Hollywood has a long and storied history of sexing anything up to make it more appealing to the masses. For instance, check out the recent 21 to see the true-life story’s fat math geek transformed into a svelte, blonde Kate Bosworth. But its bullshit machine seemingly kicks into overdrive whenever a computer enters the script. Whether through ignorance or willful belief that the common moviegoer doesn’t know jack about what a computer can actually do, Hollywood moviemakers rarely bother to present a computer's limitations on screen, instead letting them be capable of anything, especially leaping through plot holes and loading a fat deus ex machina as needed. As geeks, this upsets us greatly, and thus have no choice but to call out the eight most egregious examples.
In 2030, when we're all oiling up our robot overlords, we'll know that the robot wars will begin on a small table in a Japanese basement. Still, you can't blame them, because that looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure they must have made those robots themselves, since I'm pretty up on Japanese toys, and I know of nothing that can do the crouching, shooting, dodging and all the other nonsense these little fellows do. If Hasbro or Mattel is watching, I'd say you're looking at a possible goldmine. (Via TV in Japan)
It happens to everyone: you plop down $12.50 to check out the latest over-hyped effects-laden summer blockbuster and right there in the middle of the spinning CGI wizardry, there’s some effect, some scene that sticks out. It doesn’t quite look right, doesn’t match with the rest of the film. Sometimes it looks like the effects team popped a squat over the negative.
Even worse is that in today’s hi-definition age, we revisit movies that may have blown our proverbial socks off in the theater, but displayed on the unmerciful resolutions that plague today’s plasma screens, they look abysmal. In hindsight, some of these hold up better than others. Here are a few that don’t.
We've always been terrified that robots would rise up against humanity like in The Terminator, or monkeys would take over like in Planet of the Apes. But we never considered the robots and monkeys might decide to work together. My friends, we humans are totally doomed.
I'm dead serious. Don't worry, it'll be fine—see, the government has ordered "science" to have replaceable, thought-controlled limbs ready within four years...which, to nerds like you and me, means ROBO-HANDS LIKE IN STAR WARS. Reports DefenseTech.org:
Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a "neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb."
The limb would have to be wired directly into the peripheral nervous system, instead of the brain-controlled arms being demonstrated today, Darpa tells researchers interested in working on this "Revolutionizing Prosthetics" project. Under agency guidelines, the arm will need enough finesse to pick up a raisin or to write in longhand. It needs to be sensitive enough for the wearer to handle day-to-day tasks in the dark. And the limb will have to be strong enough to lift 60 pounds at a time.
These are beyond ambitious goals, and even the even the big thinkers at Darpa acknowledge it. Breakthrough research in "neural control, sensory input, advanced mechanics and actuators, and prosthesis design and integration" will all be needed, the agency says in a call for proposals. Neuroscientists, roboticists, engineers, occupational therapists, and surgeons in the neural, orthopedic, reconstructive subspecialties will have to chip in.
I've got a good feeling about this, so I think I'm going to saw off my hand later today, just to be ready. Who's with me?
When your economy is based significantly on perversion, there are some unsettling side effects. Such as the existence of this:
...an adorable, bear-shaped rape whistle for kids! It also has a flashlight, for finding your way out of dark basements, looking for something to cut ropes with in a trunk, and the like. So what's worse...the fact that someone in Japan thought to make this, or the fact that someone in Japan probably needs this? (Via TokyoMango)
Since perversion-related industries makes up about 60% of the Japanese economy, it should be no surprise that many women (many, many women) get groped in Japanese subway trains. It happens often enough that a few men who accidentally bump into women's T and/or A thanks to a jostling train car, which is often packed full to bursting anyways, are unjustly accused of groping. So what's a Japanese gentleman to do?
Buy a portable subway strap. About $5, this keeps your hands up, showing the lovely ladies around you that you have no interest in groping them illicitly (well, more likely that you can manage to refrain from groping them, despite your interest in doing so). Sure, you look like an imbecile, but it's a small price to pay for excluding yourself from the vast army of Japanese men who use the subway as their sexual harassment playground. (Via Pink Tentacle)
Steve Jobs just got done giving the keynote speech at MacWorld, where he unveiled four Mac-tastic items of news:
1) The new MacBook is thin. Like really thin. It's called MacBook Air, weighs 3 pounds and is 3/4 of an inch tall. It fits inside an envelope. It has no optical drive, but it reads the optical drives of your other nearby computers (PCs or Macs) so you can download discs from that.
2) Time Capsule will be a hard drive that backs up Macs wirelessly. It has four ethernet ports. It's $300 for 500G, and $500 for a terabyte.
3) Just about everything on the iPhone is improved, including maps, weather, turning web clips into wallpapers, and a de facto GPS. Also, the iPod Touches will get almost all the iPhone features except the phone part.
4) Apple TV is coming back with iTunes movie rentals, $3.99 for regular new releases and $4.99 for HD (with 5.1 surround sound). All the studios are on board, says Jobs. If you have the Apple TV, it'll be a free upgrade.
Big Daddy ran an article yesterday which strangely meshes with the ol' TR mission statement, which is something to do with naughtiness and artificial intelligences. Anyways, writer Bonnie Ruburg decide to pass the evening as a sex-bot on online chats, using stock phrases as a lasciviously programmed sex bot might. The results will astound you...or at least make you feel a little dirty.
My Life as a (Pretend) Russian Sexbot
That darned Japan! As soon as you beat them in a World War, in just over 60 years, they're already planning on building giant war robots...or at least pricing them out. Official Pal o' TR Gia sent me this troubling link, a translation of a post on Japan's Science and Technology Agency's Japanese SciencePortal website, which figures the official cost of making a real, moving, 60-foot-tall Gundam mobile suit at a mere $725,000,000.
You can check out how the costs break down at the article on Pink Tentacle, but it does not include labor in the final tally, or beam sabers, or locating an emotionally damaged 15-year-old boy to be the pilot (although in all honesty, those last things seem to be a dime a dozen in Japan).
The Consumer Electronic Show—better known as C.E.S.—is the biggest business show in the world, for good reason: it’s where all the companies that matter show off their wares and new technology for the year. So there’s always awesome and awesomely crazy gear and gadgets to be seen. Topless Robot failed to send me out there to cover it, but they did graciously allow me to read Gizmodo, Engadget, IGN, Cnet and other sites to find the eight coolest things from this year’s show. Enjoy!
If you’ve been lying awake at night, fitfully masturbating to The Jetsons’ Rosie the Robot (and who hasn’t?), there is good news. Make that great news: According to this MSNBC article, we could all be fucking robots in five short years. Better still, it won’t necessarily make us all perverts!
At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon,' [artificial intelligence researcher David] Levy said.
By Summer Mullins
By Zac Bertschy
Steve Jobs just got done giving the keynote speech at MacWorld, where he unveiled four Mac-tastic items of news:
That darned Japan! As soon as you beat them in a World War, in just over 60 years, they're already planning on building giant war robots...or at least pricing them out. Official Pal o' TR 
