Technology Corner By: George Champine Cool Technology Gifts This part of the column on gifts written by our guest columnist Andrew Olson of Hudson. Christmas is rapidly approaching and technology provides an array of interesting and useful gifts, especially for young people. Products include flat panel TVs, MP3 players, cell phones, and computer games. Flat panel TVs have dropped in half in the last two years. LCD technology is best for under 30 inches, and plasma is good for the larger sizes. My favorite is the new DLP technology, which is not as thin as LCD or plasma, but weighs much less and is more reliable. The leading MP3 player is the iPod from Apple. The iPod Nano can hold up to 1000 songs and is the size of a credit card. The iPod video include an FM receiver and can also store and display photos and videos. Songs can be downloaded for 99 cents and videos for $1.99. The Motorola ROKR is like an iPod with a cell phone. Cell phones are available from many vendors and are extremely useful gifts for kids in school in these busy times. Computer games can be very educational and can develop creative thinking and problem solving. The leading computer game systems are: Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation, Nintendo Game Cube. The games I really like are: 1) The Sims, 2) Age of Empire III, and 3) Rise of Nations. Thrones and Patriots is an excellent expansion pack for Rise of Nations, and the other games also have excellent expansion packs. To conclude, I recommend any Star Wars game because Lucas Arts is really doing well with their games. See http://www.cdmag.com/ for more information. Computers available to Hudson Residents Hudson residents can use Hudson High Schools new Virtual High School computer lab at the school Monday and Wednesday evenings 7- 9 PM. After-hours computer use is free, and advanced signup is not required. Residents are invited to surf the net, design a flyer, scan or print a document or photograph, send e-mail and attachments, or do research on the Internet. An HHS faculty member will be available for those needing assistance. For more information, call the school at 978-567-6250 or e-mail gcruz@hudson.k12.us. Sony Spyware Spyware is an increasing problem in this new age, and even a high quality company like Sony has been found guilty. Sony included Spyware on about 20 music CD titles which monitored your music usage and reported it back to Sony with the purpose of preventing illegal pirating of music. This only occurred if you played the music on a computer with Microsoft Windows, and is not a problem if you played it in a normal CD player or a MAC. You can remove the spyware by going to : http://www.microsoft.com/ and click on antispyware.

9 January 2008

By: Alexandru Stanescu, Editor, Gaming Reviews (Consoles)
Rise of Nations Secrets (PC)
Increase population limit
Rise of Nations is a real-time strategy computer game, developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft on May 20, 2003. The development of the game was led by veteran Brian Reynolds, of Civilization II and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Concepts taken from turn-based strategy games have been added into the game - including territories and attrition warfare. Rise of Nations features 18 civilizations, playable through 8 ages of world history.On April 28, 2004, Big Huge Games released Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots, an expansion pack. Later that year, a Gold edition of Rise of Nations was released, which included both the original and the expansion. (Wikipedia)SecretsEditing unitsDoing this can allow you to change stats of units. First find your rise of nations folder. then go to the ''data'' folder. Find the file called ''unitrules''. right-click on it and go to properties. be sure to select only archive and disable read-only. open this document using preferable Microsoft Word. Then be sure to read the information. Next you can edit any unit. Be sure not to change the names of the units this can cause errorsIncrease population limitPART I Find your Rise Of Nations folder in your Microsoft games directory in the program files folder in your C drive. Go into the data folder, and look for rules.xml, right-click the file and select open in notepad. Press Ctrl+F, and type in to search for it. From here you can edit the desired population limit entries in quotation marks. Also, search for and edit value and type in the same number that you entered for the last entry in the pop cap field. PART II Then press Ctrl+F, and search poplimits. Edit each category to the desired population cap you would like. Then type in the desired population limits in the data brackets under each category. For example, the end result would be: then, then, 5000 Gameplay footage from the Gold Edition of the game:
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