I today discovered The Fly is being re-remade. Cronenberg is to return to the property that he worked on in 1986, which was based on the 1958 original. My question is this: what is the point? 1986’s The Fly is still a great film, and even the special effects remain of a very high quality, due to the reliance on puppetry rather than then-embryonic computer graphics.

I therefore don’t understand what a remake would bring to the party. There’s a pretty huge gap between 1958 and 1986 in terms of film-making, but not nearly the same gap between 1986 and today. Also, the story isn’t really strong enough to sustain sequels, and so unless it’s radically altered, The Fly will remain self-contained. And although CGI has moved on in leaps and bounds, it mostly still lacks a feeling of reality—CGI creatures typically lack gravity, a tactile quality, and feel slightly out-of-place.

But this is apparently the season to take advantage of 1980s nostalgia and drop the risk factor significantly. It’s safer to remake Robocop and Flight of the Navigator, The Karate Kid and Short Circuit. But in the cases where the original films remain fine, it all seems terribly pointless and wasteful.

You might be aware that Lily Allen is now using her opinions on IP infringement to get herself press and further her career single-handedly saving the music industry by telling everyone that file-sharing is bad and evil (BBC News: Lily wades into file-sharing row).

However, here are some tips for you in the future, Lily, when you start arguing the toss about rights infringement and what other artists have to say about the subject:

1. Don’t misrepresent the opinions of your peers. When you referred to The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and claimed “These guys from huge bands said file-sharing music is fine,” you might want to ensure that’s actually what they said. If, for example, they said pretty much the complete opposite, you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
2. Don’t rip off other people’s content. When you’re on a crusade about IP infringment, it’s probably not a good idea to infringe someone else’s IP, by, for example, copying and pasting their blog posts. Do this and you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
3. Don’t infringe other people’s rights. When you’re informing people about the evils of rights infringement, it’s probably not a great idea to rip off other people’s IP by scanning in newspaper articles and posting them on your blog. Do so and you might end up looking a wee bit silly—doubly so when your Photobucket bandwidth is exceeded and said articles can’t actually be read. (Although I guess this at least deals with the IP issue, since the stuff you ripped can’t be seen when your account’s down. MAJOR WIN FOR COPYRIGHT!)

For the record, as someone who’s been smacked hard financially by file-sharing (albeit with books rather than music), I do have some sympathy regarding dealing with file-sharing in some manner. However, government proposals to boot people off the net won’t do it, nor will celebs on their high-horses.

Content providers need to figure out some way of monetising file-sharing, and, most importantly, to simply encourage more people to buy content instead of copying it. People should be rewarded for doing so, rather than—in many cases—being seen as potential criminals (such as with rights ads on DVDs that can’t be skipped) or gouged for every penny they have (as with £1.89 single-TV-episode downloads on iTunes).

Hat tip for some of this post: the ever-fragrant Gary Marshall on TechRadar.

A few years back, I bought a new car. I knew roughly what I wanted, but there were a few different models available, and so I test drove a bunch of them before making a decision. The garage in question knew full well that I’d be making test drives despite possibly not buying from them. And they didn’t charge me a penny.

If you’re thinking “well, of course they didn’t, idiot,” you might be in for a shock if the completely staggering stupidity in the music industry goes up another notch. And that’s because, according to CNET, the music industry now wants money for previews played in the likes of the iTunes Store.

Yes, that’s right—those 30-second previews that you use to see whether you want to buy a track are, according to David Renzer, CEO Universal Music Publishing Group, ripping off artists and labels, due to them not receiving ‘performance’ income.

So, essentially, people in the record industry want you to pay to see whether something is worth buying from them. They are mistaking ‘advertisements’ for ‘performances’, or, to put it another way, ‘abject stupidity’ for ‘common sense’. I’m sure if anything’s going to lead to a resurgence in the music industry, paying for previews is it. No, wait—the other one.

When I’m not writing, I’m designing websites. For me, usability is key, coming above most other considerations, and is a core element of good design. Clearly, whoever’s making the decisions regarding the pocket Tube map needs to understand such things.

An example of the new map is on Flickr, and two particular gems stand out. First, the map removes the Thames, thereby omitting the single biggest navigation aid the city has to offer; secondly, it doesn’t show the zone structure, so you’ve no way of knowing from the map whether another stop will stray outside of the zone you bought a ticket for. To have to look at another map for this information shows what a disaster this pocket map is.

Various other changes have happened, including the removal of East London line buses, multiples of stations, and icons that indicated stations that served airports. Clearly, someone was on a major minimalism kick, in order to ‘declutter’ the map. However, minimalism—while often beneficial—doesn’t equate to usability. The rule is to keep taking things away until the point where removing anything further would be detrimental; sadly, it looks like whoever designed this Tube map didn’t know when to stop.

Cnet reports that yesterday’s iPhone OS 3.1 update reverses ‘jailbroken’ devices. Services and apps installed by Cydia (and Cydia itself) will vanish if you update your device. Already, people are bitching about Apple being ‘invasive’, ‘closed’ and a little bit like an evil dictator that goes MWAHAHAHAHA a bit too much. So here are three helpful hints to anyone with a jailbroken device:

1. Last I heard, Jobs wasn’t traveling the world, forcing you to upgrade. Just wait until the hacking software is updated or update now, lose your hacks and quit your moaning.
2. Every single Apple update prior to now has reversed/wrecked unofficial hacks—why did you think this one would be any different? Apple’s remarkably consistent in this area.
3. Apple owes you nothing. Seriously. Why people think Apple should support a hack is beyond me.

That third point is especially obvious when you look at Apple’s desktop OS. Every time a major bump to Mac OS X happens (and, sometimes, a minor bump) a bunch of add-on hacks keel over and die. With Snow Leopard, every Safari add-on bit the big one. But these were essentially hacks to the system potentially affecting security, and certainly doing things over and above what typical apps do. Supporting such things simply wouldn’t be feasible for Apple, and so it is also with iPhone and iPod touch hacking.