downgraded to xp for several reasons

- fix refreshrate in dxdiag (I still run a crt)
- no annoying delays when starting things
- the security popup that warns me that something wants to do changes to my computer sometimes takes like forever
- the new taskbar is a #fail compared to the mac dock
- ...

now I'm going back thanks to starcraft.

ok could try to find what does the hick hack, but I expect that on a clean install and everything updated that things should run like a charm if they did on win7. The sad part, they don't.

I got realy annoying lags in starcraft II during multiplayer, lasting 3-4 secs and usually one right at the start followed by two more latter during the game. Also I got droped once.

so either my network driver for xp sucks or win 7, once a thing runs, does better to keep it that way.

alright!

ubisoft drm server down for at least 10 hours, according to http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down.

mhh does that help them to convince me that they are totally trustworthy? errr... no, it does not.

oh and while readinga around this topic of always-online-drm someone wrote that steam has an offline mode. sweat. obviously i didn't knew that. really cool for the non 3g data plan laptop crew (or those that rather use their cap for something useful).

so another time to anno 1404 bashing or rather anno 1404 publisher bashing.

so since they patched out the DRM everything should be fine, right? they put it right back in with the add on.

sorry i'm all like eric cartman in the pirate episode from season 14: "teh fcuk?"

oh and ubisoft/tages are of the helpful kind if i'm trusting the problems some users report on steam forums:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1147232

oh, steam. you know the-you-need-to-be-online-to-play-thing did not received the DRM patch. teh fcuk?

oh and on some flame sites they claim that all games after vencie will be online-to-play-games.

seriously? ubisoft go bankrupt already.

lucky for me i cut back on my game spendings only going for weekend madnesses of games that where on my radar like 'torchlight' and 'mount and blade', which i bought recently, since i am doing savings for new hardware. honestly i would be sooo pissed if i bought anno at premium and my hardware not being able to run the huge cities and ubisoft throwing yet another teh fcuk at me.

sounds like i have to wait until they bundle it drm free with some game magazine, by then i should also have decent enough hardware to push every slider to the right.

oh and to end with something positive. really love the screenies of venice and the retro gaming feeling from the demo. guess blue byte did a decent job. to bad they are owned by ubisoft.

So if I blog, google buzz buzzzzs this?

Oh and while I'm at it, been to avatar 3d sometime ago.

Really liked it. I hope ppl see the ugly face of the Sky People that destroy the rainforest of planet earth just to eat ridiculous huge amount of unhealthy non-human animal flesh.

Finished reading The World According To Garp and The Attack Of The Unsinkable Rubber Duck this August.

Garp:
Got this book borrowed by Julia. Good book but it's to dark imho. Also some stuff is made a big deal about, but was missing in the earlier chapters. Like the under toad bit.

Rubber Duck:
If you got problems with *%§$°-language, this book is not for you. I liked it very much. Guess I'll pick some of his other works as well. Get yourself a copy.

http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/

Been testing the demo version of Anno 1404, since I'm below the minimum requirements. Worked fine apart from some sound glitches. Maybe larger Cities will crumble my frame rate but oh well. I will get a fast laptop sometime in the near future anyway. And it reminded me a lot of the first Anno I played.

Since I accidentally got a DRM infested version of Oblivion, for $$$, I do check before buying a game now. To Bethesda defence they did not use freaking activations.

To bad for Ubisoft, they are using TAGES which does not sound like something I would like to use. Google for it and see some of their problems from the last holiday season (servers down 2+ days) and ubisoft is allegedly having bad customer service concerning older DRM titles as claimed by users on the steam forums or cd drive problems in X3TC (yeah I read anno does not use cd validation).

I do not oppose DRM completely as long as they are sane.

As you might have read, on twitter, I bought The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition on Steam. I wont be able to pass my copy to a friend or family member after I finished the title, as I did when I was a minor and played Monkey Island the first time. Plus I do not have a nice coaster sitting in my bookshelf after finishing the game.

But steam proved itself of being trustworthy and non intrusive, imho (and Monkey Island is only 10 Euros). Same scheme as iTunes after-all.

On iTunes I bought TV episodes that also bound to my account but are cheaper then the DVD and also available in English. Yet I would not buy non iTunes-Plus music since I can't copy it to my linux or if ever I buy a non apple portable music player.

Egosoft with X3 uses stupid DRM too, but they are trustworthy to provide lots of patches that also contain free updates and after awhile they remove the DRM from the game. One might just wait for the DRM free 2.0 version, if you hate DRM that much. All hail to egosoft. Seriously I like you guys.

That said I'm none of this automatic no-sayers, still I do not like to be fucked with for spending good money on a poor product (non sane DRM, whatsoever). You could at least have a non TAGES steam version. I might have considered buying that.

Well maybe they patch it out or I make up my mind. Until then I got plenty of other games, SimCity4, CivIV,... and maybe pick it for $ instead of $$$ price tag without three online activations later next year.

Peta has a campaign for the amzon.com which sends it to the CEO directly or something, you might consider putting your question in their form:

http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/amazon_fur

Only recently was I made aware of that amazon sells fur. How should I noticed, I hate it when rich women think that is an adequate replacement for the dick-enlargement Ferrari or Porsche. So I emailed amazon to give me an insight why they do this.

Most annoyingly amazon.de didn't addressed any of my questions and simply claim that they read my email (they did not address any claim) and even claim to agree on many points.

Yet they have to make the biggest selection, whatsoever, for their other costumers as well. Therefor not banning it from the marketplace. Basically this is the same response others have got. Canned email. Really sad.

I will not buy any products from amazon while they continue to do.

Spread the word and if you do have an amazon account ask them yourself why they do this and how you feel about it (like buying elsewhere). Close down your wish list (by simply setting it to private). Hope that they understand loss in sales more then reading email and taking a stand against cruelty.

the canned response (in German) follows:

Guten Tag,

vielen Dank für Ihr Schreiben an Amazon.de.

Ihr Feedback wurde weitergeleitet.

Wir danken Ihnen natürlich für Ihre E-Mail zu unseren Produktangeboten, die Tierfelle enthalten. Dabei können wir nachvollziehen, dass Ihnen diese Angelegenheit sehr wichtig ist und stimmen auch in vielen Punkten mit Ihnen überein.

Unser Ziel als Händler ist es, unseren Kunden die größtmögliche Auswahl zu bieten, damit Sie die von ihnen gewünschten Artikel bei uns finden und kaufen können. Daher enthält unser Angebot in seiner Breite auch einige Artikel, die von anderen Besuchern beanstandet werden.

Ihr Feedback dazu ist uns sehr wichtig. Vielen Dank, dass Sie uns Ihre Meinung mitgeteilt zu diesem Thema mitgeteilt haben. Auch wenn wir auf dieses Thema nicht weiter eingehen können, hoffen wir, dass Sie unser Angebot weiterhin nutzen.

Wir bitten um Ihr Verständnis.

Freundliche Grüße

M##### B#####
Unser Ziel: das kundenfreundlichste Unternehmen der Welt zu sein
http://www.amazon.de

sorry for the lack of updates... again.. i am so lazy blogging.

here are two pic of someone just turned 29 ^^

this one is somewhat blurred... :-/

oh and we got this cam since december, my big sister did won it somewhere, nice device. samsung nv15 10.1mp.

on other news "The Day the Earth Stood Still" wasn't that great... rating: c (nice cgi though)

looking forward for that vampire movie though (rise of the lycans)

also planing on seeing slumdog millionaire, starting around march 19 at the pictures, maybe also one near you, with angela.

created a last.fm account to give that thing a try since I actually can use it at home, now.

already noticed somethings I can't stand. first thing is you can mark tracks as loved but can't listen to them unless you subscribed. guess I must add them to a play list as well (edit: playlist are also for subscribers only). the second thing is, that either I am to stupid or you have to like the whole works of an artist, that is if you mark a song as loved you also get the other stuff of her or him.

anyways if I dont trash my account it's de_markanthony

listening to a real radio station like motor.fm has several advantages over last.fm, like the dj presents you nice new tracks with you doing nothing, no clicking through a similar artist selection.

Ok I do now have broadband so I should take advantage and blog more often... well I try. Starting with the last weekends this is one of these I am so lazy and now need to sum it all up blog posts.

DIED
Yesterday one of my drives died, again. I had two IBM 60gig drives that are known to die sooner then they usually do. The other died last year, so I had no important stuff on this one, nothing that could be replaced that is. yet still it sucks >_<.

VSD
Last Saturday, 9/6/8, I have been to Dortmund and had lots of yummy vegan foodstuff on this years Veggie Street Day (VSD). Been plundering the tents mostly with Sasa and Mali. Apart from slight flaws only the sushi was not recommendable, though I had none of the TIRM's stuff (this will change this Saturday since they do the same chili con soja for the gallusviertel stadtteil fest).

ROLLERCOASTER
On 8/31/8 I was half drunk (not from alcohol but from lack of sleep) with ChaCha (or is this ShaSha...) and his sister Natascha to the Fantasia Land in Bruehl after a splendid brunch. We had a brunchette ticket and a first row ticket. Really enjoyed riding the roller coasters esp. the black mamba.

WEDDING
On 8/30/8 was ChaCha and Betti's Wedding and I was there ^^ really enjoyed it. Her wedding dress was just awesome... Well you'd better been there yourself because words can't describe. (sleep count: 3hours due to snoring roommate)

BIRTHDAY
On 8/29/8 I was at Indy's birthday party at cologne which was fun. Met nice happy vegans. We had tons of yummy stuff. To be honest there was so much we did had lots of left overs, apart from ise's casserole and
indy's homemade-bailey's cake (ok technically there was one slice left but only because we all were so stuffed even before we started with the cakes)

I made an tahini-lemon-tomato-tortellini-salad with garden tomato and parsley (note to self: add more fresh tomato next time).

(sleep count: zero hours)

Been with the Gruink to the pictures, last Tuesday, to see the Don't Mess With The Zohan movie. Really enjoyed it despite the bad reviews it had.

Rating would be A.

got my first set of American Apparel (AA) that I will use for the wii fit from now on, its an army Fine Jersey and an army California Fleece Slim Fit Pant. why army? because I wanted a matching set. and therefor i was limited to black, white, brown, grey and army. black can be dull and white gets dirty quick. my PJ is brown. grey? no thanks. army? nothing is wrong with army, apart from being asked whether I am pro war or not at the checkout. (Just for the record: war sucks.)

On the website they have also navy... didn't noticed that at the store.... Anyhow I wonder why I did not bought something sooner from AA. they are no more expensive then other brands are. Maybe I wasn't aware of that or boh don't know.

I guess I will stock up on AA since I do like a new fleet of fine shirts for the summer.

EDIT: A friend of my sister was shocked after reading this as she thought army meant camouflage. No, its not it's a greenish brown or a brownish green.

Have a look at the AA Website, you can click on army. Though I will post some pics in september.

Hoodie on the AA website

Been with Ronan to the Iron Man movie last Tuesday. Great special effects and all.

This movie is of the sort "don't think about the story and have another beer".

Oh and Gwyneth Paltrow as Miss Money Penny Pepper Pot was just great.

Rating: B solid.

Berkeley:
Got myself a phantom Jack Wolfskin Berkeley backpack since I couldn't stand moaning about the lack of space my crumpler back offered.

happy so far with it.

City Journal:
Vandy@simtropolis is nearly done with the Koyama Island map I requested. Its a 24x24 csq (24.48kmX24.48km) map. A lot smaller then I originally requested but due to certain limitations we settled with this size.

I will set up pseudo web pages for the cities that can be found on this Island and there will be a CJ at simtropolis as well as roleplaying.

If you are interested in roleplaying an Assembly Person, Mayor or Special Interest group (or somebody else) feel free to get in touch with me.

Books
------
Finished reading Triple by Ken Follet two weeks ago and noticed that I didnt bloged a thing so far. I liked it and can only recommend it. Its affordable 5 Euros on paperback and is a really good thriller.

This sure would also make good as a movie.

http://www.ken-follett.com/bibliography/triple.html

Twitter
----------
I am on twitter now. Mark Anthony and Koyama where both taken so I am Mark_Anthony.

Most lack of updates on my blog is because I think mhhh this is not noteworthy for a blog entry. Twitter jumps in this gap, quite well.

I hope it doesnt eat up the few spare time I got, just like studivz (german wannabe facebook) did in its early days. But I assume not. Twitter twitters all updates directly to my inbox and not like studivz leaves a message that something had happend and lures me to log in and waste hours of clicking through each groups forum.