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Qualcomm could join BlackBerry founders in bid for beleaguered phone maker
As if the rumor mill wasn't crowded enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that mobile chipmaker Qualcomm could be joining RIM founders Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin in a bid to buy BlackBerry. Speculation of Qualcomm's involvement would be part of a bigger deal between RIM's founders and Cerberus Capital Management LP, that comes just days before the deadline for bids, set for Monday. The ever-informative sources close to the matter point out that even should the group create a partnership, they may not make a bid. Interest in the company has been attributed to every one from former Apple CEO John Sculley, to tech giants like Google, Intel and Samsung. However, the only real bid known to be on the table thus far is the $4.7 billion offer Fairfax Financial put forth in late September. Qualcomm's massive presence in the mobile space makes for an interesting twist, but we should know more on Monday when BlackBerry's board will consider whatever offers it actually receives.
EVE Evolved: Fitting Heavy Assault Cruisers in Odyssey 1.1
The Odyssey 1.1 patch landed this week in EVE Online, introducing several highly requested PvP tweaks and overhauling all of the Command Ships and Heavy Assault Ships. Active shield boosters, armour repairers and medium-sized long range turrets all received sizable buffs, but it's the newly updated Heavy Assault Cruisers that really took my interest. They've historically been used as highly mobile damage-dealers for fleet warfare, but now each has been targeted at a specific combat niche. The Deimos is a brawler for small-scale gang warfare, the Ishtar is a heavy drone platform, the Cerberus turns frigates into molten poop, and the Eagle is... well, nobody can really figure out what to do with the Eagle yet. All of the HACs have been augmented with a new role bonus that reduces the signature radius penalty of activating a microwarpdrive by 50%. This may seem pretty weak, but in practice it makes the ships a lot more viable in PvP. Activating your microwarpdrive will normally increase your signature radius size by 500%, making you a hell of a lot easier to hit and increasing the damage you take from missiles. The speed boost will counteract this to some degree, but it takes a while to reach that speed, and you're very vulnerable in the interim. Reducing this to only 250% means you get all the defensive benefit of the speed increase without much of the vulnerability. In most cases, you'll actually take less damage with the microwarpdrive on than off. In this week's EVE Evolved, I put together PvP setups for the at the newly revamped Deimos, Ishtar, Cerberus, and Eagle Heavy Assault Cruisers.
EVE Evolved: Odyssey 1.1 and PvP balance
It's been just under three months since EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion went live, bringing in a new hacking minigame and significantly buffing the underused tier 1 and tier 2 battleships. With a complete rebalancing all of the tech 1 sub-capital ships now complete, CCP has turned its attention to some of the oldest tech 2 ships in the game: Heavy Assault Ships and Command Ships. Developers have been testing out changes to these ships on the test server and hitting up players for feedback since Odyssey went live, and the results are finally ready to deploy. Odyssey 1.1 will go live in two days time on September 3rd and contains some pretty big changes that are sure to shake up the PvP landscape. Medium-sized long-range weapons have been buffed beyond all recognition, and a buff to active tanking may soon make it viable in PvP. Heavy Assault Ships and Command Ships have been beefed up, the Dominix is getting a small nerf following its absolute dominance in the Alliance Tournament, and the Nosferatu energy vampire module may be about to make a return to PvP setups. In this week's EVE Evolved, I analyse the upcoming Odyssey 1.1 patch and what the new ship balance changes mean for the average player.
Mass Effect Normandy SR2 Cerberus Variant model up for pre-order
The problem with that Normandy SR2 model you pre-ordered for your cube back in May is that it doesn't have anything to pick a fight with. Enter the newly announced Cerberus variant, available for 35 clams, and expected to arrive in this galaxy sometime in November. Pew-pew sounds not included.
New Mass Effect 2 DLC armor, shotgun available tomorrow
A post on the Bioware forums has revealed that two new bits of DLC will be coming to Mass Effect 2's Cerberus Network tomorrow, February 9. Players will be able to download both a new set of armor and a new shotgun for free via the game's DLC pipe. The Cerberus Armor ups heavy weapon ammo capacity, shields, and health by 10 percent each, and the M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun is "a longer-range shotgun with armor-piercing loads" that "also violates several intergalactic weapons treaties." But those "treaties" were never ratified by the Citadel Council anyway, so who cares? The new DLC should be released by 2pm ET, so you can start ganking with the new space shotty then. [Thanks, Michael]
Pirates of the Caribbean Online brings boatloads of fun for Father's Day
Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online has created a whole raft of new content for fans of high seas adventure, beginning with the addition of special Ghost Ships that haunt Isla Cangrejos and Cutthroat Island. These ships -- Shadow Crow, Cerberus, and Blood Scourge -- are crewed by the terrifying undead, and they're no easy pickings, but the rewards for taking them on will be well worth the risk.Additionally, PotCO is bringing a Father's Day event to its players, asking you to find Captain Teague, reputedly Jack Sparrow's father. Under what circumstances could such a notorious pirate disappear? That's up to you to find out.
Warcrafter does the heavy math on your character's stats
Amanna is the latest blogger to bring up Warcrafter, a nifty little online application that is basically the Armory on speed. It'll not only pull up your character, your gear, and your talents, but it'll use all of that information to calculate everything you'd ever want to know about your stats, including DPS, crit percentage, spellpower, and even where all of those things come from. It'll even go into your spells, and calculate the average heal or average damage of your most-used spells and abilities. Warcrafter tells you everything it can calculate about your character, directly from the numbers pulled out of the Armory. Fascinating to see.There is also a sandbox page, which is everything an aspiring theorycrafter would ever need to make up the character of their dreams. Punch in a class, race, and gear, and then go to town shifting around buffs, weapons, talents, and anything else you'd want to check. Cerberus is an attentive creator, too-- if there's a calculation off or a piece of gear missing, he seems more than happy to add it in. I only hope that we don't crush the site with our exposure.The sandbox page mentions something about "locking" the character, and it would be cool to have a quick permalink setup for created characters (we could have someone show off all the buffs/gear needed to get the Ghost Wolf taming cast time down, or show off the highest possible spellpower available in the game so far). But other than that, Warcrafter is a great piece of web-based software. Very cool way to inspect every single aspect of your character out of game.
Rayservers Cerberus laptop touts rugged frame, thick security
While there's already a fair amount of competition in the rugged laptop realm, Rayservers is taking its uber-secure approach and blending it with military-grade toughness for its Cerberus MIL-STD-810F Crypto Toughbook. Aside from borrowing the "100-percent encrypted hard drives and privacy protected internet access" from its other models, this "Secure-Out-of-the-Box" machine also touts a sealed plastic keyboard, 80GB shock-mounted removable hard drive, magnesium alloy case (with handle), and moisture / dust resistance to boot. If these amenities sound familiar, it's because the actual hardware is a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30, but the AES 256 Encrypted Linux is all Rayservers, and you'll also find Intel's 1.66GHz L2400 processor, GMA 950 graphics set, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 13.3-inch XGA touchscreen, DVD burner, gigabit Ethernet, PCMCIA, 802.11a/b/g, FireWire, 56k modem, and a trio of USB 2.0 ports on the machine. Of course, the 8.2-pound beast demands a hefty premium for all this literal and theoretical security, as it'll reportedly cost you about $10,000 (saywha?) to weather a data-jacking invasion and mountainside fall simultaneously.
