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I previously wrote a brief article about gOS - the new cheap FOSS pc that brings Google Apps combined with Linux to the masses. Interestingly today I came across the 'dev kit' version, for $60 you can buy the motherboard and processor out of this PC which normally retails for > $200. This is a hackers dream as the main criticism with the initial gOS was the fact that it came in a shockingly large ugly case for the size of the internal components. I was sorely tempted to buy it in order to harvest the internals and build it into a slim client. This dev kit would make it a lot easier (and cheaper) to do however its only available in the US at the moment.

For my readers who do not own a PSP or have not been following the PSP homebrew scene, I should explain this, rather absurd headline. For a few months now, an exploit that allows the downgrading of the PSPs internal software (the firmware) has been in circulation after the accidental inclusion of a 'Pandora' battery by Sony. It would appear that Sony's solution to bricked PSPs would be to flash them through software which puts the PSP into a pseudo development mode. A Sony technician accidentally sent one of these magic batteries back with a customer's PSP and this exploit quickly became viral.

Now anyone can potentially unbrick a previously dead PSP - makes you wish you bought all the cheap 'bricked' PSPs on ebay. People who did must be happy now at the prospect of selling them and making a ten fold profit. But I digress, it would appear that new Sony batteries have been altered so as to stop them being modified to trigger the service mode. Should be interesting to see how they achieved this.

I found on the VALVe software shop two of the coolest products possible from the VALVe franchise.... a head crab and a vortignout in cute plush fun furry form!! Ideal presents for a geek? I think so...

But enough of the alliterations, I also found plans to make home made headcrabs. At the moment the VALVe store is soldout and whilst we wait in hope for more stock, feel free to try your hand at this.

In a refreshingly philanthropic move (especially historically when intellectual property has been involved) Will Wright has donated the original SimCity for the One Laptop Per Child project in the hope that it will inspire a generation of OOTB (out of the box) thinkers. This idea was born from the 'SimCity.edu' project by Don Hopkins, essentially making SimCity into a multiplayer game to help teach Civil and Environmental Engineering running on Linux/X11.

Also, while you are browsing, an old friend of mine told me about 'The Nites', an unsigned band that have some great music on their Myspace. I highly recommend listening!

... and to my regular visitors I promise, the next post will be original content rather than hotlinking. I humbly submit myself for your forgiveness.  

"Alex Taldren" has posted an interesting article comparing PC gamers to our console brethren. Call of Duty 4 is pretty much identical across the PC, 360 and PS3, however the user ratings on Gamespot vary slightly across the three platforms with PC gamers rating the game the lowest.

It makes for a great read although maybe ~17 & 26 (PC & PS3 ratings) is too few statistically to compare to 96? (360) It is refreshing to see this data included in the comparison rather than being omitted in order to artificially give the story more authenticity and I do have to give AT praise for this!

Whilst the games themselves are likely to be similar in terms of content and graphics (at stock), the fact is that the PC is a heterogeneous platform unlike the two consoles. As a result, the gaming and graphical performance can and most likely will vary from setup to setup. Also of note will be if any nasty DRM / Copy Protection is used in the PC version as this can have a detrimental effect in some cases - Starforce anyone? This is about the only way in which I believe consoles to be superior to the PC, simple, quick, homogenous and playing perfectly out of the box. It will be interesting comparing these numbers again in a few weeks to see how they change as more people rate the games across the platforms.

So it appears the delightfully peculiar (but awesome) Stephen Fry has started his own blog. By the looks of things he will be 'blessaying' about gadgets and other Fryish trivia. It is strange to think of Stephen Fry as a celebrity - after all, he just humbly gets on with the job, providing witty satirical entertainment rather than having a fan base of screaming morons and making an ass out of himself. In this modern age of A (to H) list so called 'celebrities,' it is a refreshing change to see someone who unassumingly is so unfazed and unspoilt by the lime light while still retaining his character, which is almost its own subtle brand. Indeed, its hard to read his blog without his hearing his voice in the back of your head.

What he has posted so far is a lot of fun to read and I wish him all the best on this latest endeavour.

Image source

I have known about the openbios / linuxbios project for a little while now, but today I discovered a video demonstrating an early build running on a standard 2Mb flash EEPROM. Not only does it completely replace the standard Award BIOS but it boots to a graphical (if lightweight) X11 server in just a few seconds. Although this project is still fairly new (shown by limited compatibility) the concept of having a unified, free bios that allows fast prebooting into a graphical environment is appealing. I believe Macs do something similar, they boot into a very stripped down GUI giving graphical boot options. This idea is not new and ASUS demonstrated a couple of weeks back a motherboard that has an embedded linux distribution ready to boot before windows. The technology is called Splashtop and allows access to email, skype and the web from a stripped down linux environment.

More and more I am seeing a trend towards 'at-an-arms-length' computing and I have mixed feelings about it. Whilst linuxbios would allow better / more efficient booting into a Linux (or other OS) distribution, having a stripped down environment where you could then VNC or telnet into another more powerful system is an interesting idea with lots of potential applications. Imagine a media center PC that was fast (as in instant) to boot and silent due to all the processing being done on another machine on the network, it would be an ideal mediacenter environment. Similarly there is a low murmuring that has been increasing in volume for the last few years concerning a complete shake up of the traditional computing environment. It essentially started with web '2.0' i.e. applications as a service. The whole idea of being able to log into a personalised environment in a web browser is an appealing one, be it a web operating system like eyeOS or just a social networking environment like Facebook. Not only can you have access to your personal space/files/environment remotely, but instead of buying a powerful machine and maintaining its software and hardware, buying a thin client and computing entirely online. Many people simply do not have the technical expertise or the time to properly maintain their home computers. Simple tasks such as regular defragmentations or temporary file cleanup and data archiving often are not done regularly. Many computers I see do not even have basic security programs running. A secure thin client running on a whitelist basis would not need such constant attention and any security would be handled remotely by the application provider. Potentially providers could offer really cheap, low power machines with a monthly payment, which would serve as a lease for an online operating system and storage space.

Although there are potentially a lot of benefits, there is something about relying entirely on a network that is outside your control, (the Internet) a service provider that could have a dubious privacy policy (look at AT&T) and a locked down client which does not appeal to me. I have very much bought into the F/OSS philosophy and the concept of being locked into a proprietary system does not appeal at all, let alone relying on a foreign (i.e. outside my home system) network - especially with my ISP's service record.

"The chemicals [in the iphone] are suspected of causing birth defects and gender-bending effects."

According to the article from the Independent, the iPhone contains several classes of compounds not known to play well with the environment or the human body. Among them are phthalates (?) which are cheifly emplyed as plasticisers and used to lower the glass transition temperature (Tg) of plastics making them more durable. I dont fully believe all the effects claimed in the article, but it makes for an entertaining read.

Full Article

The site that streams Beyond The Red Line's videos appears to be down for maintenance I found the sign rather amusing.

Also the season 4 BSG trailer is up on you tube I simply cannot wait for the new season. The end of season 3 was so different and shocking it took me a good few hours to digest what we discovered about the Cylons and 4 of the final 5. Absolutely amazing TV!

I was randomly looking for a quote from Goldeneye (the movie) on youtube last night when I discovered a collection of videos showing the various fun things you can do with a bit of gamesharking. The kind of things you can do are really impressive, for example, the first few preview pictures show dual wielding of weapons but with the actor camera angle / height changed. Whilst this looks excellent with dual magnums, two RPC90s or KF7s look a little weird. Did someone say gigantism? From guards that don't fit in the dam level to enormous remote mines.

One of the more fun alterations was changing the default actor model from the standard Russian guard to Natalia or the scientist models. Still more entertaining was Sean Bean replaced by a Goldeneye satellite which walked around the end of the facility level. There appeared to be several codes which just made the default soldiers go crazy, from shooting at right angles to the player to shooting at the idiot with the box on his head. The final six pictures showed multiplayer fun from levels which definitely were not included as official multiplayer maps (train, dam, cradle and depot.)

I discovered a glitch that could be exploited on the facility level many years ago. I never posted it online as I though everyone else knew about it, but recently I discovered no mention of it anywhere on the official Goldeneye fan sites. It is simple enough to do. When at the end of Facility, talk to Alec but get close to the door. Immediately when the alarm sounds, run through the door into the lab area. Ourmov WILL NOT spawn, meaning you can return to the bottling room and shoot at guards to your hearts content. Alec will even help you.  I will post a video guide to this (although its trivial to perform) soon.

Gameshark Videos:

Part 1,2,3,4,5,6,7

Just a quick post tonight. I was busy reading and exploring the web (as usual) when I came across this excellent portrayal of Jack Thompson. In case you don't know Mr Thompson, he is a conservative Christian lawyer from Florida who believes the root of evil in our society stems from violent video games. He has sued retailers and run various campaigns to ban various computer games. Well the gamers at Extra life (with the help of our friend Adobe Mischief-shop) decided to let their feeling be known about this individual.

Image Credit - http://www.myextralife.com