At my office the IT department is super paranoid. They run a NTLM Authentication server, making the Internet in-accessable, or at least very hard to reach for power users. Many programs and even Linux distributions (gentoo?) almost awlays require direct access to the Internet in order to download necessary updates and files. Recently I had the need to installed the Subversion (SVN) Plugin for Eclipse but Eclipse doesn’t work when behind an NTML authentication servers. It appears to let you enter a proxy host, port and username with password but it doesn’t seems to work.

The Solution
My solution uses NTLMAP as a local proxy server which re-sends and receives requests to a NTLM Authentication server. The NTLM proxy server has no clue what is really going through it as everything is masked by the ntlmaps proxy. Side note: It’s really cool for those pesky networks where they block the word “gecko” in the user-agent string making FireFox broken…

Steps
1. Install NTMLMaps, configure it, and test it using a web browser.

2. Configure Eclipse to use your local proxy server.
2a. With Eclipse open goto the Window menu, select prefrences.
2b. Then click the General tab, then Network Connections.
2c. Type in localhost, and the port you used in NTLMaps.

3. Goto Help->Install Software and try installing an Eclipse plugin.

Recently I have decided that I want to move my website (this website actually) onto my own server at home. In order to do this with my own .com domain name I’d have to pay DynDNS a fee for hosting my domain name (they offer free subdomains only) and for letting me do auto-updates. I did however find a super easy way to use your own DNS hosted with GoDaddy and DynDNS together on a cable/DSL connection that has a dynamic IP address.

1. First I went to DynDNS and setup a free sub domain. I used jimburnett.homelinux.com as my free domain name and pointed it initially to the IP address of my cable modem.

2. Next, in GoDaddy’s DNS setup page for jimmyburnett.com I pointed the “www” CNAME to jimburnett.homelinux.com.

3. For the root domain name (jimmyburnett.com without a www…) I pointed it to an IP address of a free hosting provider and created a simple webpage with a “META REFRESH” html tag that redirected me to www.jimmyburnett.com.

4. Next, I updated my Linksys router to use the DynDNS service and update my dynDNS subdomain every time my cable modem’s IP address changes. If you do not have the built in features in your router there plenty of scripts out there to do it for you.

And that pretty much sums up how to use your own domain name with DynDNS, GoDaddy and a Dynamic IP address.

As many of you may know, I stopped the video games and techy stuff for a while to help me get in shape and change my lifestyle. Needless to say, I’m getting back into the tech world again, however I will not be playing or writing about video games. While I am still going really hard at the fitness stuff, I just find it really boring to write about. I plan to continue my blogging about Linux, Programming and other tech fields I am interested in and just leave the video games out, which were my biggest problem when it came to my health anyway.

A company called replica shopping has been spamming blogs, including mine. We highly suggest that you do not do business with this company. They are huge supports of blog spam and email spam which means they only intend to rip you off. The company has no visible street address and has a very sketchy return policy.

Below is a picture of them spamming our site. All those comments made by “god” contain links to their website. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see the status bar which shows what they are linking to.

They really need to find a better way to market their website.

Unsecure Check Out
This picture shows that their website uses NO SECURITY. Notice no “s” at the end of http. If you order from website and they do use https at checkout, DON’T trust them.

And no wonder. The person spamming originated from the Asia Pacific Network, notorious for scams, spam and illegal internet activity.

ARIN WHOIS for: 121.32.0.71
OrgName: Asia Pacific Network Information Centre
OrgID: APNIC
Address: PO Box 2131
City: Milton
StateProv: QLD
PostalCode: 4064
Country: AU

I’ve used Linux almost exclusively at every job I’ve had. During those years I looked for excuses to not run Linux at home and one of those excuses was that I couldn’t play the games I liked on Linux. The truth is, Linux isn’t a gaming machine and isn’t designed to run games, although there are some popular titles with Linux support such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Another truth is that game makers are slowly moving away from PC development as game Consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 gain more popularity. I realized it was time for a change.

The games that were keeping me from using Linux at home were World of Warcraft and EVE Online, two very popular MMORPG games. After being stuck in a virtual world of gnomes and elves I came to realize that there were MUCH better games out there. One of these games is a game called Crysis. This game wouldn’t run on my PC, was slow, and lagged a lot. I only had 2GB of ram and a 512M 8800GTS video card, not bad but not good enough for this game. What really got me was the fact that this game looked amazing and so did many other games, AND, these types of games also ran on onsoles!

So I sold my gaming computer at home and purchased a 32″ HDTV and fixed a broken XBox 360 a friend gave me, and I don’t regret it one bit. The games for consoles are just better and easier to get going in. Just pop the disc in and I’m on my way to fraggin people in the head. A more recent game that I purchased, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is just awesome. The game play is so much fun and it’s nice playing on my lazy boy chair and not at a desk. I would have had to upgrade my PC in order to play this game at a decent frame rate. Glad I have an XBox now!

Ok back to my point. The point is, if you really want to learn or use Linux as your main OS, but don’t feel you can because of gaming, give up the kiddie PC games and get a console and use a computer for what it was meant for. Stop hunting down gnomes and trolls and hop on the Linux train! Personally, I can’t believe I let a game of gnomes and elves keep me from switching to Linux.

Now I can play better games and still use Linux on my older dell desktop at home. I feel much better now!

In the last month or two people have come up to me and asked whether they should host their website and blog on Blogger or get hosted space and use the WordPress software. Using Blogger has it’s benefits, such as being free, but also has it’d cons when it comes to user privacy and Google’s Terms of Use policy.

Blogger is a blogging service from Google which is free. You can create dynamic pages and traditional blog posts just like you can with the WordPress software on your own hosted web space. One problem with Blogger is that you do not have nearly as much control over the look, feel and optimization features you have with WordPress. With blogger you can create templates, but you can not change things such as Permalink URLs, Page and Post titles, and you don’t get a plugin API which you can use to make custom features. Something else to consider is that when using Google’s Blogger service Google basically owns your articles and everything that you do. With that said Google can also shut you down anytime they want, even by accident. Using your own web space and software such as WordPress you own your website and if it goes down it’s probably because you didn’t pay your hosting fee.

WordPress on the other hand lets you control every aspect of your website. It maybe a littler more difficult to get going but once you do it runs on it’s own. You can have WordPress professionally installed for around $100-$250 not including a custom theme. Expect double that our more if you need a custom theme to be made. Plugins allow you to change the way the software works. You can change every aspect of WordPress including the admin interface and even the front end user interface. Plugins let you make custom changes to the software with out actually touching the core system. The means that you can change the software all day long but when it comes time for updates, they won’t overwrite your changes! Pretty sweet eh? Using WordPress on your own hosted service also means that you own your content and you backup your content. You won’t have to worry about Google shutting your website down for any reason they want.

While I am a fan of most Google services, their Blogging service has always worried me. A person can spend a lot of time in building a Blog and I’d hate to see all that work go down the poo-hole because of some crazy reason Google deems necessary.

If you are really set on using Googles blogging service for the “free” aspect and you really don’t need or want customization and search engine marketing aspects then by all means give it a try. Just make sure you backup every single page and post because you just never know what might happen!

Today I installed and tested Ubuntu 10.04 beta to check out what’s new in this super easy to use distribution. Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu are raving about how they are bringing social media to the Ubuntu desktop in this version. However! My tests show they have done absolutely no work in this area and just pre-installed Gwibber, a free and open source social media application that anyone can use. Canonical seems to be making claims about brining social media to Ubuntu but they haven’t done anything special except pre-installing some software they didn’t even write. I’m really big on first impressions and Ubuntu 10.04 really doesn’t look all that much different than any other version of Ubuntu. In fact it appears they messed up the Windows by grouping all the minimize, maximize and close buttons to the left. WTF?

The one other thing I did notice right off the bat was that the GIMP was gone. Why Canonical decided to leave out a very, if not the most important piece of software raises some questions. Canonical needs to spend less time on Google’s Chrome OS and more time on their own OS.

Ubuntu 10.04 = Bleh. Then again I am an Arch Linux fanboy so yeah.

Sony’s 3.21 firmware update will remove the “Install other OS” feature found on most PS3′s today. You can choose to not upgrade your PS3 but you will not be able to play games or videos that rely on the 3.21 patch. You won’t be able to connect to the PlayStation Networks either unless you update. Sony is citing ‘security concerns’ as the reason. “For most of you, this won’t have any impact on how you use your PS3,” the company claims. “If you are one of the few who use the “Other OS” feature, or if you belong to an organisation that does, then you can choose not to upgrade your system.” Running Linux on the PS3 ‘was’ a deciding factor for me, guess it’s not an issue now!

As some of you know I am trying to sell my Gaming PC to pick up a console. I still haven’t decided between PS3 or an XBox yet however Sony pulling stunts like this is a big turn off. If customers rely on a certain feature of a product and the manufacturer changes it on them 80% through it’s life cycle, the customer loses out. If game developers are concerned about security they should implement better mechanisms in their software.

Recently I’ve been knee deep in an MMO rut with no where to go and nothing to do. I love the MMO genre of games, whether it be sci-fi or fantasy. Maybe I’m all MMO-ed out, maybe it’s my A-D-D, maybe the MMO’s out there just suck, either way, MMO’s today are B-O-R-I-N-G. Please help me find an MMO that is exciting, where the PVP means something and has real consequences.

Lets pick on World of Warcraft for a bit. WoW has been watered down and dumbed down. Their most recent patch lets anyone get PVP gear just by spamming Battle Grounds. All of us that actually put time into PVP to get our gear just got screwed over. Enough of WoW though, everyone knows WoW is 4 teh ghey now, am I right? (Fanboys feel free to flame!)

Next in line is WoW gone apocalyptic, Fallen Earth. Fallen Earth had a lot of promise, but the typical WoW style questing just turned me off big time and based on what I have seen on YouTube and read on the forums, the PVP is so slow and boring you can actually fall a sleep during fights. (EVE Online anyone?) The fighting animations in Fallen Earth’s character meshes are just boring and repetitive. There is nothing exciting or epic about the fighting and PVP in this game. I was expecting and little more “twitch” like shooting and carnage than it currently gives.

Now for Age of Conan. AoC has population zero. No one is playing this game. The graphics are sweet, there is tons of action and blood, but no one is playing, probably due to the crashing every 15-20 minutes. The wait times for mini games (sorta like BG’s) is over 2 hours. Enough said about AoC, epic fail from the start.

Aion Online. Aion Online was a pretty fun game, until you hit 25 and experienced PVP in the Abyss. AO’s WoW like questing was typical, but I was expecting way more in the line of PVP. Basically Aion’s PVP consists of one huge Wintergrasp like area where people fight over resources. Aion also lets you fight in your opposing faction’s land but this requires that you find rifts, and that takes way too much time for the typical PVPer. No Arena like battles, no instanced CTF like PVP matches, nothing. To be fair, I haven’t tested this game sense launch. Please feel free to rag on me and call me out if things have changed but be prepared to show me proof!

EVE Online was my first MMORPG. I played this game for 2 years on and off. The PVP in this game consists of flying out to an area called null sec (or 0.0 as some call it) and finding some ships to kill. It can take up to 20 minutes to fly to an area to find someone to shoot and it can take even longer to find people to go with. You can join what is called faction warfare, but usually this is one sided one way or the other. When a fleet is actually up and running there is usually no targets, and when there are a few targets to shoot, there is usually no fleets up. With all this said this would probably be the game I would go back to just for the fact that I can get into PVP in many different ways. The only thing is, I hate being in a space ship. I would rather watch my kick-ass avatar chop someones head off then watch a space ship spew lasers…pew…pew..pew. The PVP in EVE is very slow to get into and not very satisfying.

Darkfall: Tried it, FPS sucks, I wana see my guy chop the other guys arms off. FPS in DF is just weird. I didn’t play DF for 10 minutes and hated it for that reason. Sorry a head of time for DF fanboyz.

War Hammer. This game is too much like WoW and the graphics are kinda poopy too. Sorry, insta-fail / no – go.

Ok I just cried and complained about every major MMO on the market. Now I have to let everyone know what I am looking for in an MMO so here it is.

My Top Ten List
1. I want PVP. Straight up, head chopping, taunting, no holds bar PVP. I would say Darkfall did this right.

2. Must be third person. If I can’t watch my kick-ass avatar rip someones throat out I’m not interested. WoW has this down, but WoW’s graphics and animations are kinda kiddie.

3. Must have some sheep and wolves aspect. If I get ganked leveling up so should everyone else. This game must be grief-able and gank-able. I feel this keeps the little kids of the picture. Gank and be ganked!

4. Instanced matches is fine, but anyone should be able to leave and join. Much like WoW I hate to say it, but don’t give away rewards, make us earn them. Any noobs can get a full PVP set in a week no problem now. This blows.

5. Team Arenas. Not so important but something where you can put a team together would be cool. Maybe 10v10 CTF or something? I’d say WoW does an OK job at this.

6. Full Lute. Instead of PVP / PVE servers do Full Loot, No Loot servers. Separate the carebears from the real PVPers but don’t take away all PVP from the PVE carebears. Either split us up or make it 100% full loot all the time.

7. Sweet as animations. AoC got this right for sure. There is nothing more satisfying the the AoC finishing moves. I love it when the Conqueror puts a sword into someones chest one a time, pulls them out one at a time, and then chops the dudes head off. That’s awesome. Put that in my game too please.

8. World P-V-P. There is nothing more satisfying then going to your enemies gates and killing everyone you see. WoW broke this with their random instances (no one quests in WoW anymore, all randoms. Sad. ). EVE Online did this right, lets guilds declare war on other guilds to open up PVP a bit. That would be cool.

9. Unique crafting. I want to make a sword that no one else can have unless they get a hold of my recipe. Unique gear would be sha-weet! I don’t care about character customization so much, people don’t see that with your gear on anyways.

10. Price. $15 a month is too much. Make it $7.99 a month, heack even $9.99 a month, but $14.99 is too much. Be pro about this, make a good game and more people will by it.

11. Ok I know I said top 10 but I have 1 more! Please add a free trial, if you don’t, be prepared to fail. If you don’t have the stones to let people test your game, your game is probably trash!

Thanks for reading, let the flame wars begin!

After a rough week with World of Warcraft I decided to download Age of Conan and give it another shot. After taking 8 hours to install the game and download all the patches I was able to finally get in and test it out. One of the first things I wanted to know was how the server population was. Funcom has merged every single PVP server (aside from RP-PVP) into one server. In the social window you can see all the guilds and how many members were in those guilds and whether they were recruiting or not. The top guild, as far as numbers, has 99 members. Only 8 guilds have over 50 members and the other 12 guilds had less than 50 members. If you do that math, that’s not very many people playing this game (basically zero). Also keep in mind that those numbers represent people in guilds and doesn’t account for the solo people. Seriously though, who plays solo anymore?

Near zero population aside I still played around in the game sporting my level 65 conqueror. Around minute 15 of playing, the game completely bombed and asked if I wanted to send an error report to Funcom, so I did! After another 10 minutes of playing it bombed again! Needless to say the game was uninstalled after round 2. That was a waste of $14.99 but heck, it was worth it to make sure I suppose.

So while WoW in all of it’s failure and noob-ness has good population, AoC still crashes a lot, and has pretty much zero population. Now what am I going to do? Time to go console?