Useless fact of the day:

1961 was the most recent year that could be written both upside-down and rightside-up and appear the same. The next year that this will be possible will be 6009!

Important stuff there, suck it in, let it push other important stuff out of your mind :)

And yes, I know it says "Useless fact of the day", and that that should probably mean tat I made a blab each day, or posted a useless fact everyday. But I'm lazy, so it actually just means that it's the useless fact of THAT particular day. Useless fact of the Blab (tm) one could say, but "Useless facts of the day" has a much bette ring to it. So BAH!

Ok, BIG TA news here:
As you all probably heard by now, Cavedog have announced that they're going to start their very own gaming service. Yes, this time it's true, that is, according to their press release. I don't think they will be retracting the plans now. :) The service, being named "The Boneyard" (or our abbreviation "BY") is most likely going to be quite similar to Blizzards own service, Battle.net. Comparissons are already being made by everyone, except Cavedog of course :)

Now, comparing it to Battle.net is something that might scare someone, battle.net does afterall get it's share of criticism. Lag, lamers, cheating, the usual. But first off, Cavedog might be able to pull things off better than Blizzard on this. Atleast, I hope they do take into concideration all of the problems that Blizzard has with their service. But all in all, I would think most people agree Battle.net is the best, or rather, the least bad solution for them.

Lag has never been a really big issue for Battle.net, but the simple reason for that is due to how much, or rather, how LITTLE bandwith games like Diablo and Starcraft actually take up. So it has (in My experience) run pretty smooth in there mostly. But I would heavily assume that with TA, it would be different. Battle.net uses a "sync screen" to compensate for lag and sync errors, making it fair for everyone. The "sync screen" is basically a "wait-and-can't-do-anything-til-the-other-player(s)-catch-up" kinda screen. This can be annoying, but I would say that it's pretty fair measure to counter one of the biggest problems with internet gaming (namely LAG).

Unless Cavedog screw it up totally, the Boneyard can only end up worse than the current gaming networks/services out there that support TA (huh? - ed.). TEN and MPlayer have lots og lag problems, and Kali and IRC are basically just chat's where you trade IP's. All these are also external programs, which have to be run on the side, and you have to multitask a bit. Now with BY, it could all be done a lot easier. I do hope they will make some area or room specifically for people who prefer the old IP trading way.

Or maybe even make a clever gizmo that could make it all done easily (in order for the game to be rated automatically, the players will have to go thru a server, like on TEN, increasing ping times by 500 or so - ed.). Maybe some IP show/track/trade and an auto-launcher for that (like Zone and ICQ launching does - ed.). To be forced to play on servers that can be laggy is something I hope to be able to avoid. But well, if their server will run perfect and even better than direct IP, well, ok I'm dreaming now (yes - ed.).

The big thing that a service like this would have going is the fact that it would (hopefully) be a central point for ALL TA'ers (And other games ofcorse). Now some would think that this isn't necesarily a good thing, but all in all, I'd say it is. The TA Community will be much stronger, and self-revitalizing than ever. Though all the newbies, veterans, lamers, wankers, cheaters, Gnugs and non-Gnugs alike will be brought together in one big boiling-pot. Let's just hope the thing wont boil over :)

The question might be if everyone will want to "leave" their old favorite gaming network behind. That will ofcourse always depend upon the quality of the BY.

The idea sounds great atleast, and this could be a huge thing for all of us, and I would urge all of you to sign up for the beta test, and convey all the great ideas to em, and iron out all the bugs. I know I have, and I'm gonna RAAAAAA at any faults and bugs BY might have, and try to get all the good ideas we get along the way through to them.

Well, be sure to read all about it at their SITE (www.cavedog.com). Some nice info there, and a lot that I haven't talked about... Yet. I'm sure I will touch this subject in future Blabs, and Blab about any new developement in this matter. Surely the biggest news for the TA community in quite a while now.

Well, that's all that I feel like blabbing about now. Work and the Gnugett taking up most of my time these days, so not getting much blabbing done, but doing lots of other stuff (we know what you mean, nudge nudge - ed.) :)

Arh !