'Magnet boy' freezes Xbox
Hair-raising gameplay
Most kids dream of having a superpower, but we've never heard of any who actually had one. Until now. One 12-year-old boy claims to be magnetised and can zap games consoles and PCs.
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Although he styled himself 'Magneto Man', Joe Falciatano from New York appears to be generating a big static electrical charge - no one knows why - and has already hit the headlines for his ability to crash his school’s computers just by touching them.
All the school could do was place a grounding pad beneath one the PCs, which was then connected to an anti-static wrist strap worn by the boy.
However, Joe’s problems didn't end in the classroom. Whenever he tried to play games on his Xbox, the controller for which is wired to the console, the unit froze. Luckily for Joe, his parents upgraded him to an Xbox 360, which comes with a wireless controller. This has stopped the problem. However, Joe does have to sit on the other side of the room to play it, so perhaps a 50in LCD is in order?
Although Joe’s parents claim the lad's problems with magnetism have been going on for years, the boy has hit the headlines suspiciously close to the release of the Jack Black comedy Be Kind, Rewind. In the film, Black becomes magnetised and wipes all the video cassettes in a local rental shop, but with funnier consequences than Joe experienced...
COMMENTS
@How would his supposed magnetism affect his typing?
I can shed some light. I used to have a PC that would lock up when I discharged a static charge by touching the metal-framed desk upon which it sat. It was not necessary to touch any part of the PC, and experiment showed that if one lifted the keyboard away from the steel frame of the desk, the lockup didn't happen. I concluded that the keyboard circuitry was acting as an antenna, picking up the pulse from the discharge and channelling it into the PS/2 socket, causing the lockup (but no permanent damage).
@cameron
"I can make the image on a TV screen go blurry just by humming..."
Yep we can all do that lol its because humming causes vibrations in your vision and et voila the tv appears to go blurry when in fact its just your vision :)
Paris because she'd fall for that too :)
@ waiting for the fanboys
it seems you're already here, waits over
@Shoes the most likely culprit
I agree. It seems that all the time I get nasty shocks from doorknobs, I'm wearing a droid suit with matching black leather shoes.
As for my special powers, well, Computer Empathy. And probably the ability to hear high-pitched sounds like the mosquito ringtone despite my age, and uncanny ability to recognize patterns.
