ZoneAlarm, a Windows firewall and antivirus program, is celebrating its birthday today and you can get the professional version for free if you download it today.  It normally costs $40, so get it soon if you need a firewall/antivirus program.

Get ZoneAlarm Pro Free here.

I recently discovered the website Tips4Linux.com.  If you are a Linux user, or are considering using Linux, it is worth bookmarking.

One of the recent tips is how to create an image of any directory, which can be used to help in backing up your files.

"If you want to make a quick backup of a certain directory, ready to be burned on a CD or DVD, you can use

mkisofs -V LABEL -r directory | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz"

In this case replace "LABEL" with whatever you want the CD label to be (what shows up when you insert the disk or mount the image).  Also, replace "directory" with the location of the data you want to make the image from.  So if you wanted to make an image of the /home/user/documents folder and give it the label "Documents," the command is

mkisofs -V Documents -r /home/user/documents | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz

This will create the gzipped file cdrom.iso.gz in the /home/user directory.  Alternatively, you can create the .iso file without being gzipped by removing the section after the |, and adding "-o filename."  So to make an image of the folder /home/user/stuff named image.iso with the label "Stuff," the command is

mkisofs -V Stuff -r -o image.iso /home/user/stuff

You can read more about this command here.

I ran across this video the other day.  It's pretty funny.

I like the ending. "Ubuntu?"

Microsoft announced that today is now "Global Anti-Piracy Day," as they are calling it.  According to the press release, today marks "a simultaneous launch of education initiatives and enforcement actions in 49 countries on six continents to combat the sophisticated, illegal trade of pirated and counterfeit software."

Some of the more interesting statements include:

"Counterfeit software exposes consumers to an increased risk of viruses, worms and other damaging code including spyware and Trojan horses."  Last time I checked, the risk of viruses and such is not increased by using a pirated copy of Windows, but rather by using Windows in the first place.

"Customers expect to receive genuine, high-quality software..."  Uh, from Microsoft?  Yeah, right.  "...but counterfeit copies often contain malicious code and/or malware and fail to operate properly."

"This, in turn, can present a significant risk of security breaches and lost business data, damaged reputation, and the need to invest thousands of dollars to recover from incidents of malicious software on individual workstations."  And we all know this never happens when using Genuine Microsoft products.

"Should the software end up being counterfeit, customers are provided with information on what they can do to secure a legitimate copy of the software."  Yes, the information is that they can go pay another $140 or more for a new copy.

The folks over at the Pirate Bay have also acknowledged the day.  See below.

1Up.com posted an interview with id's Tim Willits and Todd Hollenshead.  They talk about what's up at id now, like Rage, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake Live, and some other random topics.

Valve has announced that they will begin hosting select mods through Steam.  The first mods that will be hosted are:

Age of Chivalry  -  First-person medieval combat total conversion.

D.I.P.R.I.P.  -  Post-WWIII vehicle combat total conversion.

Insurgency  -  Realistic modern warfare total conversion.

Synergy  -  Co-op mod with deathmatch and teamplay support.

Zombie Panic: Source  -  Zombies; self-explanatory.

I have not played all of these yet, but I have spent a while in Insurgency and it is very fun.  One of my favorite mods (probably my #1 favorite), The Hidden, is not hosted yet, but hopefully it will be soon.  Either way, it is an exhilarating experience, so download it if you have a Source game.

Michael Ogawa has created some interesting videos visualizing the development of some open-source software.  He developed a program called code_swarm using processing.  Check out this and the other videos online.

Microsoft conducted an "experiment" to try to demonstrate that people actually like Vista when they don't know it's Vista.  Just more marketing junk from M$.

And if you didn't know, M$ actually makes people pay to "downgrade" from Vista to XP!  Wow, what other company can pull that off?  Make people pay you even more because your software sucks?  And OEMs and nearly everyone else are going right along with it.

Well, it makes no difference to me because I still have a completely free operating system with completely free software that works better than Microsoft's junk.

Blender is a free, open source 3D modeling and animation program.  It is available in officially supported versions for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, FreeBSD, and Solaris, and will work in several other operating systems.  Blender is extremely powerful, as you can see from the extensive feature list.  Be sure to check out the gallery to see what skilled Blender users can make.

The Blender community has been growing rapidly, especially in the past few years.  More features are being added, bugs are being fixed, documentation is becoming more in depth, and big projects are being worked on to demonstrate Blender's prowess.

This short film was made using Blender by a small team over a period of several months.  Be sure to watch it in high resolution if possible.  You can download copies of the movie here.

All the files from Big Buck Bunny are available to download for free (at the bottom of the page, under Production Repository), because it is an open movie.  There is also an open game in the works using content from Big Buck Bunny.

I'll post a lot more about Blender at some point in the future.  The learning curve is very steep, but I plan on conquering it slowly and surely.  I'll be documenting my experiences with Blender here, so stay tuned.

Phoronix has posted some information stating that they have received confirmation that Valve is porting their Source Engine to Linux.  Rumors of such an event have been floating around for a while, but these seem to be more than just rumors.  Phoronix rarely posts unofficial information or rumors, but they will when are they are nearly 100% sure the information is correct.  So how will this affect anything?

Well, for starters, the Source Engine is very powerful, offering HDR, one of the best AI systems, a Havok-based physics system, and many more awesome features.  Not only that, but word has it, as would be expected, that Valve's content distribution program, Steam, will also be available on Linux.  This would open up Linux users to a huge number of games without the use of any special programs, such as Wine.

Not only that, but if a bunch of new games become available for Linux and the Linux gaming community increases, companies will have a reason to develop better Linux drivers instead of relying on unofficial, manytimes unstable Linux drivers.  This could be a huge turning point for the Linux community.

It also could turn out to be just another temporary excuse for real Linux support in games.  But my guess is that this is not the case.  Judging by Valve's history, this is going to be a big deal, and it could easily change the way most people view Linux.

I know that I will definitely be a happier Geek.  I don't believe I could think of a single good reason to use Windows once I can play all the best games in Linux natively.

Oh, and there will probably be Mac support too, but that makes no difference to me.