If you encounter errors when playing some Painkiller levels or starting a multiplayer game, and the error looks like the one below, there is an easy way of solving it.

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/ParticleFX/Environments/SnowEnvironm..."]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/Items/C1L3_korzenie.CItem"]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

[string "../Data/LScripts/Templates/Items/C1L3_uapka.CItem"]:1: invalid control char near `char(1)’

First of all, patch Painkiller to the latest version (1.64). If the patching doesn’t work because you don’t have registry entries, download my Painkiller registry entries here.

Then you have to download these template files for Painkiller and extract the archive using WinRAR or any other archiving program into the Painkiller directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Painkiller). If it asks to replace files, select “yes to all”. Now your game should work perfectly!

Now that the actual development of Windows 7 is finished, Microsoft seems to begin with Windows 8 according to different sources on the Internet. The new operating system will include innovative new features like cluster support, a “revolutionized file access in offices” and is called a “cutting-edge project”.

The rumors that Microsoft begins developing the Windows 8 before Windows 7 has been released is based on a job description on the Microsoft website saying:

“Are you a talented SDE/T Lead looking for the next technical challenge on a key operating system component? Are you passionate about distributed systems, networking, file systems and want to be the leader of a cutting edge project? Are you looking for a team with abundant opportunities to grow? If so, we have the position for you!

DFSR is Microsoft’s premier file replication engine and is an integral part of our branch office strategy and File Server role. It can scale to thousands of servers and replicate hundreds of terabytes of data. We have shipped the technology that powers file sharing in Windows Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Spaces (Vista) and Branch Office replication in Windows Server 2008 which has strong customer deployment. DFSR technology saves MS-IT and our customers more than 80% WAN bandwidth by using advanced On-The-Wire differential compression.

For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.”

Since Steve Ballmer announced shorter periods of developing their operating systems after the long time we had to wait for Vista, it makes sense that Microsoft starts that early with the development. On the other hand, it may turn out that it’s just a typing mistake in the job description. Until this moment, Microsoft didn’t confirm the speculation.

Just a few weeks ago Futuremark, a company known for creating benchmark programs for Windows computers (3DMark and PCMark), released a new benchmark called “Peacekeeper“. Peacekeeper tests various browser functions such as JavaScript arrays, DOM functionality, rendering and other things often used by today’s modern websites like YouTube, Facebook and GMail.

Why would you need a browser benchmark? The better a browser performs on your system, the faster websites are shown and can interactively been used. This is especially needed when browsing Web 2.0 websites, and on low-end PCs such as netbooks the difference can really be a barrier. I experienced this using my favourite browser Firefox 3.0 on my Asus Eee PC 900: When typing and address into the address bar, the “intelligent search” feature needs so much computing power that the whole browser is stuck. Also using GMail or Facebook doesn’t make fun when you have to wait for a second before you can click, scroll, type, etc… That’s why I switched to Google Chrome. Jukka Mäkinen, Head of PC Products and Services at Futuremark, said:

“People have more choice now in how they experience the internet than ever before. But they may not realize that performance between browsers can vary dramatically, especially on lower-end PCs. With Peacekeeper, it’s simple to compare different browsers and see which one offers the best performance on your PC.”

Benchmark your browser now using Peacekeeper!

I compared all the major browsers on my computer (Pentium 4 3.2GHz with Hyper-Threading, onboard S3 graphics) and got quite interesting results:

[poll id="6"]

Continue reading…

While the work on the next version of Firefox, Firefox 3.5 is still going on, some developers are already showing some features of the following version, Firefox 3.6 codenamed “Namoroka”. You can download the nightly build at Mozilla’s website, but please be reminded that it’s a pre-alpha version and should be used only for testing purposes:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-central/

Major new features:

• Support for private browsing (Firefox won’t store any information like history, cache, cookies, … on your computer when private browsing is enabled)
• Better browser cleaning (e.g. for cookies or history, you can now select time intervals)
• Tab previews when moving tabs inside the tab bar or from one Firefox window  to another
• Changing tabs with CTRL + TAB will create a half-transparent window showing previews of all tabs and allows the user to search the tabs

Do you know TinyURL? It is a service that allows you to create a short URL from a long one, when somebody accesses the short one, it will redirect him to the original website.

Well, okay, that may be quite useful, e.g. for Twitter where your message size is restricted to 140 characters. Still, there are times when making things convenient for people just won’t do. In those cases, you need to make the URL bigger, whether for a light jab in the ribs, or a test of how dedicated someone is to checking out your link, even if it means re-pasting truncated email text by hand. If someone complains about having to copy and paste such a huge URL, you really can’t expect them to be the kind of team player who logs the necessary hours for the next big thing, right?

In this case FreakingHugeURL will do the job for you.

This freaking website made the nice, short URL of my blog to a monster with 1475 characters!

On April 1st, YouTube decided to flip their complete website including videos, text and icons and to name it the “new layout for better watching experience”.

A click on “tips for viewing the new layout” revealed that

“modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it’s best to rotate your mattress every six months. You might find that YouTube videos look better this way.”

They also offer other helpful tips like turning your head to the side or moving to Australia.

Anyway, if you want to see the flipped design still after the April joke was over, you can just add “&flip=1″ as parameter to your video URL, meaning:

Original Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4

Flipped Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4&flip=1

Now you will be able to see the whole website upside down! Have fun turning your head!