Dorrway Forums

Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

Sun, 09 May 2010 00:41:08 +0000

Important: If your computer does not retain parameter RAM (PRAM) settings when it is turned off, this generally indicates that the battery needs to be changed. Refer to Macintosh Family: Batteries and Part Numbers.

Resetting PRAM and NVRAM

Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.

Your computer's PRAM and the NVRAM are reset to the default values. The clock settings may be reset to a default date on some models.

Steve Jobs Hates Flash

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:15:52 +0000

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and Javascript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and Javascript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs
April, 2010

Season 1 UPDATE 1.1

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:24:20 +0000

Greetings!

We hope you've been enjoying Season One of Star Trek Online. We're already a month into the first season and are set to release another feature packed update. If you've been following along by reading the Engineering Reports, you already know this update fulfills some of the requests you've been asking for since the launch of the game (and even Beta!). A big huge thanks to you for taking the time to provide feedback via the forums and for logging in to Tribble to see the changes before they go live. You've had a big hand in this update and we can't wait for you to experience it! Enjoy!

Season 1.1 Update - New Features FAQ

Difficulty Settings
By popular demand, we have added the ability to scale difficulty in instanced missions so that you can customize the combat challenges to your liking. The difficult you have been playing on is the default which is considered “Normal”. If you would like more of a challenge, you can adjust this via the Options screen or the Episodes tab on your mission journal.

The available settings are:

Normal – The default combat settings prior to this update with no injuries as a result of defeat.
Advanced – Increases combat difficulty and introduces injuries as a result of defeat.
Elite – Significantly increases combat difficulty with an increased chance of injury as a result of defeat.

As an added incentive to the additional risks, there is greater frequency and quality of rewards from defeating enemies on higher difficulty setting. Mission rewards are not impacted by difficulty settings.

Things to note about difficulty settings:

When teamed, the Team Leader’s difficulty setting prior to entering the system determines the difficulty of the mission.
Difficulty settings do not apply to Fleet Actions, PVP, Social Maps, or Deepspace Encounters (or any other non-instance map)
We have disabled difficulty settings for Special Task Forces temporarily while we adjust the system to work with the increased difficulty of these special missions.
You cannot modify difficulty once you have entered a mission map. All settings must be set or modified prior to entering the mission. If you want to change the difficult of a mission you are currently on, all players must exit the mission and wait 15 minutes for the mission to cooldown before your new difficulty settings can be applied.

Injury System
In conjunction with the new Difficulty Settings, we are introducing an injury system that adds added risks to playing on higher difficulties. Depending on the type and severity of the injury sustained, you will notice a decrease in related performance until treated. Federation players will receive a mission that sends you a contact on Earth Space Dock which will explain more about injuries.

Here’s How It Works

If your captain, your bridge officers, or your ship is defeated, there is a chance they will receive one injury. This occurs at the time you are defeated, regardless of whether or not you respawn or are resuscitated. Injuries cause various de-buffs depending on the type and severity.
If you receive an injury, the severity of that injury is determined by chance, modified by the existence of any untreated injuries already on that character/ship. For example, the chance of receiving a Major or Critical injury is increased if the character/ship has an untreated injury already.
Injuries do not occur below level 5 on any difficulty setting and there is a maximum of 50 total injuries each character/ship can sustain at any given time.

Type of Injuries

Minor – The negative effect of minor injuries is small enough that it would take several minor injuries before most players would notice any difference in performance.
Major – These injuries feel significant, but the character/ship can continue to function with only slight performance decreases. Sustaining more than one major injury of the same type (which modifies the same stat) will begin to cause noticeable performance impacts.
Critical – These injuries will cause noticeable performance impacts. A character/ship may still continue on in a mission (and succeed) with more than one critical injury, but each additional critical injury will prove costly to treat and will put the character/ship below the expected potency curve.

How to Treat an Injury

Visit a medic/engineer in your faction’s major social hub and pay them energy credits to remove the injuries. Use an injury pack to remove the item yourself.
Regenerators treat personnel injuries – Components treat ship “injuries” (damage)
Each pack comes in 3 versions that correspond to the severity of the injury.
Injury packs are not available in replicators, but some packs are available stores.
There’s a chance of finding some types of injury packs as a reward drop.
Your medical/engineering staff will automatically treat each Minor Injury 30 minutes after each injury was sustained.

Important Power Updates
Several key powers are being updated with this release in order to address concerns and bring their functionality in line with expected design goals.

Feedback Pulse
Goal: This ability can be used to augment DPS by reflecting your opponents directed energy attacks, as well as a deterrent in PvP if currently the main target of a group.

Changes:

Now reflects all directed energy types (beams, cannons, turrets)
Feedback Pulse is now an energy type, buffed and resisted similar to other damage types
Damage reflected by Feedback Pulse hits shields first, but does have 50% shield penetration
Overall reflected damage has been reduced for each version. Version 1 damage is about 60%, version 2 about 80%, and version 3 nearly 100%.

Countered by: Subnucleonic Beam removes buff; Projectile Weapon or Indirect Damage ignores it.

Subnucleonic Beam
Goal: This ability removes buffs and slows performance of targeted enemy. Counters abilities such as Feedback Pulse, Reverse Shield Polarity, Attack Pattern Alpha, by removing the applied buff.

Changes:

This does not put abilities into recharge, but instead slows the recharge time for bridge officer abilities and weapons systems over its duration.
Removes currently applied buffs from target at activation time. Buffs can be later applied while subnucleonic beam is active.

Countered By: Science Team applied while SNB active removes the debuff; Photonic Officer helps to offset slow recharge

Viral Matrix
Goal: Cripples target, but target has the chance to remove debuff or continue to fight at a disadvantage.

Changes:

This is no longer a hold, but instead takes three of a ship's subsystems offline.
Shields subsystems are unaffected, but weapons, engines, and auxiliary will go offline in a random order (each time it is used) over the course of the duration. As the systems go offline in a staggered method, the target has some time to react and does not have all three systems disabled for the entire duration.
The best case duration for a subsystem being offline is approx 7.2, 9.6, and 12 seconds for ver 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

Countered By: Engineering Team now restores all subsystems; Emergency Power to (system) will restore that particular subsystem.

Commodity Missions
Based on feedback with Federation “Aid the Planet” missions, we’ve made changes so these exploration missions are more viable.

Federation players will now receive some basic information about what commodities might be useful in the nearby Star Cluster as well as a few commodities to get you started.
Unknown Systems within Star Cluster previously were in need of up to 5 different types of commodities, which meant that if you wanted to be prepared, you had to haul around a cargo hold’s worth of goods. We’ve reduced this to 3 types that could possibly be needed.
If you didn’t have the commodities needed on board, you had to exit the system and find a trader who would sell them to you. This is where most players would drop the mission. Now, you have the option to replicate the necessary commodities on the spot. Be warned that the cost of doing this is at a premium.
If you are looking for better prices on commodities other than your replicator or via trade ships, you can hover over a commodities tooltip to learn which system sells the commodity at the lowest price.
As a reward for taking the time to deliver these commodities, the planet you are aiding will now offer you a gift as an additional reward. These gifts could be anything, so open them up and see what you get!

Exchange Improvements
If you’ve ever used the exchange to look for an item, you’d noticed it was a bit messy. This update introduces changes to help clean the exchange up and makes some general improvements.

When searching for an item, results are now returned in a sorted list by either price or item name
Items you place on the exchange will now expire after 1 week if no buyer is found. The item will be returned to you via an attachment using in-game mail.
Once this update goes live – many (if not all) items on the exchange will be returned as they are long overdue to expire.
To aid in comparison price purchasing, you can now drag and drop an item on the search field to look for similar items

TODAY, 12:35 AM #2dstahlStar Trek Online Team
Join Date: Aug 2008

Team Mission Tracker
When you are teamed, your mission journal will now show you which missions your team mates are currently working on to aid in team mission planning.

Space Auto-fire Improvements
By popular demand (and to save your fingers) we’ve opened up the ability to set all ship weapons to auto-fire. Simply right click a weapon (notice the green outline) to toggle auto-fire. Weapons auto-fire in the order they are placed in the Weapon’s Tray. Keep in mind that having all weapons on auto-fire can lead to danger if you are frequently switching targets.

Store Inventory Changes
Mark (Valor, Honor, and Exploration) Stores now sell a variety of equipment and weapon damage types. You’re no longer limited to Anti-Proton damage when searching for Rear Admiral Gear.

Female TOS/Mirror Universe Costume Updates
Many of you who received these costumes as part of your purchase bundle were underwhelmed with what you received. While there was some miscommunication as to what was initially available, we are happy to announce that female TOS and Mirror Universe costume updates are now available to those who have them unlocked on their account.

Playable Joined Trill of the Klingon Faction
For those who purchased a bundle pack which offered you the ability to play as a Joined Trill, you may have been bummed that you could not create a Joined Trill that was aligned with the Klingon Faction. Well Jack promised it, and here it is. If you have Joined Trill unlocked on your account, you can now make a Joined Trill of the Klingon Faction.

Inventory Stacking Improvements
We’ve made a first pass at making things stack better in your inventory as well as when purchasing items in bulk. Let us know what you think!

Fleet Mail
Fleet Leaders can now send messages to their entire fleet at once per day

General Updates

Your starship will now look for a clear path and adjust heading prior to warping out so that it doesn't warp through the center of a planet
Adjusted the stuck message to remove the suggestion use /killme if stuck doesn't work
Updated the details about what changes with a “short name” rename
Fixed bug that prevented players from continuing to respec once they'd pressed the "Accept" button unless they pressed the "Reset" button
The in-game camera will no longer pass through ship geometry when zooming in all the way
Nearly all Tribble descriptions have been updated
The camera will now attempt to avoid obstacles when playing the beam out cutscene
Updated French and German localized text
Klingon Faction players now have their own replicator menu
Klingon Faction players can now set ground weapons to auto-fire
Fixed a crash that would occur when inviting others to your Fleet
Fixed a crash that would occur while trying to take a screenshot in certain circumstances
Fixed a crash that would occur when a player attempted to enter a private queue that was full
Fixed a crash that would occur when dismissing or training certain bridge officers
Fixed a crash that would occur when attempting to mail certain item
Fixed a crash that would occur when inviting players from an enemy faction
Fixed a bug with renaming that could occur if your captain’s name was the same as any of the other officers in your crew
Fixed a bug where some items attached via mail could not be viewed
Add a LFG option for teams either at the player’s difficulty level or any difficulty level.

PVP

Scaling PvP rewards are now in. Players will now be rewarded for the time spend in a pvp match, making longer matches now just as viable as short ones.
Added the ability to request to “Join New Game” in the PvP Queue window. The join button is now a drop-down. When clicked, this displays two options: "Join New Game" or "Join Any Game"
Updated the look and feel for the PvP Queue
Personal scores in the PvP score window are now in columns to take up less space
The current team is now indicated with an icon in PvP
Personal missions are no longer shown on PvP maps, only Open Missions, so the PvP scoreboard should no longer be hidden by the mission tracker UI
Corrected a mistake in the Area Control reporting which was showing incorrect winning conditions
Adjusted the “Show Queues” drop down so it now only shows queues
Added a join time limit for the various queue types. This prevents players from queuing up for a pvp game and entering a map that is well into the game. Arena Maps: 2 minute time limit, Everything else: 4 minute time limit
Fixed a bug which prevented players from seeing their open mission while on a PvP map
Fixed the issue where players would spawning inside of geo in PvP area control maps
Fixed an issue with the second Federation base in PvP FvF Area control
Added defensive turrets to protect player spawn-points on PvP area control maps.
The map logic has been updated on PvP KvK Assault for both ground and space versions
Abort Mission and Beam to Ship buttons are now disabled on all PvP maps in anticipation of a quitting penalty for PvP
PvP Assault Report now shows appropriate team names instead of Red and Blue.
Fixed an issue with the Assault Scoreboard score values

Restored the missing "Base Defense" (AccuracyMiss) ship stat in the status window
Eliminated duplicate instances of combat maneuvers, starship strategy, and starship attack vectors in the ship status window
Fixed bug where additional stats were sometimes being displayed on tooltips for weapons linked in chat
Players are now able to search Fleet Bank log activity by category
Removed unnecessary spacing from item and power tooltip and inspect descriptions
Added the pips background to the Klingon Team List and made Klingons use Klingon pips
Fixed issue with all trait/power descriptions displaying twice
Fixed bug where item stack counts were not being shown for items in the Exchange
Updated the Fleet Management Roster button bar
Updated the Friends Tab with backgrounds for rank pip icons
Tooltips were added to LFG icons and abbreviations
The "Friends" tab in the social window has been upgraded:
Added an "Accept Request" button
Changed the name of the team invite button from "Invite" to "Team Invite" for clarity
Moved the "Add Friend" button to the bottom right
Added a "Remove Friend" button
Now show "Decline Request" instead of "Remove Friend" if the currently selected character sent a friend request
Added a confirm dialog when attempting to remove a friend or decline a request
Improvements to the "Ignored" tab in the social window
Added a "Remove Ignore" button
Moved the "Add Ignore" button to the bottom right of the window
Added a remove confirm dialog when attempting to remove an ignore
Reorganized the buttons in the "Find Team" and "Search" tabs of the social window. Buttons that affect elements in the player list are on the left ("Tell", "Invite"). Other buttons are on the right ("Set Status", "LFG", Visibility").
The Skill Picker and Skill Respec "Accept" button is now disabled if no net change has actually been made. Added a 5 second cooldown on the "Reset" button to prevent server spamming
Implemented new UI for privacy options in the social UI. Added a privacy button which replaces the (confusing) visibility button. This opens up a menu with allowed chat members and visibility options.
Updated the PVP icons to denote which status you're in - Queue, Ready, Invited or Snooze for Fed and Klingon
Bridge officer status windows will now display correctly while on a ground map
Tweaked the mouse filtering default settings to reduce enormous delay at the highest value
Fixed some issues with the options screen:
Mouse filtering option wasn't saving properly.
Restore defaults wouldn't properly reset shield FX setting.
Moved game-specific settings to the top of the options list.
Added a setting to HUD options that will allow the user to enable or disable "critical status" information on reticules. If enabled, this will show indicators when a sub-system goes down or when the entity's life is low.
Rolled fleet invite, team invite, interior invites into a single invite approved list.
Added a check so blacklisted players cannot be invited to fleets, teams, or interiors.
The UI will now properly display that a free respec is no longer available.
If the user cannot afford a stack of items when buying in bulk, there is now UI that tells the player "You do not have enough ".
Fixed bug where some skills in the skillpicker would show +0% modifiers.
The clear button will now clear all the fields in the player search window
Fixed the fisheye text problem in the "Regions" filter.
All Buff/Debuff trays now use the new function that combines buffs, debuffs, injuries, status and DoTs into one list
Fixed an issue where landmark icons in sector space would go offscreen
Fixed a waypoint icon scaling bug
Fixed bug where "Expose Attack" or "Exploit Attack" was being displayed multiple times for a single power on the power's tooltip or inspect description.
Added some missing powers to tooltip displays
The power transfer rate of your ship will now be displayed as a percentage in your status screen
Fore weapons are mapped to keys 1,2,3 and aft 4,5,6. This adjusts based on how many weapon slots you actually have.

TODAY, 12:39 AM #3dstahlStar Trek Online Team
Join Date: Aug 2008

Powers and Skills

Special Antiproton ground weapons that have a bonus proc vs. Borg can now be given to your bridge officers.
Fixed the Tribble of Borg buff from stacking in certain situations
Updated the Borg tactical Cube: They were given more beams, their cannon firing arc is increased to 90 degrees, their recharge timer has been reduced on cannons, and the recharge time on their shield neutralizer has been increased.
The reverse shield polarity tooltip now displays the three skills that modify the magnitude/duration. Feedback Pulse has been updated: It now works against all direct energy weapons, not just beams. Reduced reflected damage for each version (Version 1~ 60% , Version 2 ~ 80%, Version 3 ~ 100% ). Reflected damage hits the enemy shield but with 50% penetration to the hull instead of 100%.
Viral Matrix has been updated: Instead of a hold, Viral Matrix now takes three subsystems offline in a staggered duration. The best case duration for a subsystem being offline is approx 7.2, 9.6, and 12 seconds for versions I, II,III respectively. The subsystems affected are Weapons, Engines, and Auxiliary. The order that the subsystems go offline is determined randomly upon each use. Engineering Team will repair subsystems that are offline.
Subnucleonic Beam has been updated: Instead of adding a recharge to all abilities, subnucleonic beam now removes currently active buffs and slows bridge officer recharge timers. Science Team will remove subnucleonic beam
Photonic Officer has been updated: Photonic Officer now accelerates the recharge time of all bridge officer powers over its duration. Best case the speed of the recharge is improved by 30%, 40%, 50% for versions I, II, III respectively. Accuracy and Defense modifiers should now show up as a percentage
Power Level Changes: Turn rate improvement has been moved from the auxiliary power level to the engine power level. Updated Evasive Maneuvers to use the engine power level as the modifier to turn rate, instead of auxiliary. Increasing power to shields now increases shield damage resistance to any damage. The formula is shield power level divided by 500, so 100% shield power would impart 20% damage resistance.
Plasma Grenade now delivers more damage on impact and is comparable to other grenade attacks
The short hold that occasionally procs on Palm Strike and Rifle Butt no longer affects players. It will still affect enemies
Fixed a display icon error that would generate a white square rather than the icon for Dampening Field.
Increased Donotra’s Scimitar resistances
Battleships and Dreadnoughts now have some innate resistance to some control powers - like subsystems offline, or jam sensors or scramble sensors, and viral matrix. The resistance reduces the effective duration of such abilities when used against these targets
Fixed an issue in the tooltip for Nadion Inversion. The power is unchanged
Confuse debuffs will no longer persist after a map change to prevent griefing and NPC killing
Fixed a bug that would allow multiple copies of viral matrix to apply in a single attack. This issue also prevented Engineering Team from cleanly removing Viral Matrix.

Audio

The Big Dig map ambient audio has been updated.
Missing sound FX for the Undine orbital cannon explosion has been added, as well as toning down the loud blast audio from the orbiting cannon arrays.
The transwarp to Sol Starbase and transwarp to Qonos sound is no longer cut off by the loading screen

FX and Animation

Players will now see a targeting ring that indicates where a grenade is going to drop.
The screens of players affected by stun grenade will go from bright white to normal lighting throughout the duration of the effect.
The screens of players affected by smoke grenade will be occluded by smoke while they are in the smoke grenades cloud.
Smoke Grenade effect has been thinned out.
Removed the tricorder light FX to fix the issue with it not turning off.

Missions and Environments

Fixed the race condition that sometimes kept the Borg Tactical Cube from spawning by the gate in Infected.
Fixed an environment issue with the Boarding Party side-action that allowed players to get stuck in the warp core.
Removed some bad spawn point maps in the Federation and Klingon star clusters.
NPC ships fighting outside of the U.S.S. Saratoga in the “State of Q” mission are now more era appropriate.
Updated hostiles in Sector Space so they have no collision once they turn into Deep Space Encounters.
Star Cluster missions are no longer showing their logical names in the mission text.
Updated the “Suspect” mission reward to contain new Science console choices.
Commodities have become more exclusive to different social hubs, with different prices at different places.
Updated the On Ship Replicator to include all the commodities, albeit expensive versions of them.
Rator III mission is now more clear on how to progress. This should help make it less likely that the mission appears stuck or confusing.
Updated mission logic for the Big Dig to fix issues with stages stalling at 19/20.
The Cerin's Fire mission is no longer gated.
The Borg geometry has been returned to “The Cure” ground.
Fixed a problem during the Khitomer Accord STF where players would not be able to drop shields on the power nodes, thereby halting progress.
Fixed a bad mission location of the War Games episode.
Fixed DS9 Fleet Action from restarting in a broken condition that would sometimes make it get stuck at 7/8 force fields.
Fixed an LOD issue with Epsilon Satellites

Ships

Added a new set of pylons to DSSV Science ship called "N Modified" to allow the player to straighten out the nacelles like in the C-Store Picture. This new set is available to all players and when used on other hull types will allow nacelles to be angled up.
All window types should now show up on C-Store Federation Ships

Characters and Costumes

Players can now create Fleet Uniforms from a saved costume file
Fixed several bugs with Cardassian textures in Alien creation
Fixed several bugs with Trill spots not always showing correctly
Updated combadges to work on more costumes
Anyone with a skirt can now choose to have a stockings material applied over the legs. Trill spots now go all the way down.
TOS Female costume has been updated:
Upper - Starfleet, the original series – loose neck variation
Lower: Skirt TOS Split
Feet: Boots – High TOS style
Head Attach Tech: Earpiece
Mirror Universe Female Option is now available to those who have it unlocked.
Upper: Terran TOS Mirror Universe tanktop
Badge: Mirror universe badge
Belt: Sash with cloth
Lower: Skirt Short Angled
Feet: Boots – Knee High
Head Attach Tech: Earpiece

Known Issues:

The “learn about commodities” mission will not complete properly if your inventory is full at the time you receive your free commodities. Make sure you have at least one space available to prevent this issue.
Tooltips for high end ground shields and weapons have vastly incorrect values for some attributes (while the actual items are themselves correct) and state that they are bind on pickup when they are bind one equip.

Fixes for both of the above known issues are being tested internally and will make it into the next game update.

Install Android 1.6 OS onto iPhone 2G

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:47:58 +0000

How to port the Android OS to your iPhone
This process can be done on a PC/MAC and it helps you install the Android 1.6 OS with basic features like calls, texts, Wi-Fi but no camera and probably a few Force Closes. After installing you can also update the newer Android versions.

What you need:

1. A jailbroken 2G iPhone.
2. Virtual Box.
3. Ubuntu Image – choose the Ubuntu Linux 9.10 codename Karmic Koala x86, it’s the number 10 on the list.
4. iPhone Explorer – if you are using Linux we recommend FilleZilla.
5. Android OS image and sources.
6. Patched Images.

Starting Instructions

1. Close the iTunes Helper process from the Task Manager ( Ctrl+Alt+Delete).
2. Install iPhone Explorer from the link above.
3. Connect your iPhone to your PC using an USB cable.
4. Run the iPhone Explorer and click on the “Change Root” button.
5. Select the “/” Real iPhone Root Directory and the browse to “private/var”.
6. Copy the “ramdisk.img”, “userdata.img”, “cache.img”and “zImage”from #5 download above to the “var” folder. Also, from the #6 download above, copy the “system.img” and “android.img.gz” to the same folder.

Setting up the Virtual Box

1. Install the VirtualBox and go to “File”->”Virtual Media Manager”. Make sure the “Hard Disks” option is checked and click on the “Add button”. Now browse to the Ubuntu image, the one from the #3 and select it. Close the Virtual Media Manager.
2. Go to “Machine”->”New” and click “Next”. Type “Ubuntu” under the “Name” option.
3. Select “Linux operating system” and “Ubuntu” version. Click “Next”.
4. On the amount of Ram select the default option and click “Next”.
5. Select the “Use existing hard disk” and then the “ubuntu-9.10.vdi”. Click “Next” and then “Finish”.
6. Select the new machine to run Ubuntu and use the “reverse” password to login.

Setting up Ubuntu

1. On the top bar, click “System” ->”Administration”->” Synaptic Package Manager” and enter on the password tab: “reverse”.
2. Go to the quicksearch box, type “libusb-1.0”. Click the Check Box next to libusb-1.0-0 and select” Mark for installation”. Repeat this procedure for the “libreadline”. Click Apply.
3. When done, close the “Package Manager” and open Firefox in Ubuntu.
4. Download openiboot installer.
5. On the top bar, click “Places”->”Downloads”. Right click on the “openiboot.zip” and click “Extract Here”.
6. Again, on the top bar, click “Applications”->”Accessories”->”Terminal”. Type “cd Downloads/openiboot”.
7. Restart your iPhone in Recovery Mode by holding “power off” and “Home” buttons.

Setting up Android

1. In the Ubuntu Windows, of the Virtual Box, go to “Devices”->”USB devices” and select iPhone (Recovery mode).
2. Go to the Terminal and type “sudo su”.Use the “reverse” password. Type again “./loadibec openiboot.img3” in the Terminal windows. You should now see the OpeniBoot screen on the iPhone.
3. Hold down the power button for a few seconds and you should see that on the buttom, the “openiboot console” option will be selected.
4. On the iPhone, press “Home”. You should see a lot of text running on your screen, hopefully stopping at the “Welcome to openiboot” message.
5. On the VirtualBox, in the Ubuntu Windows, go to “Devices”->”USB Devices” and select iPhone in the OpeniBoot Mode.
6. In the Terminal windows, type “su ./oibc” and enter the “reverse ” password. If it doesn’t work, type instead only “./oibc”. This should make the text from the iPhone port to the Terminal window.
7. Again in the Terminal window, type ‘nor_read 0×09000000 0×0 1048576? and press Enter.
8. After it says “Done”, type again ‘~norbackup.dump:1048576? to back up your NOR memory. Just in case, save a copy somewhere.
9. In the Terminal window, type “install” and hit Enter.

Starting up Android

1. If you still have the Terminal window opened, running the oibc, type “reboot” and press Enter. If not, disconnect your phone and restart it.
2. On the iPhone, when openiboot appears, press the “Power Button” to get the openiboot console to the front screen.
3. Hold down the “Home” button and the Android will start to boot.
Pfiu, this was long. Now you should have installed the Android OS on your iPhone. If you encountered any problems until now, read bellow.

Troubleshooting Guide:

If you get stuck on the baseband message, use the FileZille for the file transfer.

If your iPhone looks like a bricked one, do a DFU restore:

1. Connect the phone to your PC via an USB cable.
2. Turn the iPhone off.
3. Hold “Power” and “Home” button for exactly 10 seconds.
4. Release the “Power” button and keep the “Home” pressed until the PC makes a beep sound.
5. A few seconds later the iTunes should detect your iPhone. If you see the “Restore” logo, you are in the Recovery Mode, not the DFU. Start again.

If you did the DFU above and your iPhone is still bricked, repeat if after 5 minutes. Users say that it may take an hour or two for the iPhone to enter the DFU mode.

If you cannot get the phone into the DFU mode, connect the iPhone to your wall charger. Hold down the “Power” button for 10 seconds minimum. Remove the charger and repeat the troubleshooting procedure above.

If you are using windows XP, you might try this:

1. Install LibUSB-Win32 drivers on the PC.
2. Connect the phone to the PC using an USB cable.
3. Hold the “Power” and “Home” buttons for exactly 10 seconds.
4. Release the “Power” button and keep holding on “Home”.
5. After a while, the PC will recognize the USB drivers and iTunes will detect the iPhone in restore mode.

Hope that fixed your issues and now you can enjoy the ported Android on the iPhone. Special thanks to AndroidALot.com blog. They also got these instructions on video.

Byramerica.com

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:09:16 +0000

Put up a short post regarding my plans for the site, considering doing liveblogging during the NFL Draft. Just as a heads up.

Tiger Install

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:43:41 +0000

Here is the sitrep from Kernel Darwin (8.0.0) and his soldiers:

panic: We are hanging here. . .

This was the successful conclusion of another site:

There was a more recent thread where that "hanging here" message occurred and in that thread the problem turned out to be that the Install CD/DVD being used was not new enough for the Mac in question.
In general you need to use either the Install disks that came with your particular Mac or a retail version of the OS X disks that dates from after the time of release of your Mac model.

Any thoughts?

Tiger Install disc

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:28:38 +0000

The Leopard upgrade disc says it needs to find 10.4 first, before it can continue. Hence, I have to download a Tiger install disc. The 1st download that I saw, half the people had problems with it. Any suggestions.

Also, I can't seem to get the Leopard upgrade disc out of the optical drive. The eject button on the keyboard will not respond. What's up?

How To: Install RAM in a PowerMac G5

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:24:40 +0000

Add "Take Ownership" to Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:03:03 +0000

Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista
Taking ownership of system files or folders in Windows 7 or Vista is not a simple task. Whether you use the GUI or the command line, it takes far too many steps.

Thankfully somebody created a registry hack that will give you a menu item for “Take Ownership” that will handle all the steps for you. (If you are the person that originally made this script, let me know and I’ll give you credit)

Here’s what the new right-click menu will look like after installing this registry hack.

Install

Download and unzip the files contained in the zipfile. Double-click the InstallTakeOwnership.reg file and click through the prompts. No reboot necessary.

Uninstall

Double-click the RemoveTakeOwnership.reg file and click through the prompts. No reboot necessary.

Download TakeOwnership.zip

Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:01:18 +0000

http://bit.ly/7U441C