After much delay and even more flaming over at Major Nelson’s site, the eagerly anticipated Prey demo is available on the XBL Marketplace. Gamers Rejoice.

As you may remember, the demo was released on the 22nd for the PC. The 360 version was also supposed to show up that day, but according to Major Nelson, the demo was stuck in the certification process. Whether or not that was the real problem, I personally am glad to finally see this demo hit the Xbox Live Marketplace.

What the Geek reader, Sarah Tomesky wrote to fill me in on a discovery she made. While watching the “best of” episode of the Sci Fi Channel’s popular original series, Ghost Hunters, she noticed some evidence that their footage of a chair being moved across the floor in a lighthouse may not have been as paranormal as originally reported. She supplied several screen caps showing what looks to be the figure of a man in the stairwell just outside the door to the room where the chair moves. Adding further validity to her claim is the fact that you can see motion in the stairwell just as the chair moves. The speculation Sarah came to is that someone in the background may be pulling the chair on a string. The string may not be visible in the footage, but if you believe Sarah’s evidence, the one pulling it is. Bear in mind, this is not proof of evidence tampering on the part of the ghost hunters team, but it does seem to cast doubt on the validity of that particular piece of evidence. Furthermore, if the evidence was tampered, that throws their investigative method into question as they claimed the lighthouse to be “haunted”. Read on to see the screen caps for yourself, and get a better copy of the video from the TAPS site here. It’s episode 104.

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A new multiplayer mod (yes, you read that correctly) is available for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The mod, called MultiTES4, is still in alpha, and currently only offers support for two player action, but the developer has a lot of big things planned for this project. Keep an eye on this one for future updates.

From the site:

What can MultiTES4 actually do?

The current version (being only an alpha) is pretty limited in it’s
capabilities. It supports only 2 people running around Cyrodiil. The other
players in the game are represented as NPCs to each individual on their
computer. The NPC will move and travel to match the players that are connected
to the server.

What can’t MultiTES4 do?

At the moment, the following haven’t been implemented: time/day/year
synchronisation, quest sharing, deathmatch, cell/world synchronisation, err
pretty much everything else you can think of. Console commands aren’t blocked,
either is fast travel. Animations aren’t shared, neither is inventories or
attributes. I wasn’t kidding when I said it was the basics.

What do you have planned for the future?

This plan for the next major release of this mod is to firstly allow for 8
players ingame, as well as an implemention of a simple form of player
deathmatch, and probably capture the flag. So not only will you be able to run
around with your friends…you’ll be able to kill them too As things are
developed, I’ll post the details on the forums and let you know how it’s going.
If things at uni become to busy, or I generally lose interest in the mod, I’ll
probably release my source code (once I get around to commenting it all) and let
the Oblivion community mod it as they please

Major Nelson has reported on his blog that Xbox Live will be down for maintenance Tuesday (June 27) from 0200-0600 PDT (5 AM - 9 AM on the east coast) for “server maintenance”. With the Prey demo being delayed as much as it’s been, I can’t help but wonder exactly what sort of “maintenance” is going on. Nelson went on to explain that there will be no new features of any sort after the downtime, and that is’ for server maintenance, nothing less, nothing more.

Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn factory has come forward and owned up to the fact that they’ve been violating Chinese labor laws. The UK’s Daily Mail first drew attention to this issue a couple of weeks back when they printed an expose on the conditions at certain Chinese factories responsible for manufacturing ipods. A Foxconn spokesperson has publicly admitted to forcing workers into an extra 80 hours of labor per month (44 more than the Chinese government allows). On the plus side, company representative Li Zong claims that employees are being paid salaries that conform with the minimum wage laws of the local Shenzhen government. We’ll post updates to this story as they are available

Tired of carrying around all those heavy bank cards? A new service called Pay by Touch has the answer. The service allows you to pay for your purchase at participating establishments simply by putting your finger on a biometric scanner, and then entering your phone number for verification. In order to register for the service you must go either to a Pay by Touch kiosk or go to their website and provide a finger print, photo ID, and a void check. Currently the only place in the US offering this service is a convenience store in Florida called Coast to Coast. Pathmark (if you live in NY or NJ you’ve seen them around) is planning to test the service in four stores in the near future although no date has been announced.

Independent Playstation Magazine posted this rather humbling video of the original Warhawk for the PS1 being played with a controller that (GASP) had both motion sensitivity, and vibration features, a combination Sony deemed impossible for the PS3.

Okay, I know this isn’t DIRECTLY tech related in any way, and I know all five of you read this site for the tech news…. but this had to go up. Al Gore and Bender do an animated spot for the new movie An Inconvenient Truth. Brought to us by the good people who made Futurama.

In a recent interview with Gamertag Radio, Peter Moore made some interesting comments on the Xbox 360’s (and the Wii’s for that matter) controller.

From the interview:

“…Shoulder buttons, triggers, analog sticks, d-pads, I mean, there’s
a lot going on there when you compare it to the old Atari 2600
button-and-stick, which everybody could pick up and have some fun with.”

“I look even in my house… there’s no way that my 14-year-old daughter
can really grasp [the standard controller]. She loves to play racing
games, but that’s about it. And she’s frustrated because of the button
configurations and the use of triggers–she just doesn’t quite get it.”

And with regards to Microsoft’s future plans regarding controllers, “We’re doing a lot of stuff there. Nothing that we’re ready to talk
about, and we’re not going to force anything that is not going to be
intuitive and innovative.”

Lots of things come in sevens. 7 deadly sins, 7 seas, 7 continents, 7 days of the week, and now you can add 7 steps to deleting a shortcut in Windows Vista to the list.Read on to see all seven steps in all their glory.

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