Tag Archives: reviews

Things that suck about CoD Black Ops

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
22

Treyarch released last month Call of Duty: Black Ops, the latest in the much-hyped “Call of Duty” game lineup. Black Ops made headlines when, within 24 hours of going on sale, it managed to sell some 7 million copies in the US and the UK. However, all is not well in the land of Call of Duty, while this game has received rave reviews from a number of gaming sites, including Game Spot and Metacritic. But reviewers at Amazon seem to get it right, with a thus-far average rating of only 1.8/5 stars. The reasons? Many.

I’ve personally been a fan of the Call of Duty series for quite some time, as the games tend to be well-developed and well-written on both the technical and storyline aspects. But Black Ops falls far, far short of the mark and in many ways is a step back from what we’ve come to expect of its predecessors. On many different fronts, Black Ops fails to deliver — consistently failing to impress and, perhaps most disturbingly, almost as if it was intentionally made this way.

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Our List of Highly-Anticipated Upcoming Games for OS X (2010)

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
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For too long, computer gaming has been a strictly Windows-only business. But that’s slowly but surely changing, as signified by the recent availability of the popular Steam platform for Mac, and soon, Linux. But what’s really exciting is that big game producers aren’t just porting old games to OS X *cough* Quake 4, Halo 1, etc. *cough*, nor is the world of OS X gaming going to be limited to indie publishers and lame (though very much appreciated) games with graphics on-par with those from the 90s on other platforms.

We’ve compiled a list of our top highly-anticipated games for OS X, most of which are actually geared for simultaneous release on Windows and Mac, making it clear that Mac gamers will take a backseat no more. Honestly, we’re not going to bother ranking them or making this a “Top 10 Games for OS X this year” kind of article. This is just a geeky gamers’ list of games to look out for, on a Mac, soon. We’re not including games that were previously available on other platforms, because that’s just sad.

And, without further ado, here’s NeoSmart Technologies’ exclusive list of upcoming Mac OS X games, sorted by expected release date from the ones you can soonest get your grubby paws on to those you’ll have to not-so-patiently wait and pray for:

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The Un-Improvements to “Find All References” in Visual Studio 2010

Posted on by Mahmoud Al-Qudsi
4

A November 2009 post on the Visual C++ Team Blog by Raman Sharma delved into the improvements Visual Studio 2010 was purported to have made to the “Find All References” feature of Visual Studio. This feature is a must-have for any developer in almost any language. As a project grows in size and complexity, it becomes a real chore to remember and locate exactly where a particular variable was defined – which is something that’s quite useful to know.

According to the VC++ blog post, VS2010 now uses a “speed-mode” by default to locate these references. It’s a bit less accurate in that it generates a lot of false positives, searching by name rather than by usage, but that this reduced accuracy comes with greater speed. And the option remains to further filter out results by having the compiler and the intellisense databases resolve the actual results and determine whether or not they indeed reference the search term.

Except that’s the way it’s supposed to work. In truth, that’s not what happens:

1) Visual Studio 2010’s “Speed Mode” of Find All References is slower than it was in Visual Studio 2005.

2) Visual Studio 2010’s “Speed Mode” not only generates extraneous false positives, it also fails to show items that do match the search term.

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January 2008 Update

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

There’s been a lot going on so far at NeoSmart Technologies, and 2008 is shaping up to be an exciting year… Yes, January is almost over; so, no, this isn’t a New Year’s resolutions list. The thing about New Year’s resolutions is that they’re almost always left unfulfilled. But that doesn’t mean we can’t share the good times, does it? Here’s some stuff to look forward to out of NST’s camp in the coming days/weeks/months:

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Microsoft FastCGI Updated – But Should You Upgrade?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
1

We previously covered the final release of the IIS FastCGI module, jointly developed between Microsoft and Zend… But just this week, Microsoft [[MSFT]] announced the availability of the RTM of the IIS FastCGI module.

So what’s going on? We’ve downloaded the current release (which, by the way, is not compatible with the old one, you must uninstall then install the new version) and checked the version number on \Windows\System32\inetsrv\fcgiext.dll – it came out to be 6.1.36.1.

By contrast, the version we downloaded and installed a month ago (which seems to have been dubbed the Go Live release) was checked and found to be 7.0.6001.16606.

Obviously the Go Live release was using the numbering from the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 releases, but it’s got us confused.

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Windows XP SP3 Beta (Build 3205) Released – Analysis Included

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
50

Following our coverage of the Windows XP SP3 beta leak almost a month ago in August, here’s some more info on the official beta, which just had its first authorized distributable released earlier today. Say hello to Windows XP SP3, build 3205!

While Microsoft’s [[MSFT]] newly-released build and the one leaked a month ago (Build 3180) may share the same name, we can exclusively reveal that they are not identical releases. This release, also shipped as windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu.exe, is 334.2 megabytes and has been made available to tier-one Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 beta testers. Hashes are as follows:

CRC: 56e08837
MD5: c8c24ec004332198c47b9ac2b3d400f7

Along with the standalone installer redistributables (in English, Japanese, and German), Microsoft also provided the usual release notes and a list of all the hotfixes included in this release. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with all-new features – not just patches and hotfixes, most of them backported from Windows Vista:

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Internet Explorer 7 “Updated” – But Not Really…

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
4

Steve Reynolds, program manager of the Microsoft [[MSFT]] Internet Explorer development team, has just announced an “update” of sorts to Internet Explorer 7 a year or so after its original release in 2006. Never mind the fact that we were promised regular updates and that “Internet Explorer 7 won’t be like IE6” with regards to lack of new features and updates, what’s up with the list of the things that have changed with this new version!? Have a look for yourself at the “changelog:”

  1. No need for WGA verification in order to get Internet Explorer 7
  2. The menu bar is now visible by default.
  3. The Internet Explorer 7 online tour has updated how-to’s. Also, the “first-run” experience includes a new overview.
  4. We’ve included a new MSI installer that simplifies deployment for IT administrators in enterprises. Learn more about it here.

Interesting… Here’s our take on these “updates” 

  1. It really shouldn’t have required WGA in the first place – Microsoft (for some odd reason) guarantees users of pirated versions of Windows “immediate” access to any security-related patches, upgrades, and hotfixes. Doesn’t Microsoft tout Internet Explorer 7 as a security-prioritized upgrade?
  2. Noooo! We love the hidden menu bar! It’s clean, it’s clutter-free, and it gives IE7 a great look. Obviously the reason they’ve put it back is that users had trouble getting the menu to show (hint: press `alt` to make it appear), but who actually uses the menu bar anyway?! At least make it a first-run option… please? Sure, you can make it hidden again by flicking a switch in the options panel, but that’s just so wrong on so many levels…
  3. Not exactly what we’d call an upgrade to Internet Explorer itself so much as it is an improvement to the external documentation. It’s just a file hosted on MS servers that users can opt to view.
  4. Nothing more than an upgrade to the packaging/deployment for Internet Explorer 7, albeit a most-welcome one for sysadmins and software integrators everywhere.

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