Sourabh’s blog

Whoever you are, one thing cant resist is the Sony Playstation Portable. The idea of a sleek device which is powerful enough to be an entertainment system playing games, movies and your favorite music on the move and qualifying to be a hand-held itself seems to be a good reason to buy. In an effort to de-throw Nintendo from the handheld market and be a better choice than the Nindendo DS, we were pleased to see the pricing of the Sony PSP being very competitive and would be the first choice for anyone at a price of 249$. If you were wondering what would be the price in India, believe it or not its available in India at a street price of nearly 11-12k.

Never mind about the fact that you need to buy legit copies of the game UMD which cost a bomb which ranges anything from 2-3k INR. If you ever wanted another reason to buy the Sony PSP, here it is - you can now run Windows/Linux on it. This is indeed true and has opened the door for a wide range of options that the PSP can now do, not limited to but including the running of: FreeDOS, Linux, DLX Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, PicoBSD, Pragma Linux, Debian 3.0r0 and 2.2r5, and any other disk images with pre-installed systems on them.

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If you were wondering how would you work on Windows? Here are the controls slated

Directional keys - Mouse movement (press repeatedly)
SQUARE - Left mouse button
CIRCLE - Right mouse button
CROSS - Middle mouse button
START - Opens the windows start menu
SELECT - Quits immediatly (though you should shutdown windows instead)

Lookover:

I agree, all these things are only for the fanatics who wont mind wasting their time to make their gizmo be able to have one more feature on their ‘Device capable to‘ list.

This is not the first time that we have been hearing about the existence of ads in games. Although I have seen a game like NFS Underground 2 carrying the ads pretty well in a game, but imagine ads tracking you during online gaming? This post has been in reference to what i read in here where the latest 1.1 patch in SWAT 4 has a ‘ Massive Streaming Ad Support’. Certainly its not what you would like in a game which you pay so much for.

What exactly is seen in the game after the latest patch is that there are real well monitored ad posters shown within the game. These are quite apparent from the thumbnail pics seen below. During online play, the game sets up an connection with the ‘madserver.net’ and directs images/posters to the game client(Checks?). What is even more shocking to see is that its just not mere showing of ads at programmed locations within the game.

What information do the advertisers get?

Till the game is closed, game client sends a message to signify that the game has ended. The game-client contacts madserver to tell the advertisers how long the gamer was with each advert in their view. This is mapped to the gamer id, so they know which player in the game saw the advert, and when, for how long, and from how far away (by virtue of the size attribute). Even the average viewing angle is passed back.

Lookover

No one would mind ads in free game. This gives them the necessary bread and butter to earn some money. I wont mind ads in games if the games are free or if they sell for very cheap rates. We see ads on Television, because TV channels are near free and we dont have to pay too big sum to subscribe to these channels. Not only the gamers get reemed for the cost of games, but now developers are seeking out more under the table ways to fill their pockets. Putting ads in games is essentially making us pay for spyware. This whole deal may just be a tip of the iceberg and bigger scams may already be going on. If a game which retails at 50$ resorts to such a thing, what can be expected from smaller game developers. Gamers who buy this have every right to be annoyed, they didn’t pay good money to see advertisements in SWAT4 , they paid money to play a good tactical shooter not an advertising tactial shooter. For me this is as simple as moving to a paid host to get rid of the ads. If you still get the ads, whats the use of paying money? If strict guidelines and specifications are not laid, this may be a sign of bigger things to come. Buyers of the same too should be informed about such types of ads which can collect user information.

Just returned from college now. I would have loved India wining the toss and having the first go by batting first but thats not the case to be. Nothing to loose hope after all, we all want India to win don’t we? I guess we have made the right choice leaving Laxman out. But that has put extra pressure on the Indian top order and I just hope they don’t tumble in the finals again. Lets see what the inclusion of both the top spinners Kumble and Bhajii does. I always believed that one should play to ones strengths and pick the team based on current form. I wouldnt have liked either of Kumble or Bhajii being left out. Lets see what the Men in Blue have in store for us today. And lets hope Jayasurya doesn’t cause us too much problems this time.

Winning the series is what India badly needs, not only to make our records in Finals of the series better but to give some much needed confidence back to the Indian team. Hope we have a great game of cricket in front of us. Hopefully the match gets over before 9 p.m as I was looking forward to check ‘Enemy at the Gates’ on Star Movies.

The impact and success which KBC achieved needs no introduction. It was a show which changed everything for Small Screen and the Tv ratings for Star Plus, and to Amitabh Bachchan in particular. What KBC acheived was least expected by anyone. The Big B had some not so good experiences in films like Lal Badshah, and Sooryavansham. A new show on the Small screen featuring the Big B was the only hype the television show had that time. Since it was a unique, novel and never seen before type of a Quiz TV show in the prime-time, the success can be credited to everyone linked with KBC. But after KBC, people were always looking forward to the anticipated sequel for the same. Some months ago, it was confirmed and that opened doors for the KBC-2.
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Just when I thought everything was going fine with my new Tata Indicom Broadband Connection, something always comes up and spoils the whole deal. It hadnt been more than 20 days for this connection, as i got the connection on 15th July. And here I am within 20 days getting my first bill mailed in the morning by courier. What was shocking though is that the plan I am enrolled in costs 800 rs. Per month . The installation Charges were 2606 rs. for the router connection which I had paid them in advance. And now i get a bill for 20 days usage claimed to be a 1 month bill charging me as follows: (more…)

Well, This is an excerpt from a mid-day column and found it to be really a good compilation. Quite a fun to read and does really list all the Mumbaiya words which give hindi a new makeover both in the wordlist and style. Not to mention every Mumbaikar in a way uses these words or has been noticed by people to speak the some unusual words with those unaware. If you were unaware of some of these words, here is a complete list of some words beginning with each English alphabet.

A- Aayla
B-Bhendi
C-Chindhi
D-Dhasu
E-Ekdum
F-Fultu
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Acer Aspire 3002NLC

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Introduction

Grand Theft Auto doesn’t need an introduction to most. If you are anything close to be called a ‘gamer’ and have not hear about the Grand Theft Auto, you should hang your head in utter shame. The original Grand Theft Auto series had originated way back in October 1997, it was the third installment of this very game which had put GTA and Rockstar on the well-known Gaming map. However, Grand theft Auto 3 was not born on PC but the Play station 2. GTA 3 was the game which made the name for the console Playstation 2, it was that Fantasy VII was on the original Sony PlayStation and the HALO on the XBox later. Such command this series of games have on gamers all over the world that no matter what people have to say about it or cribble about, they would get a copy of the game anyways. Every next series of the game has been highly awaited. Back in October 2004, Sony PlayStation 2 gamers were blessed with another installment in the already highly successful and sometimes controversial Grand Theft Auto series called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It was a Playstation 2 Exclusive back then and PC gamers had to wait for almost 7 months to get their hands on the same. While most die-hard GTA fans may already have a copy in their PS2s, some may have opted to wait for the “higher resolution” version of the game to arrive on the PC and X-Box platforms. (more…)

The next generation gaming consoles are all round the corner and awaiting a highly anticipated show from the Sony’s PS3 and the Microsofts XBOX 360. It’s pretty common for kids to go trolling on game forums and make obnoxious claims such as having a go on the Xbox 360 in their own home. Well, this thread on Gamespot started that way, except the kid actually backed up his claims with these photos:

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I was previleged to see some of these pics in an email-forward some days back. Would like to share it with you guys.

An Open view to the hardware inside

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