Code Retard

Before I start this, I should note that I’m a huge World of Warcraft fan. It was actually the first computer game I played, since I grew up with consoles and never got around to PC gaming. I jumped on board about a month after the launch of vanilla WoW, and I played all the way through Wrath. I even worked at Blizzard for a couple of years, in a position my NDA explicitly forbids me from disclosing. What I’m saying is, you can trust me when I say I know WoW and its players pretty well.

I’ve been loosely following the progress of WoW since I walked away from it late last year. Cataclysm certainly looked like a step in the right direction, but the gradual dumbing down of WoW with simplified talent trees, charity epics and gold flowing from the hills like a waterfall turned me off to the whole thing. I enjoyed Wrath of the Lich King, but the challenge I had seen in dungeons like Upper Blackrock Spire and Blackwing Lair, and to a lesser degree the Black Temple, never really resurfaced. When a group of ten random people could clear a raid in one night, I knew that the game couldn’t offer me much of a challenge.

Mist of Pandaria, announced at Blizzcon yesterday,  looks like it’s designed to do one thing – make the fans happy. While this is certainly a good plan for generating sales, it doesn’t do much for the hardcore player looking for a challenge. All of the announced features seem to be making WoW even easier, and while casuals should absolutely have a place in any game, it just doesn’t seem like the same game that drew our passion and love in 2005. If you remember, Pandaren were added to Warcraft 3 as a joke – fans just happened to like them so they got retconned into the story.

Hell, even Blizzard was amazed that people liked them. Here’s a quote from the guy that designed the Pandaren Monk art for the original joke, Samwise Didier:

“But so we put that up in there and everyone was like “Oh my God! A PANDA RACE? That’s kind of cool!” And I’m like “Are you kidding me, really? You want to see pandas in Warcraft III or whatever?”

And now they’re taking that joke and shoving it into WoW. It’s been sad to watch the Warcraft lore die over the last few years and it’s pretty evident that Blizzard may be running out of ideas. They’ve basically pillaged everything they can from their history instead of coming up with new stories to tell, and an entire expansion based on the Pandaren makes it clear that they don’t have much left for World of Warcraft.

What’s really telling is the addition of a Pokémon-like mini-game, in which players will force their non-combat pets to fight. You’ll also be able to find and capture pets in the wild and then train them to be better fighters. It’s an interesting concept for killing time between raids or groups, but it also says a lot about how the WoW player base has changed in the last six years. Essentially, WoW has gone from MMO to casual Facebook game; it just has a nicer interface.

We’ll  have to see how the expansion goes – maybe I’m just an idiot. Maybe people want to play as Pandaren, and maybe they’ll have a great time. But it certainly looks like the WoW I loved is dead, and there won’t be any reason to come back. I just don’t think Blizzard knows how to update the franchise for hardcore players anymore. That, or they don’t care.

Guess we’ll just have to wait for that other top-secret Blizzard project, huh? Are you still going to play World of Warcraft after the new expansion?

These are instructions on how to perform a semi tethered jailbreak of your iOS 5 iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

A semi-tethered jailbreak is an interim solution which solves the problem of being unable to reboot with a tethered jailbreak. The semi tethered jailbreak by BigBoss will allow you to reboot on the road, but with limited functionality. It is enough that you are no longer stranded, and you can use your phone, text, and many other features. This is just until you get home and can use redsn0w again to ?just boot tethered?. Once you do that, you?re back to fully functional state.

Step One
Jailbreak and boot your device tethered using the instructions below:

? iPhone 4 (Mac, Windows)
? iPhone 3GS (Mac, Windows)
? iPhone – No Baseband Update (Mac)
? iPod Touch 4G (Mac, Windows)
? iPod Touch 3G (Mac, Windows)
? iPad 1 (Mac, Windows)

Step Two
Press to launch Cydia from your Springboard.

Step Three
Press to select Manage from the tabs at the bottom of the screen.

Step Four
Press the large Sources button.

Step Five
Press the Edit button at the top right of the screen.

Step Six
Press the Add button at the top left of the screen.

Step Seven
Input http://thebigboss.org/semitether into the text field and press the Add Source button.

Step Eight
Press the large Return to Cydia button.

Step Nine
Select thebigboss.org from the list of Sources

Step Ten
Select SemiTether from the list of Packages

Step Eleven
Press the Install button at the top right of the screen.

Step Twelve
Press the Confirm button to begin installation.

Step Thirteen
Press the large Reboot Device button.

You’re device will now reboot without stalling at the Apple logo!

To get full functionality back you will need to boot tethered. Launch RedSn0w as you did in Step One then select Extras then Just boot from the menu.

**A big thanks to BigBoss and all those who made this tutorial possible.

Official release of the iXtreme Burner MAX firmware V1.0 for Liteon iHAS drives
Liteon iHAS124B = baseline model
Liteon iHAS224B = 124 + LightScribe
Liteon iHAS324B = 124 + SmartErase
Liteon iHAS424B = 124 + LightScribe + SmartErase (or = 224 + SmartErase)
Liteon iHAS524B = 124 + LabelTag + SmartErase
Liteon iHAS624B = 124 + LabelTag + LightScribe + SmartErase (or = 524 + LightScribe)

Features:
* World first Full 8.7GB 100% Backups on standard Dual Layer DVD+R DL
* No CIV errors
* Passes all current checks

The Kindle Fire incorporates Amazon’s new Silk browser, which apparently will learn your reading/surfing habits and cache pages you return to frequently.

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)

The Silk browser was only one of many revelations at Amazon’s Kindle event last month, but it was a doozy. Expected to ship initially only on the Kindle Fire in November, Silk promises to learn how you browse and to predict where you’re going to surf to next.

That kind of stickiness with your personal data left many security experts and some lawmakers uncomfortable. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation now says it believes Amazon will provide users with the tools to disentangle themselves.

The digital privacy rights group released a report yesterday analyzing several areas of concern it had with Silk, and how Amazon allayed them. The biggest problem for the organization was whether or not the “cloud acceleration” feature could be turned off, which Amazon confirmed to the group that it can. Cloud acceleration is active by default.

There were other problem areas, including secured traffic. Jon Jenkins, Amazon’s director of Silk development, told the EFF that secure web page requests via SSL and HTTPS are not routed through Amazon’s servers even when cloud acceleration is running. And as the report points out, an enormous number of Web sites force secure connections, so Amazon ought to have a vested interest in Silk resolving sites quickly even without cloud acceleration.

Amazon also told the EFF that Silk logs only three pieces of information regularly when using Google’s SPDY protocol for faster connections to Web servers: the URL being requested, the time at which the request occurs, and a personal identification-free token used for identifying a session. Those logs are kept for 30 days.

Jenkins told the EFF that IP and MAC addresses are collected for technical troubleshooting, but are not associated with browsing history. He added that there is no way to connect logged information to a user’s Amazon account, and that outgoing Amazon server (AWS) information isn’t logged, either. Amazon said that it follows caching headers to prevent sensitive information from being sent over an unsecured connection.

The 7-inch Kindle Fire, set for release on November 15, will offer access to books, games, movies, TV shows, music, Amazon’s App Store. It will offer Wi-Fi, free Amazon Cloud storage, and Amazon’s new Silk browser. Amazon Prime members can access unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 movies and TV shows.

(Credit:
Amazon.com)

The EFF noted that it still had some concerns about Silk. One of these is storing URLs visited, including search queries, which can sometimes contain identifying information. Another is Amazon’s EC2 server cache, which could also contain information that could lead to uncovering a person’s identity. A third is the potential for law enforcement to become interested in the collective browsing data of Amazon’s users.

Even though the EFF concluded that the browser overall has enough privacy points to ensure that you won’t be tracked all the time, people who are concerned about any of those last three issues–or about trusting Amazon in general to keep data safe–ought to turn off cloud acceleration when using Silk.

These guys at SQL PASS presented on using Kinect to interact with SQL. Create databases by raising your arms. Delete databases by kicking them away. Back up databases by bringing your arms back.

Awesome!

As the search engine giant Google releases new technologies ever so often, the talk about real-time search is now a thing of the past. Google launched real-time search sometime ago, allowing users to search and view updates on major social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. At that time you were able to search for a particular topic or keyword and find out what the buzz was on that topic.

Even though Google has stopped using real-time search for some time now, you will still find them indexing Twitter profiles and tweets as if they were regular pages.  Some people may think there’s a secret to this, but only a few companies and persons have started optimizing their twitter profiles for great search engine performance.

By optimizing your profile page you will find that using Twitter will be a great and very effective way for you to build links naturally and increase traffic to your website and best of all, this works for almost all the major search engines.

So just in case you might want to start optimizing your twitter page for a better search engine performance, I have put together a few tips that will help you and your company, build quality links to your website and increase brand awareness.

Creating your Twitter handle

This is just about the most critical of all. Selecting a handle/username is not just about choosing a random name, but it should be something relevant to your brand name or a keyword in your niche.

Your choice of username must be done carefully as this cannot be changed and it will be used in your url when your profile is indexed by the search engines.

Optimize your profile bio

Another thing you should look at is the information contained in your bio. Twitter allows you to use only 160 characters in your profile bio, so you have to make it not only relevant, but interesting so that you could attract users.

This will be very helpful if done right as the search engines will use your profile bio as the description, and we all know how important it is to have a proper description.

Retweetable  Tweets that are keyword rich

When thinking about something tweet, always remember to try and make sense with you tweets, while on the other hand staying on topic.

Twitter only allows you a certain amount of characters per tweet so try and make good use of each update by including your keywords in each update. While you would like your updates to be keyword-dense, you should not stuff it with keywords, as this will seem to be a bit spammy and will be a major turn off to your followers.

Links to your twitter profile

Just as links to your website are important, the same thing goes to your profile. Increasing the links to your twitter profile will make it stronger in the search engines. You could start by linking to profile via your website hereby passing on some of your domain authority to it.

Another thing you could do is try an increase your followers, as they too give a link to your profile from theirs, under the list of people they are following.

Twitter should not be used as your main strategy when it comes to your seo link building, but it sure is a start of things to come. Social media is all about the conversation, and the conversation can turn a visitor into a customer, and keep them coming back.

Want to unlock that phone? Smile.

(Credit:
Google)

There’s more to Ice Cream Sandwich than just better camera controls, near-field communication support, and the redesigned interface. Google has also been working on making the latest version of
Android the safest yet, and several of the features are mighty sharp for a melty brick of ice cream.

The biggest of them all is that you’ll be able to fully encrypt your ICS device. This means that all your data will be on lockdown, inaccessible even to you until you enter in the passcode or personal identification number.

The benefit of this obvious: if lose your phone, you won’t have to worry about remotely wiping it. The downside, of course, is that if you forget your password, you’re locked out and the only way to get your phone back is to factory restore it. Expect to see renewed interest in cloud-based backup services for Android.

How apps manage authentication and secure sessions will get easier in ICS, thanks to a new keychain API that works in conjunction with the underlying encrypted storage. Any app will be able to use the keychain API to install and store user certificates and certificate authorities securely. It’s a very technical change that will nevertheless allow apps to be written more safely from the get-go.

The lockscreen itself has received some effective enhancements, too. The first, and the most widely-talked about, is that you’ll be able to unlock your phone using native facial-recognition technology. Called Face Unlock, this tech has been around for a while for other systems, such as Windows, so it’s good to see it being ported to a high-profile mobile platform natively.

The most common concern with facial recognition technology is that it can be fooled by a photograph. Android developer Tim Bray says that it can’t; and my own tests in 2010 with the Windows facial recognition software Blink failed to fool it then. Obviously, a Windows program and an Android feature are not the same, but given that I wasn’t able to log in with a photo two years ago, it’d be a massive failure for the feature if it could happen now.

Other potential facial recognition problems include alterations to your appearance, such as facial hair or make-up, or poor lighting conditions. If the feature can’t tell that you’re you, it’ll open the passcode box for manual unlocking.

Android 4.0 will also let you customize a lockscreen message. This isn’t world-shaking, to be sure, but it will allow you to set a “please return to” message for anybody who finds your phone, potentially improving your chances of getting a lost device returned to you.

Lastly, big improvements have been made to app control. You’ll be able to disable bloatware, those apps that come pre-installed on your device, and you’ll have the ability to disable background data on a per-app basis.

The disable option promises to let you render an app fully inactive. It won’t be able to send or receive data, it won’t be able to launch, and it won’t display an icon in your app tray. However, because those apps are part of the system partition, you won’t be able to fully remove them. That will still require rooting your phone. Nevertheless, this is a massive improvement for people wondering what the heck a Citrix is.

Being able to disable data transfers for apps running in the background provides a stopgap measure for controlling apps without taking the harsher measure of disabling the app outright. While some apps such as JuiceDefender already give users that kind of control, it’s enormously helpful to have that as a default Android feature.

These are solid improvements to Android security, although I’d like to see more in the way of exposing permissions and either simplifying them, or helping users understand them, or both. For instance, you might notice that your violent bird-throwing game has permission to send out your location. On the face of it, that sounds bad. But what if the game has a new social networking component that allows you to compete against nearby friends? Making clear how a particular permission is used by an app would be a big boon.

If there are security improvements you’d like to see made to Android, tell me in the comments below.

The Dead or Alive series is known for three things. Being really fun, having interesting if outrageous storylines (with cameos) and physics. Now those physics are being ported directly to your iPhone and will be out January 31st 2012.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of Soul Calibur V and the fact that Ezio from the AC series was gonna show up, much like Yoda and Vader in the previous iteration. The latest news from Namco Bandai was the fact that they’d be stretching their claws into a brand new platform. 

I did play Tekken Bowling earlier in the year and whilst it didn’t capture the fun I had had back in the early days of PS2, it was still a fairly good port. Whether or not Namco will step up their game for the SCV port is probably unlikely and only have a few characters, but still interesting regardless.

Via [GamePro]

These are instructions on how to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS on the iOS 5.0 firmware using RedSn0w for Windows. The Mac tutorial is here.

This procedure will cause you to upgrade your baseband potentially ruining your chances for an unlock. Please wait until we have posted a tutorial on how to update to iOS 5 using a custom ipsw if you need an unlock. The jailbreak is also tethered for all devices except the old bootrom iPhone 3GS which means you will need to connect your device to the computer each time you reboot. Finally, it may be prudent to save your SHSH Blobs by following this tutorial before continuing.

If you want to jailbreak a lower firmware version you can find the appropriate tutorial here.

Step One
Create a folder on your desktop called Pwnage

Download RedSn0w 0.9.9b6 from here and place it in the Pwnage folder. Likewise, download the 5.0 firmware from here and place it in the Pwnage folder. (Note: you do not need to download the 5.0 firmware if you are already on iOS 5.0)

Extract the RedSn0w zip file by double clicking it.

Step Two: (Skip this step if you’re on iOS 5 already)
Connect your iPhone to the computer and launch iTunes.

Select your iPhone from the list of devices on the left. Now hold down Shift and click the Restore button. Restore is preferred as it won’t create any wasted space on your iPhone.

Navigate to the Pwnage folder on your desktop and select the 5.0 firmware ipsw. Click the Choose button to continue.

iTunes will now update your iPhone to the new firmware.

Step Three
Launch the redsn0w application from the redsn0w folder we extracted earlier.

**Windows 7 users may want to try running the redsn0w executable mode as an administrator in Windows Vista compatibility. You can do this by right clicking the executable and selecting Properties from the contextual menu.

Step Four
Once RedSn0w opens click the Jailbreak button

Step Five
Plug your iPhone into the computer and make sure its OFF then click the Next button

Step Six
RedSn0w will now guide you through the steps to get into DFU mode. You can find more help with DFU mode here

Hold down both the Home button and the Power button for 10 seconds.

Release the Power button and continue holding the Home button until RedSn0w detects the device.

Step Seven
Your iPhone will now reboot

Step Eight
RedSn0w will prepare the jailbreak data.

Step Nine
Select Cydia from the list of options and click Next.

Step Ten
Your iPhone will now be rebooted again and RedSn0w will begin uploading the new RAM Disk and Kernel.

Step Eleven
Once this is complete you will be notified that RedSn0w is done. When your iPhone finishes rebooting (5 minutes or so) it will be jailbroken with Cydia on the SpringBoard.

BOOT TETHERED
Once you have jailbroken you will need to rerun redsn0w to boot tethered.

Step One
From the main RedSn0w menu click the Extras button.

Step Two
Select Just boot from the Extras menu to just boot tethered.

*As usual a big thanks to the iPhone Dev-Team and Geohot for their hard work and contribution to the iPhone community.

Introduction:
It’s a new hack, congrats to gligli and co.

What’s New:
– slim/fat glitch hack support for 13599/13604
– ability to build clean/retail images (v7371+) with -retail flag on command line
– ability to patch clean smc if required for glitch reset (limited to those in imgbuild python script)
– power boots patched dash, eject boots xell-gggggg.bin
– todo: remove fcrt.bin requirements from glitched kernel
– todo: virtual fuses for glitched kernel
– todo: verify glitched kernel is working on zephyr