Monday, October 30, 2006

CD Comapatibility Woes

This is completely nuts! None of the CDs that I buy can install without a glitch!

Well, I am writing this after the 10th time I wanted to install Fifa 2007. At the end of the installation process, I always get an error saying that CRC checking failed. For the last time, I changed the CD and tried it ONE MORE TIME.
97% complete ... 98% complete ......... 99% complete ........ ERROR MESSAGE AGAIN!

I am totally upset. Most of the CDs that I purchase will have some sort of problem, whether be it installation errors, file transfer errors or just plain scratches! Ugh! And the shopkeeper doesn't want to change the faulty discs! One time he is very friendly and the next time he won't even recognize you!

This is totally absurd. All the discs that are locally burnt in our country (NPP, AZE, etc,) are downright unprofessional - they just care about making money, not the fact that you could even install the game in the first place! The soluion to this problem? Get Malaysian CDs/DVDs. They might not be original ones or cost as much, but they are the next best thing.

They cost around 250 taka for a single DVD (the local ones cost 100-150 taka), and in my opinion, they are worth the money. All the DVDs are golden discs and I have never encountered an error with them. They also have long shelf life.

So I guess that I am going to buy Malaysian DVDs/CDs afterall. I am just upset with our local ones!

What experience did you have? Share it with our readers by leaving a comment.

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Google turns to World Domination?

Information is the world's most vital resource in 2k millennium, and Google seems to have a hammerlock on the aspects in which people access and respond to that information. Personally, I'm almost in awe of how often we use the world Google, and how we interact with the company in some capacity almost every day. It's mind-boggling.


Google is on the cusp of establishing a virtual dynasty by exerting prominent influence in the ways people access, manage, and respond to information. Could we be witnessing the birth of a new empire?
If all roads lead to Rome, then all cyber pathways lead to Google.

You can't read a blog or visit a technology news site without seeing the company's name referenced at least once, if not several times, throughout an article. Just last week, media coverage of the Google acquisition of YouTube reached feverish proportions.

People just can't seem to get Google off of their minds.

In fact, the terms "Google" and "World Domination" are becoming more commonly associated together these days among bloggers and tech journalists alike.

The reality of the situation is that Google is becoming a mythical, almost omnipresent force in the online realm. The sheer scope of the company's influence inspires comparisons to the birth of a new empire.

The staple of a prominent dynasty is the ability to control access to and distribution of vital resources to the masses. The Roman Empire constructed a detailed infrastructure for travel between territories while also developing aqueduct systems within the framework of their cities.

Ultimately, this allowed Roman leaders to exert significant power by controlling access to both water and transportation.

How does this translate into the digital age? People want information; it's an invaluable resource. Whoever controls access to that information will inevitably wield tremendous power in the age to come.

Google acts as the road to information in today's realm, and collects the tolls in the form of paid search advertising.

The raw statistics don't lie; Google is responsible for 60% of all Internet searches in the United States and nearly 70% of searches throughout the UK. With similar shares of the search landscape throughout the rest of the world, one singular fact starts to become evident.

When people want information, an overwhelming majority of them look to Google to supply their needs.

Information access and distribution, however, mark only the beginning of Google's budding virtual empire.

The next logical course along the trail is to supply people with tools to manage and implement the information they find within the confines of Google's search domain. Google Trends, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Google's tools for educators are all efforts focused on providing users with outlets for the management and application of said information.

Is Google ready to compete with Microsoft in terms of application prowess? Perhaps not, but refusing to take their efforts seriously would be a mistake of epic proportions. Steve Ballmer perhaps already sees the handwriting on the wall, according to John Battelle.

So while retrieving and interacting with information is vital, the third side of the triangle is perhaps the most important in securing public allegiance: Provide the masses with a forum to express their own ideas in response to the information they consume.

Google Video, MySpace Video and YouTube are sterling examples of a platform for the voice of the Internet public to be heard. Millions of people visit these sites on a daily basis, interacting within a virtual community committed to the free exchange of ideas and opinions.

Not coincidentally, Google now controls two out of the three major communities geared toward social expression in terms of video.

It is becoming clearer every day that information is one of the world's most precious resources; and Google is already at or very near the core of how people retrieve, manage, and respond to that information.

This may not constitute world domination in the military sense, but it could prove to be even more effective in the long run.

Is the keyboard mightier than the sword?

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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The True Meaning of F.E.A.R


I haven't been this scared all in my life (except for the time I burned my PC!)Man, this is one frightening hell of a game!

I'm the cowardy type. I can't stay in a room alone and I also can't go to the bathroom all by myself ;) So it is unliley for me to go, purchase a shiny copy and start playing F.E.A.R. My first reactions while playing the game? Absolutely scary!

The intro is pretty gory and had me running off to the bathroom once in a while. I anxiously watched the intro and then it all started. I was dropped of all alone (oh no!) in an abondoned warehouse to investigate something. Yikes! While I am not going to spoil the game for those who have not played it, but FEAR is pretty scary.

The flashbacks to your previous life is eerie and also the sudden appearance of a defouled being, out of nowhere, on your screen and into your face!

My reactions after playing for a couple of minutes? Too scary! I haven't still got past the second level and have no intentions to do so. I can't just take it anymore!
Purchase the game, and the superb graphics and sound effects and the chilling cutscenes will make you understand the true meaning of FEAR.

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Saturday, September 02, 2006

You Thought Wrong: Why the PS3 won’t lose out in the next-gen console wars

Sony has been long enough in the console business, far more than Microsoft. So it is not going to let that crown of No.1 console slip off its head, not yet.

All of the recent discussions in forums, blogs, analysts’ reactions seems to indicate that the PS3 could lose out on the next-generation console wars. But I beg so to differ.

The main dispute seems to be with the $600 price tag (although there is a cheaper version for $500). I mean no one’s ever going to spend that much money on a console, right? Why bother 600 bucks for a PS3 when there are cheaper alternatives like the X360 or the Nintendo Wii for that matter? So you’d be thinking that no one is going to bother about it in Bangladesh, right? Well you thought WRONG!

If everyone wanted the cheapest of everything, then we wouldn’t had Mercedes or BMW’s rolling down the streets of Dhaka, or first-class flights, or the A380, or those ridiculously expensive home theatre systems for that matter! Now ask yourself. Did that price tag on the expensive T-Shirt hold you back on purchasing it? The Nintendo Gamecube is a whole lot cheaper than the PS2, but did you buy it? I don’t think so.

And besides, the extra price is for the Blu-Ray Disc reader that you’d be getting. For the X360, you have to spend around 200-300 dollars for the optional HD-DVD reader. And the launching price of anything is unreasonably high. The only ones who is going to get the console with its launching price are those who are plain stupid (and with tons of money). As time goes on, the price is surely to drop, I mean its basic Economics! Case in point: The PS2 cost around $500 as it was released in the US in 1999. But look now, you can get it for less than 200 bucks! So I am definitely sure that the price will go down.

The next seems to be about the Blu-Ray discs. It has “that” state of the art copyprotection technologies that everyone is fearing, so that pirates have a hard time cracking it. Well, it is going to take some time for pirated discs to appear. But nobody said it is not going to! And did you ever think once about what the No.1 piracy hater Microsoft is going to put in their HD-DVD discs?

The PC games that come with SecureRom, StarForce, etc. employ the toughest copy protection technologies (to date), but did that stop pirated discs from appearing? No! You can play those games just as well. And stop moaning if no-one can’t pirate your favourite PS3 game – it will save the game publishers billions of dollars in lost revenue and you can finally play it over the internet.

So in the end, Sony might win again in the console wars. My predictions are that Sony will claim the first spot, with Microsoft at second and Nintendo at third (as usual). I am no analyst here, it’s just my opinion from the years of experience I had with games and technology. But then again, this is a dog-eat-dog business, so we might even see Nintendo in the 1st spot. Yeah right, that’ll happen. When cars fly.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

My Top 10 Favourite Games of All Time

I've played a lot of games (trust me, a-l-o-t!). So to compile them into a list of the Top 10 was a hard decision! So after a lot of thinking and tinkering, here it is!

1. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II
2. Warcraft III
3. Half Life 2
4. NFS
5. Dog's Life (PS2)
6. Jak III (PS2)
7. The Settlers V - Heritage of Kings
8. Star Wars Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
9. Battlefield 1942
10. Sims

Make sure you leave your Top 10 favourite games list in the comment box!

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AMD buys ATI


So, yes, what you’ve heard is true: CPU maker AMD bought GPU maker ATI for more money than you, your children, and your grandchildren combined will ever see, with plenty left over to buy round-trip tickets on Virgin Galactic for everyone attending the Los Angeles premiere of Snakes on a Plane.

But the merger won’t even receive the OK from the government until later this year, so it won’t be until well into 2007 before we start seeing plans form as a result of the acquisition.

And when we do, the first pups the two companies will raise are likely to be less interesting to hardcore gamers; namely, CPU and GPU combination processors for mobile computing. There’s good reason to believe, however, that AMD’s friendliness to gamers and the open-source community may spill over into ATI’s heart, possibly leading to driver packages for Linux. And if Linux starts looking like a burgeoning platform for gamers, Microsoft, and Windows Vista, will have a very interesting year ahead of them, with lots of chair-throwing from Mr. Ballmer.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

The Worst Copyright Infringement Ever

Ever since Gamers World Bangladesh started (first as a magazine and then this website) we have a few copycats on our tails. But by far, this is the worst attempt to copy our website ever!

With fame comes headaches. Recently, Gamers World Bangladesh has been a popular target for copycats. A few sites like us have sprung up (even they publish their non-professional magazine) but a recent search at Yahoo groups revealed the worst attempt, ever.

A certain Yahoo group (I am not mentioning their name), has been claiming that they have published the first ever Online Bangladeshi Games Magazine. Okay, like whatever. We all know who was the first one, right? Anyway, they were so amazed with our articles that they are collecting it and putting it up as a magazine at their forum, claiming that we(!) stole it from them! They are also blaming us about a lot of things that even I cannot relate.

Next month they are going to publish a collection of our articles saying that it was stolen from them. Way to go LOSERS!

And so pathetic they are that the whole group is devoid of real members. The owner has made a couple of Yahoo IDs and have added them to his group to boost his groups membership numbers. Even if you post a message, no real reply will come. Only the owner trying to act like a different person - and the similarities are always obvious.

Recently, he has taken matters to the extreme. Now he has turned to hacking other Yahoo accounts in order to add them to his group. He even hacked mine, once or twice. No matter how much they try, good always wins over evil.

So readers, remember. Gamers World Bangladesh is the first ever magazine (online or off) and now we are the first website in Bangladesh dedicated to games only (see Prothom-Alo). That's a lot of firsts, right?

And we have only one forum at http://forum.gamersworldbd.com/ which redirects you to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gamers-world_bd/ If you see any work(s) and/or article(s) that you think that might have been taken from Gamers World Bangladesh, then please report it immediately. We need the help of the public to battle this ongoing war against copyright infringement.

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The Search for a Good ISP

Fed up with the worst service that I came across, I decided to switch my ISP. When all hope was lost, an unbelievable offer came up - which I couldn't resist.

Yesterday, I just reached the end of my patience with my current ISP, Dtech Ltd. from whom I took a broadband connection. The speed was unbearably slow. Everything seemed to take ages to load. Trust me, it took forever. Worse still the connection would drop suddenly and I would not be able to go online for days.

After not receiving the connection for three consecutive days, I got fed up. I decided to call in tech support. There didn't seem to be any good reason for the connection to keep dropping continually. The tech support wasn't of great help either.

"We're doing the very best we can, Mr. Rahman. I will at once increase the bandwidth of your connection."

After receiving a temporary boost of about two hours or so, my connection resumed its previous state. Again. Agh. That was the last straw, I thought. I need to switch my ISP.

A search on Goolge revealed several ISPs near my home. Most of them offered more or less the same packages to home users. a 28.8 kbps shared bandwidth at 1,500 taka (the same service as I had from Dtech Ltd.). Once or twice, I even considered getting a corporate package in my home!

I feared that the end was nigh. There didn't seem to be any good ISP available in all of Dhaka city. So it was a chance of luck that I landed on www.zipbd.com Now, what they were offering to home users was unbelievable. A 128 kbps (average) shared fibre optic connection at 1,500 taka per month! Moreover, they offered other ancillary services, such as Video over IP, a gaming server (yummy) and 30 or so free videos on demand. It seemed too good to be true. I even contacted customer support to make sure that all the details were accurate!

So fast forward to today, and I have a delicious fibre optic connection pumping at more than 128 kbps. Now everything loads faster and downloads don't take forever. I do not have to wait overnight for a 1GB game demo to near completion and suffer from little or no lag while I play Battlefield 2 online. Well see you slow-pokes later, I've got a date with my Battlefield 2 clan, online.

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Welcome to the Gamers World Bangladesh™ blog, where all the editors will talk about the latest trends in the gaming and technology front.

If you do not know what Gamers World Bangladesh™ is, then you haven't been paying enough attention lately! We are the first ever games site of Bangladesh. Enough said. Check us out at www.gamersworldbd.com

Make sure to bookmark us as we take you through a wild roller coaster ride of games and technology!

Sincerely,
The Gamers World Bangladesh™ Team

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