Toteu blog

It’s another bleak forecast for the future in the new video game “Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.”

Yet it’s so much fun you probably won’t mind the prospects of an Earth politically splintered and environmentally devastated by an ever-spreading crystalline alien substance called Tiberium.

This latest saga marks one of the best, and only, games of its type for the
Xbox 360. (The T-rated, $59.99 title is also available for Windows PCs for $10 less).

Like other real-time strategy titles, the gameplay is centered around collecting resources (in this case truckloads of Tiberium), constructing barracks and other structures, and then sending your newly minted army into all-out war.

Nothing here really breaks away from the real-time strategy genre’s conventions, and that’s just fine.

The frenzied managerial pace of building forces, collecting tiberium and defeating rivals remains an intense experience. The hours will quickly pass as you conquer one mission after another.

There are several ways to play, but I recommend going through the single-player story modes first.

They not only serve as a good primer to the Xbox 360 controls and various units you can build (tanks, troops and air fighters among them), they also advance an intriguing story that’s filled with plenty of cheesy sci-fi twists and turns.

Anyone who’s played earlier games in the series, which date back to the mid-1990s, will get an especially big kick out of seeing what fanatical Nod leader Kane and other characters in the long-standing series are up to now.

Speaking of characters, one of the hallmarks of the series returns with a campy vengeance in “Tiberium Wars.”

The full-screen, full-motion video segments between missions tell the story and feature great appearances from some Hollywood talent such as Battlestar Galactica’s
Tricia Helfer,
Billy Dee Williams and
Michael Ironside.

Yes, it’s often painful watching these actors “act” in a video game. But I had a smile on my face the whole time, and seeing this classic feature from older “Command & Conquer” games conjured up a warm retro feeling.

Whether you enjoy the video sequences or the addicting gameplay, “Tiberium Wars” is a welcome return to a reinvigorated franchise.

Three stars out of four.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. said on Wednesday it had created Web software that runs both online, and offline, marking a sea change for the Internet industry by letting users work on planes, trains, spotty connections and even in the most remote locations.

The technology, called Google Gears, would allow users of computers, phones and other devices to manipulate Web services like e-mail, online calendars or news readers whether online, intermittently connected to the Web or completely offline.

By bridging the gulf between new Web services and the older world of desktop software, where any data changes are stored locally on users’ machines, Google is pushing the Web into whole new spheres of activity and posing a challenge to rival Microsoft Corp., leader in the desktop software era.

“The Web is great but it doesn’t work very well when you don’t have a Web connection,” Jeff Huber, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in an interview. “Gears addresses a functional gap on the Web.”

Google plans to make the Gears technology available for free as “open source” software, meaning other developers are free to use and enhance the software in their own products.

Gears promises to expand the usage of scores of Google products and services, as well as thousands of programs from independent software makers, by making them more accessible at previously inconvenient times and places.

The technology also allows developers to build Internet search and indexing of Web pages into their own software applications, Huber said.

Many such products will be able to make limited searches offline, since they will have downloaded data automatically when connected. Google’s full Web search functions would return once the user reconnects to the Internet.

Early partners who will use Gears in their products include design software leader Adobe Systems Inc., maker of Flash animation and Acrobat document-sharing software, as well as new Apollo tools that work online and offline, Adobe said.

Other organizations working with Google are Norway’s Opera Software ASA, maker of a Web browser popular with mobile phone users, and Mozilla, the group behind Firefox, the biggest alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, according to Google.

BEYOND DESKTOP

Analysts said Google’s move capitalizes on a growing trend over the past couple of years for Web applications to behave as responsively as desktop software.

Microsoft already offers technologies like Groove, which allows users to work offline, then synchronize changes when connected later. But the software giant has been reluctant to make existing products work both online and offline.

Technologies such as AJaX, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, Adobe’s Flash or Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology have made this increasingly possible.

“Now the Web is becoming so good that there is less and less of a reason to build software that just runs on desktop computers,” said Gartner analyst David Smith of Bedford, New Hampshire. “In the past, developers had to make some pretty clear trade-offs between the Web and software for desktops.”

Google Gears promises to help further close the gap for software developers across the industry. “This is a very big step, but I would say it is an obvious step,” Huber said.

The first Google product to feature Gears will be Google Reader, which allows consumers automatically to track updates to hundreds of Web sites. Users could connect temporarily for updates, then go offline and read up on recent Web news.

“We expect this to be extended to other Google applications over time,” Huber said, without setting any timeframes.

Once retrofitted, for example, Google Apps, the company’s free, advertising-supported group of Web programs including word processing and spreadsheets that can be shared and edited by groups, could work with only periodic Web connections.

Huber said Gears’ biggest impact could be in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where poor or non-existent Internet connections hobble access to digital information.

Google made the announcement ahead of its Google Developer Day conference, which is taking place on Thursday in 10 cities around the world starting in Sydney and culminating at the San Jose Convention Center in Silicon Valley later in the day.

Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) are college roommates. They may live in the wintry squalor of 1987 Romania — in the last days of Communism — but their lives seem familiar to us despite that gigantic difference; they have exams coming up, friends and lovers, future opportunities and current challenges. They may buy their perfume on the black market, but they still buy it — they’re kids, essentially.

There’s school; there’s the joy and effort of friendships; there’s the looming reality of future mandatory military service; most pressingly, Gabita needs to have an abortion — in a rigidly-policed state where that’s been illegal for decades. Otilia is going to help her — How could she not? — but neither of them are prepared for what that’s ultimately going to cost.Written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days is the sort of film that will inspire a visceral reaction from most moviegoers — a quick grimace, a darting look away: Wow, that sounds not-fun. And no, 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days is not ‘fun’ — but it’s incredibly affecting, magnificently acted and superbly made; in a lot of ways, it reminded me of last year’s Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film, The Lives of Others, insofar as both depict universal challenges of human existence — what to do about one’s problems, how those difficulties can poison how we deal with others — with the harsh realities of fascist power making those challenges even more difficult to deal with. I cannot imagine how hard it must be to decide to have an abortion and see it through in the here-and-now; watching that agonizing choice played out with additional layers of challenge — bribes, secrecy, covert meetings and the looming possibility of jail — is achingly painful and fraught with tension.

Mungiu’s film is naturalistic — the cinematography is made up of either loose tracking shots or long, locked-down single-take scenes — and we never have a scene without Otilia on-screen. (Gabita may be in trouble, but Otilia is the one who has to take action.) That doesn’t mean, though, that the film is without craft; Mungiu’s sense of timing and space is exquisite, and his actors give performances so good that they disappear into their roles. As Gabita, Vasiliu is stressed-out and desperate; Marinca’s Otilia is more worldly-wise, more self-assured — until she runs into the realities of what has to happen and how. Praise should also go to Vlad Ivanov, who plays Mr. Bebe — the abortionist Gabita puts her life in the hands of.

Ivanov’s performance is magnetically repellent; Bebe is a man who knows exactly what he’s doing — the risks, the dangers, the ending of lives — and what does has made something in him turn monstrous and meticulous, carefully calibrating how hard he can push his luck and the spirit of his charges. As I said, Ivanov is magnetic in his careful, soft-voiced corruption — and what he ultimately asks of Otilia and Gabita is a grim, inescapable demonstration of the fact that making something illegal often simply places it outside the law. The scenes with the three sitting in a hotel room discussing the nuts-and-bolts of what has to happen and then the ugly business of payment — in cash and more — are fierce and blunt and matter-of-fact, and so superbly acted you feel as if you’re watching a documentary. (There’s one shot in these sequences — with Bebe sitting talking to Gabita as she stands, her head cut off by the framing of the shot — that says more about the physical realities of abortion than a thousand polemics.)

4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days is supposedly the beginning of a series of films Mungiu is hoping to make called The Golden Age, each about life in Communist Romania. I hope he’s successful; if this film is an example of the kind of rough-hewn humanity and blunt realism we can expect in future films, I’d definitely seek them out. As it is, 4 Months 3 Weeks & 2 Days moved me and challenged me, made me feel and made me think, demonstrated the personal and political challenges of a heartbreaking choice that, in many ways, is no choice at all– and that’s a rare enough achievement, and one worthy of seeking out.

ATLANTA -

NASCAR

can’t stop AT&T Inc. from featuring its logo on Jeff Burton’s No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, a federal judge ruled Friday. NASCAR asked for the ruling to be put on hold pending appeal.

U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob in Atlanta issued a preliminary injunction barring NASCAR and any entity affiliated with it from interfering with AT&T’s rights as primary sponsor of the car in NASCAR Cup Series races.

NASCAR has tried to prevent the Cingular logo from being changed to the AT&T logo on Burton’s car. AT&T is the sole owner of Cingular and is rebranding the cell phone company’s name to AT&T.

Sprint Nextel Corp. sponsors NASCAR’s premier series, the Nextel Cup, and has exclusive rights as the telecommunications company for the series. Attorneys argued the only exceptions are companies, including Cingular, that already sponsored cars when Nextel reached its agreement with NASCAR.

San Antonio-based AT&T became the full owner of Atlanta-based Cingular when it completed its purchase of Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp. in December.

Cingular argued that its rights included changing its brand name to AT&T.

AT&T wasted no time following the ruling. John Burbank, AT&T vice president of marketing, told reporters in a conference call that Burton’s car will be repainted in time for Saturday’s Nextel All-Star Challenge at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.

“We’re not hurrying in any way, shape or form to in any way make a statement about our relationship with NASCAR or Sprint Nextel,” Burbank said. “This really is the normal course of business.”

But later Friday, NASCAR filed a notice of appeal and an emergency motion asking that Shoob’s order be stayed pending the appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. There was no immediate decision on the motion. Shoob’s law clerk, Jessica Arnold, said NASCAR’s motion to stay will be addressed Saturday morning during a conference call between the parties.

In his ruling regarding Burton’s car, Shoob said, “The court concludes that the continued appearance of the Cingular brand on the No. 31 car, unaccompanied by any indication that Cingular now does business as AT&T, is likely to confuse NASCAR fans.”

Shoob also concluded that AT&T has shown it will suffer irreparable harm in the form of loss of goodwill and loss of exclusive rights to renew its sponsorship agreement unless the court issues the injunction.

NASCAR had argued that AT&T would be welcome to sponsor a car in NASCAR’s Busch series or truck racing, but that Nextel was entitled to exclusivity through its 10-year, $700 million investment that began in 2004. It also said it could be sued by Sprint Nextel if the court granted the injunction in favor of AT&T.

“Regardless of whether Sprint Nextel could or may bring suit against NASCAR, the court finds that the threat of such a suit does not outweigh the actual and imminent irreparable harm plaintiff will suffer if the court does not issue an injunction,” Shoob said in his ruling.

NASCAR said it was disappointed by the ruling.

“NASCAR will continue to protect the industry from actions designed to interrupt a business model which has been beneficial to all,” it said.

NASCAR also said that Sprint Nextel is a cornerstone sponsor that benefits the entire industry by way of its contribution to the championship point’s fund, technology bringing fans closer to the sport, and its marketing and advertising campaigns.

“All of this was possible through the exclusivity granted to us as the series sponsor for the Nextel Cup, and that exclusivity from NASCAR also grants us protection from other telecommunications competitors infringing on our sponsorship rights,” Sprint Nextel marketing director Dean Kessel said in a statement. “The merger that created the new AT&T means their brand now represents a much broader and more comprehensive company than the Cingular brand.”

In a statement, AT&T said it was pleased with the ruling.

“We look forward to the debut of the new paint scheme and to directing our focus back to the action on the track and to Jeff Burton’s fantastic start to the 2007 season,” Burbank said in the statement.

The No. 31 car has been sponsored by Cingular Wireless LLC since 2001. Cingular had been a joint venture of AT&T and BellSouth before AT&T purchased BellSouth.

According to AT&T, earlier this year NASCAR rejected a transitional plan to change the paint scheme and introduce the AT&T logo on Burton’s car. AT&T later filed suit against NASCAR.