PCMag dropped in on the House of Imagination exhibit at the Tribeca Film Festival and put together this report. This is the second year the festival did the exhibit and competition, which they call Storyscapes; it is all about how movies may evolve and become more interactive and more immersive. There were 5 finalists, and they put forward some amazing installations. I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that Oculus Rift is at the center of a lot of these development approaches. Thanks to IGN for the heads up on this one.
I can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t appreciate Ghost In The Shell when they meet this unique cyberpunk universe, so instead of ranting about how excellent the series is this time I thought I should just share a few of the recent shorts from GITS: Arise. The first one from The Borderless Project is called Foreseeing 2027, the second is Memory, and the third is Color. There are a few more in this set, all encouraged by Katsuyuki Motohiro, the main director of Psycho-Pass, which owes its existence to the influence of this show.
In Movies, I have to name The Secret Life of Walter Mitty first, because they truly did an amazing job on the remake of this film. It is one of the few instances where I liked the re-imaged version better than the original, it is just that good. Switch with Andy Lau is a twisty little Secret Agent vs. Smuggler tale tied together with the artistic history of their nation’s culture. This action film is a Chinese equivalent to the Mission Impossible series of movies. Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times may be the definitive documentary, possibly even surpassing It Might Get Loud for sheer fun; if you are a Zeppelin fan, do not miss it.
Ripper Street: Season 2 and Bletchley Circle: Season 2 are both worthy follow-ups to their original series. They are both period pieces set in interesting UK history slices. I am sure everyone is aware of the near-fantasy Ripper legend, but Bletchley Park was one of the birthplaces of modern cryptography as well as advances in computer science like the world had never seen before. It was there that Alan Turing himself (yes, the inventor of the Turing Test ) made the first attacks on Enigma, the Nazi cipher machine, which shortened WWII by 2 to 4 years, or made it possible for the allies to win at all, depending on who’s analysis you prefer.
In Anime, Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! isn’t exactly the rom-com the title might suggest… or is it? Nyaruko, also known as the Crawling Chaos, has been sent by the Planetary Defense Agency to protect Mahiro from the rampaging demons trying to destroy him. It turns out all of the creatures from H.P.Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos are aliens, and cute girls, and they all seem to like him. Mahiro and his friends fight to survive, learn about love, play intergalactic video games, and might just save the world if everything goes right! Like most of the best anime, you can watch it streaming online before you decide to commit your money to owning it yourself. You would think I would stop mentioning that, since it is true of so many shows of all types these days. But what the heck, including a direct link is never a bad thing.
From the New World is another tale which starts innocently enough but rapidly goes off the rails. This time, it is a thousand years in the future, and Saki and her friends seem to live in a place where you can materialize anything by an act of psychic will, no technology required. But then a long-lost artifact gives the lie to the facade of their world, and they learn about the bloody secret history of how their world came into existence. Now the question is, will they live long enough to save it, for humanity and everyone else?
Berserk: The Golden Age 3: The Advent has Griffith still imprisoned by the Kingdom of Midland and the Band of the Hawk running for their lives when Guts returns to lead them to the rescue. OK, that’s a bit abrupt, but then One Piece Collection 9 continues the tale of Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates as they gather together friends on the quest to make Luffy King of the Pirates. This set runs from episode 206 to 229, but the currently streaming episode is 640 or so, expect a disconnect between them if you watch both media delivery styles. Also be aware Spice and Wolf is being released in a single box set, and Heaven’s Lost Property is as well. If you don’t already have them, they just became a bit more cost effective to acquire.
By now everyone knows of the OpenSSL flaw known as Heartbleed that allows people to break its encryption and harvest all your user names, passwords, credit card info, and so forth. On many fridays I post about Live Discs that give you arsenals of free software targetted at specific tasks. While all of them are good, some of them have not been patched yet, so if you have a favorite build you might check with their users forum and see if they have a patched update to download. If you installed Linux to a computer hard drive or memory stick, run your package manager to check for and install updates. If your computer automatically updates itself, use the command
# openssl version -a
or
# sudo openssl version -a
depending on which OS you installed, and look for the build date. If it is on or after April 7th of this year, you are good. If it is before that, you need to get it upgraded, especially if you built your box as a server. Note that you don’t actually use the # in the command; in a Terminal, Shell, or DOS prompt, that tells the computer that what comes after is a comment. It is on this page in front of the command strings so your system doesn’t get confused and try to run it (that almost NEVER happens, but almost isn’t always). Also, you will have to give the command as root, so knowing your root password is important. Once you have updated, change your root password, and start changing your online passwords.
Even if your favorite Live Disc hasn’t been patched, you can still use all the software on it locally. Just don’t use it to go online and buy anything, do any banking, or sign into email or other services until they have a patched ISO for you to burn to disc. If you have a MAC instead of Linux, guess what; you are using Linux with a MAC GUI interface lying on top of it, you can use your normal proceedures to get it updated and patched. If you use Windows and have OpenSSL on your computer, visit the OpenSSL Web Site to grab an updated build.
Have an old Pentium III or Pentium 4 gathering dust because you can’t stand the 20 minute wait while it slowly boots an obsolete version of Windows? You can now turn it into a fast (or at least faster) useful machine again using Legacy OS 2.1, a Boot From CD (most of the computers from 2000 to 2006 didn’t have DVD drives in them, so a bootable CD is your best Live Disc option) Linux build. The latest version was released earlier this week, and comes with over 200 software packages ready to run right off the disc. That includes all the usual web tools, media players, office software, and everything else a modern computer should have. Of course, after you have tested the Live version to make sure it recognizes and can use your hardware properly, you can always install it to the computer’s hard drive and get it to run even faster, as well as be able to update or add new software, if you like. Another variation this Australian build came out with last October is Legacy OS 2.1 Gamer, with over 100 classic games, including the Open Source version of Doom. It is always good to make something useful and fun again, and this project does that nicely.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, Knoppix 7.3.0 is the latest release of this grand-daddy of Live DVDs. When it first started out in the late ’90s it was built to be both a Live CD to give you an instant free operating system full of free software that would run on almost any hardware you had available, and to be a Rescue Disc. By 2003, when version 3.2 came out, it had become a lot more, with many different specialized builds, including Scientific, Engineering, Game and Network platforms. A lot of folks also used it as a Demo Disc environment, making their own customized builds that would launch straight into their own programs, allowing you to run the software without having to install it on your computer. Over the years the functionality has grown, but the two core abilities that make it so very useful remain its Rescue Disc and its Disc Authoring tool kits.
You can download Knoppix 7.2.0 from one of the mirrors listed, using HTTP, FTP, or BitTorrent, and it is available in both CD or DVD size, depending on how extensive your software needs are. Note that the 650Meg Live CD version unpacks to 2Gig worth of software, so even the smaller file is a powerhouse. The latest version, 7.3.0, can be picked up included with the March copy of Linux Magazine.