Stories about: Pixar

Bruce Perens, a longtime leader in the open source movement, is rarely remiss in speaking his mind on open source matters. Here's how Perens breaks down the key opportunities and challenges for open source in the years to come.

What are the next steps needed for open source as a software production methodology to reach the next level?

The Cool Stuff Holiday Gift Guide is back, with tips for the very best gifts to buy for the tech lovers in your life. This year, be the one whose gifts are the biggest hits.

It's been said that there's a Simpsons episode to cover every possible situation. Recently I've been thinking about the episode where Homer joins the Hullabalooza tour as the side entertainment: a fat guy who can take a cannonball to the gut and live to tell about it. Earlier in that episode, Homer makes reference to the US Festival.

In 1982, Disney studios released Tron, one of the first films from a major studio to feature extensive computer graphics. The movie is about a programmer (Jeff Bridges) who gets "digitized" and finds himself inside a computer where he is forced to play the gladiatorial games he wrote. (Bridges' character eventually escapes and sets out to topple the despotic Master Control Program, or MCP.) Even though Tron was something of a milestone for computer-generated imagery, it met with little success at the box office and failed to garner a special effects nomination from the Motion Picture Academy. At the time, the Academy considered the use of computers in films as "cheating."

A perusal of Internet message boards and online forums shows that fan anticipation of seeing characters from popular Japanese superhero-themed cartoons such as Gatchaman and Astro Boy make the 21st century leap to feature-length computer-generated imagery (CGI) films is reaching a fever pitch.

Research in Motion (RIM) will search for a new chairman of its board after CEO Jim Balsillie stepped down from the job Monday, taking blame for his role in a stock-option scam that will cost the company US$250 million in restated earnings.

An initial implementation of 500 blade servers soon grew to 2,000 to meet the processing capacity requirements needed to create the Oscar-winning animated film, Happy Feet.

New allegations have surfaced that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was involved in backdating stock-option grants improperly while chairman of the animated movie studio Pixar.

Google has added a corporate finance specialist with deep ties to the entertainment industry to its board of directors, the company announced Tuesday.

Many self-avowed Microsoft haters have stopped short of switching to Linux when they realized the pain involved with abandoning all of their favorite Windows software.