Geek news, reviews & more

Jul 30, 2009

Humor,

Microsoft,

News

Windows 7 Ultimate has been cracked. The pirate milestone, reached almost three months before Windows 7 is set to hit General Availability on October 22, 2009, was achieved via OEM instant offline activation that passes Windows Genuine Advantagevalidation and keeps the operating system permanently activated. Previous cracks weren't as solid: while they may be working now, they can easily be disabled by Microsoft. This one won't be so easy.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate can now easily be activated, according to My Digital Life. For Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Home Basic, and Windows 7 Starter, the OEM-System-Locked Preinstallation (SLP) keys haven't been leaked, so they cannot be OEM-activated yet. It won't be long before easy-to-use Windows 7 activation toolkits start appearing in the wild.

The story begins with a Windows 7 Ultimate OEM DVD ISO from Lenovo leaking to a Chinese forum. The boot.wim file was then used to retrieve the OEM-SLP product key and OEM certificate for Windows 7 Ultimate. The SLP is a procedure used by Microsoft to preactivate the Windows operating system for mass distribution by major OEMs. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 use SLP version 2.1, which is backwards-compatible with version 2.0, the version Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 use. As such, after the OEM certificate and OEM product key were extracted, it was discovered that Windows 7 uses the same digitally signed OEM certificate, which has an .xrm-ms extension, that Vista uses.

The extracted Windows 7 Ultimate OEM-SLP product key can be used to activate an installed Windows 7 Ultimate system, and since the product key appears to be a master OEM-SLP product key for Windows 7 Ultimate, it can activate Windows 7 Ultimate from any OEM. Furthermore, even if the user already has a retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate installed, it can be converted to an OEM version with two simple commands, and then activated.

This is a major breakthrough for the Windows piracy world and a huge blow to Microsoft. Even if it was imminent, the fact that it has occurred so soon means pirates will have activated copies of Windows 7 a good week before even MSDN and TechNet subscribers get their hands on the RTM build on August 6, not to mention all the other groupsMicrosoft plans to give the build to. The Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 RTM build was compiled on July 13, 2009 and the official announcement was made on July 22, 2009.

Jul 30, 2009

Humor,

Microsoft,

News

Thursday

Jul302009

Rock Band: Beatles | E3 2009 Trailer | What do you think?

Jul 30, 2009

Gaming,

News

Although there is no need for me to go in depth about who the beatles are and the fact that they frikin rocked the world from the 60's and beyond! I have no doubt, in every world-wide house hold, somebody (if not the whole family) knows who the beatles are and how much they have changed the face of music forever.

The point is that almost 50 years later they have one of the most succesfull game chains wanting to make a game about them. 50 YEARS! So that means that we have to do some simple math:

As of July 30th 2009, this trailer has recieved 600,000 video views on youtube. Now, who is watching videogame trailers on youtube... 15 year old kids thats who!

Now alot of you are thinking "well that doesent mean 60% of the views are from kids". Well think about it. Most people who are old enough to remember the Beatles are not very interested in spending $300 on a gaming system, then another $200 on Rockband, then, wait for this game to come out. The majority of people that are going to get this game is 10 - 25 Year-olds.

Judging by the fact that this trailer is mostly game footage, there is no more left to say then you must buy this game when it comes out.

now..

Leave your opinion in the comments and maybe give us some more insight.

Jul 30, 2009

Gaming,

News

Wednesday

Jul292009

iPhone Worldwide SMS Hack Coming Thursday | 30th Jul 09

Jul 29, 2009

World,

iPhone

Two researchers have found an iPhone bug that could infect phones virally via SMS.They plan to reveal the still unpatched iPhone bug at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on Thursday. If you receive a text message with a single square character, you are advised to immediately turn off your iPhone, as they warn it means that someone has utilized the bug to take over your iPhone.

This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone,” said cybersecurity researcher Charles Miller. “Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.

The two found the bug in how the iPhone handles text messages.Once in control, the hacker has complete control over your iPhone, allowing them to make calls, visit websites, turn on the camera and more importantly they can send the bug via SMS.
Well over a month ago, they have reached out to Apple, but have not heard back.

Charles Miller isn’t new at finding security flaws in the iPhone. Back in 2007, Miller found a bug that allowed someone to remotely hijack the iPhone via the browser.

It’s not clear if Apple has included a fix in iPhone OS 3.1, which recently entered beta 3 stage, so will not be ready by Thursday. Be careful out there and perhaps we’ll have more information come Thursday on a possible fix from Apple.

Jul 29, 2009

World,

iPhone

Wednesday

Jul292009

Apple Tablet will be coming sometime in September 2009

Jul 29, 2009

Gadgets,

News

According to this Gizmodo article, the new Apple Tablet will be coming sometime in September this year. They have obtained their info from the Financial Times who have labelled the news as ‘confirmed’. As well as the tablet device, Apple are also expected to release new iPodsin time for the Christmas holidays.

The Financial Times' sources point out that the device will have a 10-inch touchscreen and runiPhone OS. The tablet will be able to connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi like the iPod touch, and—according to publishers—it will also have a book marketplace.

Gizmodo

Jul 29, 2009

Gadgets,

News

Tuesday

Jul282009

the Squarespace iPhone / iPod touch app | What to expect

Jul 28, 2009

Websites

We all know you love squarespace, and so do the rest of us. It blows the doors off Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress by making blogging, human friendly. Squarespace is truley a premium blogging platform for people looking for their voice on the internet. Using Squarespace and making posts and changing templates and reaching out to a bigger audience is a truley rewarding experience.

What if

you could do all of these things on the bus, riding down 25th street on your way to work with Squarespace in your hand and a hot coffee in the other.

Being an employee of Squarespace has it’s perks and I’ve had the pleasure of using a beta version of the Squarespace iPhone app. All I can say is that it blows the livingbageezusout of any other blogging client available for the iPhone. Seriously. It’s like having Squarespace in your pocket. Makes me feel all warm and squishy inside just thinking about it.

If you want to do a little mobile blogging (known as moblogging to geeks) from your iPhone then you are going to want to get this app. If you are not one of the lucky 30 people to win an iPhone then do yourself a favor and go buy one! The Squarespace iPhone App makes the cost of the iPhone totally worth the money.

Kris Black...Squarespace Superhero

Jul 28, 2009

Websites