There’s something oddly compelling for me to see something in its formative stages, before even those involved know exactly what it is that they’re dealing with; going back, later, to watch early Buffys where the tone isn’t quite there, or re-reading X-Mens where Wolverine is much more of an asshole and Storm seems to be eyeing up …
Reviews & Features
The Case of the Stolen Laptop: How to Encrypt, and Why
There’s an investigator I know, top of her profession, who once put her laptop in the trunk of a cab. By the time she reached her hotel, the laptop was gone. This happens thousands of times a year at airports, train stations, libraries and coffee shops. Sometimes the thief wants your hardware. Sometimes your data turns out to be more …
Worst Government Snoops: Russia, China … and USA
Ah, the land of the free.
Forrester Research has a depressing summary of international privacy protections for data stored in a cloud service like Mozy, Google Docs or Dropbox. (It’s a clever graphic done up as a “data protection heat map.”) The worst countries to live in, if you value your digital secrets, are marked with an …
Digital Privacy: If You’ve Done Nothing Wrong, Do You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’?
A few years back, I did a long newspaper story about the FBI snooping on the private records of ordinary citizens. As my old editor Michael Kinsley likes to say, the scandal is what’s legal. The Patriot Act unleashed the FBI to search your email, travel and credit records without even a suspicion of wrongdoing. The FBI was doing it, in …
Hive Mind: What We’re Looking Forward to in August
What a month. It’s hard to think back past Comic-Con, but nerd fests aside, we had quite a time. We weighed into Apple’s iPhone 4 Antennagate (Hey, free bumpers!) and munched on pop corn while Inception bent our minds in ways only Christopher Nolan ever could. (Was it all a dream? WELL WAS IT?)
Then there was The Con. A week that …
Two Minute Video: Quick Look at Madden NFL 11
EA Sports’ Madden NFL 11 hits stores August 10th but the playable demo is available now on Xbox 360 and PS3 systems. Here’s a quick look at the demo and some of the game’s new features.
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13 Thoughts On Warehouse 13 2.4: Age Before Beauty
Lessons I learned from last night’s episode of Warehouse 13: My TiVo hates me. No, wait, I mean “Myka isn’t supremely confident, Claudia is socially awkward, and both need emotional support from their male counterparts.” No, that’s not right either. Oh, well: Here’re thirteen thoughts about “Age Before Beauty.”
1. Some Girls Play With …
Doctor Who 5.13: All This, And The Big Bang 2
Well, that was definitely not a disappointment.
It’s a testament to just how good Steven Moffat is that a season finale that actually didn’t answer the big questions about what actually happened, who was behind the destruction of the TARDIS and whose voice that was at the end of last week’s episode, was nonetheless completely …
Comic-Con: The (Disappointing) True Lives Of Booth Babes
Call it nerd male guilt if you must, but every time I’ve gone to comic conventions and seen the various “booth babes”, I’ve had a reaction that pretty much goes like this: “Oh God, those poor women, having to wear such skimpy outfits and be ogled by all manner of socially awkward men. They must hate this whole thing.” A reaction that was …
Two Minute Video: Golf Club Meets Wii Remote with the Chicken Stick
The Chicken Stick is a $40 Wii accessory. Wait! Don’t go. Don’t go. It’s better than you think. Developed with true golf fans in mind, the Chicken Stick is made from a real golf club–Golf Pride grip, True Temper shaft–shortened, and with a slot on the end to hold a Wii remote and MotionPlus attachment securely in place. Check out the …
Interview: Curt Schilling Talks 38 Studios’ “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”
At EA’s Studio Showcase event yesterday, Red Sox pitching great Curt Schilling finally got to reveal the first glimpses of his long-brewing action-RPG. Formerly known as “Project Mercury”, the title’s been revealed to be Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and is being published through EA’s EA Partners division. The game will be appearing on …
13 Thoughts On Warehouse 13 2.3: Beyond Our Control
Was it just me, or was last night’s episode of Warehouse 13 kind of… odd? By that, I don’t mean “intentionally wacky” as much as “just not the same as the show normally is.” Are these growing pains, or something more sinister? Here’re 13 unlucky-for-some thoughts about “Beyond Our Control”:
1. Was The Artifact The Least Important …