Those who thought that smoke machines and cobwebbed candelabras were the stuff of Halloween parties and dance clubs need to think again. In Joel Schumacher's film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway musical THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, these moody set devices--and countless others--make every scene an atmospheric vision of souped-up 19th-century Gothic bliss. Christine Daee (a luminescent Emmy Rossum) is a tortured young star who is haunted by the voice of the phantom (Gerard Butler--who also played the lead in DRACULA 2000), a musician who hides in the shadows to hide a facial disfigurement, yet sings to her obsessively. Dwelling in the dark, damp chambers beneath the Paris opera house, the phantom lords over the cast and management with artistic autocracy--he writes the shows, casts them, and threatens all who disobey his plans with dramatically violent outbursts. But when his young student Christine falls for the rich and dapper Raoul (Patrick Wilson), the phantom descends into madness. Webber's memorable songs are performed with aplomb by Rossum, whose background includes singing with the Metropolitan Opera, and Wilson and Butler provide ample accompaniment. One of the treats of the proceedings is Minnie Driver's deeply exaggerated portrayal of the jealous diva, giving this PHANTOM a very appropriate dose of comic relief.

Set in 1966; Produced and released in 1983.

After catching his mother and her boyfriend "in flagrante delicto" and dispatching both of them with a farm implement known as a sling blade, a simpleminded 11-year-old boy is sent to a mental hospital where he spends the next 25 years. Upon his release, the emotionally and mentally stunted man-child returns to his Arkansas hometown and takes a job in a local garage, only to have the past inexorably repeat itself. An indie-film triumph, adapted by star-writer-director Thornton from his 1993 short, "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade." Academy Award Nominations: 2, including Best Actor--Billy Bob Thornton. Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay.

Darby O'Gill (Albert Sharpe) is a man with the Irish gift of gab who finds himself face-to-face with the magical little people, the leprechauns, in an underestimated Disney classic. Unexpectedly, one of the old storyteller's tall tales comes true when he captures the King of the Leprechauns, who must grant him three wishes. Unfortunately, all the wishes backfire in amusing, and sometimes frightening, ways. This classic family film features the era's cutting edge special effects and beautiful Irish scenery.

A camp for chubby kids is invaded by a fitness instructor who spoils their fun and presses them into a strict calisthenics program. After weeks of grueling discipline the kids conspire to overthrow the dictator and win back their freedom.

Splinter, the rat ninja master is kidnapped by the evil Shredder and his gang of hoodlums. The green teens with the help of an ambitious reporter embark on a perilous journey through the city streets and sewers to save him.

. brbrCopyright 1981-(current year) Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved

LITTLE BIG MAN was significant when it was made because of its editing, which was still being explored in Hollywood at the time as a vehicle for innovative, simple storytelling.

Three escaped mental patients converge on the home of their therapist and his family, and proceed to terrorize them.

In Final Fantasy XIII, players will embark on a journey through the cityworld of Cocoon and the outerworld of Pulse, encountering and fighting alongside a diverse group of allies.

When one man is not enough, it will take an army of two to fight through war and a conspiracy so vast it threatens the entire world.

Alice in Wonderland allows players to guide, protect and aid Alice as she journeys through the world of Underland while unraveling the game's many twisted mysteries.

God of War III puts Kratos at the center of the carnage and destruction as he seeks revenge against the Gods who have betrayed him.

Alice in Wonderland allows players to guide, protect and aid Alice as she journeys through the world of Underland while unraveling the game's many twisted mysteries.

In Final Fantasy XIII, players will embark on a journey through the cityworld of Cocoon and the outerworld of Pulse, encountering and fighting alongside a diverse group of allies.

After Earth's distant colonies are devastated by an alien menace called The Covenant, a group of soldiers escapes to the space station HALO. Once here, you'll have to lead a squad of troops into a battle with The Covenant in order to reveal the secret power that Halo possesses. The game utilizes both a first and third-person perspective as you fight for the survival of humanity. If you are successful, the human race goes on, but if you fail

RPG set 200 years in the future in an epic universe, in a vast galactic community in danger of being conquered by a legendary agent gone rogue.

The mad Kratos is guided by the gods to fight through hordes of enemies from Greek mythology and overthrow the war god Ares.

This next-gen follow-up to the survival horror series breaks further away from the old confining standards, with a theme of escape as its core.

Available Mar 2, 2010

Available Mar 2, 2010

Available Mar 2, 2010

Available Mar 2, 2010

Available Mar 9, 2010

Available Mar 9, 2010

Available Mar 9, 2010

Available Mar 9, 2010

Available Mar 9, 2010

Available Mar 16, 2010

$28.99

$28.99

$28.99

$19.99

$19.99

$19.99

$19.99

$19.99

$27.99

$10.99

An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

gollum123 sends an excerpt from the NY Times on how Google has taken a lead in language translation, in one of the company's few unqualified successes as it attempts to broaden is offerings beyond search. "...Google's quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems. The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation. ...in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts. It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google's alley. ...Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

adeelarshad82 writes "After originally rejecting the story, online retailer NewEgg confirmed that a shipment of Core i7s were indeed fake, and apologized for the affair. NewEgg has also broken off its relationship with IPEX, the supplier of the phony lot. The retailer said that it has already contacted affected customers and would continue to reach out and replace the counterfeit parts. We discussed the fake Core i7s over the weekend." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

netbuzz writes "When the NASDAQ stock index hit its all-time high of 5,133 on March 10, 2000, it had more than doubled in a year and the dot-com bubble was already leaking in a big way. A week later the NASDAQ had fallen 9 percent. A year later it was below 2000. Gone were such poster children of the era as Pets.com, Kozmo, and — who could forget? — Whoopi Goldberg's Flooz. Here's a look back." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bjb writes "While helping a somewhat computer illiterate person figure out a problem recently, they mentioned that PDF files had recently stopped working. Upon investigation I found something installed called 'PDF Suite.' Never having heard of it, I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but nothing turned up, though my suspicion remained (and was somewhat confirmed by WOT.) So my question is, where can you go to find out if something is legitimate? Because the person I'm helping is on a dial-up connection, downloading malware detection applications (and updates) is too heavy consider. And I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps, since I don't do this kind of thing very often. Where can you quickly find information?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What to do when germ-infested children come to your office.

[more ...] Payroll tax - Medicare - Tax - United States - Business]]>

[more ...] Rahm Emanuel - White House Chief of Staff - New York Times - Washington - United States]]>

[more ...] Health care - United States - Government - Jim DeMint - South Carolina]]>

[more ...] ]]>

[more ...] Arcadia University - Theodore Roosevelt - Health care - United States - Health insurance]]>

[more ...] Etiquette - Text messaging - Mobile phone - cellphone - Science and Technology]]>

[more ...] Energy - Technology - Conservation - Home improvement - Home]]>

[more ...] United States - Recreation - Women - People - Advice]]>

[more ...] China - Golf - Zhejiang - Sport - China Daily]]>

TechCrunch's most-discussed stories, 1/31/2010Well, on this past Wednesday, Jan. 28, Apple finally unveiled its long-rumored tablet computer - the iPad. Needless to say, any Apple innovation is discussed to death on the intertubes, and the iPad is...

© Heather Powazek ChampYes, the internet is not a dump truck, it's a series of tubes. Or whatever. One of the benefits of this "series of tubes" is access to folks/stuff the un-internet would never present. Thanks to Google or whatever,...

Here are the headlines: Google's mobile hopes go beyond Nexus One WSJ: Apple tablet shipping in March Microsoft sets Office 2010 pricing Three links - all on CNet.com - about stuff that happened today/yesterday (Google's phone; Office 2010...

One item I just forgot to mention in my 2010 Prognostications entry: 2010 will be the year of mobile (hardware/software/start-ups). Yes, the iPhone started the real mobile craze, and this was in 2007(?); last year saw the introduction of other...

Ah, that time of the year - time to see how well I predicted events for this year (2009), and then onto prognostications for 2010. First, how'd I do last year?: Yahoo! will significantly change its direction, and make search deal with...

I dunno, I think this is this simplest, cleanest explanation about the way SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not worth paying for, much less endorsing: Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken...

Officially winter; the longest night of year behind us. What bodes for this winter/spring (and so on)? It's been a crazy year (employment, elections, ecommerce, journalism and so on). Bring it on...

The most annoying part of OSX (for me): Whenever I plugin my iPhone or the memory card from my camera,...

Nothing to see here.. and no I'm not dead, just busy!...

We've been doing a lot of phone interviewing at work lately to fill a couple positions. Granted, Connecticut isn't exactly...

Just a few books for the next couple of months All the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for...

A new SUV named 'patriot'. No message there!...

My server was hacked last week. It was not a super-smart uber hacker who did it. There isn't enough interesting...

.. well, at least error message translation does, so users don't see this (click on image to see larger): Arrived...

It's hard to believe, but three long years have passed since I purchased my old, trusty powerbook. Three, long, slow...

I have a coworker who sometimes likes to spray air freshener in the office. It really bothers me. I'm sensitive...

While in the process of looking through code to see what I need to change for my current project I...

I haven't written much here recently. And that's really due to a lot of reason, not the last of which is being busy and that we have a wonderful new kitten named Bear: The other issue is that I've becoming increasingly unhappy with my blogging tools, the custom hacks I've added over the years, and the required maintenance and upkeep. So I've decided to give WordPress a try. You can visit my new experimental (likely semi-permanent) blog here: Jeremy Zawodny's...

A few weeks ago, Kathleen and I went on our first cruise together. It was her fifth and my first, so I got to experience a lot of new things. If time allows, I'll try to write about that in the future. But for now, I want to talk about one of our shore excursions. Our first day in port was in Puerto Vallarta. The weather was absolutely perfect: a few scattered clouds, light winds, and about 80 degrees with...

I arrived at the Knoxville, TN airpot a bit ago for my slightly delayed flight back to San Jose via Dallas. Since I finished my book on the flight(s) out, I stopped by one of the shops to do something I rarely do: buy print media. Well, I still buy books now and then. But today I bought a couple of magazines: Disocver and Business Week. I sat in the Ruby Tuesday's at the airport and managed to read a...

Yesterday was a very sad day for us. Barnes, one of our four cats, had to be put to sleep after we took him to the pet hospital because he was having trouble breathing. A bit over a year ago, Barnes was diagnosed with Diabetes and he'd been getting regular insulin injections (2 per day) and vet visits. In fact, his most recent visit (3-4 weeks back) was very good. The doctor was happy with his progress and he generally...

A week ago I decided to finally get serious about putting gearman to use for search indexing. I had been batting the idea around in my head for a long time (too long, really) but figured I should just write the code and see what happens. It took less than a day to get a prototype working in our development environment, but the end result made me very happy. Today, in our production deployment, when a sphinx cluster pulls new...

Marshall Kirkpatrick is reporting that Yahoo! will shut down MyBlogLog next year. Well, color me unsurprised. The service has languished for years. I removed it from my site a long time ago. It made me a little sad to do so, but it was just slowing things down and not really "adding value" as they like to say. It's sad because I was involved in the MyBlogLog acquisition at Yahoo! and believed in what they were doing. I worked to...

In a 10-point press release issued today Oracle has listed a series of "commitments" regarding their acquisition of MySQL by way of acquiring Sun. I am not impressed. As a former employee of a large Internet company (the largest at the time, in fact) that used both Oracle and MySQL, I'm utterly puzzled by this. I can't think of why we should trust Oracle to do right by the users of MySQL--especially the non-paying users. You see, for years Oracle...

I really have no idea what prompted this: This is Rev.Willson and am interested in some of your Barrel. I need the Barrel in the specifications of 55 Gallon Barrel. Blue Plastic.So what will the total cost of the Barrel with the dimensions i gave and i need 100 quantities of the Barrel.So i will like you to go ahead and quote me the total charges of 100 quantities of the Barrel + tax without shipping charges included.Because i will...

I'll be speaking Tuesday night at the San Francisco MySQL Meetup. Here's the blurb from the announcement: Jeremy Zawodny will talk about Craigslist's current use of MySQL, where it's painful, and how things are being re-architected to make the pains go away. This includes hardware changes, sphinx, redis, memcached, and some custom Perl work. Despite not living too far away from the SF MySQL Meetup venue, I'm a little annoyed at myself for never having attended. So this will be...

I've recently been accumulating some MySQL configuration variables that have defaults which have proven to be problematic in a high-volume production environment. The thing they all have in common is a network blip or two can trigger some very undesirable behavior. max_connect_errors If a client is having trouble connecting to MySQL, the server will give up waiting after connect_timeout seconds and increment the counter which tracks the number of connect errors it has seen for the host. Then, when that...

With a click of a mouse, cyclists can get the quickest, and flattest, route between Point A and Point B.

The Nasdaq begins its spectacular collapse, signaling the end of the dot-com boom.

The recently unveiled secret agreement that Apple makes iPhone developers sign supports what many have suspected all along: Apple is trying to control the universe.

Taking public transit wouldn't just decrease our carbon footprint — it'd also end all that fiddling with the phone while driving, an insanely dangerous problem.

Huge projects that would store wind energy by compressing air in abandoned mines and porous sandstone are gaining steam in the Midwest.

The Nasdaq peaked at 5,049 on March 10, 2000, then it promptly nosedived and hasn't come near that level since. Here’s a look at the era that launched — and crushed — a million dreams.

Through interviews with a brainy crop of musicians and scientists, a new documentary probes the connection between body, mind and music.

You're carrying around a video camera in your pocket (it's that thing attached to your mobile phone) so be prepared and learn how to start streaming video to the web at a moment's notice.

It's from 1934, and it doesn't look like a car, and it doesn't look like it would fly.

It’s a sadly familiar story from the high-flying market of the past few years: Speculator thinks values will continue to go up, up, up. Overbids for a hot property. Can’t keep up with the payments. Lender is forced to foreclose. Only this isn’t about real estate — it’s about the most expensive domain name in the history of the internet: sex.com.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Democrats on Tuesday cast doubt on their chances of meeting the White House's March 18 deadline for voting on a stalled healthcare overhaul, but said they are moving as fast as they can.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will on Wednesday propose to force banks to reveal how many of their staff earn top wages, in steps that go further than previous proposals, financial services minister Paul Myners said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli cabinet minister apologized on Wednesday after Israel embarrassed visiting Vice President Joe Biden by announcing plans to build 1,600 more homes for Jewish settlers.

LOS ANGELES/DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. safety regulators and Toyota dispatched teams on Tuesday to inspect a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway a day earlier, as the automaker struggled to reassure consumers shaken by its recall crisis.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leader of the House of Representatives -- a persuasive arm-twister and deal maker -- faces her toughest challenge yet in the coming weeks: getting 216 votes to pass final legislation revamping the U.S. healthcare system.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. economists raised their forecast for economic growth in 2010 in March, the third straight monthly rise, while trimming their growth forecast for 2011, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, making a final push for healthcare reform, will back bipartisan plans to stamp out waste in government-run medical programs for the old and needy, the White House said on Tuesday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A television producer pleaded guilty Tuesday to trying to extort $2 million from U.S. talk show host David Letterman by threatening to reveal his affairs with women who worked on his late-night program on CBS.

CANBERRA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - A suspected mastermind of the Bali bombings was killed in a police raid in Indonesia in the latest blow to an Islamist militant movement in the world's most populous Muslim country.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sees risks to the economic recovery and says it is not the moment to change course as he prepares for an election by June.

A California jury recommended Tuesday that a man who once appeared on "The Dating Game" be executed for the murders of four women and a child.

A Pennsylvania woman has been indicted for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and kill a person in a foreign country, the Justice Department said.

A former Ohio doctor was sentenced to life in prison for poisoning his wife with cyanide five years ago. The judge lamented that she could not hand down a stiffer sentence.

The body of a missing energy executive was pulled from the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Tuesday, four days after he disappeared, police said.

A gunman apparently angry over a poor evaluation entered an Ohio State University maintenance building today, killing a manager and then himself, police said.

A documentary producer who interrupted a director's Oscar acceptance speech Sunday night says she was the one who was "big-footed" on stage.

Dogs bark and whine behind high chain-link fences, some of them gnawing the wire so hard they bleed at the mouths while cats packed into crowded cages cower in fear if anyone approaches.

Why would a gay politician vote against gay rights?

Today is the first day same-sex weddings will be performed in the District of Columbia.

A nearly $140 billion bill to extend unemployment benefits and a host of expiring tax cuts cleared a procedural hurdle Tuesday in the Senate on a vote of 66-34.

One-day only special price: $5.40