Yeah, that error that you see above happened to myself eariler this evening playing the “Goalpost” mission of Modern Warfare 3. Unlike how the game would randomly crash in eariler versions of Modern Warfare, MW3 catches that error and kicks you back to the title screen. A little discomforting, shooting away, screen flickers and title screen appears. The exit button was also a little confusing – would I have to restart MW3 or was this going to close the popup?

According to this article on GameFront, to avoid getting the error, don’t randomly walk down the street. Here’s how to fix:

The solution is not to go along the street but jump inside the bulding with broken windows on the right. There will be several enemies there, you will kill them, exit the building on the other side and the checkpoint will save. Going along the street in the open causes this glitch.

This “fix” has been confirmed working by lots of happy camers on the GameFront article’s comments. Now, the question is: “Infinity Ward, MW3 Patch where?”

We hope this helps!

Here at Coburn’s Domain, we’ve been observing the recent attacks that Sony’s online intrastructure has been copping from unknown identities. While the details vary, we can confirm, from a trusted news source and local news and current affair programs, that the Australian side of the PlayStation Network was indeed hacked and large number of Australian PlayStation Network gamer profiles (that contained personal data and also credit card identification) were crippled as a result along with the massive hack that the global network suffered.

Sony needs to spill the beans on the situation, or risk losing a large percentage of their fanbase. If you take a look at YouTube, you’ll see many frustrated casual to hardcore gamers complaining about PSN being terminated until repairs are complete on it’s intrastructure.

While the media might have made such a big deal about the hack, Coburn’s Domain recommends you deactivate any PSN Account links to Debit or Credit Cards, check your account for unauthorised transactions (and contact your bank if there are) and/or cancel that card and have another one issued. Even if you think it’s silly to do so, prevention is better than the cure – you would want a PSN hacker to tap into your credit card and sap your funds, would you?

The web is a dangerous place, and as hackers get smarter and write highly complex exploits and hacks, such threats like these will become more common.

The iDroid Project crew have recently discovered that some scammers are attempting to drain your wallet by monetizing the iDroid Android port for jailbroken iPhone 2G/3G/4s, and iPod Touches which allow you to boot Android natively on the hardware itself. The annoucement was made on twitter under the name of @iDroidProject:

androidoniphone.com is a SCAM – they do not have anything that we didn’t write nor have anything that we haven’t released as OSS, please RT

The developers also stated:

People still seem to keep falling for it, DONT BE FOOLED! for actual project status, follow @iDroidProject or go to http://t.co/dEZ9jwN

One of the lead developers, Nick Pack, also stated the following:

We don’t and never will, charge for iDroid, its an Open Source project, and that will never change

This is not a rare issue. There is a lot of scamming activity going on around the place, including pay to use free software or download it free with malware packages that uTorrent users were victims of. The geeks behind Coburn’s Domain have already seen pay-to-use websites wanting you to buy free products, like Acrobat Reader or OpenOffice 3, this year. As with anything, if it’s too good to be true, it’s most likely a fake. Excerise caution around shady websites, and users should do their homework (as in, google searches) before users dive into clicking the buy now links on the imposter websites.

You can help the iDroid team spread the word by tweeting this article, or speading the news via Twitter/Facebook.

Via Nick Pack and the iDroid Project team.

As a server admin, Apache and it’s .htaccess files are nightmares. But hey, at least we’re back online, no? Sorry for any inconvience caused.

As some of you might not know, but I have had a lot of problems as of lately with Microsoft Windows.

Like the episode that happened today, Windows spazzes out and froze 3 times in a row, making a very low-pitched loud buzzing sound. I thought it was a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) about to strike, but no. It just died right in front of me.

Some people on Twitter suggested that I should consider getting Linux, or upgrading to the 64bit edition of Windows 7. However, for a very long time I’ve been a fan of Apple’s products and always wanted a Apple computer (I also wanted an iPhone when they were in fashion). Since I was still in school at the time, studying computer subjects which used software that required a Windows-based OS to run on, there was no equalivent software available for the Mac platform.

My laptop in question is a  Toshiba Satellite M300 which originally came with Windows Vista Business. Since everyone knows that Vista is pretty much useless for everything and slow like a turtle, I downgraded to Windows XP using the restore discs that came with the Laptop, and I had a faulty screen soon after. It was flickering every few minutes, and my friend, the Coburn himself from Coburn’s Domain, saw the laptop’s screen having a flickering party. When I took the laptop into Boonah Business Supplies (the local computer repair shop), they said nothing was wrong with the hardware, but the screen resolution could be the blame. I took it home and it happened again. Doh!

I took the laptop back in to the computer store and it got sent off to the Toshiba repair station. I got my laptop back just before that christmas and the repair people said that I should reinstall Windows, and they couldn’t find the problem or even fix it.

I had no problems until the new year, in which the same issue happened again, so I decided to back up my data and reinstall Windows. When I got back from camp a few weeks later, I took it back the local computer store to send it off again to Toshiba’s repair station. A month and maybe 2 weeks or so later, I got my laptop back. During that time, I had to use the school computers which ran like snails, and browsing the internet was terrible with the school’s intensive censoring of websites. Not to mention the crapload of restrictions – don’t get me started on that.

Anyway, my laptop came back. I was on Cloud 9, enjoying a flickerfree display while watching my favorite DVDs. The problem was a faulty display cable, and since that was replaced. I had no problems. But then…

Just after my warranty expired on my laptop, I had another problem: The AC adapter died. So I bought the new AC adapter which took a few weeks to arrive, and during that time, I purchased a Lenovo S10 netbook to satisfy my needs.

The day after Windows 7 came out in Australia, I bought an OEM copy and installed it onto my Toshiba Satellite M300. Windows 7 is pretty good, but I’ve basically been getting  a few BSOD  messages every couple of weeks, and now I’ve been getting 3 BSODs daily. So I’m fed up with Windows. This meant that my dream of owning a Apple Mac was coming true.

I should be the proud owner of a shiny new 13″ Apple Macbook  by the end of November. If you’re stick of the problems that you face with Windows, give Microsoft the finger and buy yourself a Mac. Trust me, using a Mac after being stuck in Windows with it’s BSODs is incredibily refreshing.

Edit by Coburn: Having used a Mac, they are quite a change from Windows, it just works without hassle. I mainly use Linux on my ASUS Laptop because it’s between “simple” and “geeky”, plus I use the command line a lot. Sometimes there’ll be the odd quirk or two in Mac OS X, but most of the time, Macs are rock solid. If your looking for a good computer and don’t mind the price tag, try out a Mac. If you’re looking to recycle or make use your old PC, install Linux on it (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, etc) and have a play around with the OS – it doesn’t hurt to learn about a non-Microsoft OS, Linux is a invaluable tool to have if you need to get data off a faulty Harddisk, and Windows is refusing to do the task, for example.

About the author
Donttrythis is the Coburn’s Domain Techology Geek. He’s the one resposible for giving his opinion on new techology and also reviewing his own gear. He’s also friends with Coburn, the main geek that runs the ‘domain.

This is I have pondered for a fair while, but have only just recently questioned. What exactly are my out-of-game motives for putting up with some of the extremely frustrating challenges some modern games present to us, and why do some developers try to use unfair difficulty as a way of extending a games playtime?  Starting just a few years ago, there has been a massive boom in creating games that have a retro visual style, and general appeal to prey on innocent Gamers’ sense of nostalgia through their rose-tinted goggles.  However, along with any good faux-retro game, not only does the art style have to be fitting, but there has also been the need to up the difficulty to extreme levels.

Over the years, while many gamers have complained about the current state of games as becoming “far too easy.”  With the release of these more challenging games, are we really getting what we wanted?  I won’t deny the fact that I love a good challenge, and I’m sure many of you do too, but is there a limit to just how difficult games will get?  With the mindset of creating a difficult game, some developers might even overlook some of the more basic questions they should be asking themselves “Is this even fun?” In my opinion, that’s exactly what a good amount of developers are currently getting themselves into a rut with. Merely trying to cook up a tough-as-nails and slap a retro visual style on it, and hope that through our rose-tinted goggles we will see these games as long, drawn out adventures that we remember from when we were children. Upon re-examining most of the games we thought were so long or amazing when we were kids, they are really just extremely short games that relied on cheap methods of increasing the games difficulty so you would be forced to spend an absurd amount of time and willpower just trying to get through a small section of the game.

One of the main games that really brought this issue up with me was VVVVVV. While it isn’t necessarily trying to cater to nostalgic fans viewing this as an incredible new 8-bit title with some cool gameplay mechanics. As I finished VVVVVV I quickly realized just how short the game was, but was relying on some very difficult platforming sections of the game and some loose controls to throw players off and have them just grind on the same section of the game for a good amount of time. I won’t lie, I did have a ton of fun while I was playing VVVVVV, and I completely think it was worth the 4.50 I paid for it on Steam. Keep in mind though, the game cost 15 dollars when it first came out, and a good player good easily beat the game in about half an hour, but the developers cheaply extended the playing time by making some of the sections extremely difficult so they would take you a fair amount of time to get past.

I can’t quite say if the devlopers truly intend to increase the playing time by adding in an extremely harsh, and cheap difficulty and slapping a “retro” label on it, or if it is just a side effect of having a fun and original new game present us with never-before-seen challenges.

With all thought about difficulty in games, I also wondered exactly what are motives are in the first place for playing the game. Sure, the initial reaction is that this is a fun new experience. Although once you plow through the initial game and the fun wears off, a good amount of games will provide us with further options to play the game in an even harder setting or giving us near impossible menial tasks such as fetching a completely unimportant item. Why exactly would we want to punish ourselves like this unless we are masochists. Should we do this for a sense of self accomplishment, or should the game give us some sort of compensation in the end. The game could provide us with achievements or trophies to show off our massive e-peen for beating that extra thing, or possibly unlock some interesting secret content for us to mess around with. I believe that the newer generation of gamers will likely be turned off the more difficult games that don’t really give them any sort of major compensation for beating them, and while I still enjoy the difficult games and extra mode, I too would just like a little to show off my amazing accomplishment.

This was more of just a musing rant about a few things I’m noticing myself in the industry, and almost all of this content could be classified as incomplete thoughts and my own opinions, I hope this has made you think just a little about all of the newer faux-retro games coming out with a steep difficulty.

Unfortunately, the success the device has been shortlived. Sony recently demanded that all orders for this device to be cancelled, in which the manufacturers agreed to and promptly the modchip supplier refunded all the paid orders that were queued.

Sony is currently taking legal action (as in a lawsuit) against the device, by requesting a sample of the Jailbreak devices to be sent to Sony HQ for analysis on the jailbreak. Developers have also suggested that a firmware upgrade release is all that’s required to plug the exploit these devices use, eventually making them redundant.

Despite the Jailbreak law being passed in the US making it legal to Jailbreak devices in the US, Sony may have to go the extra mile in order to win the lawsuit.

We’ll keep you updated on the situation as it plays out.

TweetDeck, a powerful Twitter client for operating systems, has been a victim of a scamming attack by another party. The issue came into attention when the lead TweetDeck developers found out that an unofficial version of their product for Android devices was released by “Hijacked Account, GmbH” with the price tag of $1.00 USD on the Android Market. This fake version has numerous features removed and may be incompatible with some devices.

The issue was raised when the offical TweetDeck developer twitter account tweeted the following quote:

Someone has uploaded a “TweetDeck” app to the Android Market and is charging for it. THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL APP. Do NOT download.

While TweetDeck users may be shocked at the fact that some party would do something like this, the TweetDeck developers wish to advise android users to steer away from buying the unoffical version (currently available in the Android Market) until Google takes action. They should also flag the application as “Malicious” and “Stolen Application”.

Article credit goes to @maxisma on Twitter for the heads up on the matter.

However, Google doesn’t seem likely to release details as to why the site has been censored from search results. This has also happened to some other websites, which involve content that is inappropriate to list here. There is also some debate over the censoring of certain words in some languages, while a innocent-looking word can be censored when a non-family safe word slips through the so-called “SafeSearch” filter. It is even worth noting that websites with porn content may not be censored from “SafeSearch” enabled searches.

The solution? Well, at this point, it looks like Sankaku Complex may have taken a hit, but we’re sure the blog will keep attracting visitors one way or another. Other search engines such as Bing, IxQuick and Yahoo have not censored the search term.

Another note is that IxQuick apparently is the best “privacy friendly” search engine, as it doesn’t record any searches performed through it’s services and also does not use any tracking systems to track your activities. It also offers a proxy page-viewing option, allowing you access blocked sites by tunneling through IxQuick’s own server bandwidth to the site.