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Raid Rx: How to combine Spirit Link Totem and Power Word: Barrier
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI-, macro- and addon-related. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading on the Matticast. I envy shaman. A latest look at the front page of World of Logs shows that the new shaman totem of awesomeness (Spirit Link Totem) has a rather intriguing property to it. We've had it for a while now, ever since patch 4.1, and this totem is the new shaman defensive mechanic. Anyone standing within 10 yards of it reduces incoming damage by 10%. Cool. What else? Every second, the health of all the players standing within it also gets redistributed. The interesting part is that the health can be increased to count as healing. However, that sword swings both ways. It'll also adjust health downward, which counts as damage. Even better? This damage can be both resisted and mitigated.
Spiritual Guidance: Holy and discipline tier 12 set bonuses
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen fraternizes with cultists and buys Justin Bieber albums. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Information about patch 4.2 has been coming in nonstop this past week, and our favorite dataminers at Wowhead and MMO-Champion have dug up a first look at the class set bonuses for tier 12 gear. As usual, the community has been chatting up a storm since the release, especially the priests. Today I'll be joining that discussion to examine what holy and discipline priests have to look forward to in the next content tier -- or not look forward to, depending on your perspective. Either way, let's take a look.
10.7 Lion upgrades expected to come via Mac App Store
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the Mac App Store is likely to be the preferred method for installing and updating OS X 10.7 Lion. AppleInsider reports that the next version of Mac OS X is going to ship digitally via the MAS, with optical media available as a backup for users on slow connections. This approach solves the thorny issue faced by MacBook Air owners of upgrading the OS, and also keeps with Apple's theme of moving away from physical media as its primary means of distribution and eventually eliminating optical drives on most of its machines. Will this mean that Lion will forsake disc-based distribution completely? Not entirely. There are still plenty of people willing to hand Apple money for a disc-based OS upgrade, and the company wouldn't turn this revenue source down. AI's source tells them that a disc will be available for those without broadband or who don't want to use the Mac App Store. I fully expect Apple also to offer USB drives with Lion on them for sale, just like the ones included with MacBook Airs with Snow Leopard on them. I'm surprised that they're not selling them now for Snow Leopard, actually. What Apple will most likely do is charge a premium for buying physical media -- akin to what happens now with Aperture. Aperture through the Apple retail site is $199, but it's $79.99 on the Mac App Store. The price difference will probably be big enough that it will nudge a good many users toward buying Lion via the Mac App Store. I expect that by Mac OS X 10.8 in a couple of years, disc distribution of Mac OSes will disappear completely.
Rumor: Apple buys 12 petabytes of video storage for iTunes
According to a site named StorageNewsletter.com, Apple has picked up a whopping 12 petabytes of data storage from a company named Isilon Systems. Supposedly, the new hardware (which makes Apple one of Isilon's biggest customers) will be used for storing video for iTunes, though because this information is unofficial, we have no idea if it has to do with Apple's new data center or some other operation Apple has planned around iTunes and its services. What we can say is that a petabyte of data is a whole lot of freakin' data; it's 1024 terabytes. Consumer hard drives nowadays top out at 3 TB, with 1 TB holding the sweet spot. Enterprise deployments are more likely to use the faster and more reliable SAS drives (at smaller capacities), but even if you try to build out your storage with cheaper consumer-grade gear, it's a lot of data. Put another way, if you tried to store a petabyte of data on dual-layer Blu-ray discs (50 GB each), it would take almost 21,000 discs to fit it all... and Apple just bought 12 of those. Especially when you add the concerns of redundancy, indexing, cold spares and all the other infrastructure concerns of enterprise storage, that is a lot of data space. It'll be interesting to see what they do with all of that storage. [via All Things D]
OS X Lion preview ably demonstrates that disc is dead
Today's cloud-based release of the OS X 10.7 Lion preview adds one more nail to the coffin of removable media. Last September, TUAW declared that the disc is dead. Apple's move today, in releasing Lion through the online Mac App store, helps reconfirm that DVDs and CDs are headed the way of the floppy -- i.e., to dodosville along with the thylacine and Android the dot matrix printer. As Apple's new death star of a data center in North Carolina begins to serve its role in taking Apple to the clouds, the disc-less MacBook Air line begins to look less like a push to save weight and streamline hardware and more like simply doing business as usual. What do you think? %Poll-60714%
Accused Xbox 360 modder finds case pleasantly dismissed
The case of 28-year old CSU student Matthew Crippen has come and gone. Arrested last year on Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations -- specifically, for modding Xbox 360s to enable them to play pirated games -- federal prosecutor Allen Chiu announced on the third day of trial that the government was dropping its case against him "based on fairness and justice." It's not a complete surprise: according to Wired, on the previous day (Wednesday), an undercover agent testifying against Crippen claimed the defendant used a pirated game to test a modded console in his presence. That detail, required for the prosecution's case (the use of pirated software), was never mentioned in any of the previous reports or sworn declarations, so once the judge dismissed it as evidence, the case against Crippen hit a snag. Source link's got the full, very interesting tale, but if you're patient, there's always a chance one of the Law and Orders will pick up the story in the years to come.
Spiritual Guidance: Preparing disc and holy priests for patch 4.0.1
Every Sunday at WoW Insider, you'll find Spiritual Guidance, a guide to healing as a discipline or holy priest. Priestess Dawn Moore will bring you the latest in news, discussion and advice for priests in the World of Warcraft while simultaneously battling her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen. This week, after contracting a team of gnomish engineers, Dawn has gone inside Fox's mind to plant an idea deep in his subconscious. The idea? Healing > DPS. Things are crazy for priests lately. New and dramatically different talent builds are appearing each week like cannonballs, mercilessly destroying everything from the previous week. This week, I was hoping to get everyone ready for the upcoming patch 4.0.1, but that's easier said than done, since build 12984 was just cannibalized by build 13033 on Thursday evening, before mutating into build 13066 on Saturday afternoon. All the same, I'm going to do my best to achieve my original goal James Stewart style, and if this all becomes irrelevant six ways before next Thursday, then it does -- and I hope you'll be patient with me while I reconstruct everything before the next storm. Cutting to the chase, I've got a talent by talent write-up to get everyone caught up on what's possibly going to go live in the next week (or three), some recommendations for talent trees, and details on glyphs.
Spiritual Guidance: Priest changes in build 12984 and Life Grip video
Every Sunday at WoW Insider, you'll find Spiritual Guidance, a guide to healing as a discipline or holy priest. Priestess Dawn Moore will bring you the latest in news, discussion and advice for priests in the World of Warcraft while simultaneously battling her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen. This week, Dawn has been training an infantry of super-perceptive aerial assault sheep to counter the Dark Shrine she spotted Fox warping into WoW Insider HQ earlier. The latest build for the Cataclysm beta was the big news yesterday, thanks to ol' B at MMO-Champion. The news hit sometime in the night while most priests were nestled all snug in their beds, but High Priest Matticus and I were up late drinking chocolate malts and playing wall ball, so we got a head start on the information ... which we promptly used to write about pets and shaman. Last week, I said I'd be finishing my Cataclysm roundup this weekend, but since there were quite a few changes in this latest beta build (which I'm guessing will affect the release of patch 4.0.1), I think it's better if we discuss the details of the changes before we try to summarize them. There was also a super-exciting (though entirely superficial) change with this patch as well ... Leap of Faith, also known as "Life Grip," got a brand new animation! Check out the video after the jump.
Dear Aunt TUAW: Burn baby burn
Dear Aunt TUAW, Is iTunes slowly encouraging the death of CDs? The burn icon at the bottom of the interface has disappeared as you can see in this screen shot. Concerned, Your nephew Sean
How disc swapping works in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for Xbox 360
If you haven't heard, the Xbox 360 version of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow will ship on two discs (Limited Edition pictured above). Here's a tip: You can save yourself some precious disc-swapping time if you install at least Disc One to your hard drive. Although Lords of Shadow's story is told in an episodic, linear fashion, you'll want to revisit earlier levels to find missing collectibles and beat any additional challenges. Without installing, you'll have to swap discs every time you want to revisit earlier levels. However, if you've installed the data, you won't ever have to swap discs again; you'll be able to continue playing with just Disc Two in the drive. It's an interesting way of overcoming the DVD format's size limitation -- a clever trick that could be employed by future multi-disc releases.
Spiritual Guidance: Back to the beta
In 2015, while testing out the latest Keepers of Time expansion, Blizzard Executive Fox Van Allen accidentally ganks his past self, undoing his own existence by causing himself to reroll paladin. Now, stuck in the year 2008, Fox must find a way to undo his mistake or risk losing everything. To do this, he tracks down the only person he knows: Dawn Moore. Unfortunately, she's never heard of him, WoW.com or Spiritual Guidance, and would much rather PvP than heal. I've come to think of the Cataclysm beta as a disease. Each week it spreads further among the general populace while simultaneously mutating into a newer, stronger version of its former self. As the resident healer, it's my duty to try to control and contain the situation by applying my latest analysis, but overall the beta is a very resistant infection and my normal approaches are continually being overtaken. Still, I stand vigilant and celebrate my small victories; I will not leave you ill-informed, my fellow priests! The sound of crickets fill the silence. Yes, well then ... Shall we get started?
Redbox rolling out $1.50 Blu-ray rentals at 13,000-plus kiosks, nationwide by fall
It's really no surprise that Redbox is going nationwide with its $1.50 Blu-ray rentals, at every step along the way of its Hollywood dealmaking, the company has pointed out its aim towards procuring a supply of high definition movies, and now the day is finally here. The high definition disc packing kiosks currently number 13,300, and the plan is to have Blu-ray in all 26,000 locations by the fall. While we spotted plenty of Blu-ray enabled locations with a San Francisco zip code, other areas in the Midwest and East Coast weren't so lucky. The site points out a few of the movies on offer, including Green Zone, Book of Eli and Bounty Hunter, but there's no way to check which movies are in stock at each box. Of course, at this price, we might be willing to take our chances until Redbox gets things straightened out, or starts offering an online competitor to Netflix.
128GB BDXL Blu-ray disc specification finalized... and fabulous!
Looks like the Blu-ray Disc Association has published the final specs for the monster BDXL disc, opening the way for manufacturers to start introducing the technology in their optical drives. Not too much here that we don't already know: aimed at institutions and folks who need to archive lots and lots of... stuff, BDXL discs are available in either triple layer 100GB (re-writable or write-once) or 128GB quad layer write-once flavors. Of course, with all these layers (or layuhs in Brooklyn) the laser in the Blu-ray drive you already own won't be able to do the trick, so start saving your change for a hardware upgrade once these things become commercially available. PR after the break.
Sony gears up for Blu-ray 3D mastering and production in Japan
Good news if you find yourself in Tokyo and just have to have a Blu-ray 3D disc made, as Sony DADC Japan and Sony PCL are equipped to produce them. They're open for business July 1, following the Panasonic facilities opened last month, check out an authoring suite at Sony PCL pictured above. So far the facilities have focused on Blu-ray 2D, DVD and UMD production, but since 3DTV has been on the air in Japan for quite some time, we're expecting there to be a quite a backlog of content to bring home on disc.
Jeff Mills' vinyl and CD hybrid disc unites young and old
Whether you like it old school or new, techno DJ/producer Jeff Mills has the disc for you. Manufactured by Optimal Media using tech it introduced a few years back, the disc features a 5-inch vinyl pressing on one side and a digital CD on the other. But for $35, it had better ship with an adapter to keep it centered on the turntable's spindle (unlike the picture above). If the vinyl/CD hybrid isn't kooky enough for your experimental tastes then why not consider sharing your talent on Optimal Media's scratch and sniff discs -- why should the stench of stale beer mixed with gastric acid be limited to your live shows?%Gallery-95516%
Europeans get tutorial DVD with Super Mario Galaxy 2
Nintendo really wants to make sure you know how to play Super Mario Galaxy 2, so in addition to the Cosmic Guide feature of the game (which will play for you past the hard parts, if you so choose), it'll also be releasing a bonus DVD in Europe with video tutorials of how to pull off some of the game's toughest tricks. We'll skip right over the irony of Nintendo releasing a bonus disc that can't be played on the Wii (since it's just a standard DVD), and tell you that we've contacted Nintendo of America to see if those of us in the States will have this same option. In the meantime, you might want to grab a copy of the first Galaxy and start practicing, because with all of this extra help that Nintendo is offering, SMG2 must be really, really hard.
Blu-ray Discs expand to 128GB under new BDXL spec
This probably isn't a response to the 3D onslaught or even "superbit" releases like the upcoming Avatar 2D disc, but just in case the standard 50GB Blu-ray discs were beginning to feel a bit -- how do you say... cramped? -- the Blu-ray Disc Association's rolling out a new BDXL format capable of holding up to 128GB (write-once) or 100GB (rewriteable). Before you get too excited, you should know that you'll need a new player to access these -- even a firmware update won't save the PS3 this time -- since they go up to three or four layers deep and will likely need a more powerful laser. While our home movies can be compressed just fine, corporations currently still using other mediums for archiving might appreciate the extra space, as well as the new IH-BD discs, designed with one 25GB read-only layer, and one 25GB rewritable layer on the same platter. If you're looking for a place to permanently back up that super high-res "amateur photography," take heart -- a consumer version is in the works, though it will first be aimed at markets where Blu-ray Disc recorders are popular, or available at all (read: maybe Japan, definitely not the US). No word when the new hardware will actually hit the market, but final specs are due "in the next few months." In the meantime, check out the full details after the break.
Spiritual Guidance: Discipline 101
Every Sunday Spiritual Guidance is liberated from the shadows by Dawn Moore, while Fox Van Allen is busy massaging the many tired tendrils of Alfonz, Dawn's loyal Shadowfiend. Dawn will reflect on the intricacies of priest healing for discipline and holy priests, while forwarding Fox's address to her gnomish allies. It was sometime in early 2009 that I was sitting in Dalaran, reading trade chat when someone asked "can disco priests heal?" Someone replied "lol, disc priests?" to which the original poster said, "yeah, disc. Can they?" I smiled when I saw the mistake. Then a few months later when I applied to a guild, I filled in my spec and class as Disc(o) Priest. In response this, one of my future guildmates told me he expected the 70s to be in full revival during my trial: I provided. I might have gone overboard since, but I was born for this. So here it is, Discipline 101. Just as was the case with the holy 101, this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to every nuance of the discipline tree. Instead it will cover the basics of how to get started with gearing and playing a discipline priest in a PvE environment, and hopefully get you asking more questions that I'll be able to answer in future articles. If you are a veteran discipline priest please provide the newbies with any tips or tricks of your own in the comments.
Spiritual Guidance: Holy? Disc? We're all priests
Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Dawn Moore reinvents what "smitelol" means to her shadowy cohort, Fox Van Allen, by busting down a door with penance lasers and raising holy hell to a Tarantino soundtrack. In the column Spiritual Guidance she offers advice to holy and discipline priests on how to wield the holy light, with style. When I first started raiding, it was in late Burning Crusade. At the time I fancied myself a PvPer, shying away from raids due to attunements, and the long gear climb I'd have to perform in order to catch up with friends doing tier 5 content. Despite this, sometime during tier 6, a friend of mine convinced me to come along to a raid. How he convinced the raid leader though, I can't imagine. I remember standing there in my resilience gear, surrounded by players in their various shiny gear sets, and asking myself over and over, "what am I doing here?" I sheepishly put my talents into the holy tree, and tried to arrange my bars to accommodate the spells I hadn't cast in months. I was out of my element. And then I saw Baba. She was beautiful.
Cranberry DiamonDisc: the $35 DVD that'll last longer than your ghost
We've seen outfit after outfit trumpet their long-lasting optical storage wares before, but Cranberry seems different. Rather than promising that whatever miracle they've just unearthed will be available "in the very near future," this company is selling its wonder product right now. The so-called DiamonDisc -- which is reportedly constructed from "diamond-hard stone" -- is designed to store precious memories for 1,000 years or more, and it's even built to withstand "temperatures extending up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit as well as UV rays that would destroy conventional DVD discs." Unfortunately, each disc holds just 4.7GB of information, and each one will run you $34.95 if purchased individually. Oh, and it's only playable on "most" regular DVD drives, so across-the-board compatibility seems less than likely. The more we think about it, the more sense that whole "just carve it into stone for future generations to see" mantra makes. Kudos, cavemen.
