Large Hadron Collider: Scientific marvel or portal to Hell?

This one is way too wacky to pass up commenting on...The Large Hadron Collider is a few hours away from getting turned on for the first time. This is a humongous particle accelerator (also happens to be the biggest machine yet built) that scientists are hoping will help answer some questions about the fundamental nature of physics.All well and good. Except some people are...

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Did Apple "Rock" today? Not really...

Gizmodo has the full rundown of what went on at Apple's "Let's Rock" keynote address by Steve Jobs in San Francisco today. In what has become an annual event - and perhaps the most-watched PowerPoint presentation in history - Jobs unveiled the coming year's new iPod models and whatever features that die-hard Appleholics should be lusting after.So what new ubercoolness has...

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SPORE Loser: Players outraged at game's DRM

Here's a screenshot I just made of the Amazon product page for the new video game Spore, which came out yesterday for Windows and Mac computers...How does a video game simultaneously occupy #1 on Amazon's sales rank, and get hundreds of one-star reviews?In three words: "Digital Rights Management". People who purchase Spore can only install it on three computers. And apparently...

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Want to read the first review of the HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE movie?!

Here it is, courtesy of Ain't It Cool News.It sounds terrible.How terrible? According to this person, who saw an advance screening in Chicago over the weekend, the funeral scene is not in the film (yeah there were two funerals in the book but if you've read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince you know which one I'm talking about). It also has the Death Eaters attacking the Weasley house at Christmas (?!?) and apparently makes several other significant...

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DMCA Abuse: 4,000 Anti-Scientology videos pulled from YouTube

During the past few days American Rights Counsel LLC has forced YouTube to pull more than four thousand videos that are critical of the Church of Scientology. At this time it's unclear whether American Rights Counsel are representing the cult and did so at the behest of Scientologists. What is known is that a butt-load of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices went out from the firm over a period of twelve hours this past Thursday and...

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Google is ten years old today

It was ten years ago today, on September 7th, 1998, that Sergey Brin and Larry Page took some investment capital and a database algorithm and from it spawned Google: the search engine that more than anything else transformed the Internet from a technological novelty into an indispensable application.I used Google on the first day it was announced, in one of the computer labs...

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U.S. federal government set to take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Read the story here.This is, by an order of some magnitude, a much more important story than McCain versus Obama right now.It's also one of the reasons why I don't believe it really matters which candidate or party wins in the November elections. If Obama wins, he's going to immediately face a ruined economy the likes of which have not been seen since the Depression and if he stays true to the policies he's running on, he'll likely make the situation...

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Amazing first screenshots from FUEL

I'm just now hearing about Fuel for the first time. Created by British game studio Codemasters and due for release in 2009, Fuel is an open-world racing game featuring five thousand square miles of navigable terrain: if you can see it in the game, you can drive right up to it. Fuel takes place in a near future where the environment has run amok and global supplies of oil...

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GHOSTBUSTERS III is officially in the works!

Variety is reporting that Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky - the producers and writers of NBC's The Office - have been tapped by Columbia to write the script for Ghostbusters III. And the aim is to bring back the original cast of Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson.Presumably this means that we could expect to see the movie coming out for the summer of...

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Finally caught all of Sarah Palin's speech from last night

And there is no way, no how, that I would now feel comfortable voting for her as part of any ticket.Palin's address at the Republican National Convention was, in my opinion, whiny and shallow. There was nothing of substance or vision that I found in her words. All I really got was that she's a mom, her kids play hockey, and she doesn't like her "opponents".And that's it.I've heard speeches with more passion at the... nah, nevermind. Don't want...

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PEANUTS animator Bill Melendez has passed away

This is the third death that I've had to report in the past day or so. Hope this is not about to become a trend...Bill Melendez has passed away at the age of 91. He was an animator who began work at Disney, and then moved on to Warner Bros. But it was a 1959 meeting with cartoonist Charles M. Schulz that would propel Melendez to everlasting fame. The two became fast friends...

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A conservative case against Sarah Palin

In case anyone's wondering: currently I'm registered as a Republican. I helped a friend run for statewide office this election season as his treasurer, running on a platform of parental choice in education. Prior to that I ran for office myself, partly regarding issues of fiscal conservatism. In my opinion Ronald Reagan was the last real President that America has had and I'm very thankful that I got to drive to Washington D.C. a few years ago...

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Viacom v. Knight at the Citizen Media Law Project

A few days ago was the one year anniversary of that very strange situation between multi-billion dollar multimedia conglomerate Viacom (owner of CBS, Paramount, Comedy Central and many other brands) and Yours Truly. If you're fairly new to this joint here's my first post about what happened and here's the list of all the news articles that I could find about it. Long story...

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They love Big Brother

April 4th, 1984, Big Brother on the telescreen at the Ministry of Truth in London, Airstrip One, from the film Nineteen Eighty-Four (the 1984 adaptation of the George Orwell novel)...September 2nd, 2008, George W. Bush on the telescreen at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, in real life...

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Jerry Reed has passed away

Singer/songwriter and actor Jerry Reed, who had a string of successful hits in the 70s and 80s but will perhaps be best remembered for "East Bound and Down" from the movie Smokey and the Bandit (which he also appeared in), has passed away at age 71.Reed was a beast on the guitar! Check out this clip of him from about thirty years ago...Think I'll pop in Smokey and the Bandit...

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Is it just me...

...or has the 2008 electoral race for President of the United States suddenly turned into a Blake Edwards mov...

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Don LaFontaine, "King of Voiceovers", has passed away

Don LaFontaine, whose work made his one of the most-recognized voices on the planet, especially for all the movie trailers that he contributed to, has passed away at the age of 68 from complications stemming from a collapsed lung.Here's a bit of a documentary showing LaFontaine at work and others discussing his prolific vocal talent...

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