Posts by MarkRBowyer

Nintendo: no DVD, BD playback for Wii U

This is more about game piracy, isn't it?

If they have a proprietary BD format for games, and can alter the drive to read it, then how are pirates going to download and burn that image to blank media?

All the hacks to Wiis I'm aware of hit the DVD drive, and "fixed" it so that it couldn't tell any more what was an orginal game bough in a white box, and what was a DVD-R with a disk image burned to it. Nintendo faught it, but the firmware on the chips in these hardware hacks just got updated and the pirates were off again.

So Nintendo get to have more storage for the games - and if the graphics chips are that good, they'll need that for all the textures - which BD gives them. And they also get to screw the Pirates at the same time. Maybe they've turned round the motor, so it spins the disk the other way, or reads from the outside to the inside instead? Put the disk ID data on the outer edge, and writer software on PCs is screwed.

Your hardware then can't read any other media, but as you say, is that really a loss? Just don't sell the Wii U as a BD/DVD player. And kill piracy without some pretty major work by the pirates at the same time. HAve they said the Wii U is backwards compatible to the Wii?

Win-Win for Nintendo and the games companies?

Hackers jailbreak iOS 5 in under 24 hours

This isn't news, sorry

The Limera1n hack is at the bootrom level - Apple can't patch it without releasing new hardware. Which is why the iPad2 isn't vulnerable to it. iOS5 was always going to be vulnerable, once it was installed on older hardware - including the iPhone4.

It's also possible to swipe your way through the protections in iOS5 and run it on phones not registered for the developer programme, but they don't work as phones if you do. Wifi only.

What Apple has fixed is the vulnerability that allowed an unteathered jailbreak on 4.3.3. So right now, the only jailbreak is the teathered one you mention in the article. Waiting on *that* is the only remaining cat and mouse game.

iPhone 4 preorder system exposes private user data

Browser selection?

I couldn't get it to work in the UK at first yesterday morning - but I was using Firefox. On a hunch I tried Safari, and wasn't at all surprised to find it working a lot better. I completed my order (and then canceled the £10,000 iPhone 4 Dock) in Safari while attempts with Firefox kept giving me server error pages. Yes, I had to hit reload a few times and log in twice, but it worked. It wasn't until after they shut the store down for an hour and brought it back that Firefox got in to look at the iPhone and accessories pages.

Odd?

Ta,

Mark.

iPhone 4 no longer available to UK buyers?

It's the new iPhone 4 Dock you need to watch

I ordered it for £25, but when I went back to check, as it then said that it was going to take a month to deliver, and they'd hold my whole order until it was ready, I saw this: http://twitpic.com/1wz8ab

And that's £10,000 for a plastic dock *before* VAT. My emailed receipt also says:

Number Product Description Quantity Price

MC670ZM/A IPHONE 4 BUMPERS BLUE-ZML 1 21.28

MC596ZM/A IPHONE 4 DOCK-ZML 1 10,000.00

Total: £ 10,021.28

Shipping Cost:

VAT @17.50%: £ 1,753.72

Order Total: £ 11,775.00

... So I cancelled it, just to be sure =O}

Brit honeybees crawl through rotten winter

On the positive side...;

While I know a few beekeepers who have lost colonies over the winter, the early blossom coming late and the late blossom coming early has led to colonies growing very fast, and lots of swarms, or keepers doing fake swarms to split their colonies. Most of the keepers I know around Hampshire have nearly doubled their hives in the last 2 months, for instance.

I had my first, empty hive stored down the side of my house. A swarm came out of nowhere and settled it, which is just *so* lucky it's untrue, and saved me spending £150 with a bee farmer to stock it.

So if that's true nationwide, this winter loss has more than been made up for already.

Ta,

Mark.

Tory 'Cash Gordon' campaign suffers Web2.0rhea bum rush

Go via Google.

The only tweet I've seen about this was a link to search Google for "Google Brown" and then click on the Tory's paid-for advert to get to this site. And then close the tab. Didn't read it, just cost them some money.

Ta,

Mark