oyvindhauge.com – Page 16

Putting Windows Vista to Sleep

After installing Windows Vista on the HTPC/gaming PC I have set up for the living room I have run into several problems (which reminds me that I have to write about them later). However, I was able to solve a quite trivial one thanks to sleep.exe by Gammadyne Corporation. This simple little program simply puts Windows Vista into sleep mode.

For several reasons I have been trying to find other ways like for instance this and this to put it into sleep mode (without using the start menu) without success. Now, putting Vista into sleep mode is simply done by assigning a short key to sleep.exe and there we are.

A PhD on Open Source on Open Source Part 6 – Running Windows Applications on Linux (No More Windows Whining With Wine)

Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API, meaning that it enables you to run a wide variety of Windows applications on Linux. I have known of Wine for quite some time but as normally have had a Windows computer around I have not gone to the trouble of installing it. I guess I have been a bit skeptical as well, however for no reason. Lately, I have put my Windows computer to rest at home and I am only using Linux (Ubuntu) on my work machine. Most of the applications I use are cross platform and of course open source.

Even though the Norwegian government has established a competency center for open source software, the government has only started using a few open source software applications. One of which is not open source is the application for getting travel refunds. This is clearly an important application but it is unfortunately only a Windows application.

Normally I have used this program on Windows but a few days ago I did not have any PC with Windows so I decided to try Wine. I must say I was impressed. I opened the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu, searched for Wine and installed it. Piece of cake. Then I just downloaded and opened the msi-file for the travel refund application. Wine automatically fired up and installed the application perfectly. Within seconds I was completing my travel form (which is really a pain).

I have not used Wine much besides this travel refund application. However, it worked flawlessly with the Olypus DSS Player, which we use for listening to recordings of interviews, as well. Bottom line, I was impressed by Wine’s simple installation and that it worked flawlessly out-of-the-box. Based on my somewhat limited experience I would warmly recommend it.

DRM Ruining the PC Gaming Industry

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is about to ruin the PC gaming industry. I am not the first to state this and probably not the last either. The discussion about DRM and PC games has reached new heights with EA’s release of Spore. Ben and Rob over at Tom’s Games discuss this here and here in their weekly episodes of Second Take.

Personally I really do not understand why EA and others are using SecuRom and similar products to “protect” their games. I assume the intention is to either (1) stop piracy or (2) stop people from selling used games. For me, the only thing they achieve is stopping me from buying their games.

Piracy is clearly a problem on the PC platform. It is a shame that people does not pay for the games they play and it is understandable that the industry tries to stop this. However, there does not exist any effective copy protection (yet) and I do not think DRM is the right way to stop piracy. DRM is only making it harder for the customers.

I have a stronger beliefe in digital distribution of quality games which are updated after their initial release to a reasonable price. Much like what the guys at Stardock intends to do with their “Gamers Bill of Rights”. This is of course a PR trick but I agree with them in most of what they say.

Back to DRM, copy protections like SecuRom are just creating problems for the people who pay for the products, not stopping piracy. Pirated versions of Spore and NoCD-cracks sirculated, probably even before Spore was released. I want to play the games I buy anywhere, at any time and I want to be able to install them as many times as I like. I payed for the bloody game didn’t I? I wouldn’t buy a bike which I could only use four times, within the city limits on Sundays!

Spore is unfortunately not the first game which incorporates such DRM solutions. Both Bioshock and Mass Effect have received massive amounts of flack for their DRM solutions which created a lot of problems for a large number of users.

So why? Dear gaming, record and movie industry. Why do you use DRM when it creates problems for the paying users, does not effectively stop piracy, increases the price of your products and give you a lot of negative media coverage? Some of the vendors have got it and they are pulling the plug on DRM as we speak. But Walmart, what about the customers who were unfortunate enough to by DRM (infested) music who are not able to play their music any longer?

Most anticipated games for 2008

Inspired by the Rawgameblog and Second Take’s Fall Games Preview I decided to make a list of my most anticipated games for the rest of 2008. These are the games which I consider getting my hands on unless they utterly fail and get really poor critics.

There are plenty of other games which look very interesting but I decided to make a top five. In doing this I had to leave out at least ten games I would like to buy. I also left out games with no confirmed release date. All dates are taken from Gamespot. You might want of have a look at all the games I am tracking. Nevertheless, here are the top five ordered by their release date.

Mount and Blade is set for a September 23rd release. Mount and Blade might not look like the most cutting edge game but I have already tested beta versions of the game and I know it is great fun. Talesworld are now about to release the 1.0 version of the unique game. The fact that it comes from a small provider makes the game even more impressing. Mount and Blade has a large community and there are already developed several mods for the game and you can expect many, many hours of barbaric fun from this game.

Far Cry 2 is going to be released October 21st. Far Cry is the sequel to perhaps one of the best halves of an FPS I have every played. The first half of Far Cry was a truly great game and I am hoping the new developers are able to pull off a complete great game with Far Cry 2. It sure looks beautify, let us just hope it is fun to play as well.

Fallout 3 with its October 28th release is another game I am excited about. I am a bit more uncertain about Fallout 3 than Mount and Blade and Farcry 2. As mentioned, I have already played Mount and Blade and I have a pretty fair idea of how Farcry 2 will play. I have never played any of the legendary Fallout games, Iam uncertain about how the gameplay will turn out and I am a bit uncertain about how Oblivion developers Bethesda Softworks will finish this game.

Gears of War 2 is starting a very hectic November with its November 7th release. Plenty of other great games are being released during November as it is probably the most hectic month of the year (in terms of potentially great games being released). Gears of War was the first truly great Xbox360 game when it was released two years ago, a short time after its superb trailer.

Left 4 Dead on November 20th is going to be a multiplayer blast. What is better than killing hoards of zombies with your friends? Just the fact that it is a Valve game increases my expectations an extra notch or two.

A PhD on Open Source on Open Source Part 5 – Images, Figures and Graphs

An image says more than thousand words and a PhD thesis can sometimes become quite long. It is therefore nice to replace some words with an image from time to time.

To include images in a LaTeX document is it very nice to have resizable figures which look good. To be able to resize an image it is recommendable to use vector graphics. Vector graphics consist of geometrical objects which can easily be resized while maitaining crisp images. Bitmap images on the other hand will often become unclear when resized. To make vector graphics figures I use Inkscape. It is simple and really easy to use.

To create graphs and plots I would use OpenOffice (Calc) and export the figures as pdf with lossless compression of images. The resulting pdf file can be imported directly when using LaTeX. I don’t really make that many graphs so I have not exported that many figures like this and there may be other, easier was to do it. However, this works quite nicely for me. It is of course possible to edit the pdf file in for instance Inkscape or some other image editor like gimp. Gimp is an open source equivalent of Photoshop. Some say it is better while others prefer Photoshop. I have not used either of them that much to have a clear meaning. Nevertheless, gimp should cover most of your needs.

When making plots and graphs gnuplot is a much used option. I must admit that I have not personally used it a lot but I know that other researchers swear to it. Like Inkscape, gnuplot is able to save scalable vector graphics. This is as mentioned a big advantage when resizing images. Everyone who has tried to export a graph or a plot as an image from Excel and resized this shold know what I am talking about.