I just thought I’d write a quick post about this problem. I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04, which in my opinion is night and day better than 7.10. My only problem was that my sound would only work once every five times that I boot my machine. After searching around, I found a solution at robmaas.eu.
The symptoms are that your sound does not work or only works through the headphone jacks.
The solution is as follows:
Make a backup copy of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa_base, if you wish.
ex: sudo cp /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.old
Open /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base in your favorite text editor.
ex: sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base
Add the following line to the end of the file:
options snd-hda-intel enable=1 index=0 model=basic
Save the changes to the file and reboot.
Hopefully, that will help others who are having the same problems I was.
Fans of Atlus will rejoice after reading the next sentence. A demo for Operation Darkness has hit Xbox Live this morning.
Operation Darkness is a turn-based, World War 2 scenario where the objective is to kill Adolf Hitler and whatever Nazis and supernatural creatures have the misfortune of crossing your path on this particular day. Characters have the ability to use magic, change into supernatural creatures such as werevolves, gather various weapons, weapons, and much more.
The game also features 2 to 4 player online co-op play via Xbox Live.
I’m normally very critical of Microsoft. My Xbox 360 works great as a heater, my Windows XP box dies almost non-stop, and I constantly have a huge line of Vista users wanting to know if I can fix their OS. As much grief as the Redmond firm gives me, I find ignoring the newest gesture on the part of Microsoft to be very difficult.
Today, Microsoft has announced a partnership with the Companions in Courage Foundation to deliver Xbox 360 kiosks to children’s hospitals across the United States. The kiosks will be stocked with an assortment of Y-rated TV shows, G rated movies, and video games rated E to E10+. Xbox Live headsets and Live Vision cameras will also be part of the set up. Microsoft, possibly aware that many users turn into total pricks after signing on to Live, has created a private network to link these kiosks so children without fear of being the victim of trash talking gone horribly wrong.
The first kiosks have been installed in the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center of Seattle, and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, California. Individuals who would like to help bring more kiosks to other children’s hospitals can donate to the Companions in Courage Foundation at their website http://cic16.org/.
On Friday, March 7th, high school students from around West Virginia visited West Virginia University Institute of Technology to learn about various degrees. Many departments set up demonstrations of student projects. One of the demonstrations was presented by myself and Dr. Nicholas “Dr. Nick” Coleman highlighting the OpenSim project and how we are trying to contribute to the project as part of our Open Source Development class.
Our demonstration was very simple. Dr. Nick and I introduced ourselves as a professor and student working on the OpenSim project. I logged into my OSgrid.org account, while Dr. Nick explained the idea behind open source software. Dr. Nick went on to describe the goals and importance of the project, while I did various things in the background.
The students seemed to enjoy several demonstrations over the others. Students were anxious to ask the all-knowing WikiLith questions, and while the WikiLith did not always return a correct answer, it was still fun to ask the all-knowing block about the meaning of life (among other things.) The room filled with “Wow!” and “Awesome!” as I lifted off the ground and fly to the video screens to demonstrate live video within the world. Finally, we’d stroll over to the weather maps to check out the radar to see if we could deduce what the weather would be like for their ride home.
A Q&A session followed the demonstration. The high school students would ask questions such as what our favorite languages were, how much the software cost, and where the software was available from. Many of them were curious if OpenSim could be used as a basis for their own games, specifically first-person shooters. We referred these students to the Quake 3 engine, because of the documentation available for budding hackers. There have also been quite a few variations on the engine which have improved on the engine, such as ioquake3. These questions would often lead the students to ask which game engine we preferred; Our choices were usually between the Unreal 3 engine developed by Epic Games and the Source engine developed by Valve. My background as a gamer and closet game developer served me well during this line of questioning. The middle school students asked far easier questions, such as why this project is useful and if I could land on various landmarks.
Overall, the students showed more interest in the OpenSim project than I expected. I consider the demonstration to be a success. I’m sharing this experience in hopes that it will inspire other members of the OpenSim community that are involved in higher education to use OpenSim to promote their own institution as well as the project.
I was listened to Destructoid’s Podcastle #2 podcast today, when Jim Sterling randomly started discussing an old Donald Duck cartoon that featured some interesting anti-Nazi propaganda. While I’m not a very big fan of history in general, I do love World War 2 history. I immediately hit Google to find it. Not only did I find that particular cartoon, I found a whole slew of cartoons that I never imagined would have existed. I recommend viewing these cartoons with caution; They CAN potentially offend someone.
Watch these cartoons, and compare it to modern day propaganda, such as when Family Guy makes cracks at Osama Bin Laden. It’s really somewhat interesting to think about. Be sure to leave thoughts and hate mail in the comments!
