Gizmodo has a Cliff's notes edition of some recent statements made by FCC chairman Kevin Martin. While the article (and the statements) have to be taken with a grain of salt, if any of what he says comes to pass, it will be good times for consumers. Particularly interesting to me are the facts that he thinks cable is too expensive (it is), and that the term "broadband" should indicate something higher than 200 Kbps (I had no idea our defined value for that was so low!). We can only hope that he keeps his word on at least a few of these items.

Warner Brothers studios has officially defected to the Blu-ray format, and now Paramount seems poised to do the same. This is all but the end for the HD-DVD format, which is a real shame. Granted, there's no real difference between the two formats (none that are apparent to the common consumer, anyway). Blu-ray discs may end up being more expensive, due to the fact that they cost a little more to manufacture. They also continue the stupid "region coding," where certain discs will only play in the players purchased in a specific geographic location.

If for no other reason, I wanted HD-DVD to win the "format war" because Blu-ray is backed by Sony. Any day that Sony fails is a good day in my opinion, and it's a shame that the movie studios decided to take the low-road. Time will tell how well this format takes off.

I missed one highlight from CES in yesterday's post. Namely, the 150-inch television from Panasonic. With televisions like this on the horizon, I predict a weakening in movie theater ticket sales.

I've only been casually following the events at this year's CES, but a few things I've seen have been pretty impressive:

• Super-Black Kuro Concept TV: the black values on this concept are unreal.
• 9-mm Thin Concept Plasma TV: can televisions get any thinner?
• Alienware Curved Monitor: I'll take 2, thanks.
• Closed captioned HD radio: this is a great idea, and I'm surprised it's only now showing up.
• Bloggers were given different badges than the regular press. The writeup at Gizmodo about this fact is so true.
• Finally, the humorous video from Bill Gates' last keynote. What can I say? The guy knows how to make fun of himself.

A couple of guys have figured out a way to hack the Nintendo Wii, opening the door for better home-brew software for the platform. The way they figured this stuff out is pretty cool, and it should be interesting to see what kind of new software is developed now that the "Keys to the Kingdom" are available.

My dad and I both agree that it seems to be in Nintendo's best interest to open up their hardware. Why they don't do it, however, is beyond what we can figure. Maybe they're scared of the game publishers having to compete against "open source" (i.e. free) games? It seems to me that having lots of great third-party, home-brewed software could only help your platform in the long run. Not to mention that it would open up the hardware to great uses as assistive devices (which would be great for kids with disabilities).

Is Digg.com on the way down? I personally find myself visiting the site less and less, turning instead to Slashdot and Gizmodo for my news and entertainment. When I do visit Digg, there's little that I find appealing enough to digg. In fact, looking at my profile, I find that the last story I dugg was on December 12, quite some time ago. The majority of stories seem to be very uninteresting, or (more likely) stories that are already covered on other websites.

Even the Diggnation podcast seems to be degrading in quality. The show used to be solidly funny, but I find myself laughing only a few times per episode these days. I'd much rather have the higher grade content as found in The Totally Rad Show. Neither Alex nor Kevin seem to put as much effort into Diggnation as they once did, which isn't too surprising. Like the saying goes, 'All good things must come to an end.'

One of the things I got for Christmas this year was The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. I've played the game for several hours now, and I wanted to discuss Nintendo's usage of the DS hardware in the game. Never before have I seen a video game make such good use of the hardware it has access to. Link is controlled entirely through the use of the touch screen (the D-pad and buttons are hardly, if ever, used), which isn't entirely a new idea; see Kirby: Canvas Curse for a previous touch-screen-only title.

What really blew me away (almost literally) was the usage of the microphone in the game. There are a number of places where the player has to take some action: call out to a character trapped behind a steel door, blow out a few candles, etc. The neat thing is that all of these actions require you to physically do something. When you are told to cry out, you have to literally cry out. When you are asked to blow out the candles, you have to literally blow onto your DS! Is this a genius idea or what? I know that Donkey Konga for the Gamecube used a microphone (where the player clapped their hands), but this is the first game I've personally played that makes use of this kind of hardware.

The game also uses one other hardware feature that helps to advance the storyline (I'll do my best to avoid any spoilers here). At one point, you are asked to perform a specific task to help locate a hidden item in the game world. In order to do this, you literally have to close the lid of the DS, and open it back up. What?!? Unfortunately, the game didn't give me enough hints to figure this out on my own (or I was too dense to make sense of the clues it was giving me). As a result, I got stuck at this particular point and ended up reading about how to advance forward (and I hate having to do that kind of thing). But this hardware hack really impressed me! It will be interesting to see if any other games make use of this technology; here's hoping that they will!

If there has ever been proof that we are living in the end times, it's this: Internet Explorer 8 has passed the Acid2 test. This is the scariest thing I've heard all year.

Interestingly enough, IE8 only passes this test in 'Standards Mode.' From what I've gathered through brief searching around the web, this appears to be an IE8-only feature that requires some 'magic meta-tag' to enable, though I'm only getting the sketchiest details. The comments in this post shed a little light, but not as much as I might have hoped for.

It's time once again for a programming tips grab bag. As with the previous grab bag, I'll focus on Perl tips since I've been doing some Perl coding recently. Next time, I'll present some tips for PHP.

1. Always use the 'strict' and 'warning' pragmas for production code

This tip is pretty much a no-brainer. Whenever you write production level code, you must make use of the 'strict' pragma (enabled with 'use strict;'). Not only will it save you from a lot of pain in the long run, but it also forces you to write cleaner code. You should also enable warnings, just for good measure. And don't do this at the end of your development cycle; do it right from the beginning. Always start scripts that you think will be used by others with the following two lines:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

I can't tell you how many times turning on strict checking has saved me from some goofy problems (such as using square brackets instead of curly braces for a hash reference).

2. Use 'our' to fake global variables

Global variables are generally considered to be bad practice in the world of programming, and rightfully so. They can cause untold amounts of trouble and can be quite dangerous in the hands of novice programmers. Out of the box, Perl only uses global variables, which is both a blessing and a curse. For quick and dirty scripts, globals are fine (and encouraged). But for production level code (which uses the 'strict' pragma mentioned above), globals aren't an option.

But sometimes, you can't avoid having a global variable (and they even make more sense than locals in some instances). I recently made use of the File::Find module in one of my scripts, calling it like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;

my $inSomeState;
find(\&mySearchFunction, $somePathVariable);

sub mySearchFunction {
    if ($inSomeState) {
        # Do something
    }
}

The find() call will execute the mySearchFunction subroutine, operating in the $somePathVariable folder. I cannot pass any parameters to the mySearchFunction subroutine, but it needs to be able to check the value of the variable $inSomeState. We previously created this variable using the 'my' construct, but since this subroutine is out of that variable's scope, Perl will complain. We can fix this by forcing the $inSomeState variable to be global, using the our call instead of 'my':

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Find;

our $inSomeState;
find(\&mySearchFunction, $somePathVariable);

sub mySearchFunction {
    if ($inSomeState) {
        # Do something
    }
}

By declaring the variable with 'our,' we essentially force the variable into a global state (for the current scope, which happens to be the script itself in this case). Very handy!

3. Capture matched regex expressions inline

The parenthesis capturing functionality in regular expressions is extremely useful. However, I found that I always wrote my capture statements as a part of an if block:

if(m/(\w+)-(\d+)/)
{
    my $word = $1;
    my $number = $2;
}

I recently learned that this same code can be shortened into a one liner:

my ($word, $number) = (m/(\w+)-(\d+)/);

Of course, the match may not occur, so you'd have to test that the values of $word and $number aren't null, but it's a cleaner way of capturing stuff from a regular expression.

4. Make sure to shift by 8 for return codes

If you're trying to automate something (which I have been doing a lot of recently), the return codes from external processes are generally of great interest. The system call makes executing a process very easy, but getting the return code is (to me at least) a little non-intuitive. Here's how to do it:

system ("some_process.exe");

my $retval = ($? >> 8);

The return code from the some_process.exe program will be stored in the $? variable, but you have to remember to shift the value right by 8 to get the actual return value.

Valve recently released some statistics on Team Fortress 2. Like their recent hardware survey, some interesting items come to light:

• Scout, Engineer, and Soldier are the three most popular classes by far (with a combined 49% of the total time played)
• Medic is by far the least favorite class (only 5% play time)
• Several melee weapons (the Medic's bonesaw, the Demoman's bottle, etc.) get surprisingly high critical damage percentages
• The two most popular maps are cp_gravelpit and ctf_2fort
• The least popular map is cp_granary
• Red team wins 70% of the matches on cp_dustbowl

Lots of other interesting data is available for those interested. Some of the items I point out above are nearly opposite my own experiences. My least favorite class is the Scout, and one of my favorites is the Medic (I guess that makes me a more defensive player than most). I never use the melee weapons, and I really like cp_granary.

I'm hoping that Valve will rebalance the cp_dustbowl map, because I have noticed that the attacking team (blue) rarely makes it through all 3 stages. Seeing that red team wins 70% of the time is a clear indication that something needs to be done. As I've said before, this kind of statistics tracking is really great for solving these kinds of problems.

There's an interesting op-ed article that contrasts Call of Duty 4 and Crysis. The author argues that emergent gaming (player-oriented, as in Crysis) is the future. Scripted gaming (like CoD4) is the current norm, but it limits the player in a number of ways. Unscripted gaming opens up a world of additional possibilities, at the cost of a much more challenging development paradigm. I certainly hope that games become more unscripted over time; I had a lot of fun with the Crysis demo, and the unscripted work going into the Half-Life 2 world seems to really be paying off.

I recently purchased Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat, and having finished the game, I thought I'd write a short review. I have to admit that I've only tried out the single-player campaign, though I hear very positive things about the multiplayer experience. Team Fortress 2 is eating up all of my online gaming time right now, so I doubt I'll give the CoD4 multiplayer any attention in the near future.

The Good

Great Graphics

CoD4 is without a doubt one of the best looking games on the market today. I was really impressed with the detail that went into the character models, and the level design is top notch. Character animations are very believable, and there are some truly wonderful moments that make great use of them.

Thrilling Gameplay

The pacing in this game is very fast, so I found myself quite tense the entire time. This fact really added to the game's atmosphere, and I found myself really enjoying the various firefights that I got into.

Excellent Mission Variation

I am thoroughly impressed with the mission variation throughout the length of the campaign. While the standard wartime firefights are present, there are a number of unique missions presented: everything from a particularly hair-raising, stealth-based mission, to a well implemented sniper mission, to my favorite, the "Death From Above" mission, where you take the role of a gunner aboard a AC-130 "Spooky" Gunship (I wish someone would design a whole game around this concept!). As a result of all the variation, the game never feels repetitive, which is a big plus.

Strong Ending

I was very pleased with the way the game ended. Most of these types of games never have much of a resolution, but this game wraps things up nicely. If you sit through the excruciatingly long end credits (and a really lousy 'hip-hop' song), you get to play through one extra mission, which undoubtedly speaks of a future Call of Duty installment (no surprises here).

The Bad

Short Length

The single-player campaign only lasts about 6 hours or so, which seems to be the new FPS length standard. This is somewhat disappointing, but not all that surprising.

Challenging Difficulty

I found CoD4 to be surprisingly difficult the first time through. There are a few times where I felt like the AI had a truly unfair advantage, which led to a few frustrating moments.

Beefy Requirements

My gaming rig could barely handle this game, which is sad considering that it's still a pretty beefy machine.

The Verdict

I really recommend this game, though I wouldn't place it on my "best of all time" list. There are a number of really great moments throughout the entire campaign, and the "Death From Above" mission is worth the price of admission alone. My final rating: A-

There's currently a lot of buzz about the supposed firing of Jeff Gerstmann, a long-time editor at GameSpot (Penny Arcade! even has a comic about the incident). He was apparently fired based on a poor review he gave for "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men," a game for the xBox 360. Eidos, who publishes the game, currently has a large advertising partnership with GameSpot for the game. This move indicates to me that Eidos was attempting to buy a good review, which they didn't get. I have no trouble believing that they had a hand in getting Mr. Gerstmann fired.

It's really sad to see when professional reviewers are forced to say one thing or another, but it's not surprising. The almighty dollar seems to make most of the decisions these days. Years ago I subscribed to Computer Gaming World magazine, but I canceled my subscription after the quality took a nose dive. The "larger" gaming websites are starting to head in that direction as well, especially after shenanigans like these. I do most of my game review reading through Metacritic, checking out what reviewers as a whole have to say about various games. I also try to seek out independent reviews, from people like myself.

This kind of story is one reason that I decided to post my own reviews here on this website. Although I don't have as much readership or visibility as the big review websites, I try to provide an alternative to the paid endorsements that publishers try to shove down our throats. Hopefully you find my reviews to be useful and honest. If so, then I'm succeeding where the large sites are failing. And that's good enough for me.

I really hate how news outfits continually refer to Cyber Monday as 'the busiest online shopping day of the year.' If you take a look at the Wikipedia article, you'll see that the term "Cyber Monday" is actually a neologism, undoubtedly created to generate public interest (and therefore, boosted sales figures). A number of online retailers point out that early December is actually a busier time than today supposedly is.

That being said, I love shopping online, and I try to do most of my holiday shopping through online outfits (though some things just have to be bought locally). How about you? Do you do your holiday shopping online, or do you head to the brick and mortar stores?

I recently posted a few thoughts on Team Fortress 2, but I thought I should write a full review now that I've spent more time with the game. Let me start off by saying that when I purchased The Orange Box, I was not in the least interested in Team Fortress 2. Portal and Episode 2 were the only titles I anticipated playing, and I even considered buying them separately. I'm very glad that I went for the better deal, as I hope this review will indicate.

The Good

Perfect Game Balancing

I cannot stress enough how well balanced this game is. Each class has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and when used together in a balanced fashion, a team can quickly become unstoppable. I've played a number of matches where nearly all of the people on a team used the same class as everyone else (e.g., everyone becomes a soldier or an engineer). This kind of 'swarming' usually results in defeat. When I join a match, I usually see which class has been omitted from my team, and I join up as that missing class. My goal is to provide as balanced a team as possible, so we have a better chance of winning the round.

Gorgeous Graphics

I really like the cartoon-like graphics. Many of the character models utilize very funny expressions throughout the game, and the cartoon visuals make it all the more appealing.

Detailed Statistic Tracking

Team Fortress 2 keeps track of all your statistics for each character class that you play. It routinely congratulates you on meeting or exceeding your current records. This kind of positive feedback makes the game very rewarding.

Stylized Game World

A 1960's spy theme is the overall look and feel (think Austin Powers or No One Lives Forever), and it really brings the game world to life. The developer commentary points out that in the real world, two warring factions would never place their bases of operation right next to one another. But in a stylized world like the one Valve has created, it makes perfect sense.

Funny Dialogue

Each character class has a number of different lines that they speak throughout the game. Much of the writing is comical, and the stereotypes the game places on each class are truly excellent. The voice acting is equally as good.

It's Just Plain Fun

At the end of the day, isn't this all that matters?

The Bad

Only Six Maps

The only down side I can see to this game is the lack of maps. A total of six maps are included with the game: one capture the flag map, and five control point maps. Valve has indicated that more maps will be forthcoming, and I simply cannot wait for the new content. Regardless of this fact, the game is still incredibly fun.

The Verdict

If you haven't tried out Team Fortress 2, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. I initially thought it wouldn't be much fun, but now I'm hooked. This game gets a solid A+.

The contact form at this website has been updated. If you run into any problems, simply leave a comment on this posting letting me know that something is broken.

Valve recently posted the results to their hardware survey. There are many interesting things that can be gleaned from the data:

• At least 54% of users have broadband connections
• 39% have 2GB or more of memory
• 55% have Intel processors versus 45% with AMD
• nVidia graphics cards are much more popular that ATI cards
• 1280 x 960 is the most common primary display resolution
• Embedded audio chips are more popular that stand-alone cards (I found this particularly interesting)
• 84% of users are still using Windows XP

Lots more interesting data is available, so be sure to check it out if you're into that kind of thing. The results of another survey were also recently released. Statistics for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 are available for viewing. I particularly enjoyed the overhead maps that show where players die most often. I've got to believe that the developers at Valve think this kind of data is pure gold.

File this one in the "Oops!" department.

During a recent US Navy exercise in the Pacific, a Chinese nuclear submarine popped up in the middle of the US fleet, completely undetected until it surfaced. I'm guessing that the top brass in the Navy will demand answers for why the submarine was not detected. This was no doubt a shock to everyone aboard the US ships, as the Chinese sub was easily within range for launching torpedoes.

There's a really great article over at Stuart Parmenter's blog discussing memory fragmentation in Firefox. This phenomenon is what's causing Firefox to appear to consume so much memory. Most folks simply assume that Firefox leaks memory, mostly because they probably don't understand what a memory leak is. Although Firefox did at one point have a number of memory leaks, the majority of them have been plugged (see this article by Jesse Ruderman for further details).

It's great to see that someone is investigating this issue, and I find it very interesting that it's a fragmentation problem that's causing things to look bad. Hopefully we can see some fixes for this issue in the near future, and Firefox can get a better foothold in this department.

Update: There's a great followup article that shows some of the preliminary work going on to solve this problem.

Ever since I completed Half-Life 2: Episode Two, I've been thinking about how stories are used in video games. Plenty of games need no story to be fun (Pac-Man, Tetris, Bejeweled, etc.). Similarly, there are games that revolve around a strong storyline. Looking through my computer game collection, I find that only a handful fall into this latter category:

• Half-Life (1, 2, Episode 1, and Episode 2)
• Myst
• System Shock 2

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the stories in any of the other games I own. There are a number of titles I considered for the above short list (the Splinter Cell series, Elder Scrolls 3 and 4, Bioshock, and others), but none of them were as memorable as the titles listed. I consider Half-Life 2 to be the pinnacle of the games I've played, and so will use it as my working example.

One thing makes the Half-Life 2 world so gripping: a believable and memorable cast of characters. In order to create such a cast, three core things are required:

Good Writers

This is a no-brainer. Without a team of good writers, any potential blockbuster story can fall flat. And most importantly, they must share a consistent vision of the world they are building. One of the hallmarks of the Half-Life universe is the inclusion of some ever-present mystery. There are always unanswered questions in the game, and Half-Life 2 is chock full of them. In fact, I've read a number of reviews of HL2 that derided the game on the seemingly cryptic storyline. Valve, in their typical genius fashion, was building a foundation from which to expand the story in Episodes 1 and 2. Keeping a number of unanswered questions in the story sparks the imagination of the player, and provides something to build on in the future. Engaging the viewer's imagination is the key; do that and you're golden.

Strong Voice Acting

The voice acting in Half-Life 2 is among the best in the industry (System Shock 2, Bioshock, and a few others are similarly excellent). Being able to bring strong emotion to an animated character is undoubtedly harder than it looks. Valve's inclusion of the developer commentary in the game provides a glimpse of this. Merle Dandridge (the actress portraying Alyx Vance) is interviewed a number of times throughout the commentary, and she discusses the challenges (and benefits) of voice acting. The performance that she gives at the end of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is nothing short of stunning.

Character Emotion

As gaming technology improves, the portrayal of character emotion has similarly gotten better. The in-game character models in Half-Life 2 are very sophisticated, and have a wide range of available expressions. Watch carefully during the various story-driven scenes in the Half-Life 2 games; each character's posture, face, and actions all help believably portray that character's current emotional state. This attention to detail builds an increasingly believable situation. As such, I become a part of the story; I am Gordon Freeman. His friends are my friends; his situations are my problems to solve. It gets no more gripping than that for me.

Are there other games that stick out in your mind as having a strong story? I'd be interested in hearing what other memorable titles you can think of.