Stuff that fries your potatoes with olive oil of HAPPY.

[Spectere]

Soo...34.53 megapixels on a cellphone camera...Ridic or redonk?

Not enough, I'd say.

I'd go for at least a couple of gigapixels.  No sense selling yourself short, after all!

[Jupi]

Shit, by that time I'll REALLY be able to steal someone's soul with my camera! 

[annon]

I didn't know that Audiosurf came with the entire Orange Box soundtrack in unprotected mp3s until just now. Now I can put awesome background music on my PSP.

[Sneaky]

My package came, and now I have beatmania IIDX styles 3rd-10th /yiff

[Jupi]

I got my clarinet fixed.  <3  Happeh.

[Leorina]

I'm going to an Expo in Philly on Sunday.

So most likely I'll start a thread about what I saw there.

^_^^_^^_^^_^^_^^_^^_^^_^^_^

[Spectere]

I love how the Wii has been hacked to hell and back.  I mean, it can now be downgraded, custom IOS modules have been written to enable all kinda of fancy new features.  Dang.  It's like a console version of the PSP now.

I'm glad I Twilight Hack'd mine before Nintendo stopped that lovely little exploit.

[Bobbias]

Lol, so, what are the highlights of the cool things that people have done with the Wii?

(Also, am I the only one who still hates that name?)

[Spectere]

I...just stated the highlights. :/  I suppose you could add that it can now play PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE backups of games without a modchip, but that's more of an extension of what can currently be done than anything else.  The entire system has basically been owned at this point.

The ability to downgrade firmware means that no matter what Nintendo does they're not even going to be able to stop people without modchips.  Of course, you can't exactly rely on being able to prepare a special battery to put the system into service mode, but there's always going to be backdoors, especially when it comes to loading saved games and such.  Nintendo, like Sony with the PSP, isn't going to be able to keep the system locked down forever.  What's worse is that Nintendo seems to be a lot slower at patching holes like that than Sony is.  Sony is known to quickly patch their firmware whenever a save game exploit comes out.  The Twilight Hack was open for quite some time before Nintendo finally closed it in an effective way and, apparently, homebrewers have already found numerous other holes in other games.

I'm not too worried, really.  Nintendo's idea of patching security holes is just plain laughable.  When Sony stops a saved game exploit, they stop it.  Nintendo's idea of stopping the Twilight Hack in the v3.3 update was to create such a specific "fix" that it took no time at all for people to find a way around it and rework the exact same exploit.  Their idea of stopping the Custom IOS was to create their own IOS254 (the tag that cIOS installs itself under).  What's to stop the homebrew community from using the IOS253 tag (or something similar) instead?  Nintendo's solutions are completely ineffective.  They're better off not bothering.  After all, Sony's doing a much better job at patching their system and they can't keep people out.

[Leorina]

So pretty much you're saying it's back to the Nintendo where they don't have that special chip that you NEED in order to play the game.  Ya know...that seal of nintendo quality that has been out since SNES.

and yes, I don't really care for the name but at least its better than what they were going to name it...Nintendo Revolution...and before they changed the shape into the current one...Gamecube Revolution.

[Bobbias]

I...just stated the highlights. :/

I was referring to specific hardware mods and such. things that happened because of Nintendo's slow-ass and ineffective attempts to stop people from abusing the Wii.

[Spectere]

I was referring to specific hardware mods and such.

The point is that they aren't needed at all.  My Wii is completely softmodded and can play PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE games (though I don't believe it supports dual layer games) if I felt so inclined.  Like I said, it's like a console version of the PSP at this point.

Even the PlayStation 2's weak protection isn't this bad; you still need a boot disc to play burned games or imports on that system.

So pretty much you're saying it's back to the Nintendo where they don't have that special chip that you NEED in order to play the game.

Almost.

The Wii is still several steps ahead of the old 10NES lockout chip (which can be easily knocked out using a voltage spike or by soldering a programmable EEPROM onto a legit cartridge in place of the ROM).  The Wii uses encryption and all of that jazz.  There are two major problems with the Wii's security:

1) It's possible to fakesign applications so that the system will run it.  This allows you to install third-party channels and such in the system.
2) The system has already been exploited via software.  Nobody with half of a braincell will install an official update after doing this.  Nintendo has lost control of every single console that is softmodded (basically, all systems that have the homebrew channel installed).

As a result of number two and the Wii's somewhat insecure architecture, the safeguards that keep the system from reading DVD-Rs can be bypassed.  The Wii's operating system -- the IOS -- runs on an ARM9 core inside of the main PowerPC processor.  If you write a module for the OS, you essentially have privileged access to the system.  If you use a custom IOS and a piece of software to load data, you can run burned DVDs on unmodified hardware.  My guess is that it fools the system into decrypting the disc despite the DVD being burned.

[Bobbias]

And, since it is possible to run gamecube code on a Wii, modders who've been working on GC hacks/homebrew are already familiar enough with programming for that sort of environment, making it easier for them to move over to the Wii.

[Spectere]

They're not that much alike, really.  The hardware is very similar but the security system, system software, and services provided by the kernel and OS are radically different.  That would be like a dedicated Windows developer working on a Linux application.

[Blue0ctane]

If you ever get minor surgery, ask for a shot of Versed. You don't even feel the shot, and then you become all loopy. It's awesome! I remember I saw the ceiling tiles moving. And then during the surgery, I didn't feel a single thing. I kept asking random questions, like if my surgeon remembered anything from high school biology. The nurse said she'd never seen me this talkative. I thought that the surgeon was cutting through a piece of cardboard when he was actually putting stitches in.