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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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Arial, Mon Amour, and Other Font Passions |
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| Topic: Technology |
9:41 am EDT, May 16, 2005 |
The Internet is a nice place for font wonks to hang out. They can laugh at other people's typographic blunders, swap alphabets, snipe at famous designers and ban fonts they hate. Why should you care? Because everything you read, every sign, book and logo, is in a font. Fonts are like the air: you don't notice them when they are fine, only when they are mucked up or obscure. When it comes to font rants, though, nothing is quite as bizarre as the Ban Comic Sans movement. Arial, Mon Amour, and Other Font Passions |
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HDTV Is a New Reality for Game Developers |
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| Topic: Games |
9:40 am EDT, May 16, 2005 |
The high cost of game development means that only the largest companies can afford to be in the business. While low-budget movies can occasionally become hits, "it is now impossible to 'Blair Witch' this business." All this complexity costs money. Mr. Goodman estimates that today's $5 million to $10 million in development costs will rise to $7 million to $15 million with the new generation of games. To compensate, publishers can be expected to raise retail prices. HDTV Is a New Reality for Game Developers |
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How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans |
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| Topic: Music |
9:37 am EDT, May 16, 2005 |
New artists, desperate for stardom, will say or do anything to win notice -- and buzz -- for their next projects. Trends like this reach a tipping point, when business as usual becomes unacceptable to the public as a whole. Judging from the rising hue and cry, hip-hop is just about there. How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans |
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Some Surprises in That Galaxy Far, Far Away |
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| Topic: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Films |
9:35 am EDT, May 16, 2005 |
Like many others whose idea of movies was formed by (and to some extent against) the galactically later, terrestrially earlier "Star Wars" trilogy, I was disappointed by "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones." So I approached the recent press screening of "Episode III" in New York warily, and perhaps a little wearily. Would George Lucas at last restore some of the old grandeur and excitement to his up-to-the-minute Industrial Light and Magic? Would my grown-up longing for a return to the wide-eyed enthusiasm of my own moviegoing boyhood - and my undiminished hunger for entertainment with sweep and power as well as noise and dazzle - be satisfied by "Revenge of the Sith"? The answer is yeth. This is by far the best film in the more recent trilogy, and also the best of the four episodes Mr. Lucas has directed. That's right (and my inner 11-year-old shudders as I type this): it's better than "Star Wars." Some Surprises in That Galaxy Far, Far Away |
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| Topic: High Tech Developments |
7:57 pm EDT, May 15, 2005 |
The rules are changing because home entertainment is about to embark on one of the last big switches for the foreseeable future. Like audio and video before it, broadcast television is finally going digital. The transition from analogue to digital broadcasting presents both an opportunity and a threat for all concernedbroadcasters, manufacturers and viewers alike. The switchover is now unstoppable. The only question is how long it will take. Television's big switch |
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The State of the News Media 2005 |
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| Topic: Media |
7:56 pm EDT, May 15, 2005 |
The State of the News Media 2005 is the second in our annual effort to provide a comprehensive look each year at the state of American journalism. Our goal is to put in one place as much original and aggregated data as possible about each of the major journalism sectors. From the introduction: Our desire in this study is to answer questions we imagine any reader would find important, to help clarify the strengths and weaknesses of the available data, and to identify what is not yet answerable. We believe our approach of looking at a set of questions across various media differs from the conventional way in which American journalism is analyzed, one medium at a time. We have tried to identify cross-media trends and to gather in one place data that are usually scattered across different venues. We hope this will allow us and others to make comparisons and develop insights that otherwise would be difficult to see. The State of the News Media 2005 |
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| Topic: Math |
8:13 pm EDT, May 14, 2005 |
A simple strategy lesson for the little Prince ... In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar field is a vector field which points in the direction of the greatest rate of change of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change. Consider a hill whose height at a point (x,y) is H(x,y). The gradient of H at a point will show the direction of the steepest slope at that point. The magnitude of the gradient will tell how steep the slope actually is. The gradient at a point is perpendicular to the level set going through that point, that is, to the curve of constant height at that point. Gradient |
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| Topic: Games |
4:41 pm EDT, May 14, 2005 |
Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos! Katamari Damacy |
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