Final Fantasy XIII gets two launch events in San Fran and a mess of new screens
Feb/100
We might normally start a post on a regional game launch event (or events, in this case) by questioning if you live in or around the geographic location in question (San Francisco), but with a game like Final Fantasy XIII, we’re not entirely sure if that kinda thing matters — we hear that FF fans can be a bit … dedicated. That said, Square Enix is holding two separate parties celebrating the March 9 release of its next in the Final Fantasy series.
Both are limited to Square Enix Members, with the launch party on the evening of March 8 limited even further to just 50 Bronze (and up) Members while the day event is limited to “200 Members and their guests.” In order to snag yourself an invite, you’ve gotta have one of those snazzy Square Enix Member IDs and enter the sweepstakes right here before February 23. After you hurriedly enter the contest, come right back here and check out the 20 new screenshots of FFXIII that we’ve dropped into a gallery below. We command you.
Final Fantasy XIII gets two launch events in San Fran and a mess of new screens originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dark matter "seen for first time"
Feb/100
After a nine year search detectors built 2000ft down in an old mine have registered two “hits” from what could be dark matter. If so then this will be…
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Dark matter "seen for first time"
Dwarf dinosaurs lived on "Neverland"-like island
Feb/100
Evidence of dwarf dinosaurs that never grew up has been found on an island in Transylvania. In something akin to Peter Pan’s Neverland the dinosaurs t…
What gives mass to matter ?
Feb/100
A new run on the Large Hadron Collider lasting until 2011 is hoping to solve the mystery of what gives mass to matter. The run will last a whole two y…
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What gives mass to matter ?
Hubble snaps Pluto changing colour
Feb/100
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken pictures showing Pluto changing colour in a new series of detailed photographs. The pictures are not as clear as …
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Hubble snaps Pluto changing colour
[MISC GEEKERY] Beware! Two More Firefox Malware Extensions Found, with Full-Blown Trojans This Time
Feb/100
Last July, we pointed out that the Google Reader Notifier extension had turned into crapware, the NoScript add-on was hijacking another extension, and even the Fast Dial extension was spamming you—so it was only a matter of time before an extension came bundled with a full-blown trojan.
Last time, it was as simple as spam links showing up in your browser, and tracking the URLs you were going to—really frustrating and evil, but not necessarily the end of the world, since it wasn’t going to take over your PC.
Yesterday, the Mozilla Add-ons blog reported that two extensions contained nasty trojans that hijacked your PC.
Two experimental add-ons, Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader and all versions of Master Filer were found to contain Trojan code aimed at Windows users. Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader contained Win32.LdPinch.gen, and Master Filer contained Win32.Bifrose.32.Bifrose Trojan. Both add-ons have been disabled on AMO.
If you’ve installed those extensions at any point, you should make sure to run a full virus scan on your PC.
Rant About Firefox Extension Security
Instead of ranting again, let me just quote what I said last time this happened…
What’s to stop yet another Firefox extension from turning into badware, sneaking in tracking codes, or stealing your personal information? It’s already happened with two of the most popular extensions… Somebody at Mozilla needs to do something about this.
The current process over at Mozilla is to run an automated virus scanner against the extensions, and as a result of this issue they have added more scanning tools to the process. This doesn’t solve the real issue, because any virus programmer with some skills can write a customized virus that doesn’t get picked up by any of the commercial virus scanning tools. Sure, some of the tools have heuristics that will probably detect rootkits and some of the nastier techniques, but it’s not going to prevent the issue entirely.
The real problem isn’t even a traditional virus, as far as I’m concerned. How difficult would it be for somebody to write a native Firefox extension that simply takes all your passwords and sends them to a rogue site? There’s no security layer to prevent add-ons from accessing your personal information stored in the browser, and no virus scanner is going to pick up a native Firefox extension since they are written in Javascript.
The Partial Solution
Nobody’s expecting Mozilla to scan through the source code of every single extension—that’s just prone to human error anyway. What would make sense, however, is to have some layers of security that prevent add-ons from accessing any of your personal information stored in the browser unless you specifically allow them to.
What Can You Do to Keep Safe?
You should always make sure to check the reviews on an extension before you install it—don’t just take somebody else’s word when they vouch for an extension… make sure to do your due diligence to check things out first. The same thing applies for any application, of course—if you’re installing applications without doing a virus scan, you’re leaving yourself wide open to having your PC hijacked.
Please read: Security Issue on AMO [Mozilla Add-ons Blog]
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[MISC GEEKERY] Beware! Two More Firefox Malware Extensions Found, with Full-Blown Trojans This Time
How To Install and Setup Windows Home Server
Feb/100
Have you ever wanted to be able to access all of your important files, music, photos, and more from all computers in your home from one central server? Today we’ll take a look at Windows Home Server and show you how to install and configure it with other machines on your network.
Windows Home Server (WHS) is meant for your family needs or for use in a home or small office. It allows you to centralize your important documents and digital media files on one box and provides easy access from other machines on your network. It has the ability to backup 10 computers and restore them if needed. It acts as a media server, backup solution, data recovery, document management, and allows you to access what you need from anywhere there is a web connection. Using a personalized website address, it lets you securely download and upload your data files.??????
You can buy server machines that already have WHS installed on it, or you can create your own (which is a lot more geeky and fun). The cool thing is that you can repurpose an older desktop to run Windows Home Server. A machine with a 1GHz Pentium III, 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB Hard Drive will work as the minimum requirements, but as you know minimum and recommended requirements are completely different things. You can check out the minimum and recommended system requirements from Microsoft’s WHS PDF guide (link below).
Start the Installation
Installation is very straight forward and easy to do. Boot from the WHS installation disc and kick off the install wizard.
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Select your region and keyboard settings…
Now choose the drive(s) that are in the machine. In this case there is only one, but if you have multiple drives, make sure they’re listed. If you want to add additional drives at a later time, it’s a simple process that we will cover in a future post.
Select New Installation…
Accept the Microsoft EULA…
Enter in your Windows Home Server Product Key…
Next it’s time to give your new Home Sever a name…
Again verify the hard drives that will be formatted…
It’s going to ask you again to make sure all the data will be deleted from the drives…
Finally it’s time to kick off the installation process. The amount of time it takes to complete will vary between systems. Count on the entire process taking a minimum of one hour and perhaps longer.
There is nothing needed from you while the install takes place. The system will reboot several times and you’ll see different screens displayed while the process completes…
Finish Installation
When you get to the following Welcome screen, you’re almost done.
Type in a password and password hint for the server.
Decide if you want to set up automatic updates or not…
Choose if you want to join the Customer Experience Improvement Program or not…
Choose if you want to turn on automatic Windows Error Reporting…
That’s all there is to it.? You don’t need to leave a keyboard, monitor, or mouse to the server. The only thing you needs to be connected is an Ethernet Cable running to your router (Wireless isn’t supported). You can administer the machine from any computer on your network after installing Windows Home Server Connector on the other machines.
Windows Home Server Console
To connect the computers on your network to the server, you’ll need to install the Windows Home Server Connector which is available as a separate download. You’ll need to install the WHS Connector to every computer on your network that you want to connect with the server. It connects your computers to WHS, allows for automatic nightly backups, monitors computer network health, and enables you to remotely administer the server from your computer.
If you don’t want to waste a CD to install it, you can use a free program like Virtual CloneDrive and mount the ISO and transfer the files to a a flash drive.
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Before installing the connector on XP you’ll be required to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and it’ll guide you through the process if needed.
When you start WHS Connector Setup it will look for the Home Server…
Then it’s just a matter of working through the rest of the wizard.
During the process you’ll need to enter in the password you created for the server.
Decide if you want your computer to wake up if it’s in sleep mode to back it up…
When configuration is complete, we’re shown our settings — wake up the computer for backup between 12:00 and 6:00 AM. Also in this instance, we’re getting a message that one of the drives in the PC won’t be backed up. This is because it’s formatted as a FAT 32 volume and it will only backup drives formatted as NTFS.
The Home Server Console icon sits in the system tray and you can control some of it’s settings by right-clicking the icon.
It will display your network’s health and show security warnings (this feature can be easily turned off). In this instance we can see one of the machines on the network has its firewall turned off.
When you open up WHS Console, you’re prompted to log into the server. There are a few other features here to like having the password remembered, password hint, and resetting the console.
Once you’re signed in, you can configure and administer the server and its different functions. We’ll be taking a closer look at the WHS Console in future articles.
If you need to make more detailed changes to your server, another good option is to use Remote Desktop, which is easier than hooking up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to it.
Download Updates
Now that installation is complete we need to add all the of the latest updates from Microsoft. Click on Start All Programs then Windows Updates. This will provide you with the latest server security updates and Power Pack updates as well. Power Packs are updates that add new features and provide fixes to known issues for Windows Home Server.
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Conclusion
This guide should get you started using your new Home Server. It comes in handy in a lot of cool ways if you want to centralize your digital entertainment and access it from any machine running XP or above. Or if you have a home or small office and want to be able to access your work from anywhere there is a web connection. There are several good reasons to have your own server at home, if you’re a power user. Over the next year we will be bringing you more detailed tutorials on how to set up and use your Home Server. If you happen to have an extra desktop you’re not using and can dedicate as a server, they offer a free 30 Day trial so you can try it out for yourself. If you like it, you can purchase a full license and I have seen it around the web for around $99 or a little cheaper depending on where you look.?
Download Windows Home Server 30 Day Trial
Download Windows Home Server Connector Software CD
Windows Home Server Getting Started Guide (PDF)
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How To Install and Setup Windows Home Server
Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text Editor
Jan/100
Are you frustrated with webpage text areas that are limited in size and display/use small text? Now you can make entering text much more pleasant (and easier on your eyes) with the It’s All Text! extension for Firefox.
Editor Note: At the time of this post, It’s All Text! hasn’t yet been updated for Firefox 3.6
Before
For our example we chose to use the comment text area for a How-To Geek article. At the moment whatever could be typed is limited (in size, etc.) to the text area itself.
After
As soon as you have installed the extension you will need to go into the options first where you can browse for and select your favorite text editor. Then it is a matter of making any small changes or modifications that you desire such as preferred “Character Set”, “Edit Button” location, or creating a “Hotkey Combination”.
After selecting Editra for our example, we did change the “Edit Button” location and the “Duration of button fade” options.
Now back to the original comment text area. As you can see an “Edit Button” is now visible with a drop-down menu (access with a right click). Clicking directly on the “Edit Button” will open up the text editor that you chose in the options.
You may also use/access the “Right-Click Menu” in the text area itself. Notice that the “Edit Button” is still visible at the moment even though the “Right-Click Menu” is still being accessed. In our test we preferred the “Edit Button” for ease of use…
Once your favorite text editor has been opened and you have finished typing, how do you get the text into the comment area? Simply click on the appropriate “Save Button” for your text editor to transfer the text.
The text will appear in the comment area with a temporary yellow background color (fades very quickly) to signal a successful transfer.
Afterwards you can close your text editor and click the appropriate “Submit Button” to finish up.
Conclusion
If you have felt frustrated with the limited area and smaller text size of comment areas at different websites, then the It’s All Text! extension will be a pleasant change and make commenting and entering text much easier on your eyes.
Links
Download the It’s All Text! extension (Mozilla Add-ons)
Download the It’s All Text! extension (Extension Homepage)
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Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text Editor
[MINI HOW-TO] Make Mouse Navigation Faster in Windows
Jan/100
You might not be a Keyboard Ninja, but would like to be able to navigate through Windows with the mouse more quickly. You can make mouse navigation faster by increasing the pointer speed and using the “Snap To” option? available in XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
To activate these features click on Start then Control Panel and click on the Mouse icon.
![sshot-2010-01-10-[00-57-07]](http://semibeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/33ff6d0848005707.png.png "sshot-2010-01-10-[00-57-07]")
In the Mouse Properties window click on the Pointer Options tab. Now increase the pointer speed and check the box next to Enhance pointer precision…this seems to come in really handy with touch pads on laptops. Under “Snap To” check the box next to Automatically move pointer to the default button in a dialog box.
![sshot-2010-01-10-[00-38-46]](http://semibeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/c5a843fd48003846.png.png "sshot-2010-01-10-[00-38-46]")
Just keep in mind that with these settings the pointer will move faster on the screen, and will go directly to the default button in a dialog box. If you’re click happy, you might end up clicking “Yes” instead of “No” in some situations. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do, you’ll be flying through Windows a lot faster. This is one of the first things I setup when using a new computer.
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[MINI HOW-TO] Make Mouse Navigation Faster in Windows
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Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition not coming to North America
Mar/100
Uh, remember how we kind of got your hopes up with the promise of Batman in 3D earlier today? Well, we hope you North American readers didn’t rush to your local game emporium to pre-order the “Game of the Year” edition, as you probably would have gotten laughed at. Warner Bros. confirmed to Joystiq that Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition — with the 3D feature — is only coming to Europe, Asia and Australia.
We also learned that, no matter what territory you live in, 3D is not a feature that’s being added to existing copies of the game. If you want all three dimensions, you’re going to have to pony up for the GOTY edition. This may seem tough now, but if you, Charlie Bucket-style, convince yourself that it’s better just by itself (the third dimension standing in for golden Wonka ticket here, of course) we’re sure you’ll pull through.
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Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition not coming to North America