After being off the air for over ten years, the good doctor (No. 7) and his trusty sidekick Ace are getting the less than royal treatment from the BBC.
Rather than kick-starting Dr. Who the TV series up where it left off in 1989, the Beeb will broadcast an all-new radio version of the show starring the last official Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, as well as a handful of celebrity guest voices including Stephen Fry and John Sessions. But this is hardly the resurrection of a legend.
This particular audio extravaganza, hitting the Webwaves July 13th, has been sitting on a shelf gathering dust because the Daleks don’t seem to be in favor in the hallowed halls of British television any longer. However, if fans make enough noise, the network might make more Internet programming in future.
Or, in *the* future, as we Yanks put it.
Intel has succeeded in reducing the size of transistors yet again, extending Moore’s Law out until 2007 at least.
The company announced that their research lab in Oregon has managed to produce a handful of transistors 0.02 microns in size. The 42 million transistors in use on current Pentium4 chips are a massive 0.18 microns by comparison, meaning you could cram 9 times the amount of transistors in the same space, assuming you didn’t sneeze and accidentally inhale them into your brain, making you some mutant cyborg bent on world destruction.
Which would be so cool!
. . .
Here’s a new one: A group of record labels (Sony, EMI and BMG among them) is suing MTVi because they’re streaming personal radio service is a little *too* personal for their liking. The companies argue that because SonicNet allows to program their own radio shows, they could be violating copyright laws which normally prevent radio stations from broadcasting the same artist too close together or an entire album without permission.
It can be said without qualification that MTV has probably done more to increase the overall financial success for these companies than anything else in the last 20 years, so why would they want to bite the hand that feeds them?
Stupidity comes to mind.
. . .
Ad Per View
TV advertisers seem to be fighting a losing battle. We get up from our seats when they appear, we mute their sound, we TiVo past them and do pretty much anything we can to ignore what pays for our free TV programming (and people wonder why the Web ad sphere collapsed?). What can they do to get us to pay attention?
What they’re going to try next is addressable advertising. So if you’re watching a Gilligan’s Island in your house and your neighbor is watching the exact same program next door, you might see an ad for Pampers because the advertisers know (via your addressable cable converter) that you’re a young family maybe with some kiddles, while your 80-year-old neighbor sees Fixodent flashing on their 27″ Sony.
AT&T Cable is testing this program with 30,000 Aurora, Colorado subscribers this fall. Expect other cable companies to follow suit. So you’ll soon be able to ignore and fast-forward past commercials picked out just for you!
. . .
In yet another helpful invasion of privacy, new services offered by cell phone service providers and wireless device networks will extend the online Buddy List metaphor to your mobile phones, pagers and PDAs. The so-called presence technology will alert others whether your phone or pager or what-have-you is ready to take their call, whether *you’re* ready or not.
At first, presence technology in wireless devices will only extend to your closed list of friends and family, who you’ll allow to monitor your device availability (and you, theirs) by glancing at the screen and seeing if you’re “on.” Later, presence can be extended so that parents will be able to check if their children are watching TV when they should be doing homework or asleep or having sex or something.
. . .
A US judge has threatened a teenager with life in prison
if he has pre-marital sex.
Judge Manuel Banales told Robert Torres, 19, he will die in
jail if he has sex again before he marries.
Torres, in court in Corpus Christi, Texas, has convictions
for underage sex and has got two teenage girls pregnant while
on probation. Judge Banales again gave him probation – and
the no sex ban. If Torres breaks the probation order he faces
life or two times 99 years in jail.
Judge Banales said: “He is fathering too many children for
which he is not supporting. So, I told him he can father as
many children as he wants as long as he establishes a marital
relationship. I wish there was a law that said that kids
cannot have kids, but that is clearly impossible to enforce.
“But it will be enforced as conditions of supervision in your
case. And if you so much as have thoughts of getting another
girl pregnant, you will go to prison for life or 99 years two
times. You’ll not get out of there alive. I want you to know
that.”
According to the court order Torres is now prohibited from sex
with any woman until marriage.
