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You might think that hiring Daft Punk is enough to make a film sound futuristic and "computery." But the makers of Tron Legacy actually faced the same tricky problem that the creators of the original film did: how do you decide what an entirely virtual universe set "inside" silicon computer chips should sound like? Go too natural, and it won't immerse viewers in a unique world; skew too synthetic, and the audience will laugh their way to the exits.

Luckily, Disney had enough sense to trust the film's sound design to the alpha geeks at Skywalker Sound, who spent two years sampling everything from vintage synthesizers to real-world motorcycles to create Tron's signature audio effects. (They also got pretty tight with Daft Punk while they were at it.) The brain trust spoke to DVICE to give an inside look at how they updated the soundscape of Tron for 21st century audiences.

Computer viruses are big news. Over the past decade, malware like the ILOVEYOU virus and Stuxnet worm grabbed headlines worldwide, and PC owners are constantly hammered with reminders about antivirus software. But what about smartphones? They're mini computers, after all, and they communicate over more networks than most PCs. Why hasn't there been a major cellphone virus yet?

I admit it. As many of you've suspected and accused me of over the last few months, I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft. I wouldn't exactly characterize myself as an Apple fanboy, but I'm sure others would (and have). My own view is that any attachment as fierce as "Apple fanboy" implies to anything other than a body part is emotionally unhealthy and a waste of time and energy. I have extolled Apple for its innovations, and have equally excoriated Apple for its idiocies.

Which brings us to Windows Phone 7. Initially, I was at best cynical, and then lukewarm up to WP7, the Kin phones, didn't help (although I wasn't as hard on Kin as other reviewers were). But I've been playing with the HTC Surround Windows Phone 7, and, God help me, I really like it — the OS, not necessarily the phone. I like WP7 in many ways more than iOS.

It's autumn in America, and that can mean only one thing: the World Series! But you know what they say about baseball: "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't trying." And although the game has remained largely unchanged over the years, it hasn't been immune to the technology that has evolved around it… which can sometimes used for nefarious purposes.

It's impossible not to look at the ur-tablet Nook Color (aka NOOKcolor) and think of iPad and other tablets. Aside from its color e-book reading capabilities, Nook Color does a lot of tablet-like stuff like run Android 2.1, surf the Web and play videos and music. With a bright 7-inch color LCD touchscreen, Nook Color looks much like the Samsung Galaxy Tab. And Nook Color is "only" $250, half the price of iPad, so that makes it a good deal, right?

Only if you took math lessons from Abbott & Costello.

Today's big unveiling of the new MacBook Air was overshadowed by an unveiling from 15 minutes previous. I speak, of course, of the new version of Mac OS X, that being 10.7 or "Lion." While some features seem like incremental upgrades, it represents a paradigm shift for computer operating systems — borrowing from the best parts of their children, mobile OSes.

In a couple of hours, Windows Phone 7 will make its big debut. Reviews of the preview build of the OS were generally favorable, but the technology is just the beginning. Cellphones are completely different beasts than they were when Microsoft first entered the mobile market 10 years ago. WP7 is challenged like other major smartphone OS has been. Here's why.

There's something not quite right with the tablet PC business. As it did with digital music players and touchscreen cellphones, Apple has created a viable gadget market where none before existed, fortifying droves of copycats. But has it occurred to anyone that perhaps Apple's iPad didn't so much create a market for tablets as much as it created a market just for Apple iPads?

In a case of David toppling two Goliaths, this week MetroPCS, a nationwide flat-rate prepaid cell carrier that weighs 7.6 million subscribers soaking wet, launched the first LTE market in Las Vegas, beating both AT&T and Verizon to the 4G-network punch. Even though there was no ribbon cutting, the LTE era has begun. What does it all mean?

Conventional wisdom holds that we need to build more highways in order to curb congestion. But what ends up happening is, more highways encourage more driving, creating a Möbius strip of never-ending highway building and even more entangled traffic jams. But there's only so much room to build new highways, which means eventually we'll be living in eternal gridlock.

The same Möbius strip of more capacity=more traffic is happening in cellphone land.

You may have heard of the so-called Singularity — the idea that, thanks to technology, we'll soon be able to upload our minds into computers and become, for all intents and purposes, immortal. It's an exciting notion. Even The New York Times likes the idea. There's just one problem: It's a load of bull.

The Internet has been alive with "reviews" of a developer's sample of a Samsung smartphone running Windows Mobile 7 (aka Windows Phone 7 or WinMob7 or WM7), Microsoft's latest mobile operating system. Most reports have generally been positive, but none of them will mean much in the real world filled with recession-afflicted consumers making delicate dollar-dispersement decisions. The answers to five questions will determine if WM7 will succeed or fail.

Recent reports insist Verizon will finally get the iPhone in January. Coincidentally (or, if I were a conspiracy theorist, maybe not), it's likely Verizon will launch it's long-awaited LTE 4G network in November. Finally, apparently Apple already has a CDMA iPhone. Expressed mathematically, that'd be 1+1+1=4G iPhone in January.

Imagine if you could access your entire music library from any computer, iPhone, iPad or any other cellphone — anywhere you want. That's the promise of cloud music storage, and it's an idea that's about to really take off.

Iron Man 2 opens this weekend, and it will not be shown in 3D. Why not? We talked to Hollywood insiders to get some answers. The first thing we learned: 3D is the current cash cow, responsible for the two biggest hits of 2010 thus far, Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon.

It's expensive to create 3D movies, but filmmakers can recoup their investment by charging more — a lot more — for movie tickets. There's a gold rush going on in 3D right now, with some studios such as DreamWorks Animation jumping in with plans to produce all their animated features in 3D from now on.

Dreamworks Animation studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg told us last month that this current version of 3D amounts to nothing short of a revolution. He said it's as important as the introduction of sound or color. Given all that, why isn't the summer's first megablockbuster, Iron Man 2, in 3D?

Mrs. Claypool, a rich widow lacking old-money pedigree, attempts to buy her way into high society by becoming a patron of the opera. To facilitate her class-seeking endeavor, she hires a consultant called Otis P. Driftwood. The effort turns into a comically destructive disaster in the Marx Brothers' classic, A Night at the Opera.

I was reminded of this silly scenario reading about HP's purchase of Palm (hereby dubbed H-Palm). It's clear (at least to me) how much HP wants to become Apple (ironic since HP had once employed both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak), a one-stop hardware/software product maker. By grabbing Palm, HP hopes to paw its way into mobile-device relevance, both with a tablet PC and back into the cellphone business I'll bet you didn't even know they were still in.

I'm not saying HP is Margaret Dumont and Palm is Groucho, but buying your way in to any highly competitive situation rarely ends well. Here's what we can expect.

Many iPad reviews are in, but forget whether the thing works well or not; some critics are asking more pressing questions. Questions like, "Will the iPad destroy society as we know it?"

Well, that might be a little extreme. But Cory Doctorow's anti-iPad screed on BoingBoing accuses Apple of having created a device that has contempt for its owner, one that might leave your children intellectually crippled: "Buying an iPad for your kids [is]... a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals."

Meanwhile, Choire Sicha of The Awl writes, "My real objection to [the iPad] is that Apple has created a computing device that... has as a design concept the need to actively resist the urges of people to make things" (emphasis his). Doctorow's column led the New York Times to ask: will the iPad cause the end of innovation? Will it?

Um, no. Definitely not. Here's why.

Imagine that you've just come home with a brand new game and you can't wait to play it. So you install it on your PC, fire it up, and the next thing you know you're hit with a screen that tells you that you need to register for an online Ubisoft account first before you do anything else, and have a constant connection to the Internet for the duration of your time playing.

This is Ubisoft's new plan to fight the piracy of video games. Its "always-on" connection will make sure that you're playing a legit copy as the moment you can't connect to Ubisoft's servers, you're booted out of the game.

It's not just putting the hurt on piracy, though. Ubisoft is catching its customers in the crossfire. Continue reading to find out how.