Great news Linux gamers! According to the twitter account of the game’s development studio Reptile Games, Megabyte Punch will be released for Linux!

Did you know that Megabyte Punch will also be released on Linux? #Linux #games #greenlight steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…

— Reptile (@Reptilegames) May 20, 2013

Recently Linux has been receiving some really impressive titles and Megabyte Punch seems to be no exception. At first blush the game may look to most like a Super Smash Bros. clone and while it certainly shares some of that game’s spirit it clearly has it’s own ambition. The gameplay  blends the action-platforming of games like Mega Man with the fighting game style of SSMB and even offers a high degree of customization through swappable parts which you can use to build your character with.

Beyond the quote not much more has been said about the game’s Linux release. As it is a Steam Greenlight game it will hopefully be available for Linux users via Steam. According to the game’s website it will also be available via Desura.

If you’d like to try the game yourself I highly recommend visiting their website where you can get immediate access to the beta for about $8.

The post Megabyte Punch coming to Linux appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

I am a Linux user primarily, but I have regularly booted to Windows to do any lab work that required Citrix as my previous experiences with the ICA Client on Linux had been frustrating at best. I have made a commitment to myself this session to complete all of my course work and lab work using Linux. I am putting an emphasis on open-source tools but in this particular case I have no choice but to use Citrix’ client.

The problem? The 64-bit package for the Citrix ICA Client that they host on their site will not install without a bit of  poking and prodding  What follows is a guide following the steps I used recently to get it working on my Ubuntu 13.04 machine:

To begin with, let’s download the 64-bit .deb file from Citrix’ site here: http://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-receiver/receivers-by-platform/receiver-for-linux-121.html#ctx-dl-eula

Once this is downloaded we can attempt to install it with the following command:

sudo dpkg --install Downloads/icaclient_12.1.0_amd64.deb

After you accept the EULA you will likely see the following output:

This outputs the following error:

Selecting previously unselected package icaclient.
(Reading database … 212683 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking icaclient (from …/icaclient_12.1.0_amd64.deb) …
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of icaclient:
icaclient depends on libc6-i386 (>= 2.7-1); however:
Package libc6-i386 is not installed.
icaclient depends on ia32-libs; however:
Package ia32-libs is not installed.
icaclient depends on lib32z1; however:
Package lib32z1 is not installed.
icaclient depends on lib32asound2; however:
Package lib32asound2 is not installed.
icaclient depends on nspluginwrapper; however:
Package nspluginwrapper is not installed.

dpkg: error processing icaclient (–install):
dependency problems – leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
icaclient

Most Linux users will recognize that these are dependencies required by the ICA Client to function. No matter this is easily solved by installing the packages we see listed:

sudo apt-get install -y libc6-i386 ia32-libs lib32z1 lib32asound2 nspluginwrapper

Once these packages are installed you could run dpkg with the install flag again but this will fail citing an inability to properly configure the package. What we need to do is fix a the post-install file that the .deb install file parses after installation to configure the package for your machine. Particularly we need to edit the icaclient.postinst file to reflect the processor architecture as 64-bit. **This is laziness on the part of the Citrix developers. It’s quite clear that  they did not test this package before releasing it or they would have caught this.

What we need to do is edit line 2648 of this file to reflect the correct architecture:

sudo nano /var/lib/dpkg/info/icaclient.postinst

From here we need to use the PgDn key to scoll down to line 2648 we can check this by using CTRL-C in nano to print the cursor’s current line. Once there we simply replace the faulty line with the following:

echo $Arch|grep -iE "x86_64" >/dev/null

Once you have saved this in nano with CTRL-O you can exit. Then we need to run the following command to configure the client:

sudo dpkg --configure icaclient

If all went well you should now have the client installed and functioning. Hooray! Sadly though, this will likely not be the end of your woes. It’s very likely that when you visit your Citrix Web Interface and try to launch an app it will scream at you about missing a cert. Maybe even a certificate that you already have installed! Now why the hell would that be?

Well, Citrix chose to have their application search for certificates in it’s own directory rather than common /usr/share/ca-certificates directory. Nope, it want’s everything in /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/.

What you will need to do is copy or download whatever cert you need and then place it in this directory. When getting things working for school I needed a particular cert from Verisign. You can use this same command to move whatever cert you need to the proper directory:

sudo mv ~/Downloads/pca3-g5.crt /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts/Class3PCA_G5_v2.crt

The post Adventures in Linux: Making Citrix Receiver work appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

Last night I decided to make a go of reclaiming my phone. Here’s what I did to root from what was ostensibly a stock 4.1.2 install with a few tweaks to the process to make it a bit more user friendly.

• Download the following zip file from my site: SGS3_root.zip
• Unzip this to your desktop or a directory of your choosing.
• Install the SGS3 drivers on your machine if you haven’t already. They can be found here: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/
• Connect your phone to your PC and copy over the files ‘root.zip’ and ‘VRLE6.bootloader.zip’ to the root of your sd_card. Power off the phone.
• Open the directory named ‘Odin3_v3.07′ and run the Odin application.
• Boot your phone in to download mode by pressing the Home, volume down, and Power buttons simultaneously. You should see a yellow triangle now. Press the volume up button to enter download mode.
• Connect your phone to your PC and you should now see a COM port listed under “ID:COM”. **If you do not you may need to re-install your drivers or try the stock USB cable.
• Click the ‘Bootloader’ ’PDA’ button and select the ‘VRALEC.bootloader.tar.md5′ file, then press ‘Start’.
• Turn your phone off and boot back in to download mode as you did in step 6.
• Reconnect your phone to the PC.
• Click the ‘PDA’ button and select the ‘cwm-6.0.1.0-kexec.tar.md5′ file, then press ‘Start’.
• Turn your phone off one more time and then boot in to Recovery mode by pressing volume up, Home, and Power buttons simultaneously.
• Select the ‘install zip from sdcard’ option and select the ‘root.zip’ file, once this has flashed repeat the process for the ‘VRLE6.bootloader.zip’ file.
• Now reboot into your freshly rooted stock rom. From here I would highly suggest downloading Rom Manger from the Google Play store, updating clockworkmod, backing up your rom, and then installing something like CyanogenMod.

Feel free to post here if you have comments, questions, or trouble with this guide!

The post Rooting the Samsung Galaxy S3 appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

I have always supported sensible gun control regulations, but I cannot support the actions of the DoD today. They are attempting to suppress the free distribution of the design files for a 3D printed firearm designed by Defense distributed. The following is currently posted on the page that hosted the files for the Liberator 3D printed handgun:

“This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.”

Below is a promotional video of the weapon being printed and fired:

As a person who believes that I should be allowed to know anything I deem appropriate I cannot support the stifling of information flow. Clearly the DoD does not understand how the Internet functions on a very fundamental level. Regardless of how hard they try, they will not expunge this data from the Internet. This battle was over the moment the public Internet began. All these little skirmishes to attain control over it and the information therein are feeble posturing.

Visit this link to hear my friends from the Nerd Absurd podcast and I discussing this very gun before it had even been printed:

http://www.nerdabsurd.com/wp-content/podcasts/NA-EP3.mp3

Information, ALL INFORMATION, is now democratized. There is no law, governing body, or group of people strong enough to stop the flow of information. All that is left now is for us to understand how to use this responsibly. And telling people what they can and cannot know is not responsible. It is a reaction based on fear of the unknown. It is cowardice.

The following link is a legally accessible download of the files for the gun. I have absolutely no intention of actually printing one, nor do I have a 3D printer at my disposal capable of doing so, but I refuse to be told I am not allowed to have this on priniciple.

http://thepiratebay.sx/torrent/8449468/Liberator_-_First_3D_Printable_Gun

The post The US Department of Defense is Censoring the Liberator appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

First we need to install the xboxdrv driver, the xpad default kernel module that comes rolled in with most common installs is a bit lacking.

apt-get install xboxdrv

You can compile from source as well but in the interest of time pulling down the binary should be fine.

Then we need to blacklist the xpad module from loading at boot. If we don’t it will interfere with xboxdrv. Be sure to ignore the quotes

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Add the following at the last line:

“blacklist xpad”

**Be sure to use CTRL+O to write your changes before exiting.

From here all we need to do is setup xboxdrv to run at boot so we don’t have to tell it what to do any time we want to play a game.

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

Before the line that reads “exit 0″ insert the following (again ignore the quotes):

xboxdrv --detach-kernel-driver --silent --config /usr/share/doc/xboxdrv/examples/xpad-wireless.xboxdrv &
sleep 1

** This last section tells the driver to refer to the xpad-wireless configuration file for button mapping. You can easily edit one of these to your liking and save it in any directory you like.

The post Adventures in Linux: Xbox Gamepads appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

It’s called Terminology and not only does it support image rastering from within the terminal window, it also has inline video playback, and live content thumbnail views of other tabs.

Time to compile me a new terminal!

For the entire laundry list of features and the source visit the Enlightenment website HERE.

The post Enlightenment’s new Terminal is Sexy! appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

And, to make it that much more awesome he has even shared all of his designs, his bill of materials, and Eagle schematic files under the Creative Commons license!

For more info be sure to check out his page HERE!

The post A beautiful time piece appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

So here goes, let me know what you guys think. I’m curious.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Takeshi Nechayev, known by the handle “Turtle” in the sprawl of the net, flopped into the chair that sat in front of the most important thing in his life. He slid the visor over his eyes. “The most important thing? Hell, it was his life,” he thought. In front of him sat what was essentially a homemade supercomputer. With 48 Petabytes of holographic storage, a quantum processing unit (QPU), and 128 Terabytes of memory for caching, Turtle had spent well over 300,000,000 credits on the machine, more than his parents had made in their entire lifetimes combined. He thought it might be safe to call it an obsession.

Back when his parents were kids the corporations of the world had gone to war, and not just in the legal sense. Sure there were lawyers and political plays at first, but what began as lumbering beasts fighting over the scraps of the world economy soon escalated into armed conflict. Pyrrhic victories left most of the corps gutted with just a few exceptions. In the end the survivors did the only thing they could do and merge with the larger, more powerful conglomerates. The biggest corp was born out of a merger between Google and Intel. They formed a type of super-corporation that would go on to swallow up the remnants of Apple, Microsoft, and most of the real talent in silicon valley, what emerged was Dynatel.

Dynatel made the fastest, most reliable hardware on the market. They also made the most expensive. Turtle’s machine was running last month’s QPU model and desperately wanted to upgrade. He hadn’t bought a new part in a few weeks and was starting to get a little shaky. Sadly work had been uncharacteristically scarce in the ‘hire-a-hacker’ field over the past few days and he had spent most of his credits just keeping the lights on in his 50th floor walk-up. To make matters worse, Dynatel had just announced this month’s new quantum processor, the Tesseract M83, due out on the 15th.

“I have to have that part,” he thought. Just then he noticed the new message indicator flashing on his heads-up display. He could hardly believe it. It was like someone was reading his mind! Which he surmised was entirely likely.

Dynatel had sent out a net-wide message to any hacker who had ever done a bit of corp espionage for them:

The first person to own the global network of Quantix Lite Industries gets a Tesseract M83.

That was it, one line. It was all they needed.

Turtle knew that every ice-breaker (hacker slang for other hackers) on the net would be hammering Quantix’ networks in the next few seconds. He was not going to lose to them, he knew if he was careful and patient he could win.

A few years back Turtle had been playing around with the latest release of nmap, a network mapping tool that had been iterated on since the dark ages of computing and needed something to scan, he chose a particular range of IPv6 Internet addresses that belonged to a few different companies, luckily one of those happened to be Quantix. He already had a place to start looking for a weakness. After just a few minutes of digging through his log of the scan he found the perfect target, a database server that appeared to be poorly configured.

Turtle had a command shell open on the device within a matter of seconds but, just as the words “I’m in,” flickered into his mind his connection was dumped. Someone had beaten him to it! A moment later a new message notification popped up in his HUD, he had every intention of ignoring it and moving on to the next available target but the message flashed up in his field of view.

It read:

We are the H.A.R.E. We are all and we are none. Tread on our domain again and we knock you off the net.

He had wondered why this obvious looking server was so responsive while he was logged in. Surely if he had found it, others had too. The only explanation was that H.A.R.E. was using Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks to knock other ice breakers off the net long enough to claim Quantix. He had heard of the hacker collective before but had never met anyone that claimed membership. They were legion though, a massive, decentralized group of hackers all over the world that collaborated when it suited their goals. He remembered seeing holo-vids of members wearing rabbit masks giving various decrees to corps and governments alike, threatening to take them off the net for a myriad transgressions, or sometimes just for fun.

They were not to be screwed with.

Turtle figured that their plan was basically an all-out assault on the entire Quantix network. Divide and conquer. Of course it helped that they could devote half of their forces to blocking the competition while the other half threw everything they had at Quantix’ security measures as fast as possible.

Turtle would persevere though. He fired up his years old scan log and found another suitable candidate for attack. He pushed through a few simple layers of encryption pretty quickly; computing encryption keys generated with outdated algorithms was nothing for a machine that could calculate Pi to nine billion decimal place in about 3 seconds. Once he had basic user access he worked slowly and methodically, covering any trace of what he was doing. He was sure that a few H.A.R.E. members would descend on the machine any second.

The right side of his HUD was a flurry of news feeds, each one declaring another chunk of Quantix to the H.A.R.E collective. Turtle toiled away until he made it into the core network. He ran nmap from the inside and found the core router, the heart of Quantix’ global network. All he had to do was pop a command shell on it and he would win! He was almost to the finish line. Meanwhile the H.A.R.E. was still dividing its fury and attention between keeping other ice breakers out and throwing junk data at every network device they could find until a random bit gave them access.

Turtle was so damned close he could taste it! He needed that upgrade! He needed it more than he needed to breathe. And then, it happened. He was disconnected from the machine in an instant. The H.A.R.E. had just taken Dynatel’s prize.

Takeshi wasn’t one to be beaten, and he certainly wasn’t one to give up. The collective had only just breached the core router; they didn’t have administrator rights on it yet. He still had time, and lucky for him it looked like once they got in they stopped holding back the torrent of ice breakers. All at once the hackers of the world were hammering Quantix. This was his chance, all he had to do was find one crack in the core router’s security, and he would use the H.A.R.E.’s own trick to do it.

Turtle overclocked his QPU and killed all other processes but his session to the router. He used every ounce of power his rig had to push random bits of data to the router until suddenly he saw that most beautiful of sights for any hacker. In his HUD he saw a pristine, ready-to-be-owned, root administrator’s command shell. He had won! Instantly a message notification with from an address of mailto:admin@dynatel.com popped into Takeshi’s HUD:

Congratulations. Your prize is being replicated at your residence now Takeshi Nechayev.

Enjoy.

Turtle swiped away the message with his data glove and looked over at his cheap, 3rd generation replicator. It was already hard at work printing his new, top-of-the-line quantum processor and would probably take a few hours. “Totally worth the wait,” he thought.

But then he noticed it. The machine wasn’t printing a new QPU, it was rendering a rabbit mask.

His HUD filled with the words, “WE TOLD YOU NOT TO!”

The post The Tortoise and the Hare appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

The process wasn’t too bad it seems. He used a 32-pin ribbon cable to extend the cartridge header so he could mount it to the backplate of the case. Then he mounted the LCD and soldered jumpers from the GBA buttons to the original GB’s control board. This proved slightly more difficult as the board appeared to have no common ground. Finally he mounted the battery and the DC jack.

What he ended up with was a great looking handheld that would play all of his Game Boy carts! I think I’m gonna have to search ebay for a broken GB. I couldn’t bare to gut the working one I have.

For more pictures and a detailed look at the build log check out Michael’s website HERE!

The post Old School Game Boy Advance appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.

If you were born in the 80′s then you must have seen the cartoon series of the same name at least once. And if you saw it once chances are you were hooked as it was one of the best cartoons of it’s time. It was bright, colorful, silly, and even a bit informative; it was everything right with after school cartoons. You can imagine how excited I was when i found out there was an NES game based on it.

I played this game so much that I still have the boss fight patterns (not that they were terribly difficult) memorized to this day. I had been burned by bad licensed games before so I made sure to rent it from this place called Movie Show Video down the street from my mom’s apartment before wasting valuable begging power on it.

The first thing that stood out to me about the game was the music. It has such a memorable soundtrack that there are actually Facebook fan pages dedicated to specific tunes from levels of the game! The music really is that good. Of course as a boy I didn’t know much about how video games were made and had no idea who the composer of the game’s soundtrack was. Fast forward to adulthood and Yoshihiro Sakaguchi is now one of my favorite game composer’s of all time.

I did know the name Capcom though! Those were the guys that made those amazing Mega Man games! I would later learn that the man responsible for the character design in Mega Man, Keiji Inafune was also the lead developer on this game. As you might have guessed I have a soft spot in my heart for that man’s work as well.

Here was a game that had it all; stunning art, amazing music, deceptively simple gameplay, boss battles, hidden treasures, and even alternate endings! It’s no wonder that the game is beloved by video game fanboys the world over. There are even quite a few giants in the industry today who cite DuckTales as their inspirations for becoming developers.

So… I had to explain all this to my wife the other night when, to my astonishment, Capcom announced they would be releasing a “remastered” version. She was understandably perplexed when her husband actually laughed like a little kid when he watched the trailer, and of course I sang along to the theme song. I am currently re-watching the entire series. Episode 10 is playing as I type this.

But enough about my temporary rejection of adulthood, on to the details about the new game!

It will be releasing on XBox 360, PS3, and WiiU sometime in the summer of 2013. As you can tell by the trailer below it features gorgeous new hand-drawn art along with 2.5D environments. Perhaps even better than that? Way Forward (the developer working on ths game) actually managed to get the entire surviving voice cast from the show to do original voice overs! I don’t think that they could be taking this more seriously.

I’ve gathered a few videos below showing gameplay and commentary from the developers.

The post It’s a Duck Blur! appeared first on This 8-Bit Life.