August 11, 2002 -
All CDs will be protected and you are a filthy pirate - The
Register, By John Lettice, One mad consumer relations team might be
an isolated incident, two begins to look like a trend. The dismissive
response Bertelsmann Music Group's copy protection team recently issued
to a consumer's query essentially boiled down to, 'all Cds will be copy
protected, it's not our problem that they won't play on some devices, so
tough.' But apparently, it's a competition. EMI Germany is taking pretty
much the same attitude, and its humorously-tagged Consumer Relations
team is calling the customers pirates while it's about it...
August 31, 2002 -
Not Yet End of Era for PC Games - By Brad King, WiredNews,
02:00 AM Aug. 31, 2002 PT, Slouched in his chair, baseball hat
pulled low, Sean Price's eyes are locked onto his computer screen. In a
fierce battle for the Quake championship, Price was wilting under
continuous bursts of lightning and hails of bullets fired by a quiet
Russian named LeXer. A few minutes later, the American bowed his head,
soundly defeated. The gesture sums up the way many gamers felt as the
August event, held in Mesquite, Texas, drew to a close. They worried
that the match was a final hurrah for PC games, which have officially
been surpassed in popularity by home consoles. Their concern has merit.
As Quake III's popularity declines, nobody knows where the next breakout
hit will come. Developers follow the money -- and consumers spent $8.5
billion on games last year, according to IDC. Most vexing for PC gamers
is that a large chunk of that -- $5.6 billion -- was spent on
Playstation2, Xbox and GameCube games. There are 60 million computers in
American homes, but consoles have one distinct advantage: They match PCs
in computing power and can be played while sitting on the couch...
August 27, 2002 -
Jedi 'religion' grows in
Australia - BBC,
More than 70,000 people in
Australia have declared that
they are followers of the Jedi
faith, the religion created by
the Star Wars films. A recent
census found that one in 270
respondents - or 0.37% of the
population - say they believe in
"the force", an energy field
that gives Jedi Knights like
Luke Skywalker their power in
the films...
August 28,
2002 -
Film Moguls: Let Sex, Gore Stay
- WiredNews, By Xeni Jardin,
The Directors Guild of
America may be circling the
wagons to take legal action
against a handful of companies
that offer consumers edited
versions of popular films with
potentially offensive content
stripped out. The potential
suit's target is a handful of
companies -- most of which are
based in Utah -- that sell
content-censoring software
applications or altered videos
and DVDs from which graphic
language, sexual content and
violence have been removed...
August 22,
2002 -
‘Simone,’ beautiful beast of fame - Pacino’s computerized
star is instant success in flick that serves up honest humor. By David
Elliott, SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM, “Simone.” The computerized beauty is
no actress, but she is a star. So is Al Pacino, as Viktor Taransky, a
“visionary” director on the skids until he lucks into the incredibly
high-tech disc created by a brilliant crank (Jay Mohr), who dies after
leaving Viktor the software and gizmo for a movie star he can use to
save his new film. Winona Ryder, as hissy-fit star Nicola Anders,
walked off the lot hissing, and Viktor’s ex-wife (Catherine Keener),
the studio head, has pulled the plug...
August
23,
2002 -
Seer Yourself in Your New Job - By Charles Mandel, In
what could become the biggest Web phenomenon since The Blair Witch
Project, a group of ghostbusters is conducting an online search to find
two "professional" clairvoyant investigators to join their spooky
sleuth team. The International Society for Paranormal Research (ISPR)
has put together a free 20-section test, in which potential psychics
can review a series of creepy photos of haunted locales...
August 19,
2002 -
Digital copying rules may change
- By Noel C. Paul, Christian
Science Monitor, In a few
years, Americans may not be able
to copy a song off a CD, watch a
recorded DVD at a friend's
house, or store a copy of a
television show for more than a
day. Earlier this month, the
Federal Communications
Commission approved regulations
that would require television
manufacturers to include
anticopying technology in the
next generation of televisions.
The technology would identify
programs that broadcasters do
not want consumers to copy
without first paying a fee...
August 02,
2002 -
Traces of Genius, Is art sullied
by technology? - By
Charles Paul Freund,
Reason-online, Thomas Eakins
(1844-1916) has long been
regarded as the outstanding
American painter of the 19th
century; his dramatically lit
portraits have even given him a
reputation as the American
Rembrandt. So in the 1990s, when
researchers started surmising
that Eakins had sometimes made
use of photographic images,
there was a sense of foreboding
among art historians. Two years
ago, when ever-closer
examination of Eakins’ paintings
made it undeniable that he
actually "traced" photographic
images projected onto his
canvases, there was disbelief.
One Eakins scholar, on hearing
the evidence, literally put his
hands over his ears. Our
Rembrandt...a tracer? ...
August 20,
2002 -
Paper Mag Sprouts
From Book Zine
- By M.J. Rose, WiredNews,
Magazine startups face the
ominous challenge of finding
readership. But when The
Readerville Journal launches
Sept. 25, it will already have
an established audience of
20,000 readers who visit its
online forum, Readerville.com,
each month. "It's as if a focus
group of several thousand people
met round-the-clock for two
years to lay out an agenda for
this content," said Randall
Stickrod, publisher of The
Readerville Journal...
August 06,
2002 -
Why TV Is Getting More Graphic(s) - By Michael Stroud,
WiredNews, LOS ANGELES -- In a scene from Fox's new sci-fi series
Firefly, a character is plucked by a cable from a bullet train
streaking 300 mph into the cargo bay of a space ship. In an upcoming
episode of the Star Trek series Enterprise, viewers will see a shot of
a spaceship's crew walking on the hull in space, then a pan to a nearby
planet, then a shot of another spaceship nearby...
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