Well this is one way to keep market share if you have a quarter of a million dollars for a marketing budget. Starting from today, Microsoft is hosting a two month promotion, “The IE7 Shop with More Confidence Sweepstakes” in partnership with PayPal to give 25 lucky users each $10,000 to spend via PayPal.

Sure they could have put that money back into the development of Internet Explorer to make it a more competitive web browser, but that wouldn’t be as fun would it?

To enter, it is suggested you first watch a ridiculously boring Flash animation before being redirected to the entry page (or just go straight to it), then complete an entry form on the promotion website. However as the name suggests, it is a promotion for Internet Explorer 7 so it makes sense you will need to use it to access the page. If you try to access the page from other browsers, it will first ask you to download and install IE7. Fortunately for Firefox users like myself, IETab gives the best of both worlds in situations like this. Sorry, but I feel even more confident shopping with Firefox. The sweepstake ends on January 31, 2008.

Sometimes I wished Australia could just become the 51st state of the United States just so I can participate in all these sweepstakes. And for a while under the Howard government, that didn’t seem too far off either.

About Sam and Max Episode 1: Culture Shock

The former child stars of the Soda Poppers TV show are wreaking havoc all over the neighborhood! But this is no ordinary tale of child stars gone awry. There’s a dark force behind the Poppers’ baffling antics. Using only their wits and a slew of heavy household objects, it’s up to Sam & Max to save the day!

Wine configuration

This is with a configuration directory after DirectX was installed and running in a 1024×768 virtual desktop.

$ winecfg

Once the .wine directory is built the configuration tool will start and you can set a virtual desktop in the graphics tab if you wish. This is a good time to also set your Audio driver in the Audio tab.

Installing Sam and Max Episode 1: Culture Shock

This is the DEMO of Sam and Max Episode 1: Culture Shock BTW…

tom@tuxonfire ~ $ wine sam_and_max_culture_shock_demo.exe
err:richedit:ReadStyleSheet ReadStyleSheet: skipping optional destination

Sam and Max Episode 1: Culture Shock first run.

Feel free to comment about this post at the wine-forum.

About Rome: Total War

Rome: Total War is the next generation in epic strategy gaming from the critically acclaimed and award winning Total War brand. The aim of the game is to conquer, rule and manipulate the Roman Empire with the ultimate goal of being declared as the “Imperator” of Rome. Set in a time when the mighty Roman Empire emerged to conquer the known world against powerful enemies, when gladiators fought to a bloody death in the Coliseum; when Spartacus defied the might of the empire; when Hannibal led his invincible army and his war elephants across the Alps to strike fear into the very heart of Rome itself; and when Julius Caesar finally smashed the Barbarian Gauls. This was a time of brutal confrontation between civilisation and barbarism, and of civil war as the ancient world’s only superpower turned on itself.

About Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion is the expansion to the best-selling Rome: Total War. The original game covered the rise of the Roman Empire and the struggle to be the Emperor of the Roman World. In the tradition of earlier Total War expansions, Barbarian Invasion (BI) introduces a new campaign in a time when an almost-unstoppable threat has arisen.

Wine configuration

This is with a configuration directory after DirectX was installed and running in a 1024×768 virtual desktop.

$ winecfg

Once the .wine directory is built the configuration tool will start and you can set a virtual desktop in the graphics tab if you wish. This is a good time to also set your Audio driver in the Audio tab.

Installing Rome Total War and Total War Barbarian Invasion

This is the DEMO of Rome Total War and Total War Barbarian Invasion BTW…

tom@tuxonfire ~ $ cd /home/tom/rome/RomeTotalWarDemo.zip_FILES
tom@tuxonfire ~/rome/RomeTotalWarDemo.zip_FILES $ wine setup
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L”tom” (nil) 0×33be6c (nil) 0×33be70 0×33be64 - stub

Rome: Total War first run

Rome: Total War Intro Scene:

Rome: Total War

Total War Barbarian Invasion:

Feel free to comment about this post at the wine-forum.

About Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

In 2001, Max Payne arrived to set the benchmark for action gaming, earning countless awards and revolutionizing the genre with cinematic combat sequences fuelled by the groundbreaking use of slow motion and compulsive narrative-driven gameplay. Now, working together with Rockstar Games’ New York-based production team, Remedy has combined Max Payne’s hallmark gameplay with all new innovations and unmatched production values. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne has raised the bar for action games all over again.

Wine configuration

This is with a configuration directory after DirectX was installed and running in a 1024×768 virtual desktop.

$ winecfg

Once the .wine directory is built the configuration tool will start and you can set a virtual desktop in the graphics tab if you wish. This is a good time to also set your Audio driver in the Audio tab.

Installing Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

This is the DEMO of The Fall of Max Payne BTW…

tom@tuxonfire ~ $ wine Maxpayne2demo.exe
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne first run

Feel free to comment about this post at the wine-forum.

Too much Windows Vista cache, a bad ting? Well, apparently yes, through Excessive Cached Write I/O and Excessive Cached Read I/O. As you probably know by now, cache is connected with boosting the performance of data accessing processes that target sluggish storage media. In an ideal scenario, the data or the code pages would be completely located within the system memory. The speed at which data is accessed, in the physical RAM, exceeds by far that of similar processes that involve a hard disk, by approximately 1 million times. But, because of the usually limited amount of RAM, the operating system will have to deal with system cache. (more…)

algorithm, hard disk, memory manager, msdn, operating system, physical memory, physical ram, processes, storage media, system cache, system memory, system performance, vista, Windows

About Halo: Combat Evolved

The year is 2552. Planet Earth still exists, but overpopulation has forced many of her former residents to colonize other worlds. Faster-than-light travel is now a reality, and Earth’s unified government, through the United Nations Space Command, has put its full weight behind the colonization effort; millions of humans now live on habitable planets in other solar systems. A keystone of humanity’s colonization efforts is the planet Reach, an interstellar naval yard that builds colony ships for civilians and warships for the UNSC’s armed forces. Conveniently close to Earth, Reach is also a hub of scientific and military activity.

Thirty-two years ago, contact with the outer colony Harvest was lost. A battlegroup sent to investigate was almost completely destroyed; only one badly damaged ship returned to Reach. Its crew told of a seemingly unstoppable alien warship that had effortlessly annihilated their forces.

This was humankind’s first encounter with a group of aliens they eventually came to know as the Covenant, a collective of alien races united in their fanatical religious devotion. Covenant religious elders declared humanity an affront to the gods, and the Covenant warrior caste waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence.

After a series of crushing defeats and obliterated colonies, UNSC Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel may inadvertently lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw, ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors — even if that means jumping without proper navigational calculations. Vessels in danger of capture must self-destruct.

On Reach, a secret military project to create cyborg super-soldiers takes on newfound importance. The soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project rack up an impressive record against the Covenant in test deployments, but there are too few of them to turn the tide of the war.

Wine configuration

This is with a configuration directory after DirectX was installed and running in a 1024×768 virtual desktop.

$ winecfg

Once the .wine directory is built the configuration tool will start and you can set a virtual desktop in the graphics tab if you wish. This is a good time to also set your Audio driver in the Audio tab.

Installing Halo: Combat Evolved

This is the DEMO of the game, I plan to purchase the full game and try it and ill update this post as soon as I get my hands the full game.

tom@tuxonfire ~ $ wine halotrialsetup.exe
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.

Halo: Combat Evolved first run

I found this video on YouTube.

Feel free to comment about this post at the wine-forum.