Every Single Article Written by N - All 1343
Book Review: Jerry A. Coyne’s “Why Evolution Is True”
Evolution, the scientific explanation for how all life on the Earth came about, is easily the most contentious of all things scientific. People can live with science’s explanation of how computers and microwaves work, how stars are birthed, live and die through snapshots, or how candy tastes yummy, but as soon as someone tries to explain that humans and modern apes came from a common ancestor that lived millions of years ago, all hell must break loose. Growing up, I lived by the Bible, so it didn’t really matter what that “theory” said, it didn’t even matter what facts were involved, the reality is that I didn’t want to believe it.
Book Review: Paul Allen’s “Idea Man”
In their college years, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded an outfit in the dusty hills of Albuquerque called Micro-Soft. They were to be the first to provide operating systems such as BASIC and FORTRAN to the first minicomputers. Before Apple and Commodore, home computing required a mail-order kit and plenty of solder. As they became more successful, getting into IBM’s first PC and creating an industry with their name on it, the two founders eventually fell out of alignment and a harsh Gates made Allen miserable. While we know Gates’ story because of Microsoft’s success, Allen’s has always been a bit elusive. Here, we see the whole thing from his perspective.
UGO And IGN To Merge, Form Larger Site We Still Don’t Care About
Don’t you remember the early 00s, right after as the dot-com hangover began? Back when wonderful sites like Daily Radar were smitten from existence and bland, unfeeling ones like UGO and IGN survived? Well, all things are circular I suppose because a recent report states that these two titans of mediocrity are joining together into a slightly larger tribute to vanilla. I have never been less excited about two chunks of personality-free internet real estate joining together.
Verizon Puts Sticker On New Phones Warning You That They Do Stuff
If you’re joining us from the current now, you’ll know that your recent phone purchase is capable of a lot of stuff. Verizon, under some inquiry by those ever-so-helpful folks in Congress, is putting a warning on all its new phones to inform you that your phone has capabilities and these capabilities will be used.
Movie Review: Fast Five
I’m not sure when the Fast & The Furious series evolved from its cheesy, ricer-fest ooze to the recent Bourne-style action films that spend as much time on foot chases as they do in cars, but everyone’s better off for it. The series had been known for being so monumentally stupid that by the second installment, complete with squeaky cars that look like they were driven straight out of the Matchbox factory, rival studios were mocking it with brain dead rip-offs like Joseph Kahn’s Torque. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you that Fast Five, the latest in the series, is also the best, earning every dollar it receives at the box office.
Exhaustive Tech Review: Windows Phone + HTC Arrive
This review covers both the Windows Phone operating system as well as the HTC Arrive hardware. Both Kelly and Nick worked on it, so Kelly’s thoughts will appear in RED and Nick’s will appear in standard BLACK.
Intro
It’s been a long time, but we finally got some extended time with Windows Phone hardware. The HTC Arrive is the first phone with Microsoft’s new Windows Phone OS for CDMA carriers, this one for Sprint. This phone was actually unveiled with its GSM siblings on AT&T, T-Mobile, and in Europe at the beginning of October, but we didn’t get to hear much about it until recently. We’ve had a few weeks with the device (none of us owning a Windows Phone yet) and are ready to render a verdict. I’ll be giving the phone a review from the perspective of a current Android (and former webOS) user.
Movie Review: The Void
Growing up, dad always turned me onto apocalyptic scenarios: what if the United States were to come under a mutually-assured storm of nuclear weaponry? What if the government collapsed and we had to fend for ourselves with every scrap of Red Dawn-inspired guerrilla warfare we could muster? What if a black hole were to suddenly materialize and rip away our atmosphere? The Void entertains the latter, but let’s be honest, I only queued this up because my man, Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, Star Trek: Generations), stars as this largely thrill-less thriller’s villain.
Book Review: Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies”
With the recent passing of legendary film director Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon), I was turned onto his behind-the-scenes book Making Movies by the Screened guys. Lumet was known as an actor’s director, one that everyone got along with and produced some of their best work with. Here, we get a glimpse into what it was like as he set upon each new cinematic effort.
Movie Review: Scream 4 (or Scre4m (or SCREEEEMFOUR))
If the Scream series is excellent at one thing, it’s parodying the hell out of itself, with each new installation adding one more layer of self-referential meta-humor. As such, Scream 4 is a pretty awful watch if you haven’t seen the previous films and a laborious one if you have.
Cisco Kills Flip
Three years ago, I got a bunch of people together to film Achievements; Sam showed up with a chunky little camera with a display slightly larger than a postage stamp. It was Flip’s first model, and while it paled compared to the $1400 Sony HD camcorder I was filming with, it was pocketable and a USB connector hid in the side as a spring-loaded switch. The quality was rubbish VGA and Sam used it to film behind-the-scenes stuff, but over the following years, Flip would end up developing a pretty big following.
