soph game is always fun to watch, as is the 3-point Shootout. However, the 3-on-3 crap w/ celebrities, WNBA players, and old fogies reminded me too much of MTV's Rock 'n Jock, of which the latter is more interesting. The dunk contest was likewise underwhelming. Except Jason Richardson's final game-winning aerial show, I saw nothing that got me bug-eyed like Vinsanity's exhibit two years ago.

People are complaining dunks are getting rehashed more and more. I, on the other hand, have a ton of ideas for the dunk contest. For example, in the round where you are required to use a partner, I really want to see someone tomahawk one over his teammate. I'd bet that'd get the fans riled up. Cut down on the ho-hum alley-oop lobs. Another idea is to dribble straight down from halfcourt and do a two-handed variation of Stansbury's Statue of Liberty dunk. How about bouncing the ball off the glass, catch it and bringing it around your back in midair before jamming it? Or maybe.......

Alas, if I only had the hops...

Sigh. Whatever anti-New England feelings I may have, I must admit these Patriots are good. Good enough to dethrone the two best teams in the league in consecutive weeks. As Tom Brady led his squad progressively downfield in the final minute, I could only watch in hopeless silence. Completion. Completion. Spike. Completion. Completion. Spike. Game winning field goal. Patriots win Super Bowl XXXVI.

Brady (left) & Belichick (right) have defied all expectations.

Congratulations to Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the New England defense. You guys have made all doubters (and haters) look like bonafide asses. And no, I am not going to bring back the donkey. I am humiliated enough as it is...

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Sorry guys. Gerry and I had planned a big Super Bowl prediction contest where the winner would win coupons for... (drum roll)... Three Musketeer candy bars! However, we were... uh... attacked w/ amnesia during the week and forgot. Yeah, that's it. So you guys will have to live w/ the final entry of this season's NFL Playoffs Diary. Please read it. Our egos are fragile.

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Anyone keeping up w/ the Wall Street Journalist hostage situation in Pakistan? Some Islamic Militant group is threatening to murder the hostage, Daniel Pearl, unless the U.S. meets their demands. The latest news is that he has been shot, but his body has yet to be found, so Pearl may still be alive. The picture below haunts me to no end.

He has a wife here in the U.S. expecting a child. Their son or daughter may grow up never knowing his or her father. The Islamic kidnappers know this, yet why do they still hold his life in jeopardy? He doesn't qualify as a POW, for crying out loud. He ain't a spy, a soldier, or a threat to the Arabs in any way. Those sons of bitches have no heart nor soul for holding Pearl captive like that. And anyways, the U.S. does not negotiate w/ terrorists. We exterminate them w/ extreme prejudice. Grr...

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In site related news, I'm still working on the console articles/reviews. Very slowly. I haven't had much inspiration for Rice World lately. Feedback has been flat-lining for weeks now. I mean, honestly, what kind of articles do you people actually read? Or do you mainly come to this site for my half-witted blurbs on the news page? I'm not too interested in turning Rice World into Rice's Diary for several reasons, one being I am a firm believer of my own privacy, and another being I lead a rather dull life. Reading my diary would put everyone to sleep.

But I digress. I know you guys have lives to live, so we'll squash our egos and troop on. It's late, and tomorrow's got an early Wizards game on NBC plus this little exhibition show called the Super Bowl. Bed time... cheers.

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Or, if sports is not your flavor of choice...

--> Click! <--

For the GOSFORD PARK review, click here.

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Last night I crashed for the first time in two months. The guity operating system? Windows XP Professional. I installed Microsoft's latest (and greatest?) last week in an effort to save some space on my puny 13 gigabyte harddrive. Some of you may remember I was running in a triple-boot configuration, but having 4 gigs dedicated to two MS OS's is just too much. So I merged the ME & 2000 partition into this current XP partition and clumped a freed gigabyte onto my Linux root partition. Unfortunately, Partition Magic tried to be too helpful in re-organizing my HD, and the end result is an inaccessible Linux partition. Bugger.

Anyways, so I've lugged my computer back home for the weekend for some doctoring, only to have XP freeze on me when I tried installing a new network card. And in freeze, I mean a dead lock, as in three-finger-salute won't work. The remedy (discovered after many hours of tearing at my hair), was simply popping the NIC into a different PCI slot. Along the way, I gathered some intelligence on Win XP, in case some of you may be considering an upgrade:

-- If your CPU has enough horsepower and RAM, XP's new "Luna" interface is very slick. Every move on the taskbar and start menu executes in an animation. I was mesmerized for hours after first installing XP. If you feel it's leeching too many of your resources, you can always revert back to "classic" mode.

-- Any version of Easy CD Creator below 5 will not work on XP. I tried installing it and it just blocked the driver from loading. I couldn't find a way to unblock it, so I uninstalled it instead. However, the error message regarding the blocked driver keeps popping up. Very annoying. Moral of the story: Don't install Easy CD Creator, period. Use Nero instead.

-- XP is TOO user friendly. When I wanted to roll up my sleeves and dig into its guts, it'll wrestle w/ me to the death. I'll change one setting, and XP will change it back the moment I reset. Even Safe Mode had teeth. To do some serious tweaking and uninstalling, you'll have to think of some clever workarounds. Sadly for me, I am not clever enough to think of workarounds. Arrgghh! Very frustrating!

-- XP will threaten you if you try to install a rogue driver. It's actually a very scary threat. The prompt reads something like,

So naturally, most users soil their pants and click no. That's the way MS likes to run their monopoly. All drivers must pass through their labs w/ a seal of approval. But the key thing to keep in mind here is it's only a threat, so click away at yes. (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for the results of your actions.)

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Okay, enough silliness. Time for bed.