Today, I stumbled upon an interesting site, TypeAlyzer.com, that identifies the Myers-Briggs Personality Type of any blog author. Usually, these tests involves answering a list of yes/no or multiple choice questions and thus far all the tests I have taken indicate I'm an INTJ. Given my very unusual mix of topics (movies and television shows, making fun of Mr. Gates) for an INTJ, I kind of expected Type Alyzer to be stumped by my blog entries. Surprisingly it did quite well, identifying me instead as an ISTJ.

As a 16 year old teenager, I was extremely fascinated with Physics. Not just Newtonian physics, but in topics such as Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. One of the things I had figured out very early on was how to imagine spatial dimensions greater than three. I could never really explain it to my friends, but this video below easily demonstrates the concepts. Not only that, it extends the idea to temporal dimensions and how to use additional dimensions are used to in Physics today.

Before letting you loose on the video, I need to warn you. Unless you're quite familiar with modern Physics, watching this video might just make your brain explode.

In Quantum of Solace, Bond learns that Mr. White's (Casino Royale) unknown organization is called Quantum, and that it has people in very high places all over the world. People including MI6 agents, presidential assistants, even advisors for the Prime Minister. Not only that, the Quantum leadership is comprised of highly influential businessmen including one Dominic Greene, who is planning to buy most of the water in Bolivia.

On its own, Quantum of Solace doesn't seem like a good Bond movie. However, Quantum of Solace continues the story started by Casino Royale and leaves enough questions unanswered to feel like the middle chapter of a much larger story. It is thus too early to rate Quantum of Solace as its final rating will depend on the next two movies.

Focusing solely on Quantum of Solace, the main villain Dominic Greene feels more like a minor pawn. Still, this is a pawn who is capable of planning a coup in Bolivia, snatch most of the country's water resource and earn a quick buck through this endeavour. Despite the weak villain, the payoff for Daniel Craig's Bond is huge. Casino Royale left Craig's character as BINO (Bond In Name Only). By Quantum of Solace's ending, this BINO finally takes control of his raging anger , desire for vengance and finally focuses his attention on the big picture, stopping Quantum because it is a menace to the world and not chiefly because the organization killed his lover. Craig truly takes on the role of James Bond and the signature gun barrel shot right at the end of the movie seals the deal.

As for Quantum, is a large and deeply entrenched hydra. A hydra that has a lot of unfinished business with Bond. One of the hydra heads I'ld love to see is the person who "oiled" Ms Fields. I get the feeling that Craig's James Bond will take all four contracted movies to uncover and take down the entire Quantum operation. Lets hope the final payoff would be good.

Last month, I mentioned Microsoft spending $300 million dollars on a Bill Gates and Seinfeld advertising campaign. Well this month, Apple has replied with its own ad:

I don't know how much Apple spent on this ad, I'm pretty sure its much less than $300 million dollars and yet this single rejoinder ad is 10 times more effective than any of Microsoft's advertisments.

In 1975, way before the term "Karaoke" was even coined, a pair of British producers created a musical sci-fi/horror film parody called "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Due to the quirky and wildly strange nature of the show (even by today's standards in many parts of the world), it was met with a bad reception by the critics. Despite being given bad reviews and a cold opening, this quirky little musical gathered a sing-along cult following that has endured to this very day. In fact, the movie has grossed almost 140 million to date and the show is so in-grained in Western culture that just about every caucasian I know have at least heard of Rocky Horror and the Time Warp dance.

Fast forward to 2008's Screen Writers Strike.

Josh Whedon, the producer of such television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, wanted to make a statement about the writer's strike. Since the strike was largely about writers not being paid a single cent for anything shown on the Internet, Josh and his friends decided the best way to present their case is to make an Internet-only show. A show that uses Hollywood talent, is done professionally and show Hollywood top management that the Internet is a very viable medium for Hollywood media.

And thus Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was born. Here's the trailer:

Since its Internet-only screening in July, the show is rapidly gathering a cult of its own. In fact, the very first sing-along session has recently been held at a full-capacity screening in Dragon-Con. The show's now being sold on iTunes for $3.99, and a DVD is being produced.

Personally, I hope this little show gets to be as popular if not more popular than the Rocky Horror Show. It deserves to be, as it is one of many milestones to show big media corporations that the future of media is on the Internet. A Rocky Horror Show of our generation.

On June 27 2008, Bill Gates finally handed over all his jobs at Microsoft and is now fully retired. Some of the PR staff at Microsoft must have asked, "Bill, now that you're retired, what do you plan to do?"

Gates must have answered, "You know, I have always wanted to be an actor".

The PR staff went, "Hmmm... perhaps I can arrange something for you."

And after spending $300 million dollars, here is the result:

Bill Gates, sorry but you can't act well, neither can you shake your butt well.

Finally, there's a competitor to the Segway. Toyota has just unveiled it's "Winglet" personal transport assistant robot. Big words, but basically its a smaller, lighter version of the Segway. I am interested in this because such a vehicle could potentially solve Singapore's "last mile" problem.

What I envision is a portable vehicle that can be carried on MRT rides. When you reach your destination, you unpack your portable vehicle and drive directly to your destination. While still not perfect, Toyota's Winglet is a much better fit for Singapore's urban environment than the Segway for many reasons. For one, it is much lighter than the Segway, and the small Winglet can actually be folded into a carrying case! Unfortunately, even the small Winglet is still too heavy with its 10k weight. If Toyota can reduce the weight of the Winglet under 4kg, I believe it would be wildly popular as an urban "bicycle".

Macross Frontier is the latest edition of the Macross Saga. And as with all Macross stories, music always play a vital role. After all, music is an elemental expression of culture and culture has a very powerful influence in the Macross universe. This time, the musicians and composers have outdone themselves, creating not just one but several hit songs for Macross Frontier.

Question: What do talented fans do to express their love of Macross Frontier and its music?

Answer: Wear a scary mask to hide your identity and produce youtube five star tributes videos. This guy's excellent, especially towards the end. Enjoy!

Diamond Crevasse


Don't Be Late


Triangular

For science afficinados who are interested in following the absolute latest news on NASA's Mars Explorer, Phoenix, there is now a new way. Thanks to the Internet (and possibly some astronomy grad students over at Arizona University who had too much spare time), the NASA team is sending out news snippets directly to interested parties via twitter.com.

You can catch the Phoenix's transmissions at http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix. You can even send messages to it and a few lucky fellas actually get replies from the machine!

I must really give kudos to NASA for really adopting the web as a means of communicating with the public.

In conclusion, Iron Man beats Speed Racer at the box office. However, things aren't as clear when we take other criteria into consideration. The visuals of both shows are on par and it really boils down to personal preference of special effects style. It is the story that separates the man from the boys, and Iron Man is not the man. So folks, it is a one-one draw. There are things to love and hate about both shows. If you have the time, watch both and decide for yourself. If you don't have the time, I suggest skipping both shows and watch Indiana Jones instead.

Pseudo-Realistic vs Psychedelic
As with all summer blockbusters in recent years, the main reason for watching them is to gawk at the special effects and both shows have excellent effects. As with past movies based on Marvel comics, Iron Man's special effects follow in the footsteps of Spiderman and X-Men in the use of pseudo-realistic, computer generated imagery. Being a computer graphics buff, I have always been interested in watching the evolution of such techniques over the years. And of course, the graphics is top notch and blends so well with the actual footage that we, the audience, can never really tell what's real and what's not. Perhaps it is a case of over dosage, but with just about every blockbuster using realistic computer generated effects, I have become numb to such effects. As a result, Iron Man's effects felt... ordinary instead of spectacular.

Speed Racer on the other hand, is produced by the infamous Wachowski Brothers. For those who have forgotten, the Wachowski Brothers are responsible for creating "The Matrix". Unfortunately, they are also responsible for creating the dismal sequels "Matrix: Reloaded" and "Matrix: Revolutions". Despite all their faults, the Wachowski Brother's have always been pushing the boundaries of big screen visual effects. They have applied their creativity and hunger for innovation to Speed Racer. The end result, is a shockingly psychedelic splash of brilliant colors that is totally different from any other movie in existence. Speed Racer is also the first movie to incorporate Kill Bill-esque elements, mixing together different visual and genre styles. These are very risky moves that definitely will shock the conservatives and has impacted Speed Racer's box office figures. However, I have to give the Wachowski Brothers some kudos for having the balls to do something different and very memorable.

Stark Industries vs Royalton Industries
Interestingly, the villain in both Iron Man and Speed Racer is the big bad corporation, personified an evil Executive as the head of the company.

In Iron Man, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is a brilliant scientist/engineer/playboy who inherited his daddy's weapons manufacturing mega-corporation. After escaping from terrorist kidnappers who forced him to build weapons of mass destruction, Stark decides to turn his company away from producing weapons. Nobel intentions indeed. If I were a determined chief executive seriously wanting to turn the company around, I would hide in my multi-million basement designing a suit of high tech battle armor. Huh? I wonder hallucinogen Tony Stark is taking there.

Meanwhile, his number two executive decides Stark has finally gone too crazy (I don't blame him, Stark IS crazy) and decides it is time for him head the company. Like any good number two executive, he decides the best option is to kill Stark. I guess the number two is also taking hallucinogens, because he too creates his own high tech battle armor and both executives slug it out metal-o-metal like two cavemen.

Speed Racer is the story about a boy (Emile Hirsch), his family, and his dream to become a professional racer. The only problem is, he discovers that the world of racing, and every single race result is tightly controlled by automobile conglomerates who only care about how race results affect their company revenue. If he discovers that if he does not race for his would-be sponsor Royalton Industries, then he won't even be able to race at all. "What can I do? I only know how to race", ponders Speed Racer who is blocked at the driveway.

I won't go into details as to how Speed solves his problem and bring down the evil Royalton Industries, save to say that it is a story about sticking to his dreams, believing in himself and having strong family values. If this type of story appeals to you, then ignore the badly done psychedelic trailer and do give Speed Racer the movie a chance. The movie itself may just surprise you.

Introduction
Today, I am going to attempt something difficult. I will not only review two movies (Iron Man and Speed Racer), I will do so with an unconventional format. The reason for doing so is because I have been inspired by one of these movies. I hope when you reach the end of this review, you will know which movie I am refering to. So without further adieu, here goes... wish me luck!

While The Forbidden Kingdom is no where near the calibre of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" in terms of story telling, the movie is still a must watch for several reasons. For one, it stars both Jackie Chan and Jet Lee in their native Martial Arts genre. This only means one thing, superb fight sequences that have been sorely missing from both Eastern and Western cinema screens for many years. After a long drought, it is refreshing to once again see good old martial art fights that do not use quick film cuts and special effects to disguise the fact that none of the young and famous actors/actresses have any physical proficiency, much less any background in Martial Arts. And like Crouching Tiger, the fight sequences are spectacular indeed.

Another reason to watch The Forbidden Kingdom is the mythology. For Eastern audience, especially us Chinese, the story is bizarre mix of several familiar, centuries old stories mixed in with modern elements. To a Western audience, the movie serves as an introduction to centuries old classic Chinese myths and folklore such as the Monkey God, Sun Wukong (Jet Lee).

The Forbidden Kingdom is a fusion of Eastern and Western elements. In terms of story, the movie reminds me of two old TV series Hercules and Xena, which uses mythical characters in a heavily adapted version of the original story. The adapted story in this case is an early tale in Journey to the West (西游记). Specifically it is the story of 孙悟空大闹天宫, where Sun Wukong the Monkey God (Jet Lee) wrecked havoc the Heavenly Kingdom (or as the movie calls it, The Forbidden Kingdom). The Forbidden Kingdom, for those who do not know, is home of the Gods and Immortals. It is largely analogous to Mount Olympus of Greek mythology. In the original story, the Monkey God could not be subdued by heavenly troops led by Heavenly Marshal Erlang Shen (二郎神). It took The Buddah himself to finally subdue the naughty Monkey God and thus Sun Wukong the Monkey God was imprisoned for centuries under the Five Finger Mountains (五指山).

The difference in The Forbidden Kingdom is that instead of winning the fight against the heavenly troops, the Monkey God was tricked by the "Jade Warlord" (an evil version of the Heavenly Marshal Erlang?) and is turned into stone. Just before that happens, Wukong manages to cast his magical staff out into The Middle Kingdom (China) where it awaits a mysterious traveller who would eventually return the magical staff back to the Monkey God. If you have seen the trailer, you would know that the traveller is a young American called Jason Tripitaka (Michael Angarano) who acquires Wukong's magical staff in 2008 and travels back to medieval China, where he meets the Drunken Scholar Lu Yan (Jackie Chan) and Little Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei). Thus begins the adventures of an American boy in medieval China, learning kungfu whilst trying to return a magical staff to a stone monkey statue.

It is a classic tale of good vs evil, but then again the plot doesn't really matter. The Forbidden Kingdom is enjoyable simply because it a mish mash of classics such as The Karate Kid, The Drunken Master (醉拳), Warriors from Mount Zu (蜀山劍俠) and more.

As we approach April, my heart can't help but flutter in anticipation of hree shows that will finally start airing after such a long break without any ground breaking shows.

Macross Frontier
The first show is Macross Frontier, a brand new anime series that picks up the on story of Macross. For those of you need a reminder Macross, also called Robotech when it aired in Singapore over 2 decades ago, is the story of the first Human-Zentraedi war that was eventually stopped by the love triangle trio of Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes and the singing of Lynn Minmei. Macross Frontier carries the story forward several centuries, to an age where the surviving Humans and Zentraedi work together to colonize the galaxy via huge colony ships.

To whet your appetite, here's a promo music video for Macross Frontier:

By the way if you have not heard the rumor, Toby Maguire of Spiderman fame has purchased the rights to create a live action Robotech movie. So who knows? In a few years there might actually be a Hollywood version of Robotech.

House
That's right, one of my current favorite characters on television, Gregory House is back from the Writer's Strike with 6 new episodes starting at the end of April.

I know many people who watch the show has a love-hate relation with Gregory House. For me, I just feel that he is like me in quite a few ways that watching the show, watcing House is almost like watching a filtered mirror of myself. I understand how House thinks, and unlike most people I do not see him as an egotistical, selfish person. Instead behind the facade most people cannot see past, I see a deeply caring, loving soul who has been cut too many times but still continues to care and love.

Battlestar Galactica
The show that I have really truly been aching for is the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica. After the long one year haitus, the uncertainty of the Writer's Guild strike, tele-movie Razor that only raised more questions than it answered, it is good to finally have the show back on television.

I once again reiterate my prediction that Ellen Tigh is the final cylon!

I had a dream this morning. I can't remember the details now, but I do remember who I dreamed of. I guess I could call her my childhood love. She was someone I saw on television when I was just a small boy. Somehow, I simply fell in love with the first time I saw those big round eyes of hears. I didn't even know her name, neither could I remember her character's name. All I know is that I have this infatuation over her.

During my days in the Polytechnic, I met a girl who looked remarkably similar to her. It was that infatuation that spurred me to approach this girl, and got to know her if only casually. Her name is Chelsea, at least thats what I think it is. Time has blurred my memory. Anyway, I never saw her again after her graduation. Since them, I have never thought about Laurie nor the young actress again until I had this dream today.

The only clue I have is the show's name, "The Wonder Years". Thanks to the miracle of the today's Internet, I now know she played the character of Gwendolyn Cooper. Her real name, is Danica Mae McKellar, born in January 1975 just a shy three months after my own birthday, and yes she is as lovely as the first time I saw her on television nearly 2 decades ago. She is still an actress today, but unfortunately I have never seen any of them since these shows aren't available in Singapore. However I truly am surprised that she was in one of my favorite shows, The West Wing. How could I have missed that, I have no idea.

What is more surreal for me, is that Miss McKellar has a degree in Mathematics, have published scientific papers as an undergraduate student and recently wrote a book encouraging women to take up Mathematics. Beauty, brains and most of all a Heart. That is the perfect combination and it makes me feel as if I could fall in love with her all over again like I did so many years ago. Alas she is all the way on the other side of the globe and busy with her Hollywood career! Oh well, I guess I just have to look for someone closer to home. :)

Recently I have been doing a lot of thinking about digital information, the music and movie industry and their tussles with digital music/movies and P2P networks.

What I have been trying to think of is a win-win solution for all parties involved. That is, to come up with a digital information distribution business model that enable the music and movie industry to earn a good profit, to ensure producers such as musicians, actors, directors, writers all get a fair share of their cut and of course, that we as consumers still continue to get what we want (high quality music) at what we believe is a fair price. The result, is this series of articles examining what's wrong with the current model and what needs to change to create a robust entertainment market.

Today, we focus specifically on why the Internet marketplace is so different from a normal brick and mortar market place that the entertainment industry is used to.

One Cent Storage, Reproduction and Distribution

As I have mentioned in the first article, the main difference between a typical brick and mortar Economics and Internet Economics is that digital storage, digital reproduction (or copying) and digital distribution are so cheap that its total cost is still less 1 cent per product sold. This is very different from real world storage and distribution where materials, manpower, warehouses, ships, trucks and store space all costs a significant amount money.

In fact when producing a digital product, there are only three substantial financial costs involved:

1. The one time cost of creating the first copy of the digital product.
2. The cost of marketing and advertising.
3. The cost of per-unit-sold royalties, licenses and residuals.
   

The first two costs are largely fixed and from a basic economic perspective, would mainly influence when a product breaks even. The third cost is going to be the bane of companies trying to enter the Internet with digital products as all other per-unit costs such as manufacturing, distribution costs drop to zero, these per-unit royalties to third parties become major factors in the final cost of these digital products. I believe the television and movie industries and to a lesser extent the music industry suffers from cumbersome per-unit costs that prevent them from selling their digital products at low prices.

Unfortunately, this is something the entertainment industry will have to solve through legal re-negotiations. However, once it is done the entertainment industry will be able to leverage the tremendous economies of scale advantages that the Internet brings.

The Long Tail
One of the well documented effects of having near-zero cost storage, reproduction and distribution is popularly called the Long Tail effect. The idea is that an "Internet Store" is able to stock up several orders of magnitude more songs/videos/movies than any brick and mortar stores can ever imagine stocking up. For example, if the operating cost of a HMV superstore allows it to stock 10,000 unique titles, then an Internet Store with the same operating cost can probably stock several million unique titles. The impact of having such a huge stockpile of music and video is that only half their revenue comes from Blockbuster Movies and Billboard Music. From another perspective, they effectively doubled their revenue by selling non-Blockbuster/Billboard products.

If you are really interested in how businesses can leverage the Internet or just how the world works, I seriously recommend reading the book "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" by Chris Anderson, current Wired magazine's editor-in-chief. The book is written for the layperson and reiterates its main points through different viewpoints that you get a pretty good understanding of why the long tail effect is so critical to Internet businesses.

The entertainment industry in particular, needs to get away from thinking solely about Blockbuster Movies and Billboard Songs and focus on serving up on the Internet everything they have produced in the past century. The entertainment industry should aos start promoting themselves with themes such as "The Place for Music" or "Where Movies Live". The movie industry, for example, can adopt genre specific promos such as Romantic Comedy/Sci-fi Month. In fact, this is exactly what Amazon.com has been doing for the past decade.

Most importantly, the entertainment industry must realize that they have always been a long tailed business. There is still a significant audience who still watch "Gone With The Wind" even though it was produced nearly 70 years ago. Even today, I frequently see posts made by teenagers who have just discovered Star Trek for the first time and are hungry for more. There are many more "long burning" products that continue to sell years and even decades after their initial release. The entertainment industry has largely neglected these "long burn" products over "flash burn" products. For the first time ever, the Internet Store offers an opportunity to stock both types of products without worrying about the cost of retail space.

In the next article, I will cover the entertainment industry's misteps with digital rights management and detail a digital copyright management scheme that both consumers and the industry can accept.

Recently I have been doing a lot of thinking about digital information, the music and movie industry and their tussles with digital music/movies and P2P networks.

What I have been trying to think of is a win-win solution for all parties involved. That is, to come up with a digital information distribution business model that enable the music and movie industry to earn a good profit, to ensure producers such as musicians, actors, directors, writers all get a fair share of their cut and of course, that we as consumers still continue to get what we want (high quality music) at what we believe is a fair price. The result, is this series of articles examining what's wrong with the current model and what needs to change to create a robust entertainment market.

The Entertainment Industry As It Is Today, Is Flawed
I do not need to repeat what just about every blog and news article is saying, that the entertainment industry's current view of their own industry is seriously flawed. For example, the four major music distribution companies, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner, think they are selling music but actually they are only selling a specific type of music that I call "Billboard Music". Likewise the movie industry is currently mostly only interested in selling "Blockbuster Movies".

The entertainment industry cannot be blamed for selling Billboard Music and Blockbuster Movies because they are only following the brick and mortar Economics: Sell as many of the most popular products. It is a good model that has worked for decades, so why change to something new? One reason is that the assumptions made by Economics about brick and mortar businesses changed when a company moves to the Internet.

This change in Economics is somewhat similar to the situation in the early 1910s when Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity. Relativity did not prove that Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is wrong. Newtonian gravity continues to be accurate on Earth even today. In fact, the only difference is that Newton assumed the force of gravity is constant throughout the universe whereas Einstein showed that the force of gravity is different at different locations in the universe. The result is that as long as we stay on Earth, both Newton as well as Einstein's formulas work equally well. When we move into space, Einstein's relativity formulas are much more accurate than Newton's.

The entertainment industry faces the same issue today. The laws of brick and mortar Economics would continue to work so long as the entertainment industry stays in the brick and mortar world. If the entertainment industry decides to move (and has to move) into the much larger universe of cyberspace, then it better be using the laws of Internet Economics and not the laws of brick and mortar Economics.

Like Newton's Laws, the brick and mortar laws of Economics makes the assumption that every resource, every step, every process used to bring a product to market costs money. It takes money to buy raw materials, hire people, store stuff, transport stuff, buy machinery. Yet strangely in the laws of Internet Economics, there are certain resources and certain processes that are so cheap that they are essentially do not even cost a cent per product sold. This might seem like a small difference between brick and mortar Economics and Internet Economics, but as we will see in the next article, the implications are huge.

According to this Channel NewsAsia report, SingTel has "more or less sealed the deal" with Apple to be the sole distributor if the hotly desired phone in Singapore. Given that SingTel has always been the leader in business oriented mobile phones and its leadership position in telecommunications in Singapore, it is not much of a surprise that Apple would choose to tie up with the company.

The report also hints that the rumored September 2008 launch date might also coincide with the launch of a 3G version of the iPhone. It certainly coincide well with many analyst predictions for a mid-2008 3G iPhone debut.

Meanwhile, I noticed today that M1 has started an aggressive new campaign to grab more subscribers before iPhone fever hits our tiny island. I anticipate StarHub to begin their campaign soon.

During January's MacWorld 2008 Keynote speech, Steve Jobs introduced the Time Capsule product that allow Leopard users to backup their data wirelessly to a Time Capsule. I pointed out at that time that the Time Capsule:

1. Was nothing more than an Airport Extreme Base Station with a built in server-grade Hard Disk.


2. Was way too expensive as a product.


3. That Apple should have just enabled wireless backup on the Airport Extreme instead of introducing the Time Capsule

Well lo and behold with this week's Airport Extreme update, Apple has done exactly what I said in point 3. The Airport Extreme can now wirelessly backup to any attached USB drive via Time Machine. This update exactly duplicates what the Time Capsule is doing at a much, much cheaper price point.

Way to go Apple, I pity all the early adopters who went to buy the expensive Time Capsule when they could have waited two months and buy an Airport Extreme and USB drive for the exact same functionality at half the Time Capsule price.

Today I stumbled upon a video that presents a very interesting viewpoint on piracy. It basically says, if you're a corporation who is suffering from piracy issues, then there is something wrong with your business and your business model. I know, it sounds wierd when I present it like that, but if you watch the video it actually makes sense. So without further ado, here is the video of The Medici Summit on March 3, 2008 on the topic "The Pirate's Dilemma".

If you're interested in knowing more, read Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism.

Until today, I never realized that for the past 2 years, I have been dilligently reading daily news updates from 22 different sites. These sites include major news networks such as BBC, Reuters, Channel News Asia for local news and for technology news, I follow Slashdot and Digg. I also follow news related to Apple, just because it is usually interesting and fun to read. For that, I read from MacRumors, AppleInsider as well as news released by Apple itself. Besides all of these, I also follow a few blogs, these are usually related to machine learning or natural language processing.

So how have I been able to read from so many disparate sites on a daily basis? To be honest, it is not an easy process. Just about every news website as well as blogs have an RSS news feed these days. I used Yahoo Pipes! to combine and sort all of these news feeds into a smaller number of news feeds, each focusing on a specific topic such as "Tech News", "Singapore News" and "Apple News". Finally, I use a FireFox extension called Sage that presents the piped news in a nice format on my web browser. So yes this is how I have been reading news everyday for the past 2+ years, and yes I know I am geeky.

Well this is no longer the case! Today, I stumbled upon a new Google product called Google Reader that handles everything for me so I don't have to jump through all the hoops ever again.


All I need to do is read the news. :)

This piece of news spread like lightning across the internet. Gary Gygax, father of the role playing game, died today at the age of 69.

While I did dabble in Dungeons and Dragons as well as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons when I was in Secondary School, it never became a great love because it required huge investments in time and money. However, the name Gary Gygax was already legendary in the 1980s. I have a few friends who were heavily into table-top RPGs and Gygax's name was always whispered with a tone of reverence. And most certainly, what I got out of those few role playing sessions was a serious love affair with the fantasy medieval genre.

Since the retro 80s, I have devoured dozens of fantasy literature, including the many books of David and Leigh Eddings, the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan and the entire Midkemia and Tsuranni storyline by Raymond E. Feist. Even my interest in MMOs came about because it was a role playing game. Marlyene saw how EverQuest held my attention when she was playing it and gave me a copy for my birthday so many years ago. For sure, that love of the MMORPG genre that continues to this day.

So it is with great sadness as I see all these legendary people die of old age one after another in the past few years. So here is a quick tribute to a few other great people who have recently left us.

Keith Parkinson (October 22, 1958 - October 26, 2005), fantasy artist and illustrator for so many TSR products, DragonLance and Forgotten Realms books, Magic: The Gathering cards and MMO cover illustrations for EverQuest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. By the way, if you are really interested in his works, Kingsgate: The Art of Keith Parkinson is the book to get.

Leigh Eddings (?? - Feburary 28, 2007), silent co-author with her husband David Eddings, has her words woven in parts of The Belgariad and The Malloreon series. She is officially recognized as co-author with Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, both of which are still my favorite books.

Robert Jordan (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), probably best known as the author of the epic 12 books long Wheel of Time series and a series of Conan The Barbarian books. I hope the final book, A Memory of Light, would be a fitting tribute to the man.

No Country for Old Men is an captivating movie with little words but a lot to show. For me, the movie asks a question: How much control do you really have in your life? And I am sure that if I watched this movie a year later, and a decade later, the movie will ask different questions. In a way, I think you get a lot more out of this movie the older you get.

On the surface, No Country is like an "action movie" where Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon 2 millon in drug money and as a consequence gets hunted down by a psychotic killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who wants the money for himself. Meanwhile, the star of this movie Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to stop Chigurh.

At least, that is what happens when you look at the actions of these men. When you look deeper and actually listen to what these characters say, you would realize this is not an action movie. It is a movie about living. Throughout the movie, these men never agonized over what to do nor look back and ponder if they've made the right choice. No, these men are experts in their respective fields. Moss is a Vietnam war veteran who has seen more than his share of action in the past and it shows in the way he cunningly avoids Chigurh and figures out how he was being tracked. Chigurh is a masterful strategist who is able to anticipate what his prey would do, although he is not as sure about non-experts. Sheriff Bell easily anticipates both hunter and prey's moves. Watching No Country is like watching a trio of warriors in their dance of death, where every move is precise and accurate. And with warriors of this calibre, only one thing separates them; random luck.

The ending of this movie is anything but conventional. I wish I could reveal more but I'm afraid this would spoil the ending. And it is what happens in the last 5 minutes of this movie that turns it from an "action movie" to an introspective movie worthy of at least a few awards. Javier Bardem's performance as Anton Chigurh should easily earn him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Coen Brothers also stand a good chance of winning Best Director or perhaps even Best Picture, although I think Best Picture is a long shot.

Jumper tries to follow in the footsteps of great movies such as The Fugitive and The Matrix. According to RottenTomatoes's 94 critics, it tries but ultimately jumps short of its targets. I tend to agree with them, but my verdict probably isn't as harsh.

I will use The Fugitive to explain why. One famous scene midway through The Fugitive a small showdown between Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) and United States Marshal Samuel Gerard inside a storm drain. Kimble holds his hands up high as a sign of surrender and tells Gerard, "I didn't kill my wife". Gerard replies with an unsympathetic "I don't care". On hearing this, Kimble escapes by jumping off the storm drain and falls a hundred meters into the freezing midnight water. Now imagine how you would feel if the movie ended right there, with promises that the story will unfold in the next part of The Fugitive movie trilogy.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

That basically describes what happens in Jumper. Haden Christensen stars as David Rice, a young man with an extraordinary ability to "jump" across vast distances in the blink of an eye. Samuel L. Jackson stars as Roland Cox, an uncaring NSA agent slash "Paladin" with high tech toys tasked to bring down Jumpers by any means necessary. Oh yes, Cox also has a personal vendetta to kill all Jumpers. All Jumpers as criminals and Cox often spout the lines "You'll eventually kill someone. It always ends up the same way" before ritualistically unwrapping a large knife and kills the captured jumper in cold blood. And now Cox has caught a new Jumper scent, Christensen's David Rice. Thus begins a relentless chase across the world. This naturally leads to a series of showdowns and narrow escapes at various locales by Rice who ultimately ends the movie with the declaration, "I'm different, I won't kill", and leaves Cox stranded in a mountain cave. End of movie.

Jumper basically sets the stage for a much larger story to come and for all I know, the entire story could be as good as The Fugitive turned out to be. On the other hand, it could end up like The Matrix trilogy. There's no way to know now. All we know now is that the visual effects are weak. The fight sequences essentially comprises of splicing together one second footages of London, Tokyo, the Sphinx, London again, some desert, Chetchnia, some river, Tokyo again, ad nauseum.

So there you have it, Jumper is the first third of a longer story arc which could literally go anywhere, with effects that definitely pale in comparison to The Matrix trilogy. In other words, it is a weak start. And if the Jumper trilogy follows the usual trend of weaker sequels, then it is a movie trilogy not worth watching.

I had an interview yesterday and I totally botched it. What happened? Basically, I gave the interviewer an impression that I am some junior programmer who know nothing about development of Enterprise grade applications. Of course, anyone who has ever worked with me professionally would immediately scoff at the notion that I'm a "junior programmer", so what happened?

There are several reasons, all of which are my fault. Prior to this interview, I have always had jobs through people who are already familiar with my level of knowledge and experience. The interview process in these cases were mere formalities and I usually able to jump straight into whatever projects they required me to do. And I am usually able to deliver beyond expectations. Thus, I was not well equipped to handle a "real" interview by people who totally do not know me, especially my sometimes unorthodox ways of doing things.

As a consequence of my lack of experience with interviews, I had focused solely on preparing my case based on my skills in informatics research and machine learning. These were things the interviewer were totally uninterested in because they were looking at me as a software developer and most definitely have already excluded me as an expert in machine learning. I did not prepare myself in anyway to handle any software development questions and was immediately struck dumb by the interviewer's first question, "How do you do debugging?".

To me, that is a very open ended question that heavily depends on what kind of application, and what resources I have available. If I have an automated build system that runs daily tests, I would already know which modules to look at. If all I had was an IDE debugger, or worse just the source code and text editor, I would be doing manual debugging by tracing variables and inserting debug statements. Since this was the very first question, I figured the interviewer wanted to know that I was at least competent in basic debugging techniques and I told them I would use a debugger to step through the source code and trace variables. If needed, I would put in debug statements.

"How do you go about designing an application?"

Again, this very open ended question stunned me. One could literally write a series of books on this and the interviewer wants me to summarize it in a few short sentences? On hindsight, I should have answered it the "standard way", that is to take a top down approach by breaking down the application into its major parts. For instance, a J2EE or web based application would first be broken into standard n-tiers, a data-store/database tier, a "business logic" tier and a presentation/web tier. I would then drill down one level to design a suitable database schema for the application, build OO business-level component managers around the database to manage database transactions and ensure that only properly validated data goes into the database as well as provide only the necessary data for each business action, etc...

I did not answer that because to me, it was elementary stuff that I have been doing for over a decade. And all that experience has told me that 90% of any application is straightforward in terms of design, implementation, coding and maintenance. As a seasoned developer, I know that it is the remaining 10% of that application that eats up the majority of development time. As a result, I usually start with an iterative bottom-up approach by constantly hammering that 10% difficult to code part of the system until it is done before moving on to tackle the rest of the application, which can be done in a jiffy if I have available RAD tools.

I should have said all this in the interview. Instead, I jumped straight ahead into difficult, the "iterative, bottom-up" part. This gave the interviewers the impression that I knew nothing of Enterprise grade application development *groan*. By that point, I basically shot myself in the leg and blew the interview away.

The interviewer switched to an even lower gear by asking me even more junior level questions, such as what is the "third normal form" in database design. I have been designing databases for over a decade, these design rules are so ingrained in me that I do not need to validate my designs against these "normal forms" to know that I have a fully normalized, well indexed database. Oh for pete's sake, how am I supposed to remember the formal definition of something I learnt over 10 years ago? Anyway, my failure to answer what the third normal form is probably sealed the interviewer's impression of me as a know-nothing programmer.

That's the end of that job interview. I'm totally disgusted with myself right now.

As usual, there are several Hollywood blockbusters to watch out for this year. Batman returns in The Dark Knight, James Bond returns in Quantum of Solace, Harrison Ford returns to the big screen as Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, comic book fans can look forward to Iron Man and Hell Boy and trekkers all look forward to the eleventh Star Trek movie.

I am not going to talk about blockbusters today. I mean, what is the fun of having every other blog out there covering the exact same blockbuster movies? So today, I figured I'll cover a few non-blockbuster level movies to watch out for in 2008. To kick things off, here's a musical to watch out for.


Mama Mia!
I love 80s retro music, especially from unconventional sounding bands such as Abba. I also love movie musicals such as Annie, Moulin Rouge and the more recent Enchanted. So what could be better than a musical turned movie chock full of Abba songs? Lets see... I can top that by adding well known actors such as Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth. What you end up with is Mama Mia! the movie.

I have not seen the musical, but I have only heard good things about it. Scheduled to be released in July in the United States, I anticipate this movie will be a big hit and earn another heapload of royalties for Abba.

Sex and the City - The Movie
I know right now, the guys are groaning while the girls are swooning at this piece of news. Yes, the popular HBO television series Sex and the City is coming to the big screen. Most of the female friends I know absolutely love Carrie Bradshaw and her three best friends, conservative Charlotte, sexually aggressive Samantha and the slightly neurotic working mum Miranda.

Not much is known about the movie right now, other than the fact that it takes place four years after the end of the HBO series. Oh, and apparently the producers are so confident about the success of the movie that they already have plans to make a sequel movie. I would not be at all surprised if this movie turns out to be a sleeper hit. Sex will hit the big screen in May in the United States.

Jumper
I saw an early trailer for this movie when I was in the cinema a couple of months ago and the premise intrigued me. With a production budget of $100 million, this movie is not exactly a sleeper but it isn't exactly a blockbuster level movie either. I guess I'll call it a blockbuster wannabe. From the look of the trailer, it certainly has the required amount of action and special effects. Having Samuel L. Jackson in the cast and director Doug Liman (who also directed the Bourne trilogy) certainly helps with the street cred too.

Watch out for Jumper, for it could be the start of the next movie franchise in the coming years.

A lot has been said about the Semantic Web and how it could change the face of the web. Indeed many well established, well credentialed computer scientists have put in a lot of effort into turning the semantic web into a reality. Surely a nobody like me has no right to doubt these people, some of whom are people I have looked up to for a long time. Yet, I am very sure that the Semantic Web, in its current form, would never be a reality.

There are reasons why I can say this with such conviction and authority. The main reason Semantic Web will be a failure is because it is designed by computer scientists who are most familiar with logic, discrete mathematics and symbolic processing. These are people who believe the world can be represented in purely logical terms. At the 2004 WWW Conference, Sir Tim Berners Lee has categorically stated as much when he said he believe the Semantic Web does not need to represent uncertainty.

In simple language, computer scientists tend to have very rigid definitions of the world. For example, a car might be defined as a powered machine with four wheels that can roll around. Under this definition, a car can never have three wheels. At this point, computer scientists would either tweak their rigid definition of cars to fit three-wheeled cars, or label the three-wheeled car as a "tri-car" and classify it as a cousin of the car under a common ancestor, "vehicles". And as more wierd cars get designed and produced, computer scientists would have to revise the rigid definition of what is a car.

Is this the only way to define stuff? Of course not.

Natural language processing researchers have been facing this exact same problem since the late 1950s, when Professor Noam Chomsky's pioneering work on the language hierarchy and specifically, context-free grammar. In simple layman terms, all human sentences has structure and this structure can be discovered by applying a set of fixed grammar production rules. For 20 years, researchers have tried to discover the ultimate set of production rules for human languages such as English. No one succeeded because human language is ambiguous in nature.

The simplest example I can give is the common linguist's example. The word "bank" has multiple meanings. "Bank" could refer to a financial institution where people can deposit money and earn interest. "Bank" could also refer to sloping land found beside a body of water such as rivers and lakes. In fact, WordNet lists 18 different possible meanings that can be attached to the word "bank". No amount of logic nor discrete structures that computer scientists love so much could accurately capture the meaning of human languages. In fact to this day, after nearly half a century of research effort, the research area of Word Sense Disambiguation (the task of identifying exactly which meaning is being used in a sentence or passage), particularly in what WSD researchers call the "all words" task, is still a very open research topic.

In the 1980s, significant progress was made when natural language researchers gave up on the use of purely logical or discrete systems and started employing statistical techniques. The real-world accuracy of language processing systems using discrete/logical methods was around the 30-50% mark. Using statistical methods, that accuracy jumped up to the 70-90% range. In some of the simpler research areas such as speech recognition, near-human performance of 95+% has been achieved.

I do not believe this is the forum to go into details as to why statistical methods can have such a huge improvement over logic based systems (if you really want a clue, look up on the Zip-Mandelbrot Law). I think it is sufficient to say that I believe all languages (yes, that includes programming and mathematical languages) are inherently ambiguous when it comes to conveying meaning (ie, semantics). As a result, a Semantic Web that does not incorporate statistics or uncertainty would never be successful in goal of transparent information and knowledge transfer on the web.

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. Here is the final part of my article detailing what I think went wrong.


Part Four: MacBook Air
When I first saw the new sub-notebook introduced by Apple, my first thought was that it is designed for the working woman. The MacBook Air is something a sales person or insurance would want to carry around for their jobs. Indeed the petite svelte notebook would even help enhance the sales pitch.

Things started going downhill once it was apparent that Apple has made a lot of compromises on the world's thinnest notebook. For example, the lack of an Etherenet port means that you can only connect the MacBook Air to a wireless network. Personally, that is the killer issue for me. Apple is assuming that wireless networks are now ubiquitous and that we can connect to any wireless network we wish. The reality is quite different. Yes, wireless networks are quite common these days but most companies also understand the security risks involved and either intentionally do not deploy a wireless network or only provide very restricted access to company resources via a wireless network. Even with Singapore and its Wireless@SG initiative, not every public area has a usable wireless connection. In the United States, I have stayed in hotels such as the Holiday Inn near Washington, Double Tree in New York that only offer wired network connections in every room. These are all stumbling blocks that a roaming user of the MacBook Air will face on a daily basis.

The single USB port is another issue that complicate matters because it means having to lug around an additional USB hub to expand the number of USB ports available. Apple could have used an internal built in hub and save its users the hassle. Besides the two issues I have mentioned, there are a host of other myriad issues that comes from the compromises Apple has made to come up with such a tiny laptop. Issues such as slow bootups, an extremely hot base and so on.

My guess is the market will view MacBook Air as a niche product that will be purchased for its looks and small size. Thanks to Steve Job's reality distortion field, MacBook Air might turn out to be a popular item but I am thinking it will never be as popular as its bigger brothers, the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. This is part three of a four part article detailing what I think went wrong.

Part Three: iTunes Movie Rentals

During Steve Job's keynote speech, he mentioned that so far no company has been truly successful in converging the television with computers and the Internet. Apple's last attempt was the AppleTV and it failed. This year, they are having a second attempt with a revamped AppleTV and the new iTunes Movie Rentals service.

Here is my 8 ball prediction: Sorry Apple, it still won't work.

In this day and age of instant availability provided by Internet companies like YouTube, and DivX's Stage6, people want more than just movies. People also want television shows. In fact, I'll even assert that both television shows and movies will not be enough. The internet era television needs made for Internet programs that cater to mobile viewers who can watch any show any where and at any time. I have digressed quite a bit off from the original topic, which is Apple's second attempt at television convergence.

A simple movie rental service would not capture any significant market. Apple's iTunes Movie Rentals service however, is much worse than a movie rental service. It is an exorbitantly expensive premium (roughly S$4.50 per DVD movie) movie rental service that has the slowest release dates (new movies are only available 30 days after DVDs are available for sale) and has an incredibly short rental time (24 hours). Just check around. Even in Singapore, I can find a rental service that is cheaper, allows me to rent both movies as well as television shows, and allow me to watch the rented DVDs over any period of time I wish.

On the whole, iTunes Movie Rentals is simply not compelling enough.

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. This is part two of a four part article detailing what I think went wrong.

Before I begin, let me first say that I will not be discussing the iPhone updates mainly because the iPhone will probably not be available in Singapore before 2009 (or late 2008 if a miracle happens).

Part Two: iPod Touch Paid Software Upgrade
Before today, I have always said that Apple's strategy with the iPod Touch was perfect. Apple had positioned the iPod Touch as a premium/future version of the iPod both in the US and abroad. More importantly, the iPod Touch is perfectly positioned for people who want the iPhone now but cannot legally purchase the lickable phone in their country (such is the case in Singapore).

I am completely baffled as to why Apple has decided to "punish" first-mover customers who have bought an iPod Touch with a US$20 software upgrade cost. This is especially bad when Steve Jobs also announced that new iPod Touch customers get the exact same software update for free. Note that iPhone customers also received a largely similar software update for free too.

This is bound to leave a sour taste for existing international customers, such as those in Singapore, who have bought the iPod Touch. Unless Apple does something fast, I believe this will quickly turn into a public relations nightmare for both Apple's iPod and iPhone product lines.

Apple has had a pretty good track record of introducing innovative and well designed products at their annual MacWorld Expo over the past 4 to 5 years. However, this year's MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs has gotten it all wrong. Lets follow the four step keynote speech that was given, shall we?

Part One: Time Capsule

The first new product introduced by Apple at MacWorld 2008 is the Time Capsule, a wireless backup solution that works exclusively with Leopard's Time Machine. I do admit that on the surface, the concept of the Time Capsule is nice. It matches especially well with Apple's strategy of predominant selling mobile laptops and sub-notebooks.

However, the Time Capsule is nothing more than Apple's AirPort Extreme Base Station with an internal 500GB hard drive plugged-in. I did a quick check at the online Singapore Apple Store today. The Time Capsule has an estimated cost of S$788, presumably for the 500GB model. On the other hand, the AirPort Extreme Base Station is selling for S$288. That is a 500 dollar difference, or exactly $1 per Gigabyte.

In contrast, you can get a 500 Gigabyte hard disk at Sim Lim Square today for no more than S$200. That is 40 cents per Gigabyte. As a backup solution, it would be much cheaper to simply buy an AirPort Extreme Base Station and a hard drive than to buy the Time Capsule. Naturally, Apple has foreseen this and surprise, surprise, the current AirPort Extreme firmware does not work with Time Machine.

Based on Apple's previous explanation, the only change required to turn the AirPort Extreme into a Time Capsule should be as simple as updating the firmware of the AirPort Extreme Base Station with some modified software. And being a Computer Scientist, I know it can be a moderately simple modification that should not involve more than modifying a hundred lines of code. It should be something that can be completely solved, debugged, tested and quality assured in a few engineering man days.

As it currently stands, even when I factor in the convenience of not having to physically connect up a server grade hard drive, I find it very difficult to accept Time Capsule's pricing. I find it even more difficult to comprehend why Apple did not upgrade AirPort Extreme Base Station as a cheaper solution.

I mentioned earlier that Battlestar Galactica fans have been pouring over a recently released "Last Supper" image looking for clues to what happens in the forth and final season of the critically acclaimed show.

One fan, attitudeandwine, noticed that there were many blank spots on the original image and knew that Leonardo da Vinci love the use of symmetry in his works. I think she's on to something and while her original image was suggestive, it was also slightly unclear. Since I had a little time on my hand and am fairly familiar with Paint Shop Pro, I decided to try and mirror the image myself. Here's the result of my own attempt at photoshopping (Click the image for a high resolution version).

Here is another version of the same image, done with a different image blending mode that allows us to see an overlap of both the original and mirrored image.

Some of the more obvious things that can be observed in the images:

1. Athena and Helo are looking at either Tyrol or Caprica and seems to be waiting for them to act.
2. Athena's hand is reaching to touch either Tigh's arm, as if seeking help.
3. Tigh is looking at Apollo or Baltar.
4. The positioning of Tigh under Adama is interesting, suggesting that their CO/XO relationship remains unchanged.
5. I think Anders kissing Caprica's arm is just coincidence.. *shrugs*
6. Tyrol, standing between Apollo and Baltar, stares very intently at the knife. I don't think he's going to kill either men.
7. On the left hand side, a partially hidden Apollo seems to be staring at the open book on the table.
8. Adama and Roslin are indeed holding hands behind Adama's back.
   

I have no frakking idea what all this means. If you do, drop me a comment!

The above stunning picture of the Battlestar Galactica cast has been circulating on the web since it was released recently. Looks familiar? It should, because bears quite a bit of similarity with Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper painting.

Many fans have been pouring over this image trying to look for symbolic clues, speculating on the roles each character will play in the upcoming final season of Battlestar Galactica, or who the final Cylon will be. It is a nice bit of viral marketing that generates some much needed hype for this show.

Just for fun, I will state for the record that I believe Ellen Tigh is the final Cylon. I don't have any particular solid reasoning behind this prediction, it is just a gut instinct that she is a good "fit" to be the final Cylon based on of how she mysteriously appeared on the show, how she lived and how she the relations she has had with both human and Cylons.

PS: Click on the image to view a high resolution version of the picture.

As some of you might know, I am a huge fan of Star Trek. So it is no surprise that I am happy Star Trek is once again returning to the big screen on Christmas 2008, thanks to producer and director JJ Abrams, producer Damon Lindelof as well as executive producers cum writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. These four people combined, has over the decade produced some of the top hit television shows such as Hercules, Xena, Felicity and Lost, as well as movies such as The Island, The Legend of Zorro, Mission: Impossible III and Transformers.

So far, what is known about the movie is that it features a completely new cast of actors portraying young versions of the original Star Trek characters such as Captain Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy. However, the quartet has kept all other details about the movie under a very tight security. Some of the measures they've taken include using fake scripts in the audition process, only giving out real script fragments to the production crew on a need to know basis and requiring all actors and extras to walk between shooting locations under either a huge black cloak or be ferried around in shrouded golf carts. All this security has piqued the interest of the Star Trek community, and started an intense competition between the various tabloid papers and websites to get the largest Star Trek exclusive/scoop they can. As a result, all sorts of rumors are flying all across the web.

Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban are respectively cast as young Captain Kirk, Spock and Doctor McCoy

For example, a late 2007 news leak claimed that The Guardian of Forever (a huge fan favorite) is in the movie. The very next day, an angry Harlan Ellison who is creator and rights owner of The Guardian responded, demanding to see the quartet over the use of his creation in their movie. A few days later, someone posted very blurred, long distance spy shots of young Spock and Captain Kirk at some unknown shooting location.

Just yesterday a popular rumor mill website, Ain't It Cool News, claimed to have inside sources who have not only read the entire script, but went further to describe the writing as lackluster and that the character of Kirk were written as if young Kirk was "a dumb after school special".

Comedian Simon Pegg as Scotty and Zoe Saldana as Uhura

Of course being rumors, this information could very well turn out to be unfounded and downright false. However, I do believe that there is a slight element of truth that the script writers, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, are not exactly well rounded writers. Don't get me wrong, I think they're excellent at writing action oriented movies, which is no doubt why all four movies they've written thus far (The Island, Legend of Zorro, Mission Impossible: 3 and Transformers) are all action flicks.

Kurtzman and Orci's main weakness is in writing characters that the audience would care about. All you need to do is compare the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) movie with Kurtzman and Orci's 2007 Transformers movie. Both movies essentially took popular children's comic book/toy characters from the 1980s to the big screen. TMNT was decidedly true to its roots in depicting the four turtle brothers, their camaraderie as well as internal conflict with each other. In other words, the turtles felt very human and by the end of the movie the audience were rooting for them.

John Cho as Hikuru Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov

Transformers on the other hand, does not even focus on the Transformers. Sure, the movie contained Transformer-specific words such as Autobot, Decepticon, Optimus Prime and Megatron, but you would be hard pressed to identify who's who given that (a) the transforming robots looked visually different and (b) most of them barely said a word. Any "script line" given to the transforming robots were largely comedic one-liners or classic "must have" speeches like Optimus Prime's classic declaration, "One will stand and one will fall". The audience is simply expected to assume that some of the robots were bad guys because they looked menacing or made evil sounding noises while the other robots were good guys because they took on the form of cool cars or ambulances. Even human characters suffered from bad writing as many of them were no more than clichéd, two dimensional caricatures.

While this level of characterization would be grudgingly acceptable for a summer blockbuster flick where the plot is simply an excuse to setup scenes with huge special effects, explosions and car stunts, it simply would not be sufficient for a Star Trek story. A Star Trek story, particularly one about the original Enterprise crew, is a story about humanity driven by characters that are larger than life. The kind of one-liner filled scripts written for Transformers or even Mission: Impossible 3 simply would not be sufficient for Star Trek.

Having said all this, I am ultimately still a fan of Star Trek and still hope that the new movie would be a success beyond my wildest dreams. I put my faith in Leonard Nimoy (the original Spock), the only remaining Star Trek elder whose judgment I still trust. If Mr. Nimoy believes Star Trek XI is going to be a great movie, then I believe it too.