As the dust from E3 settles, it’s quite apparent that the new Xbox has taken quite a beating. The revelation that the console would feature a strict, one-copy-per-person game policy hasn’t been very good for its public reception, particularly considering DRM has never been a popular method of license-enforcement. DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is a blanket term for technology used to control the access to content after it has been sold, primarily for copyright reasons. The Xbox One, in particulary, needs to check-in with Xbox authentication servers once a day. In addition, games can only be traded once, and only then to people you’ve been friends with for more than 30 days. This news, coupled with the fact that the successor to the Xbox dynasty is $100 more expensive than its Sony counterpart, seems to doom the console before it even hits the shelves.

But isn’t that what Steam does?

Steam, the popular PC gaming market place, has largely the same restrictions. Once you buy a game from their online store, it is tied to your account. It can’t be transferred, and all games bought through Steam require Steam to be online (or at least, logged in) before they will run. And yet, Steam does incredibly well. Their community is large, developers are happy with its results, and consumers like the fact that they can get games cheaply and quickly, with the added benefits of cloud storage, game synchronization, and a nice community to boot.

It seems as though Microsoft is just awful at telling people this. A frustrated Microsoft dev anonymously commented on the console’s release, making a number of points about the its goal and purpose. His most notable point was that by restricting the ability to resell games, things like licensing fees and anticipatory price hikes can be reduced or eliminated. If the console takes off (which, if only because of its name, is more likely than not), it could conceivably create a Steam-like environment, where games are cheap, no one gets ripped off by GameStop, and people can watch live TV while playing Gears of War. Plus, how awkward would it be for a game to be $20 less for the Xbox One than on the PS4?

This, obviously, remains to be seen, but it does poke at a few important issues. Firstly, what makes Steam so successful and Microsoft so loathed, when they effectively have (or will have) the same business model? Apart from Steam’s good-guy reputation (supporting the indie game culture and being run by Gabe Newell) and Microsoft’s large, corporate bulk, there is the concept of physical media.

Physical media is, by most accounts, dying off. People buy their music online instead of getting CDs, and people rely on Netflix and the like for their movie fix. Aside from music enthusiasts and vinyl collectors, physical media is all but going extinct. The Xbox One gnaws on Blu-Ray discs to deliver content, a crutch that will ultimately hurt it. When people buy games on discs, they have a feeling of ownership. When people buy games on the iTunes AppStore, they don’t seem to typically think, “damnit, I’d love to give this game to Joe, but I just can’t.” Similarly with Steam, there doesn’t seem to be much of a demand to resell games (if you can consider such a thing possible). The Xbox needs a fail-safe way to ensure that games don’t rely on the physical media. My Steam games can’t get scratched, broken, or stolen, an advantage I happily trade for Steam’s DRM.

Again, I’m not going to lose hope in the Xbox One completely. I’m not about to buy one right away, and certainly not until the advantages (and disadvantages) of its seemingly-draconian DRM come to light, but there’s still hope yet for Microsoft’s amped-up VCR.

As featured on Medium.

If by this morning I meant some time mid-December, I’d be telling the truth. I was more or less tired of looking like a middle schooler to the internet, so much so that I stopped telling people that I had a blog. It had become something of an eyesore, full of outdated content and poorly modified php. So, I drafted a new theme from scratch, tore out some 30 unused plugins, and hid all my old posts (you can still find them if you search for them, though).

I set about coding this theme, which I now call Calcium, around the start of winter break. I was holed up in my house for about a month and, having completed finals and such, needed something to occupy my time. I had no obligations, I had no classes, and I had all the time in the world. So, naturally, I stayed inside and stared at my computer screen.

Looking at the github repo for this theme, my indecisiveness is more than apparent. I went through several design iterations, essentially starting over each time. I had a good deal of help from my less aesthetically challenged friends, which I greatly appreciate. The theme leans solidly on Skeleton, from which its name was derived, and takes visual cues from sites like Medium and Svbtle. After a few months of poking around, I ended up settling upon this.

There’s a lot to be done still (the “Contact” and “About me” pages are terrifying), but it’s at a place that I’m reasonably happy with. If you catch any obvious bugs, or have any critical feedback, please tell me. I’ll be updating the contents of this site over the course of the next few weeks, weeding out categories and pages and useless posts.

I’m going to restart this blog fresh. I’ll keep most of my old content around, since it certainly seems useful (especially to those of you trying to jailbreak things), but the site is going to be completely redesigned. I hope to be done within the next coming weeks. I want to start blogging again, but I want to do it right this time.

Cheers to all, and I hope your holidays have been well.

Salem

I'd hit that.

I recently purchased a laptop for college. It’s a Lenovo T420 and, despite looking like a 1990′s era business laptop, it’s one of the smoothest-working rigs I’ve used. I mean, the thing was built to take a beating, and sure shows it. 

At any rate, here are my specs:

• Intel i7 2620M Processor clocked at 2.7 ghz (dual core)
• 8 Gigs of DDR3 Ram
• 500 Gig Harddrive
• NVidia NVS 4200M Workstation Graphics Card with NVidia Optimus
• Fingerprint Scanner (YEAH!)
• 720p webcam
• Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN Wireless Card (I get reception in the basement now. Yeah.)
• 14″ 1600×900 HD+ Anti-Glare Widescreen
• 9 cell battery with an additional “Slice” battery (The slice battery clips onto the bottom of the laptop. Without it, I’ve gotten up to 11 hours of battery. With, 30.)

Ironbuds - Modular earphones.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve had to get rid of (or unsuccessfully try to repair) a pair of earbuds because part of them had frayed or broken. It sucks, particularly when the earphone itself still works fine. Those cables never last me. I abuse them way more than I should. At any rate, get ready for some modular earphones from Ironbuds, the first completely modular earbud: Ironbuds.

The site is still a startup and is using Kickstarter to raise some initial funds. The headphones are relatively cheap ($21-47 for some pretty good quality headphones) and seem to be made of high quality materials. The cables are even wound in a woven protective covering.

At any rate, definitely give it a look. If you donate to the startup, you can even receive a pair of earphones for yourself. I myself donated to the cause and will hopefully receive a pair soon.

Check them out on kickstarter.

At any rate, I should be back to my good ol’ blogging self. Expect some design changes as I’ve been learning a lot of web design in the past few months.

In the mean time, if you want a copy of the app, let me know. I’ll email it to you directly or something.

Edit: Here’s the app.

View this page on your android device, follow the link below, and then download/install the app.

http://www.4shared.com/file/jY6nJJFX/new_twitter_for_android.html

What is RockMelt?

It’s a new browser, built off Chromium, with tons of social networking features. It allows you to update your facebook and twitter statuses, share any page you’re on seamlessly, keep up to date with your various RSS feeds, chat with friends… there is a lot of stuff. It’s kinda cool, actually.

More importantly, beta giveaway!

I’m giving away three beta invites. Just share this page somehow and post a comment with a link to where you shared it. StumbleUpon, Twitter, Facebook… they all work just fine (if you share it on facebook, make sure you set the visibility of the post to “Everyone” so we can see it). I’m cutting off submissions on February 15th (or sooner if there isn’t a whole lot of interest (psh, like that will happen)).

So I got an LG Vortex recently.

I was super excited. It was my first smartphone, I finally had an unlimited data plan, etc. Being the nerd that I am, I figured it’d be to my benefit to root my phone. So, using the z4root (I’ll have a tutorial for that up in no time) I rooted my phone.

Things went well until today, when I was notified of an update to the Android 2.2.1 software. Without looking into it, I installed it. After the update had finished, I saw that my phone was unrooted. Apparently, the 2.2.1 update serves primarily to patch the all-in-one exploit that many people use to root their phones. As of right now, the easiest way to root a 2.2.1 phone is to downgrade it to 2.2 again and re-root it there.

I spent a while figuring it out. I followed a tutorial on BreakNeckMod.co.cc‘s website, but there were a few unclear or bumpy parts in the instructions (Then again, they DID get my phone downgraded, so here’s a huge thank-you to them). So, I figured I’d post my own tutorial here with all the steps written out.

Downgrading Tutorial!

1. You’ll need to download this file. It has everything you’ll need to downgrade your phone. Extract it to a folder on your desktop. Inside this extracted folder, you’ll see three .rar compressed files. Whenever I talk about extracting something, it’ll be one of these three .rar files in this folder.
2. Extract LGNPST.rar first. Inside, you’ll see LGNPST_General_v1.2_Lab_Version.msi. Run this and install it. It will install software to interface with the Vortex on your computer in C:\LG Electronics\LGNPST\. However, don’t try and run it. It won’t work as-is. We need to do a few more things first.
3. You’ll also see a folder called LGNPST LAB 1.2. Inside this is a file called LGNPST.exe. Move or copy this to C:\LG Electronics\LGNPST\. If you want, make a shortcut to this file on your desktop (Right click it, select “Send To” and choose “Desktop (Shortcut)”).
4. Next, you’ll want to extract LGNPST_Components_Ver_5_0_12_0 LGNPST_GenericModels_Ver_5_0_10_0.rar. This contains multiple versions of necessary .dll files, to ensure a smooth installation. If you get an error about a necessary part of the installer not being able to run, just run the installer again.
5. Go to C:/LG Electronics/LGNPST/ and create a folder called “Model”. Inside that folder, create another folder called “LGVS660″.
6. Extract LGVS660.rar. Inside this, you’ll find a VRZ folder. There are three files inside this: a .tot file, a .scr file, and a .dll file. Move these all into C:/LG Electronics/LGNPST/Model/LGVS660/ (the folder you just made.
7. If you’re on Windows XP, hit start, click on “Run”, and run this:
   regsvr32 "C:\LG Electronics\LGNPST\Model\LGVS660\VS660.dll"
   If you’re on Windows Vistas or 7, hit start, type cmd.exe, right click on cmd.exe when it comes up in the search area, and run it as an administrator. Type in the following and hit enter:
   regsvr32 "C:\LG Electronics\LGNPST\Model\LGVS660\VS660.dll"
8. Before we can connect your phone to your computer, we need to prep it. On your phone, go into settings, select “Applications,” select ‘Development,” and make sure USB Debugging is checked. I also like to have Stay Awake checked. Plug your phone into your computer (the phone charger you got with your phone also doubles as a usb cable. How nice of them). Make sure your phone is connected as a Mass Storage Device (on the pull down notification screen, select the USB connection, select the Mass Storage Device option, and select ok).
9. You’ll next want to run C:/LG Electronics/LGNPST/LGNPST.exe. If you made a shortcut earlier, you can just use that instead, of course. Your phone should be detected. If it isn’t, and you’re sure developer mode is enabled and your computer can see the phone as a drive (Check under My Computer to see if your computer sees it), select “File,” choose “Select DLL,” and choose “MS690.dll” from the list.
10. Select the phone, make sure the Provision tab is selected and that the Upgrade option is selected (on the bottom half of the screen). You’ll see BIN on the right half of this tab. Across from it is a folder icon. Click the folder icon and type in *.* where it says file name. Click “Open,” and then navigate to “C:\LG Electronics\LGNPST\Model\LGVS660\VS660ZV5_02.S5_02.P58006.tot” and select it. Click open again.
11. Below the BIN option, you should see a SCR option. Check it, click the folder, and select the “Common_UserSCR_00.scr” file you should see. Hit open.
12. Click Start. Let your phone sit there for a bit. It took me around 6 or 7 minutes for the whole thing to work out. Your phone will reboot a few times. Just leave it go. Once your computer says “Complete” and your phone has started up successfully is it ok to unplug your phone.

That’s it! It seems like a pain, but it’s not all that bad. It’s just a lot of tedious work. After you do all that, just re-root your phone as you normally would (I recommend the z4Root). I’ll be adding images and such soon. Good luck, everyone.

Look how beautiful randomly generated terrain can be.

At long last, Minecraft Beta has been announced! The program has been chugging along in alpha for so long now, everyone thought Beta would never exist.

Apparently, the game’s Beta is set to launch on the 20th of this month, just in time for the holidays! The beta promises a mod API (for all you modders out there), a narrative early on to help people get started, a late-game goal to try to work towards, among other things.

But get it now!

With the release of the beta, the price will double. Plus, if you get it after the Alpha is done, you will have to pay for future releases! According to WordOfNotch.com (The developer’s blog,) :

We will also change the license to remove the line that promises all future versions of the game for free. Please note that this change only affects people who buy the game after December 20, so if you got the game for during alpha, you will still get all future updates for free, despite this change. A promise is a promise.
Buying the game during beta will include all updates up until release, of course, and bug patches will be free.

In other words, get it now.

[WordOfNotch.com]