As a fan of Numb3rs, and of mathematics in general, I know that you can do a lot of interesting things with an equation. Well, add forecasting certain kinds of war to the list. It seems, from the way it's written up on Slashdot, that it works similar to the way probability theory and statistical analysis was used to predict bank robberies in Maryland in 2004. Unfortunately, the actual article requires a subscription or a fee to get into. Suffice to say, mathematics strikes again.
Google, meanwhile, faces opposition in its quest to create a database of millions of public domain books, or books whose ownership is unknown. Apparently, when you're a big enough company, everyone will think you're being evil when you want to index more data. Meanwhile, Firefox users will no doubt use the latest data on browser usage to crow victory over IE. It's shown that Firefox 3.5 is currently the most used web browser. I have a few criticisms, though: multiple versions of the same browser are included on the graph, Chrome isn't even listed (I'd be curious to see how many people are using it), and if you add up the three versions of Firefox listed and the three versions of IE listed, Microsoft's browser is still number one overall.
The new movie Avatar looks like it's going to be very successful. Well, as long as theatres don't have any more problems with its DRM protection. A preview screening in Germany was canceled due to a problem with such protection, and critics of DRM are using this as proof that invasive copy protection does not work. Another kind of avatar looks to make life harder for fat gamers. Apparently, rather than do what the Wii did and come up with an Xbox 360 version of WiiFit, the company wants to take games away from fat people unless they exercise. In a way, it's like Microsoft is trying to say, "Stay away, fatty. No one wants to see you on Xbox Live."
Remember COFEE? Well, this past week, a couple developers came up with a tool to counter COFEE and keep it from doing its job. Then a few days later, announced that they were just kidding. The current message on the official website speaks of selling the code to someone else. Whatever the purpose of DECAF was, it's helped to remind everyone that COFEE exists.
And finally, coming soon to theatres: a movie written by the guy who made the video at the head of this article and uploaded it to YouTube.
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