If you’re tired of answering questions from impatient people in the middle of a movie, Microsoft’s latest release of Windows Media Player is for you. Included in WMP 10 is a feature Microsoft is dubbing the “Windows Movie Assistant.” WMA will help viewers in the confusing and at times daunting task of understanding a movie.
“I love the feature, because now when I watch Memento with my girlfriend, she’s not always bugging me about what’s going on. The movie assistant tells her, so I don’t have to,” said Kyle Rosenberg of Evansville, Indiana.
Not everyone is this enthusiastic about WMA, however:
Martin Scorsese said, “Movies are meant to be enjoyed, not explained. This will only increase the cinematic stupidity that our country experiences today.”
As with many of Microsoft’s innovations, only time will tell if WMA becomes popular. I’m not sure what my opinion on this is, but the movie assistant certainly looks helpful and friendly…
I have no idea how MIT got the funding for this, but someone must have a sense of humor. A robotics lab at MIT has built a robot which goes to bars, begs people for money, then buys beer with the money. The robot then drinks the beer. There is a nice video of the bar bot. It would be kind of cool to have one at a party, but it would just drink all of my beer.
They even won an award for “Other Achievements in the Fields of Cocktail Robotics” at the Roboexotica Festival.
Finally I have all the justification I need to drop a couple g’s on a flatscreen TV. I can now consider it a critical item in my disaster preparedness kit and can write it off as a homeland security expense. As reported by CNN, the Toshiba TV of an Oregon man was broadcasting the 121.5 MHz international distress signal with enough strength to attract the attention of monitoring satellites and eventually Langley Air Force base. Fortunately for the man, Toshiba has offered him a free replacement set to avoid the $10,000 fine that would result from continued use of his television and “willingly broadcasting a false distress signal.”
symon
Comments Off
Anheuser-Busch is introducing a caffeinated beer. The new “beer” will be called B(E), or “B to the E power” (see image at right). While caffeinated beer has been tried before, this is the first time it will be mass-marketed. Apparently the market is “21- to 27-year-old drinkers who seek novel beverages and switch drinks more frequently according to mood and occasion.” A description of the high-carb drink:
B(E) infuses beer with caffeine, guarana and ginseng, along with berry aromas for a sweeter, yet more tart taste at 6.6 percent alcohol by volume, said company brewmaster Nathaniel Davis.
In case you’re wondering what real beer drinkers think of this, I invite you to consult the German Beer Purity Law of 1516:
“Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities’ confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.”
Somewhere in Seattle a lone medical student (from St. Louis, no less) cries out in triumph…
