I was raised in the glory days of Japanese RPG's (JRPG's) on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were the biggest game franchises, and real gamers could debate their merits endlessly. We remained engaged in the stories of the games, even though the soldiers, princesses and schoolchildren all had spiky day-glo hair. We waded through hours of randomly triggered menu-based battles instead of playing Doom or baseball. And we loved every minute of it.
This will not be cheap. The mark attends a show by Criss Angel, or David Blaine, Derren Brown, the Amazing Kreskin, whoever. He's brought onstage to be hypnotized. Seconds later, the audience and all the mark's buddies are laughing their heads off and applauding wildly, the house is coming down.
Step one. Find out who is most terrified of heights, someone inevitably will be!
Kill with skill. That's the motto of the newly released Bulletstorm, available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows. It may sound ridiculous and somewhat obnoxious by itself, but it's actually in regards to its many "ridiculous skillshots" that a player can perform. And yes, ridiculous skillshots was an actual quote, straight from Epic Games.
Last time, we looked at archaic cryptography, so you should have a basic understanding of some of the concepts and terminology you'll need. Now, we'll discuss one of the most important advances in computer security in the 20th century—public key cryptography.
"Google+ is dead." How many times have you read that in the past few weeks? It seems like I can't get away from this notion that Google+, as a social network, is a total failure. Don't feel too sorry for them, though. +Bradley Horowitz isn't worried. In an interview with VentureBeat, he explains, “Six months from now, it will become increasingly apparent what we’re doing with Google+. It will be revealed less in what we say and more in the product launches we reveal week by week.” Indeed, som...
Increasingly, I'm turning to Google+ as a source of news, and it looks like I'm not the only one. On Thursday, news of a small earthquake broke on both Twitter and Google+. One curious user, +Keith Barrett, decided to try and find out which social network was faster with the news. Turns out it was a tie. As Google integrates Google+ more closely with the rest of its services, and more users post relevant stories, I think we'll start to see Google+ as a place that can create and break stories,...
The UK print media has been yellower than the middle traffic light for a long time now. The News of the World scandal has cast that into particularly sharp relief of late. The Sun, one of the biggest newspapers in the United Kingdom, demonstrated it again last week when they ran the front-page headline "DEATH BY XBOX".
The sudden deceleration, shifting in the knee, popping sound and screaming from the intense pain that immediately follows is becoming increasingly common among our young athletes. Those who
The sudden deceleration, shifting in the knee, popping sound and screaming from the intense pain that immediately follows is becoming increasingly common among our young athletes. Those who have witnessed or suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) are familiar with the pain, surgery and intense 6 to 8 month rehabilitation that accompanies the injury, not to mention the disappointment of ending a season. Nationwide, this will occur more than 500,000 times this year, and female athlete...
Ubuntu users can directly copy flash videos from the web with Firefox. There's no need to install software such as a YouTube downloader, which are available in abundance throughout the web. First, you need to know where to find the temporary flash file in Ubuntu (see my other post for that).
Not every DIY project is as executable as, say, making a potato gun. Occasionally, we observe a quixotic project that is just plain wonderful. Consider rich guy Philip Anschutz and his eponymous Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). His ambition to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles is a Fitzcarraldo-sized DIY project that, if the stars align, might happen in time for the 2016 season.
Just installed a new hard disk on your PC, but Windows was unable to detect it? Download Ubuntu
Snakes on a Plane (or Serpents on an Aircraft if copyrighted)
Obesity has ballooned into a worldwide epidemic. The World Health Organization estimates that 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and 700 million will be obese by 2015. Over 20 million children are overweight today. The reasons for these distressing figures are common knowledge: The international switch to high sugar, high fat, low nutrient processed junk foods prompted by global fast food chains and their advertising; the increasingly sedentary nature of jobs; children playing video games ...
TOP MOVIES 2011 The Artist (2011)
This is my attempt to show people some cool things we can do with programming, and to give a small incentive for people to join the weekly Community Bytes. I wanted to make a tutorial on how to use Twitter from the command line with Python. This would have been an easy project to do not too far back, and a good bit of practice for a beginner to programming. It teaches that you can do useful stuff with programming. However, a while ago Twitter started using something called OAuth to access the...
This week's FIGRR is all about games that are old-new (or new-old, if you like) school. Each celebrates a different vital, yet largely taken for granted, aspect of video game history in the decidedly new-school world of indie games. Their titles betray them. Blocks That Matter is all about blocks. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is all about item shops. Neither are particularly sexy aspects of gaming, but both are ubiquitous elements of great games that can stand on their own.
What's more fun? Winning against your friends or winning against others with them? It's an age old question, and in video games, the former one-on-one multiplayer has been the norm. But cooperative multiplayer has made a comeback, with Halo and Diablo II starting the trend, the first mainstream shooters and RPGs with great co-op modes. And now good local and multilplayer co-op games are available in almost every genre.
A century ago there wasn't much life available for quadriplegic people. Handicap accessibility was barely even a concept, and lacking medical technology kept any semblance of independence out of reach. Today those unfortunate enough to be paralyzed from the neck down have brighter prospects, but are still unable to participate in many activities. Video games are a great option for those who do not have the use of their legs, but for quadriplegics, the use of a standard controller is not an op...
This words will help you identify terms that are brought up in reviews. You can also use them when writing your own review to be a bit more descriptive.
Dangers abound in the world of srteet art, however one danger stands out as increasingly dangerous. Gangs around the country use graffiti to mark their terriotory and do not take kindly to street artists. In several parts of los angelos gang members will stop you in the middle of the street and ask you if you have spray paint if you are wearing a backpack or a messenger bag. If you answer in the affirmitive (or if they take your bag and find spray paint or markers) its very likely they will s...
You start a casual conversation about skydiving with someone afraid of heights, you suggest to them a good prank would be to dive from a plane blindfolded and find your friends (who are also falling) so they can put on your parachute guided via a radio headset. While they tell you about how much they think it is a bad idea your buddies pounce from behind, blindfold them, tie them up and make out like your going to try the stunt.
Facebook Fan Pages have become extremely popular and are being used by everyone from large companies like Coca Cola and Ford Motors all the way down to people's pets.
Chicago Sun Times movie critic Roger Ebert hates 3-D. And when I say hate, I really mean hate. Check out Ebert's excerpted nine points below via Newsweek.
Back in the eighties, I used to hate television commercials, but I eventually got used to them. Had to, in order to enjoy my favorite shows. Then, the increasing number of billboard ads annoyed me in the nineties. They followed me everywhere I went—no escape—persuading me to buy the newest whatever. It seemed like Big Brotherism—like They Live. But, I got used to it. When I finally entered the digital age and became a web addict, I was peeved at the constant sight of online ads everywhere I v...
Construct "Day Spa" This will need to be a temporary building that is free standing and preferably a rectangle (for maximized destruction!) with the entrance leading to two rooms in the back, like so:
The entire Jackass gang are seated around a large conference table. They are seriously strapped down in the chairs and wires & electrodes are attached to all of them. In front of each them is are large unmarked push buttons. Each umarked button is linked to a certain Jackass member. When any button is pushed, some serious voltage is sent to a specific person. However the juice will be turned off, for most of the time, for a preceding event will be taking place will be well, SOME WEIRD STRANGE...
The community here on Null Byte has always been great and helpful in sharing their know-how, even before I took up admin duties in this World. I jumped at the chance of leading Null Byte because I enjoy teaching and informing people on all of the important need-to-know things out there, but more so than that—there is a deeper reason.
Do you need to email your wife your Social Security number? Send confidential business plans to your partner in Thailand? Send your hacker buddies the recovered hashes from last night's breach? Try using GPG, a valuable and easy to use open-source encryption program.
Dungeon Defenders is the most exciting craft game on the Fall 2011 release schedule. I got a chance to play it at PAX in August and interviewed developers Trendy Entertainment last month. After more than a year of publishing difficulty and delay, the game finally came out on PSN, XBLA and Steam. I put about 20 hours into the XBLA version over the past weekend, beating all the campaign maps and racking up a huge pile of in-game money. It is not a perfect game. But it is a huge, challenging, an...
D.I.Y.: Start Your Own Cassette Label! By adam_schragin on Aug 4, 2008 at 10:56am in DIY
Three years ago, Scrabble was one of the very first 500 mobile applications to appear on the new iTunes App Store, allowing iPhone users the chance to kill their Scrabble cravings on the go. It was a smart move for Hasbro and Electronic Arts (EA), but it's been two years and eight months since the Android Market opened for business, and they've just now released an official app for Android smartphones—Scrabble Free.
Making your way into an online community can be really exciting. Some life-long friendships and lasting romances begin in humble chat rooms and message boards. But for the novice internet user, one of the biggest hurdles can be trying to figure out just what people are saying to one another.
When you're aiming to set up a scavenger hunt, you might be pondering how much time frame you are committing oneself to. It's a great thought, and one which does not have a single size that matches everyone's resolution. But this unique guideline will furnish the facts you need so that you can figure out just how long implementing a scavenger hunt or clue hunt will take. You might want to be aware of a small amount with regards to which variety of quest you are preparing. Is it a common scave...
Anonymity is something that doesn't exist today. Everything you do in the world is tracked, from the purchases you make to surfing the internet—even taking pictures on your iPhone. Everything you have ever said and done on the internet is still there—somewhere. This is called caching. For example, when a site is down, you can view its cached page on Google.
