I'm a big fan of 30 Rock because it was an unexpected comedy hit. I don't remember hearing a lot of hype for it, and it seemed to take a few episodes before people really started noticing it. But now they're in their second season and the show's still great.

NBC put up a bunch of bonus content online with behind-the-scenes footage, cast interviews, outtakes, etc. And once again I've found an un-hyped goldmine. Unfortunately they won't let you embed the video, so here's a few links: Any Arrested Development fan will want to check outtakes of Will Arnett seducing Kenneth and a multi-part interview with him. There's more outtakes here.

I thought the Ask Tina segments were pretty funny. One of the questions was "What do you think about the mixed reviews the show gets?" to which she answered, "I think the positive reviews about the show are right, and the negative reviews must have our show confused... ...with Studio 60." There's a couple of other Studio 60 jokes in there, but generally the questions and answers are pretty funny.

It's too bad it's not well-organized or easy to embed videos, but it's easy enough to click around in the popular videos to find more clips.

Somehow Larry King didn't get the memo on how Seinfeld ended, and the topic came up when Jerry appeared recently to promote Bee Movie. And Jerry's not happy about it, though towards the end of the clip he's pseudo-laughing it off. But you can tell he's trying really hard to not reach across the desk and punch Larry in the face.


Also, if they don't stop promoting the crap out of Bee Movie, I'm going to reach across and punch Jerry in the face. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if all the NBC promos didn't COMPLETELY SUCK and keep appearing during the shows I watch. There's nothing funny or entertaining in "Bee Movie TV Juniors," so stop playing them already.

Despite being unconfirmed as of yet, this isn't hard to believe and is pretty damn awesome. Though Jon Stewart didn't really need to do something to make himself more awesome. Apparently he's offering to pay the writing staff from his own pocket while they're on strike. They still won't be writing, but this way they'll still be making money until the stalemate ends. And that's because of the fact that Jon's a supporter of unions:

In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, the Daily Show host has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report. A Comedy Central spokesman referred my inquiry about this to Stewart's personal publicist, who has yet to respond.

Stewart's intention, says the source, is to ensure his writers will face no financial hardship should the strike, which kicked off at 3 a.m. local time, conclude within that timeframe.

Meanwhile, both Stewart and Stephen Colbert are reportedly working on their contingency plans in case it doesn't. "There are indications that Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert will come back in tweaked form if the strike is a long one, leaning on interviews and other writer-free approaches to keep both programs alive in a very busy political season," reports today's Times.

It should come as no surprise that Stewart is a union die-hard: He tells the current issue of Rolling Stone that his childhood heroes included socialist leaders Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas.

Of course the extension to writers of The Colbert Report is more than just a nice gesture. Stewart owns Busboy Productions which produces The Colbert Report. I'm just extremely happy that they're already preparing to come up with new stuff in other ways instead of just continually showing reruns as other late-night TV will surely resort to. But the article seems to indicate that for these 2 weeks it may be reruns.

You may have noticed I'm pretty interested (and somewhat disturbed) by the fact that the DARPA challenge has been getting more challenging and advanced every year. Basically it's a challenge where teams have cars perform tasks like navigating a trail using GPS and cameras to navigate an obstacle course without any human intervention. Due to the risks of comething like that being fully automated, they started out the competition in the desert, where there were also interesting obstacles such as cliffs, tunnels, etc.


This year's competition really took things to another level in the Urban Challenge where the cars would perform in a real-world like driving environment, complete with roadways, merging, drving through intersections, etc. I had posted about this when it first was described because I started thinking about the implications of where this is all going. That led to the pros and cons of completely autonomous vehicles:

The way I see it, there's a number of overall advantages and disadvantages to cars driving themselves:
Advantages:

• Reduced traffic, especially during rush hour. Can you imagine a world in which there are few or no accidents? And even if there is an accident, you'd never have a stupid "gaper's delay" because drivers of other cars could look at another accident while their car continues to drive itself. Today, people stare at accidents and cause major slowdowns on the highway because they don't maintain their speed when they do so.
• Reduced accidents, and consequently injuries and deaths
• No drunk driving! Your car will take you home. Now getting up once you reached home is another matter.
• Consequence of reduced and more efficient traffic: drastically reduced commute times to going anywhere. Cars on roads with less congestion could travel at very high speeds.

But it's not all peachy. There's plenty of
Disadvantages:

• For those that enjoy the thrill of driving (including me!), you're always going to be against something taking that away from you. So does that mean that the cars would have to allow you to drive if you want to? But if enough people are choosing to do that, the efficiency of automation is lost and you still have traffic and accidents. Maybe they would allow manual driving only during certain times? But then you're going to have people speeding and driving like crazy because it's the only time they get to.
• Related to enjoying driving, what about roadtrips? A roadtrip wouldn't be a lot of fun if your car is zipping around at 150 or 200MPH (maybe more?) and getting you there in half the time.
• Software glitches. All it takes is one bug in any car's software and the result could be fatal. Not to mention the bug would be on a large group of cars, and this could lead to many accidents. While obviously this kind of software would be very well tested to begin with, a software bug could happen to any company, and in this case the results would be devastating.
• What is the car protecting? When it drives around it is going to avoid collisions. But what happens if you're driving around a narrow mountain pass and another car comes barreling around the corner? Would the car choose to launch you off the mountain because it's programmed to avoid collisions at all costs?

The more I think about these things, it seems like a scary but inevitable change that's going to occur. Hence the title of this post..."When," not "If."

This year, 3 vehicles successfully completed the Urban Challenge.

I think I had a pretty good list of implications, and they're still worrisome. Sure all this stuff's still quite a ways off, but this latest challenge helps show it's even closer now than some may like to think.

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Apparently the Writers Guild of America, comprised of 12,000 film and TV writers, is threatening to go on strike because the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers is not meeting their demands for change. Basically they want increased revenue from DVD sales (they get 4 cents per DVD sold now and they want 8), and they want a cut of new distribution mediums - primarily internet content.

A couple of articles (CNN, Forbes) state that the strike will likely start on Monday, and would first affect late-night TV shows since they don't have pre-recorded content. Other primetime shows usually have filmed at least a week or two in advance, but shows like Letterman, The Daily Show, Leno, Conan, etc. would be the first to feel the burden of missing their writers. The shows would have to go off-air and show reruns.

A poster describing the strike to writers

Overall there's a bunch of finger-pointing which makes me wonder if this would get resolved anytime soon. Surely it can't be good for anyone if the fall season starts getting completely disrupted.

The labor impasse concerns royalties from DVD sales -- last negotiated in 1988. Writers also want royalties from the so-called new media -- all the various places their works are distributed, including Internet downloads.

"The future of TV is not going to look like what it's been for the last 30 years," said TV writer Dave Schiff, who has penned scripts for "King of the Hill" and "That '70s Show. So, you know it's not just for us who are currently working, but writers down the line, that we make sure that we get a ... piece of the pie."

But CBS President Nina Tassler said not enough is known yet about new media revenues. "We don't know what the pie is yet, in order to determine how to cut it up," she said recently.

Hollywood producers say the issues are non-starters. "We want to make a deal," Counter told the writers on Wednesday, according to a written statement. However, he added, "No further movement is possible to close the gap between us so long as your DVD proposal remains on the table."

Writers accuse producers of being nonresponsive. "After three and a half months of bargaining, the AMPTP still has not responded to a single one of our important proposals," a statement from the WGA said. "Every issue that matters to writers, including Internet reuse, original writing for new media, DVDs, and jurisdiction, has been ignored. This is completely unacceptable."

TV writer Bryce Zabel said that producing companies "have decided to force the writers into a situation of a strike. Our choice right now is to accept a completely unacceptable deal or to go on strike," he said. "Strike is the only option."

The film industry has also been preparing for a possible strike. "Everyone is sort of madly scrambling to get scripts into production, sometimes a little ahead of what might otherwise be prudent," said Gavin Hood, director of the film "Rendition."

This is a prettty crazy situation, and I'm surprised I hadn't heard anything about it until today. Supposedly the WGA will actually announce when the strike begins sometime today, and then we'll have to see how long it lasts.

It's been less than a month since Radiohead turned the music labels on their head by releasing their album for free on the internet (they weren't the first, but they were the biggest band to-date to do so). At the time, Nine Inch Nails got released from their contract with EMI and Trent Reznor was promising some changes to their distribution model and many suspected he would do something similar to Radiohead. It didn't come as a surprise considering how much he had publicly bashed music labels in the past.

Fast forward about 3 and a half weeks. Trent produced a hip-hop album for Saul Williams called "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" and unsurprisngly many are saying it sounds like hip-hop with a NIN twist to it. The album is now being distributed (as expected) online. One complaint some had with Radiohead's distribution was that the quality of the MP3s was only 128Kbps, which isn't that great. For this album, you can get the entire album in 192Kbps for free. Or, you can cough up $5 to get 192Kbps MP3s, 320Kbps MP3s, or FLAC lossless files.
I haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet, but I am loving this new model. I can easily get the album for free and give it a listen. If I find I really like it, I can directly support the artist by going back and purchasing the album for $5, which is more than they would ever get from a CD sold by a label. If I decide I don't like it, I'm not out any cash for giving it a listen.

As has been mentioned before, it's easier for those that are already popular to start distributing in this way, but it seems like a viable (and likely more profitable) business model which benefits both the artists and the fans by cutting out the middlemen.

Looks like police in California have determined the wildfire that has burned more than 38,000 acres and charred a total 508,000 acres was caused by a boy playing with matches.

The Buckweed Fire began about 2 p.m. (5 p.m. ET) on October 21 in the Agua Dulce community.

Authorities immediately began an investigation, and a day later identified the male juvenile as a suspect, according to a report issued by the sheriff's department. "After talking with the suspect, he admitted playing with matches and starting the fire," the report said.

The boy, whose name and age were not given, was released to the custody of his parents, police said. The case will be presented to the Los Angeles County district attorney for possible charges.

Sixty-three structures, 21 of them homes, were destroyed, and three civilians and two firefighters were injured. The sheriff's department said the fire forced the evacuation of about 15,000 people from their homes. The fires are blamed for 14 deaths and charred a total of more than 508,000 acres, destroying about 1,600 homes.

That's pretty crazy...I wonder how young he is and what charges could be brought up.

You may recall that in April I posted about someone escaping a prison via helicopter to a getaway car. Apparently at the same prison, a similar event occurred again, though this one turned out more ridiculous:

A Belgian inmate made a dramatic escape from jail for the fourth time Sunday evening after his armed accomplices landed in the prison grounds in a hijacked helicopter, prosecutors said Monday.

Nordin Benallal, self-styled "escape king" with several convictions for armed robbery and carjacking, has previously run from a prison van, walked out of jail wearing a wig and sunglasses and scaled a prison wall with a rope ladder.

Sunday, Benallal's accomplices hijacked a helicopter near the prison in Ittre, some 30 km (19 miles) south of Brussels. On landing, the helicopter was crowded by other prisoners, making takeoff impossible and causing it to crash. The pilot and a prisoner were slightly injured.

Benallal and his cohorts then briefly seized two prison warders as hostages and fled in a car parked nearby.

He's escaped by wearing a wig and sunglasses?!? First off, where the hell did he get a wig, and how did the handcuffs not give him away? I mean, maybe he didn't have handcuffs on, but I'd think you'd still need some kind of authorization to be leaving an area that's locked down. Call me crazy.

And how do they not have guard towers or something that would let them fire warning shots at helicopters? Especially after they'd had a helicopter breakout already? That's some poor planning. Between that and the guy being able to escape by wearing a disguise, I'm convinced this prison is guarded by a bunch of mannequins.

Also, this story makes me want to watch 24 or Con Air (but not Prison Break because I hate that show...never has there been so much suspense leading to nothing in the history of television).

Here's a Wikipedia entry on helicopter escapes.

A cage like this could prevent helicopters

The extended trailer for the new season of 24 is now online. For those trying to avoid any spoilers, you should definitely not watch this. It doesn't contain anything more than I've posted about before though, and I don't think it'll make the season any less enjoyable. I'm just glad they realized they lost some steam in Season 6 and are willing to make changes to make fans happy again.

And here's the proof (higher quality on 24trailer.com):

(Thanks to dave for the tip!)

dave submitted an article about some motorized shoes that look pretty absurd. I would love to see what happens if you hit a small bump or crack in the sidewalk.

Now, there is a new way to look like an asshole while moving around town, the Ishoes, motorized shoes. Watch this guy tear ass in his new shoes. I dunno if this makes a person look more lazy than any of the aforementioned transportation devices, not to mention how impractical these look. I wanna see what extreme shit someone can do with this, it might just be "going into traffic". Enjoy...