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Hi all…

I saw this article on TechCrunch this week and it made me pause and scratch my head. Why would Dell pre-load their computers with movies?

Your typical high definition digital movie file takes up a large amount of space, somewhere between 1 Gigabyte and 4 Gigabytes (assuming some degree of compression) of storage would be required on a hard drive. If you have a 300 gig drive, which is about average these days, that would be a maximum of less than 1.5 percent of your hard drive.

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently Paramount and Dell inked a deal for Dell to sell Iron Man on new machines for $20. This includes the digital movie, plus the DVD extras, right on the hard drive. And you can burn it to DVD. But only once.

I’m guessing that we’ll see more movie studios go this route with hard disk space as cheap as it is (and getting cheaper every day), but I have to wonder why. What’s the benefit of having it on the hard drive? I only see one — no DVD to haul around and lose. But that’s the only benefit I can see.

Am I just missing the point?

–Fitz

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Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

Hi all…

I had a chance to watch the Justice League: The New Frontier animated movie over Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature on their website and thought I’d write about it.

Amazingly enough, it worked really well. I say that as if I was shocked, because I was. I tried it a year ago and was sorely disappointed. But on Vista and using Internet Explorer (ugh), it worked remarkably well.

I’m a dedicated Firefox guy, so it was a little bizarre having to open up IE for this. I hope they can figure out how to make it work cross-browser. But ultimately it was pretty seamless.

It did have a few hiccups now and then as it streamed the movie to my desktop, but the quality was excellent on my 19″ wide-screen computer monitor. The colors were crisp and the sound quality was good.

Now that I’ve had one positive experience with it, I might have to start watching other movies online as time allows. It would certainly free up some of the backlog of movies I have in my Netflix queue.

So give it a shot if you’re a Netflix subscriber with Broadband internet access. You might like what you see.

–Fitz

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Hi all…

The geek in me won’t let me let this day go by without commenting on the Phoenix Mars Lander’s amazing landing today… Do you know about this cool probe?

You can find out more here.

The Phoenix Lander is the latest in a series of highly anticipated, successful missions that NASA has undertaken in the last few years. The two Mars rovers kicked off the era of success and I’ve been watching for quite a while (I’ve been a space geek since Elementary School).

According to an article in CNET:

Phoenix is set to take up residency in the north polar region of Mars, where researchers expect it to find “ice-rich permafrost” underneath the rocky, dusty surface. In 2002, the Mars Odyssey Orbiter indicated that there could be large amounts of subsurface water ice in that area.

Upon landing, it will be about 170 million miles from Earth–after having traveled about 422 million miles through space.

Using a robotic arm, Phoenix will dig into the surface to bring up both soil and ice. In its platform structure, the lander will then analyze those samples to help scientist on Earth create models of Mars’ historic climate and to predict future atmospheric conditions.

We should all hope we can get some great images from the Lander’s camera and data from the robotic arm’s experiments — and I truly hope that we get as much great data from this robot as we did from the two Mars Rovers…

A HUGE congratulations to NASA, JPL, and all the folks involved in this incredible achievement. It’s one thing to send a probe into space — it’s quite another to get a probe to actually LAND on a planet.

–Fitz

Hi all…

I was VERY amused when I saw this article on Engadget… And it gets funnier if you go to the original post that Engadget was writing about here…

This makes the guy who flies around with the jet pack look SOOOO much safer. Why didn’t Iron Man use one of these? ‘Cause he’s not crazy, that’s why!!!

–Fitz

Hey all…

Just a quick post… There was a cool story this morning on Slashdot linking to a story on the New Scientist website about the science behind Iron Man. It’s amazing how closely science fiction is catching up to reality!

See the story here — Iron Man: The Science Behind the Fiction

Thanks!
–Fitz

Hi and welcome to a new irregular feature on the Lair called “Paranoid Minute of the Day” or PMOTD for short…

[BEGIN PARANOIA]

Today’s minute focuses on the bizarre thought that robots are becoming cheap enough that they could be used against us by terrorist or criminal organizations sooner than later. A couple of articles brought this up for me this week…

1) Could Robot Warriors Become Terrorist Weapons?
2) Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat to Humanity, Robotics Expert Warns

Could the Terminator scenario come true? Probably not. Probably something more like the 1984 movie Runaway with Tom Selleck (penned and directed btw by Michael Crichton) where a madman or group of madmen intent on creating chaos or destruction start using robots against us.

(more…)

Hi all…

This is a little off topic, but it’s something that touched me when I saw it yesterday posted on Slashdot and wanted to share it.

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the TED Talks (TED stands for Technology, Education, Design) that are held every year by some of the most brilliant minds of the US (TEDGlobal does the same thing for the international community) to discuss advances in thinking, tools, and products. Some of these talks are more than a bit out there (talking about things coming to pass 20-50 years down the line), but now and then there’s a topic where they’re getting amazing success in the NOW.

This is one of those talks. Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. He uses digital technology to bridge the gap between the digital and the physical worlds. Here’s his bio.

You can watch the video (it’s a bit over 17 minutes long) here, but I’m also going to embed it on this page if you’d rather watch it here (after the jump). Note that this requires Shockwave installed…

(more…)