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All rights reserved. webmaster@world-of-newave.com (Webmaster) Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:41:41 GMT Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:41:41 GMT Newave Lisa XML Engine v1.0 - http://www.world-of-newave.info/about.htm 60 http://www.world-of-newave.info/images/wi8831.gif World-of-Newave.info - Knowledge and Informational Database http://www.world-of-newave.info/ 88 31 {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Disney Leading Hollywood to the Videogame Grail http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/disney-leading-hollywood-to-the-videogame-grail-2008081963.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/disney-leading-hollywood-to-the-videogame-grail-2008081963.htm Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:15:00 GMT News from Portfolio.com Also on Portfolio American Apparel Cashes In on Hip, Cheap Web Ads When Will IOC Realize Olympics Were Made for Web? The Wall Street Journal's Broken Subscription System Subscribe to Portfolio magazine In 2002, when Graham Hopper was tapped to head Disney's videogame operations, his bosses gave him a choice: Come up with a dramatic plan to reinvigorate the flailing unit or downsize and focus exclusively on licensing to other companies. It was far from an obvious choice. At the time, many Hollywood studios were getting out of the games game?Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox, and DreamWorks dumped the divisions they had launched during the digital boom of the 1990s, having learned the hard way that the ability to make successful films and television shows didn't mean squat in the interactive world. Producing quality videogames required hundreds of millions of dollars and years of patience. Hopper convinced his bosses to hang on?with a small footprint, making cheap games based on Disney Channel fare like Hannah Montana and Kim Possible. Just five years later, that decision has put it ahead of the pack, as Hollywood goes hurtling back into videogames. Paramount and Universal are spending tens of millions of dollars to create a new slate of products, and MTV and Warner Bros. have invested hundreds of millions to build themselves into major publishers. "If you were to build an entertainment company from scratch today, you wouldn't even question that games should be in it," says Hopper, a dapper South African who spent a decade in Disney consumer products before his videogame stint. It's not the first time such words have been uttered in Hollywood, but there's a sense of inevitability?for some, perhaps even desperation?this time around. When Hollywood exited videogames five years ago, it was riding high on revenues from DVDs. Today, home entertainment is shrinking, box office is flat, the TV audience is increasingly splintered, and significant internet money remains hypothetical. Videogame revenue, meanwhile, shot up 34 percent last year and has increased 49 percent so far in 2008. Companies are busily recruiting experienced talent, spending big on acquisitions, and pushing through early failures. Warner Bros. made its first stab at videogames with the 2005 flop The Matrix Online, but has gone on to release a much broader slate?and spent more than $200 million last year to buy British developer Traveller's Tales, maker of the ultra-successful Lego Star Wars games. Movie-based videogames have a deservedly terrible reputation. Since they're often made on the 12- to 18-month timeframe of a film's production schedule rather than the three years it takes to produce a major console game, and can sell well on the back of a movie's mega-marketing spend, they're regularly amongst the lowest-quality titles on the market. For proof, just check the reviews of recently licensed games like Iron Man and Wall-E." But even adaptations that sell can tarnish a brand with young consumers if the games stink?something studios now recognize. Universal, not wanting to rush its self-financed Wanted game, hasn't announced a release date yet, even though the film is out. Warner Bros. is turning Watchmen into a series of small downloadable games rather than rush one big package for the film's release next March. "The ultimate goal for us is to have our best IP well established and sustainable on the videogame market," says Martin Tremblay, who worked at Ubisoft and Vivendi Games before becoming president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in June. Accomplishing that is a crucial first step for studios before becoming a fully legit publisher by moving into original titles. So far, Disney is the only player in Hollywood that has already done so. After establishing girl-targeted brands like Hannah Montana and Kim Possible as million-unit-plus sellers in 2003 and 2004, it came into 2005 with a small but viable publishing operation. "This is a very disciplined company, so we were given a small amount of resources at first to prove we could be successful," recalls Hopper. "Then we were able to get more investment and just keep on growing." Disney's C.F.O., Tom Staggs, said last year that the conglomerate is prepared to more than triple its spending on games from $100 million in 2006 to $350 million by 2012. Disney recently moved videogames out of the sprawling consumer-products unit and into a new operating division along with online media. The revived Disney Interactive Studios (formerly Buena Vista Games) has used its capital infusion to acquire six development studios (the folks who actually make the games) since 2005, and has a slate of 19 titles for its fiscal year ending in September, significantly more than any other media conglomerate and even some pure-play publishers like Sumner Redstone's struggling Midway or Eidos. "By the existing model, Disney is definitely in the lead. They are a good year or two ahead of Warner," observes Keith Boesky, a former president of Eidos who now leads his own videogame agency. "The question is whether one of the other studios will come up with a better way to pursue the market." About 70 percent of Disney's games are based on existing film and TV properties like Prince Caspian and High School Musical?the bread and butter of Disney Interactive's business. But the real reason the company is willing to invest so much may lie in that other 30 percent. Its small but growing slate of original titles, which started last year with alien-exploration game Spectrobes and is expanding this fall with the stunt-driving title Pure and Guitar Hero-like music simulator Ultimate Band, are potentially more than just game properties. They're new franchises that can eventually flow through the Disney pipeline: Imagine Pure the theme park ride or Spectrobes the animated TV show. "They're a content engine, like any other form of media," Hopper says. Core videogame players are still largely young males, and Disney Interactive has started pursuing them with games like Pure and February's Halo-esque shooter Turok, based on a comic book about a dinosaur hunter. That's not exactly standard fare from the most conservative studio in Hollywood. "Part of our opportunity here is to connect in a relevant way with demographics groups that are otherwise harder for our company to reach," Hopper says. "It's easy to get other publishers to license our hit movies or TV shows, but if we want to invest in new customers via videogames, we have to do it ourselves." Wired.Com Disney Leading Hollywood to the Videogame Grail {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - News from Portfolio.com Also on Portfolio American Apparel Cashes In on Hip, Cheap Web Ads When Will IOC Realize Olympics Were Made for Web? The Wall Street Journal's Broken Subscription System Subscribe to Portfolio magazine In 2002, when Graham Hopper was tapped to head Disney's videogame operations, his bosses gave him a choice: Come up with a dramatic plan to reinvigorate the flailing unit or downsize and focus exclusively on licensing to other companies. It was far from an obvious choice. At the time, many Hollywood studios were getting out of the games game?Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox, and DreamWorks dumped the divisions they had launched during the digital boom of the 1990s, having learned the hard way that the ability to make successful films and television shows didn't mean squat in the interactive world. Producing quality videogames required hundreds of millions of dollars and years of patience. Hopper convinced his bosses to hang on?with a small footprint, making cheap games based on Disney Channel fare like Hannah Montana and Kim Possible. Just five years later, that decision has put it ahead of the pack, as Hollywood goes hurtling back into videogames. Paramount and Universal are spending tens of millions of dollars to create a new slate of products, and MTV and Warner Bros. have invested hundreds of millions to build themselves into major publishers. "If you were to build an entertainment company from scratch today, you wouldn't even question that games should be in it," says Hopper, a dapper South African who spent a decade in Disney consumer products before his videogame stint. It's not the first time such words have been uttered in Hollywood, but there's a sense of inevitability?for some, perhaps even desperation?this time around. When Hollywood exited videogames five years ago, it was riding high on revenues from DVDs. Today, home entertainment is shrinking, box office is flat, the TV audience is increasingly splintered, and significant internet money remains hypothetical. Videogame revenue, meanwhile, shot up 34 percent last year and has increased 49 percent so far in 2008. Companies are busily recruiting experienced talent, spending big on acquisitions, and pushing through early failures. Warner Bros. made its first stab at videogames with the 2005 flop The Matrix Online, but has gone on to release a much broader slate?and spent more than $200 million last year to buy British developer Traveller's Tales, maker of the ultra-successful Lego Star Wars games. Movie-based videogames have a deservedly terrible reputation. Since they're often made on the 12- to 18-month timeframe of a film's production schedule rather than the three years it takes to produce a major console game, and can sell well on the back of a movie's mega-marketing spend, they're regularly amongst the lowest-quality titles on the market. For proof, just check the reviews of recently licensed games like Iron Man and Wall-E." But even adaptations that sell can tarnish a brand with young consumers if the games stink?something studios now recognize. Universal, not wanting to rush its self-financed Wanted game, hasn't announced a release date yet, even though the film is out. Warner Bros. is turning Watchmen into a series of small downloadable games rather than rush one big package for the film's release next March. "The ultimate goal for us is to have our best IP well established and sustainable on the videogame market," says Martin Tremblay, who worked at Ubisoft and Vivendi Games before becoming president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in June. Accomplishing that is a crucial first step for studios before becoming a fully legit publisher by moving into original titles. So far, Disney is the only player in Hollywood that has already done so. After establishing girl-targeted brands like Hannah Montana and Kim Possible as million-unit-plus sellers in 2003 and 2004, it came into 2005 with a small but viable publishing operation. "This is a very disciplined company, so we were given a small amount of resources at first to prove we could be successful," recalls Hopper. "Then we were able to get more investment and just keep on growing." Disney's C.F.O., Tom Staggs, said last year that the conglomerate is prepared to more than triple its spending on games from $100 million in 2006 to $350 million by 2012. Disney recently moved videogames out of the sprawling consumer-products unit and into a new operating division along with online media. The revived Disney Interactive Studios (formerly Buena Vista Games) has used its capital infusion to acquire six development studios (the folks who actually make the games) since 2005, and has a slate of 19 titles for its fiscal year ending in September, significantly more than any other media conglomerate and even some pure-play publishers like Sumner Redstone's struggling Midway or Eidos. "By the existing model, Disney is definitely in the lead. They are a good year or two ahead of Warner," observes Keith Boesky, a former president of Eidos who now leads his own videogame agency. "The question is whether one of the other studios will come up with a better way to pursue the market." About 70 percent of Disney's games are based on existing film and TV properties like Prince Caspian and High School Musical?the bread and butter of Disney Interactive's business. But the real reason the company is willing to invest so much may lie in that other 30 percent. Its small but growing slate of original titles, which started last year with alien-exploration game Spectrobes and is expanding this fall with the stunt-driving title Pure and Guitar Hero-like music simulator Ultimate Band, are potentially more than just game properties. They're new franchises that can eventually flow through the Disney pipeline: Imagine Pure the theme park ride or Spectrobes the animated TV show. "They're a content engine, like any other form of media," Hopper says. Core videogame players are still largely young males, and Disney Interactive has started pursuing them with games like Pure and February's Halo-esque shooter Turok, based on a comic book about a dinosaur hunter. That's not exactly standard fare from the most conservative studio in Hollywood. "Part of our opportunity here is to connect in a relevant way with demographics groups that are otherwise harder for our company to reach," Hopper says. "It's easy to get other publishers to license our hit movies or TV shows, but if we want to invest in new customers via videogames, we have to do it ourselves."
Read the latest video game, gaming systems and console news, including Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, handhelds PSP and Nintendo DS from Wired.com {...}
Published: August 6, 2008, 4:15 pm - Indexed: August 6, 2008, 11:04 pm - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {ENTERTAINMENT > PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA} - WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/wargames-a-look-back-at-the-film-that-turned-geeks-20080728738.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/wargames-a-look-back-at-the-film-that-turned-geeks-20080728738.htm Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT It was the year Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire"; the year the United Nations implored the Russians to withdraw from Afghanistan; the year ABC aired The Day After, a TV movie about the wake of a nuclear attack on the US. In the midst of all this came WarGames, a fizzy little thriller about looming Armageddon. It's a deceptively simple story: High schooler David Lightman (played by 21-year-old Matthew Broderick) is a digitally proficient goofball who wants to play an unreleased computer game — and impress a pretty girl (Ally Sheedy). So he does something most Americans didn't have a word for back then: He starts hacking. Little does he know, the "computer company" he's infiltrated is actually a military installation running a missile-command supercomputer called the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), and the game — Global Thermonuclear War — is real. Naturally, only David can stop it from setting off World War III. Over the years, WarGames has written itself into the cult lore of Silicon Valley. Google hosted a 25th-anniversary screening in May, where keyboard jockeys cheered Broderick's DOS acrobatics. (Imagine Rocky Horror, but picture the audience in Hawaiian shirts and mandals.) "Many of us grew up with this movie," Google cofounder Sergey Brin told the packed house. "It was a key movie of a generation, especially for those of us who got into computing." The original WarGames theatrical trailer. For more, visit video.wired.com. WarGames: The Dead Code attempts a reboot. For more, visit video.wired.com. How did WarGames become the geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy? Related question: Shall we play a game? In 1979, Walter Parkes, the future head of DreamWorks Pictures, was a young screenwriter with the outlines of an idea he'd developed with Lawrence Lasker, a script reader at Orion Pictures. Called The Genius,it was a character film about a dying scientist and the only person in the world who understands him — a rebellious kid who's too smart for his own good. The idea of featuring computers and computer networks would come later. Walter Parkes, Screenwriter: WarGames is looked upon as technologically prescient, but we actually started off with a concept that had nothing to do with technology. Lawrence Lasker, Screenwriter: We were complete newbies. In 1979, we didn't even know that home computers could hook up to other computers. Peter Schwartz, Futurist and creative consultant: I spent 10 years at the Stanford Research Institute, from 1972 to the end of 1981. That's where all this began. Walter and Larry came to SRI with a script idea called The Genius. And it was about a boy and a relationship he had with a great scientist named Falken, who was basically Stephen Hawking. Lasker: For me, the inspiration for the project was a TV special Peter Ustinov did on several geniuses, including Hawking. I found the predicament Hawking was in fascinating — that he might one day figure out the unified field theory and not be able to tell anyone, because of his progressive ALS. So there was this idea that he'd need a successor. And who would that be? Maybe this kid, a juvenile delinquent whose problem was that nobody realized he was too smart for his environment. That resonated with Walter. So I said, let's actually go talk to people about how a kid could get in trouble and get discovered by a brainy scientist and take it from there. Parkes: Before our conversation, the Falken character was just a way to access the adult side of the movie. It wasn't even much about computers yet. Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and the military — and The Genius began its long morph into WarGames. Schwartz: There was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known as hackers. SRI was in Palo Alto, and all the computer nerds were around: Xerox PARC, Apple just starting — it was all happening right there. SRI was node number two of the Internet. We talked about the fact that the kinds of computer games that were being played were blow-up-the-world games. Space war games. Military simulations. Things like Global Thermonuclear War. SRI was one of the main players in this. SRI was, in fact, running computerized war games for the military. Screenshot: Courtesy MGM In the summer of 1980, Parkes and Lasker went looking for inspiration for their war room set. They found it when they pestered their way onto a tour of the North American Aerospace Defense Command's central nerve center — 2,000 feet under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. From here, American and Canadian military officials could detect an incoming Soviet nuke from hundreds of miles away. Lasker: As we're walking back to the bus that's going to take us to the hotel, James Hartinger [then commander in chief of Norad] walks up between me and Walter and plants a hand on the back of our necks: "I understand you boys are writing a movie about me!" he says. "Let's go to the bar." Walter says: "Well, we have to get on the bus to go back to our hotel." And Hartinger replies: "Are you insane? I've got 50,000 men under my command. You think I can't get you back to your hotel? Plus, I can't drink off the base. So c'mon." He was all for the message in our script. We kind of simplified it to "machines are taking over." He said, "God damn, you're right! I sleep well at night knowing I'm in charge." So we based General Beringer, played by Barry Corbin, on the real commander at Cheyenne Mountain. Parkes: We came up with a number of different military-themed plotlines prior to the final story. In one version, this kid was connected via computer to someone known as Uncle Ollie, or OLI. Later on, it's revealed that OLI stands for Omnipresent Laser Interceptor, a space-based defensive laser, and it's got this intelligent program running it. This was another version of what the WOPR became. We could never make it work, but I remember doing quite a lot of research into space- and Earth-based laser systems. It turned out to be too speculative, not as specific as what we decided on. David Scott Lewis, Solar-tech entrepreneur and model for David Lightman: Hacking was easy back then. There were few if any security measures. It was mostly hackers versus auditing types. The Computer Security Institute comes to mind. I would read all of their materials and could easily find ways around their countermeasures. The part in the movie showing David Lightman perusing the library to find Falken's backdoor password, "Joshua," is clearly a reference to many of my antics. Lasker: David Lewis wasn't exactly the inspiration. But he was a model. You could call him up in the middle of the night and ask, "Can you get a computer to play games with itself?" And he'd say, "Yes! Number of players: zero." Screenshot: Courtesy MGM Parkes: There was a guy named "Captain Crunch," John Draper. He was the famous phone phreak, one of the first telephone hackers. He was called Captain Crunch because he used a toy whistle given away in the cereal to activate a telephone trunk line, enabling him to make unlimited free calls. John "Captain Crunch" Draper, Early hacker and reformed phone phreak: I talked to them about how phone phreaks did it: The use of a dialer scanner program came from me repeatedly dialing up numbers until I found a computer modem. It's called wardialing now because David Lightman used it in the movie to make contact with the Norad computer. I called it scanning. Kevin "The Condor" Mitnick, Early hacker who served five years in prison for computer-related crimes: Scanning was a common hacking technique. But it seemed like something from a James Bond movie. In early '82 , the script grew so ambitious that the filmmakers needed to build the Hollywood version of Norad's Crystal Palace command center. Universal Pictures began to balk at the prospect of shooting a tech-heavy movie its executives didn't fully understand. The project stalled and ended up at United Artists, where director Martin Brest was hired. He began making changes in the script, starting with the key character, Falken. Lasker: I still wish we'd been able to stick with the original dying-astrophysicist character. It was Marty Brest who didn't like the idea of a man in a wheelchair in a war room, because it was too much like Dr. Strangelove. Parkes We always pictured John Lennon, because he was kind of a spiritual cousin to Stephen Hawking. Lasker: We had communicated with Hawking — not directly. And through David Geffen, we'd communicated with John Lennon, and he was interested in the role. I was writing the first scene where we meet Hawking — Falken — in the movie. He was an astrophysicist in our second draft. I was staring at the cover of the November '80 issue of Esquire, with Lennon on the cover, and describing his face, when a friend of mine — a bit of a jerk — called and said, "You're gonna have to find a new Falken." They had to find a new director, too; UA wasn't happy with the footage Brest had produced. The studio fired him and called in John Badham, the acclaimed director of Saturday Night Fever. Geek Goddess Those eyes. That laugh. Those khakis. For a legion of young WarGames fans, 20-year-old Ally Sheedy was a lust object second only to the Imsai 8080. A quarter century later, Wired caught up with hacker culture's first crush. — Scott Brown Wired: So it wasn't a love for microprocessors that drew you to this role. Sheedy: I couldn't make heads or tails of the script. It was easy for me to do the part where she's asking questions. Wired: What about now? Sheedy: To be honest, I haven't seen the movie since it came out. It's probably kind of quaint. Wired: Nowadays, cybercrime might outrank nuclear warfare as a source of collective anxiety. I sometimes feel really at sea with technology. I love email. Sheedy: All this communicating has created a world where no one's accountable. And I have a 14-year-old daughter, so I worry. Wired: Wow. You have a 14-year-old daughter. That just set off a wave of cognitive dissonance among the hackers who'd like to hit on you ... Do hackers hit on you? Sheedy: No, I don't hear so much from hackers. No. No, no, no. I don't. Thankfully. No. Wired: Just one no would've been fine. John Badham, Director Leonard Goldberg, the producer, shows me some footage they'd shot — it was a scene with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy going into his bedroom, early in the movie, and he shows her how he can change her grades on his computer. She freaks out and leaves. And I'm looking at this and thinking, "What's wrong here?" Driving home that night, I realized what it was. I stopped the car, found a phone booth, and called Leonard. "I know what the problem is!" I said. "They're not having any fun!" These kids were treating this as if they're involved in some dark and evil terrorist conspiracy. If I could change somebody's grades on the computer, I'd be peeing in my pants with excitement to show it to some girl. And the girl would be excited about it! I wasn't taking the point of view that there was something wrong with this guy. Parkes: There was such a myth that we were all subject to, that personal computing would lead to a generation of disconnected loners who stayed in their rooms. But it actually led to social networking of a kind we've never seen before. The David Lightman character we first wrote was an edgier character than the one that Matthew portrayed. The final version was edgy enough but in a slightly more playful way. Schwartz: The first thing on his mind was impressing the girl: "I'm changing your biology grade!" He was more about that than the art of hacking. The two computer nerds he goes to visit, Malvin and Jim (played by Eddie Deezen and Maury Chaykin), are much more in the mold of the conventional hacker. Eddie Deezen, Actor [New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael said that I was the first computer nerd of film, and since then nobody has ever challenged me. To ensure accuracy, Badham invited a small army of computer whizzes on set. Badham: You could get all the hacker geekiness you wanted just by standing on the set. We were dealing with things like when Matthew sits at the computer, we've got an actor who can't even type. I'd say, "No, I just really want him to type in 'David' and have him get on." They said, "No! You can't do that! You have to go through all these elaborate sequences!" I said, "No, we're not doing that. Audiences will have left the theater by the time he logs into the computer one time." Draper: I was taken down to the set as a technical assistant. I don't really believe that there were any technical glitches — the fact that you can find a game company by scanning for phone numbers was real. That military computer, the WOPR, on the other hand, was a stupid, crazy thing. That was crazy. That was silly. Made for $12 million, the movie was released on June 6, 1983. It was a hit, nabbing $80 million at the box office (the fifth-highest total of the year) and three Oscar nominations (for original screenplay, sound, and cinematography). Film critic Roger Ebert described it as "an amazingly entertaining thriller" and "one of the best films so far this year." When the WOPR spoke the movie's penultimate line ("A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"), audiences, unnerved by years of US-Soviet nuclear brinkmanship, spontaneously applauded. And Ronald Reagan did not find the WOPR crazy or silly when he saw the movie at a special Camp David screening during its opening weekend. Lasker: I arranged that screening. Reagan was a family friend. My parents were in the movie business, and I grew up in Brentwood. We had Saturday night parties, and much the same people came. The Reagans — you could set your watch by them. At 7 o'clock, there they would be — ding-dong! Days after the screening, wrote Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon, Reagan held a closed-door briefing with some moderate members of Congress, wherein he sidetracked discussion of the MX ballistic missile program by bringing upWarGames. Had any of them seen the film? he asked, then launched into an animated account of the plot. "Don't tell the ending," cautioned one of the lawmakers. Parkes: I remember the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock was at three minutes to midnight. The timing of it all was really interesting. William Lord, Commander, Air Force Cyberspace Command: It was a great movie! A few years later, I was an executive officer with the Air Force Space Command stationed at Norad near Cheyenne Mountain. And I'm wondering, "Gee, where can we get such cool-looking displays?" It was a good forcing function. It required us to all of a sudden say, "If it really can look like this, why doesn't it?" Poster art: Courtesy MGM WarGames had its most indelible influence on hacker culture, not defense policy. The Cold War was ending, but the cyberwar was just getting started. The year after the movie's release saw the debut of 2600 magazine — a hacker zine named after the 2600-Hz tone Draper used to phreak phones. In 1993, the first hacker convention opened its doors. It was (and is) called Defcon, an affectionate nod to the movie that helped popularize the term. But WarGames' legacy isn't all smileys and Sunday wardrives. This was Silicon Valley's Jaws, doing for the digital demimonde what Spielberg's thriller had done for sharks: It introduced the world to the peril posed by hackers. Mitnick: That movie had a significant effect on my treatment by the federal government. I was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year because a prosecutor told a judge that if I got near a phone, I could dial up Norad and launch a nuclear missile. I never hacked into Norad. And when the prosecutor said that, I laughed — in open court. I thought, "This guy just burned all his credibility." But the court believed it. I think the movie convinced people that this stuff was real. They tried to make me into a fictional character. Parkes: Between John's instinct and Matthew's interpretation, Lightman ended up being a more accessible, real kid. We didn't know it at the time — we went into this researching hackers — but we probably drew a picture of a gamer. I mean, look at the line "I wanna play those games." Lewis: In those days, there were no blackhats or whitehats. I didn't do anything too serious. Just wanted to see what I could get away with. Just like in the movie. Parkes: If there's something naive about the movie, it's that we didn't anticipate the power of hackers. For the handful of people who ended up doing things like unleashing viruses, well, most of those guys got arrested and then worked for the computer security business. So I guess it's all worked out. Mitnick: It was a cool script, and Lightman becomes the hero. He was just doing it for fun. Today people aren't doing it for the fun. I was an old-school hacker, doing it for intellectual curiosity. It was more innocent. Trying to find a cool game to play and accidentally stumbling across a game that was for real. Contributing editor Scott Brown (scott_brown@wired.com) wrote about the new Batman movie in issue 16.07. Additional reporting by David Downs. Wired.Com WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - It was the year Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire"; the year the United Nations implored the Russians to withdraw from Afghanistan; the year ABC aired The Day After, a TV movie about the wake of a nuclear attack on the US. In the midst of all this came WarGames, a fizzy little thriller about looming Armageddon. It's a deceptively simple story: High schooler David Lightman (played by 21-year-old Matthew Broderick) is a digitally proficient goofball who wants to play an unreleased computer game — and impress a pretty girl (Ally Sheedy). So he does something most Americans didn't have a word for back then: He starts hacking. Little does he know, the "computer company" he's infiltrated is actually a military installation running a missile-command supercomputer called the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), and the game — Global Thermonuclear War — is real. Naturally, only David can stop it from setting off World War III. Over the years, WarGames has written itself into the cult lore of Silicon Valley. Google hosted a 25th-anniversary screening in May, where keyboard jockeys cheered Broderick's DOS acrobatics. (Imagine Rocky Horror, but picture the audience in Hawaiian shirts and mandals.) "Many of us grew up with this movie," Google cofounder Sergey Brin told the packed house. "It was a key movie of a generation, especially for those of us who got into computing." The original WarGames theatrical trailer. For more, visit video.wired.com. WarGames: The Dead Code attempts a reboot. For more, visit video.wired.com. How did WarGames become the geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy? Related question: Shall we play a game? In 1979, Walter Parkes, the future head of DreamWorks Pictures, was a young screenwriter with the outlines of an idea he'd developed with Lawrence Lasker, a script reader at Orion Pictures. Called The Genius,it was a character film about a dying scientist and the only person in the world who understands him — a rebellious kid who's too smart for his own good. The idea of featuring computers and computer networks would come later. Walter Parkes, Screenwriter: WarGames is looked upon as technologically prescient, but we actually started off with a concept that had nothing to do with technology. Lawrence Lasker, Screenwriter: We were complete newbies. In 1979, we didn't even know that home computers could hook up to other computers. Peter Schwartz, Futurist and creative consultant: I spent 10 years at the Stanford Research Institute, from 1972 to the end of 1981. That's where all this began. Walter and Larry came to SRI with a script idea called The Genius. And it was about a boy and a relationship he had with a great scientist named Falken, who was basically Stephen Hawking. Lasker: For me, the inspiration for the project was a TV special Peter Ustinov did on several geniuses, including Hawking. I found the predicament Hawking was in fascinating — that he might one day figure out the unified field theory and not be able to tell anyone, because of his progressive ALS. So there was this idea that he'd need a successor. And who would that be? Maybe this kid, a juvenile delinquent whose problem was that nobody realized he was too smart for his environment. That resonated with Walter. So I said, let's actually go talk to people about how a kid could get in trouble and get discovered by a brainy scientist and take it from there. Parkes: Before our conversation, the Falken character was just a way to access the adult side of the movie. It wasn't even much about computers yet. Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and the military — and The Genius began its long morph into WarGames. Schwartz: There was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known as hackers. SRI was in Palo Alto, and all the computer nerds were around: Xerox PARC, Apple just starting — it was all happening right there. SRI was node number two of the Internet. We talked about the fact that the kinds of computer games that were being played were blow-up-the-world games. Space war games. Military simulations. Things like Global Thermonuclear War. SRI was one of the main players in this. SRI was, in fact, running computerized war games for the military. Screenshot: Courtesy MGM In the summer of 1980, Parkes and Lasker went looking for inspiration for their war room set. They found it when they pestered their way onto a tour of the North American Aerospace Defense Command's central nerve center — 2,000 feet under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. From here, American and Canadian military officials could detect an incoming Soviet nuke from hundreds of miles away. Lasker: As we're walking back to the bus that's going to take us to the hotel, James Hartinger [then commander in chief of Norad] walks up between me and Walter and plants a hand on the back of our necks: "I understand you boys are writing a movie about me!" he says. "Let's go to the bar." Walter says: "Well, we have to get on the bus to go back to our hotel." And Hartinger replies: "Are you insane? I've got 50,000 men under my command. You think I can't get you back to your hotel? Plus, I can't drink off the base. So c'mon." He was all for the message in our script. We kind of simplified it to "machines are taking over." He said, "God damn, you're right! I sleep well at night knowing I'm in charge." So we based General Beringer, played by Barry Corbin, on the real commander at Cheyenne Mountain. Parkes: We came up with a number of different military-themed plotlines prior to the final story. In one version, this kid was connected via computer to someone known as Uncle Ollie, or OLI. Later on, it's revealed that OLI stands for Omnipresent Laser Interceptor, a space-based defensive laser, and it's got this intelligent program running it. This was another version of what the WOPR became. We could never make it work, but I remember doing quite a lot of research into space- and Earth-based laser systems. It turned out to be too speculative, not as specific as what we decided on. David Scott Lewis, Solar-tech entrepreneur and model for David Lightman: Hacking was easy back then. There were few if any security measures. It was mostly hackers versus auditing types. The Computer Security Institute comes to mind. I would read all of their materials and could easily find ways around their countermeasures. The part in the movie showing David Lightman perusing the library to find Falken's backdoor password, "Joshua," is clearly a reference to many of my antics. Lasker: David Lewis wasn't exactly the inspiration. But he was a model. You could call him up in the middle of the night and ask, "Can you get a computer to play games with itself?" And he'd say, "Yes! Number of players: zero." Screenshot: Courtesy MGM Parkes: There was a guy named "Captain Crunch," John Draper. He was the famous phone phreak, one of the first telephone hackers. He was called Captain Crunch because he used a toy whistle given away in the cereal to activate a telephone trunk line, enabling him to make unlimited free calls. John "Captain Crunch" Draper, Early hacker and reformed phone phreak: I talked to them about how phone phreaks did it: The use of a dialer scanner program came from me repeatedly dialing up numbers until I found a computer modem. It's called wardialing now because David Lightman used it in the movie to make contact with the Norad computer. I called it scanning. Kevin "The Condor" Mitnick, Early hacker who served five years in prison for computer-related crimes: Scanning was a common hacking technique. But it seemed like something from a James Bond movie. In early '82 , the script grew so ambitious that the filmmakers needed to build the Hollywood version of Norad's Crystal Palace command center. Universal Pictures began to balk at the prospect of shooting a tech-heavy movie its executives didn't fully understand. The project stalled and ended up at United Artists, where director Martin Brest was hired. He began making changes in the script, starting with the key character, Falken. Lasker: I still wish we'd been able to stick with the original dying-astrophysicist character. It was Marty Brest who didn't like the idea of a man in a wheelchair in a war room, because it was too much like Dr. Strangelove. Parkes We always pictured John Lennon, because he was kind of a spiritual cousin to Stephen Hawking. Lasker: We had communicated with Hawking — not directly. And through David Geffen, we'd communicated with John Lennon, and he was interested in the role. I was writing the first scene where we meet Hawking — Falken — in the movie. He was an astrophysicist in our second draft. I was staring at the cover of the November '80 issue of Esquire, with Lennon on the cover, and describing his face, when a friend of mine — a bit of a jerk — called and said, "You're gonna have to find a new Falken." They had to find a new director, too; UA wasn't happy with the footage Brest had produced. The studio fired him and called in John Badham, the acclaimed director of Saturday Night Fever. Geek Goddess Those eyes. That laugh. Those khakis. For a legion of young WarGames fans, 20-year-old Ally Sheedy was a lust object second only to the Imsai 8080. A quarter century later, Wired caught up with hacker culture's first crush. — Scott Brown Wired: So it wasn't a love for microprocessors that drew you to this role. Sheedy: I couldn't make heads or tails of the script. It was easy for me to do the part where she's asking questions. Wired: What about now? Sheedy: To be honest, I haven't seen the movie since it came out. It's probably kind of quaint. Wired: Nowadays, cybercrime might outrank nuclear warfare as a source of collective anxiety. I sometimes feel really at sea with technology. I love email. Sheedy: All this communicating has created a world where no one's accountable. And I have a 14-year-old daughter, so I worry. Wired: Wow. You have a 14-year-old daughter. That just set off a wave of cognitive dissonance among the hackers who'd like to hit on you ... Do hackers hit on you? Sheedy: No, I don't hear so much from hackers. No. No, no, no. I don't. Thankfully. No. Wired: Just one no would've been fine. John Badham, Director Leonard Goldberg, the producer, shows me some footage they'd shot — it was a scene with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy going into his bedroom, early in the movie, and he shows her how he can change her grades on his computer. She freaks out and leaves. And I'm looking at this and thinking, "What's wrong here?" Driving home that night, I realized what it was. I stopped the car, found a phone booth, and called Leonard. "I know what the problem is!" I said. "They're not having any fun!" These kids were treating this as if they're involved in some dark and evil terrorist conspiracy. If I could change somebody's grades on the computer, I'd be peeing in my pants with excitement to show it to some girl. And the girl would be excited about it! I wasn't taking the point of view that there was something wrong with this guy. Parkes: There was such a myth that we were all subject to, that personal computing would lead to a generation of disconnected loners who stayed in their rooms. But it actually led to social networking of a kind we've never seen before. The David Lightman character we first wrote was an edgier character than the one that Matthew portrayed. The final version was edgy enough but in a slightly more playful way. Schwartz: The first thing on his mind was impressing the girl: "I'm changing your biology grade!" He was more about that than the art of hacking. The two computer nerds he goes to visit, Malvin and Jim (played by Eddie Deezen and Maury Chaykin), are much more in the mold of the conventional hacker. Eddie Deezen, Actor [New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael said that I was the first computer nerd of film, and since then nobody has ever challenged me. To ensure accuracy, Badham invited a small army of computer whizzes on set. Badham: You could get all the hacker geekiness you wanted just by standing on the set. We were dealing with things like when Matthew sits at the computer, we've got an actor who can't even type. I'd say, "No, I just really want him to type in 'David' and have him get on." They said, "No! You can't do that! You have to go through all these elaborate sequences!" I said, "No, we're not doing that. Audiences will have left the theater by the time he logs into the computer one time." Draper: I was taken down to the set as a technical assistant. I don't really believe that there were any technical glitches — the fact that you can find a game company by scanning for phone numbers was real. That military computer, the WOPR, on the other hand, was a stupid, crazy thing. That was crazy. That was silly. Made for $12 million, the movie was released on June 6, 1983. It was a hit, nabbing $80 million at the box office (the fifth-highest total of the year) and three Oscar nominations (for original screenplay, sound, and cinematography). Film critic Roger Ebert described it as "an amazingly entertaining thriller" and "one of the best films so far this year." When the WOPR spoke the movie's penultimate line ("A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"), audiences, unnerved by years of US-Soviet nuclear brinkmanship, spontaneously applauded. And Ronald Reagan did not find the WOPR crazy or silly when he saw the movie at a special Camp David screening during its opening weekend. Lasker: I arranged that screening. Reagan was a family friend. My parents were in the movie business, and I grew up in Brentwood. We had Saturday night parties, and much the same people came. The Reagans — you could set your watch by them. At 7 o'clock, there they would be — ding-dong! Days after the screening, wrote Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon, Reagan held a closed-door briefing with some moderate members of Congress, wherein he sidetracked discussion of the MX ballistic missile program by bringing upWarGames. Had any of them seen the film? he asked, then launched into an animated account of the plot. "Don't tell the ending," cautioned one of the lawmakers. Parkes: I remember the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock was at three minutes to midnight. The timing of it all was really interesting. William Lord, Commander, Air Force Cyberspace Command: It was a great movie! A few years later, I was an executive officer with the Air Force Space Command stationed at Norad near Cheyenne Mountain. And I'm wondering, "Gee, where can we get such cool-looking displays?" It was a good forcing function. It required us to all of a sudden say, "If it really can look like this, why doesn't it?" Poster art: Courtesy MGM WarGames had its most indelible influence on hacker culture, not defense policy. The Cold War was ending, but the cyberwar was just getting started. The year after the movie's release saw the debut of 2600 magazine — a hacker zine named after the 2600-Hz tone Draper used to phreak phones. In 1993, the first hacker convention opened its doors. It was (and is) called Defcon, an affectionate nod to the movie that helped popularize the term. But WarGames' legacy isn't all smileys and Sunday wardrives. This was Silicon Valley's Jaws, doing for the digital demimonde what Spielberg's thriller had done for sharks: It introduced the world to the peril posed by hackers. Mitnick: That movie had a significant effect on my treatment by the federal government. I was held in solitary confinement for nearly a year because a prosecutor told a judge that if I got near a phone, I could dial up Norad and launch a nuclear missile. I never hacked into Norad. And when the prosecutor said that, I laughed — in open court. I thought, "This guy just burned all his credibility." But the court believed it. I think the movie convinced people that this stuff was real. They tried to make me into a fictional character. Parkes: Between John's instinct and Matthew's interpretation, Lightman ended up being a more accessible, real kid. We didn't know it at the time — we went into this researching hackers — but we probably drew a picture of a gamer. I mean, look at the line "I wanna play those games." Lewis: In those days, there were no blackhats or whitehats. I didn't do anything too serious. Just wanted to see what I could get away with. Just like in the movie. Parkes: If there's something naive about the movie, it's that we didn't anticipate the power of hackers. For the handful of people who ended up doing things like unleashing viruses, well, most of those guys got arrested and then worked for the computer security business. So I guess it's all worked out. Mitnick: It was a cool script, and Lightman becomes the hero. He was just doing it for fun. Today people aren't doing it for the fun. I was an old-school hacker, doing it for intellectual curiosity. It was more innocent. Trying to find a cool game to play and accidentally stumbling across a game that was for real. Contributing editor Scott Brown (scott_brown@wired.com) wrote about the new Batman movie in issue 16.07. Additional reporting by David Downs.
Read about the latest Entertainment News on Wired.com, including art, technology, films, animation, music, web video, tv, podcasts, and blogs. {...}
Published: July 23, 2008, 2:00 pm - Indexed: July 25, 2008, 11:04 am - Page Size: 50KB
Category: Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media

]]> Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media {NEWS > BREAKING NEWS} - Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/sept-8-1966-liftoff-for-the-starship-enterprise-20080951513.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/news/breaking-news/sept-8-1966-liftoff-for-the-starship-enterprise-20080951513.htm Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:00:00 GMT 1966: Star Trek makes its network television debut. Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons -- 80 episodes -- and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings. But if network numbers-crunching and the short-sightedness of advertising sponsors doomed it, Star Trek's long-term survival, evidenced by its ongoing syndication, not to mention the numerous TV spinoffs and feature-length films it inspired, is both a vindication of and a tribute to its creator and executive producer, Gene Roddenberry. And Roddenberry was a guy badly in need of vindication. His career began promisingly: Roddenberry wrote scripts for some popular 1950s TV shows like Naked City, Highway Patrol and Have Gun, Will Travel. But the original Star Trek TV series, as well as the first feature-length film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, were conspicuous successes in an otherwise unremarkable and often problematic association with Hollywood. The commercial success of the first Star Trek movie would spawn other films and a new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, although Roddenberry's involvement with those projects was diminished. But if his relationship with the industry had its rough patches, his reputation as a futurist and visionary -- which begins and ends with Star Trek -- is assured. The original show's most visionary aspects were social, not scientific, and that had everything to do with the times. The country was in turmoil, embroiled in Vietnam and the growing civil rights movement. Roddenberry said later that these events influenced many of the themes, as well as the multicultural makeup of the crew. Roddenberry remained in demand on the lecture circuit to the end of his life, speaking not only at universities but at some other pretty significant places, too, including the Smithsonian Institution and NASA. Star Trek's impact on popular culture is matched by only a handful of other television shows, and surpassed by precious few. The original cast members on the USS Enterprise's 1966 flight deck became household names: Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei). Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who joined the cast in the second season to give the Russians their due in space, was also a popular character. Phrases like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Live long and prosper" and "to boldly go ?" entered the lexicon, and the show's cult following, kept visibly alive by the numerous and rollicking Star Trek conventions, remains strong to this day. An 11-foot model of the starship Enterprise is on display at the Smithsonian. On the tech front, the communicator used by Enterprise crew members is said to have been the inspiration for the flip-open cellphone. The original pilot episode for the series, "The Cage," was filmed in 1964 but not aired in its entirety until 1988. After the original pilot was rejected by NBC, "The Cage" was chopped up and heavily edited, and eventually shown under the title "The Menagerie" during Star Trek's three-year run. Nimoy's Mr. Spock was the only character from the pilot to later appear in the TV series, although he was most un-Spock like, showing a lot more emotion than your average Vulcan. In the pilot, the Enterprise was commanded by Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter). Because of all the spinoffs that resulted from it, Roddenberry's Star Trek is often referred to as The Original Series. For a lot of us who came of age watching Shatner chewing on all that alien scenery and nibbling on all those alien necks, it was The Only Series. Have some favorite Star Trek moments you'd like to share with us? Wired.com wants to hear about your favorite Star Trek series, episode and feature film. Have a copy of the Animated Series on Laserdisc? Please, do share. Source: Various Wired.Com Sept. 8, 1966: Liftoff for the Starship Enterprise {new window}   Www.Wired.Com - 1966: Star Trek makes its network television debut. Given the cultural impact and enormous franchise spawned by the original Star Trek series, it's hard to believe that the show lasted just three seasons -- 80 episodes -- and was canceled by NBC in 1969 because of low ratings. But if network numbers-crunching and the short-sightedness of advertising sponsors doomed it, Star Trek's long-term survival, evidenced by its ongoing syndication, not to mention the numerous TV spinoffs and feature-length films it inspired, is both a vindication of and a tribute to its creator and executive producer, Gene Roddenberry. And Roddenberry was a guy badly in need of vindication. His career began promisingly: Roddenberry wrote scripts for some popular 1950s TV shows like Naked City, Highway Patrol and Have Gun, Will Travel. But the original Star Trek TV series, as well as the first feature-length film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, were conspicuous successes in an otherwise unremarkable and often problematic association with Hollywood. The commercial success of the first Star Trek movie would spawn other films and a new TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, although Roddenberry's involvement with those projects was diminished. But if his relationship with the industry had its rough patches, his reputation as a futurist and visionary -- which begins and ends with Star Trek -- is assured. The original show's most visionary aspects were social, not scientific, and that had everything to do with the times. The country was in turmoil, embroiled in Vietnam and the growing civil rights movement. Roddenberry said later that these events influenced many of the themes, as well as the multicultural makeup of the crew. Roddenberry remained in demand on the lecture circuit to the end of his life, speaking not only at universities but at some other pretty significant places, too, including the Smithsonian Institution and NASA. Star Trek's impact on popular culture is matched by only a handful of other television shows, and surpassed by precious few. The original cast members on the USS Enterprise's 1966 flight deck became household names: Capt. James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei). Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who joined the cast in the second season to give the Russians their due in space, was also a popular character. Phrases like "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Live long and prosper" and "to boldly go ?" entered the lexicon, and the show's cult following, kept visibly alive by the numerous and rollicking Star Trek conventions, remains strong to this day. An 11-foot model of the starship Enterprise is on display at the Smithsonian. On the tech front, the communicator used by Enterprise crew members is said to have been the inspiration for the flip-open cellphone. The original pilot episode for the series, "The Cage," was filmed in 1964 but not aired in its entirety until 1988. After the original pilot was rejected by NBC, "The Cage" was chopped up and heavily edited, and eventually shown under the title "The Menagerie" during Star Trek's three-year run. Nimoy's Mr. Spock was the only character from the pilot to later appear in the TV series, although he was most un-Spock like, showing a lot more emotion than your average Vulcan. In the pilot, the Enterprise was commanded by Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter). Because of all the spinoffs that resulted from it, Roddenberry's Star Trek is often referred to as The Original Series. For a lot of us who came of age watching Shatner chewing on all that alien scenery and nibbling on all those alien necks, it was The Only Series. Have some favorite Star Trek moments you'd like to share with us? Wired.com wants to hear about your favorite Star Trek series, episode and feature film. Have a copy of the Animated Series on Laserdisc? Please, do share. Source: Various
Get the latest in science news, including space, physics, planet earth, discoveries, NASA, satellites, and space travel from Wired.com {...}
Published: September 8, 2008, 5:00 am - Indexed: September 8, 2008, 10:49 am - Page Size: 49KB
Category: News > Breaking News

]]> News > Breaking News {NORTH AMERICA > LODGING} - Palm Springs Mid-Century Pool Home (Palm Springs) $350 4bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/palm-springs-mid-century-pool-home-palm-springs-2008092344.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/travel-and-tourism/lodging/palm-springs-mid-century-pool-home-palm-springs-2008092344.htm Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:37:02 GMT H-Palm Tree OasisH-MCAVOYBedrooms: 4Baths: 4Sleeps: 8This 3,700 square foot home has everything you are looking for in a Palm Springs vacation rental. Located at the southern end of Palm Springs, just off E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Tree Oasis offers convenient shopping, great restaurants and entertainment, while giving you quiet, ample space and privacy. Originally built in 1954 for a member of the famed NY City Rockettes and the local Palm Springs Follies, the home gives you that "Old Hollywood" feel the minute you step through the front door. Newly refurbished with period style furnishings, the home boasts three large bedrooms and baths in the main house and a private one bedroom, one bath casita with its own kitchenette. Check Rates / Book Online / More InfoClick HereFor more information please visit our web site at:http://www.ps4rent.com 477 S. Palm Canyon Dr., Ste. 1 • Palm Springs, CA 92262Toll Free Reservation Line: 800-777-4606 • Phone: 760-322-2500 • Fax: 760-323-7878E-mail: info@ps4rent.com Sfbay.Craigslist.Org Palm Springs Mid-Century Pool Home (Palm Springs) $350 4bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - H-Palm Tree OasisH-MCAVOYBedrooms: 4Baths: 4Sleeps: 8This 3,700 square foot home has everything you are looking for in a Palm Springs vacation rental. Located at the southern end of Palm Springs, just off E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Tree Oasis offers convenient shopping, great restaurants and entertainment, while giving you quiet, ample space and privacy. Originally built in 1954 for a member of the famed NY City Rockettes and the local Palm Springs Follies, the home gives you that "Old Hollywood" feel the minute you step through the front door. Newly refurbished with period style furnishings, the home boasts three large bedrooms and baths in the main house and a private one bedroom, one bath casita with its own kitchenette. Check Rates / Book Online / More InfoClick HereFor more information please visit our web site at:http://www.ps4rent.com 477 S. Palm Canyon Dr., Ste. 1 • Palm Springs, CA 92262Toll Free Reservation Line: 800-777-4606 • Phone: 760-322-2500 • Fax: 760-323-7878E-mail: info@ps4rent.com
Palm Springs Mid-Century Pool Home {...}
Published: September 4, 2008, 8:37 pm - Indexed: September 4, 2008, 8:46 pm - Page Size: 7KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Travel and Tourism > Lodging {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Giant agribusiness back in the dock http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/giant-agribusiness-back-in-the-dock-2008094044.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/giant-agribusiness-back-in-the-dock-2008094044.htm Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:07:40 GMT Environment, science & technology: ADM is once again besieged - by green campaigners and Hollywood stars Guardian.Co.Uk Giant agribusiness back in the dock {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - Environment, science & technology: ADM is once again besieged - by green campaigners and Hollywood stars
Alternative energy - Bourne again: a giant agribusiness finds itself back in the dock | Environment | The Guardian {...} ADM is once again besieged - by Hollywood stars and green campaigners {...}
Published: September 3, 2008, 12:07 am - Indexed: September 3, 2008, 12:30 pm - Page Size: 91KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media {NORTH AMERICA > RENTALS} - + 2 Top Floor, Corner Unit w/View of Park (san jose north) $2812 3bd http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/2-top-floor-corner-unit-w-view-of-park-san-jose-north-2008095892.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/north-america/united-states/california/metro-areas/san-francisco-bay-area/business-and-economy/real-estate/rentals/2-top-floor-corner-unit-w-view-of-park-san-jose-north-2008095892.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:39:30 GMT This is a 3+2 apartment on the 4th floor, corner unit. Has 1315 sq. ft. of living space and has view of a 5-acre park. Price shown net effective w/ $50 OFF THE MARKET RENT + $1000 OFF THE FIRST FULL MONTH'S RENT ONLY. Market rent is $2945. Must move in within 2 weeks. Minimum 10-12 month lease. Rates subject to change. Please call for details! Amenities include: ~Private Patios and Intimate Balconies ~Roomy Kitchen w/Refrigerator w/Icemaker, Microwave, Granite Tile Countertops, & White Shaker-Style Cabinetry ~In-home Full Size Washer/Dryer, Some Stacked ~Dramatic 9-Foot Ceilings and Dining Room Track Lighting ~Bathroom Vanities w/Hollywood-Style Make-up Lighting ~In-home Alarm System w/Optional Monitoring ~Wired for High Speed Internet/Multiple Phone Lines ~Digital/Cable TV Ready ~Internet/Phone/TV Options Available The Pines at North Park is one of six communities centered in a unique village of stylish apartment communities, surrounding a beautiful 5-acre park. Nestled in the vibrant center of North San Jose, you can relax in the casual luxury of park-side living with an array of services, amenities and features designed for your enjoyment. We are conveniently located close to Shopping & Restaurants, as well as easy access to the 237, 880, 87 & 101 Highways. New Community Recreation Center open to all residents, plus an Internet Café! Come see what we have to offer! Our offices are open 7 days a week! To schedule your personal tour today, please contact our Leasing Office at 408.570.5010; or Carmina Ryerson at 408.570.5013, email at cryerson@irvinecompany.com Sfbay.Craigslist.Org + 2 Top Floor, Corner Unit w/View of Park (san jose north) $2812 3bd {new window}   Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - This is a 3+2 apartment on the 4th floor, corner unit. Has 1315 sq. ft. of living space and has view of a 5-acre park. Price shown net effective w/ $50 OFF THE MARKET RENT + $1000 OFF THE FIRST FULL MONTH'S RENT ONLY. Market rent is $2945. Must move in within 2 weeks. Minimum 10-12 month lease. Rates subject to change. Please call for details! Amenities include: ~Private Patios and Intimate Balconies ~Roomy Kitchen w/Refrigerator w/Icemaker, Microwave, Granite Tile Countertops, & White Shaker-Style Cabinetry ~In-home Full Size Washer/Dryer, Some Stacked ~Dramatic 9-Foot Ceilings and Dining Room Track Lighting ~Bathroom Vanities w/Hollywood-Style Make-up Lighting ~In-home Alarm System w/Optional Monitoring ~Wired for High Speed Internet/Multiple Phone Lines ~Digital/Cable TV Ready ~Internet/Phone/TV Options Available The Pines at North Park is one of six communities centered in a unique village of stylish apartment communities, surrounding a beautiful 5-acre park. Nestled in the vibrant center of North San Jose, you can relax in the casual luxury of park-side living with an array of services, amenities and features designed for your enjoyment. We are conveniently located close to Shopping & Restaurants, as well as easy access to the 237, 880, 87 & 101 Highways. New Community Recreation Center open to all residents, plus an Internet Café! Come see what we have to offer! Our offices are open 7 days a week! To schedule your personal tour today, please contact our Leasing Office at 408.570.5010; or Carmina Ryerson at 408.570.5013, email at cryerson@irvinecompany.com
+ 2 Top Floor, Corner Unit w/View of Park {...}
Published: September 2, 2008, 9:39 pm - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 9:55 pm - Page Size: 6KB
Category: Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals

]]> Regional > North America > United States > California > Metro Areas > San Francisco Bay Area > Business and Economy > Real Estate > Rentals {ENTERTAINMENT > PUBLICATIONS AND MEDIA} - Hartnett's West End debut delayed http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/hartnett-s-west-end-debut-delayed-2008099793.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/entertainment/publications-and-media/hartnett-s-west-end-debut-delayed-2008099793.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:42:28 GMT Hollywood star Josh Hartnett's London stage debut is put back one week to allow for extra rehearsals. News.Bbc.Co.Uk Hartnett's West End debut delayed {new window}   News.Bbc.Co.Uk - Hollywood star Josh Hartnett's London stage debut is put back one week to allow for extra rehearsals.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hartnett's West End debut delayed {...}
Published: September 2, 2008, 5:42 pm - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 11:23 pm - Page Size: 42KB
Category: Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media

]]> Arts > Entertainment > Publications and Media {EUROPE > NEWS AND MEDIA} - Don LaFontaine, voiceover king, dies http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/don-lafontaine-voiceover-king-dies-2008094592.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/regional/europe/united-kingdom/news-and-media/don-lafontaine-voiceover-king-dies-2008094592.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:49:04 GMT Man behind much-parodied, thunderous 'trailer voice' beloved of Hollywood studios dies aged 68 Guardian.Co.Uk Don LaFontaine, voiceover king, dies {new window}   Www.Guardian.Co.Uk - Man behind much-parodied, thunderous 'trailer voice' beloved of Hollywood studios dies aged 68
Don LaFontaine, king of voiceovers, has died | Film | guardian.co.uk {...} Think of that much-parodied, thunderous {...}
Published: September 2, 2008, 3:49 pm - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 11:32 pm - Page Size: 74KB
Category: Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media

]]> Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > News and Media {LITERATURE > RSS FEEDS} - Perelman Eyes Poltergeist Remake http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/perelman-eyes-poltergeist-remake-2008092055.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/perelman-eyes-poltergeist-remake-2008092055.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT The Hollywood Reporter confirmed a report that first appeared on >a href="http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/13463" target="outside">Bloody-Disgusting.com that Vadim Perelman is in negotiations to develop MGM's Poltergeist remake as a potential directing vehicle. Scifi.Com Perelman Eyes Poltergeist Remake {new window}   Www.Scifi.Com - The Hollywood Reporter confirmed a report that first appeared on >a href="http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/13463" target="outside">Bloody-Disgusting.com that Vadim Perelman is in negotiations to develop MGM's Poltergeist remake as a potential directing vehicle.
Published: September 2, 2008, 6:00 am - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 10:34 pm - Page Size: 41KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds {LITERATURE > RSS FEEDS} - Knight Tops $500M http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/knight-tops-500m-2008097212.htm http://articles.world-of-newave.info/arts/literature/genres/science-fiction/rss-feeds/knight-tops-500m-2008097212.htm Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:00:00 GMT The Dark Knight became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million over the Labor Day weekend, the Associated Press reported. Scifi.Com Knight Tops $500M {new window}   Www.Scifi.Com - The Dark Knight became the second movie in Hollywood history to top $500 million at the domestic box office, raising its total to $502.4 million over the Labor Day weekend, the Associated Press reported.
Published: September 2, 2008, 6:00 am - Indexed: September 2, 2008, 7:56 am - Page Size: 40KB
Category: Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds

]]> Arts > Literature > Genres > Science Fiction > RSS Feeds