hacks and developers

just recently two huge breakthroughs were made in the PSP underground/hacking world.  Noobz and Archaemic found an exploit in the game Lumines that basically allow all PSP firmware versions (1.5 to 3.50) and allow it to run homebrew.  this is a pretty huge find, so much so that for a few days Lumines sales on amazon exploded, at one point its sales were up 5,700%! whoa.

however, this is not the first instance that a game exploit/buffer overflow has been the entry point for hackers into a gaming console.  with the xbox there came to be a way to softmod it via a hacked game save file, i believe the game used was mech assault. 

the gamecube also had a game hack too, that game was phantasy star online. it allowed users to even put linux on the gamecube.

so i've always wondered, do developers purposedly leave the rare exploit in their code in hopes to drive their own software sales due to the exploit? even though the console maker and other software makers may not like the idea, it really seems to be plausible thought.  one that i am sure that most devs would ever speak of. 

anywho, i also see that the iphone activation has been hacked, DVD Jon has figured out a way to emulate the apple activation servers, however you will not have any cell phone abilities (but give this some time, once the sim card lock has been broken, a combination of this hack and a future one could allow those non-cingular/att users to have actual working iphones; not saying it will be me but ya never know.. i like a good hack!).

peace

the iphone launches, and i still don't care...

yes, you heard that correctly.  the iphone launch has come and gone yet honestly i still could care less about this phone.  to me its still an overpriced, uber locked down, last years feature phone... 

i guess i have not really ever bought into the whole hype of the phone.  as a self-proclaimed phone geek, the iphone does not offer me the features i want for a phone that costs that much.  i'd much rather save my pennies and get sony ericsson's new replacement to the K800/K790.  hey, atleast then i get a 5.0 mp camera and a phone thats capable of sending MMS.  and again, i hate itunes and refuse to use it on my windows machine. 

plus, i've grown up in life and need to actually be able to access work emails to justify such a price for a phone (hell, my MDA cost me only $349 and prob still can offer the same exact features w/appropriate add-ons or hacks).

as for the iphone.. i'll pass... to me, its just a glorified music sidekick...  plus, i want that damn sliding qwerty keyboard; software keyboards will never live up to an actual full qwerty keyboard.

however, to each his/her own.  perhaps that is why i still don't own an ipod too.. :)

netflix and Watch Now..

well, i've been using the Netflix Watch Now option w/my netflix account.  basically what the Watch Now option is netflix's VOD via the internet and an embedded video player in IE.  they offer a slim selection but have been good about adding more and more older movies. 

however, i am blogging about their service since tonight i've noticed a very dramatic boost in quality.  the video looks pretty decent even on my 24" fullscreen.  pixelation is pretty low and i have not experienced any lag or stuttering most services usually encounter.  then again the performance boost i'm seeing may be due to the fact that i've been getting some nice 2mbs download speeds lately w/azerus and just normal web downloads. 

the amount of free per month viewing you get depends on what type of subscription you have, basically for each $1 of your subscription, you get 1 hour of viewing; with a max of 13 hours per month.  ( more details over here: http://www.netflix.com/WatchNowMessage?msg=99 )

so check it out if your a netflix member w/a highspeed internet account! i know i can't say no to some free and decent quality VOD!  peace

OSX86 fun.. or not!

well, as previously blogged; i have been attempting to get Mac OS X 10.4.8 up and going on my HP TC1100, however i have not had much success.  the first installs never completed (over 6 hours and sitting at end of install, gave up at that point and tried again), second install did install but never made it past the grey Apple logo on the first boot, the third and fourth times came up with errors. 

 Oh yea, and to top it off; my TC1100's HDD poops out yesterday.  Hmmm, i almost wonder if the OSX86 installs might have caused the failure or not.  had me worried, however my 80gb is still under warranty and i had my original 60gb that i could swap back in.  btw, i still am a huge fan of making ghost backups in case things like this happen.  did a ghost bkup before doing the OSX stuff so i had my system back up and running in 15minutes.  its nice being a geek. :P  hehe.

anywho, so round 1 of my OSX86 install goes to Apple.   i'm wondering if my problems may have been related to my tc's hd failing or did the installs/failed installs cause the failure?  i swear the drive was beeping (like when your desktop won't POST and all you get are the error diagnostic beeps); couldn't even boot from a LiveCD or floppy w/the drive in.

however, round 2 hopefully will go my way; i've decided to install it on my main desktop pc on a spare p-ata harddrive (20gb). realized the OSX86 install does not let you install to S-ata harddrive (i have 3 of them of course and no P-ata), so i had to pull out a 20gb p-ata drive from a gutted system and find a spot in my case.  sure am glad i upgraded away from my htpc cases; no way i could fit my: 3 s-ata drive, 1 p-ata drive, 1 dvd burner, 1 front panel VFD display/remote.

got the install running right now and so far so good (knock on wood), figure it should run pretty decent on my system since i finally upgraded to 2gb of memory; really need to get a new mobo and upgrade to 4gb memory and newer x2 cpu.  however, bills be bills..

if only computer upgrades grew on trees.. ;)

--update:  just got osx86 running on my desktop machine, runs pretty smooth! also got my system setup to triple boot via the vista bootloader and chain0 hack; works like butter.  i posted a recipe to triple booting over at http://tech-recipes.com 's main site, should be live in a day or two.  i'll post more tips and notes as i come across them.

osx86 and the TC1100: round 1, install frustrations

well, this weekend has been a weekend of some geek frustration.  previously i had mentioned i wanted to try to get OS X Tiger up and running on my HP TC, however i have been having some issues. 

my main problems have been the install itself.  my first install attempts ended w/me not being patient enough and giving up. after about 3 hours of waiting and seeming like nothing was happening i would power off my tablet and start over.  i realized that stuff was going on in the background but the Apple boot screen was hiding it, i decided to use the -v flag while booting via darwin.  this atleast gave me the piece of mind knowing something was going on. 

however this still did not resolve the SUPER long time it takes to install.  my first install did not boot past the grey Apple logo and the install itself took over 5 hours (took a nap in between prompts).  the logs seemed to point to titan failing to start.  i decided to now try another full install and not installing the titan video drivers.  hopefully my tablet will boot!

if it does, i think i will make a ghost image of the partition (avoid having to go through the painful install again!) and then reghost my whole machine w/OS X on the first partition and my tablet xp on second and then using Darwin bootloader for my dual booting.

i'll post an update once or if i get it running or not. btw, i'm using the JaS 10.4.8 AMD Intel SSE2/SSE3 PP1 and PP2 iso. i also patched w/the defiant ppf patch.  it almost seems like my problems may be my cd drive, i might grab my ext from work tomorrow if i can't boot after this install and start from scratch.

more to come!

New geek project: getting OS X Tiger on my HP TC1100

well, after helping one of my pals get her work Mac G4 server back up and going, i decided that its time that i tried to get OS X Tiger going on one of my Intel/AMD machines. 

since i rely on my main pc and can't afford to 'accidently' wipe out any of my 3 hds in that sytem, i had to find an alternative system to try the farked install on.

hmm, thus my HP TC1100 came to mind.  how sweet would it be to have a Mac Tablet, eh? hehe. i have not done any installing yet but have been doing mainly just some research on it prior to installing.

my goal is to triple boot my tablet pc w/XP, Vista, and OS X Tiger.  I currently have 4 partitions on my 80gb drive and have allocated about 10gb for the OS X install. 

Partition0=XP
Partition1=Vista
Partition2=User files
Partition3=OS X

also, i am using the Vista bootloader and intend to use that for my triple booting.

tonight i plan to try the install and will post my results/notes on the process (since i have not seen any TC1100 running OS X yet).

i am hoping that i can use drivers from a serial based wacom tablet for the TC1100's wacom digitizer, but this may be very interesting.  also, from what i've been reading i may need to recompile a few things to work w/my tablets Intel Centrino processor; i'm hoping there have been others w/this processor that have gotten OS X to work. 

nonetheless, should turn out to be a pretty fun sounding project! i'll post a followup this weekend on if or how i got it all working! :)

XP vs Vista: the crappy pc test

well, like most geeks out there, i have quite a few 'crappy' systems.  basically computers that have been 'frankensteined' together with parts i've gotten from pals, co-workers, random strangers. 

one of these systems consists of an Athlon 64 3000+, Winfast mobo, 512mb memory, 100gb hd, and using onboard memory (64mb shared).  for a while i was using this pc as a living room pc and had vista business ed running on it, however dvd playback on it was horrible, unbearable and the OS just seemed to lag.  i decided to bring it back to the parent's farm so i had a pc to watch movies at night when up there.  after struggling through the choppiest movie i've ever seen (major lag probs in vista, video playback just seems to blow). 

so this last weekend i decided to put good ole XP Prof back on it.  dvd playback was perfect, no lag or anything.  os was much snappier and music playback also was smoother.

obviously this makes sense since vista requires a much higher set of hardware requirements and i was using onboard video.  however i never thought the difference in video playback would be so much different (unbearable in vista and smooth in xp).

this actually leads me to my rant on vista. where is the video driver support??  seriously, i'm a little sick of not having the ability to use full screen overlays on my secondary monitor.  for being an OS that claims to be aimed towards multimedia, it sure seems to fall flat on its back. however most of the blame still goes towards the video card manufacturers and their horribly slow updates to drivers. come on! you've had over 2 years to get drivers working.

i'll get off my box now, but seamonkey's 'mr. obvious' tip of the day, stick w/XP for those crappier, slower systems.  vista just is too much of a hog for these notsopowerful systems. 

peace

Blackberry 8830 - Mini-review/first impressions

For all of those Blackberry users (or crackberry), Verizon released the much anticipated 8830 World Edition phone. 

 

The Blackberry 8830 is offered by Verizon and has both CDMA and GSM technology in it.  Basically this phone should work anywhere in the world, hence the "World Edition" branding.  Of course, using the phone/data in a different country will require the World plan.

I got my grubby little mits on one just last week since we have a ton of attorneys that travel abroad.  I've so far used the following blackberry phones and will use them as reference to the features/options of the new Verizon Blackberry 8830: 7250, 7103e, 8703e, 8800 (pearl).  I've also used the following smartphones too: Motorola Q, Treo 600/650/700P/700W/700WX/755P/678, Tmobile MDA/Cingular 8125. 

PS3, hdmi and digital optical audio at same time; figured out!!!

well, one of my previous blogs about my PS3 mentioned how i was able to get HDMI and Digital Optical output at the same time and then how i wasn't able to duplicate it. well, i think i have finally figured it out and mastered audio out on my PS3! hehe..

first things first, my setup.

• Olevia 237V LCD HDTV (1080i) connected to PS3 via HDMI cable only (no other audio cables from ps3 to tv)


• standard run of the mill Sony 5.1/DTS AV receiver connected to PS3 via Digital Optical Cable


• PS3 set to output all formats to Digital Optical (aac,dts,dolby,pcm). Movie/BD audio set to Bitstream.

what i've found out, atleast in my case, is that its the order in which i turn on my devices and how i turn off my ps3.

whenever i power off my PS3 when watching a movie (just have movie playing, hold PS button, turn off system) and then if i turn on my setup in this order i get both HDMI and Digital Optical sound on my PS3.

1. PS3


2. TV


3. Receiver

it almost seems like by doing this tricks the PS3 in its digital/drm rules of audio output.

i have now duplicated this 5 times in a row.. however, i do have to do the exact steps above to get it to work including power down the ps3 while in a movie/dvd.

also, this works ONLY with DVD movies, not Blu-ray movies

my youtube clip of it in action!

PS3 firmware v1.80; UPSCALING!!!! joy!

well, i've been using my ps3 mainly for its multimedia capabalities as of late and was overjoyed to see at midnight my ps3 saw the v1.80 update!!

basically this update adds a slew of things we've been wanting, not quite the infamous v2.0 update list but very nice nonetheless.

the list includes the ability to now upscale dvds and ps2/ps games to 1080p.  on top of that add in the ability to connect to DLNA devices (ie my pc running vista and Windows Media Player Media Sharing; lets me stream all of my music, vids, photos to the ps3 now; works pretty good.  however you can only stream a limited but popular formats like mp3, wmv, jpg, etc).  head over here for the full press release from sony.

nice job sony! this summer may end up being a good sony summer afterall. :P

the upscaling on my hackers dvd looked pretty good, figure w/that much cell power you should be able upscale better than most standalone dvd upscaling players.  prob will check out god of war tomorrow sometime and see how that upscaling looks.

aiy, peace.

apple's iphone.. will it be worth the money? (opinion)

are you going to go and snatch up Apple's iPhone once its released this summer?  as a phone geek, i am losing interest as each day goes by.  yes, Apple's UI will be very easy to use and very clean looking.  yes, its nice having the iPod features and the touchscreen/gestures.  yes, it will probably be a very stable OS/phone and has a nice amount of onboard memory.  it will prob be the best if not one of the best music/video phones in 07; however i still love my walkman phones though. 

however, these good points don't do it for me and here's why:

consipiracy theories and the likes

well, i admit it.  as a kid and young adult, i was totally into the whole 'conspiracy theory' stuff.  that 'big brother' was covering up the facts and controlling the flow of media/news. 

firefox, wordpress blogs, and youtube problems w/embedded videos...

i would consider myself still to be a rather newer user of wordpress for my blogging. i previously had used blogger for all of my blogging needs. however, i hate how wordpress handles youtube's embedding code.

for example, this is the code that : <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/HsN3bqc2wos"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HsN3bqc2wos" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

normally, if i want to embed a youtube video into one of my wordpress posts, i will go to the HTML tab in my post and then paste the above code in.  however, i noticed that after i did this and then viewed the published posts in firefox; the formatting of anything after the embedded video would get really 'funky'.   the problem does not happen when i view the posts in Internet Explorer 7.0 (ironically eh?).   i also noticed that if i embed video in a post via the HTML tab in the wordpress Editor and have the Ad-Block extension enabled it will add the "block this ad" to the photos/images or video.  this only seemed to happen if i saved the post and then went back to edit it.

what i have done to avoid the formatting weirdness w/embedded videos from youtube is to just remove the <object .... code lines, so from the above code i would only put in this to embed the video into one of my blog posts:

<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/HsN3bqc2wos" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed>

once i did this, the posts formatting seemed to be fixed for me and my posts.  almost seems like the <object> and <param> are the problems.
hopefully that helps other wp users w/these problems. :)

ps3 random notes, hdmi and optical digital sound at the same time?

well, i admit it.. my ps3 at times sees more loving from my than my wii.. but that really depends on if i have pals over (wii) or am going solo mode (ps3).. however, today i realized something i hadn't up until now. my ps3 is hooked up via hdmi to my tv (no other audio except hdmi), audio is then connected to my sony receiver via digital optical and my ps3 is setup to output via digital optical (dts,dolby,pcm).

however, yesterday i was watching the news in the morning via my tv's tuner and had the tv's speakers on and up. after flipping through the news, i flipped on my ps3 to get some downloads setup for while i was at work. and then voila! my tv's sound seemed to magically work even though i have the audio setting to digital optical. put on some music, plays fine and same w/videos.

can some verify this has this always been true or added in the latest firmware?? nonetheless, i'm happy! hdmi and digital optical output = :)

well, i gave in and decided to get MKII for the PS3 and just tonight, calling all cars since.. well.. there hasn't been crap released on the PS3 in some time... man, both my wii and ps3 are lacking games still.. only good thing is that this fall looks very good!

the power of the masses, go digg!

well, yesterday we witnessed a pretty significant event on the web. we saw a site/company bow down to their users (http://blog.digg.com/?p=74) and in turn disregarded the advice of their attorneys. we also finally saw the power that we users hold and the beauty of the web and inability to censor it.

for those uniformed, here is a quick recap of what happened.

Digg.com received several cease and desist letters from the movie industry to take down any user submitted content relating to the HD DVD crack thats floating around on the web. initially, Digg wanted to avoid any possible legal issues or take down of their site by removing the content (http://blog.digg.com/?p=73 ) but after receiving tons of emails, posts, they decided that they would listen to their users and leave the content up.

Surfers/Users then started their backlash towards the industry by posting the now infamous HDDVD key in any way possible. some create some very witty photos w/the key, while others flooded message boards and post comments w/the code. Initially Blogspot and Wordpress tried to remove any posts/blogs that contained the code; i'm not sure if they are still doing this or not (guess we'll see!)