General Motors and Segway plan to take a two-wheel concept vehicle for a spin around New York City on Tuesday.
The prototype vehicle, called Project PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility), is designed to ease congestion and pollution problems in cities. It is based on the Segway Personal Transporter but holds two people, instead of one, and lets them sit, instead of stand.
A PUMA runs on lithium ion batteries, can reach 35 miles per hour, and can travel up to 35 miles between charges.
It includes some high-tech touches, including GM’s wireless OnStar communications technology that lets a passenger locate other drivers in a city.
The two-wheeler is meant to address the mounting problems of urban car transportation, according to the two companies that plan to unveil the vehicle at an auto show in New York.
A March 5th midnight show, 3 screens 2 sold out, surrounded by comic book fans from my local comic shop, I saw The Watchmen. So what did I think of it. Quite simply I liked it. It was good. If I had to pinpoint one problem the movie had was its runtime. Clocking in at 165 minutes, it is just too short to completely capture the soul of the graphic novel. It novel is very dense. An average comic book will take me between 10-15 minutes to read, an issue of The Watchmen (the graphic novel is a collection of the 12 issue mini-series) can take me closer to 20-25 minutes, just because there is so much information, not only in the words but in the art as well. Of course some things were cut or truncated for the adaptation, which I expected, but there was only so much you could omit. It is the volume of content combined with the runtime that makes a good portion of the film is rushed, robbing certain scenes of their emotional impact and character development. However, I will add that the changes made to the big climax of the movie did not lessen the impact of the events and the message of the story, making me very happy.
One place where the movie excels is the acting on the part of Jackie Earle Haley was spot on. He brought is character of Rorschach to life, and I challenge anyone to read (or re-read) the graphic novel and not have Rorschach sound like he did in the movie. I know that as I finish up my fourth re-read I have that voice in my head. Another outstanding performance came from Patrick Wilson’s Dan Dreiberg, Nite Owl II. When I do read The Watchmen, this is how I picture Dan Dreiberg. Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan (he actually did act the part, he was replaced in post-production just like Andy Serkis was in the Lord of the Rings movies), was cold, withdrawn and a bit scary, so he also did a good job. There were some issues with the CGI. I did read a review in which did confirm one of my thought while watching it, that the mouth movements were sometimes iffy. Malin Akerman definitely looked the part of Laurie Juspeczyk (she was Laurie Jupiter in the movie, but in the novel she makes it a point to correct people so, so will I), but there were times her performance was stiff.
Sadly, in the end the legendary creator Alan Moore, was probably right, it is “unfilmable”. However, I do not think it is because of the material in the novel, but that Hollywood won’t give it the time it needs to tell the story. It needs at least 2 3hour movies, or even better a 12 episode mini-series on HBO or Showtime to come close to being able to tell the story the right way.
I could go into more detail as to where I felt the movie went south or excelled, and I may later on, but I do not want to so until more people have a chance to see it. What I will say is that in the graphic novel there is a comic within the comic which Zack Snyder has turned into an animated direct to DVD feature called “Tales of the Black Freighter” (out on March 24th), and the reports are that Warner Brothers has Snyder cut down the original runtime of the movie to under 3 hours. I am hopeful that the eventual extended directors cut (which will include the Black Freighter cut within the movie) will be better than the theatrical release and become the standard (just like the Blade Runner Director’s Cut), but that doesn’t mean you should wait for it. Go out and see The Watchmen, hell I am even going to see it again, and by all means if you haven’t read the graphic novel, go and read it.
At COMDEX Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating (by Mr. Welch himself):
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.
New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lift the door handle, turn the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as in the old car.
You’d press the “start” button to shut off the engine.
Just because the current economic climate is edging towards an Ice Age doesn’t mean you can’t get your groove on. Using financial data, and various other statistics, this guy used Microsoft’s Songsmith to create some jazzy, infomercial worthy tracks that will help forget the fact that you are getting poorer and your retirement plan just got set back a decade or so. Who needs to retire at 55 when you can start your toe tapping to these future #1 hits.
A friend sent me a link to this video and it was so cool i figured best to pass it along. The text below I pulled from Gizmodo.
Italian artist BLU is famous for painting politically and socially charged street murals, but his recent project involving street animation may be his most visually stunning. Called MUTO, the video is a series of digital stills assembled from sequential paintings on the streets/walls of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s been floating around a bit, but if you haven’t seen it, the effect is a sort of living, evolving mural that follows a dramatic, character-drive storyline. And if you watch one thing online today (or tomorrow or the next day), this should be it:
Sun’s Fishworks wanted to see what happens to hard drives with they are vibrated. So in proper frustrated tech fashion they yelled at it. SPOILER ALERT:: The computer did not go faster.
For those who are into nifty benchmark graphs check out the link to Sun’s blog for a screenshot of the proof.
