Competition

The hottest thing in movie rentals is as old as the Coke machine -- and just as red. Redbox movie kiosks are popping up by the thousands in supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants and convenience stores around the country. The kiosks stock DVDs that rent for $1 a day, a remainder-bin price that is less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Before the recession, Andrew Puzder, who heads the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's burger chains, liked to joke about how sharp-priced competitors were "giving food away." As the recession deepened and the number of 79-cent taco and 99-cent hamburger offers exploded, Puzder realized it was "no longer a joke; they are giving food away." Literally. On Monday, KFC gave away a free piece of its new grilled chicken just for the asking.

In the complex tango between movies and video games, Hollywood may be losing its lead. Motion picture studios have had a penchant for adapting games into movies all the way back to 1993's "Super Mario Bros.," which starred Bob Hoskins as the mustachioed hero Mario and Dennis Hopper as the villainous King Koopa, with varying degrees of success. But today at the giant Comic-Con International fan convention in San Diego, Microsoft Corp.

Despite a new prime-time perch and a larger audience, NBC comedian Jay Leno is fishing for guests from a substantially smaller pool of talent. Rival networks ABC and CBS are discouraging their stars from appearing on the prime-time talk show. They are determined not to let Leno's 10 p.m. program undercut viewership of their costly dramas when they are trying to build audiences at the start of the TV season. The boycott highlights an unintended consequence of NBC's decision to move the veteran late-night comedian into prime time: making it harder to book some TV stars whose appearances could boost Leno's ratings.

It seems so very British that an ugly row has broken out between those who say they love dogs and those who say they love dogs more. But just such a royal catfight has ensnared the country's most prestigious dog show, Crufts, which opens today here in Birmingham, a four-day extravaganza of four-legged bliss that has drawn millions of viewers to the British Broadcasting Corp. since 1966. But not this year.

For a generation of students who share every detail of their personal lives in text messages, MySpace pages and other online postings, the college admissions chase is offering a lesson that some things are best kept private. Last December, when Brown University's early admission decisions were released online, students in one classroom at North Hollywood High's highly gifted magnet program could be heard applauding. In another, there was silence, followed by the sound of someone crying.

This battle of disc jockeys is playing out in court. The publishers of Scratch: the Ultimate DJ, an upcoming video game, have sued Activision Blizzard Inc. They accuse the Santa Monica game company of embarking on a "sinister strategy of intentional interference and unfair competition." In the suit, filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Genius Products Inc. and Numark Industries lay out a tale of alleged corporate intrigue and backstabbing.

Combine a land shark with a paddle-wheel boat, spice it with servo motors and radio transceivers, mix with water and what have you got? At Caltech, you have the year's biggest sporting event. At Tuesday's competition, engineering students at the Pasadena campus operated hand-built robots and maneuvered them through an obstacle course that included concrete walkways, a shallow pond and a finish line atop an arching bridge.

Three gas stations vie for customers along Interstate 5 in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, but Cheryl Ahern-Lehmann usually bypasses the Chevron and Arco in favor of a station she once spurned as too pricey. That station in north San Diego County, a Texaco for years, won her business after it became a Valero in 2003. "It just appeared here . . . I didn't know what it was," Ahern-Lehmann said of the gasoline brand.

Had pundits bet on the HD DVD camp folding its hand in Las Vegas, they would have lost their shirts. None of the corporate giants that back the next-generation DVD format have jumped ship at the Consumer Electronics Show here. But the huge momentum shift toward the Blu-ray format has at least one studio strongly considering a switch. Warner Bros.'