Playing Full Throttle is like tasting a rich bowl of roadhouse chili filled to the rim with biker gangs, chick mechanics (covered in engine grease too), and truckers with badass tattoos. An action packed, comical (albeit short), animated graphical adventure set in the backdrop of an apocalyptic future, Full Throttle touches on the subculture of motorcycle gangs and their steel horses. It is also a story about Ben, a renegade biker who lives and dies by his own rules. Ben’s voice (played by the late Roy Conrad) is every bit as gravelly as the Old Mine Road where he does battle. In this alternate world, cars hover, transport trucks are armored, and desolate towns like Melonweed are sinking fast into the sand. It is a land with many strange locales and even stranger inhabitants.

Released by LucasArts with much fanfare, Full Throttle was an instant hit among critics. Over time, the game grew to become a cult classic and developed a huge fan base. Yet, behind the success of Full Throttle was a detracted story of developer heartbreak. Since the game’s initial release, LucasArts had twice attempted to develop a sequel for the game, but both ended as abruptly as they began. Very little was known about these sequels behind the scenes, except for their names—Full Throttle: Payback and Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels.

This is the story about the rise and fall of Full Throttle.

Nintendo doesn't exactly advertise it, but the remotes for the Wii gaming console—including the balance board that comes with Wii Fit—have Bluetooth capabilities. That means you can connect your Wii peripherals to your computer to operate the media center hooked up to your TV, play emulated games with a Nunchuk, Classic Controller, or even a Balance Board, and pretty much have them do anything you can do with a keyboard. Let's walk through linking up your Wii peripherals and putting them in control of your Mac, PC, or Linux box.

To give you an idea of what you can do with a Wii/PC hook-up, here's a look at one neat example: Controlling Windows Media Center from a distance, without having to shell out for a separate remote control.

Even though Nvidia’s Nvision tradeshow did not achieve its goal of 10,000 visitors, more than a thousand gathered at the Center for Performing Arts to witness the ending of the event. The duo behind the popular Mythbusters showed the results of six months of work, demonstrating the difference between a CPU and a GPU, following the conventional wisdom of parallel computing.

Dubbed Smiley and Mona Lisa, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman presented two robots that represented the difference between a CPU and a GPU. Smiley was given a task to draw a smiley using conventional CPU techniques, doing one thing at a time. Smiley was a relatively simple robot, while Mona Lisa consisted out of "1100 massively parallel barrel processors", dwarfing the 240 shaders offered by a GeForce GTX 280 chip.

I've had serious discussions in the past about whether nor not video games constitute an art form. I hold very strongly that they do--the act of playing a game can be as engrossing as the best novel, and the act of creating a game can be much more involved than the creation of a film. The video game industry has suprassed the film industry in monetary terms, and seems now to equal to television and cinema in regards to pop-cultural awareness.

There are, of course, detractors.

They're wrong.

Anyway, I've had this phrase in my head all year--"The year is 2008"--from the opening cinematic of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. The game came out in 2001, and it struck me at the time that it's rare for a piece of art to predict so near a future.

We like to look at early science fiction and laugh: Bradbury's Martian Chronicles had us living on foreign planets by the 1990s, and of course Orwell envisioned the thought police and big brother by 1984. Here it is, coming up on a decade into the new millenium, and there are no flying cars, teleporters, or laser guns.

So I've been waiting seven years to see how ironic Ghost Recon would be. It's always struck me as a bit brazen to put a very specific timeline on a piece of art that takes place in the future, especially the near future, when people will be able to have immediate perspective on how wrong it is.

But it's not.

Though sales of the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable are strong, there are many who use the devices exclusively for homebrew applications. While some of these homebrew devices or homebrew-enabling schemes are looked upon less than favorably by the big manufacturers, such as the infamous R4 flash cart for the DS, there are some companies who see the value in releasing devices capable of homebrew software. Enter the Wiz, a new open-source handheld gaming unit from GamePark Holdings.

Homebrew and open-source applications often offer utility unrivaled by the more mainstream units, and that's something GPH is hoping to take advantage of with this new handheld. The Linux-powered device (running its own GP2X distribution) sports an Arm9 533MHz processor with a 3D accelerator, 64MB of RAM, 1GB of built-in NAND flash memory, an external SD card slot, and a single USB 2.0 connection. The display is a 2.8" OLED touch screen panel with a resolution of 320 by 240 (QVGA). The unit is powered by a 2000mAh Lithium-Ion battery that nets an advertised five hours of play time.

Official commercial games, launching alongside the unit, are a strong focal point. While previous devices in the line have been host to for-pay games, the Wiz will debut with a full suite of official games from third-party developers. Launch titles Asura Cross Wired, a fighting game, and Her Knights, a side-scrolling action game, will come alongside the release of the handheld and future titles that are slated for release through 2009, including puzzlers, rhythm games, shooters, and even RPGs.

If you want to combine a pair of GeForce graphics cards with a new Core i7 processor from Intel later this year, you're in luck. Just after the grand finale for its Nvision conference, Nvidia gathered reporters to inform them of a somewhat surprising and apparently very recent decision: the firm plans to enable its SLI multi-GPU scheme to work with Intel's X58 chipset–without the need for an nForce 200 PCI Express bridge chip on the motherboard.

The fate of SLI support on the X58 chipset–intended for Core i7 processors, which are code-named "Nehalem"–has been a question mark for some time now. Nvidia has said that it won't be making chipsets that work with the Core i7's QuickPath Interconnect (QPI), and it had instead proposed that motherboard makers use its nForce 200 chip on their boards. The presence of that bit of Nvidia hardware would then make the mobo kosher for SLI support. However, the company said today that it realized such a silicon solution would limit SLI to a small number of very high end motherboards, effectively roping off SLI from the mainstream of the enthusiast PC market. Rather than be forced into that situation, Nvidia has elected to allow SLI on the X58 chipset–under certain circumstances.

Ever wondered what your holiday snaps would look like if Hitler decided to hang them on the walls of a secret Nazi base?

No? Oh, well you are going to find out anyway.

Thanks to a talented Javascript hacker who wanted to learn how the Flickr API worked, you can now view your Flickr photo albums through the eyes of B.J. Blazkowicz from the original Wolfenstein 3D.

Statisticians have used a lower limit for 100-meter times of about 9.45 seconds, according to Tabata and other researchers. The exponential curve seen above -- which is drawn from an equation calculated to fit the world record data -- had been quite successful at predicting the steady progress of faster and faster 100-meter times. But Bolt's recent string of world records was clearly not an expected event: The model didn't predict a 9.69 until almost 2030.

Mathematicians like Noubary don't use the body's physiology to assess human physical limits. They were merely working with data that suggested that human speed increases were decelerating and would eventually stop completely. Indeed, in some events, like the long jump, the pace of record-setting has slowed nearly to a stop. That record has only been broken twice since 1968.

But it could just be that mathematicians have been modeling the pace of progress wrong all along.

I had imagineered the iPhone as a web browsing iPod (“based on Nokia’s mobile contributions to Safari”) with SMS messaging features, contacts, calendar, and a camera… six months earlier. And CDMA? I recommended Apple “leave Verizon alone and partner with Cingular, TMobile, and MetroPCS using GSM technology.” The difference between my ideas and those from (Kevin) Rose, apart from mine being six months earlier, is that I presented mine as only reasonable ideas with some rationale behind them; Rose insisted he had special knowledge from reliable sources.

Rose says the Nano will get a redesign that makes it look like last year’s Flash RAM Zune; iLounge already predicted this a month ago, although Rose embellished his version with the idea that “the actual plastic on the outside will be curved,” presumably like a TV from the 80s. How nostalgic! I miss having a wildly distorted tube picture, almost as much as a scratchable plastic iPod screen. Oh the good ol’ days.

Like many others, Eric Ruckman found that the DS controller add-on for Guitar Hero: On Tour left a bit to be desired but, unlike most folks, he didn't just go back to playing on his console of choice -- he actually went all out and pieced together a full-size rig out of a PS2 Guitar Hero controller. As you can see above, that includes a special housing for the DS itself (it's still used for strumming), and even a built-in FM transmitter with its own screen, which lets him pump the audio through his home sound system.

Members of Custom PC’s Folding@home team may have noticed a major increase in our production rate recentlys, and there’s little doubt that much of this can be attributed to Stanford’s new GPU2 client for Nvidia and ATI GPUs. However, it looks as though Nvidia GPUs are the king of the folding castle at the moment, as they’re currently responsible for a whopping 42 per cent of the project’s total output.

This is despite the fact that over three times as many active PlayStation 3s as there are Nvidia GPUs contributing to the project, not to mention 16 times as many CPUs folding under Windows. There are currently 12,982 Nvidia GPUs actively folding, out of a total of 323,424 active processors in total. As such, the fact that Nvidia GPUs make up such a colossal percentage of the total output is pretty incredible.

You can see the current statistics on the next page, showing that Nvidia GPUs are currently churning out 1,428 TFLOPS out of a total of 3,372 TFLOPS for the whole project. Meanwhile, ATI GPUs are responsible for 404 TFLOPS, but even this is double the output from Windows CPU clients, and is an impressive figure considering that there are only 3,677 ATI GPUs actively folding at the moment.

Wie man der obigen Tabelle entnehmen kann, besitzt "Kuma" zwei Kerne und wird wie bisher alle Vertreter der Phenom-Reihe im 65 nm-Verfahren produziert. Ähnlichkeiten zu den Topmodellen ergeben sich auch bei der Cache-Ausstattung. So sorgen an dieser Stelle ebenfalls 512 KiB L2-Cache pro Kern sowie ein gemeinsamer, 2 MiB großer L3-Cache für die schnelle Zwischenspeicherung von im Umlauf befindlichen Daten.

Des Weiteren lassen sich bereits die Kern- sowie HTT-Taktfrequenzen ablesen. Ist die HTT-Taktfrequenz bei allen drei Chips mit 1600 MHz festgesetzt, so beträgt der Kerntakt 2,3 (GE-6600), 2,1 (GE-6500) und 1,9 GHz (GE-6400). Aufgrund der relativ humanen Taktfrequenzen kann AMD bei allen Modellen eine TDP von gerade einmal 45 Watt fahren.
Wann und zu welchem Preis die Phenom Dual-Cores kommen werden, muss noch abgewartet werden. Der Eintrag macht jedoch Hoffnung, dass es allzu lange nicht mehr dauern wird.

Over the years of the modern Olympic era we have witnessed design take a forefront in the planning and execution of the event. It has seemingly gone from a casual, low key sporting event, with each venue taking their turn hosting, into a full scale media orgy of Superbowl proportions.

With the enormous costs that cities face to hold the games, more energy, and money, is being focused on branding in hopes at creating a memorable and rewarding event. Host countries now reach out to the best designers, architects, and artist, to create a spectacle the world will never forget, and the one symbol that will be plastered on the streets, merchandise, and computer and television screens across the globe: the logo. And while most designs have stuck close to the blue, yellow, black, green and red of the Olympic colors, we have begun to see new colors emerge from the more recent games, including the first logo to come in multiple colors, which will be seen in 2012.

Angelina Jolie does so much good with her fame, she's almost like Bono, except her accent is more transatlantic than Irish. Or like Princess Diana, but alive. But sometimes, Jolie's fame is put towards evil use. For example, The Wanted. Also: spam. Jolie's name makes a lot of people click on emails. Secure Computing reports that each day, some 2.3 percent of all email traffic contains Angelina Jolie's name in the subject line. Think "Angelina Jolie naked," "Angelina Jolie nude movie," or "Angelina Jolie naked video,"writes InternetNews.com's Andy Patrizio. The 10 most common names associated with spam emails are below. We're glad to see so many people interested in nude movies featuring Barack Obama and George Bush.

Having spent considerable time with the Terran and Protoss at BlizzCon last year -- and no access to the Zerg at Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational -- I thought it might be fun to take out my old favorite class for a spin.

As you might expect, there was a wait, one that gave me ample opportunity to watch the Zerg in action. Most noticeable was the lovely look of the Creep, the purplish goo that the hivemind race builds upon. It has a constant visual pulse to it, not something that distracts when one actually gets one's hands on the keyboard and mouse.

That said, the Zerg were probably the hardest race to easily distinguish from their surroundings. Hopefully that's just due to inexperience and unfamiliarity with the new models, but the move to 3D and a higher resolution does make it a bit more difficult to pick out units.

Nestle Prepared Foods Company is recalling about 215,660 pounds of frozen stuffed pepperoni pizza sandwich products, known as Hot Pockets Pepperoni Pizza, because the product might contain small pieces of hard red plastic and other foreign material, which pose a risk of serious injury to consumers.

The Mt. Sterling, Ky., company has received four consumer complaints and no reports of injuries. Spokeswoman Roz O’Hearn said the reported foreign substance — hard red plastic as well as clear flexible rubber-like material — might have splintered off from a testing device and some of it could be buried inside with sharp edges.

We all know about Pandora's troubles paying their ever-increasing rent to the RIAA Copyright Royalty Board, but now another one of our favorite internet music spots could be succumbing to corporate pressure as well. Muxtape, the site that allowed users to make 12-song playlists of their music and share them online has been (temporarily?) shut down. Their page is left with the simple message "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." And once again, the RIAA does its job to ensure that no one anywhere gets excited about music.

Independent developer Cliff Harris, of Positech Games, asked pirates why they choose to pirate his games, promising them immunity and anonymity in exchange for their honest rationales, which he would aggregate and post on his blog. They reciprocated, and of about six reasons, a righteous indignation at DRM seemed to lead the list. Harris is actually responding to the gripes in both the pricing and de-DRMing of titles in the future, with his own reasoning why it's a good idea.

Our Deutsch is a little rusty, but Spiegel's got a hard-hitting, um, sounding story on Segway safety -- specifically regarding what happens when one hits a stationary object or falls off of one while riding it at full speed. Hey der Spiegel, why don't you try the same test with one of those bicycle contraptions we hear Europeans are so in love with? We have a feeling you might be slightly more horrified by the results.

G4 has figured out the best way to harness the energy of Will Wright. Besides getting him to make a game, of course, which Electronic Arts has already figured out. Instead, G4 has set up a camera in front of him and told him to talk about whatever he wants. They've then taken an interesting minute at a time and made short clips called "The Will Wright Minute". The great thing about these is that Will Wright's off-the-cuff observations are more than interesting enough to make up for the silly animation and the Spore and G4 promos that technically make these "The Will Wright Minute and a Half".

They're like Zero Punctuation, but with punctuation. And Will Wright. And American. And without cynicism, sneering, or sarcasm. And not about games.