Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 2000 American film adaptation of the novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. It was a commercial and critical disaster and has been widely criticized as one of the worst films ever made. Starring John Travolta, Forrest Whitaker and Barry Pepper, the film depicts an Earth that has been under the rule of the alien Psychlos for 1,000 years and tells the story of the rebellion that develops when the Psychlos attempt to use the surviving humans as gold miners. Travolta, a long-time Scientologist, had sought for many years to make a film of the novel by Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. After a long search, he obtained funding from Franchise Pictures, an independent production company that specialized in rescuing stars' pet projects. However, Battlefield Earth received abysmal reviews on its release and failed to recoup its costs at the box office. Franchise Pictures was later sued by its investors and was bankrupted after it emerged that it had fraudulently overstated the film's budget by $31 million. (more...)

The good news is that there are new games coming out this week on PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo DS. Scope out the full list for all the details, or look below for the highlights.

Last year I closed the forum I had here on Geek News Central but by popular demand of my listeners of my podcast, I have put one back online and hopefully we will be able to get some traction on it.

Virtual cell phone operators Virgin Mobile USA and Helio are rumored to be in merger talks, a move that could bring a lot of benefits to both companies.

The tie-up between the two MVNOs, or mobile virtual network operators, was first reported Thursday by the wireless blog MocoNews. According to ...

The latest bill would allow lenders to reduce their exposure to foreclosures if they agree to cut the outstanding balance of an existing loan, thus allowing homeowners to refinance into a new loan that would be FHA insured. The reductions taken by lenders are substantial and must be based on new appraisals that should reflect current home pricing levels.

Law Librarian Blog: Roy M. Mersky, Dead at 82. The world of law librarianship loses a giant in the field.

crazyeyes notes the leak of 7 pages of secret Microsoft information on the upcoming Service Pack for Windows XP. Quoting: "We were the first to break the news on the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and the final RTM schedule of Windows XP Service Pack 3. Now, we will be the first to release the full details on Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3, which as we know will be available for manual update on April 29, 2008."

Our ability to remember the objects, places and people within our environment is essential for everyday life, although the importance of this is only fully appreciated when recognition memory beings to fail, as in Alzheimer’s disease.

Derrick Bostrom of Bostworld provided an invaluable service to the world by scanning a vintage Classroom Filmstrip and uploading it to YouTube. Classroom Filmstrips have been a staple of kitch fans since time immemorial (that’s about four decades, in Kitsch Years), yet the Web still lacks a truly marvellous repository of the things. Collectors are apparently afraid to let them out of their little plastic tubes for fear they’ll crumble in the air. Others would rather compile them onto equally crumbly paper and weigh in on the matter with their own two cents. Thusly, I couldn’t resist a box of Sunday school filmstrips during a recent antique store outing. I also couldn’t resist scanning a couple of them, adding the included soundtrack records, and combining the whole mess into a couple nifty QuickTimes files — just the thing for an upload to YouTube. The colors have faded and dust has burned permanently into the images, but the somber message for our little ones is as clear as on the day these filmstrips were manufactured. After weighing the pros and cons of simulating the film-roll experience, I ultimately ruled it out. It would have been too much trouble. Today’s lesson is the intriguing story of the little cloud who gave his life to help humanity. Not only is it a terrific primer for helping kids visualize fluffy Casper-like supernatural beings floating overhead affecting our lives, it also introduces children to the concept of self-sacrifice (very important in a society that relies upon a standing military), the value of prayer in an agrarian economy, and the scientific role of cloud sadness in the production of rain. Link...