A hacker from New Jersey has unlocked the iPhone, enabling the device made by Apple to be used by any carrier.

George Hotz unlocked the iPhone, and has connected it to the T-Mobile Network. T-Mobile is a major competitor of AT&T, who is the sole operator for iPhone.
Hota says to do the hack takes 2 hours, some knowledge of software and soldering. No word yet from either Apple or AT&T.

The hacker hopes that people will unlock their own phones  on their own, he doesnt want his discovery to be used to gain profit. His next project will be to unlock the phone without any soldering.

Hotz says it took 500 hours of work to discover this.

DARPA has made driods that can pilot a plane during air to air refueling. This occurs when the fuel planes refuels an airborne jet, in flight. Its a technique  thats difficult at best.
Theoretically, an unmanned craft with the ability to air to air refuel would only need to land for occassional craft maintenance

In the past 12 months the droid pilots have successfully done an air to air refueling 11 times without any human input. The jet used in testing was an F18. The android was able to connect to the refueling jet in the toughest of conditions.

Not aonly could the robot pilot connect and take fuel in turbulence but even did so as the tanker was in a turn.
Human pilots have followed tankers through turns, but never connected during one.

The game “arm spirit” had to be removed from Japanese game rooms this past week after displaying inhuman strength, breaking the arms of 3 players.

The game is a version of arm wrestling, but your opponent is just an arm, connected to a box that beeps while snapping limbs on human players .

Atlus game distributor said their recall was just a precaution, implying that the Japanese should buck up and get tough!

An Atlus spokesperson says that their machine is only as strong as a muscular man, and that properly trained a woman can beat it.

I wonder how the spokesperson would do against the machine?

Your younger daughter a bit bored? Does she need a fun healthy activity that she care share with friends? I have the answer!

Cartoon Doll Emporium.

Its curiously addictive. Cartoon Doll Emporium is one of the fastest growing online communities for “tween” girls. They have fun online activities, like dressing some of their favorite stars in fashions they choose, and often times they can choose to change the colors of clothes, hairs, etc. Its YOUR style after all!

Cartoon Doll Emporium also has “webkinz”. These are hand drawn dolls that you take care of online, dress up and play with. Theres even tools that allow you to send the dolls and webkinz to your MySpace.

Another big thing alot of tweens enjoy is dressing up the Hannah Montana superdoll at Cartoon Doll Emporium. Yeah I tried it, its interesting because there was so many different combinations of clothes and accessories, plus I even got to pick my own pet.

I recently came across one of the cooler products I will likely ever see in my generation. Digital picture frames!

Its really superb. You take your photos on a digital camera, so why not display them in a digital photo frame? The picture quality is second to none. Theres a setting for which photo to display to display in your digital picture frame.

Also interesting is the frames capabilty, these devices can play movies, mp3’s, display photos. So your digital picture frame can play your wedding song, while displaying a slideshow of the event!!

I cant think of a better gift than one of these wonderful digital photo frames.

Theres something of a variance with his device just as there is in any item, some cars are just 2 seaters while minivans are  larger, both are automobiles and yet they have much different features, digital photo frames are no different.

Some digital photo frames  can only display JPEG pictures. Orthers support a greater variance in media. Some  can also play movies recorded in the digital camera, MPEG & MP3’s. Some frames can even load pictures over the Internet from RSS feeds,  Flickr and Picasa and even from your e-mail. Networked models usually support wireless. Many  frames display the pictures as a slideshow  with an adjustable time interval.

Most digital photo frames often display the photos directly from a camera’s memory card.

 Skype is blaming last week’s two-day nonservice on “massive restart” of user computers worldwide.

Skype says that in a very short period of time users worldwide rebooted their PC’s because of the Microsoft Windows Update.

The Skype system crashed after a flood of request from users requesting authentication to the skype servers, this appears to be a large flaw in Skypes network resource allocation.

Skype claims it cannot confirm  there was no activity that might be called malicious.

How does this look for skype? Not well. Of course Skype is Ebay’s black sheep. Ebay bought skype in 2005 for almost 3 billion. People have always wondered why.

This outage will only serve to make people very leary of Skypes ability to deliver the service.

  Microsoft announced officially that they will be dropping their price on the Xbox 360 gaming console.  In fact, all three versions will recieve a price cut. The elite will be 449, the 360 will be 349, and the 360 Core will be 279.

Microsoft feels that leading the console market in sales while maintaining their initial price says alot about their product. They also feel that with the Launch of the latest Madden game their numbers will hit record peaks.

Video game creation is difficult. Developers must make a quality, function product, it has to be enjoyable to play, they must dance around the ESRB so they can reach their target market, then the publishers have to liek the game as well. And hopefully the creators will still be proud of it when this is all said and done.

The creation of games is chaotic, you throw things about, shift it in and out, like pieces of a puzzle, finding things that fit and things that do not, what works and what wont. After a few weeks of that, the process really begins.

Often things areleft out of the game, but the code remains intact and within that game. Thats odd you think. But if ti were removed then it may create other bugs in the code.

Example: A dev creates a jumprope minigame and he decides it should be a rhythm type excercise, he goes on to develop the system for the rhythm(algorhtyhms and such), he adds some things like related graphics, and gets it approved and ready to go

Now,the other developers will review this work and see what of it they can build upon, the graphics people will add good graphics to the original devs stuff. These graphics might be exclusive to the jump rope sequence, and they may also be found elsewhere in the game.

In a few months time, the original coders work is used by several other devs in their code, and the art is spread around as well. Then suddenly some higher up cuts the jump rope sequence.

How can you remove such an embedded portion of development? It is present, and functional. Other portions of the development are built upon it, dependant even, the praphics are there as well. What now? Simple, you simply never have the jump rope sequence called by the game, essentially the main program never calls for that function. It doesnt alter any of the code, the sequence is just never seen by consumers.

Most games have “easter eggs”. We see this all the time, and the example above is likely what happened in GTA:SA. Most hidden code is not sexual, but then again GTA:SA is a “mature” rating.

Do we blame the ESRB? Of course not! The hot coffee minigame is only there if you hack it. Sure, its just a single bit, but its a modification to the game files, to play the game in a manner not intended by the publisher/developer.

1. Video games lead to violence in youth.

Citing national crime statistics, youth violent crime hasnt been lower in 30 years. 99% of gamers dont commit antisocial acts. In fact, studies have shown that mental stability and home life are the contributors to violence and not games. How can the guy at home pwning his friends be out and commiting crimes?

2. Video games are marketed at children.

While most kids do play video games, the market is shifting to adults. In fact, 62% of platforms, and 66% of pc gamers is over 18. The original gamers have hit adulthood and are now the focus of developers.

3. Girls arent gamers.

Once that was an accurate statement. The female population of gamers has increased steadily for years. Females out number males on web based games. World of Warcraft is also played heavily by the female market.
4. Video game play is isolating.

On the contrary, much video game play is social. 60 percent of gamers play with their friends. 33% percent play with their brothers and sisters.
5. Video game play will desensitize the masses.

Animal studies show that primates differentiate between play fighting, and that of true violence. Sometimes they seem to be quite amused wrestling each other. Other events see them ripping each other to shreds. Are we not smarter than the apes?