EndOCrime.com

For the past three or so days, I have been using the latest beta of Mozilla Firefox, Firefox 3 Beta 3.  So far, it seems to be excellent, even for a beta.  Firefox 3 is based on an all new rendering engine, Gecko 1.9, which is its major change.

I haven’t had time to explore all its nuances and new features, but here are some of the things I noticed:

1. Download manager actually resumes downloads now.  This is long overdue.

2. Memory usage: Firefox 3 beta 3 seems to use less memory than Firefox 2.  With all my extensions, tabs, and such running, Firefox 2 would take ~200MB of memory.  However, Firefox 3 beta 3 has not gone over 100MB of memory usage.

3.  The UI (user interface) has been revamped in some portions.  For example, the “Home” button is gone.  But to be honest, the “Home” button was pretty useless.

Here is the full changelog  if you are interested.  Firefox 3 beta 3 can also be downloaded from a link on that page.  Congrats to Mozilla for a product that is shaping up nicely.

The first person shooter (FPS) is a very popular genre of game these days. There are literally hundreds of shooters on the market. However, most of them are unimaginative and bland.

The 2001 video game Halo may be to blame for the decay of the first person shooter. Released as a Xbox-exclusive, Halo showed the world that the FPS could be viable on game consoles and that it could also be highly profitable. In fact, many even call it the “most successful game ever.” Predictably, many other companies began developing shooters for consoles. Many well-established PC franchises like “Call of Duty” even became console exclusives.

Consoles are an imperfect platform for shooters. A shooting game can work reasonably well with a game controller, but a game controller lacks the precision of the good o’ keyboard and mouse. Console games also usually lack mods and are generally inferior graphically. Finally, console games usually do not have as advanced an AI or physics system as PC games do.

I can understand why consoles are popular though. The cost of a well-equipped “gaming PC” can be almost twice as much as even a PlayStation 3.

The dumbing down of shooting games is a phenomenon that has been going on for quite a while and is one that is unlikely to stop anytime soon. To be succinct, the trend can be summed up simply: developers are focusing more on flash than substance. They would rather work on having the most shiney graphics rather than the most innovative or even most balanced gameplay.

From Kotaku:

“Both Counter-Strike and EverQuest, each now nine-years old, were said to promote “the subversion of public order, were an attack against the democratic state and the law and against public security” by the judge enacting the ban. According to the AFP report on the matter, the prohibition on selling CS and EQ was actually passed in October of 2007, but was only recently enforced by PROCON, the national consumer protection agency.”

Talk about overreacting. What’s next? Banning Spore for showing an imbalanced view of evolution?