Lai Alexander

Due to all the problems with firmware 2.40, Sony withdrew the update. Sony said themselves that there had been problems with some PS3 systems, caused by the update.

Version 2.41 of the firmware is now out, it has been downloadable since July 8. This update featured various fixes for problems caused by version 2.40. Here are the changes:

• Various fixes for issues caused by update 2.40.
• Changed platinum trophy icon.
• New page added to profile of users under [Players Met] which shows the last game played with that user.

Everything should work smoothly for everyone. I was so fortunate that nothing wrong happened with 2.40. I got the XMB to work exactly as it was supposed to. I still like the new features a lot, and one of my favorites is still the clock. Today, I used the ability to send messages and friend requests while playing games, and that sure is useful. It was so annoying when you had to quit the game to read a message.

According to Wikipedia, Sony UK have said this about 2.41:

• With this update, we have fixed the problem that has prevented a limited number of PS3 systems from activating properly after updating to version 2.40, which was caused by certain system administrative data being contained in the HDD.
• For those users who have updated to version 2.40 and have experienced the problem that the PS3 Home Menu (XMB) is not appearing, or no images are displaying on the screen, please contact Customer Service.
• We have confirmed that for those users who have successfully updated to version 2.40 and are able to activate the PS3 system, this problem will not occur on your PS3

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There have been numerous reports of PS3 system not working the way they should after installing the new update. That is a shame, considering that this was a great update. I have updated my system, and I haven’t had any problems, fortunately. Firmware 2.40 included ingame XMB, ingame messaging, trophies and more. Read more about the new features at molybda.com.

Joystiq reports that PS3 systems have been affected. People are not able to boot up their system properly. The only known solution is to take out the hard drive, format it, and then insert it. This should solve the problem, but the drawbacks are that you will lose all your save games, downloads and so on.

In this thread from the PlayStation message boards, people tell about their broken systems. Apparently the problems affects all PS3 versions. In response to the problems, Sony has taken the update down temporarily. They are working to find out what the problem is, and their are trying to find a solution. In the meantime, you will not be able to update to 2.40.

This is another good reason to back up your saved games and other files regularly.

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That’s right. Blizzard announced that they are working on Diablo III earlier today. I’m pretty psyched. Gamer.no reports that the crowd went wild at the World Wide Invitational when Blizzard brought the news. Recently, I actually got a hold of both Diablo and Diablo II and the expansion packs. Unfortunately I haven’t played it that much yet, mostly because of work and of course CoD4. I do remember playing the Diablo games when they were released, but because of the fact that I was nine and twelve years old when they were released, I didn’t really play them that much. I enjoy both games far more now.

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You might have read my post, Prime numbers and Ruby, and wondered why the program used a huge amount of time, and even after 25 hours of computing, the program did not have an answer. The code of the program is really not that advanced, but when the input number is a big prime number, the number of calculations needed is huge.

I do want to run the program again, with the same number. I have also tried to make a similar program in C++, but unfortunately, that version of the program won’t even accept the input number to be that big. Anyway, I thought if I should run it again, I might want to do some thinking and try to figure out how much time my computer will use, and then I need the amount of FLOPS the computer is capable of. My CPU is a Intel Celeron at 1.60 GHz. I have tried to figure out how many FLOPS I can expect, but I haven’t found out anything clever. If anyone know how to calculate this, I would be grateful.

Anyway, with the number I typed in, I have found out that I need roughly 68 630 000 000 000 (could be wrong) floating point operations to be able to say that the number I wanted to check is a prime number. The CPUs in the PlayStation 3 runs at 218 GFLOPS (218 000 000 000 FLOPS), which would mean that the PS3 would need approximately 315 seconds, which is 5 minutes and 15 seconds. That’s right. And that is for the PS3, which is much faster than my computer! The PS3 is actually so powerful that the University of Bergen have bought five of them to use them in education and to to heavy calculations. They connected the five PS3s together, to make use of the power and have one machine capable of one teraFLOPS. Their last supercomputer was capable of 0.7 teraFLOPS.

Basically, I have found out that my computer will use an awful lot of time to finish the calculations, but I will do it. I’m actually pretty excited to find out how much time is needed.

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I’m still a beginner at programming. I have not really decided if I want to learn ruby or c++, but for now I think c++ is more versatile. Anyway, I have made a little program that solves quadratic equations, with both real and complex solutions.

The quadratic formula itself can be found in my post Solve quadratic equations with php. The difference between the solving in these two cases, is that the php-solver do not solve the equation if the solution is complex.

Until I figure out a smart way to display nice looking code in my posts, the code can be found here. If you are familiar with c++, you should understand quite easy. I don’t think it is to difficult if you are familiar with another programming language, or programming in general either.

Download the program. Don’t worry about it being and .exe-file, even though they potentially are dangerous. This one is perfectly safe to download and use. Show care when downloading from the Internet.

I use Code Blocks when programming in c++, both for editing and compiling.

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I have recently started to learn how to program with Ruby. I am somewhat familiar with programming already, but by noe means an expert. I really do want to learn programming, so I started off with Ruby. One of my first programs is a program that checks if a number is a prime number. I have made the program in MATLAB earlier, so I just ported it, if one can say that.

Here you see the program in action. My computer have spent the last few hours trying to figure out if it is a prime or not. Yes, I know it is a prime, and therefore the program needs to do a lot more computing. After all, this is actually a quite big number. Even though it is a small program, with just 25 lines of code or so, it uses over 95 % of my CPU. Because of that, my computer is running a bit slow at the moment. Anyway, I will let the computer finish the calculations. I do wonder how much time it will need though.

I will keep you updated, and write a new post when the program gives me the answer. I will give you the code to, if anyone should be interested.

Update: The program have spent the last 22 hours trying to figure out if the number is a prime or not. I’m really beginning to wonder how much time is needed.

Update II: After about 25 hours, I logged in at my computer, and guess what? For some reason, the computer had decided to reboot. Not too happy about that. I actually suspect that the computer got overheated. Anyway, I will try again, but I might try on another computer. After all, the program uses a lot of resources, so I can’t really use the computer while running the program.

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Ever wanted to solve quadratic equations with php? When I started to learn php, I wanted to see if I could make a script that solved quadratic equations. In a course I participated in, we made a MATLAB-script that did just that. A quadratic equation is on the form aX²+bX+c=0, and the solutions can be found with the quadratic formula:

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Researchers have recently found that in one-on-one sports, like wrestling, the competitors with red suits win more often. Robert Barton and Russel Hill studied boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling during the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. The contestants wore either red or blue, and those who wore red won more fights. What is more interesting, is that this actually applies to online first person shooters as well.

Danish scientists have studied 1 347 matches in Unreal Tournament 2004 where players are on either red or blue team. Guess what? The red team wins more often. The truth is that the red team won 55 percent of the matches. Mihai Moldovan of the University of Copenhagen believes that the reason is that red acts as a psychological distractor for men.

While this is really an interesting analysis, the notion of red team versus blue team has been ingrained in the Unreal Tournament series for years. We don’t anticipate any immediate changes to team colors.
Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games

Apparently red players have an advantage in most activities. This did surprise me, I wouldn’t have guessed that the worn colors could matter. Isn’t the human mind fascinating?

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A 2CD Age of Conan soundtrack has been announced by FunCom, and it will feature threes songs from the Nowegian band Turbonegro. Turbonegro also performed at the Age of Conan launch event. Lead singer Hank von Helvete claims to have read every Conan comic and is a huge fan of Conan. Fellow band member Happy-Tom, says Hank is one of Norways biggest Conan fans. CD1 of the soundtrack can be purchased at iTunes, while CD2 will be released during june.

It’s just perfect that Age of Conan is supported with a song from Turbonegro – the two hardest rocking pieces of entertainment to ever come out of Norway. As a huge Conan fan, I am proud to be part of this statement against modern life boredom and common life impotency. Heads must and shall roll.
Hank Von Helvete

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Limbo of the Lost is a point and click adventure game, developed by Majestic Studios, who has gotten a lot of attention lately. Apparently Majestic Studios have stolen textures, weapons, backgrounds and even whole levels from other games as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Diablo II.

Comparison screenshots are all over the web. A forum thread at GamesRadar have a lot of them, and the resemblance can be spotted quite easily. In fact, it’s not even resemblance, the screenshots are almost identical. The list of games Majestic Studios have stolen from is huge, according to Wikipedia, these are the games:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 2003, Diablo II, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Thief: The Dark Project, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Crysis, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Painkiller, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middleearth, Hexen and World of Warcraft.
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