Category Archives: News

[PS3] PS Jailbreak and Clones To Be Released

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Media have widely reported about the latest steps in hacking the Playstation 3 console. Obviously that tiny PS Jailbreak USB Dongle turns a consumer PS3 into a debug PS3, thus allowing to run games from the internal or from an attached USB harddrive. The price is said to be around 160US$. For legal reasons here in Germany we can’t like to PS Jailbreak supplyers.

Now PS3Hax.net reports that using PS Jailbreak on Sony’s Playstation Network is very likely to result in being banned:

According to SKFUand RichDevX, the Backup manager game ID (LAUN-12345) could be logged/recorded by Sony when logged into PSN (when online). This would obviously allow Sony to see who would be using the illegal PSjb/clone and we could very well see ban waves similar to the Xbox 360. Sony does currently ban PSN/consoles that results in the 8002A227 error code.

Redmondpie.com reports that latest rumors indicate that there are also chinese clones of the PS3 Jailbreak called X3Jailbreak on their way, priced at 40$.

It seems like the PS3 hacking as a business model is out of date even before it started. We suspect it it won’t take long until a free open source solution will be available on the net aswell…

[Pre] Palm Testing Final Version Of Adobe Flash 10.1

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Adobe.com today announced, that Adobe Flash 10.1 for mobile devices has been released to mobile platform partners:

Flash Player 10.1 was also released to mobile platform partners to be supported on devices based on Android, BlackBerry, webOS, future versions of Windows® Phone, LiMo, MeeGo and Symbian OS, and is expected to be made available via over-the-air downloads and to be pre-installed on smart phones, tablets and other devices in the coming months.

Palm/HP: keep testing Flash, your userbase is keen on finding Flash on the App Catalog soon.

[Muzaq] In Memoriam Alberto Adriano

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Ten years ago, on June 14th, 2000 Alberto Adriano died from an attack of rightist extremists in the german city Dessau. Adriano was originally a contract worker from Mozambique who came to the German Democratic Republic in 1980. At the time of his death he had three children in the age between 5 months and 8 years.

The three rightist extremists told the police they did it because they hated foreigners. According to a BBC article Adriano’s wife said “They stamped on his head so hard they knocked out an eye.”

For the first time in german history a Chancellor chose to pay his respects immediately. Mr Schröder went to the simple shrine which then marked the murder scene. He approached slowly and sober, before placing the wreath.

The three rightist extremists were convicted of beating Adriano to death and were handed down tough prison sentences. The oldest man at that time was 24. He was sentenced to the maximum of life in prison. The two 16 year olds were given 9 years each, so they would have been released at latest in 2009.

The afro-german music combo Brothers Keepers recorded a title called “Adriano” afterwards.

» Wikipedia.de: Alberto Adriano (Google translated)…
» BBC News: Race hate in Germany…
» Encyclopedia.com: Three Neo-Nazis Convicted In Brutal Killing Of African Immigrant …
» Wikipedia.org: Brothers Keepers…

[MacOS] Paragon Updates NTFS Driver for Mac OS

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The german Paragon Software Group has just released their Windows NT file system driver “NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0”. According to Paragon this driver is the only driver on the market that allows to read and write to NTFS drives with the same speed as native HFS+ drives.

In contrast to Tuxera’s “NTFS for Mac” solution Paragon’s “NTFS for Mac OS X 8.0” also supports 64bit kernel installations of Snow Leopard.

A free 10 days trial version is available thru their website. The full retail version costs about US$ 39.95 or €29.95.

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[MacOS] Valve’s Steam Platform Barely Playable on Macs

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Tom’s Hardware tested Steam for the Mac intensively. Their first impressions are disappointing for Apple fans: the Windows version of Steam is a lot faster.

As their benchmark test they used the Valve’s game “Portal” and took benchmarks from two computers:

1. A mid 2009 Mac Book Pro

2. A custom built Hackintosh

Right, they’ve set up a hackintosh with all its ingrediences. Check their tables: you can clearly see the framerates are a lot higher on a Windows installation, but on a Hackintosh system the Mac OS version of Portal becomes playable after all.

tomshardware

So what do we learn?

First: Valve’s step to get on to the Mac OS platform is a good one. But they still have lots of work to do. Second: playing on Windows means more fluent gaming as the framerates are a lot higher (around factor 2). Third: if you’re willing to play on Mac OS you may consider setting up a hackintosh. A hackintosh with the config above easily outpaces at a normal Mac Book and it costs only about half the money.

Via Tom’s Hardware…

[iPad] Fuel.TV Replacing Skateboard With iPad

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Soon after they bought the iPad they found out it hasn’t got any usable interfaces, so it seems unusable as a notebook replacement, but it makes up as a skateboard replacement pretty well.

See for yourself: Fuel.TV’s latest episode of Built To Shred. And hey: please don’t do that at home, this might void your warranty ;-)

New iPad Test – Will It Shred? from FUEL TV on Vimeo.

[WebOS] Palm/HP Slate Code Name Hurrican To Come in Q3/2010?

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The Examiner.com reports that they got information from HP insiders. Under code name “Hurricane” it is rumored that HP and Palm are prepping a slate tablet running Palm’s latest operating system WebOS. Their timeline says Q3/2010. Read more on Examiner.com. With HP in the back that slate could become a real competitor to the iPad. We are very curious about it…

[MacOS] VirtualBox 3.2 To Support Mac OS Guest on Windows Host [Update]

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We suppose Apple will not like that, but Oracle’s latest version of VirtualBox 3.2 Beta 1 now supports virtualization of Apple’s Mac OS X.

Legal View

Although Apple’s license agreement clearly prohibits installing Mac OS X on other hardware than Apple’s, the screenshot shows that even the Windows version of Mac OS X is prepped to run Mac OS X as guest operating system.

On the other hand Apple’s license agreement is not valid in all countries. It cannot be applied in Germany and some other countries for example.

Technical View

To satisfy Apple’s Aqua binary encryption it is required to supply two operating system decryption keys (OSK0 and OSK1) to the kernel extension “Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext”. Although it is no secret that Mac OS can be run on PC hardware using decryption emulators like netkas’ fakesmc.kext, anyhow at the moment it is unclear if Oracle integrated those operating system decryption keys into VirtualBox.

[Update]

VirtualBox does not circumvent Apple’s binary protection. A VirtualBox developer confirmed, that Apple hardware is required in order to run Mac OS as guest in VirtualBox. So without tempering either with VirtualBox’ EFI or with Mac OS X it is not possible to run OS X in VirtualBox on a PC.

On the other hand a closer look at the EFI booter integrated in VirtualBox could reveal either how to modify PC Bios‘ to boot Mac OS X DVDs natively or how to expand our beloved Chameleon.

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