Futurama Returns 386
riflemann writes "Another 26 episodes of Futurama will shortly go into production! This news comes from none other than Billy West (voice of Fry) himself, in a short post to his own message board. No further details are available, except that it's likely to be on TV, not straight to DVD." The best news is that means fresh quotes for slashteam to hide in the source code.
HTTP headers (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an example of one (hidden in the HTTP headers that /. returns):
X-Bender: Well I don't have anything else planned for today, let's get drunk!
Re:I don't own a television (Score:3, Informative)
The main way people can help to do something about the quality of TV is by actually watching/buying DVDs of the decent shows, but not watching the crap. The ratings are what is important to Fox, not the 'quality'.
Re:HTTP headers (Score:4, Informative)
Slash has X-Fry and X-Bender headers it sends on every page (randomised). Press Ctrl+I to see that in Firefox, Konqueror, or pretty much any web browser.
Slashcode.com also uses those quotes in its random quote of the moment thinger at the bottom of the page.
Old news: this dates to July 2005 (see within) (Score:0, Informative)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0471711/ [imdb.com]
has more.
(The dingo ate ma bay-bee!)
Re:HTTP headers (Score:5, Informative)
You're watching Futurama... (Score:5, Informative)
This is great news for all us nerdlingers. For those of you who don't know already, here's a look at the backgrounds of some of the writers on the show:
J. Stewart Burns: Graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 1992. His senior thesis was on "The Structure of Group Algebras." He received his master's degree in mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1993.
David X. Cohen: Graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University in 1988. He received his master's degree in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1992. He published the following article with Manuel Blum: On the Problem of Sorting Burnt Pancakes. Discrete Appl. Math. 61 (1995), no. 2, 105--120.
Ken Keeler: Graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1983. In 1990, he received his Ph.D. in applied math from Harvard University. The title of his doctoral thesis was Map Representations and Optimal Encoding for Image Segmentation. He also published the following article with Jeff Westbrook: Short Encodings of Planar Graphs and Maps. Discrete Appl. Math. 58 (1995), no. 3, 239--252.
Bill Odenkirk: Has a PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.
Jeff Westbrook: Majored in physics and the history of science at Harvard University and he received his Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University in 1989. The title of his doctoral thesis was Algorithms and Data Structures for Dynamic Graph Algorithms. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Yale University and also worked at AT&T Labs before writing for Futurama. He published the following article with Ken Keeler: Short Encodings of Planar Graphs and Maps. Discrete Appl. Math. 58 (1995), no. 3, 239--252.
And with that the show also has some great voice actors (Billy West, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche, Dave Herman...), a great 3D department (praised for its ability to blend 3D scenes almost seamlessly into 2D backgrounds), and the show even uses a full orchestra to record its music (composed by Christopher Tyng). And with the huge scope of ideas possible in the SF universe the show is set in, I imagine it'll take a long time yet for this show to burn out.
Re:Two Down, One to Go... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds30578.html [digitalspy.co.uk]
Re:Old news: this dates to July 2005 (see within) (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Two Down, One to Go... (Score:4, Informative)
They aquired Stargate when it was looking like it was going to wrap up in its 5th season (or was it 6th?), and its now going into its 10th? (and done rather decently including letter the characters grow and evolve).
They spun off Stargate Atlantis, and its now into its 2nd Season and looking forward to a 3rd.
Battlestar Gallactica is looking forward to a 3rd season as well, and getting rave reviews from critics, and some interesting re-imagining that I think most fans are appreciating, except for a few die-hards (Heck, my wife who isn't a big SciFi junky like I am has really gotten into the character driven stories of both SG:Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica! amazes the heck out of me).
Andromeda had already jumped the shark before Sci-Fi got hold of it (some would argue the same for Sliders), so I find it hard to blame them for the shows last season. Rather, I find it encouraging that they at least gave it a home for a last season, and an opportunity to finish telling their story (to admitedly medocre success).
I am also looking forward to their new show "Eureka" that looks very intreaging, and I hope shines as well as "The Invisible Man" and "The Chronicle" did. Granted they didn't last as long as they should have (both being fun and entertaining shows in my opinion), but they were both allowed something rare in the Network world, the chance for a satisfying conclusion and the wrapping of most major plot threads.
They've made mistakes (Farscape not getting a 5th Season for instance, which I think most fans are still sore about, even after the mini-series), but they have certainly made more positive moves as far as dramatic content goes
I won't get into their original half-hour shows which are usually more schlocky (and not so much my taste) considering "Ghost Hunters", "Scare Tactics", and "Tripping the Rift" (the last of which is at least somewhat amusing, while completely offensive
I'm sure, since this is Slashdot, someone will correct my facts if they think they are blatantly out of line with reality
Re:You're watching Futurama... (Score:2, Informative)
Here is the abstract:
The "pancake problem" is a well-known open combinatorial problem that recently has been shown to have applications to parallel processing. Given a stack of n pancakes in arbitrary order, all of different sizes, the goal is to sort them into the size-ordered configuration having the largest pancake on the bottom and the smallest on top. The allowed sorting operation is a "spatula flip", in which a spatula is inserted beneath any pancake, and all pancakes above the spatula are lifted and replaced in reverse order. The problem is to bound f(n), the minimum number of flips required in the worst case to sort a stack of n pancakes. Equivalently, we seek bounds on the number of prefix reversals necessary to sort a list of n elements. Bounds of 17n/16 and (5n + 5)/3 were shown by Gates and Papadimitriou in 1979. In this paper, we consider a traditional variation of the problem in which the pancakes are two sided (one side is "burnt"), and must be sorted to the size-ordered configuration in which every pancake has its burnt side down. Let g(n) be the number of flips required to sort n "burnt pancakes". We find that 3n/2 less-than-or-equals, slant g(n) less-than-or-equals, slant 2n 2, where the upper bound holds for n gt-or-equal, slanted 10. We consider the conjecture that the most difficult case for sorting n burnt pancakes is In, the configuration having the pancakes in proper size order, but in which each individual pancake is upside down. We present an algorithm for sorting In in 23n/14 + c flips, where c is a small constant, thereby establishing a bound of g(n) less-than-or-equals, slant 23n/14 + c under the conjecture. Furthermore, the longstanding upper bound of f(n) is also improved to 23n/14 + c under the conjecture.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Loved the show, not happy about this. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HTTP headers (Score:5, Informative)
Billy Was In Error (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Futurama returns (Score:5, Informative)
Not so good after all
In another post [billywest.com] on the blog, Billy West says:
Guys,I'm sorry I gave inaccurate info on the cartoon.I was told on one end that the TV show was a go but DXC enlightened me (with a hammer) that this was not the case.I think there is a Futurama project as in DVD's but I appearently had bad info.But I do live to give good Futurama news to people.So I must've died or something.
All eyes on the skies,
Billy
Re:I don't own a television (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. Geraldo's reporting was so accurate [americandaily.com] that it got him booted out of his unit. Broadcasting troop positions aside, how is Fox any more accurate than the other outlets?