I hear this one a lot. How the ability to patch games has made the game developers of today lazy. They rush to release games by a dead line, put out an unfinished product, and rely on the update systems.
Considering how many release dates have been scrapped, I kind of doubt this. Sure, they rush to meet deadlines, but who doesn’t? The testers certainly have improved. When was the last time you saw “Uh oh. The truck have started to move!” or beat a game to be congratulated with “congraturation!”?
All games have glitches, and we used to regard a few of them as something special instead of complaining about them. The Minus World and Kill Screens come to mind. I am certain there were a lot of other glitches going on that were not publicized though. Most of us probably never experienced them, but I imagine that they were there. I even found a way to exploit an old hockey game on the SNES so that I would score a goal every single time, and I imagine that would get patched if it were a Xbox Live or PSN game today. With modern games being a lot more complex, and a lot more people playing the more popular ones, a lot of glitches are found and exploited. In Call of Duty, patches come out all of the time, and people take notice of this. I cannot say for sure what all of them are for, but some are to prevent people from getting an unfair advantage via a glitch. Getting out of a level for example, something that has been happening since at least the days of Socom on PS2. The others are likely minor bug fixes.
In closing, I don’t think ability to patch systems has lead to lazier video game developers. I think it has really just brought a grater awareness of bugs to the consumer.
Posted in Gaming | No Comments »
Posted on 26 January '12 by Eric B, under Gaming. No Comments.
A while ago, some site I don’t even remember ever going to was hacked. While I do not have much nice to say about these these idiots stored all the site passwords in plain text, they were at least nice enough to let me know what had happened. The passwords were all made public, and while I use that one a lot, I though I only used it for useless things like forums to which I have no admin rights. Turns out it was also my Xbox Live password.
Not wanting this to happen again, I instituted levels of passwords. Simple one for harmless site, and harder ones for other things. The thing is, once someone gets all my info from a hack, they can still use it elsewhere. Today I decided to start using long random passwords stored and generated by Keepass v2 for everything. I keep a copy on my phone, and one on my PCs.
I thought to encrypt my phone and its SD card, but this will make copying my data back and forth a pain. I need to keep my Keepass DB copy current everywhere.
If anyone knows something that will cross platform sync with Windows, Linux, and Android, that would be awesome. A plus if it does this via HTTP traffic, as my employer blocks everything I can’t pass through a proxy server.
UPDATE.
It turns out Dropbox will install manually. The Ubuntu installer refuses to call the proxy server despite it being set as an environment variable. I now have my password DB everywhere that I need it.
Posted in Computers & Gadgets | No Comments »
Posted on 23 January '12 by Eric B, under Computers & Gadgets. No Comments.
So, there was an update to my Droid X quite some time ago. I kept getting notifications because I was just running the stock ROM these days, as most of the ones available for download would break the Exchange Server account options. Eventually I accidentally accepted it, and I decided to just roll with it. What did I need root for besides the Anyconnect VPN that I used once? Well, someone finally got hacked internet tethering working again, which is a great thing to have.
I tried the easy update method found here. http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/gingerbread-development-hacking/37965-root-how-win-linux-os-x-latest-dx-602-605-a.html However, it was not that simple.
* daemon started successfully *
* Running exploit [part 3 of 3]...
remount succeeded
5524 KB/s (1867568 bytes in 0.330s)
651 KB/s (26264 bytes in 0.039s)
5928 KB/s (196521 bytes in 0.032s)
pkg: /data/local/tmp/Superuser.apk
Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_ALREADY_EXISTS]
link failed File exists
I kept getting an error that the file already existed, which it did. I had the SuperUser.apk on there from before. I removed it using the app management tool on my phone. However, it treated it as a system app. It uninstalled updates (what updates?) and then left the system app that I could not remove. I had adb on my system from previous issues, and I removed the apk manually.
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
* Running exploit [part 3 of 3]...
remount succeeded
3900 KB/s (1867568 bytes in 0.467s)
636 KB/s (26264 bytes in 0.040s)
4103 KB/s (196521 bytes in 0.046s)
pkg: /data/local/tmp/Superuser.apk
Success
link failed File exists
Success, it copied it… but the file already exists? I suppose it means the sym link already exists, but it should be correct. Whatever. I removed the apk yet again, and this time I just installed the SuperUser.apk from the root methods directory manually. Then I updated the sym link myself.
./adb install Superuser.apk
./adb shell
# cd /system/bin
# mv su su.orig
# ln -s /system/xbin/su /system/bin/su
All was well.
Tags: Droid X Android, Root
Posted in Computers & Gadgets | No Comments »
Posted on 15 December '11 by Eric B, under Computers & Gadgets. No Comments.
I got a text from a number I don’t know last night. The last time this happened, I was at work, and it was a bit more entertaining. I only wish I still had that one saved.
+1201275xxxx: 9 pages away from finish =-D 7:19 PM
Me: Awesome. How has been coming along? 7:20 PM
+1201275xxxx: gud wut about u 7:21 PM
Me: Good, but you have the wrong number. I would have kept this going, but this doesn’t seem half as scandalous as the last time this happened to me. 7:24 PM
+1201275xxxx: whoz dis den 7:25 PM
Me: Eric, unless that’s who you are actually looking for… in which case I forgot more of my bachelor party this weekend than I thought. 7:27 PM
+12012753567: eric irby or edwards 7:30 PM
Me: Which one would have had a bachelor party last weekend? 7:32 PM
+1201275xxxx: sorry i thought this wuz mii big sistaz friend soory 4 waisting your time 7:39 PM
+1201275xxxx: if dis is da wrong # y u respond 2 ,”9 pgs away ” by putting “awesome hows it goin or wuteva u put 7:45 PM
Me: Lol. Like I said, the last time I got a wrong number it was pretty scandalous. They started talking about sleeping with someones boyfriend. This didn’t seem like it was going to be as entertaining so I told you it was the wrong number. 7:50 PM
+1201275xxxx: ur a clown again sorry 4 waisting ur time.i thought u were my big sistas friend.i thought he wuz playin.hes silly 2.but thanx 4 tellin me its da wrong # 7:57 PM
+1201275xxxx: .so embarrased.ps plz dont call txt or have any contact with me i wud appreciate it.sorry 7:57 PM
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Tags: text messaging, wrong number
Posted in Humor | No Comments »
Posted on 28 September '11 by Eric B, under Humor. No Comments.
What are they really worth? They do not detect anything but major virus infestations from years ago. Yet every large corporation uses them. I cannot understand why for the life of me.
Avast’s free home edition picks up almost everything the web can through at it. I have recommended it to countless people that were suffering malware infestations on the regular. Only once did it let one go through, and to give you an idea of how bad these people’s browsing habits are, a handful of them were all infected that week with the same malware. The fact that it let one slip, and everyone got it just goes to show how much it has been preventing.
I looked into it, and the corporate edition features full back end control like McAfee and Symantec products. It seems to use no more resources than the McAfee suite. I also get the feeling that it has to be cheaper than Symantec and McAfee as well.
McAfee’s site advisor has also recently prevented Firefox from opening. I had to disable it from Firefox’s safe mode option. So now its also becoming counter productive. On top of that, we now use McAfee’s web gateway product which is flagging tools like Combofix. This is really ironic and counter productive. Not only is it blocking a safe tool, the tool wouldn’t be needed if McAfee did its job in the first place and protected computer systems correctly.
I know the names have been around for ages, but its time for people to ditch these archaic products.
Tags: Antivirus, Avast, Malware, McAfee, Symantec, Virus
Posted in Computers & Gadgets | No Comments »
