oscars

Profit was the motive behind Google keeping online a video of an autistic teen being bullied, according to the Italian judge who convicted three company executives over it.

In a court document (PDF) released Monday, Judge Oscar Magi explained his rationale behind the guilty verdict earlier this year for three Google employees whom he said were responsible for the company keeping the video online. Magi said he found them guilty because he felt Google was trying to make a profit by selling ads on the site where the video appeared.

"In simple words, it is not the writing on … Read more

EMERYVILLE, Calif.--Oh, Pixar, Pixar, Pixar. You've done it again.

Let me just say it now: "Toy Story 3" is fantastic. I saw an advanced screening Thursday night, and going back over the notes I took in the dark theater at Pixar's headquarters here, I find this that I wrote about a third of the way into the film: "I already know it's a BIG hit."

At Pixar's request, those of us in the room for the screening are constrained about what we can say. Director Lee Unkrich, who spoke prior to … Read more

Fair warning: reading the title of today's show should be an easy goal to achieve, but this morning's 404 podcast preshow had us all so shaken up we skipped the entire intro altogether. Three grown men squealing about creepy crawlers is a pathetic sight to see, but luckily Mark Licea hops into the studio and gently ushers us back into adulthood. And while we're on the subject of adults, don't fast-forward through our story about a surprisingly coherent drunk e-mail we received from Molly Wood last night. Got a funny drunk text story? Leave us a voicemail at 1-866-404-CNET and tell us about it!

One week ago, Sarah Killen's life painted a picture of the typical Twitter user: a couple of mundane posts a day about morning coffee, Oscar commentary, and her love for peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. All that changed last Friday when she became the first person to get "followed" by former "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien. Conan has more than a half million followers but never followed anyone back; so how did the Lovely Button catch his eye? And how many gummy dinosaurs do we have to eat before we get some love?

We've all eaten our fair share of trashy food, but swallowing a whole USB key might be a little challenging. Florin Necula got into some trouble with the Secret Service, who suspected him of using card readers to steal money from ATM machines. When confronted about the crimes, Florin had no choice but to consume his Kingston USB flash drive that contained incriminating evidence against him. Even more miraculous is that the feds were able to extract the key from his body, intact and still readable! We have our suggestions for what he should have done with the stick, but maybe we'll save that for Thursday.

Plenty of owl-related voice mails as well as a quick discussion on the future of 3D in the home on today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. Thanks for listening!

If I can tell you one thing about trying to TiVo Sunday night's Oscars, it's that being online during the ceremonies was definitely not a safe place to be.

This is the era of time-shifting, and I like to take full advantage of the fact that I can set my DVR to record something like the Oscars and then sit down later on and watch it at my leisure and yet still be surprised by what happens.

But just as the show was beginning, I switched over to TweetDeck to check something out on Twitter and was horrified … Read more

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast deals with a lot of movies, which makes sense after last night's utterly forgettable Academy Awards ceremony, or so Wilson claims, because he forgot to watch.

The awards committee certainly wasn't lacking a sense of irony after selecting Sandra Bullock for the best female performance in "The Blind Side." The actress also won the Razzie for worst female actor in "All About Steve." Audience members were also surprised to see "Avatar" lose the best picture award to "The Hurt Locker," despite the questionable activity of one of its producers prior to the event. It's also interesting to note how the same movies in the best picture category ranked on BitTorrent, with "District 9" earning the most at more than 12 million downloads since its DVD-quality release last September.

Tim Burton's adaption of "Alice in Wonderland" came out last weekend, and Jeff went to check it out with his fiancee, who festively dressed up as Alice for the showing. Don't get your hopes up though; Jeff sadly left his White Rabbit costume at the dry cleaners. I won't spoil Jeff's personal review of the movie, but let's just say that 91 other movie-goers on Rotten Tomatoes agree with him.

No matter what you think of AIW, we can all agree that Zach Snyder's new movie "Legend of the Guardians" will win next year's Oscar for best comedy. Based on the novel "Guardians of Ga'Hoole," the teaser implies that the movie is about talking owls...fighting in the sky...wearing Elven face masks. Check out these screenshots and join us as we purchase advanced screening tickets live on the show.

All these stories plus some a near-expired batch of Calls From the Public and a news piece about your grandmother DJing Parisian nightclubs, all on today's episode of The 404!

Weren't the folks who ordered an Intel Core i7 surprised when they got a Styrofoam fake instead? Well, yes. But we still haven't heard from Newegg how this happened. However the fake was incredibly well done. So props to that. We also discuss Apple's first iPad ad and Ubisoft's incredible DRM failure.

And the BitTorrent award goes to… http://torrentfreak.com/and-bittorrents-oscar-goes-to-district-9-100307/

Apple airs first iPad commercial during Oscars, Steve Jobs at event http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/07/apple-airs-first-ipad-commercial-during-oscars/… Read more

Why would Apple launch its iPad campaign March 15, as was rumored by some, when it could launch during the Oscars? This is Apple, not Snapple.

It seemed so necessary the iPad would receive its official TV push as other glamorous objects of adoration displayed their wares.

What is remarkable about the ad is that there is nothing remarkable about it at all. It is very neat, but very standard communication from Apple.

Yes, there is the music: "There Goes My Love" by Danish band The Blue Van, a tune that will soon be downloaded quite often on … Read more

He wasn't lining up for an interview with Ryan Seacrest about what designer made his suit, but a few eagle-eyed bloggers on location at the 82nd Academy Awards on Sunday evening say that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was in attendance. In a tux, not a black turtleneck.

Blogger and Web video personality Wayne Sutton snapped a far-away shot of someone whom he believed to be Jobs, accompanied with "OMG it's Steve Jobs! I'm the only one yelling at him." Indeed, Sutton's photo shows Jobs' unmistakable profile filing into the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. CNET … Read more

Apple may not take the stage at Sunday's Oscars, but the company will be well represented by many filmmakers, directors, producers, and editors who will pick up awards.

In fact, 9 out of 10 of this year's nominees in the "Documentary Feature" and "Documentary Short" categories used Final Cut Studio to make their films. Final Cut Studio includes Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color, Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro, essentially giving filmmakers all of the tools they need to make a movie.

CNET caught up with a few of the people responsible for … Read more