Did the Beatles sales plans Come Together?

When is selling 595,000 copies of a game in three weeks a disappointment? When it’s the Beatles edition of Rock Band.

The sales make it the third best-selling game of September, beating out fellow debutante Guitar Hero 5, which just fell short of the 500,000. The Beatles game was up in second place for total revenue thanks to sales of the higher-priced editions with customized guitars, though there aren’t any public details of how well each individual version sold. Given that the only real extra cost per unit with the custom controllers (compared with the standard guitars) is any licensing fee, you’d have to imagine the profit margin on the accessories is very healthy.

There had been predictions of a million sales for the game in the month, a figure Guitar Hero III achieved. Now some analysts are questioning the Beatles game’s staying power, though it’s not exactly as if the tracks are going to fall out of fashion, and it should certainly get a boost from the Christmas market.

Meanwhile the rhythm game genre keeps on rocking. There’s now a version of Rock Band as an iPhone app, costing $9.99. The game includes 20 songs, with others available at 99 cents for two songs.

While the DS version of Guitar Hero solved the touchscreen conundrum by releasing a plug-in keypad, this game requires users to tap along on the screen, Tap Tap Revenge-style. Early reviews are fairly mixed, though it’s possible that the price tag will mean it’s mainly people who are dedicated to the Rock Band series who’ll buy it, so they’ll be less likely to be disappointed.

For those looking for a more intense musical game experience, Brutal Legend could be for you. Released this month, it appears to be the perfect answer to that age-old question “Why isn’t there a game like Grand Theft Auto where you play a roadie, everything is themed on heavy metal album covers, the main weapon is a Flying V guitar which can fire pyrotechnics, and missions include summoning an army of fans by playing a Guitar Hero-style rhythm game?”
 


Blue Screen of Death Belt Buckle

Ladies and Gentlegeeks, behold! Here is what could possibly be the ultimate in geek fashion: The BSOD belt!

Currently priced at $16.95 at Geek Gone Chic, you too can now sport your very own BSOD error message for all to see. The belt fabric is made out of a cotton/acrylic blend, and the clam style closure buckle is in metal, with the BSOD picture in front sealed under a gloss finish to protect it from abuse.

[BSOD Belt @ Geek Gone Chic]

MySpace Post Allowed as Evidence in Murder Trial

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

gavelFollowing a horrific murder in 2007, an Indiana man, Ian Clark, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life without parole. But the case recently came up for appeal, and the sole issue? Whether the trial judge was right in allowing a MySpace post to be admitted as evidence.

The WSJ Law Blog reports that the Indiana Supreme Court held it to be admissible, affirming the verdict. Apparently the defendant’s own words posted on the Internet were key to understanding his state of mind, which was at issue in the trial since he testified that he was “reckless” (as he was drunk at the time of the killing) but not an “intentional killer.”

On his MySpace page, Clark wrote: “Society labels me as an outlaw and criminal and sees more and more everyday how many of the people, while growing up, and those who judge me, are dishonest and dishonorable.”

This isn’t the first time that Internet postings have been used as evidence in a courtroom, but it always serves as a reminder that you should be careful about what you say – or write. In Clark’s case, noting that “It’s only a C Felony, I can beat this,” was probably not particularly endearing to the jurors.

[Image Source: joegratz (CC)]

Pixar Intro Parody

Have you ever wondered what really happened to the unlucky “I” that gets flattened in the original Pixar Intro? Well Collegehumor gives you an extended look at the poor letter’s fate in their latest parody.

Scientists not cancelling Christmas plans for 2012

The world will end after being hit by the planet Nibiru on 21 December 2012.

That’s a nice story, but it’s not true. And a senior scientist at NASA’s Astrobiology Institute says so.

David Morrison (pictured), writes a regular column with the wonderfully Onionesque title Ask an Astrobiologist for the Astronomical Society of Pacific newsletter. He says that he’s been asked about the 2012 story by almost a thousand readers.

There appear to be many reasons for the scare stories, which go back at least 30 years. The main one involves claims that the Sumerians, the oldest recorded civilization on Earth, based in what’s now southern Iraq, wrote that they had discovered a planet named Nibiru which orbits the Sun every 3,600 years. More recently, a so-called psychic claimed aliens had informed her that the planet was due to collide with Earth.

These theories later got mixed up with some misapprehensions about the Mesoamerican long count calendar, a system used around 4,000 years ago in what’s now Mexico and Central America. To simplify the claims, there are some who believe the calendar runs for a fixed amount of time (unlike our own, which runs in annual cycles) and that that time runs out on… 21 December 2012. Add two and two together and you get Armageddon.

Morrison has now put together a detailed look at the science behind the bogus claims (PDF). Among his main points:

  • The Sumerians did not even know about Uranus, Neptune and Pluto or the idea of planets orbiting the sun.
  • The so-called Planet X, “discovered in 1993” and said to be Nibiru, was never proven to be a planet. Even the title is misleading: if and when something is confirmed as a planet, it receives a proper name; until then it isn’t referred to as a planet.
  • Most so-called pictures of Nibiru are in fact reflections of the sun caused by lens flare.
  • Even if the government wanted to keep Nibiru’s existence a secret, it simply wouldn’t be able to do so because astronomers would be so excited and discuss it. Indeed, if the stories were true, Nibiru would now be visible to anyone with a telescope.
  • Calendars measure time. They don’t predict events.
  • It’s illogical to ask NASA to prove Nibiru is a hoax. Proving a negative is impossible.
  • The theory that Nibiru could cause the Earth’s magnetic polarity to reverse simply doesn’t make sense, particularly as it’s based on a bogus idea that magnetic polarity is linked to the Earth’s rotation.

Unfortunately, despite the work of men like David Morrison, the doommongering probably isn’t going to quieten any given the upcoming release of a movie, 2012, in which the disaster does indeed take place. To promote the film, Sony has created a spoof website for the Institute of Human Continuity, an organization which is apparently running both a lottery to get places in special subterranean cities and an election for a new leader of the post-devastation world.

It’s not exactly convincing though. For those who don’t see the Sony copyright notice as evidence something is amiss, there’s also the question of whether an organization dedicated to giving everyone an equal chance of survival would really produce a website that’s inaccessible without the Flash plug-in. (Actually, I have a horrible suspicion the answer is yes, it would.)

Launching Lenovo Laptops with a Trebuchet

Ok, sending a couple of Lenovo laptops into the sky via a trebuchet may not be anywhere as cool as doing so with flaming bowling balls, but this is still a pretty interesting experiment.

At Gadgetoff 2009, a team of tinkerers used their trebuchet to launch two ThinkPad laptops, with the benediction of Lenovo of course, to see how they would fare after the test. The result? Well, they were pretty thoroughly destroyed, but apparently, when taken off the systems and installed in a new one, the trashed laptop’s hard drives booted just fine.

For those of you who haven’t been with us for long and are interested in medieval siege engines, you might want to check out our exclusive HD video report on Mongo the trebuchet, a full-fledged trebuchet that can launch 20-pound projectiles (including fireballs) at around 250 meters.

[Via Gizmodo]

Going Beyond the Streets with the Google Street View Trike

Since Google Street View cars are somewhat limited to conventional paved roads, the folks at Google thought to equip a trike with the gear necessary to take pictures of spots which are normally not reachable by four-wheeled vehicles. Check it out.

You can even go and vote for the trike’s next destination by visiting the Google Trike homepage.

[Via PopSci]