Entertainment & Gaming

After listening to a week of testimony, the House Judiciary Committee has crafted two bills that seek to deal with the problem of cyber-bullying. One bill is a nuanced attempt to create a conversation between children, parents and school administrators about the proper use of technology, and the other is, well, not.

Name: Mario. Age: 28. Profession: Plumber. Ethnicity: White. Anyone who has played a lot of video games knows that the vast majority of characters are white males. However, a team of scientists have conducted the first ever virtual census, putting a number on the ethnicity and sex composition of video game characters, and raising questions about the psychological effects these games might have on members of the underrepresented groups.

When first-person-shooter video games first hit the market, the computer-controlled bot characters that were deployed in multiplayer matches to fill out the ranks ran around like the Keystone Cops. Now, the bots do a bit better, but not nearly good enough for the people behind the BotPrize.

Imocap image courtesy Animation Weekly News

Much like puberty and Ramadan, the movie awards season begins earlier and earlier each year. But this year, the nerds get to fire the opening salvo. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (emphasis on the "Sciences") has released its short list of nominees for the Science and Technical Oscars. The list includes some of the best known names in computer animation and special effects, like Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic, as well as some less famous companies that have been quietly changing the process of filmmaking.

Making consumer OLED screens hasn't been easy. Sure, pocketable gadgets like the upcoming Zune HD have had them for a couple years now, but so far Sony has been the only company to get a screen on the market with a size in the double digits.

Ladies and gentleman of the Internet, I think today we may have found the best possible application for chiptune music--that uber-geeky genre utilizing vintage game console's music synthesizers, real or software-emulated, as the sole instrumentation. It just so happens that faithful covers of jazz classics sound great: the pleasures of one of my favorite albums of all time intermingling beautifully in my (significant) brainspace cubby where the Contra and Tecmo Bowl themes are on infinite loop.

Last year Esquire rolled out an e-ink cover to celebrate the mag's 75 anniversary and introduced moving pictures (well, scrolling text and flashing images, at least) to the world of print. Next up: talkies. Yesterday, CBS and Time Inc. announced a video ad set to appear in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 is a gaming giant -- figuratively and literally. Figuratively, its graphics are amazing and it has been praised as the best Blu-ray player you can buy. Literally, the 80GB system weighs more than 11 pounds and sucks five times as much energy as a fridge when running, according to a 2008 study. The just-announced PS3 Slim kicks those beastly qualities to the curb.