Dekortage writes: "The New York Times reports today about Michael Hollick, the actor who provided the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid. If this was television, film, or radio, Hollick and the other GTA actors could have made millions by now. Hollick says, "I don't blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it's the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies." Is it time for video game actors to be treated as well as those in other mediums?"
tomandlu writes: "The BBC is reporting that Carnegie Mellon University has found a novel use for CAPTCHAs — deciphering old texts. A sort of distributed computing project...
Basically, the CAPTCHA is made up of two words — one of which is known to Carnegie, and one of which isn't. If the user correctly deciphers the known CAPTCHA, then the unknown CAPTCHA is assumed to be correct. Well, almost. Two different users must give the same answer to the same unknown CAPTCHA before it is taken off the list.
Clever, IMHO, and might at least give us some consolation as we squint at those damn characters.
Of course, all this could be screwed if too many bots starting using the same algorithm to incorrectly guess the answer..."