{mosimage}The US screenwriters' union has called a strike starting next Monday to demand a fair share in royalty payments from DVDs and new media sales. About 12,000 members of the Writers Guild of America are being asked to cease work and set up picket lines.



"Television will see the most immediate impact of a strike, with late night programs hit first. Without writers on staff to create monologues, shows like CBS's The Late Show With David Letterman and Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will likely go into repeats fairly quickly. Within a month or so, daytime soaps will probably follow suit.



Prime-time schedules would appear relatively unchanged for a couple of months, since a handful of episodes have already been prepared. But if the strike drags on the 2008 schedule will be heavy on reality shows (not covered by the current contracts) and reruns.



Emmy-winning writer, director and producer Ken Levine, whose TV credits include M*A*S*H, Cheers and Frasier, agrees. "It's like if you're a restaurant that's struggling, it's not a good idea to close on the weekends."



Click here or here for the full story.

{mosimage}So, apparently the super, spectacular game blockbuster also known as the DirectX 10 showcase game, Crysis is out off beta testing and ready for public testing in demo form.



Having been rejected from the beta testing for not having a rig up to specs, even though EA didn't take my SLI *kachink* setup into consideration, this game is already bitter for me. And it's just gotten worse ...



I downloaded the double-whopper-sized demo (1.8GB) from Ausgamers using their torrent facility, however, this is where it went wrong. This is now the third game I have tried to download from this service that has turned out to be fine when downloaded but on execution, a file within the installer or self-extracting EXE is corrupt.



The first time, I thought it was my system. The second time, I thought it was bizarre. Now, I know it's not my system and in the future, I'll be downloading from another mirror service until Ausgamers can get their act together.



Anyway, to add insult to injury, I've heard Crysis is tha goods, even on XP (DirectX 9.0c) machines.

With Apple's latest Mac OS X version Leopard being released on 26th October (27th for us Aussies), they have revved up the marketing machine with a guided tour.

Check it out and then wait with baited breathe for Leopard's release. Personally, I'll be waiting until the Family Pack (5 licensed copies for $249 AU -- beat that Microsoft) is available, which usually is about a week after it launches.

The thirteenth episode of the GameGab Podcast is now up. "This episode we review - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Your hosts for this podcast are Sikosis, Oddbod and special guest - Mojo (No, not the hoff :P)."

NB: Please note Odeo are hopeless at updating their embedded player.



Please use the link to head on over to the GameGab site or alternatively, try the new PageFlakes page.

{mosimage}From the folks who brought us CCleaner and Recuva, comes a new tool for your Windows IT arsenal - Defraggler.



This application differs from other defragmentation tools in that you can "defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive."


And best of all, it's free to use at Home and in a Corporate environment.