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...)

Justin Hall and Merci Hammon's networked browser-game PMOG (Passively Multiplayer Online Game) just launched after a solid beta period. The idea is to encourage people to be more adventurous and smarter when they browse the web, by awarding points for different kinds of Internet activity (for example, awarding bonuses for looking at Wikipedia history pages, comparing search results across different engines, or installing Firefox). The networked play also allows players to create their own missions and quests, and to lay traps for other players. All in all, it's great fun, and a genuinely novel way at looking at Internet literacy. Justin sez, PMOG is a steamy Victorian metagame about being online. The game gives its players tools to leave treasure or traps on any website, and to make guided web missions for other players. PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game, which means you earn resources and unlock rewards just by surfing. Players in PMOG can hide the game, pause the game, or erase their histories at any time; we encourage people to experiment with and take control of their data trails. PMOG is the first MMO in Firefox , a 220k extension to enhance your browsing pleasure. PMOG players who regularly read BoingBoing get a "Bounce Bounce" badge Link (Thanks, Justin!) (Disclosure: I am proud to serve on PMOG's advisory board)...