My Blog
With great technology comes great hackers (or rather, reverse-engineers. The term "hacker" is more intended for malicious intent where as people who reverse engineer software are usually in it to figure out how things work and, in the case of the iPhone, unlock various features).
Apparently the new Apple iPhone has been "unlocked" so to speak, recently. It seems that AT&T has a sort of exclusive access to use the phone for awhile before it was to be released to other carriers. A number of attempts have been made by individuals to make the phone accessible to other networks; however, most of the attempts have involved hardware changes and tampering. This of course would be fairly difficult for the average user. However a new technique has been developed that is software based and "totally painless" according to reuters.
Apple may come out with a software patch to fix the technique, but as they say: Building a better mousetrap results in creating a better mouse. I'm sure that if they fix this "hole" then the engineers will just find another method of doing the same thing. It's just a matter of time.
For the full article: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2436004320070824
I'm not sure if I have a poor sense of time or just the people over at Blizzard are putting out expansions quicker. (In my defense, or is it offense.. either way, I'm pretty sure that it's just my poor sense of timeline.)
Their current expansion is known as The Burning Crusade. This expansion (as most players of Warcraft probably already know) added two new races; one race for the horde and one race for the alliance. It also opened the Shaman class up to the alliance and the Paladin class for the horde. Previously the respective classes were exclusive to each side. It also added a new territory. The new territory added new monsters and pets as well. Furthermore, the level cap was raised from 60 up to 70. Players who have World of Warcraft but not the Burning Crusade expansion will not be able to reach 70 until they purchase it however.
With all of these things added with the current expansion, many people are wondering what will be added in the upcoming second expansion The Lich King. Some of the details of it have been released so far by Blizzard, however most people believe that there are some parts of it that Blizzard hasn't mentioned yet. After all, it would be in poor marketing to release all details of a secret before anyone has even bought it, right?
The current speculation is that there will be another new profession or two, along with another increase in the level cap. A lot of players have debated though whether they will raise it another 10 levels up to 80, or if they will only put it up an additional 5 levels up to a max of 75. The way the leveling curve is, I wouldn't be all that surprised if it was only up to 75 though. Not that the curve is terrible. I've seen much worse (for example, Ragnarok Online where you can reach 30 in a day, and only a few levels afterwards in the same time period).
All in all the more the merrier I say as far as content goes. Story is always appreciated in my opinion. A game is nothing if it's just mindless.
Also, the upcoming expansion looks similar to the one that was released before for Warcraft 3. That could be where some of the in game speculations are coming from...
Just wanted to let you all know that there are some pretty fun games over at http://www.flasharcade.com/ No I'm not working for them or anything like that :p
I'm just waiting for some downloads to finish up and wanted something to play that didn't require a lot of bandwidth to play while waiting. Some of the games over there are pretty addicting actually. There's even a game where you can play as the president and shoot up a bunch of bad guys in a city. You know, if you like shooters anyway.
They even have a game about the tv show Deal or No Deal. There's some puzzle games, arcade games, more shooters, some nice puzzle games..
All in all it's a pretty decent place for playing games quickly. Especially when you are waiting for other, bigger more important games to finish downloading.
It seems another new (and fairly cute looking from the screenshots so far) game has emerged on the internet. I saw the ad for the game when visiting Aeris and Leo over at their place on VG. (That's http://www.vgcats.com/ for those of you who don't know. Really funny comic I think, although I do wish that Pantsman would update more often.)
The site (or at least the ad) claims to have 32 different combinations of their jobs and... well... "races". Their "races" are actually a bunch of different animals. You can play as a bunny, kitty, buffalo, or even a dragon! (among other animals). They seem to have different names for the same "job" for each gender though so I'm not sure if they include that in the "32 different combinations" or not.
It seems like it should be a pretty entertaining game though from the looks of it. Also the download is only (at the time of this writing) around 400 megabytes. Oddly enough, the game installs for considerably more space than that though. I'm not complaining though. I would much rather spend time waiting for the de-compression to take place than spend hours waiting for a poorly compressed install file to download.
For those interested, the website is at: http://www.tricksteronline.com/
And if you are the type that likes to see a game before playing it, the screenshots are here as well: http://www.tricksteronline.com/Downloads/Screenshots.aspx
So, recently I was in New York City and had a chance to play the latest Mario Party for the Wii at Nintendo World. I must say, going into the game it didn't seem my different from the older game cube versions. Now, admitedly I haven't played a few of the Mario Parties before this one simply because it was always the same thing; sometimes even the same mini games or courses.
The Wii, like with all the other games it's put out, changed things up a bit. Granted, it's still the same basic idea (Roll the dice, move your character around various maps, blue squares are plus some coins, red lose some, green trigger events. Goal is to get to the star and collect the most.) The mini games however have been revamped for the Wii. Some of the games have you use the wiimote to shoot targets, or turn it sideways and use it like the old NES one for various games.
Course, any Mario Party is better with a group of friends.
