Fresh Ink Online: Best Of Floppies 2008

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In Part 2 of our year-end wrap up, host Blair Butler takes a look at the best floppies of 2008, including Echo, Jonah Hex, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ex Machina, The Killer and Pax Romana. And that’s not all! You’ll also get taste of Criminal, The Sword, Secret Six, and the always-shocking Walking Dead. But it’s All-Star Superman that really captures our heart this time around. Enjoy!

(Oh, and join us on Facebook and MySpace, and rant in our Forums.)

Airport Security System Fails with Tape

An airport in Tokyo got foiled by a woman using a most underrated spy tool: tape.

The Japanese spent 45-million dollars installing biometric systems in their airports back in 2007 for immigration purposes.

A South Korean bar hostess, who initially got deported back in ‘07 for being in Japan illegally, entered the country again with a fake passport and a piece of tape stuck to her finger tip.

The tape made it impossible to read her fingerprints.

Japanese officials admit that many others probably are doing the same trick to enter the country without proper documentation.

Come on Japan! You guys can make toilets that analyze people’s urine sugar, but your multimillion-dollar biometric-scanner can be fooled by a flimsy piece of tape? Really?!?

Source

Rebecca Romijn Reprises Role As Mystique…Sort Of

Funny or Die found itself quite a niche during the election season with a plethora of targets with which to satire politically. Tons of celebs drop by to participate in their professional big-budget virals, putting them in place to be the Channel 101 of 2008. (And perhaps ‘09.)

However, they do more than just hide the heartworm pill of Hollywood politics in the bacon of comedy. In this recently posted masterpiece, Rebecca Romijn reprises her role from the X-Men films as Mystique, torturing her husband Jerry O’Connell with inappropriate shapeshifts.

Jerry O’Connell rubbing the feet of comedian Jerry Minor = Worth the price of admission.

Yelling At Your Hard Drive Won’t Work, Increases Latency

We’ve all yelled at our computers before, it can be very therapeutic, but we never thought it would do anything. Thanks to Brendan Gregg of Sun’s Fishworks team, we know for a FACT yelling at your computer doesn’t do anything helpful, and in fact increases latency.

Brendan wanted to see the effects of vibration on a disc array, so the best idea he came up with for improvised vibration was yelling at it. I’m glad I’m not kidding. What resulted (besides an incredibly hilarious video) was a sharp spike the number of I/O operations that take over 5ms to complete. Lesson learned: electronics won’t listen to you.

Source

Sony’s R&D Money For Cell Helped Create The Xbox 360 CPU

The Wall Street Journal was a lengthy writeup on The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the Xbox 360 & PlayStation 3. The book, written by two former IBM employees involved with the creation of the Cell processor, chronicles the chip designs for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It turns out that IBM, Sony, and Toshiba spent 400-million dollars and five years in designing Cell. Meanwhile, Microsoft benefited from all the research and development. The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan V. Last writes:

"In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft’s rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM’s Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony. All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony’s primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony’s R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it."

That’s pretty crazy. It appears that Sony’s ambitious plans for the PlayStation 3 combined with a surprising amount of trust in a Western partner caused it to take its eyes off the ball. Meanwhile, Microsoft cleverly — and apparently legally — seized an opportunity to get a fancy new chip with other people’s R&D money. I’m absolutely fascinated by how this book humanizes three very large companies. Based off of theWSJ report, I feel sad for Sony for being hustled and admire Microsoft’s gumption. Then there’s IBM, which comes off as the dirty, two-timing slut. At least, that’s the characterization that comes up in my head.

How do you guys feel about these revelations? Source

Toyota Working on Solar Green Car

Toyota Motor Corp. — maker of the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle, the Prius — is quietly developing a car that will run completely on solar energy.

Solar cells from the car will provide some of the power which can be recharged from solar panels on home rooftops.

It appears the Japanese automaker isn’t immune to the global economic blight as Toyota reported its first operating loss in 70 years. It’s doing exceptionally bad in major U.S. markets, and the enormous rise of the yen value doesn’t help either.

As a leader in green technology, Toyota already uses solar panels in to generate electricity at its Central Japan plant.

These panels equal 60 tennis courts in size and generate enough energy to power 500 homes. Which is great for emissions as it reduces 740 tons of the nasty carbon dioxide.

Source

Airport Security System Fails with Tape

An airport in Tokyo got foiled by a woman using a most underrated spy tool: tape.

The Japanese spent 45-million dollars installing biometric systems in their airports back in 2007 for immigration purposes.

A South Korean bar hostess, who initially got deported back in ‘07 for being in Japan illegally, entered the country again with a fake passport and a piece of tape stuck to her finger tip.

The tape made it impossible to read her fingerprints.

Japanese officials admit that many others probably are doing the same trick to enter the country without proper documentation.

Come on Japan! You guys can make toilets that analyze people’s urine sugar, but your multimillion-dollar biometric-scanner can be fooled by a flimsy piece of tape? Really?!?

Source

New Year, New ‘Wolverine’ Pic Released

It’s "Wolverine’s Celebrity Hot-Tub Party!" Well, given the scowl on his face, it seems like Logan might actually be expressing a bit self-consciousness towards bathing with other men. (Not that such a reaction is one I recognize from experience.) Actually, it is a brand new X-Men Origins: Wolverine pic released from Ain’t it Cool News portraying Logan emerging freshly from (what presumably was) a long and painful session of adamantium therapy.

The pic comes amid rumors that the film was actually a production plagued with creative conflicts with studio (Watchmen fans take note,) 20th Century Fox. While there may be some general pessimism surrounding the film, I think that at the end of the day, it it will generate enough excitement to make ALOT of money. Enough, anyway, to keep the machine of the X-Men film franchise going, whether that be in the form of the recently-delayed Magneto prequel, or a sequel to this Wolverine story. To me, it seems likely to happen.

Source

Yelling At Your Hard Drive Won’t Work, Increases Latency

We’ve all yelled at our computers before, it can be very therapeutic, but we never thought it would do anything. Thanks to Brendan Gregg of Sun’s Fishworks team, we know for a FACT yelling at your computer doesn’t do anything helpful, and in fact increases latency.

Brendan wanted to see the effects of vibration on a disc array, so the best idea he came up with for improvised vibration was yelling at it. I’m glad I’m not kidding. What resulted (besides an incredibly hilarious video) was a sharp spike the number of I/O operations that take over 5ms to complete. Lesson learned: electronics won’t listen to you.

Source

Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch, And Microsoft Using ‘PlayStation Home’ For Meetings

In a project being conducted by Portsmouth University and funded by Advanced Workplace Associates, big companies are experimenting with Sony’s PlayStation Home service to hold virtual meetings (would this be considered Homework? *snicker*). Using a service like Home enables companies to cut costs and reduce carbon emissions. The participants include Ernst & Young, Merrill Lynch, and…wait for it…Microsoft! Advanced Workplace Associates Andrew Mawson said:

"Increasingly we are living in a world without borders where workers need to collaborate on a global scale. Audio and video-conferencing solutions have emerged but the use of virtual worlds may offer the next evolution in overcoming the tyranny of distance — a more realistic and learning-enhanced environment."

While many of us have issues with PlayStation Home, it’s pretty cool to see big businesses use it to save some money and be nicer to the planet. I suppose Home is also doing the world a favor by helping combat the "tyranny of distance"…which, by the way, is my first nominee for the dumbest phrase of 2009.

A few companies have used Second Life for virtual meetings and a lot of people thought that Google’s Lively service would be used for the same purpose. Personally, I don’t get it at all. A teleconference or a video-conference seems much more practical to me. A product like Skype can make conferencing free or inexpensive — certainly cheaper than spending 0 per machine for employees that are probably dozing off in meetings anyway. What am I missing here? What do virtual avatars and 3D environments add to meeting productivity? Any ideas?

Source via Gamasutra

Woman Puts Credit Cards In Her Wii

Oh NeoGaf, what would we do without you?

Thanks to a member of the internet forum NeoGaf, we have one of our favorite gaming fail stories EVAR. It all began when "HUELEN10’s" neighbors decided to get a Wii for their family. Knowing their neighbor was a gamer, they asked for some recommendations on games they should purchase that the whole family could enjoy. Along with a few retail games, "HUELEN10" also recommended purchasing some Virtual Console games, as they had bought a Classic Controller to go with their new Wii.

Here’s where it gets awesome.

"HUELEN10" explained to the wife and mother of the house next door that she could get Virtual Console games by going into the Wii Shop channel, putting in her credit card when prompted to do so, and purchasing the amount of Nintendo Points she needs to cover the games she wants. Well, "HUELEN10" got a phone call from said lady neighbor saying that the Wii wasn’t working and she needs help. What was the issue?

The woman physically put 3 credit cards into the disc slot of her Wii. No joke. When the credit card number prompt came up on the screen, the woman jammed a credit card into the system, and then another, and then another. There is a Wii out there with no less that 3 credit cards forced into the disc slot because the owner thought that was how you purchase Nintendo Points. Worst part about it, the idiot lady neighbor expects "HUELEN10" to pay for the repairs. Good luck with that.

Source

‘Twin Skies’ Scales Back From 3D To 2D

Meteor Games have been talking about all the innovations they had planned for their upcoming MMO Twin Skies, merging a 3D persistent world with 2D flash games that would effect the 3D realm. Well…don’t hold your breath, because we now know from an announcement on the game’s official forums that they will be scaling back development to only include the 2D realm, making Twin Skies just another free-to-play browser based MMO.

"A lot of things have changed in the last few months, we’ve taken a few steps back and realised that creating a 3D MMO is really, really hard, especially in this economy. We’ve come so far with the design, quests, and lore, but we feel that it’s just a really risky and bad time to try and follow through with our plans and complete the game. Donna and myself have a much stronger background in 2D content (at least that’s what it says on our resumes) and this is the direction we feel the company should pursue."

"You’ll still be able to go on adventures, craft items, join guilds, raise pets, grow magical plants, trade, and play minigames for points, it’s just going to be more accessible, a little bit cuter and hopefully easier to make."

This brings up an interesting point, will the economic downturn have a large effect on the gaming industry? Should we expect statements like this one to be frequent over the next year or two? Or is this just a bad year to start a new development company or launch a new intellectual property? Only time will tell how much the gaming world will be affected by the current economy, but it helps to remember that entertainment industries have for the most part been recession-proof. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Source

Rebecca Romijn Reprises Role As Mystique…Sort Of

Funny or Die found itself quite a niche during the election season with a plethora of targets with which to satire politically. Tons of celebs drop by to participate in their professional big-budget virals, putting them in place to be the Channel 101 of 2008. (And perhaps ‘09.)

However, they do more than just hide the heartworm pill of Hollywood politics in the bacon of comedy. In this recently posted masterpiece, Rebecca Romijn reprises her role from the X-Men films as Mystique, torturing her husband Jerry O’Connell with inappropriate shapeshifts.

Jerry O’Connell rubbing the feet of comedian Jerry Minor = Worth the price of admission.

Man Scares Off Burglar…As Thor!

Home invaders, beware! In Edinburgh, Scotland, a burglar attempted to break into a home, only to find something waiting for him that was so powerful and frightening, that he ran away in terror. It was none other than the Norse God himself, Thor! Well, it wasn’t him really (seeing as he is a fictional character from Marvel comics,) however, it was the owner of the home who had just arrived back from a New Year’s costume party dressed as the hammer-wielding action deity.  As homeowner and 38 year-old construction worker, Torvald Alexander* recounts the incident:

"As soon as he saw me his (The Burglar’s ) eyes went wide with terror. He looked like he had had a few drinks and decided to do a late night break in, but he hadn’t counted on the God of Thunder living here."

Not only did the intruder not have time to steal anything from the home, but he fled so quickly, that he left his shoes!

Perhaps there is something to this. This incident might be able to finally make the case for crime-fighting cosplayers. So don’t be surprised if in the near future you read headlines such as:

• Evil Dead fan kills drug dealers with ‘boomstick.’ Says fan, "Shop smart, shop S-Mart."

• A Heath Ledger Joker uncovers a huge insider trading scam. Kidnaps and interrogates CEO, annoying him by continuing to repeat the "why so serious?" line.

• Sephiroth Foils Bank Robbery. Jumps down from the ceiling and stabs robber through the back with a sword. Incident happened in slow motion as very sad music is played.

*Pic is of a random cosplayer, not of Mr. Alexander.

Source

Nielsen Says PlayStation 2 is Most Popular in 2008

Nielsen Ratings, the media research company which determines TV viewing audience size and programs watched, has come up with 2008’s list of "Top Tens" for video-game console usage.

According to the company’s data, the PlayStation 2 has been determined the console that most gamers collectively spend playing. PS2 users counted for 31.7 percent from a nationwide study, covering January to October 2008.

In second place is the Xbox 360 which amounted for 17.2 percent of total time played, follow by the Wii with 13.4 percent at third place.

It also found that first-gen Xbox has more players (9.7 percent) than Playstation 3 (7.3 percent). It’s interesting that the GameCube also made the list with 4.6 percent of console players using it.

Speaking of surprises, are you guys even remotely phased that World of Warcraft killed it as Nielsen’s most-played video game? WoW has an average of 671 played minutes weekly. That’s equal to almost one percent of all PC gamers who are clicking this baby at any given minute.

Any of these figures surprise you? Leave a comment and let me know.

Source

Rocky IV Reunion: Expendables Teams Stallone With Dolph!

Fans of ‘80s action flicks rejoice! You may have heard that Sylvester Stallone is set to star in and direct The Expendables for Nu Image/Millennium Films. And you may know that it also stars modern action icons Jason Statham and Jet Li. But did you know that the film serves as a Rocky IV reunion of sorts, in that it co-stars Russian blonde beefcake Dolph “Ivan Drago” Lundgren?

The Expendables follows a team of mercenaries on a mission to overthrow a South American dictator. Forest Whitaker and Randy Couture also star in the film, which starts production in Costa Rica and Louisiana next month.

Stallone also wrote the script, with producers Avi Lerner, John Thompson and Kevin King Templeton on board alongside executive producers Boaz Davidson, Trevor Short and Danny Dimbort.

IMDB lists the film as in pre-production, while aintitcoolnews.com has a copy of the script, which they say it quite awesome.

What do you think? Good idea or terrible concept about to go horribly awry?

Source

Woman Puts Credit Cards In Her Wii

Oh NeoGaf, what would we do without you?

Thanks to a member of the internet forum NeoGaf, we have one of our favorite gaming fail stories EVAR. It all began when "HUELEN10’s" neighbors decided to get a Wii for their family. Knowing their neighbor was a gamer, they asked for some recommendations on games they should purchase that the whole family could enjoy. Along with a few retail games, "HUELEN10" also recommended purchasing some Virtual Console games, as they had bought a Classic Controller to go with their new Wii.

Here’s where it gets awesome.

"HUELEN10" explained to the wife and mother of the house next door that she could get Virtual Console games by going into the Wii Shop channel, putting in her credit card when prompted to do so, and purchasing the amount of Nintendo Points she needs to cover the games she wants. Well, "HUELEN10" got a phone call from said lady neighbor saying that the Wii wasn’t working and she needs help. What was the issue?

The woman physically put 3 credit cards into the disc slot of her Wii. No joke. When the credit card number prompt came up on the screen, the woman jammed a credit card into the system, and then another, and then another. There is a Wii out there with no less that 3 credit cards forced into the disc slot because the owner thought that was how you purchase Nintendo Points. Worst part about it, the idiot lady neighbor expects "HUELEN10" to pay for the repairs. Good luck with that.

Source

Idiot Kid Arrested After Threatening Suicide To Blizzard Rep

You know, I feel really bad for the in-game customer service representatives in World of Warcraft. Not only do many of them have to work the graveyard shift all night, but they often have to deal with the most extreme cases of nerd rage found on this plane of reality.

Well, this story might take the cake for that, because after threatening suicide while talking to an in-game customer service rep, one nerd was ripped away from his World of Warcraft session and arrested. The 17-year-old boy in question lives in Fairfield Township, Ohio and was text-chatting with someone at Blizzard on Monday, and apparently the conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. After the young man typed that "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for," the Blizzard employee rightfuly called the kid’s bluff and dialed 911.

The little nerd told police that it was a joke and he was trying "to get what he wanted for the game" as they handcuffed him and placed him in the patrol car, before releasing him into the custody of his father. The young man is going to court on January 6th to face a first degree misdemeanor charge, and some serious public embarassment. Kudos little guy, you’ve raised the bar of extreme nerddom for all of us. Let’s hope no one tries to challenge you for your title.

Source

Resident Evil 5 producer is worried about Western developers

Filed under: Business

The fine folks at Capcom don’t have a whole heck of a lot to be concerned about — their shares are still selling at fairly epic prices, and they’ve got a pretty solid release schedule lined up for the first half of 2009. Still, Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi recently said in a Famitsu interview that he’s worried about “the movements of Western developers,” specifically the movements into Capcom’s home turf, Japan.

Takeuchi hopes that 2009 will see an improvement in Japan’s domestic games market, stating, “it’s not good if Japanese developers are making games that can’t be enjoyed by Japanese people.” Capcom seems poised to lead that charge — Takeuchi hinted that Capcom’s unannounced plans for this year’s releases might just “surprise” their fellow countrymen. We hope they’ve got Mega Man X9 somewhere up their sleeves. Man, Japan would never see that one coming.

Resident Evil 5 producer is worried about Western developers originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:00:00 EST.

7-in-1 USB charging cable is for the bold and thrifty

Filed under: Nintendo DS, Portable, Sony PSP

Are you tired of dealing with the tumbleweed of cords responsible for siphoning power into your GBA SP, DS Phat, DS Lite, DSi, and your three different PSP models? Do you only have seven bucks with which to remedy said problem? Are you brave enough to trust a third-party company whose promotional materials feature glaring typos (we trust you can find it in the above image) with moving electricity from one of your expensive electronic devices into another? Can we turn your attention to Brando’s 7-in-1 USB Charging Cable, the perfect gift for those who meet the criteria listed above? Can we write this whole post only using interrogative sentences? Yes, we can. Aw, crap.

7-in-1 USB charging cable is for the bold and thrifty originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST.