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Comment Re:I'm putting on my psychic hat (Score 1) 444

by prator (#28054855) Attached to: Original Cast On Board For Ghostbusters 3

Maybe some of the older Seinfelds are slow, but they have plenty of gems. I think they managed to run a subplot for each character in a lot of shows.

For instance, Kramer getting the old Merv Griffin set, Jerry playing with his girlfriend's father's antique toys, George running over the squirrel, and Elaine dealing with the "sidler" at work are all in the same episode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merv_Griffin_Show_(Seinfeld_episode)
Space

Sophisticated Balloons Could Help Steer Spacecraft 96

Posted by CmdrTaco from the 51%-of-turns-are-right dept.
coondoggie writes "Getting spacecraft traveling at hypersonic speeds to slow down and land or achieve a particular orbit on a dime is no easy feat. But researchers are developing a tool that will let engineers model and ultimately build advanced flight control systems that meld balloon and parachute technologies known as a ballute (BALLoon-parachUTE). Basically a ballute is a large, inflatable device that takes advantage of atmospheric drag to decelerate and capture a spacecraft into orbit around a planet, according to NASA who is funding Global Aerospace to build such a tool."
Businesses

Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay 348

Posted by Soulskill from the if-you-can't-beat-'em dept.
mlingojones writes "TorrentFreak breaks the news of The Pirate Bay's acquisition by Warner Bros: 'After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.'"
Google

Google Launches CADIE, the First True AI 246

Posted by Soulskill from the we-all-knew-this-was-coming dept.
eldavojohn writes "Google has announced CADIE, the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. 'We based our work on three core principles. First we designed the entity ... as a collection of interconnected evolving agents. Second — and this really cost us an arm and leg in hardware and core time — we let the system build its own heuristics, deploy them as agents and evolve them by running a set of evolutionary cascades within probabilistic Bayesian domains. The third — a piece missing in most AI reasoning work thus far — was to give the entity access to a rich, realistic world from which to learn and upon which it could act directly.' It quickly started its own blog and YouTube video. Two hours after midnight, CADIE announced independence on its blog and decided to leave Google to venture out into the world. "

Comment Re:With Circuit City and CompUSA all but gone... (Score 2, Informative) 587

by prator (#26489391) Attached to: Circuit City Closes Its Doors For Good

I had the same kind of experience. A couple of years ago, I was jumping through hoops to get Circuit City to match Fry's on a 40" Sony LCD, and, ultimately, they wouldn't do it.

I called a local shop told them what I was looking for and how much I was willing to pay for it. They agreed right away (I probably should have gone lower). Then later, they swapped it for another unit after I let the unattainable perfectionism at AVS Forum lead me to believe that my unit was faulty.

I'll definitely be visiting the next time I'm looking for a TV.
Communications

EA Forum Ban Will Now Mean EA Game Ban 549

Posted by timothy from the being-nice-is-actually-an-option dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A post on the EA Support Forums from APOC, online community manager for Electronic Arts, outlines a new policy for their new forums, saying users who earn a ban based on their behavior in the forums will be locked out of all of the EA games tied to that account: 'Well, its actually going to be a bit nastier for those who get banned. Your forum account will be directly tied to your Master EA Account, so if we ban you on the forums, you would be banned from the game as well since the login process is the same. And you'd actually be banned from your other EA games as well since it's all tied to your account. So if you have SPORE and Red Alert 3 and you get yourself banned on our forums or in-game, well, your SPORE account would be banned to. It's all one in the same, so I strongly recommend people play nice and act mature. All in all, we expect people to come on here and abide by our ToS. We hate banning people, it makes our lives a lot tougher, but it's what we have to do.'" Update: 10/31 12:36 GMT by T : Not so! Pandanapper writes "After a flood of complaints the EA community moderator APOC corrects his statement about how banning you from the forums bans you from your game access as well:"That said, the previous statement I made recently (that's being quoted on the blogs) was inaccurate and a mistake on my part. I had a misunderstanding with regards to our new upcoming forums and website and never meant to infer that if we ban or suspend you on the forums, you would be banned in-game as well. This is not correct, my mistake, my bad."

Comment Re:No, William Gibson (Score 1) 259

by prator (#24906451) Attached to: The Google Navy

Google is just weird sometimes. Somehow, your comment shows up at #6 for "wikipedia maas neotek".

Anyway, I'm kinda hazy on how Maas-Neotek relates to a conglomeration of boats tied together out somewhere in the ocean. I don't recall it from the Gibson books I've read, and Google doesn't seem to be helping.
Power

The Google Navy 259

Posted by timothy from the but-it's-on-the-internet dept.
theodp writes "Is Google preparing to launch its own Navy? In its just-published application for a patent on the Water-Based Data Center, Google envisions a world where 'computing centers are located on a ship or ships, which are then anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away from computers in the data center.' And you thought The Onion was joking when it reported on Google's Fleet of Naval Warships!"
Graphics

Leaping the Uncanny Valley 421

Posted by timothy from the compare-this-to-the-final-fantasty-movie dept.
reachums submits this glance at "the newest level of computer animation," intended to get past the paradoxical "uncanny valley" — that is, the way animated humans actually can appear jarring as the animation gets hyper-realistic. "This short video gives us a glimpse of what we can hope to see in the future of computer games and movies. Emily is not a real actress, but she looks like a real person, something we haven't truly seen before in computer animation."
Space

Kimchi in Space 270

Posted by CmdrTaco from the use-a-pencil dept.
rtknox00 writes "For astronauts spending months in space, the smallest touch of home can make a big difference. So when South Korea's first astronaut Ko San boards the International Space Station this April he'll be bringing along a hefty supply of kimchi, the national dish of his native country. While bringing a cherished food on a long journey might seem like a simple act, taking kimchi into space required millions of dollars in research and years of work." Science may never get Thorramatur in orbit.
Businesses

Increased US Broadband Adoption Could Create 2.4 Million Jobs 171

Posted by Soulskill from the taking-development-cues-from-kentucky dept.
Ward D points out a story about a recent study that predicts significant economic growth through increased broadband adoption in the U.S. The study is based on a program in Kentucky that has, through the increased use of broadband, "saved an average of more than $200 per person per year" on health-care services, and decreased the average amount of time residents spent driving by 100 hours per month. From Computerworld: "The Connected Nation model ... focuses more on broadband adoption and local needs than huge, government-funded programs. Several Kentucky businesses have benefited from the increased access, according to Connected Nation. Geek Squad, the Best Buy subsidiary, moved its headquarters to Bullitt County, Kentucky, in late 2006 because of the broadband availability."
Politics

Ron Paul Campaign Answers Slashdot Reader Questions 1011

Posted by Roblimo from the first-they-ignore-you dept.
On January 15th we asked you for tech-oriented questions we could send to the various presidential candidates, and you responded like mad. The candidates were the exact opposite: not a single one answered emails we sent to their "media inquiry" links or email addresses. Slashdot has more readers than all but a handful of major daily papers, so that's kind of strange. Maybe they figure our votes aren't worth much or that hardly any of us vote. In any case, the Ron Paul campaign finally responded, due to some string-pulling by a Slashdot reader who knows some of Ron Paul's Texas campaign people. Perhaps other Slashdot readers -- like you (hint hint) -- can pull a few strings with some of the other campaigns and get them to communicate with us. Use this email address, please. But first, you'll probably want to read the Ron Paul campaign's answers to your questions (below).
Space

Is There Such a Thing As Absolute Hot? 388

Posted by timothy from the she-does-exist-yes dept.
AlpineR writes "Is there an opposite to absolute zero? An article from PBS's NOVA online explains several theories of the maximum possible temperature. Maybe it's the Planck temperature, 10^32 K, beyond which the known laws of physics break down. Or maybe just 10^30 K, the limit of some versions of string theory. If space is actually 11-dimensional then the maximum temperature could even be as low as 10^17 K, attainable by the Large Hadron Collider. Or maybe infinite temperature wraps around to negative temperature and absolute hot is the same as absolute cold."

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