YokimaSun writes "Following the recent exploit that allows you to jailbreak your PS3, the homebrew community have now breached the console with the first homebrew game, which is the classic Pong. Also released is the first emulator for the system in the shape of a SNES Emulator great for those 16-bit games. Finally drk||Raziel, the coder of the Dreamcast Emulator NullDC, has posted screenshots of his Dreamcast emulator working on the PS3 (albeit at a very early stage). The PS3 is building up to be the Dream Console for emulation."

oztiks writes with this excerpt from The H: "A vulnerability in the 32-bit compatibility mode of the current Linux kernel (and previous versions) for 64-bit systems can be exploited to escalate privileges. For instance, attackers can break into a system and exploit a hole in the web server to get complete root (also known as superuser) rights or permissions for a victim's system. According to a report, the problem occurs because the 32-bit call emulation layer does not check whether the call is truly in the Syscall table. Ben Hawkes, who discovered the problem, says the vulnerability can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with kernel rights. ... Hawkes says the vulnerability was discovered and remedied back in 2007, but at some point in 2008 kernel developers apparently removed the patch, reintroducing the vulnerability. The older exploit apparently only needed slight modifications to work with the new hole."

YokimaSun writes "Sony may have dealt a major blow to the PSjailbreak sellers, but the release last week of PSGroove, an open source version of the hack, has now opened the floodgates of ports to mobile phones such as the Nokia N900 and Palm Pre. The final kick in the teeth is that a port of the exploit has been released by Waninkoko of Wii custom firmware fame for the Dingoo Handheld, which is a homebrew console that is very popular amongst emulation fans. It makes you smile that you can use one homebrew console to hack another to get homebrew on that console. Awesome." pudge notes that you can apparently do the same with a TI-84 Plus graphing calculator (YouTube video).

eldavojohn writes "There's been a movement to preserve virtual worlds but MIT's Tech Review paints a dire picture of our video game memories rotting away in the attic of history. From the article: 'Entire libraries face extinction the moment the last remaining working console of its kind — a Neo Geo, Atari 2600 or something more obscure, like the Fairchild Channel F — bites the dust.' Published in The International Journal of Digital Curation, a new paper highlights this problem and explains how emulators fall short to truly preserve our video game heritage. The paper also breaks down popular SNES emulators to illustrate the growing problem with emulators and their varying quality. Do you remember any video consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey that are forever lost to the ages?"

neogramps writes "It's been a long time coming, but the first Pandora consoles are finally rolling off of the production line. (Well, this one actually walked out the door to a customer who lived near the 'factory.') Initial estimates had put production and development at taking two months, but Murphy had other ideas. Banking issues, design problems, problems communicating with the Chinese moulding company, escalating assembly costs, and even a volcano all managed to get in the way, but the small and dedicated team soldiered on, and just over a year and a half later, the wait is coming to an end for the 4,000 pre-orderers."

An anonymous reader writes "Author Salman Rushdie donated his papers and notes to Emory University a while ago. Not surprisingly, many of Rushdie's original notes, drafts, and correspondence existed in electronic form. Rather than printing them out or converting them to other formats, archivists at the university created an emulated image of Rushdie's old computer, complete with old software. Researchers visiting the archive can read his email in Eudora and his Stickies notes, or read drafts of his books in ClarisWorks. When you leave your legacy to future generations, would you like a virtualized copy of your personal system to be included?"

Many readers have been sending in news of the impending PS3 firmware update that will remove the ability to install other operating systems on the console. (We discussed it here on Sunday.) Over the past few days, legions of PS3 owners have been voicing their anger at Sony's decision, upset that they'll be forced to either lose their custom install or forgo use of the PlayStation Network and be unable to play certain games and movies. Now, hacker George Hotz, known for his iPhone jailbreaks and his PS3 hack earlier this year, has vowed to fight back and restore Linux support on the PS3. He said, "The PlayStation 3 is the only product I know that loses features throughout its lifecycle. Software PS2 emulation, SACD playback, and OtherOS support are all just software switches you can flip. It's unbelievable you would go and flip one, not just on new boxes you are shipping, but on tens of millions already in the field."

An editorial at GameSetWatch makes the case that game developers' relentless drive to make games more real has led to missed opportunities for creating unique fictional universes that are perhaps more interesting than our own. Quoting: "Remember when the norm for a video game was a blue hedgehog that ran fast and collected rings and emeralds? Or a plumber that took mushrooms to become large, and grabbed a flower to throw fireballs? In reality they do none of those things, but in the name of a game, they make sense, inspire wonder, and create a new universe. ... We’ve seen time and time again that the closer you try to emulate reality, the more the 'game' aspects begin to stick out. Invisible walls in Final Fantasy, or grenades spawning at your feet when you go the wrong way in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are examples of kicking the player out of that illusion of reality, and letting them know that yes, this is a game, and yes, the rules are designed to keep you in the space of this world, not the real world. In reality, as a soldier I could disobey my orders and go exploring around the other side. I could be cowardly and turn back to base. Games shouldn’t have to plan for every eventuality, of course, but it’s not so hard to create universes that are compelling but where the unusual, or even simple backtracking, is not so unfeasible."

Orion Blastar writes "While many Amiga users have moved on to Linux, Mac OS X, and even, gasp shock, Microsoft Windows, some of us don't want to give up so easily. There are two open source projects that are keeping the Amiga legacy alive even if Amiga Inc. seems to be deader than a doornail and not really doing much but selling old Classic Amiga games for new platforms. Like WINE, there was a project to run AmigaOS 3.1 software for Linux and other platforms, but it evolved instead into an open source operating system named Amiga Research OS, or AROS. AROS is best run inside an emulator, and while it is not a modern OS like Linux, it can be downloaded and run inside of Linux (and the downloads section has more). While it is not ready for prime time yet, it is a promising OS that is being ported to many platforms and uses the user friendly Amiga GUI we Amiga users grew up with." Read on for more.

KingofGnG writes "An impressive confirmation of the Dolphin Wii emulator's capabilities comes from a YouTube video, which shows off recently-added video clips of New Super Mario Bros. Wii in full HD. It demonstrates the growing compatibility of Dolphin with the latest games published for the Nintendo console."

An anonymous reader writes "Nintendo is investigating potential copyright infringement by Nokia during some video demos of their N900 phone, which can be seen emulating Nintendo games. Nintendo spokesman Robert Saunders says: 'We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place.' In the video, Nokia says, 'Most publishers allow individual title usage, provided that the user is in possession of the original title.'"

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that finding malicious code might have just become a little harder. Last week at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, security researchers Joshua Mason, Sam Small, Fabian Monrose, and Greg MacManus presented a method they developed to generate English shell code [PDF]. Using content from Wikipedia and other public works to train their engine, they convert arbitrary x86 shell code into sentences that read like spam, but are natively executable. "In this paper we revisit the assumption that shell code need be fundamentally different in structure than non-executable data. Specifically, we elucidate how one can use natural language generation techniques to produce shell code that is superficially similar to English prose. We argue that this new development poses significant challenges for in-line payload-based inspection (and emulation) as a defensive measure, and also highlights the need for designing more efficient techniques for preventing shell code injection attacks altogether."

Hugh Pickens writes "Stephen Williams reports in the NY Times that the app recreating some of the Commodore's seminal retro games, including Le Mans, Dragons Den and Jupiter Lander, has been re-issued after being pulled in September. The app features SID sound emulation, auto-save to continue where you left off, and a realistic joystick with a beautifully crafted C64 keyboard. Apple originally rejected the program for violating the SDK agreement, which dictates that 'no interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).' After disabling the controversial feature, Apple published the app in September, but days later it was pulled and the developer was asked to remove, rather than just disable, the BASIC interpreter from the program, which would have allowed unscrupulous users to run unlicensed, emulated code on the iPhone or iPod Touch. 'The road was bumpy, but we remained persistent and made the changes Apple was looking for. Ultimately, BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it,' the company wrote on its blog."

An anonymous reader writes "Costis was able to dump the elusive boot ROM from the Gameboy Color by using various voltage and clock glitching tricks. The boot ROM is what initializes the Gameboy hardware, displays the 'GAMEBOY' logo and animation, and makes the trademarked 'cling!' sound effect. Even decapping the CPU had failed previously, but now the boot image and specifics on how it was dumped (along with many photos) are available for download."

Busshy writes "Darkchen has released a Gameboy Advance emulator for the Nintendo DS/DSi that plays full speed with frameskip. This can only be played with the homebrew dev cart, the DS iPlayer. The emulator adds save states, cheats and tools to GBA games, and for DSi Fans the ability to finally get over the loss of the GBA Slot on the DSi."

traycerb writes "It's been 10 years since 9/9/1999, when the Dreamcast launched on American shores. The hardware was ahead of its time; online capability, web browser, a visual memory unit, and a controller that anticipated the much-loved Xbox 360 controller. The games were amazing: Jet Set Radio (the first popular 3d cell-shaded game on a console), Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (still the apotheosis of 2-d fighting; just try finding a copy on ebay), Soul Calibur (still looks good compared to the recent Xbox/PS3 versions), NFL 2K (came out of nowhere, and was so good that it shook EA into spending tens of millions of dollars to seal up exclusivity for NFL rights), and many others. No doubt some of the reasons for the Dreamcast's demise lay with Sega, whose dubious hardware decisions (ahem, 32x) finally caught up to them, in the form of ambivalence from both developers and gamers, just as the console-making world was shifting to the multinationals with big pockets who were willing to spend it on pricey hardware design (or could absorb the cost of faulty hardware design). It was also one of the first consoles widely used for homebrew. In honor of the 10th anniversary, a new game is being released for the Dreamcast, called Rush Rush Rally Racing. The Dreamcast is dead! Long live the Dreamcast!"

Rob Hearn sends in a piece up at PocketGamer.co.uk on why Apple suddenly pulled Manomio's C64 emulator soon after finally approving it. (El Reg has coverage too.) "It was a glorious few moments for retro gamers when Manomio's C64 emulator was finally approved by Apple and released to the eager, nostalgic iPhone public. Then, calamity! It was gone again. Apparently some wily users figured out how to access the Commodore 64 BASIC system that was originally packaged with the emulator — something that Apple wasn't too happy with, given the nature of the interpreter's code. By setting the keyboard to 'always on,' launching a game and restarting BASIC, players got into the 'empty shell' of their C64 emulator."

Gi0 writes "After a couple of months of rejection, the C64 Emulator has finally been approved for the iPhone (and is available at the app store now). 'BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it. Despite its absence, BASIC is not our focus; ultimately, fans of the C64 want games.' It comes with 5 bundled games and will certainly give you that retro fix for your iPhone."

Busshy writes "Slaanesh has released a port of MAME for the Dingoo A320 (the console that comes with GBA, SNES, CPS1 and Megadrive emulators built-in), with support for thousands of old arcade games. You will have to install Dingoo Linux to be able to use MAME on the Dingoo. Some tutorial videos are available."

Al writes "Technology Review discusses what a US carbon trading scheme could learn from the flawed European experience. Advocates of carbon-trading schemes like to point to Europe's cap-and-trade program as a model worthy of emulation, but the reality has been less than perfect. A glut of pollution credits, distributed without cost during both the first, transitional phase of the program and the current working phase, drove down the value of the EUAs. As a result, Europe's carbon dioxide emissions remain priced well below 20 euros per ton. With the price of pollution so low, economists say, industries that generate and consume energy have no incentives to change their habits; it is still cheaper to use fossil fuels than to switch to technologies that pollute less. Establishing a carbon price in the US system now, and tightening the system later, could send a dangerously wrong signal to financial markets looking to invest in new energy technologies."