MI-80

 

H.A.W.X. LogoMany people are asking about the HAWX pre-order codes to unlock the three planes exclusive to different retailers. I got mine from GameStop today and was surprised it is not the traditional Xbox style unique key, but rather a plain old button combination. So, with that in mind, here are all three unlock codes for all three systems!

 

GameStop FB-22 Strike Raptor:

360: (HOLD LT) RB, X, RB, X, RB, Y

PS3: (HOLD L2) R1, square, R1, square, R1, triangle

PC: (HOLD SHIFT) D, X, D, X, D, Q

I am a nerd, and have generally become accustomed to the obscure practices unique to the IT field, such as clicking Start for the longest time in Windows to turn my computer off. It does not make sense when I first look at it, but it is the way it is, so I learn and live with it. However, after recently upgrading to Outlook 2007 and attempting to use it daily, I must say it is absurd how it handles some things. My first major hurdle was that I had a folder previously entitled RSS Feeds, so when I installed Outlook 2007 it made a default folder named RSS Feeds1. This was minor, but I was determined to fix it since it could not be that hard to fix...right? Sadly, you cannot simply rename default folders, so I spent some loving time with Google before finally discovering you can start Outlook with the /resetfoldernames flag after deleting the RSS Feeds folder I had created, causing the default folder will revert to its proper name and drop the extra 1. Why in the world does that have to be so difficult? Live and learn though; delete folders that may conflict with Outlook created folders prior to installing!

I've been playing The Darkness for the PS3. I was actually planning to review it as I got it off a trusted recommendation from a local GameStop employee and basically fell in love. I almost never finish games, but I was able to blow about 80-90% of the way through The Darkness in two sittings. And then I hit a bug that won't let me finish the game.

What's so important about that 128bit hex string? Well that just happens to be the processing key which unlocks all current high-definition movies, both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Hackers of the Doom9 forum [1] have been making plenty of news lately. Through the last few months they've made several breaks in the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) [10], the security mechanism aimed to keep high-definition movies locked up. Unfortunately for the movie industry it's proved only slightly more deterring than the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to encrypt original DVDs, which was broken by a lone teenager in his spare time to enable his movie watching under Linux [2].

“Covering your ass”: we've all done it. Unfortunately while most learn to eventually take responsibility for their actions the IT industry, and especially the security industry, still believe firmly in just that – solutions which don't enhance security, but limit liability.

To start off: let's define cron. Cron is a daemon in UNIX like operating systems, including Linux, that lets you schedule tasks. It's what lets you do things like run a virus scan every Sunday morning, or run that fun custom backup script you wrote every night after you've hit the sack. So Drupal is controlled via a script, site/cron.php. Hitting that script causes Drupal to run its cron jobs which are defined throughout the CMS' configuration. In short: this is how things get done. Drupal's cron jobs send out emails, run submitted content through spam filters, update RSS feeds, and many other activities you expect from a dynamic site. When I moved MI-80 to the new server I ran into a small issue. On my old host I relied on the crutch of cPanel, and when SUSE lacked a GUI cron tool I had to brush off my rusty cron skills. Cron is hardly difficult, but if you barely use it it's easy to forget the syntax, so I had to re-learn it basically. Any who so I had a simple goal: get cron running so Drupal would run its scheduled tasks once an hour.

I'm not sure how many of you are gamers, or how many own a XBOX 360, but if you do have you noticed how terrible the backwards compatibility is? Sony and Nintendo with their next generation offerings have given amazing backwards compatibility. The Nintendo Wii will work with Gamecube games, controllers, and memory cards. The Playstation 3 will play both PS1 and PS2 games. Both systems will feature downloadable games from older systems. I love this all. Why did Microsoft implement such shitty software support? Where as Sony and Nintendo will surely find and document a few games that don't work, Microsoft has taken the opposite approach. They have a very, very short list of original XBOX games which they've written software backwards compatibility support for. The result is that each game requires about a 10MB patch (the 360's hard drive has 12-14GB available upon opening), and you've got to have Live to get it. It also ensures that some games that are supported aren't perfect. Jade Empire has some missing textures that greatly detract from the gameplay for example.

Let's face it, every now and then us Gentoo users break our systems. If we wanted a stable system we wouldn't have gotten Gentoo to begin with. That's not to imply that Gentoo isn't stable, it is. However it's a bleeding-edge distribution that just begs to be modified and tweaked, and tweak we shall. Unfortunately tweaking does sometimes break things, especially during installation. Every now and then you'll need to boot off of the Gentoo LiveCD, mount your installation, and fix something. I did this about an hour ago. It's probably the 50th time I've had to do this, and each time I had to load gentoo.org, access the install guide, and skim through the commands picking out what I needed. Certainly someone with a better memory could just remember them, but if I had a good memory I wouldn't be sitting here writing myself a cheat sheet. Anyways here's the quick and dirty list of what it takes to chroot into your Gentoo installation to repair something from the LiveCD: