If you asked 100 adults which question they’d most like to ask an astronaut, probably 95% of the responses would involve bodily functions. But American children have a different question: Do astronauts play video games in space?
That was the first question asked by a group of schoolchildren who joined Barack Obama for a live link-up with the crew of the Discovery shuttle which is currently orbiting Earth. The reply came from one crew member that:
We can, in fact. And in fact a few years ago when I was up here for six months I had a video game that I used to play in my spare time. Unfortunately, we don’t have much spare time. So we can, we have a lot of laptop computers. But for the most part we stay real busy doing real work.
The chat also revealed that the crew receives a daily electronic e-mail including all the latest NCAA March Madness results.
It will come too late for the crew of Discovery, but NASA is working on a game titled Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond. The CEO of one of the firms involved in the game, Information in Place, says it could help spark interest in sciences, mathematics and technology: “When [students] see that they can use these skills to build something – like a space shuttle or a greenhouse – then they understand why it’s important.”
NASA certainly seems happier dealing with children than adults at the moment. It’s still deciding on how to deal with the results of an online contest it ran to name a new wing on the International Space Station. The leading option suggested by NASA, ‘Serenity’, wound up 40,000 votes behind the top write-in suggestion ‘Stephen Colbert’.
It’s been a badly kept secret, but the games-playing world now has the first official confirmation that there will be a DJ-based spinoff from the Guitar Hero franchise. The game’s site has just launched, though it doesn’t tell us anything other than that it will be available for X-Box, Playstation and Wii.
The game will be competing with Scratch: The Ultimate DJ by 7 Studios (pictured below). That game has more details publicly available: there’ll be a controller based on a turntable and, while the heart of the game will be similar to the concept of Guitar Hero and the like, there will be more room for improvisation.
The rival games will also be doing battle to get the involvement of celebrity DJs. Both DJ Shadow and DJ Z-Trip are expected to be involved in DJ Hero, but Mixmaster Mike is already signed up to Scratch.
DJ Hero will be one of the first tasks facing Dan Rosenweig, a former Yahoo executive who has taken on the role as president of RedOctane. That’s the Activision division responsible for the Guitar Hero series.
Rosenweig’s jump was only confirmed yesterday, but he’s already spoken about his work. He told The Hollywood Reporter that as far as the franchise goes, “the present is awesome, but the future is significantly bigger.” He noted that DJ Hero will be coming out “at the end of the year”, which presumably means it will be aimed at the Christmas gift market.
DJ Hero comes as Activision recovers from news of a $72 million loss in the last three months of 2008, despite the company producing four of the ten best selling video games. Analysts believe the hugely successful music-game genre may have reached its peak and firms could struggle to find new ways to make money from fans. Figures for both January and February show sales of music games across the industry down by around a third, despite an overall rise in game sales.
The town of Vulcan, Alberta, has about 2,000 residents. They are, of course, Vulcans. The Vulcan Tourism and Trek Centre has been lobbying for the town to host the premiere of Star Trek XI for a couple of years now. Paramount said no.
Leonard Nimoy, the only original cast member who will appear in the new film, sided with Vulcan, going so far as to lobby for the town. The problem is that Vulcan, Alberta has no movie theater! They have a space-themed water park and a Vulcan starship. They’ve even hosted a Star Trek convention, but still no movie theater. A compromise has been reached between Paramount Pictures, Nimoy, and Vulcan. The plans now are to have a special advanced screening for 300 Vulcan residents in Calgary, probably on May 6th. They will be brought in by bus, as the Vulcan starship is currently inoperable. The Alberta premiere will be on May 8th. Nimoy calls the compromise “logical”.
Our crazy pals at [H] were curious about how many hard drives a .50 Caliber Armor Piercing Round could go through, so they’ve decided to test it. Check it out below.
If you’re a fan of Battlestar Galactica, whether you liked the finale or hated it, there will be (almost – keep reading) no more. So now what? Will Friday nights now be spent cradling a DVD boxset of Firefly? Now, I offer no guarantees, but here are some upcoming series that may help fill the void – or at least, the SciFi channel (or “SyFy” which I still can’t quite get on board with) hopes they will. After all, if Patton Oswalt is right and it really is the silver age of television, then it can only get better from here.
Caprica
This is probably the obvious choice – a prequel of sorts to BSG, Caprica is set about 50 years before the current series. Whereas it does tell the story of how humanity created the cylons who would ultimately cause their destruction, it’s been described as a “family science fiction drama.” The early trailer made it look more like a Romeo & Juliet type story about dueling families than what you might expect from the BSG world, but the new trailer that aired during Friday’s finale seems more promising. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long to find out; the pilot is premiering on DVD on April 21. Though after that, it’s a wait until 2010 for the actual series to start airing on television.
Stargate Universe
The third installment in the popular Stargate series, Stargate Universe is set to begin airing on the SciFi channel in October. Described as a “separate entity” rather than a spin-off like Stargate Atlantis, the new series involves a ship that gets stuck in the far reaches of the universe. That actually sounds a little familiar – Voyager, anyone? In any case, it’s supposedly darker than the other two, and also more relationship-based. (Stargate is one of those series that has inspired massive amounts of fan fiction, so I’m not sure if that’s considered a good thing or a bad thing for those writers.)
Warehouse 13
A preview for this new SciFi channel show aired during the BSG finale as well, which was actually the first I’d heard of it. It was a pretty long trailer for a commercial, and after it was over I still felt like I had no idea what the show was about. Something about FBI agents… and a giant warehouse… and weird stuff? Apparently it’s part X-Files, part Raiders of the Lost Ark, and part Moonlighting, which from what I’ve seen sounds about accurate. Oh, and it features a male “rule-bending” agent and a female “by-the-book” agent, which I guess comes from the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” school of television writing. Though the female agent is played by Joanne Kelly, who was really hot as the vampire Bianca in the short-lived Dresden Files series. This one will start airing this summer.
Of course, for those of you who don’t want to wait for your new science fiction fix, let me throw out a recommendation if you haven’t already checked it out:
Dollhouse
This new show got pretty mixed reviews at the beginning, but after the new episode on Friday night (which, since it overlapped with the 2-hour BSG finale, I watched yesterday on Hulu), I’m completely sold. I think that the show may have suffered from the FOX curse of rearraranging episodes at the beginning (and that worked so well with Firefly), but now it’s hitting its stride. Plus, if you’re missing BSG, you can get your weekly fix of Tahmoh Penikett (Helo on BSG and Agent Ballard on Dollhouse). Also appearing on Friday’s episode was Mark Sheppard – Romo Lampkin on BSG, though you may also remember him as Badger from Firefly – as another FBI agent. I personally rather like Joss Whedon’s tendency to use the same actors over and over, but only because he also tends to pick good actors. I think Eliza Dushku (Faith on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Amy Acker (Fred on Angel) are doing a great job on Dollhouse. (And while I’m on the subject of Joss’s actors, I’ll give a tentative thumbs-up to ABC’s new show Castle that airs on Monday nights, though Nathan Fillion – Mal from Firefly – is definitely the best part.)
So if your Friday nights are now woefully science fiction free, you may want to give Dollhouse a try. Or wait and see what SciFi (SyFy? Hrm.) has in store next… but wait! As I mentioned, BSG isn’t quite over yet, and that’s not just a reference to Caprica. Airing in November is a new TV movie, a “reimagined” version of BSG – from the point of view of the cylons. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is directed by Edward James Olmos (aka Admiral Adama), who says that it will make fans want to watch the whole series over again. I’m sure the DVD box set will be out just in time.
The idea of hackers bringing down power grids may sound like a far-fetched plot from the current series of 24, but a security firm insists it’s a genuine threat.
The threat is now a possibility because of the use of a technology known as Smart Grids. This involves around two million devices, largely wireless, which send data back and forth between power stations and homes. The idea is to better manage demand for electricity based on the actual needs customers have at any moment.
Unfortunately security researchers at Seattle-based IOActive say they’ve proven the devices are vulnerable to hacking. Using equipment costing $500 they were able to create a worm virus which spread rapidly across the meters in the network.
Naturally the researchers didn’t do any serious damage: according to PCWorld they simply tweaked the meters so that their LCD screens displayed the word ‘pwned’ rather than the meter readings. But the researchers believe a similar technique would allow hackers to either remotely shut down the supply to customers, or send bogus increased demands for power to a station causing blackouts. Such an attack could cause a knock-on effect to other stations in the network.
The firm has passed on its findings to officials and is not making the precise details public. However, it’s thought the technique involved exploiting a bug in a chip used in the meters.
A malicious attack on the electricity network may seem unthinkable, but last year the National Journal claimed Chinese military and government officials may have been behind two blackouts in 2003. It reports a theory that a Chinese hacker who was intending to gather data on power systems had either made a mistake or got carried away and wound up triggering the blackout.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about this short film because there’s almost no details around. The only thing I know is that, just like Escape From City 17, this is another amateur-made half-life 2 inspired flick that looks pretty darn promising. Enjoy!
If you asked 100 adults which question they’d most like to ask an astronaut, probably 95% of the responses would involve bodily functions. But American children have a different question: Do astronauts play video games in space?
The town of Vulcan, Alberta, has about 2,000 residents. They are, of course, Vulcans. The 
The idea of hackers bringing down power grids may sound like a far-fetched plot from the current series of 24, but a security firm insists it’s a genuine threat.