parking

Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush Free is a free three-level preview of Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush, a Halloween-themed, 3D follow-up to the 2D arcade game Rollercoaster Rush. Like its predecessor, Haunted 3D Rollercoaster Rush has you controlling roller coaster cars on a series of architecturally outrageous tracks, over jumps, curves, loop-the-loops, and increasingly vertiginous drops.

The interface gives you two options for controlling your cars: you can tilt your device right or left to accelerate or brake, or you can use a touch slider to meter your speed. In each level's Play Track mode, you earn from one to three … Read more

It's only been about a week since the release of Sony's PSP Go, but hackers are already ahead of the game, despite Sony getting rid of the removable battery in an attempt to stop the siege. We don't have a link to the actual game you have to use to release the exploit, but hackers are using it as a proof-of-concept for future homebrews and pirated gaming. As usual, these guys are ahead of the curve, as we've seen before in Sony's previous PSPs. Of course, you can always get free games if you can somehow get a job reviewing them for a big Web site...right, Jeff?

In other news, Facebook can now measure what they're calling the GHP, or the Gross National Happiness. The popular social-networking site is using text analysis software to index how its users are feeling based on positive or negative words in their status updates. You can see on this chart that there were major spikes last year around November 23rd for Thanksgiving, as well as in December for Christmas and New Years. Check out the podcast to hear Jeff's reason why Hanukkah is nowhere to be found.

It's also time again for the Beck's Beer semi-weekly Audio Draft! Jeff's pick for today is an oldie but a goodie, The Rx Bandits! Jeff and I are huge fans of the bands from when we were wee lads. They're rooted in Seal Beach in Southern California, and while their ska sound grew popular in the early '90s, they have successfully pulled out those roots and progressed into a super eclectic alt/prog/rock/reggae sound. They just released another full length entitled Mandala, which also includes one of today's featured tracks, "Bury it Down Low." Here's to many more years with the Rx Bandits!

Oh yeah, everyone's password got hacked.

Now, don't get any wrong ideas, the show title might sound dirty, but it's actually just a reference to our parent company, the wonderful Columbia Broadcast System, or CBS. Unfortunately, Dan the Former Mantern is no longer with us, but we're happy that he just moved laterally to PBS and WNET.org's Thirteen. In fact, he joins us on today's show to help promote a local documentary he's working on featuring yours truly! It's a spotlight on New Yorkers whose lives were changed after visiting one of America's National Parks, and what a coincidence--I just got back from a trip to Yosemite!

Dan and I collaborated on this project, which will air on Thirteen this Sunday, September 27, at 10 p.m. EDT. Everyone else can catch the special on the Thirteen Web site, which we'll also link to after the premiere.

Dan sticks around after this shameless self-promotion to help us discuss a few stories from around the Internet, including a horribly offensive Ching-Chong iPhone App. The cheesy little game produces the same ambiguous messages you find in fortune cookies, but the catch is that the app actually reads the message outloud in a voice that bears a disturbing similarity to Verbose Asian Guy. Of course, Jeff, Dan, and even Wilson (shame on you, Wilson) practically force him out of retirement, and we even get a glimpse of Jeff's priceless Woody Allen impression...TONS of laughs in today's show!

After we play the second Caribbean Call From the Public, we run through Rotten Tomatoes' Top 25 Worst Movies of the Decade. We're not surprised to see most that most of the titles are straight to DVD movies, so we take it upon ourselves to name off a few of our own picks, including "Gigli," "Jersey Girl," "Kangaroo Jack," "Cool World," and more. Let us know in the comments what your top picks are, or call us at 1-855-404-CNET and leave a voice-mail for Monday's Jeff-less show. Have a great weekend!

Work began this week on restoring what will be the world's oldest working stored-program electronic computer.

Volunteers at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park--about 50 miles northwest of London--will rebuild the Witch machine--a computer first used in 1951 for atomic research.

Witch, or the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, was based on telephone exchange relays and 900 Dekatron gas-filled tubes, which could each hold a single digit in memory. Paper tape was used to both input data for and store the output of the machine.

The device is not the oldest electronic calculating device but … Read more

Waterslide Extreme is a free arcade racing game sponsored by the British credit-card company Barclaycard, based on one of their TV commercials in which a waterslide weaves between the buildings of a city. The interface of Waterslide Extreme is intuitive and easy: you steer by tilting your device left and right, and you can slow down by either pressing a touch-screen brake button or tilting your device back (with options for calibrating and adjusting accelerometer sensitivity). You can choose a male or female avatar, with first- or third-person view, as you slide down nine separate levels, collecting power-ups and point-award … Read more

A three-man team of programmers and engineers announced on Thursday that it has found a way to park for free by bypassing the security of "smart" parking meters used in cities including San Francisco, which has about 25,000 of them.

The parking meters are manufactured by J.J. MacKay Canada and accept coins and prepaid plastic cards that can be purchased in $20 and $50 denominations from local drugstores and grocery stores.

Although MacKay claims (PDF) its meters use "sophisticated security algorithms to deter fraud," it took the trio of hackers three days to figure … Read more

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK--If there's any doubt that more visitors to this treasure of nature check out Old Faithful than anything else, all you need to do is compare the size of the world-famous geyser's parking lot to that of any other place in the park.

But while Old Faithful may be synonymous with Yellowstone geothermal activity in most visitors' minds, it is, in fact, just one of hundreds of geysers, hot pools, mud pots, hot springs, and steam vents scattered throughout the park. And on Road Trip 2009, I set out to explore the lesser-known members of the … Read more

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo.--During the course of Road Trip 2009, I've covered more than 4,000 miles, been in seven states, and seen some pretty amazing things.

But entering Yellowstone at the West entrance today--later in the day than I should have, admittedly--I thought I had finally met my match: a traffic jam that seemed, based on my map, to stretch nearly 15 miles to the first visitor center. It promised a horrid day of waiting hours to get anywhere and not even being able to park at some of the more popular destinations.

I was ready to … Read more

GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont.--I'm kind of awestruck. For four years I've been doing CNET Road Trip projects, and every time I've hit a new thousand-mile milestone, I've stopped, photographed the odometer and the surroundings, and then blogged about the spot.

In almost every case, that new set of zeroes on the odometer has come at some nondescript location. There have been a couple cases where it happened near something incredible, but I'll be honest: I've cheated a little bit and, say, driven back and forth across a parking lot to have the milestone … Read more