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Solar flares set to wreak havoc on GPS signals
The sun's activity isn't usually a hot topic around these parts, but when it threatens to derail satellite navigation services around the world, it must surely take center stage. UK researchers have corroborated Cornell's 2006 warning that our solar system's main life-giver is about to wake up and head toward a new solar maximum -- a period of elevated surface activity and radiation. It is precisely that radiation, which can be perceived in the form of solar flares, that worries people with respect to GPS signaling, as its effects on the Earth's ionosphere are likely to cause delays in data transmission from satellites to receivers and thereby result in triangulation errors. Still, it's more likely to be "troublesome than dangerous," but inaccuracies of around 10 meters and signal blackouts that could last for hours are being forecast in the absence of any intervening steps being taken. So yes, you now have another reason not to trust your GPS too much. [Thanks, Mike]
Armory updates with model viewer, character and calendar feeds
Blizzard has added some nice new features to the World of Warcraft Armory, including a few players have been asking for in the past. The most exciting change is something that doesn't seem to be working quite correctly yet -- they're including a Flash-based model viewer for characters that will let you see what a toon looks like without ever logging into the game. So says their updates page, but as of this writing, the whole system is going up and down, and we couldn't get it to work correctly on any of our PCs. Should be done soon, though. Other updates include character activity feeds -- there are now RSS buttons all over your profile that will let you track achievements, items, and other specific character information via RSS. And Blizzard has also built in calendar feeds that will let you output guild and player calendars to Outlook, Google Calendar, or other calendar applications. That means your out-of-game calendars will update automatically if your raidleader happens to change up the raiding schedule. And finally, character profiles have been redesigned and streamlined -- they look a little different with all of these new features. The date on all of these changes actually says January 1, 2010, so Blizzard may have implemented them a little early, but sooner or later we'll see these welcome changes all active on the Armory. Thanks to everyone who sent this in! Update: The Armory is offline for maintenance now. These changes were seen in action, so they're real, but as we say above, they're officially dated for January 1st. So they may not be in effect just yet.
Fixing raiding lag
There is quite a thread going around with some ideas about how to fix raiding lag. Lag, like many cross-computer issues, is a pretty complicated thing -- there's all kinds of reasons it could be happening, from errors on your computer to errors on Blizzard's end, and all the little connections and switches in between. A certain amount of lag is unavoidable. But there are certainly some things you can do to make sure the link between your client and Blizzard's server is working at its best. This thread, which started on the EJ forums and then moved on to Livejournal, has some good tips in it, including turning off most combat logs like Recount and even Blizzard's official "Everything" log -- having to write down everything happening in game does cost some computer time as you play. Blocking addon "spam" is another way to keep things simple and clear -- while lots of useful addons help you share information between raid members, sending that info back and forth can cause problems when you're down to milliseconds of lag. The final suggestion is to run a third-party program that's supposed to keep your latency high, but I would be leery of doing that -- a better solution if you continue to have high latency constantly, even after making the changes above, would be to go to Blizzard (and/or your Internet Service Provider, or ISP) with your issues. They have a good guide to smoothing out your connection, and many times the problem can be with your router or firewall, which is usually a quick fix.
Sony: PS3 disc drive errors not a firmware issue
The trouble started with Uncharted and has now reportedly grown to encompass all manner of media fed into the PlayStation 3 disc drive. The comments section of PlayStiaton Blog's Firmware 3.01 announcement has been overwhelmed by user reports of disc drive errors since Firmware 3.00 and 3.01 were released; most commonly, read errors reportedly occur when running Blu-ray games or movies, but in some alleged cases plain old DVDs are not working either.Eurogamer has reached Sony for comment, and the console manufacturer has disavowed responsibility for the apparent drive failure, declaring it "not an issue with the firmware." In other words, corresponding repair costs are currently placed squarely on the shoulders of the affected consumers.We will continue to follow this story as it updates. Stay tuned.
Delving into the iPhone's DCIM folder
Today, Dave Caolo discovered what happens when your iPhone camera rolls past picture number 99999 (or so). As he and other Apple users have found, a picture count that goes too high can lead to unforseen errors. Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Or a camera roll that doesn't acknowledge new photos. Snapped images are stored on your iPhone in your home folder. As user "mobile," that home folder is /var/mobile and the folder that stores your iTunes library, your voice memos, and your photos is /var/mobile/Media. Inside that media folder is a subfolder named DCIM. Read on for more details.
Blizzard working to fix graphics issues on Macs
Reader Catsby sent along news of an issue that's apparently plaguing Mac users. Blizzard has confirmed that people using Macs with Nvidia 7300GT and 7600GT graphics cards in them (you can see what you've got by going to the Apple, "About this Mac," and then hitting more info) are having issues with framerates, especially around water and during boss fights (which is exactly when you want the graphics to mess up, right?) Unfortunately, there's no fix yet -- Blizzard says the issue is known and reproducible, and they're working to put a fix in "the next patch" (originally they say it'll be in a PTR patch 3.2.2 build, but a hint at the end of the thread suggests we may see it even sooner than that). So if your Mac has one of those graphics cards installed and you're having this issue, just sit tight -- Blizzard is working as fast as they can to get a fix out to you.
Champions Online experiences open beta troubles
For many people, today was supposed to be a magical day filled with ponies and superheroes. But what should have been a wonderfully magical experience has left many with a bad taste in their mouth and a patcher that constantly disconnects. We, honestly, blame Foxbat for this. He once tried to steal the Empire State Building, you know.In all seriousness, many users have been reporting that the official Champions Online patcher has been both downloading slowly and disconnecting from the server after timing out, leading to many people becoming furious over not being able to log in. FilePlanet users have also been affected by this as well, even after pre-loading the Champions Online client to be ready for this day.
NetEase to buy all new servers for Chinese WoW
Yes, as you may have noticed in the update on our post the other day, it's confirmed: NetEase will be taking over operating the World of Warcraft in China as of June -- their new homebase over there can be found at wow.163.com. And while we originally reported that The9 would be turning over their software, hardware, and staff to run the game, apparently that's not completely true. IDG News Service is reporting that NetEase will be setting up their own network of servers to run the game. That's a big undertaking -- it likely means that things will be bumpy for the first few days of the transition (though Blizzard is clearly confident that NetEase can handle it, having run a few other games in the market before). And it also means that some of the supercomputers we've reported on before that are owned by The9 will go to... well, we're not sure what.Not that there aren't plenty of things to use them for -- despite their stock dropping on news of the WoW license loss, The9 also runs a number of other games over there, including Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online, and a few more popular Eastern MMOs (not to mention that EA has a nice stake in them). And at the very least, there's got to be a market for supercomputers with other companies and educational institutions, right? It's unlikely that all that hardware will just sit dark.But more importantly, it'll be interesting to see how NetEase handles the transition -- we've had a few inventory and other issues here on the Western side of the world, but we've never had a major loss of character information (cue all of the Blizzard engineers knocking on wood). We're sure there are countless backups in place, but if something goes majorly wrong in the transition between hosts, it could be devastating for the WoW audience in China.
Tech support open today
In the aftermath of one of the biggest patches WoW has ever seen, many realms are still experiencing some technical issues. Talents and items are going missing, world and instance servers are down, and I've heard at least one report of trash mobs in Naxxramas suddenly breaking out in song. Okay, I might have made that one up. The point still stands: problems exist in the realms right now. Blizzard knows this too, and they've decided to keep their technical support department open today until 7 PM Pacific time (10 PM Eastern). Usually they're only open on weekdays. Support will be available over the phone, through email, and in the tech support forums, as usual. Eyonix has posted a list of the methods to contact tech support, so check it out if you're having problems.
Minor bugs to appear in patch 3.0.8
Eyonix posted a note about a few minor bugs that will appear when patch 3.0.8 goes live: Ritual of Summoning can only be used once every two minutes. Human females have animation errors when shooting a ranged weapon or using two-handed weapons. Remember that with 3.0.8 Ritual of Summoning will be changed to create a summoning stone. The Warlock will cast Ritual of Summoning, which will drop the stone, which can then be used to summon other party/raid members. We are assuming that it's the actual casting of the spell to summon the stone that can only be used once every two minutes, and not the actual summoning of people.We'll get some video of the animation errors up on WoW Insider as soon as we can, I'm sure there's some potentially funny stuff there.And don't bother asking if 3.0.8 is coming tomorrow. While we think it's definitely possible, god only knows what Blizzard will actually do. I give it a 80/20 chance that it drops tomorrow morning.
Maintenance tomorrow - no patch expected
The opening announcement on the game is currently letting us know that realms will be down for maintenance tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. While the realms are going to be down, we are not expecting patch 3.0.2 to drop.Earlier last week it was announced that 3.0.2 would come when season 4 ended. Season 4 was announced to end on October 14th, and thus we are all expecting patch 3.0.2 to come on October 14th.However if for some reason it starts raining cats and dogs and the patch does drop, we'll let you know. But I wouldn't count on it.
An iPhone developer's story
If you're curious about developing for the iPhone, but haven't made the plunge yet, you might want to read Rogue Amoeba programmer Mike Ash's 22-step tale of developing NetAwake, which is available in the App Store. It's a fascinating story, with a lot of waiting, a lot of rejection, and a lot of "screwing about in Xcode." "The errors are essentially worthless. I believe I only ever saw Xcode generate one error, over and over and over again, as it encountered a whole bunch of different problems," he wrote. The app took a month to approve, once it was submitted. Ash says that the people he corresponded with at Apple were "nice about responding to my query" but "spending a month in limbo for a single bug is a very poor tradeoff."
Is your Samsung Instinct acting up?
At first, we figured our Instinct here at Engadget HQ had just woken up on the wrong side of the bed, but we're now receiving a flood of tips from individuals nationwide having the same issues. Put simply, it seems that certain data services are thoroughly borked, with our Weather app being unable to refresh for at least the past 18 hours (some are reporting even longer). Additionally, we're hearing that folks are having to manually refresh their email and deal with all sorts of error messages when attempting to use any of the data services. So, what gives? Are you having data-related issues with your Instinct? C'mon Sprint, this is your best-selling EV-DO device of all time -- it'd be nice to have it working for the weekend. Oh, and great job showing all those angered iPhone 3G users that your network doesn't have issues, too.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Breakfast Topic: Stupid mistakes
Last night in Heroic Magister's Terrace, I accidentally ninjaed a Cudgel of Consecration. I'm not sure what was going through my head -- I'm currently a Holy priest, and clearly need it much less than the Prot pally tank I was grouped with. Somehow I'd gotten under the impression that it was a healing item, or something. I was, understandably, promptly called a noob and yelled at by several members of the group, and there are a couple hunters out there who may well never group with me again. I profusely apologized to the tank, and we both opened tickets and sat around in the instance waiting for them to get answered. (The response, un-helpfully enough, was "your ticket has been escalated; this may take several days to be resolved.") I gave him the mats for a Major Spellpower enchant, to put on the Cudgel once he gets it, to help make up for my stupidity. We parted on pretty good terms; we're hopeful that the GMs will sort this out. But picking up that item may well have been the biggest "d'oh" moment I've had in the game thus far. Either that, or accidentally taking a point in Throwing Weapon Specialization one time while respeccing my rogue. What's the most boneheaded mistake you've made in your WoW career?
Known bugs in patch 2.4.1, 2.4.2 on the way
Patch 2.4.1 was rushed out the week after 2.4 hit, to fix some game-breaking errors, and we already know 2.4.2 is in the works; the hard-working Mac CM Tigerclaw, for instance, has mentioned that certain bugs are fixed in 2.4.2. It's a good thing they have another patch on the way, because 2.4.1 has its share of bugs. Hortus has posted a list of about 150 known bugs in the bug reports forum. Here are a few of my favorites: "The /clap emote is not emitting sound if performed more than once." This is a feature, not a bug. "Cloak of Shadows do not remove the curse Shrink." Ha! Where's your CloS now? You're little! "Whirlwind has a new sound." This is a bug? Is it a bad new sound? "The death emote voice-over for Kael'thas Sunstrider in the Magister's Terrace continues after he has already died." You just can't kill this one. Kill him in the Eye, and he comes back in MrT. Kill him in MrT, and he still keeps talking! Maybe we have to burn him. "Abilities/trinkets that trigger after killing an opponent that gives experience or honor are being activated after killing mobs during bombing quests" True. I've gotten a heck of a lot of mana from my Power Infused Mushroom, not that it makes much of a difference. "Using a Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit does not initiate a global item cooldown." Biscuit spam! For more exciting errors, visit Hortus's post.
Tournament Test Realm: The good, the bad, and the bovine
The Arena Tournament Test Realm (TTR) has been live for a few days now. It seems there have been some hiccups, which is to be expected during a stress test. Hortus has popped up in a few instances on the TTR forum to address some of the major concerns that players have brought up. Lag is far and away the biggest issue on the TTR. Hortus indicated that one of the main functions of the TTR is measuring the best way to handle the massive number of contenders on the official tournament server. Blizzard currently has no plans for opening up any new TTRs to relive the stress. Logging into the server, I find the term "laggy" to be an understatement. Movement is dizzying, and players crowd around.
Extended maintenance and you
So yes, as you may have heard, maintenance is extended today, and the official forums are abuzz with what you might expect: a few people complaining that their playtime is ruined, with most people saying that a few hours of maintenance every two weeks shouldn't be that much of an ordeal.Personally, I don't have a problem with longer maintenance today, as long as it fixes the stability problems we seem to have been having all weekend. Multiple realms and instance servers have been up and down over the past few days (maybe Blizzard wasn't really ready for 10 million), and so if the maintenance makes sure that we can have a full Kara run without a server crash tonight, it's all good.That's the real issue here-- players want to see maintenance that's worth it. I don't think any of us have a problem with taking Tuesday mornings off, as long as when we log on again, things are better than they were before.
Armory delays abundant, fix expected
What's up with the Armory lately? I've always had a problem getting in there (the pages load super slowly, although I'm pretty sure that's just all the database pinging they're doing), but lately, players have been reporting lots of character progress missing from The Armory. I spent all day yesterday on my Hunter ploughing through Hellfire Peninsula's big gear giveaway, and none of that new gear shows up on my profile. One of WoW Insider's writers hasn't even seen one of her alts on the Armory-- that's 40+ levels worth of missing info.To be fair, the Armory is more or less an extra service, and Blizzard knows there are problems and is supposed to be working to fix them, so there's not that much to complain about, really. Unsubstantiated rumors being passed around say Blizz is working on updating the code to allow level 80 characters (for the expansion), but the fact is that we don't know what's going on-- they could be adding in even more features that we don't know about (like, say, what the Figureprints folks get, or a nifty little API system). But, as a WoW Insider writer told me, at least there always is one way to see what's up with any character in the game: make an alt, run out to where they are, and /inspect away.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!Update: Looks like we lit a fire under somebody over there-- the Armory is redirecting to a maintenance page at the moment.
iPhone Tales of Woe: Booting to Single User
A short while back, Digg hosted a link to this crashed iPhone showing single user mode. In that case, the error message stated that the iPhone couldn't "exec /bin/sh for single user: No such file or directory." Now that the iPhone has been thoroughly hacked, this error has evolved somewhat. Last night, TUAW friend DrunkDwarf crashed his iPhone but since he'd actually installed a copy of /bin/sh his error was somewhat different. Instead of complaining that it couldn't find /bin/sh, his iPhone simply... ran it. Not that this was much better news. Without a keyboard and no way to attach one, DrunkDwarf was a bit out of luck. He ended up having to do a restore.
Bugs show a little emotion
Sorandra over on Livejournal has an interesting bug happening when she runs WoW in Vista-- her female draenei is showing a different skin in different situations. Out of water, she's got the face you see up on the left. But in water, a different face appears. It looks like her toon just really hates water.Of course it's just a texture error (a known one, at that), most likely fixed by updating her video drivers. But it does kind of make you wonder a little bit why Blizzard doesn't bother implementing something like this for real, and making characters actually show facial animations. Sure, the mouths move, but we can't actually frown when we /frown or smile when we /smile. If it's this easy to change the face textures, it seems like it would be just as easy to show displeasure for real.The only obstacle might be that they'd have to design different textures for each gender and race, which would take a bit of time (time probably best spent on the actual patches and expansions). Still, a little more emotion would be fun to have. If Blizzard ever gets around to doing a graphics overhaul (much like Dark Age of Camelot has done with one of their expansions), hopefully something like this will be on the list.