This week, the White House chimes in on cellphone unlocking, Samsung‘s new phone watches you watching it, YouTube takes on Spotify, Microsoft gets its wrist slapped, Six Strikes and you’re out, Han, Luke & Leia come back for Star Wars: Episode VII; and I, for one, welcome our new cinder block-hurling overlords.
The 8th episode of The Geeks Of Doom Round Up is here, and Greg takes a look at the trailer for Men In Black III, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, and Josh Brolin. For our music selection this week, Andy remembers Jimmy Ellis from The Trammps who sadly passed away this week, and in tribute plays a mashup of “Disco Inferno” entitled “Reggae Inferno.”
Greg also announces a new podcast project called Disquisition, to be launched this week. Later, we evaluate the merits of Metallica‘s new 3D movie to be directed by Nimrod Antal. And perhaps it’s futile, for we might all be dead by the time it comes out thanks to the new robotic Cheetah developed by DARPA recently – these things will kill us all!
This week on the show the TDD team explores Microsoft‘s Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and of course, Apple‘s latest tech offerings, the new iPad, Apple TV, and iOS 5.1. But first, this week’s latest tech headlines…
Devindra recaps Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress 2012, including Nokia‘s 41-megapixel 808 PureView, AT&T modifies their data throttling policy, Zynga launches a standalone destination, Google consolidates media sites into Google Play, EU says Google’s new privacy policy is bogus, Lulzsec is sold out by its own leader, Valve may be entering the console arena, and DARPA builds a robot cheetah.
Confirming the fact that we are creating the SkyNet/Terminator world that will inevitably spell the destruction of the human race, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the U.S. government experimental lab devoted to creating state-of-the-art tech weaponry, released a video demonstrating their “Cheetah,” a quadruped robot designed to mimic its flesh-and-blood counterpart.
The Cheetah, built by Boston Dynamics (previously responsible for the equally creepy four-legged Big Dog and humanoid PETMAN, and probably one of the basis for FRINGE‘s Massive Dynamic), reaches a top speed of up to 18 miles per hour (a new record for legged robots, btw). That’s nowhere near a real cheetah’s top speed of 70 mph, but it’s faster than the average human running speed of 15 mph. Not to mention, it never gets tired.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press