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Old Dog, New Tricks | User Error 39

chris — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 00:01:23 +0000

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On the Bandwidth Wagon | TTT 212

chris — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 10:16:13 +0000

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New charging technology should fill your phone’s battery up 30% faster, Flickr wants you to explore photos with VR, Microsoft auto-downloads Windows 10 and we’re a bit outraged & why we think John McAfee is running for president.

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The post On the Bandwidth Wagon | TTT 212 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Chromium Bugging Bug | Tech Talk Today 187

chris — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:14:24 +0000

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Google wants to improve your search experience for you automatically, with your microphone. We debate if this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back or just a nice feature.

Plus the Core Infrastructure initiative throws a little money around, the US Navy is sticking with XP & more!

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— Episode Links —

KICKSTARTER OF THE WEEK: Phree – Make the world your paper by OTM Technologies Ltd

The post Chromium Bugging Bug | Tech Talk Today 187 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Firefox gets Unplugged | LINUX Unplugged 66

chris — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:57:08 +0000

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The crew took the Firefox challenge & we follow up, we reflect on 10 years of Firefox, their early Linux support & the growing competition from Webkit.

Gnome raised money to defend it’s Trademark from Groupon, which has quickly raised the white flag. Is this instant groundswell of support the dawn of a new community attitude towards Gnome?

Plus an exciting first live on the show, tons of great feedback & more!

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Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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Pre-Show:

Amazon Echo Parody – YouTube

FU:

Firefox Challange Follow Up

I’m taking the Firefox Challenge, and I crash too

Celebrating 10 Years of Firefox | The Mozilla Blog

10 years ago we built Firefox to give you a choice. The Web was a monoculture and the only way in was through the company that controlled your operating system. We believed then, and so did many of you, that the Web deserved an independent alternative. Today hundreds of millions of people trust Firefox because they understand that we’re different; that our independence lets us put you first.

Mozilla Introduces ‘Forget Button’ for Firefox and Dev Edition Browser

With a huge developer user base, Mozilla’s new Firefox Developer Edition browser looks to provide an all-in-one debugging toolset for professi

While it’s loosely based around the previous Firefox Aurora builds, it’s not a straight-forward rebrand — it’s closer to the nightly builds, but built for a developer user base with different needs. It also removes a lot of the safeguards that are vital in the consumer browser but that can frustrate developers.

Chromium:

The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the BSD license,[18] with other parts being subject to a variety of different open-source licenses, including the MIT License, the LGPL, the Ms-PL and an MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license
Chromium (web browser) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Differences from Google Chrome

Chromium is the name given to the open-source project and the browser source code released and maintained by the Chromium Project.[7] It is possible to download the source code and build it manually on many platforms. To create Chrome from Chromium, Google takes this source code and adds:[8]

A restriction blocking the installation of extensions from anywhere other than the Chrome Web Store [9]
Integrated Flash Player [10] (proprietary license and code)
Built-in print preview and print system
The Google and Google Chrome names (both trademarked)[11][12][13]
An auto-update system called GoogleUpdate (some, such as the Debian or Ubuntu community builds of chromium, rely on the package management system of the OS as an alternative)
An opt-in option for users to send Google their usage statistics and crash reports
RLZ tracking when Chrome is downloaded as part of marketing promotions and distribution partnerships. This transmits information in encoded form to Google, including both when—and from where—Chrome was downloaded. In June 2010, Google confirmed that the RLZ tracking token is not present in versions of Chrome downloaded from the Google website directly, nor in any version of Chromium. The RLZ source code was also made open source at the same time (previously it was proprietary—and although the source is now open the feature was not migrated to Chromium) so that developers can confirm what it is and how it works.[14]

By default, Chromium only supports Vorbis, Theora and WebM codecs for the HTML5 audio and video tags. Google Chrome supports these as well as the patent-encumbered AAC and MP3 codecs. On 11 January 2011, the Chrome Product manager, Mike Jazayeri, announced that Chrome would no longer support the H.264 video format for its HTML5 player.[15] In October 2013 Cisco announced that it was open-sourcing its H.264 codecs and will cover all fees required.[16] As of December 2013, Chrome still supports H.264. Linux distributions that distribute Chromium may add support for other codecs to their customized versions of Chromium.

Gnome Vs Groupon

Help the GNOME Foundation defend the GNOME trademark

Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation.” The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here). To use the GNOME name for a proprietary software product that is antithetical to the fundamental ideas of the GNOME community, the free software community and the GNU project is outrageous. Please help us fight this huge company as they try to trade on our goodwill and hard earned reputation.

MATE 14.04 is OUT!

Ubuntu MATE | Ubuntu MATE
More Ubuntu MATE coverage for our German members.
Ubuntu MATE 14.04 Live Release at 1:01:15.

Runs Linux from the people:

Send in a pic/video of your runs Linux.
Please upload videos to YouTube and submit a link via email or the subreddit.

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Ubuntu Online Summit Starts in Just Two Days

The post Firefox gets Unplugged | LINUX Unplugged 66 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Tendresse for Ten | BSD Now 21

chris — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:58:45 +0000

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We\’ve got some great news for OpenBSD, as well as the scoop on FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE – yes it\’s finally here! We\’re gonna talk to Colin Percival about running FreeBSD 10 on EC2 and lots of other interesting stuff. After that, we\’ll be showing you how to do some bandwidth monitoring and network performance testing in a combo tutorial. We\’ve got a round of your questions and the latest news, on BSD Now – the place to B.. SD.

Thanks to:

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– Show Notes: –

Headlines

FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE is out

The long awaited, giant release of FreeBSD is now official and ready to be downloaded
One of the biggest releases in FreeBSD history, with tons of new updates
Some features include: LDNS/Unbound replacing BIND, Clang by default (no GCC anymore), native Raspberry Pi support and other ARM improvements, bhyve, hyper-v support, AMD KMS, VirtIO, Xen PVHVM in GENERIC, lots of driver updates, ZFS on root in the installer, SMP patches to pf that drastically improve performance, Netmap support, pkgng by default, wireless stack improvements, a new iSCSI stack, FUSE in the base system… the list goes on and on
Start up your freebsd-update or do a source-based upgrade right now!

OpenSSH 6.5 CFT

Our buddy Damien Miller announced a Call For Testing for OpenSSH 6.5
Huge, huge release, focused on new features rather than bugfixes (but it includes those too)
New ciphers, new key formats, new config options, see the mailing list for all the details
Should be in OpenBSD 5.5 in May, look forward to it – but also help test on other platforms!
We\’ll talk about it more when it\’s released

DIY NAS story, FreeNAS 9.2.1-BETA

Another new blog post about FreeNAS!
\”I did briefly consider suggesting nas4free for the EconoNAS blog, since it’s essentially a fork off the FreeNAS tree but may run better on slower hardware, but ultimately I couldn’t recommend anything other than FreeNAS\”
Really long article with lots of nice details about his setup, why you might want a NAS, etc.
Speaking of FreeNAS, they released 9.2.1-BETA with lots of bugfixes

OpenBSD needed funding for electricity.. and they got it

Briefly mentioned at the end of last week\’s show, but has blown up over the internet since
OpenBSD in the headlines of major tech news sites: slashdot, zdnet, the register, hacker news, reddit, twitter.. thousands of comments
They needed about $20,000 to cover electric costs for the server rack in Theo\’s basement
Lots of positive reaction from the community helping out so far, and it appears they have reached their goal and got $100,000 in donations
From Bob Beck, \”we have in one week gone from being in a dire situation to having a commitment of approximately $100,000 in donations to the foundation\”
This is a shining example of the BSD community coming together, and even the Linux people realizing how critical BSD is to the world at large

This episode was brought to you by

Interview – Colin Percival – cperciva@freebsd.org / @twitter

FreeBSD on Amazon EC2, backups with Tarsnap, 10.0-RELEASE, various topics

Tutorial

Bandwidth monitoring and testing

News Roundup

pfSense talk at Tokyo FreeBSD Benkyoukai

Isaac Levy will be presenting \”pfSense Practical Experiences: from home routers, to High-Availability Datacenter Deployments\”
He\’s also going to be looking for help to translate the pfSense documentation into Japanese
The event is on February 17, 2014 if you\’re in the Tokyo area

m0n0wall 1.8.1 released

For those who don\’t know, m0n0wall is an older BSD-based firewall OS that\’s mostly focused on embedded applications
pfSense was forked from it in 2004, and has a lot more active development now
They switched to FreeBSD 8.4 for this new version
Full list of updates in the changelog
This version requires at least 128MB RAM and a disk/CF size of 32MB or more, oh no!

Ansible and PF, plus NTP

Another blog post from our buddy Michael Lucas
There\’ve been some NTP amplification attacks recently in the news
The post describes how he configured ntpd on a lot of servers without a lot of work
He leverages pf and ansible for the configuration
OpenNTPD is, not surprisingly, unaffected – use it

ruBSD videos online

Just a quick followup from a few weeks ago
Theo and Henning\’s talks from ruBSD are now available for download
There\’s also a nice interview with Theo

PCBSD weekly digest

10.0-RC4 images are available
Wine PBI is now available for 10
9.2 systems will now be able to upgrade to version 10 and keep their PBI library

Feedback/Questions

Sha\’ul writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2WQXwMASZ
Kjell-Aleksander writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2H0FURAtZ
Mike writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s21eKKPgqh
Charlie writes in (and gets a reply): https://slexy.org/view/s21UMLnV0G
Kevin writes in: https://slexy.org/view/s2SuazcfoR

Contest

We\’ll be giving away a handmade FreeBSD pillow – yes you heard right
All you need to do is write a tutorial for the show
Submit your BSD tutorial write-ups to feedback@bsdnow.tv
Check bsdnow.tv/contest for all the rules, details, instructions and a picture of the pillow.

All the tutorials are posted in their entirety at bsdnow.tv
The poudriere tutorial got a couple fixes and modernizations
Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv
Stop commenting on the Jupiterbroadcasting pages and Youtube! We don\’t read those!
Watch live Wednesdays at 2:00PM Eastern (19:00 UTC)

The post Tendresse for Ten | BSD Now 21 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Classic Adventure Gaming | In Depth Look

chris — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:44:18 +0000

Can a 20 year old Star Trek game contain the secrets to a fantastic Action Adventure game for anyone? Well I think so, and in this episode I\’ll attempt to make my case!

Why I think Star Trek the 25th Anniversary has the key ingredients to a great game!

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Intro:

Instead of a game in which you simply rehash events that have been modified into a playable format, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary presents you with all new scenarios that run in the same vein as the original television series.

Graphics
Although the game graphics are clearly unspectacular by today\’s standard, they serve their purpose well. They were able to bring scenes to life that the TV shows budget, would never have allowed for.

Not afraid to have a more advanced look.

Fans got to see well known locations re-imagined, or in one mission, all beat up!

Voices
The digitized voices are available only on the Enhanced CD-ROM version. Playing the CD-ROM version is like acting out as an episode of Star Trek.

The Floppy disk version of the game was too limited on space for the voices.

Voice overs, multiple choice, often funny

**A real challenge*
NO hand holding, you have to look up facts, use tools in the scene. Find them your self.

First scene is a battle, no tutorial. Later in the game there are rather clever things you have to pick up on, to solve locks and puzzles. (This was pre-Google too).

Many missions had a sub-game wherein the player would figure out how to get the redshirt killed, although this would diminish their rating at the end of the mission.

The use of your crew is a key game play element. Turning them from token tagalongs, to full fledged helpers. And they act/help in the way you expect for their character.

Adorable copy protection
As a holdover from the Floppy Disk version, the CD-ROM version retains the copy protection in the form of a star chart inside the instruction manual. This chart must be used in order to choose the correct destination star system for each mission. This is a simple but effective copy protection scheme that fits well into the context of the game, unlike the traditional but tiresome \”find the fifth word on the third page\” routine.

Copy protection via the manual / sector map

The game contains a copy-protection system that asks the player to consult the game\’s manual to find out what star system to warp to on the navigation map. Warping to the wrong system sends the player into either Klingon or Romulan neutral zones, and initiates an extremely difficult battle that often ends in the destruction of the Enterprise.

The lost 4th Season

When the writers wrote this game, they viewed it as the never aired 4th season. And wanted it to feature stories and characters that would have been in that season.

Combined with the voice overs, this gives the game a nearly episodic feel to it. And sucks in the player.

This game manages to cross blur the lines between game and dramatic entertainment. Much how TOR does for me now.

Final Notes:

One of DeForest Kelley\’s last roles
When a closeup of Harry Mudd is displayed on Enterprise\’s viewscreen, his facial features are obscured by shadows. This is because Paramount required that when likenesses of real actors or actresses were used in the game, the approval of the actor or actress in question was needed. However, Roger C. Carmel, who played Mudd originally, had passed away by the time the game was made. This problem was only noted near the end of development, and negotiating a solution with Paramount would have delayed the release. Therefore the decision was made not to actually show Mudd\’s face clearly.

Abandonware

Download Star Trek – 25th Anniversary | Abandonia

Download Star Trek – Judgment Rites | Abandonia

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The post Classic Adventure Gaming | In Depth Look first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Battery Malware | TechSNAP 16

chris — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:52:47 +0000

Attackers take aim at Apple with an exploit that could brick your Macbook, or perhaps worse. Plus you need to patch against a 9 year old SSL flaw.

Plus find out about a Google bug that could wipe a site from their Index, and a excellent batch of your feedback!

All that and more, on this week’s TechSNAP!

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[ad#shownotes]

Show Notes:

iPhones vulnerable to 9 year old SSL sniffing attack

A nine year old bug discovered and disclosed by Moxie Marlinspike in 2002 allows attackers to decrypt intercepted SSL sessions. Moxie Marlinspike released a newer, easier to use version of the tool on monday, to coincide with Apple finally patching the flaw on iPhone and other iOS devices.
Any unpatched iOS device can have all of it’s SSL traffic trivially intercepted and decrypted
This means anyone with this new easy to use tool sitting near a wifi hotspot, can intercept encrypted login information (gmail, facebook), banking credentials, e-commerce transactions, or anything else people do from their phone.
The bug was in the way iOS interpreted the certificate chain. Apple failed to respect the ‘basicConstraint’ parameter, allowing an attacker to sign a certificate for any domain with an existing valid certificate, a condition normally prevented by the constraint.
There are no known flaws in SSL it self, in this case, the attacker could perform a man-in-the-middle attack, by feeding the improperly signed certificate to the iPhone which would have accepted it, and used the attackers key to encrypt the data.
Patch is out with a support doc and direct download links

Apple Notebook batteries vulnerable to firmware hack

After analyzing a battery firmware update that Apple pushed in 2009, researchers found that all patched batteries, and all batteries manufactured since, use the same password
With this password, it is possible to control the firmware on the battery
This means that an attacker can remotely brick your Macbook, or cause the battery to overheat and possibly even explode
The attacker can also falsify the data returned to the OS from the battery, causing odd system behaviour
The attacker could also completely replace the Apple firmware, with one designed to silently infect the machine with malware. Even if the malware is removed, the battery would be able to reinfect the machine, even after a complete OS wipe and reinstall.
Further research will be presented at this years Black Hat Security Conference
In the meantime, researchers have notified Apple of the vulnerability, and have created a utility that generates a completely random password for your Mac’s battery.
Additional Link

Facebook fixes glitch that let you see private video information

A glitch in facebook allowed you to see the thumbnail preview and description of private videos posted by other users, even when they were not shared with you.
It was not possible to view the actual videos

Google was quick to shutdown Webmaster Tools after vulnerability found

Using the google webmaster tools, users were able to remove websites that did not belong to them from the Google Index
By simply modifying the query string of a valid request to remove your own site from the google index, and changing one of the two references to the target url, you were able to remove an arbitrary site from the google index
The issue was resolved within 7 hours of being reported to Google
Google restored sites that were improperly removed from its index.

Researchers find vulnerablity in Skype

Inproper input validation and output sanitation allowed attackers to inject code into their skype profile
By entering html and java script in to the ‘mobile phone’ section of your profile, anyone who had you on their friends list would execute the injected code.
This vulnerability could have allowed attackers to high your session, steal your account, capture your payment data, and change your password

Feedback

Q: (Sargoreth) I downloaded eclipse, and I didn’t bother to verify the md5 hash they publish on the download page, how big a security risk is this?
A: Downloadable software often has an MD5 hash published along with the downloadable file, as a measure to allow you to ensure that the file you downloaded is valid. Checking the downloaded file against this hash can ensure that the file was not corrupted during transfer. However it is not a strong enough indicator that the file has not been tampered with. If the file was modified, the MD5 hash could just as easily have been updated along with it. In order to be sure that the file has not been tampered with, you need a hash that is provided out of band, from a trusted source (The FreeBSD Ports tree comes with the SHA256 hashs of all files, which are then verified once they are downloaded). SHA256 is much more secure, as MD5 has been defeated a number of times, with attackers able to craft two files with matching hashes. SHA-1 is no longer considered secure enough for cryptographic purposes. It should also be noted that SHA-512 is actually faster to calculate than SHA256 on 64bit hardware, however it is not as widely supported yet. The ultimate solution for ensuring the integrity of downloadable files is a GPG signature, verified against a trusted public key. Many package managers (such as yum) take this approach, and some websites offer a .asc file for verification. A number of projects have stopped publishing the GPG signatures because the proportion of users who checked the signature was too low to justify the additional effort. Some open source projects have had backdoors injected in to their downloadable archives on official mirrors, such as the UnrealIRCd project.

Q: (Christoper) I have a windows 7 laptop, and a Ubuntu desktop, what would be a cheap and easy way to share files between them?
A: The easiest and most secure way, is to enable SSH on the ubuntu machine, and then use an SFTP client like FileZilla (For Windows, Mac and Linux), and then just login to your ubuntu machine using your ubuntu username/password. Alternatively, If you have shared a folder on your windows machine, you should be be able to browse to it from the Nautilus file browser in Ubuntu. Optionally, you can also install Samba, to allow your Ubuntu machine to share files with windows, it will appear as if it were another windows machine in your windows ‘network neighbourhood’.

Q: (Chad) I have a network of CentOS servers, and a central NFS/NIS server, however we are considering adding a FreeNAS box to provide ZFS. I need to be able to provide consistent centralized permissions control on this new file system. I don’t want to have to manually recreate the users on the FreeNAS box. Should I switch to LDAP?
A: FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD, so it has a native NIS client you can use (ypbind) to connect to your existing NIS system. This would allow the same users/groups to exist across your heterogeneous network. You may need to modify the /etc/nsswitch.conf file to configure the order local files and NIS are checked in, and set your NIS domain in /etc/rc.conf. Optionally, you could use LDAP, again, adding some additional parameters to nsswitch.conf and configuring LDAP. If you decide to use LDAP, I would recommend switching your CentOS machines to using LDAP as well, allowing you to again maintain a single system for both Linux and BSD, instead of maintaining separate account databases. If you are worried about performance, you might consider setting the BSD machine up as an NIS slave, so that it maintains a local copy of the NIS database. The FreeBSD NIS server is called ypserv. You can find out more about configuring NIS on FreeBSD here

Bitcoin Blaster

Allan’s Bitcoin mining rig mined it’s 36th bitcoin today
Research shows Bitcoin may be less anonymous than initially though
Buy Humble Bundle 3 with Bitcoins!
Why We Are No Longer Accepting Dwolla « TradeHill

Roundup

The post Battery Malware | TechSNAP 16 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

All Hail F2P! | MMOrgue 7

chris — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:56:00 +0000

Since the beginning of the year, nearly a dozen different subscription-driven titles have announced their intention to switch to various versions of Free-to-Play subscription models, across the MMO landscape. In today’s episode we’ll look at a few of the most recent additions to this playing field, and discuss the ins-and-outs of their particular takes on the F2P concept. How are they moving from premium subscriptions without alienating existing consumers? How will they market themselves to new gamers? Find out on this week’s MMOrgue!

Direct Download Links:

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HD Video iPad & Apple TV Video iPod Video MP3 Audio	HD Video RSS Large Video RSS Mobile Video RSS MP3 Audio RSS

Show Notes:

Fallen Earth
Being republished by GamersFirst, who also recently resurrected APB

Corrections about GamersFirst — Ep. 2 of MMOrgue
Response from GamersFirst

I incorrectly stated that they are an Asian company. This is just flat-out incorrect, and I’d like to apologize to the crew over there for getting my wires crossed during my research phase.
To be frank, I got their acquisition and relaunch of APB mixed up with Hanbitsoft and the relaunch of Hellgate. Embarassing!
GamersFirst is actually a California-based company, and entirely stationed here in the Western market. And while they have a world-wide presence, they don’t consider themselves to be marketing to an “eastern” market by any means.
That being said, I believe my criticisms about their “Pay To Win” cash shop still stand, including the fact that this type of F2P model is more common, and more accepted, in the East.

Now… moving on to CURRENT news, GamersFirst announced about a week ago that they were partnering up with the makers of Fallen Earth. Shortly after that announcement, the info surfaced that Fallen Earth would soon be relaunched under a new F2P subscription model.

Since I have never gotten my hands on Fallen Earth, the best thing I can say about this move is that I will soon be able to do so. Without it costing me a cent.

This, I think, is a very important statement to nail home, about the concept of F2P in general…
- MMOs are seen as long-term investments, by the typical MMO gamers. We’re not generally looking for a game that will keep us entertained for a weekend, or a summer. We want longevity, community, commitment, and enough content to satisfy the cost of investing in a title.
- This attitude was ingrained in us from the standard Premium Subscription model, where a box costs as much as a standalone game, but then you also have to pay monthly to continue to play.
  - Under a F2P model, the client is generally given away free, and a huge portion of the gameplay is available without spending one red cent.
  - By eliminating this barrier of entry, you can accomplish two separate financial goals:
    - 1) MMO gamers accustomed to monthly subscriptions are now more willing to “try out” your title without having to drink your kool-aid.
    - 2) Gamers that are unwilling to pay monthly subscription fees are introduced to a whole new style of gameplay.
    - Even if only a small % of either type of gamer stick around, it’s still an improvement.

The core Fallen Earth team of devs will be staying in their current location, and remain employed as a separate game studio under Reloaded Productions (GamersFirst’s dev wing).

According to their dev blog, they hope that an influx of new players, and possibly more funding, will allow them to follow up on features and content that they’ve had plans for, but no resources to follow up on.

Subscription Tiers:

Free: Unlimited free trial. No reward points. Similar restrictions on trade & crafting to current “Trial” accounts.
Low Premium: Costs less than current sub. No reward points.
Mid Premium: Same as current sub ($15/mo). Monthly reward points. XP bonus.
High Premium: More than current sub. Monthly reward points. Bigger XP bonus. “Premium Aura” which allows many bonuses to be shared with their teammates. This aura stacks.

All tiers enjoy unlimited content. FE devs want you to play in their world with your friends, regardless of how much money either of you decide to spend on the product.
I’ll also say this: I’m not a fan of many of the design choices made in APB, but there appear to be different minds behind Fallen Earth’s transition. If they can steer away from the money-grubbing attitude present in APB – which they SEEM to be doing, based no their dev blog and community posts – then I could definitely see this breathing new life back into this rather unique, but barely alive, title.

These changes are supposed to take place in Q4 of 2011. Vague!

LEGO Universe

My Review at Ten Ton Hammer

Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming. *raise*

Press Release

Why didn’t I see it coming? I mean, it was already cheap, and only a moderate success in the online space. Gazillion Entertainment already sold it back to LEGO Corp a few months back. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, so why does it?

Because it’s aimed at KIDS.

Cash Shops are a necessity of F2P models – it’s how you make money. LEGO U would need to make its shop easily accessible, without putting Daddy’s credit card in the hands of a spendy 10 year old with a passion for fashion.

So what is LEGO doing? NO CASH SHOP! Problem solved… kinda…

This is not a truly free-to-play version of LEGO Universe, as the headlines indicate. This free TRIAL version of LEGO U will only include 2 adventuring zones and one personal property area, whereas the full game features almost a dozen of each.

This is insidious!

The adventuring side of LEGO is not its true selling point. If you want a good LEGO-themed adventure game, you’re far better-off playing one of their standalone console or PC titles, like LEGO Star Wars, etc. The mini-games, like racing and a shooting gallery, are the only bits that stand out.

So what does that leave you with? Building things! This is the core joy of LEGO to begin with, and they’re allowing you access to it in the Free Trial version… kinda…

With only one property to build on, the canvas for your bricky masterpieces is limited. Furthermore, with only 2 adventuring zones available where you can collect bricks, the amount of models you can effectively construct will be massively limited. Anyone hoping to build a truly epic construction of their own will likely be FORCED to subscribe to the full game, simply to gain access to the full range of Brick and Model vendors available in zones that will otherwise be beyond their reach as Trial Accounts.

In summary, I’d like to say “Shame On You” to LEGO Corp for their misleading Press Release and disingenuous use of the phrase “Free to Play.” And a secondary “check your info” to every MMO news site out there that ran with the headline before reading the fine print.

The FREE TRIAL of LEGO U will become available in August of this year.

City of Heroes

https://www.cityofheroes.com/news/news_archive/announcing_city_of_heroes_free_1.html

Download Link: https://www.cityofheroes.com/account/download_game_client/download_city_of_heroes.html

Renaming the project, City of Heroes Freedom.

No colon? No apostrophe? That’s terrible grammar! ARRGH.

I don’t have much to say about this, except that this swap was simultaneously, inevitable and a surprise to me.

Inevitable: The superhero market is reaching saturation, between COH, CO, DCUO and the upcoming Marvel MMO. With CO being a primary player in that subcategory, and offering its content under a F2P subscription model.
Surprise: NCSoft has never shown itself to be a proponent of this model. 4 out of their 5 big titles are currently subscription-driven, with the remaining title still charging a box fee.

Details of subscription model: https://www.cityofheroes.com/news/freedom/player_choices.html

Current subscriptions = VIP access. Full content + 400 Paragon Points per month
Prior subscription = Premium access. Free + Anything you previously purchased or earned with Reward Points (expansion packs, etc)
No subscription = Free. Limited content. Buy Paragon Points with cash.

VIPs will also have access to an exclusive server (no F2P allowed!)

Free players will not have access to Mission Architect.
Unsurprising, but kind of a let-down. UGC is a big draw for this game. But I suppose you have to convince new players to pay for SOMEthing.

———

These three up-and-comers join a cast of dozens, including prominent titles like:
Age of Conan
Global Agenda
Ragnarok Online
APB
Champions Online
and of course, DDO and LOTRO

On a completely different topic, I’d like to drop this week’s big speculation on you: Pottermore

By the time this episode airs, we may already know the answer as JK Rowling’s YouTube page says that a big announcement will be forthcoming on June 23rd. I won’t lie – I’m a Harry Potter fan, and firmly believe that an MMO in that universe could potentially be a BLAST to play. Or could fail so hard it would make the entire island of Great Britain sink into the ocean. Either way, I’m keeping an eye on this one.

Next Week:
Player Housing
Some of the best examples, and the worst, and perhaps even get to the bottom of why this particular feature has such a spotty implementation history throughout MMOs.

Best current example, EQ2
Worst, STO
CO getting “Hideouts” soon
Gods & Heroes will have “Estate System” (releasing today)

So until then… play smart, and target their healers first!

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The post All Hail F2P! | MMOrgue 7 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Music Streaming Rocks | J@N | 1.25.11

chris — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:59:50 +0000

Online music services like Spotify, Pandora, and many others are exploding. But how do they compare? What features do they each have that make them unique?

Tonight we look into some of our favorite music streaming service, and answer those questions, and many more!

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PANDORA
www.pandora.com

Pros:
– Good for finding new music that is similar to songs you like.
– Easy to purchase songs you like.
– Separate stations for different “moods”

Cons:
– Commercials
– Free service limits the number of songs you can skip.
– No downloadable client unless you pay for the service.

Price:
– $36/year for desktop subscription
– Mobile app is free but includes ads, customer feedback indicates it doesn’t multitask well

last.fm
www.last.fm

Pros:
– Social music sharing experience (FB/Twitter sharing, and on-site socializing)
– Allows purchase of songs you like right from the site.
– “Scrobbler” download parses your existing library and sets up your preferences automatically.
– Live event listings

Cons:
– Small library in some genres, lots of repeated music.
– Premade stations aren’t that great, better to build your own playlists (which takes time)
– Download client doesn’t fully implement social features, just the music scrobbling.

Price:
– Free, free, free.

Grooveshark
https://listen.grooveshark.com

Pros:
– HUGE library of songs
– Lots of variety under the “Radio” function
– Powerful UI, easy to use.

Cons:
– No prebuilt playlists
– Can’t sort searches by music genre

Price:
– Free in the web player
– $6/mo for ads-free client
– $9/mo for mobile app access with account syncing

I <3 Radio
https://www.iheartradio.com/index.html

Pros:
– Listen to your favorite local radio no matter where you are.
– Some original stations

Cons:
– Commercials and talk just like normal radio
– Not all stations use it.
– Audio quality seems inconsistent on some stations.

Other Options:
Slacker
Yahoo! Music (aka Launchcast)
1club.fm
Sirius or XM Satellite Radio

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The post Music Streaming Rocks | J@N | 1.25.11 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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