Barry Willis

John Frankenheimer, director of <I>The Manchurian Candidate</I> and <I>Birdman of Alcatraz</I>, died Saturday, July 6, of a stroke following spinal surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 72.

A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge has denied a request for a temporary restraining order against 72 computer enthusiasts brought by the DVD Copy Control Association. The computer folk were accused of distributing a string of code, called DeCSS, that enables them to play DVD movies on Linux-based machines and thereby violate intellectual property laws. Linux is user-developed software widely perceived as a possible competitor to Microsoft's Windows.

The American broadcasting industry needs an attitude adjustment, according to <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> chairman William Kennard. At last week's <A HREF="http://www.nab.org/">National Association of Broadcasters</A> convention in Las Vegas, Kennard took the industry to task for the slow rollout of digital television, mandated by his agency for more than two years now. The consumer electronics industry has embraced the promise of digital television from the beginning.

The slow-as-molasses rollout of digital television has riled <A HREF="http://www.fcc.gov/">Federal Communications Commission</A> chairman William Kennard. If he has his way, broadcasters will eventually pay for the surplus radio-frequency spectrum they now control, and electronics manufacturers will be required to make all new television sets capable of receiving digital signals. The two suggestions were among several that Kennard made in a forceful speech at New York's Museum of Television and Radio on Tuesday, October 10.