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In the era of the Broadband Society, cloud journalism, and streaming, the film industry is trying to modify traditional distribution channels. The adaptation of literary classics was one of the most widespread practices to obtain well-known, quality material for new productions. The objective of this research is to understand empirically what differences are involved in industry’s major production and distribution companies’ choice between adapting preexisting material or creating an entirely new film, as well as the benefits of adaptations. The methodology is comparative and quantitative, consisting of collecting data on films from the five major distributors (Universal, Warner Bros, Disney, Sony, and Paramount) from 2010 to 2019 and analyzing variables to detect market trends related to adaptations during that decade. We observed a higher percentage of adaptations as well as correlations between adaptations and film genre, distributor and genre, adaptations and awards, awards and genre, and genre and the film’s evaluation, as well as between distributor and average budget, adaptations and budget, adaptation and opening weekend box office takings, genre and profit, adaptations and worldwide box office revenues, ratings and worldwide box office takings, and awards and worldwide box office takings; however, this was not observed between adaptation and profit and the breakeven point. It is concluded that, despite the fact that the trend of using this practice has not increased in recent years, it provides a great advantage compared with debuting new intellectual property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the use of mirrorless systems in medical photography, based on the author's experience using Sony mirrorless systems. It is not aimed at being an in depth comparative technical review but aims to discuss the technology as a viable alternative to the digital single lens reflex (DSLR) when documenting the most common subjects a medical photographer will face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that cyber operations have limited coercive value. It theorizes that cyber operations contribute to coercion by imposing costs and destabilizing an opponent’s leadership. As costs mount and destabilization spreads, the expected utility of capitulation surpasses that of continued defiance, leading the opponent’s leaders to comply with the coercer’s demands. The article applies this ‘cost-destabilization’ model to the 2014 North Korean cyber operation against Sony. Through cost imposition and leadership destabilization, the North Korean operation, despite its lack of physical destructiveness, caused Sony to make a series of costly decisions to avoid future harm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Perspectives on Russian television focus mainly on state controlled networks. Russia, however, also has several important commercial televisions stations to whom little attention has been given. The most important of these stations is the entertainment network STS. The station was founded in 1996 when a subscription station AMTV merged with Saint Petersburg based broadcaster Channel Six and several regional stations to form Russia's fifth national broadcaster. After airing primarily Hollywood and Latin American series in the 1990s, the station began to produce Russian language series in 2003. Today the station is one of the most important entertainment brands in the former Soviet Union. This paper traces the history of STS and its importance in bringing new genres and production techniques to Russia. It also maps the network's explosive growth in the 2000s and its relationship with major Hollywood studios, most notably Sony. The influence of the station's two most important executives Alexander Rodanyansky and Vyacheslav Murugov is also examined. The paper then theorizes on what STS' current strategy may yield and what its current programs suggest about the changing nature of the Russian television market in an increasingly politicized environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Hannah Hamad's concept of postfeminist masculinity, this article analyzes how the animated filmsChicken Little(Disney, 2005) andCloudy with a Chance of Meatballs(Sony, 2009) construct postfeminist fatherhood in opposition to two traditional stereotypes: the emotionally distant authoritarian and the bumbling pal. In contrast to films from the 1980s and 1990s, in which sons struggle to live up to their fathers’ expectations, these films demand a change in paternal attitudes, requiring fathers to adapt to their sons’ needs instead. The article argues that the films offer a didactic message to fathers as well as sons, which suggests that in postfeminist fatherhood older parenting models are no longer viable, and a new culture of fatherhood is needed, which may offer a way of challenging hegemonic masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No matter what the national context, the question of how to understand the impact of government programmes, particularly in terms of value for money, has emerged as a complex problem to be solved by social scientific management. This article engages with these trends in two ways. It focuses on the UK to understand how these tools and technologies are used for valuing objects and practices. By showing the rationality for using these techniques for understanding culture, it creates a link between studies of cultural policy and broader questions facing the arts and humanities. The article’s second contribution is to our understanding of the role and function of arts and humanities by showing, in the British example, how a true understanding of the value of culture is impossible without the disciplines and fields that are currently peripheral to both government social science and, more broadly, higher education in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Topics include hackers attacking the Internet naming authority, a new Bluetooth version offering online connectivity and showing promise for the Internet of Things, companies looking for ways to enable mobile apps to communicate with one another, the US planning the world's most powerful supercomputer, a set of prosthetic arms that users can control with their thoughts, hackers hitting a German steel factory and a South Korean nuclear power plant, NASA using apes as the model for a disaster-response robot, Sony inventing a system that converts regular glasses into smart spectacles, researchers finding a critical flaw in an important cloud technology, a new approach letting cellular towers function like inexpensive radar, and a program teaching California prisoners to program. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There's nothing about the recent Sony hack that withstands close scrutiny. The story began as bunk, took a spin around blather and hooey, and then seems to have come to rest on drivel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Topics include new technology that promises to revolutionize Web development, Hewlett-Packard's plan to reinvent the computer, a Microsoft antimalware operation that took innocent companies offline, a US Supreme Court decision that has sparked fear for cloud services' future, a malware campaign that threatened big companies in several countries, a new technology that "increases" wireless bandwidth, a report that indicates a slowdown in supercomputer performance growth, virtual reality coming to gaming, tech companies hardening their systems to fend off government spying, and movie theaters banning Google Glass. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]