Author Neal Stephenson has been credited for inspiring today’s virtual world startups with his novel Snow Crash. Now he’s launching a startup himself: Subutai, where he is co-founder and chairman. Subutai is launching its inaugural product today, a serialised story called The Mongoliad about the Mongol invasion of Europe. The company promises to release a new chapter a week. Readers can pay $5.99 for a six-month subscription fee or $9.99 for a year. — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Whatever it is, Neil Patrick Harris is my generation’s feel-good gay. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s in a long-term relationship with a handsome young man with perfect hollywood-spouse credentials: a part-time actor who doesn’t steal the limelight — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dr. Macro has compiled an impressive collection of high quality photos featuring famous screen personalities from the 1940s and earlier.
The images are scanned from 8×10 publicity photos and presented in all their high rez glory. As an interesting side-note, movie stills from that era were typically captured with medium and large-format cameras with significantly higher resolution than "modern" 35mm SLRs that became common in the 1970s.
Meet Yoda. He’s little, but he can still do great things! My daughter told me she wants one in purple after meeting him 😉 lol. Remember, these instructions can be adjusted to what you have. Feel free to try different hook sizes, different types of yarn, etc. And, I forgot to meaure him before I mailed him, but he was about 5 inches maybe? No bigger than my hand for sure — via Happy Together
Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper Dennis Hopper has died at the age of 74 following a battle with prostate cancer. Known for such cult classics as Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now and Blue Velvet, Hopper embodied the image of the Hollywood icon. Hopper died on Saturday morning surrounded by friends and family at his home in Venice, California
Last month it became apparent that several Hollywood movie studios had threatened to take legal action against the owner of ISP CyberBunker, the current bandwidth provider for The Pirate Bay. Now, according to fresh information from a reliable source, the studios have come good on their threats
In some tilt against the windmill of fan fiction, George R. R. Martin makes the false claim that [H.P. Lovecraft] let so many others play in his sandbox, he essentially lost control of his own creations…[and] Those copyrights are ultimately all that separates an [Edgar Rice Burroughs] from a HPL.
Martin is wrong about many other facts in that post—copyrights do not need to be defended to be maintained, that’s trademark—but he is gloriously wrong about Lovecraft. Indeed, he is so gloriously wrong that I must once again recycle my favorite publishing joke — via nihilistic kid
Australians illegally download television shows more than music or movies, according to a survey conducted by News Limited. A survey of more than 7000 people who admitted to downloading the three entertainment formats was conducted in conjunction with market research firm CoreData. 6694 respondents said they had illegally downloaded or streamed a TV show in the past 12 months. Of these, 86.8 per cent said they did so regularly
Shortly after Metropolis was released in 1927 it was acquired by Paramount Pictures, which drastically edited the film, cutting an hour of footage. For eighty years efforts have been made to locate the deleted scenes; in 2001 a partially reconstructed version was exhibited to the public. In 2008 an even more complete version was located in Argentina. Except for a few frames, the Argentinian version appears to be complete, and film critics viewing it believe it offers new insights into the original film
Movie director James Cameron, of Avatar and Titanic fame, is helping to build a 3-D camera for the next robotic rover that NASA will send to Mars. NASA announced this month that Cameron is working with Malin Space Science Systems Inc. of San Diego to build an updated camera that, if completed in time, will be installed on the Mars Science Laboratory rover, which has been dubbed Curiosity. The rover’s cameras will be the machine’s science-imaging workhorse
, according to the space agency. Curiosity is scheduled to be launched in 2011
Google’s latest search engine feature enables users to search for individual TV episodes and sort the results by season in each series. Just search for a TV series like Mad Men or The Office, then click the Show options…
button above the results. A panel appears on the left with several options; you can click Videos
to narrow your search to videos, and after that the option to search for Episodes
instead of All videos
Delegates to the University of Hertfordshire’s Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture
conference to be held on 16-17 April will have their food served to them out of coffins as part of a mission to encourage students of all ages to study literature. English lecturer Sam George, who has just launched a Master of Arts degree in vampire fiction at Hertfordshire, said the most famous vampire narrative of all, Dracula, was written by Irishman Bram Stoker and set in London and Whitby in Yorkshire, but that now with the Twilight
saga and True Blood
, modern vampires have become Americanised
It’s been just over a year since Bill has sent me one of his missives:
As
studiothirteen, is no more, Dear Red Wolf, As the Final Episode of The X Files (ieThe birth of Little William) And withMulderout of the Picture both realistically on the Show and OffIs there a way I could serve as some kind of Catalyst to promp[t Frank Spotnitz along with the cadre of Writers who weekly wrote many episodes! The whole plot formation should continue! Before you discount my fervor as a Fanatical Fan Gone South, I have thought of hiring a Playscript writer to help me continue with Chris Carter’s Brainchild SUCH QUALITY TELEVISION SHOULD NOT DISAPPEAR! I have even thought toSPURN ACTIVITY INFOX STUDIOS
He seems to recognise himself as a fanatical fan
, but still doesn’t actually seem to get that I not only don’t care, but I couldn’t do anything to help him even if I thought he was marginally sane.
Surely there’s a loony bin looking for an escaped inmate somewhere in his neck of the woods. Or he’s my own personal episode of The X-Files
A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allen Poe’s tomb in Baltimore, Maryland, has missed his rendezvous for the first time in 61 years, the Poe Society said. He did not show up this morning,
Jeffrey Savoye, secretary and treasurer of the 380 member society, said
Channel 4 looks set to become embroiled in another taste row after backing a project which seeks to mummify a terminally-ill volunteer for a TV documentary. The body of the candidate selected to be embalmed could then end up being displayed in a museum. If the project goes ahead it will follow a trail of programmes which seek to challenge views on death
As Google launches its Nexus One phone, one call that the company hasn’t made is to the family members of science-fiction author Philip K Dick, who complain the device’s name infringes on one of Mr Dick’s most famous novels. We feel this is a clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights,
said Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author’s works
George Lucas’s empire failed to strike back yesterday after he lost a legal battle with the British maker of Stormtrooper helmets for the film Star Wars. Andrew Ainsworth recently began selling replicas of helmets and armour made from his original mould, prompting a $20million lawsuit from Lucasfilm. But the Court of Appeal agreed that even though Mr Ainsworth did not own the design, he had not broken any British law because his creations were not art
On 8 December, Canadian sci-fi author Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy and Blindsight, was crossing the US/Canadian border at Port Huron, Michigan when he was involved in an altercation with US Border Patrol agents. According to Watts, he was beaten, left half-naked in a cold cell, and finally dumped on the Canadian side of the border with no coat. A legal consultant from the Electronic Frontier Foundation was successful in helping a civil rights lawyer in Michigan free Watts. Watts faces US charges of assaulting a federal officer. Based on the accounts, one can assume Watts did so by hitting the officer’s hand with his face. If convicted, Watts faces two years in a US Federal prison — via Slashdot
Revenue earned by artists from both concerts and recorded music sales has risen steadily over the past five years as revenue earned by labels has declined dramatically, therefore making the case that the only real loser from illegal file-sharing has been the record labels themselves
British sci-fi author Charles Stross has confessed that he has long hated the Star Trek franchise for its relegation of technology as irrelevant to plot and character development — and the same goes for similar shows such as Babylon Five. The problem, according to Stross, is that as Battlestar Galactica creator Ron Moore has described in a recent speech, the writers of Star Trek would simply insert
technology or science into the script whenever needed, without any real regard to its significance; then they’d have consultants fill in the appropriate words (aka technobabble) later
— via Slashdot
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