Latest news with #It'sAWonderfulLife
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Rochester creator will launch memories into space with new technology
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — We all have our favorite memories stored in photo albums or a flash drive to make sure we don't lose them. Well, one Rochester inventor focused on creating an eternal method of saving what's important, is taking classic memories to new heights. Bruce Ha came to the United States from Vietnam with his family at just 10 years old — nearly 50 years ago. 'When we came over, we had nothing except for photo albums that our family took. And with the photo albums, they're disintegrating. They're falling apart,' Ha said. When he came to Rochester in the 90s, it was a job at Kodak that continued Ha's passion for preserving history in an eternal format. His first way of doing that was by helping Kodak launch its CD-ROM technology. 'To create a permanent record, we have to put it into something that's… we have to consider a couple things,' Ha said. 'We have to consider, first that it's going to last, it's going to endure. And second, it's got to be recoverable.' That's exactly what Ha set out to do when he left Kodak and took on a new title of CEO of Stamper Technology. There, he created Nanofiche technology. 'We have to be able to do something that is visual, that is human readable. Otherwise, imagine 10,000 years from now, we uncover a bunch of digital things, like an SD card, a USB card. How do you go about reading that?,' Ha said. But on something made of gold or nickel, Ha said it's forever. But how does Ha store files on something so small? 'Nanofiche is the invention I created that puts information onto an analog format, and it's engraved onto nickel, and as nickel, it will endure, because the information is just missing,' Ha said. And it's something you have to see to believe and understand. Ha took News 8 into his lab and showed the process of creating Galactic Library Preserve Humanity, or simply put, GLPH. Pouring in the bits of nickel, using a laser to etch the images onto tiny and thin material, and viewing the files when the process is complete. Remember those disintegrating family photos? 'This is our family today,' Ha said as he showed the family photos etched on a GLPH. 'And oh, here's the image of when we first landed in Thailand. And all we had were exactly that.' Those memories, along with a huge library now on a number of sturdy nickel and gold will stand the test of time when they are launched into space later this year. Through a contract with Astrobotic technology, classics including Isaac Asimov's foundation trilogy, and 'It's A Wonderful Life' will be sent up. 'We can easily make these clones, and we can make these copies that will reside on Earth, and if anything happens, the last resort is the moon,' Ha said. 'In Vietnam, I would not have the ability to make this technology. I'm very grateful. And on this 50th anniversary, I'm putting together a library to preserve humanity and pay back to the world.' Ha said the GLPH have been tested in Hawaii where the High Seas were used to test the harsh environment on Mars. And after that test, the GLPH survived. Ha has also promised News 8 that this story will be etch onto a GLPH and sent up into space later this year. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BBC News
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Mariah Carey wins copyright case over All I Want For Christmas Is You
Mariah Carey has been cleared of copyright infringement in a case over her 1994 Christmas staple, All I Want for Christmas is a ruling issued on Wednesday, a US judge rejected the allegations of songwriter Adam Stone, who released a song with the same name in 1989. He accused Carey of exploiting his "popularity" and "style".Mr Stone, who performs under the name Vince Vance, was claiming at least $20m (£16m) in in her ruling, Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani cited expert testimony saying the two songs simply shared "Christmas song clichés" that were common to several earlier hits. Mr Stone and his lawyers had not "met their burden of showing that [the songs by] Carey and Vance are substantially similar", she Almandi also ruled that Mr Stone and his lawyers should face sanctions for filing "frivolous" arguments, that included "vague... and incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions, and other irrelevant evidence".She ordered Mr Stone and his lawyers to repay the legal bills Carey incurred in defending the case. The case was originally filed in 2022, with Mr Stone claiming Carey's hit was copied from a song he'd recorded under the name Vince Vance and the court papers, he claimed his track had received "extensive airplay" during the 1993 holiday season - a year before Carey's song was recorded and her 2020 memoir, Carey said she had composed "most of the song on a cheap little Casio keyboard", while playing the movie It's A Wonderful Life for inspiration, before completing it in the studio with her co-writer Walter Mr Stone rejected that account."[Carey] palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own," he said in court papers. "Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn't believe the story she has spun."The initial complaint was dropped in December 2022, but refiled a month Stone had hoped to share in the song's runaway success. All I Want For Christmas Is You earns about $8.5 million (£6.6 million) every year; and has spent 140 weeks in the UK's top 100. 'No similarities' Carey's lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case last August, arguing that Mr Stone had failed to establish copyright infringement."The claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: A title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like 'Santa Claus' and 'mistletoe'," they Wednesday's ruling, Judge Almadani endorsed two reports from musicologists hired by Carey's one, New York University professor Lawrence Ferrara testified there were "no significant melodic similarities" between the two added he'd discovered "at least 19 songs" predating Mr Stone's track that had similar lyrical ideas - several of which were also called All I Want For Christmas Is You.A similar report filed by the defence was ruled inadmissible - especially after its author admitted in a deposition that the melodies of the two songs were incomparable because "the rhythms are different".On that basis, Judge Almadani ruled in favour of the motion to Mariah Carey nor Mr Stone were immediately available for comment on the ruling.
The National
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
How Jack Quaid became 'this generation's Tom Hanks'
There are two types of transcendent leading performers: Those you love to observe and those you can't help but feel for. And in the contemporary landscape, the latter has become the hardest to find. 'There's a real hole in the marketplace of actors,' says Robert Olsen, co-director of Novocaine. 'If you're looking at the next generation, Glen Powell fills the Tom Cruise slot, Timothee Chalamet is the next Leonardo DiCaprio, but where's the Tom Hanks? Where's the everyman?' And without an everyman, a lot of movies just won't work. Tom Hanks is needed for a role like Castaway, just as Jimmy Stewart was for a role like It's A Wonderful Life. For Novocaine, an action comedy about a man impervious to pain, Olsen and his co-director Dan Berk needed to find their own. 'At the time, we were watching the series The Boys, and we just started writing the character in Jack Quaid's voice, never even thinking we were going to be able to actually get him for the movie,' says Beck. 'We really do think he's this generation's Tom Hanks. He's funny, but you wouldn't call him a comedian. He's handsome, but not intimidatingly so like Brad Pitt. And everyone – man, woman, young and old – is charmed by him,' says Olsen. To say that Jack Quaid was made in a lab to be the perfect everyman would only be a slight exaggeration. After all, he's the son of actors Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid. Quaid became aware of his everyman qualities on the set of The Boys, playing a normal guy caught up in a world of superheroes and assassins. The show, which began as satirical counter-programming to the glut of Marvel and DC fare, has become a cultural juggernaut, with season four garnering 55 million viewers in its debut month last July – setting Quaid on a path to becoming a household name. 'I don't think you can train to be an everyman. I can't go to the tape and learn how to do it. It's just a quality you have and I'm lucky to have it. Some people find out they're going to play jerks for the rest of their life – and I also do that, come to think of it – but I'm glad I can do this as well,' he says. Quaid has been in the industry for more than a decade, getting his start on the first Hunger Games movie in 2012, but now that his leading man moment is finally here, he's not exactly sure how to play it. 'It's very hard for me to take a compliment,' Quaid admits. But as hard as it is for him to admit to himself how well everything's going, it's undeniable at this point. Novocaine, which releases on March 27 in the UAE, just topped box offices in the US with strong reviews, only weeks after his sci-fi thriller Companion found success critically and commercially. And stars are joining his projects just because he's on board. 'To be honest, the thing that drew me to this was working with Jack. I love everything he does. I've been waiting to work with him for literally years – his name is why I said yes,' says Novocaine co-star Amber Midthunder. Quaid thought he'd end up doing comedy – he got his start in sketch and improv – but being an action star is new to him. And as much as he excelled in it – he's not sure if that is his true path. 'I had to get in the best shape of my life for this movie,' he says. 'That's all gone now. It's out the window. I went back to candy immediately after it wrapped. They said 'cut' and I said 'hand me some Sour Patch Kids'.' And while he's now more adept at stunts after pushing himself further than before, he's having trouble unlearning the most challenging aspect of his Novocaine role – playing a man who can't feel pain. 'It's completely ruined me for every other fight scene I'm doing,' says Quaid. I'm shooting The Boys now, and I had one scene the other day where I got punched in the face, and I had to remind myself to show pain. It's too in me, now.' Quaid hasn't mapped out the kind of career he wants for himself – 'the world is too chaotic for that,' he says – but he does know that he's not going to take any shortcuts, trying to land roles with the biggest filmmakers or franchises in Hollywood. 'I love being on the ground floor with filmmakers like Dan and Bobby, or Drew Hancock who did Companion. I want to work with people who are coming up – to see them take off and work with them as they're doing it. I want to find incredible filmmakers at that stage and just keep those relationships going,' he says. There is one pet project he's dying to do, however, that doesn't fit this mould. He played the real-life scientist Richard Feynman in the Academy Award-winning Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer (2023), and he still hasn't gotten the role out of his head. 'I'm trying to make it happen. This world is insane and Hollywood is weird, but I'm trying to figure it out. I just fell in love with the guy while researching him for Oppenheimer. It'll be the Oppenheimer cinematic universe – also known as the real world.' Novocaine will be released in cinemas across the Middle East on March 27
