Author: Gary Cutlack
Playing Halo is as addictive as heroin or crack cocaine, says judge in Halo killer case
Or rather stopping playing Halo is as hard as giving up heroin or crack cocaine, according to the judge handling the case of Daniel Petric, who said “When you stop [playing the game], your brain won’t stand for it, just as it wouldn’t stand for it when you quit using heroin or crack cocaine” when summing up the case.
The judge ruled that 17-year-old Petric was guilty of killing his mum and attempting to kill his dad, after they tried to stop him playing Halo so much by confiscating the disc. Yes, really…
Danish police surround gamers, after loud PlayStation session triggers SWAT team attack
We’re not huge fans of Sony’s console division, but we wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that anyone who owns a PlayStation wants shooting – but that’s very nearly what happened to a couple of Danish gamers over the weekend.
A concerned neighbour heard gunshot sounds coming from their apartment – damn those cheap partition walls and declining modern building standards – and called the cops to investigate the possible slaughter going on inside flat 11b. Only there was no gun, or slaughter, only a game involving shooting being played way too loudly by a couple of kids…
The UK has gone GAMING MAD – 22 million consoles in use, PS3 dead last
Gfk-ChartTrack, the Europe-wide sales-counting conglomerate that tracks how many games and how much hardware we’ve all been buying, has sad there are now a staggering 22 million games consoles in the UK.
That’s an increase from January 2008’s 13.5 million, a figure which presumably doesn’t include all our childhood Mega Drives and SNESs that are sitting in mum & dad’s loft. Nintendo sold 2.9 million Wiis between Jan 2008 and Jan 2009, Microsoft shifted 1.4m Xbox 360 consoles and Sony moved a rather poor 1m PS3s, making it…
Make your life even more ironic with the 3.5" floppy disk iTunes and Firefox posters
Here’s how you can be even more ironic than your ironic mate who does nothing but ironically play ironic 1970s children’s TV programme theme tunes all day – buy yourself a set of the deeply ironic posters based around 3.5″ discs.
Ironically imagining what it would’ve been like had iTunes or Firefox launched in the 1980s and been distributed on floppy disks, these ironic posters will ironically enhance any ironic modern living space. They also feature the right number of discs required to fit today’s modern apps – iTunes 8.02 would need to be spread across 42 floppies, for example.
I’m only bitter because I didn’t have the idea first. Maker Mehmet Gozetlik is promising to have full-size prints available soon from his shop, for a relatively…
ECCENTRIC BRITISH HEROES: Neil Laughton driving/flying his Skycar from London to Timbuktu
Adventurer and after-dinner speaker Neil Laughton’s customised dune buggy can fly. So he’s going to fly it – taking off from London this Wednesday, and landing/rolling up in Timbuktu approximately 42 days later.
The buggy comes with a detachable ParaWing (parachute/aerofoil thing) and has a fan on the back of it, allowing it to take off into the sky when it hits 45mph – and it can then cruise at 70mph at a possible and terrifying maximum altitude of 15,000 feet…
Glacier Media Systems promising "3D porn" to revolt you in more ways than previously imaginable
Now, personally speaking, I’m quite a fan and active user of a wide and varied range of pornography – but I’m not so sure there’s a need to watch it in 3D.
I don’t like the idea of a man’s belly and scrotum protruding into my lounge as he services the needs of a dishevelled-looking East European lady. That crosses a boundary. I want to feel emotionally detached. I don’t want a starring role. I’d never be able to perform under that sort of pressure.
But that’s precisely the sort of in-your-face and in-your-living-room approach to movie-watching being taken by Glacier Media Systems, with its Glacier Iceberg 3D entertainment system promising to bring your existing movie collection into 3D somehow, should you have…
Peripheral company Nyko bravely waves its Wii Wand in the face of Nintendo's legal team
Is Nyko allowed to do this? Can it really be completely OK for it to make such an inch-perfect clone of Nintendo’s Wii Remote and then sell it to people like it’s its own idea?
Apparently so, as the Nyko Wii Wand was freely displayed above-the-counter at CES 2009, and no police were called to have it seized and taken away. Matching the size, functionality and layout of the standard Wii Remote precisely, Nyko also reckons its offering is better than Nintendo’s, thanks to “Trans-Port technology” – which lets…
Average UK broadband speed is 3.6Mbps – and you're probably only getting half the speed you're paying for
Ofcom, the communications watchdog that’s in charge of making sure everyone’s phones work and no one’s getting ripped off too badly by the ring tone companies, has revealed the results of a massive survey it conducted into the UK broadband scene.
As you might expect, we’re not getting what we pay for – as anyone who spends most of their evenings conducting broadband speed tests and sighing at the results will already know…
CES 2009: Touch screen gadgets alienate blind tech fans, says schoolground blind icon Stevie Wonder
It’s all well and good you sitting there, staring at the Palm Pre and imagining yourself navigating its menus after having successfully blagged one for free off your provider, but what about the needs of the blind? You haven’t considered them at all, have you, you selfish little shit?
That’s an issue Stevie Wonder is in Las Vegas to raise, highlighting the fact that the new wave of touch screen gadgets is making many of today’s hot new electric toys impossible for blind users to operate…
CES 2009: Sony reveals its 3" OLED-screened WALKMAN X music and media player
This beauty is the new Sony WALKMAN X range – featuring a 3″ OLED touch screen to make videos look marginally better than they have ever looked before. Although they won’t look very good when you’ve had your fingers all over the screen for six months.
The X1050 and X1060 both feature digital noise cancelling technology, FM tuners, the 3″ 432×240 screen and come with 16 or 32GB of storage space. Here’s a big photo of it, as it’s rather pretty. That’s not my music. That’s someone else’s music.
The WALKMAN X is even packed with a wi-fi chip and custom BBC iPlayer tool…
