It used to be simple to know what we were supposed to pay attention to. We usually relied on third-party judgments by gatekeepers and screeners -- journalists, producers, academics -- to tell us what we needed to know. Technology has changed all of that. Soon, the products, services or information judged worthy of people's attention may be those whose providers pay the most money. Business, magazines, websites, software developers, entertainment companies may soon be paying you to pay attention to their creations, rather than the other way around.

Give director Simon West credit for navigating some tricky ground. Some movies have been greatly influenced by video games -- The Mummy's Return -- and still others were literal, and stinky spin-offs (Mortal Kombat and Super Mario Brothers for instance) but Tomb Raider is one of the most expensive, ambitious and closely watched of this new hybrid-cinematic format -- the game that not only inspires a movie but becomes one. Games have come a long way. The movie is perhaps too faithful to the game that inspired it, raising the question of whether games and films can really mix. And Angelina Jolie is stellar bungee-jumping in those silk pj's.

I was expecting to have my eyes dilated on friday during my visit to the optometrist, but fortunately, it wasn't to be. Dilated pupils couldn't save me from the wretchedness that was Tomb Raider, but the upside is I did get to see Atlantis, the latest Disney animated mega blockbuster (once again from the pair of directors that brought us Beauty and the Beast way back when). Keep reading to see my opinions, and then tell me I'm all wrong for having them, and that I should just shut up because I'm evil and dear god does this website suck now. Oh, the short review, I dug it. There might be minor spoilers, so if you wanna avoid them, flee now.

Chip Salzenberg writes "Microsoft's attacks on the GNU General Public License (GPL) prompted me to analyze its technical merits, using insights from the book 'Nonzero' by Richard Wright. Since I'm a fan of Open Source for its pragmatic benefits, my own conclusions surprised the heck out of me." This is an interesting article promoting the GPL, the quintessential Free Software license, coming from a member of the Open Source Initiative.

Yet another phase of the Net era ended earlier this week when two of the Web's oldest magazines, Feed and Suck, merged last year into Automatic Media, announced they were shutting down and laying off their already miniscule staffs. The end of these two ground-breaking sites, and the troubles afflicting Salon, Inside and Slate are historic for new media and cyberspace. Many in the geek and hacker universe have arrogantly underestimated Big Media as being both toothless and clueless. It's true that they don't really want to shut you up or throw you in jail -- you aren't worth the cost or trouble. But that doesn't mean they're harmless. Big Media will homogenize opinion, marginalize you and other smaller competitors and make it impossible for anyone else to compete or grow in the emerging Net AOL/Disney/Sony information economy.

Swordfish is the second stupid movie in recent months -- Antitrust was the other -- to exploit the hacker myth/legend and wrap a mindless crash-bang action film around it. The first minutes of this film are promising, a neat riff on the nature of movies and their endings. But after that, there isn't an auto smash-up or explosion that this movie doesn't love. Maybe producers think it's hip to write goofy and unrealistic hacker characters into silly films, that they will make this tired form contemporary in some way. But if there's much more of this, the term "hacker" will become as distorted a word as the media has tried to make it. SPOILAGE WARNING: Plot is discussed, no ending.

Ivan Reitman's latest film Evolution stars David Duchovny and the Make Seven Up Yours guy in a reasonably entertaining rehashing of Ghostbusters featuring more butt related jokes then any movie without Adam Sandler. Decent CGI and action sequences are available too. Nothing that will warrant awards in this day and age, but it might entertain you for a few minutes. There's much more to be said about this, so keep reading if you want to know what I think, or just want to complain that I'm sharing it.

Ken Whistler sent in the lengthy and rather pointed response below to the article "Why Unicode Won't Work On The Internet," which was posted to Slashdot on Tuesday.

Microsoft has battled back to the top of the Internet heap, with more heavy-duty products coming to market this year than ever before, profits soaring again, and more research and development money in the bank than most of the world's nations can ever get their hands on, not to mention Microsoft's many out-maneuvered competitors. Microsoft, reports Business week in a thorough report in its June 4 issue, and discussed in on Slashdot two weeks ago, is drowning in cash: $30 billion, more than any other company in the Corporate Republic formerly known as America.

The first direct legal challenge to the DMCA was filed at 9 a.m. EDT today by EFF-sponsored attorneys at the United States District Court in Trenton, New Jersey on behalf of Princeton Professor Edward W. Felten and others who helped crack a series of digital watermarking schemes as part of an SDMI Challenge sponsored by the RIAA. Named defendents include the RIAA, SDMI, Verance Corporation (producer of one of the cracked watermarked schemes) and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

This week, Microsoft unleashes a virtual onslaught of new products and initiatives, from gaming to small business software that will likely leave the company dominating the world of computing for years. Bill Gates, on the ropes just a year ago, is now the undisputed King of the Net, the CEO of the Corporate Republic. He's created the first but surely not the last truly Unaccountable Corporation, a vast entity that is, in fact, above the law and more powerful than the government which enables it. If you thought Open Source was a good idea a few years ago ... (Read more.)

We're living in the era where bands are prepackaged for our convenience, and then the packaging itself is repackaged as a serial documercial and sandwiched between paid ads. The kids whose billions pay for this machine are not only fully aware it's a sham, they embrace the cynicism and still manage to enjoy the show. So I'm guessing nobody will be stunned to learn that, a week ago, the L.A. Times uncovered documents showing that record labels are still buying radio airplay, at some stations, the same quasi-legal way they've been buying it for twenty years. But it's an interesting story, and it's as good a launching point as any for thinking about the next twenty years. ("Payola" is the first of three Slashdot features on music distribution. Parts two and three run tomorrow and Thursday.)

What's The Worst That Could Happen? Maybe shelling out nine bucks for this turkey of a movie. With Danny DeVito and Martin Lawrence, it had a good shot at being funny. It isn't. So I headed across the megaplex for Moulin Rouge, which is 90 percent computer animation, visually stunning and unique, and way over the top. You won't see a weirder movie than this one, at times brilliant and frustrating. Plots are discussed, but not endings. (Read more.)

Connecticut's politicians, like those in the rest of the country, range from the reasonably rational to the ignorant and manipulative. Last week saw performances by both varieties. Gov. John G. Rowland last week vetoed an anti-video game bill barring children under 18 from playing "point-and-shoot" video games in public places. The legislation, passed by a wide margin in the Connecticut legislature, was even by gaming-phobia standards so brazenly stupid and blatantly unconstitutional that it calls into serious question its sponsors fitness to hold public office. It shreds any notion of First Amendment freedom. It removes parental responsibility for children's moral and recreational lives, mis-guidedly assigning that role to government and the operators of small businesses. (Read more.)

A few city blocks and many philosophical lightyears away from the New York University auditorium where Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie extolled the virtues of proprietary software a few weeks ago, Richard M. Stallman spoke this morning instead on the reasons that software developers, CEOs and every citizen whatsoever should prefer the Free software movement's methods and results. Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, said a lot of things that he's been saying since 1984, but also threw in some zingers aimed at Microsoft's recent public criticism of open development models. Update: 05/30 01:56 PM by T : Correction: I incorrectly reported in the story below that David Touretzky of CMU introduced Richard Stallman at this speech; in fact, it was Mike Uretsky, Administrative Director of NYU's Center For Advanced Technologies (CAT) and professor in the Stern School of Business; the text below reflects this. With many apologies to both professors and to readers, timothy. (Read more.)

If the history of the twentieth century was marked by bloody struggles against totalitarian political power, then the history of the Twenty-first will likely be marked by efforts to curtail the excessive corporate power that grips the United States and is spreading throughout the world. This conflict between morality and prosperity isn't only about the survival of individualism. It's about the soul of technology, which created the Fast Food Nation. It could soon be the story of computing too. (Read more.)

Before the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor, we were a pretty, innocent, and simple folk. We all looked like Ben Affleck, Josh Hartness, or Kate Beckinsale. Sure, we had our faults. We drank a bit and were awkward with the girls. There was racism and stuff; there was complacency, and dumb, technologically ignorant admirals who should have been sounding the klaxons long before the Japanese attacked. After all, the Japanese did everything but ring up Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and announce they were coming. But hey, the countryside was gorgeous and lush, and we were all playing catch or golf or lounging around the beautiful Honolulu beaches. After the attack, well, you know ... coming of age, loss of innocence. We became an ugly, crowded, smelly, complicated country, losing our sepia tones and contending with social problems and divisions, with TV and bad airline service, with the Net and all that. SPOILAGE WARNING. (Read more.)

If you didn't know that the same guy who co-wrote LA Confidential wrote and directed A Knight's Tale, you wouldn't believe it. Merrie Old England may never recover from this amusing collision between American teen/pop culture and the brawling, allegedly chivalrous jousts of the 14th century. It would be worth a trip to London to sit in a British cinema and watch jaws drop. (Just hang on a bit. The really good stuff starts coming out next week.) SPOILAGE WARNING: Plot is discussed, but not ending. (Read more.)

Pragmatic reader Crashnbur contributed the below piece, his own take on the world of fair use and software. If you've ever burned a CD of MP3s, you may find yourself in the same philosophical boat -- or you may think that increasingly narrow copy-restricting licenses are the greatest thing possible for software (and music, say) under freer alternative licenses. I'm not sure that software and music licensing are quite this parallel at all, though, or that Microsoft really doesn't mind consumers playing musical upgrades, even on their home machines.

The next major battle between hackers and the Corporate Republic will almost surely involve the relatively unknown fields of steganography and digital watermarking, otherwise known as Information Hiding, a scientific discipline to take very seriously. This is where the big three digital policy issues -- privacy, security and copyright -- all collide head-on with corporatism. If they hated Napster, they'll really go nuts over rapidly evolving research into how to hide data inside data. (Read more.)