Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

This idea was floated this week that Benedict Cumberbatch might be cast as Doctor Strange. I thought it was a great pick, but apparently, I am in the minority according to Twitter! Many fans apparently said that Cumberbatch as Khan in Star trek, as Sherlock, etc. was too much! Many said that he were officially chosen to play Doctor Strange, they would boycott the movie! Wow! Come on, guys! He just plain looks like Strange! I would think it would be akin to Robert Downey, Jr. playing Iron man… a no-brainer! Oh well!

Also, there were the calls to make Doctor Strange a “person of color” on Twitter. Odd, given that he looks Caucasian in the comic book. There were those that suggested Pedro Pascal to play Doctor Strange. Pascal is from Chile, and does have “the look” to play the character. However, since the first announcement that Cumberbatch was a “possible” it seems that the news is that it has firmed up, and that he will play Doctor Strange. I guess we will see!

Private space exploration got a double-punch this week. I was sorry to hear about both losses, especially the loss of life, but it sounds like they are still undeterred in their efforts.

After two crashes, private space industry faces inevitable questions

Fortune – By: Benjamin Snyder and John Kell – “Will back-to-back space flight accidents this week give customers of private space companies second thoughts?

It’s been a rough week for the private space industry. On Friday, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two crashed during a flight test in the Mojave Desert, killing one and seriously injuring another. On Tuesday, an unmanned Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded six seconds after lift-off in Virginia.

The back-to-back accidents raise inevitable questions about the safety and reliability of the emerging private space industry. Will space tourists and companies that want to put cargo into orbit take the risk?

‘Gut reaction, this is a major setback,’ said James Pura, president of Space Frontier Foundation, a non-profit that advocates more space exploration. ‘A lot of our hopes and dreams in the private commercial space industry lie in the success of the leading companies, and Virgin Galactic is one of those.’

The private space industry is receiving a huge influx of investment and attention. Elon Musk’s Space X, for example, has a number of contracts to deliver satellites and cargo into space. Another company, Planetary Sciences, backed by billionaires like Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, plans to mine asteroids. Meanwhile, Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, got started in 2010 as a space tourism business, but has since detoured into making rocket engines.

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism start-up founded by Virgin mogul Richard Branson, had plans to take its first commercial trip 62 miles into the stratosphere by the end of the year. Over 700 customers have paid $250,000 to take a trip.

But it may be difficult to meet that goal after today’s accident, in which a test flight experienced what the company described as an ‘in-flight anomaly’ that sent the craft hurtling to the ground. At least one of the test pilots escaped by parachute.

‘Space is hard. And today was a tough day,’ Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said.

Earlier in the week, Orbital Sciences, a company that carries customer payloads into space, suffered a huge setback when its launch went haywire. A rocket it launched in Virginia had to be destroyed just seconds after taking off.

Shares in Orbital Sciences ORB 1.04% plummeted over 16% after the failure.

‘It is far too early to know the details of what happened,’ Frank Culbertson, Orbital’s executive vice president and general manager of its advanced programs group, said in a statement. “As we begin to gather information, our primary concern lies with the ongoing safety and security of those involved in our response and recovery operations.

‘From a financial standpoint it will take some time to assess the precise impacts; however, I can tell you that Orbital’s view for 2014 remains unchanged,’ Garrett Pierce, Orbital Sciences’ vice chairman and CFO, said on a conference call with analysts and investors.

Of course, private space companies aren’t the only to suffer setbacks. NASA has had its own high-profile mishaps over the years, including two Space Shuttle accidents. Whether governmental efforts are any more risky than private launches is unclear. But one thing is certain.

‘Space flight is inherently risky and we as humans are curious about space and always will be,’ Pura, the foundation president, said. ‘Those brave pioneers are turning science fiction into reality. Our heart goes out to those brave pioneers at this time.'”

A major milestone anniversary this week for Ubuntu Linux! Wow! It is now the third most popular Operating System, behind Windows and Mac OS/X!

OpenSource.com – “What a difference a decade makes. As Scott Gilbertson writes at Ars Technica, Ubuntu arrived on the scene with little fanfare. Now, there are ’25 million Ubuntu users worldwide. That makes Ubuntu the world’s third most popular PC operating system,’ according to Gilbertson. But with the wide-spread adoption and acclaim has come quite a bit criticism from a number of corners. As Gilbertson points out, ‘violating unwritten Linux taboos became something of an Ubuntu sport over the years. And the critics were there at every turn.’ That hasn’t slowed Ubuntu and Canonical down. The distribution is widely considered to be the public face of Linux, and now it’s moving into mobile. It should be interesting to see where Ubuntu is heading in the next 10 years.”

Hewlett-Packard’s 3-D Printer Is Essentially a Replicator

re/code – By: Arik Hesseldahl “When the computing and printing giant Hewlett-Packard announced its plans to enter the nascent market for 3-D printing earlier this week, it set the stakes by saying its technology could trigger a ‘new era of manufacturing.’

Most of the world’s attention on 3-D printing has focused so far on hobbyists who want to make their own do-it-yourself items, or on startups seeking to make mass-customized products aimed at everyday consumers. Normal, for example, makes custom headphones; Shapeways sells items as varied as jewelry and My Little Pony figurines.

HP is instead aiming at bringing 3-D printing to big industry. The concept device it showed off at an event in New York this week, called Multi Jet Fusion, fits not on a desk, but is about the size of a pair of household laundry machines.

And its technology is different too. First, it can print multiple different kinds of materials at once. Current 3-D printers can only use one material at a time, great for printing something simple and solid, say, a toothbrush. (The model pictured above was printed using HP’s technology.)

But if you wanted to print something a little more complex with moving parts, say an electric toothbrush, you’d have to first print all the individual parts — the handle, parts for the motor, the bristles — and then assemble them into the finished product. Printing with multiple materials creates the potential for producing a finished product — moving parts and all — at once.

HP can print not only multiple materials at once, but vary the physical properties of each of those materials as it prints. Our toothbrush handle can now have blue and red stripes. It could be textured in parts to allow a good grip. Some parts might be flexible, some more rigid. Inside, some of the material could conduct electricity, essentially becoming the internal wiring to power the motor. Suddenly, the notion of printing a finished electric toothbrush — and disrupting an industry — seems plausible.

And yet that’s not the point. The material costs to mass produce 3-D printed consumer products still can’t beat the conventional methods. It’s more appropriate for small runs of products — dozens or hundreds.

Maybe you want to build a small business selling customized electric toothbrushes to the hipster set. You might not be able to justify buying one of HP’s printers for that purpose, but you could take your designs to someone who has one you can use. One target of HP’s business plan is to sell these printers to what it calls the ‘central market.’ Think a FedEx Kinko’s of 3-D printing, but with a more industrial bent.

Who else might buy them? Let’s say you already have a company that makes electric toothbrushes. You’ve invested in factories and the equipment, and you’re not going to throw it all away for a fleet of new 3-D printers.

Instead, the 3-D printer could help you keep those factories running by printing a steady stream of replacement parts for when that machinery breaks down. Ordering replacement parts might take days or weeks, which translates into lost sales, and keeping replacement parts on hand in inventory adds costs, too.

If you walk away from all this with a shrug, wondering why any of this matters, the following numbers should get your attention: Last year, manufacturing in the U.S. accounted for about $2 trillion worth of economic activity, or about 12 percent of the gross domestic product, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. In China, the world’s largest economy, manufacturing output was worth north of $3 trillion in 2011, according to the United Nations.

For HP, the strategy is simple: Capturing business that accounts for even the tiniest fraction of the world’s manufacturing activity could in time be worth billions, and billions at HP is real money.

When? That’s harder to say. HP has said that its Multi Jet Fusion technology won’t be ready for sale until 2016. As analyst Steve Milunovich of UBS wrote in a research note Thursday, ‘3-D printing won’t be material to HP for some time to come.’

In a few years, it could be.”

And, I just got a Netgear Neo Prime unit to play with Google TV, and now they have it on Roku!

Despite Android TV push, Google Play Movies & TV app comes to Roku set-top boxes

VentureBeat – By: Tom Cheredar “The latest app making its debut in the Roku Channel store today is Google Play Movies & TV, which is the search giant’s digital media store for buying and renting videos.

The move is a tad interesting because Google is currently in the middle of a big promotional push for its own Android TV operating system, which powers several set-top boxes made by a variety of hardware manufacturers.

You’d expect that Google wouldn’t want to take attention away from its new Nexus Player by allowing people to gain access to its video services on rival devices. However, this actually makes sense when you consider that most people probably aren’t using Google Play to buy movies and TV shows – and it’s unlikely that this will change if consumers can’t gain access to the Google Play Movies & TV show service on the most popular devices.

The app itself is pretty standard among video-focused applications. The one unique feature worth mentioning is that Google will provide ‘info cards’ related to the content you’re watching. For example, pressing pause lets you identify the actors within a specific movie. Google is also offering the first X-Men movie (2003) for free to those that sign up for the service or download the app on Roku.”

The Hendo hoverboard is kinda sorta, getting there to be the hoverboard that Marty rode back in 1989!