Star Trek:TNG casting memo surfaces after 23 years

In a parallel universe, Belgian actor Patrick Bauchau played Captain Picard.

I’m basing that claim on a 23 year old memo that surfaced, on Paramount letterhead, written by John Ferraro, who was then a young development executive in Paramount’s syndicated television division, to John Pike, president of Paramount’s TV division at the time.

The memo, which has surfaced on the Letters of Note blog, lists the people who were being brought in to read for Gene Roddenberry in April 1987 for the various roles. Notably, Brent Spiner and Wil Wheaton weren’t even being considered for the roles at that time, and Wesley Snipes was being considered for the role of Geordi LaForge.

Obviously, this was early in the casting process.

[GAS] tracked down the author of the memo, John Ferraro, who had no idea the old memo had been leaked online.

“It’s so funny! How did that memo surface, it’s been like, 25 years! That’s kind of crazy! Somebody obviously found it in somebody’s old file at the studio, I guess.”

Ferraro mentioned that the letter might have simply been used to create a preliminary list of the types of actors that the series would go for – and was quick to point out that though he wrote the letter, he did not determine the names on the list.

“Those weren’t my choices. It wasn’t like I was the one who put Wesley Snipes’ name on the list…. “

“The casting director was bringing people in, and it looks like [at the time the memo was written] they were starting to pare things down and determine the people who would read for Gene [Roddenberry]”

“It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t worked in the industry, but there’s sort of a hierarchy of the way it works on the executive side… I was pretty junior, and I was reporting to a guy named Rick Berman, who became the producer of the series… I was his guy who did a lot of the legwork. But I had been working in television for about five years at that point.”

Ferraro worked on Star Trek through the production of the pilot, and possibly, he said, through the first couple of episodes. After that he moved to Paramount’s film division. Today, he’s working on producing other independent film projects.



Awesome: Star Wars Logo Bookends

Originally a Borders Exclusive, these bookends let you use the iconic Star Wars logo to support your favorite tomes or DVDs, be they Rebel or Imperial, Jedi, or Sith. Each set of bookends is individually hand-numbered and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. Together, the two ends measure 9.25″ long x 3″ wide x 4.25″ tall. Limited to 5,000 sets.

[$54.99 at Bigbadtoystore.com | Via]

Time controllers have (leap) second thoughts

One of the geekiest moments of any year, the leap second, may be under threat. The International Telecommunications Union, the organization that governs global communications issues including how computers deal with time, is calling for feedback on the idea of dropping the practice.

The leap second is designed to correct the disparity between the rigid consistency of an atomic clock (used for most automated timing systems, including computing) and the solar clock, which measures the movements of the Earth in relation with the Sun (hence giving us days and years).

Until 1967, the “official” definition of time was simply based on the Earth’s movements around the Sun: once round was a year, and a second was simply the appropriate fraction, depending on whether it was a leap year. The problem is that this period is slowly increasing as the Earth slips further away from the Sun.

The solution is the leap second: each year a leap second can be added on June 30 or December 31 (or both, or neither) to catch up the difference. Where this happens, the official measure of time, UTC, adds an extra second at the end of the relevant day. The idea is that the time we use, and the “true” solar time are never out of kilter by more than a second.

The reason for the proposed abolition is that the extra second can cause problems for computers using UTC. That’s because, unlike simply consulting a calendar for future dates, it’s not usually possible to predict when a leap second will be needed more than about six months in advance as their use depends on the actual, unpredictable, movements of the Earth. If you’re programming an application that depends on precise timings, you’ll need to build it in a way to keep it up to date.

The ITU proposal is to abandon the leap second, let the two times grow apart and perhaps chuck in a leap hour every couple of thousand years or so.

Critics of the proposal say that it would do more harm than good as most programmers who are affected by the time disparity have already tweaked their systems to take advantage of it and would be disrupted even further by undoing things.

[Picture credit: Screenshot of time.gov by Flickr user Jay Knight]



IE9 Screen Shot: Looks like Chrome?

A little earlier today, it seems that Microsoft Russia accidentally posted what appears to be an IE9 screen shot on its press site. The picture was quickly taken down, but fortunately, someone was fast enough to grab it in time. Check it out:

Looks a little like Chrome doesn’t it? In the meantime, we’ll have to wait until September 15th to learn if IE9’s interface will really look like what you see above.

[Via ZDNet]

Make and Receive Phone Calls from Gmail

Google has just announced that starting today, U.S. based Gmail users will now be able to place and receive phone calls directly from the Gmail interface. Calls placed to U.S. and Canadian-based numbers are free, and if you need to make international calls, the rates are extremely cheap. Check it out:

Cloud Computing the HiveMind

You may have heard Peter Molyneux’s “virtual boy” Milo. He’s the uncanny valley’s answer to the Tamagotchi, and the latest project to take advantage of the Xbox’s “Project Natal.”

You can see Milo in the video below:

Here’s what I find particularly interesting about Milo. Milo learns.

According to James Orry at VideoGamer.com, no two Milos will be the same, because they are customized to the environment and the players on each specific Xbox. But not only will they learn from their players, but also from each other, connected via the Internet to communicate with other Milos in the cloud.

This brings up broader questions about cloud computing and cloud based data. While there are many obvious advantages to cloud computing (being able to access your data from anywhere with an Internet connection), and obvious disadvantages to the technology (being unable to access your data if your Internet connection goes down), one aspect of cloud computing that is, quite frankly, breathtaking, is the ability to gather data on the performance of the applications as a whole, and to roll out updates to all users simultaneously.

In the case of “Milo and Kate,” this takes the form of taking the data from thousands of instances of Milo, processing it, and then re-uploading it from the central server back to Milo, to be improved on again. Iterative, automated improvement.

This is not only useful for video gaming. One client I had operates a cloud-computing based monitoring tool for their software, and, through being able to see the aggregate problems of the entire user base, they can make a much more informed decision on how to improve their products and offerings to help the most people at the same time – then seamlessly roll out the improvements to the customers in one step.

This is partially why Google is so dominant in technology at the current time. Search, of course, only works “in the cloud,” and they are able to take the data from billions of its users and sort through that information in order to figure out what people are searching for, when, where, and maybe even why. They’re able to then take that data and improve their algorithms serving ads alongside search results.

Amazon already has adopted a framework that allows people to do datamining on the already existing Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 cloud computing services. Some more technical views on data mining for the cloud (at least for SQL Server based clouds) can be found at DM(X).

[Picture source: Flickr (CC)]

‘YES! Elves and Leprechauns really exist!,’ according to this convincing man.

In case you didn’t know, Elves and Leprechauns are for real! Seriously! They are also very good unicorn caretakers and can easily be attracted with pineapples and chopsticks. Don’t believe me? Just listen to this guy; I’m sure he’ll convince you right away.

[Via Geekologie]

Belgian user may hold monthly download record

A Belgian internet user downloaded 2.6TB of data in the space of a month according to his (or her) internet service provider. And amazingly the ISP is happy about it.

Telenet recently launched a service known as “Vrij Downloaden”. It translates as “free download”, but rather than referring to the price, it appears to be more about the lack of restrictions. The company doesn’t outright promise unlimited downloading for its fastest connections, but its fair use policy simply means you can’t use so much that it begins to affect the service for other users.

The company has now published a list of the 25 users with the most data downloaded in the first month of the service. Eight managed to clock up a full TB (1,024 GB), with the number one slot going to a user with 2,680GB.

What’s particularly impressive about that is that the user was only on the third fastest package, with a maximum download speed of 30MBps. One message board poster notes that this works out as the equivalent of eight and a half days of continuous downloading at full speed.

What the user actually downloaded isn’t known. Officially Telenet does not allow copyright-infringing content to be downloaded so we’ll be generous and assume the person tried out 570 different Linux distributions designed to each fill a DVD.

If you were to put it in a more cynical context, the data is enough that if it were entirely video content and burned to single layer discs at their two-hour capacity, it would have taken 47 full days to watch, which would certainly be an impressive achievement in the space of a month.

In case your wondering, the package used in this case to download the 2.6TB of data costs 61.32 euros a month: just over US$75.

I’ve not come across any confirmed reports of anyone topping the 2.6TB figure. However, a writer at Arstechnica says an unnamed US provider told him of a customer who managed 4TB in a month.

OMG: Neverwinter Is Coming

While there have been rumors for some time circulating about the Neverwinter franchise—including links to Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition—we’re getting a clear picture for the first time with yesterday’s announcement of a new game, Neverwinter. Courtesy of GameSpot, who scored an exclusive Q&A session with Jack Emmert, chief operating office of Cryptic–the company behind the project–here’s some more details.

A few things to know right off the bat: the game is going to be both multiplayer and solo playable, however the emphasis is toward the group aspect, echoing the collaborative play of D&D itself. The game itself is tied to upcoming books by fantasy heavyweight R.A. Salvatore, so you can see they’re clearly trying to blur the lines between games and books—which certainly Dragon Age attempted to do in a way, too. Narrative is becoming more and more important, it seems, in these fantasy RPGs.

But wait, I shouldn’t call it that, because as Emmert says, they’re coining a new phrase: OMG. Yes, OMG. It stands for “online multiplayer game”—a cooperative RPG, in other words. Yes, it’s Forgotten Realms. Yes, it’s D&D. But the idea isn’t to queue in line for an hour to do a raid; it’s to get together in a group and do some serious damage.

From a D&D standpoint, the developers are currently working to combine 4E into the game system. Explains Emmert:

I think there are two very unique gameplay elements in 4th Edition that we’ve done something interesting with: action points and healing surges. In the tabletop game, an action point lets a player perform a reroll or add an additional die to a roll. In our game, action points are earned through combat and spent to power special abilities called “boons.” These boons give players special boosts, but only in certain circumstances. Healing surges represent the amount of times a player can heal himself before resting.

From the interview, Emmert indicates that the initial classes will be Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Ranger, and Cleric, and playable races include humans, elves, and dwarves, with a few currently undisclosed options as well. Additionally, gameplay will first center around the city of Neverwinter, but with hopeful expansions reach out across the landscape.

To add to the fray, there is also a project in the works called Forge (which is a code-name), which will allow for world and adventure customization and building. Familiar Neverwinter Nights players will recognize this approach from previous incarnations, but this could be promising if done right. Especially good, I’d imagine, for long-distance D&D sessions.

I’m hopeful, in this case. As someone who loved the original games and certainly adores D&D (and 4th Edition), this holds a great deal of promise. But, as the adage goes, the proof is in the potion. If Neverwinter combines what I loved best about the franchise with D&D, it could be awesome; however, if it goes off too far on a tangent, trying too hard, it could fall flat.

[Image: Cryptic/WoTC]

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