MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by a fellow called Rod Brock.

SCP developed what it at various times called QDOS and 86-DOS to run on a CPU card it had built based on Intel's 8086 processor.


Command line: MS-DOS 1.19 still running after all these years
The company had planned to use Digital Research's CP/M-86 operating system, then still in development. But, having released the card in November 1979 - it shipped with an 8086-compatible version Microsoft's Basic language interpreter-cum-operating system - and reached April 1980 without CP/M-86 becoming available to bundle, SCP decided it had to create its own OS for the card.

Enter, in August 1980, QDOS. It really did stand for Quick and Dirty Operating System. That's actually what it was: a basic but serviceable OS good for coding and running programs written in 8086 assembly language - the x86 instruction set. It was written by SCP's Tim Paterson, who had joined the company as a programmer a couple of years previously and began work on it in April 1980.


On the cards: Seattle Computer Products advertises its wares
Some observers later claimed that QDOS too closely resembled CP/M for comfort. Paterson himself would later say that QDOS' design criteria specifically included the abililty to support programs written for CP/M and compiled for the 8086. That's not at all surprising given that SCP undoubtedly saw QDOS as a temporary stand in until Digital Research (DR) shipped CP/M-86.

The picture we have today is muddied by the claims that IBM originally wanted to use CP/M-86 in its first personal computer. IBM and DR famously failed to come to terms that would allow CP/M-86 to be bundled with the PC, and IBM turned to Microsoft for an alternative. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall, who died in 1994, would later allege that Microsoft's product was a rip off, fuelling plagiarism claims that Paterson has always denied - he reverse engineered it.

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/27/ms_dos_turns_30/ ...

Lion's share of revenues enjoyed by an elite few, analyst group claims
More than half of the money made from the top 300 iPhone games is channelled to just ten publishers, new data suggests.
Mobile analytics group Distimo suggests that Apple’s booming games platform no longer helps smaller studios compete on an even playing field with the more established mobile publishers such as EA and Gameloft.
And microtransactions are becoming the market’s new growth sector, Distimo said.
Now 35 per cent of the App Store’s top 300 free games is monetised via in-app purchases.
Total revenue generated by the App Store’s top grossing games increased 79 per cent year-on-year, the analyst report added, but only ten firms will enjoy the lion’s share of the money.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...ifbh+(Develop) ...

Fiscal first quarter sees sales of $57m, up 9 per cent year-on-year.

Electronic Arts has reported its fiscal first quarter financials, and they show more growth for its mobile gaming division.

EA Mobile's sales were $57 million for the quarter, up 9% year-on-year. The publisher highlighted its success on iOS, claiming two of the top 10 paid iPhone games and two of the top 10 paid iPad games in June 2011 in its financials filing.

Overall, EA's net revenues were $999 million for the quarter, meaning mobile accounted for 6% of the company's sales.

CEO John Riccitiello also gave his summary on the rapid pace of change within the games industry, fuelled partly by mobile devices. "Consider that just 18 months ago, there was no iPad, Google was just experimenting with Android and most big games were limited to a single revenue opportunity at launch," he told analysts.

"On smartphones and tablets like the iPhone and iPad, the top paid apps are all games. Recognize that the fastest-growing revenue streams for console, PC, smartphones and tablets are all digital, and that EA is partnering with its retail and platform partners to help jointly grow these digital revenue streams."

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...es-rise/015020 ...

The following Hacks have been submitted and approved to the database (in submitted order oldest to newest):

•Revelations - The Demon Slayer Improvement (Improvement)
•Kid Icarus ZZ (Improvement)
•Story of Thor / Beyond Oasis Retranslation (Complete)
•F-Zero X New Lap (Complete)
•F-Zero X 2nd Boost (Complete)
•Lode Runner ~Rebuilt~ (Complete)
•Megaman Metal Army (Improvement)
•Cheetahmen II - Bugfixed version 2.1 (Bug Fix)
•SMB FINAL QUEST (Complete)
•Famicon Fantasy (Spoof)
Relevant Link: (http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/) ...

The following Translations have been submitted and approved to the database (in submitted order oldest to newest):

•Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (English)(Fully Playable)(GB)
•Felix the Cat (Spanish)(Fully Playable)(NES)
•Disney’s TaleSpin (Spanish)(Fully Playable)(NES)
•Time Crisis (Spanish)(Fully Playable)(PSX)
•Pocket Monsters Green Version (English)(Fully Playable)(GB)
•Fushigi no Umi no Nadia (English)(Fully Playable)(GEN)
•Mobile Suit Gundam F91: Formula Wars 0122 (English)(Fully Playable)(SNES)
•Jump Ultimate Stars (English)(Fully Playable)(NDS)
•Cheetahmen II (Spanish)(Fully Playable)(NES)
•Märchen Maze (English)(Fully Playable)(TG16)
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/inde...pic,12964.html ...

If you like “Top 10” types of posts, this one is for you, and I’m sure you won’t find it anywhere else. This is a chronological list of PSP games in which vulnerabilities were found (ordered by date of exploit release, not release date of the game)…
Come with me, we’ll visit some of the major events in the scene’s history on the way… and as a nice bonus, 2 of the exploited games in this list were never revealed publicly before

1. 2005 : Puzzle Bobble
We’re going back to the very early days of the PSP scene with this first entry! Most of you probably never heard of this one before, actually.
The Japanese version of Puzzle Bobble was compiled in debug mode, allowing hackers to retrieve some interesting information, such as function names, that were later on used in the scene’s PSP SDK.

This was one of the first steps to getting homebrews on this great device.


2. 2006 – 2007 : GTA – Liberty City Stories
This one started a long era of “save game exploits” on the PSP. Fanjita and n00bz found a buffer overflow vulnerability in the savegames of GTA-LCS. This allowed users to run the noobz eLoader, and later on, downgraders.

Sony quickly patched this one with a firmware update, and Rockstar also updated their game. People wanting to hack their PSP had to be careful not to buy an updated version of the UMD. This is the only time in the PSP history that an exploited game got a UMD update.

Funny anecdote, this vulnerability got reused a second time by Noobz almost a year later, in what was called the goofy exploit, when it was discovered that sony had incorrectly patched the vulnerability. This one has a special place in my heart, as the GTA exploit is what I first used to run eLoader and scummVM on my psp phat!

3. 2007: Lumines
Noobz again, with the help of hacker Archaemic, found an exploit in the game Lumines. Called illuminati, the exploit was apparently found by pure luck, when Archaemic was trying to feed random data to the game.

This exploit gave hope to owners of the 3.50 firmware, technically working on all PSPs from firmware 1.0 to 3.50 (the most up to date firmware at the time)




4. 2009: Gripshift
As a happy new year present for 2009, developer MaTiaZ gave us the Gripshift exploit, yet another buffer overflow vulnerability in the player’s name, using the game’s save data.

Although the hype was extremely high on this exploit, the lack of a good Kernel exploit to work with it basically ruined the fun for everybody. The old guys among us will remember this as a big fight over an exploit between famous Hacker Dark-Alex, and team pspgen, when pspgen announced they would release a Custom Firmware/Hen using the Gripshift exploit

5. 2009: Medal Of Honor Heroes
In the middle of 2009, developer kgsws (who is now better known for being the first to sign homebrews on the PSP) released an exploit for the game Medal Of Honor Heroes (MOHH). The exploit had the particularity of requiring the players to commit suicide in the middle of a multiplayer game, which, although not very practical, was extremely fun.

Again, the lack of Kernel exploit (or rather, the lack of interest from people who had a kernel exploit) to work with this game made it not so interesting to the community, but this is also the game on which m0skit0 started developing Half Byte Loader, an open source successor to the NoobZ eLoader (these are both applications that allow to run homebrews without a kernel exploit)


6. 2010: Patapon 2
The PSP Go had announced dark times for the scene: exploits in games weren’t cool anymore, because exploits on UMDs wouldn’t work on the PSP Go, and exploits in games from the Sony PSN would get patched instantly. The “serious” guys were digging in the PSP firmware, or looking for exploits in images or mp3 files. Some people were still looking for exploits in games though, mostly for the fun of it.

This was the case of malloxis, who found an interesting crash in Patapon 2. What he didn’t realize at the time was that Patapon 2 also had an associated a demo, that could be obtained without accessing the PSN Store on various websites (no risk of an update by Sony), and that this demo could load and save games.
It took roughly a week to developer Wololo (that would be me ) helped by N00b81, to create a proof of concept for a binary loader using this buffer overflow. At this time, taking note of the previous “wasted” user mode exploits (MOHH and Gripshift), we (n00b81 and myself) wanted to go further, and help m0skit0 with his work on half byte loader. We wanted to keep our exploit under wraps, until HBL was ready, to avoid this great exploit being “yet another wasted user mode vulnerability”.

What actually happened is that malloxis blew it off by leaking my files, and we had to release a work-in-progress version of Half Byte Loader. But overall things turned out well, as Half Byte Loader dominated the scene for a few months, until Total_Noob’s Hen came, almost a year later.

Fun fact: people who used HBL during this era now want to kill kittens every time they hear the Patapon song.

7. 2010 – Hot Shots Golf 1 and 2
As ...

From team-xecuter.com:
[QUOTE]
As you all know (or should know), the AP2.5 challenges changed dramatically with the latest dashboard (not in the dae.bin either)

Over 140+ unique challenges were logged and that wasn’t even the end of it !

Anyway after speaking to C4 this morning, he told me that he has BO booting finally with yet another new firmware hack.

Early days yet, lots of testing needed. More news soon.

If you want the latest news updates, guides and info for firmware – join the OFFICIAL IRC channel #C4E !

http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/...EyFrInETTT.php ...

How can one learn to cook properly without Mama watching, judging your every move? Pre-order Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic for 3DS from GameStop and you can take a Mama doll home with you. Just place her atop the refrigerator and feel her disappointment magically turn you into a better cook. It's the ultimate tool in negative reinforcement.

Don't let the soft demeanor fool you, there is darkness in Mama that dwarfs that of domestic diva Martha Stewart. One doesn't reach 12 million global sales without being a "Business Mama" as well. Cooking Mama 4: Kitchen Magic will pull a dinner out of its hat this October.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/25/co...e-order-bonus/ ...

Your 3DS Mii is pathetically teensy now, suitable for posing next to hamsters and soda cans. But you could make your virtual self much more (virtually) substantial with the giant AR Card, available now from North America's Club Nintendo for 200 Coins. The 28.5" tall card has the question-mark block on one side, and Mario on the other, allowing it to be used for AR Mario images as well.

Two other prizes were added to the lineup today: for ten coins, you can get a Metroid: Other M screensaver -- released almost a year after the game ... or for 400 Coins, there's a set of three Donkey Kong posters, in the same style as previous Mario and Zelda posters.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/25/tr...g-3ds-ar-card/ ...