entertainment

We've got a gallery over at CNET News.com of some of our favorite 'Star Wars' pop culture homages over the past few decades, from Spaceballs to Lost. In case you stepped in late, today's the 30th anniversary of the original A New Hope release--seriously, has it really been that long? Talk about timeless.

Click here to see the rest of the gallery.

P.S.: What's the matter, Colonel Sandurz? Chicken?

Some rockin' San Francisco geeks have taken Guitar Hero, and heroically programmed the system to produce live, concert-ready music. With due humility the quartet calls themselves "The Guitar Zeros." Take a listen, we think they're at least a seven on a scale of one to ten.

As programmers, these guys are definitely a ten.

Forget the "magic box," the Dharma Initiative, and how that rather good-looking dude with the eyepatch managed to come back from the dead. The #1 subject of intrigue on Lost these days, for me at least, is the bizarrely iPhone-like satellite phone that fell from the sky along with the multilingual parachutist. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you might want to consult Lostpedia.) What an awesome gadget! And it's so technologically advanced, even Sayid isn't sure how to fix it.

Looking at a screencap of the phone, it appears that it … Read more

In The Know: Do You Remember Life Before The Segway?

The Onion's Onion News Network has put together a tribute to everybody's favorite disappointment: the Segway. Remember what it was like before those iconic scooters? Yeah, I didn't think so. They've changed our lives in so many profound ways!

Take a trip down memory lane with this thought-provoking, in-depth video feature courtesy of the top-notch journalists at The Onion.

Considering he's already pranked Wikipedia and weaseled his way into online polls aplenty, here at News.com we're actually kind of surprised that Comedy Central talk show host Stephen Colbert took this long to instigate a self-promoting "Google bombing" campaign.

Google bombing, in case you're unfamiliar, is a method of directing mass links that contain a particular line of text to a certain site, which then bolsters that site's ranking on Google when that line of text is used as a search query. The most famous Google bomb was probably "miserable failure," … Read more

It's been over a week since I reported that we got CableCard working on a Velocity Micro CineMagix Grand Theater PC, and I promised that I'd take requests for things to try out. I wish I could deliver. Sadly, 12 hours after we got it working, we lost the signal completely. I haven't reported since then because I wanted to know what the problem was before setting off a wild string of speculation. About all I can confirm is that it still doesn't work.

I hoped yesterday I'd either get it working or have an … Read more

It would be perfectly understandable for Nintendo purists to be appalled by some of the abominations of recent years, but a current auction offers some hope for true loyalists. An old (and rare) Nintendo Entertainment System is up for sale on eBay, a 1980s-vintage in-store kiosk that its owner claims was never available for consumer purchase.

The console comes with 12 cartridge slots and five controller ports, but Technabob notes that the retro monitor is not included in the auction (bummer). And interested aficionados should be prepared for sticker shock: Even without the tube, it was still going for more than $500 … Read more

We kind of really love pirates around these parts, but there are limits to everything. Take this 14-inch TV, for example, manufactured for Disney by Japanese electronics company Runat. It's got a skull and crossbones on top, a pirate-worthy set of buttons, and some additional swashbuckling decor, but I personally find it rather lame. It's possible to integrate pirate imagery into household gadgets in far more effective ways.

Besides, the makers of this TV should really get with the program. If you're going to make a Pirates of the Caribbean TV-DVD player, it had better at least … Read more

Kudos to Laptop magazine for getting the scoop, with the one of the first hands-on reviews we've seen of the Netgear EVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD. There's just one problem: they got one big detail of the product dead wrong. The Netgear product does play songs purchased from the iTunes Store, as confirmed by hands-on tests in the CNET Labs.

We purchased and played two songs from the store, and were surprised to see that the Netgear was able to stream them to the TV/stereo system in the next room just as easily as it could with DRM-free … Read more