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This guy seems to really be enjoying his Samurai sword, perhaps a little too much. Don’t get me wrong – if I got my hands on something this sharp and knew how to use it, I might end the life of a few plastic bottles myself. However, something makes me think that this guy takes things a bit too seriously. The video is pretty entertaining, but it gets even better when the water bottles don’t cooperate.

[via Neatorama]

I recently had the opportunity to sit down and play a few Xbox 360 demos, including Bulletstorm, Breach, and Crysis 2. Each game is a different take on the First Person Shooter, and boy are they different!

Bulletstorm

The game’s motto is “Kill with Skill”, though I think it might be more accurately represented as, “Kill like a potty mouthed 12 year old”. Bulletstorm’s visuals were crisp and colorful, if not a bit oversaturated. I enjoyed them however, as it’s a nice change from the gritty, grey backdrops that you see in most shooters. The game’s mechanics were interesting – not a big deviation from the control schemes found in other games, aside from the use of your laser lasso (I’m not sure if it’s actually called a laser lasso, but we’ll stick with it). Grabbing enemies from across the screen and pulling them in my direction was a hoot – I loved blasting them back in the opposite direction only to grab them again and shoot them (or kick them) to their death. The use of the game’s environment in killing enemies is novel, and a nice approach, though it does rely heavily on the use of the aforementioned lasso.

What didn’t I like? Well, I felt like the game tried too hard to be gritty and sarcastic. Vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity is rarely funny, and that stands true in Bulletstorm. The character drops mild expletives left and right, and immediately after starting the game, you are lovingly referred to as “Dicktits”. Charming. You are later instructed to “guide my boot into his bean bag”.

Listen. I’m no prude. I enjoy an off color joke just as much as the next guy. However, the way that Bulletstorm crowbars the vulgarity in like a 12 year old that just learned a whole slew of new dirty words just isn’t funny. Never has been, never will be. I know it might age me, but I honestly prefer the subtle (but also toilet) humor of a game like “Conker’s Bad Fur Day” over something as blatantly crass as Bulletstorm. That’s just me.

Trite dialogue aside, the game definitely looks like one I’ll play through at least once.

Continue reading “Demo Daze – Bulletstorm, Breach, and Crysis 2” »

When installing the software for my new Logitech C910 web cam, my computer started to randomly blue screen, then reboot. During one of these blue screen dumps, I managed to see which file was faulting before the computer restarted.

For some reason, ks.sys was causing the computer to crash, and upon looking into it, I discovered that ks.sys is related to the computer’s sound card. That made sense to me, as the Logitech installer was adding its own microphone drivers to the mix. What didn’t make sense to me was the actual reason behind the blue screens of death.

Upon further investigation and poking around in the Logitech support forums, I found that my Western Digital SmartWare was the culprit. I have a WD Passport drive, which requires the SmartWare application in order to access the hardware-encrypted data on the drive. It seems that the associated services cause the ks.sys fault, for some unknown reason. The only solution that anyone has seemed to come up with is to stop the Western Digital services while the Logitech installer is running, then restart the services afterwards.

So, I did just that, and my installation went off without any more problems. If you are experiencing the same problem, stop the following services before installation, and then restart them afterwards:

WD File Management Engine
WD File Management Shadow Engine
WDDM Service

I recently installed SQL Express 2008 and ran into an annoying issue when I later tried to alter the installation.

The initial SQL install went off without a hitch, but the problems began when I tried to add my application. During the installation process, I was prompted to enable full-text indexing on my SQL server. I had no idea this was a prerequisite…shame on me for not reading the application requirements! To add insult to injury, I was not aware that version of SQL Express I was using did not come with full-text indexing as an installable option.

Back to the Internet I went, searching for a copy of SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services. A 500 MB download later, and I was well on my way to getting things running, or so I thought.

I began my SQL installation, choosing to add or change features to my existing install. Everything seemed to be pretty straightforward and painless until I tried to select which SQL installation to upgrade. Each and every time I tried to select the one and only instance on this particular server, I was greeted with the message, “The instance id is required but it is missing”.

I double-checked the installation options I had selected, I ensured that all of the proper services were up and running, plus I even rebooted the server and tried the installation again. However, no matter what I tried, I received the same error each time I attempted to select my SQL instance.

I poked around for awhile, then finally found a solution. First, I went to the Control Panel and selected the Add/Remove Programs console. There, I located the SQL express install and clicked the Change/Remove button. This brought up a slightly different version of the installer interface, from which I could choose an Add option.

Going through the paces, this installer found my existing SQL instance without any issues and I had my SQL Server, complete with full-text indexing in no time!

If you’re like me you’ve been keeping abreast of the recent developments regarding the fail0verflow team’s reverse engineering of Sony’s root signature key. This feat allows the generation of signed homebrew code which can run natively on the PS3 without the need for an existing jailbreak which bypasses the signature check. However, beyond the implications of this feat how did the fail0verflow team accomplish the impossible task of reverse engineering a private key from publicly available data? The answer lies in Sony’s botched implementation of Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA).

All code which executes on the PS3 requires a valid signature in order for the hardware to allow its execution. In the case of SELF (Signed Executable and Linkable Format) executable files Sony requires a signature within the file to be present which is an ECDSA signature of the file’s header utilizing Sony’s root signing key as one of the private variables. Sony’s crucial mistake comes in their implementation of the ECDSA algorithm which requires that all signatures be calculated with some unique random number k. Instead Sony used a fixed value for k across all of their application signatures which in turn has rendered the ECDSA algorithm effectively useless.

In the case of ECDSA when the random seed k is constant across more than one signature ECDSA hashing function can be solved for the private key d in the form d = (s*k – z) / r where s, z, and r are either publicly known values or are calculated as part of the ECDSA algorithm from publicly known values.

With the private key d now known SELFs may be generated which pass the security validation on the PS3 hardware and may run as native code without restriction. Furthermore, with this method duplicated across all levels of the PS3′s security layer less scrupulous members of the community may use the same method to trivially generate the private signing keys for game encryption, firmware validation, and even the system’s bootloader.

So with PS3 custom firmwares and native homebrew already starting to show up where does Sony go from here? Only time will tell. However, looking back you can say that you fully understand how it all began.

Now you know!


[Thanks to Armin Tamzarian]

It’s a new year and so far, Geek Republic hasn’t done a darn thing. You might be asking yourself, “What’s the deal with these guys?”

Rest assured that we are just stretching our holiday vacation as far as the limits of decency will allow, and that we will be back with more reviews, articles, and contests in the very near future.

Matt has tallied up the entries, fired up his random number generator, and selected the winners for this round of our Gaming Giveaway for the very last time.

The final four winners are:

Twitter user tlwizard who won a copy of Kameo Elements of Power for the Xbox 360.

Twitter user EarthB47 who won a Motorola X10 Headset

Twitter user cloey12 who won a copy of Sam and Max Season 1 for the Wii

Twitter user Pixiestiks who won a Nyko Charge Base 2 for the PS3

Do you want to get in on the giveaway action? Sorry, no can do. We’re done for now, but check back after the new year for new chances to win some awesome stuff!

The next time around, I promise it will be awesome stuff and not just old swag we had laying about the house!

After my awful experience with the Effervescent Cupcake Drink Tabs from ThinkGeek, I was hesitant to try the bacon-flavored tabs I also ordered. However, in the name of science, I decided to give them a shot anyway. How bad could they be?

Upon opening the tin, I was actually pleasantly surprised – I was greeted by the scent of well-smoked bacon. Thankfully, these tabs, unlike the cupcake tabs, actually smelled like the product they purported to taste like. They looked the same, and unfortunately behaved the same when submerged in water. I popped 3 tablets into my mug and watched as the Bacon Chum slowly formed.

I honestly couldn’t bring myself to drink from the scum-covered pond of bacon water that occupied my mug. Instead, I popped one of the bacon-flavored tablets into my mouth, re-enacting my cupcake tab experiment. This time around was just as awful, albeit a lot more smokey. I would liken the experience to guzzling half a bottle of Liquid Smoke. I quickly chewed the tablet to end my misery, then I sucked down a cup of coffee to rid myself of the “bacon” aftertaste.

Again, I was sorely disappointed with my flavor drink experience. If I ever dare to purchase a fun candy product from ThinkGeek, I hope to fare better than I did this time around.

I recently received a gift card to ThinkGeek and decided to pick up a few random items for review. When the package arrived, the first of the goodies I tested were the Effervescent Cupcake Drink Tabs.

When I first saw them online, I figured screw turning water to wine – you can’t get much better than making water into cupcakes, or at least somewhat cupcake-y water. The tin and its contents looked safe enough – For $3.99, you get a small tin with 15 nickel-sized cupcake tablets. I popped one into a coffee mug of water and waited for the cupcake explosion to ensue.

Then, I waited some more.

I was expecting and Alka-Seltzer-like “Plop plop fizz fizz, i’m drinking freaking cupcake water!!” Instead, after 15 minutes of swirling the tablet in the cup, I had this:

That’s not effervescence my friends, that’s what I like to call “Cupcake Chum”. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what the water now resembles. I know, however what it doesn’t resemble – a cupcake.

The water was relatively tasteless, and after about 15 minutes, I gave up. Here, you can see what was left of the tablet after all was said and done.

I figured that if the tabs didn’t work in water, they might work if I simply ate them like a breath mint. I was wrong. Dead wrong.

The tabs seemed far more effervescent while in my mouth, but the flavor certainly didn’t wow me. It was somewhat cloyingly sweet, while also salty – probably due to the tablets containing some amount of baking soda in order to provide the lackluster effervescent bubbles. The tablet didn’t really taste like cupcakes either. There was a hint of eating frosting from the can, but that sensation was fleeting at best.

I was quickly losing faith in these miracle tabs, so I shoved a few more tablets in my mouth just to see if I could concentrate some of the cupcake goodness. This time around, I decided to chew them immediately to release the cupcake beast within. All I got was a mouth full of salty Cupcake Chum, and some strange looks from the people around me, as I was now foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.

All in all, I am sorely disappointed in the cupcake tab experience. I partially blame ThinkGeek for not testing these ahead of time and discovering what a huge cupcake failure this tin contained. However, I also blame myself for having such high expectations of a $4 tin of “Cupcake Tablets”.

Next up: Effervescent Bacon Drink Tabs….I can’t wait!

So you encrypt your top secret files with RSA using extreme 4096 keys, but do you really understand the core of what makes this and other types of public key cryptography so secure? As it turns out generating prime numbers with a large key length (more than 64 bits) is computationally easy. Conversely, factoring a large number into its prime factors is computationally very difficult. This is especially hard when your chosen number only has two prime factors.

Don’t believe the facts? Take the work of mathematical geniuses who showed that the number of prime numbers between 1 and a large number n is approximately equal to n / ln(n). So, choosing a 128 bit key we end up with a number between 1 and 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (approximately 3.40282367 x 10³⁸). Therefore factoring this number into its prime factors requires testing 3.40282367 x 10³⁸ / ln(3.40282367 x 10³⁸) prime numbers which is only roughly 3.83534128 x 10³⁶ terms. Assuming you can check over one trillion factors per second you’re still looking at over 3.83534128 x 10³⁶ year’s worth of computation time: roughly 2.95026252 x 10¹⁴ times longer then the estimated age of the universe.

While the mathematical specifics of different encryption algorithms expand on this concept to create much more cryptographically secure systems this unique mathematical concept provides the strength behind public key encryption. That is, as long as P != NP…

Now you know!

[Thanks to Armin Tamzarian]