mark castillo
Top Ten Shameful Games
Steel yourself for some of the most shameful, pain-inducing video games out there. Are these the worst games of all time? Well, that depends on your definition of "worst." Is it worse for a game to be boring, offensive, poorly designed, or simply stupid? It's hard to say, and there are plenty of games out there that fit one or more of those descriptions. It doesn't take much to be simply a bad game, but to be truly shameful, a game has to have something more… or maybe less. If the game makes you wince, it probably has that special something. Maybe it has to do with expectations. Let's face it -- you expect some games to be bad. If they aren't, you're pleasantly surprised; if they are, you quickly put them away and forget about them. But the truly shameful games have something fundamentally wrong with them that makes them stick out as examples of flawed game design, even if they do manage to include a few redeeming factors. So, these 10 titles may not be the WORST of all time, but they are far, far from being the best.
Group claims first cloned human born
A company founded by a religious group that believes humans were created by extraterrestrials said Friday that it has created the first human clone -- a 7-pound baby girl it calls Eve. "I am very pleased to announce that the first baby clone is born," said Brigitte Boisselier, the scientific director of Clonaid and a bishop in the group, called the Raelians. "She was born yesterday at 11:55 a.m. in the country where she was born. She is fine." Boisselier refused to disclose where Eve was born but did reveal that the mother is a 31-year-old American citizen. She said Eve was created using DNA from the mother's skin cells and is a twin of her mother. In an exclusive interview with CNN after the announcement, Boisselier said advances in the field of human in-vitro fertilization and cow cloning added to her success. "We have experts with 24 years of experience in the reproduction of humans and benefited from that.... (and also from) the work that has been done on cow cloning, of course," Boisselier said. "My expert, the one technician that did the embryo, did more than 3,000 cow embryos before touching any human eggs."
GameSpot Presents: The Best and Worst of 2002
GameSpot is proud to present its seventh annual Best and Worst of the Year feature, which highlights the most noteworthy achievements from the past year in gaming. It's appropriate that this year's feature is by far the biggest that we've ever produced, because, by all accounts, this has truly been an extraordinary year in gaming--one where great games weren't uncommon. So now we wish to commemorate the many impressive accomplishments that have emerged in 2002, in an awards feature that encompasses more than 100 unique categories, each with up to five deserving nominees.
Floating Monkeys dot COM
Hello everyone! My name is Kamel Perez and I am the "webmaster" of this site. I love creating images. I love photography, I love drawing, I love creating things, and I love sharing my creations with others. So what better way to share than to use my website to show my art to the world.
Buying a PC?
Before you open your wallet to buy a personal computer this holiday season, it's best to find out just how much computer you need. "It all depends on what you want to do with it," said Roger Kay, a personal computer and computer server analyst at market research firm International Data Corp., based in Framingham, Massachusetts. With the steadily advancing speeds of microprocessors, hard disk drives that hold more data yet cost less, faster recording-disc technologies, and the proliferation of gizmos that connect to PCs, there is no shortage of configurations from which to choose. There is a computer to be had for most budgets: You can buy a full-fledged new PC for less than $800, and, on the pricier end, you can easily pay more than $2,000, depending on the number of digital bells and whistles you want, Kay said.
Pop-ups add new twist
Pop-up advertisements, already the bane of millions of Web surfers, are becoming more intrusive. Pop-up and pop-under ads open a new window when people visit many popular Web sites, often littering the computer desktop with multiple browser screens. Advertisers hope people will visit the promoted Web page by clicking anywhere on the window, although many simply close it by selecting the "X" box in the top-right corner. But a relatively new feature may make it harder for people to avoid these windows. Using a technique called the "kick through," advertisers can direct a person to another Web site if they simply move their cursor across the pop-up ad--no clicking is necessary.
Free Speech -- Virtually
But since many bloggers have no background in publishing, they often come to the medium unaware of the rules that apply, and complaints are becoming more common. Many people publish as if they were untouchable, assuming that because what they write appears in a virtual world, it won't come back to burn them in the "real" world. Many overlook the fact that their rants can potentially reach millions of people when posted on the Internet.
Slashdot | MacAddict Tracks Down eBay Scam Artist
OS24Ever writes "A future high school history teacher, Jason Eric Smith, sold an 867MHz PowerBook G4 on eBay right before finals. He found out the hard way that people are out there to rip you off, and he went to
great lengths to catch this guy with the help of Mac heads everywhere. A great read and agreat way for us little guys to get back at these scammers."
Froogle
Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.
Slashdot | Examining a Tablet PC
Mister Buttons writes "There really haven't been any real technical reviews of the new Tablet PC operating system from Microsoft yet. Those marketing stories published on CNET and the like do little more than whet the appetite. Luckily it looks like someone finally took a close look at the Tablet PC. The folks over at AnandTech have a
good tablet PC review up which includes information on both the hardware and software that the tablet PCs use. Maybe it's time to break open that piggy bank..."
Erykah Badu, Jill Scott Join Common's 'Electric Circus'
Common's Electric Circus, due out on December 10 on MCA Records, boasts an all-star lineup of collaborators including Prince, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Mary J. Blige, ?uestlove from the Roots, and Sonny from P.O.D., among others. The Neptunes and the Soulquarians (Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, James Poyser, Pino Pallidino, and Jay Dee) handle the album's production. Blige appears on the album's first single, "Come Close," produced by the Neptunes.
Books: A Different Kind of Selling Out
When John Freyer decided to unload a few of his things and go live in New York, he couldn?t imagine it would come to this. Two years later he still hasn't moved to the Big Apple, but he has managed to move everything he owned. Freyer put it all up for sale online, every single possession, and then used the $6,000 he made to visit his old stuff all over the country. "I've become amazed by the history and genealogy of objects," says Freyer, who's engaged to the women who bought his kitchen table.
Slashdot | Open Source Housing
No_Weak_Heart writes "The latest issue of Metropolis magazine has an interesting look at the house of the future. The primary focus of the article is on MIT's House_n project and its offshoot - the Open Source Building Alliance. The article discusses potential benefits of adopting a modular, component-based, everyone's-invited approach to building. Houses built via interactive design stategies and mass-cutomization vs. single-purpose structures driven by one ideology."
New t-shirts for Mac fanatics at Macsurfshop
Is there a Mac fan on your holiday shopping list that loves to wear his heart on his sleeve? The
Macsurfshop has come up with four new t-shirt designs, just in time for the holidays. The first tee is in black and sports a white image of a "Classic" Mac, as see when you boot older versions of Mac OS. The logo says, "Classic for Life." Design number two is a blue tee with white lettering featuring text from a Nielsen/NetRatings report published earlier this year: "Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts."
