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It's goin' nowhere
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/THIS_Wiimote_is_goin_nowhere'; We knew the straps were a little weak. This user decided to protect his loved ones and shiny TV set in the most authoritative way he knew how: chaining that wand to his wrist, nuclear-bomb-code-briefcase style. We ourselves have used thick shoelaces at parties to ensure ... ah ... inebriated members of the populace wouldn't deface and destroy; how about you guys? Come up with any creative solutions in the realm of protective measures?[via VG Cats]
Mom-of-the-year calls cops on son who opened "PlayStation GameBoy" pre-Xmas
As the PS3 crime spree chronicles continue to unfold, a zany mother in South Carolina apparently got a few wires crossed (and an incensed son, to boot) according to a recent police report. After claiming to purchase a "PlayStation GameBoy" for her mischievous 12-year old son to open at Christmas, the woman filed a petty larceny incident report to have the youngster arrested for opening it this past Sunday. Reportedly, the woman came home to a haphazardly opened box, and found the unit after the child claimed he "didn't know where it was," sending the mum into a fit which led to her son's arrest. While the boy was known to be a troublemaker in school, purportedly "attempted to assault a police officer" in the past, and has a thing for "stealing," the mother's soft heart still found it possible to purchase the coal-deserving brat an object that hasn't even been released (nor created). Whatever it really is, we hope it ends up on eBay so some deserving kiddo can give it a whirl.[Via Digg]
Arizona implements Lidar gun to nab tailgaters
While we can't say we're exactly fond of notorious tailgaters ourselves, we won't be the first to agree that fines in "the hundreds of dollars" are exactly fitting for those who like follow closely. Nevertheless, the Arizona Department of Public Safety is taking a note from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Oregon by implementing a radar-based tracking system to calculate just how far back a car is from another while cruising on the freeway. Laser Technology's Lidar (no known connection to Liger) works essentially like a speed gun, except it boasts a higher level of accuracy and the ability to calculate the distance between passing cars down to the tenth of a second. Arizona cops are reportedly loving the new machine, as it's "basically impossible" to argue with, and supposedly "educates the people who get pulled" because of it. So if you get a thrill from seeing just how close you can come to kissing that bumper ahead of you, or you just get a testosterone rush every time you get behind the wheel, you may want to put a few seconds (at least) between you and your closest roadmate when rolling through AZ.[Via Slashdot]
Dyslexic cops get iPod accommodation
Dyslexic police officers in Liverpool, England will soon be given iPods as training aids. Student police in training classes will use the iPods to view images of road signs and listen to 900+ hours of material from the police force's official training manual. 900+ hours!!?? According to my calculations, this should take the dyslexic police cadets 22 weeks or more to listen to. This assumes they do nothing else during their 8-hour shifts although I suppose you could continue listening to lectures during potty breaks. A police spokesman described the training-with-iPod scheme as "really worthwhile as it accommodates the needs of those officers with hidden disabilities such as dyslexia who would find it difficult to digest such a vast amount of information in written format." I may be way off base here, but I can't imagine listening to, let alone digesting, 900+ hours worth of training material, dyslexia or no.Special spell check thanks to Jon Grimshaw
FBI taps cellphone mics to eavesdrop on criminals
While we figured the NYPD could just install Magic Message Mirrors in every mafia hotspot in the Manhattan area, the Genovese family has proven quite the eagle-eyed bunch when it comes to spotting wiretaps, tailing, and other (failed) attempts of bugging their conversations. In order to tap into critical conversations by known mafioso and other, less glamorous criminals, police are utilizing a "roving bug" technique which remotely activates the microphone of a crime lord's cellie, giving the boys in blue convenient access to their secret agenda(s). The presumably controversial tapping was recently approved by top US DoJ officials "for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques." Software hacks (and actual phones, too) have previously allowed such dodgy eavesdropping to occur, with "Nextel, Samsung, and Motorola" handsets proving particularly vulnerable, but this widespread approach in tracking down criminal conversations could hopefully pinpoint future targets where prior attempts failed. Of course, if mafia members hit the internet every now and then, they're probably removing those batteries right about now anyway.
PS3 crime spree, part III: Rise of the righteous
While selling a PS3 soon after launch day probably paid some hefty dividends for those lucky enough to secure one, pistol-whipping someone in order to make it happen probably isn't worth the trouble. Apparently a cash-strapped (or completely crazed) Massachusetts duo couldn't quite weigh the consequences before taking action, and are now under arrest for "attempted murder and robbery." One gunman, William J. Robertson, is already being held under a $1 million (or about 600 to 700 properly eBayed PlayStation 3s, whichever you prefer) bond, while his 17-year old partner in attempted larceny remains "on the loose." While we knew the PS3 launch would potentially bring out the worst in people, unloading ammunition to get your game (or profiteering) on is just taking things a bit too far -- so while camping out weeks in advance for a next generation console may surely pay off in the short-term, we'd say pulling a criminal stunt to get one probably won't.Update: Looks like the second fellow has now been apprehended and faces his own $1 million bond. Tsk tsk.
UK cops to trial public fingerprinting
If you just so happen to live across the pond, and have been staying out from behind bars thanks to your clever facade and charming manipulations, things are about to get a whole lot tougher. Over the next year, pilot projects in "Essex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, North Wales, Northamptonshire, West Midlands, West Yorkshire," and other various locales will place portable biometric scanners in the hands of police. The backers hope that giving the boys in blue quick, handy access to "6.5 million fingerprints" will land more sly criminals in jail than are currently being sniffed out. According to reports, around "60 percent" of suspects are giving out entirely false identities while out and about, but considering how immensely difficult it is to alter that telltale print, British cops could be rolling quite a few more perpetrators than usual back to the precincts. Interestingly enough, suspects can only be scanned "after giving permission," which isn't likely to happen to any sane, sober, and halfway intelligent crook. Nevertheless, "project Lantern" should kick off in Beds real soon, arming contemporary cops with "PDA-like" scanners to patrol the streets and (hopefully) curb the frequency in which those oh-so-susceptible ATMs are being violated (and emptied).
Eight London cops to get head-mounted video cameras
Eight of London's finest in the Metropolitan Police in Haringey (North London) have been selected to be the bearers of the first law enforcement head-mounted video cameras in the UK. The AA battery-sized cams, which are worn on a headset and sit just above the left ear, cost £1,800 ($3,410) each and record up to 12 hours of video on a waist-worn media player that resembles, for lack of a better parallel, an Archos player. We hope that these officers are trained in the ways of YouTube though -- police-sanctioned recording of hooligan debauchery immortalized on the internet surely would make for a great deterrent, no? Actually, no, scratch that, we've all seen "Cops."[Via The Raw Feed]Read - Press AssociationRead - BBCRead - eGov monitor
iPod: media player, cultural icon, and rescue beacon?
Sure, we've heard the heartwarming stories of SMS savings a boy's life and TiVo preventing a man from heading to prison, but this round of "Gadgets Saving Lives" features none other than the token iPod as the center of attention. While Griffin has long since had the idea of using the iPod to power a flashlight-type device, a mushroom hunter (yes, they do exactly as the title describes) resorted to the backlit LCD in his Apple in order to lead rescuers to his location. While enjoying a presumably thrilling evening of picking 'shrooms from the wild brush in Vancouver, Washington with his mother, Pini Nou somehow found himself off the beaten path and lost under a cover of darkness (and wild grass, too). By phoning in authorities and faintly describing his surroundings, troops were able to get close enough to view the white glow emitted from his PMP, and 20 minutes later he was safe and sound, albeit "cold, tired, and aching." So, there you have it kids, the ultimate excuse to get an iPod for the holidays -- safety.[Thanks, Napo M.]
Chicago invests in bomb-defusing robots that can't climb up two steps
Possibly fearing an invasion by the South Korean gun-toting sentry army, the city of Chicago has just purchased a trio of $135,000 bomb-diffusing robots (paid for by your Department of Homeland Security!), dubbed Frank in honor of the local flesh-and-blood bomb squad commander. Frank (the bot, not the man) is equipped with four pan-tilt-zoom cameras, x-ray vision, night vision, chemical sensors, two sets of treads, a mic, speaker, and our favorite part, a high-powered water cannon. Although all of those things sound like the perfect recipe for a rave, Frank will unfortunately be assigned boring tasks like taking down booby-trapped meth labs or standing on call at Chicago O'Hare Airport. However, before it gets assigned to such tasks, the CPD probably will want to work out some of the kinks in its design -- according to the Chicago Sun-Times, Frank took a half-dozen attempts to climb a two-step riser at Navy Pier during a demo on Thursday. Let's just hope those clever would-be bombers don't barricade themselves atop the Sears Tower after sabotaging the elevators, because then Chicagoans would really be screwed.Read - Chicago Sun-TimesRead - CBSRead - Medill News Service
Siemens HQ raided by cops over alleged embezzlement
Oh Siemens employees, have you been naughty this year? German prosecutors and law enforcement seem to think so, given that police searched company buildings and employees' residences as part of an investigation alleging that workers embezzled somewhere around €20 million ($25.6 million), and that there was possible fraud, bribery and/or corruption within the company. More than 200 officers, prosecutors and tax inspectors checked nearly 30 business locations in Munich and other sites around the country. To be fair, Andreas Schwab, a company spokesperson, acknowledged that although "certain Siemens employees have engaged in fraud," the company was "cooperating fully" with the investigation. If authorities ever do manage to recover the money, they may have to just accept that the first million was already spent on lifetime supplies of Krombacher and bierwurst -- well, that's what we'd spend it on if we were in Germany, anyway.[Via The Inquirer, image courtesy German Press Agency]Read - Der SpiegelRead - BBCRead - The Associated PressRead - Bloomberg
PS3 hopefuls shot with BB's at Kentucky Best Buy
If you thought shacking up outside of a Best Buy in near-freezing temperatures (say, Ann Arbor, Michigan) for nearly two weeks is hardcore, imagine how folks waiting in Lexington, Kentucky felt when a drive-by shooter let the pellets fly into a group of PS3 hopefuls. Apparently bitter and distraught from not getting their name on a (shaky) pre-order list, enraged suspects drove by a Best Buy on Nicholasville Road and "injured four people with BB pellets," including a news reporter who was conducting an interview with one of the campers. Although none of the folks were seriously injured, we can't help but wonder who pulls off a drive-by shooting with cameras rolling, and moreover, did the "mildly wounded" individuals waiting in line forfeit their position to visit a hospital? The soldier in us says negative.[Via digg]
UK drivers change lanes to outsmart SPECS speeding cameras
Why pay thousands for that temptation-quelling adaptive cruise control option, or dream about the forthcoming Siemens VDO electronic governor, when all you have to do is switch a few lanes while smashing the pedal to the metal? The Home Office has fessed up to a "massive flaw" in the costly (and abundant) SPECS speed monitoring / ticketing cameras, which allows drivers to avoid any legal repercussions by simply ending up in a different lane than the one they began in. The system takes the average speed between two points to calculate if a motorist has been speeding, and then snaps their photograph and sends them a very unwelcome ticket in the mail if they were; however, the cameras are only designed to analyze and penalize those who remain in the same lane throughout the speed-checking segment, opening up a very exploitable loophole. Government officials, along with the cameras' manufacturer (Speed Check Services), have resorted to begging with the public to not evade the presumably imminent £60 ($112) fine in order to maintain a "high level of safety" on the roadways, but it's not likely that pleading to deaf ears (and lead feet) will entice folks to willingly suffer a penalty this easy to avoid.[Via FARK]
Quick-footed thieves snag 39 iPods in 15 seconds
Okay, so iPods might be easy to flip on eBay, but cruising around with 39 hot PMPs in the trunk of your car (and a stash of PlayStation 2 games to boot) probably isn't the best way to welcome yourself to Utah. Three New Yorkers apparently took those crime dramas a bit too seriously as they acquired "maps of every Target store in Utah and Nevada," and flew off to Riverdale with a heist in mind. When the thieves couldn't break open the iPod display at their primary target (ahem), they sped off to execute plan B, but alerted authorities to their ill intentions in the process. Nevertheless, the crooks finally pulled off the job with utmost haste, as they stuffed 39 iPods (and possibly a few PS2 titles) down a presumably gargantuous pair of "oversized pants" in a blistering 15 seconds. Although the second time proved to be a charm, their sloppiness in round one landed them in police custody less than 24 hours after arriving in the Beehive State. While flying across the country to jack $7,000 worth of 'Pods might make for good television, you're probably better off trying to outwit one of those yet-to-be-altered cash-flinging ATMs if you're feeling frisky.[Via PowerPage]
Durham police department in trouble over 1080p DLP HDTV purchase
Usually, congratulations are in order after you purchase a new HDTV, but not so for the Durham Police Department. In need of a replacement for a dead $800 TV, they decided on a 52-inch Mitsubishi DLP for a little over $2,000. From the information available, it looks like they picked up the 1080p WD-52631 with 6-color wheel and Plush1080p image processing for upconverting lower-res signals, at a decent price for the model. The timing of the purchase is what's raising eybrows, while Durham's City Council is reviewing the budget and considering a possible tax increase. We think if they invited the taxpayers over for a little Xbox 360, HD DVD or Blu-ray action all this would blow over and they would realize how totally necessary this equipment is.
Robbery averted via Beatles fan webcam in Liverpool
Britain, rightly or wrongly, is crawling with surveillance cameras for spying on its citizenry. But there's a whole class of cameras that could be used for security purposes that MI5/MI6 may have forgotten about: webcams. On Friday, a Beatles fan happened to be watching the webcam that's trained on Mathew Street, a nabe in Liverpool that houses the famous Cavern Club, where the Fab Four got their start. This astute fan watched from his home in Dallas as three perps were breaking into a sports store. He picked up his phone and called the Liverpool police -- and the suspects were arrested. Techmology 1 - 0 Crooks.[Via Reuters]
Scottish police testing metal-detecting gloves
Police in Scotland have begun field-testing a pair of tactical gloves that sport built-in metal detectors for identifying sharp objects during routine pat-downs -- and should they fail to detect a hidden weapon, they're made out of Kevlar to protect the wearer during the ensuing knife fight. Although not specifically mentioned in the source article, it seems the Scottish cops are trying out seven pairs of the HF-1 from Adams Electronics, which are powered by regular 9-volt batteries and vibrate inconspicuously at the wrist to signify that an object has been detected. Available in either "passive active" or "dual active" configurations (depending on whether one or both of the gloves sport a detector), the HF-1s deployed for the trial cost about $370-a-pair, and are being used to supplement the 1,000 or so FriskerPRO-like handheld detectors that are already in use. Overall these seem like a good way for officers to protect themselves without getting too touchy-feely with suspects, but on the other hand, they may just encourage enterprising criminals to step up their game and begin carrying around undetectable weapons like ceramic knives and filed-down toothbrushes.
NYC police warn of cellphone guns
We've been seeing warnings about guns disguised as cellphones for so long that we long assumed the weapons were urban legends akin to the stories about telemarketers building a database of cellphone numbers and Bill Gates sharing his fortune. Turns out, however, that the guns do indeed exist, and apparently originated in Europe around 2000. And now, according to the New York Police Department, they may be making their way across the Atlantic. According to the New York Post, The NYPD has issued a warning about the hidden weapons, and has circulated a description of them to station houses. There's no word that any of the weapons have actually been seen in NYC, but police are being told to be on the lookout for them at locations such as courthouses. So, if you're heading downtown for jury duty and don't want to endure getting your brand new Walkman phone taken apart because it looks suspicious, you may want to just leave it at home. Oh, and Bill, we're still waiting for our check.
GPS leads police to loot from bank robbery
Thanks to some quick-thinking bank employees, robber Thomas Fricks was quickly apprehended following a robbery Thursday at the Washington Trust Bank in Spokane. He had herded three employees into the bank vault and threatened to kill their families if they didn't cooperate, asking for $40,000 in "no bait bills." One employee, on the phone with her husband, told him to call the police while another employee stuffed both the money and a GPS device into the duffel bag, enabling the police to track down the getaway minivan within minutes. The best part was the dude's response when the fuzz caught up with him: "You guys are good!"
