Movies Under the Stars

Summertime in the city brings one of the nicest things in Hoboken, the Movies Under the Stars on Pier A. August is all about the kids, but June and July have some nice options. Movies start at 9:00 PM except in August when they start at 8:15 PM.

June 7 The Squid & the Whale
June 14 Good Night & Good Luck
June 21 Crash
FRIDAY: June 23 - Pier A Park - special guests
Special Premiere Screening:
Brooklyn Lobster - starring Danny Aiello & Jane Curtin
Brooklyn Lobster’s gentle humour articulates the bittersweet nature of change as it recounts the challenges of living a small-town life in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, in multi-cultural New York City.
June 28 The Producers
July 12 Brokeback Mountain
July 19 Walk the Line
July 26 Rent

Aug 2 March of the Penguins
Aug 9 Curious George
Aug 16 Wallace & Grommit
Aug 23 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Aug 30 King Kong

Graduation

After close to two years I had the pleasure to graduate from the Rutgers Executive MBA program. A truely memorable and enlightening experience, with an incredible bunch of classmates.

Fuzzy maths

An interesting article from the Economist on Google and things Googley. Visual simplicity that hides the sophistication of its content, or just ambition… take your pick.

At a maximum, the transformation goes quite a bit further. George Dyson, a futurist who has spent time at Google, thinks that the company ultimately intends to link all these digital synapses created by its users into what H.G. Wells, a British science-fiction writer, once called the “world brain”. Google, Mr Dyson thinks, wants to fulfil the geeks’ dream of creating “artificial intelligence”. Passing the so-called “Turing test”, created by Alan Turing, a British mathematician, to determine whether a machine can be said to be able to think, would be the ultimate reward.

Entropia Universe

Once you start noticing one thing, in this case a MMORPG, you start seeing news all over the place. Soon after my Second Life post, I noticed on NYTimes regarding Online Game to Allow ATM Withdrawals. This article was about Entropia Universe, that used to be known as Project Entropia.

The Entropia Universe is not a game. The Entropia Universe is for real. Real people, real activities and a Real Cash Economy in a massive online universe.

Join people from around the globe who use the Entropia Universe currency, the PED, to develop their characters everyday on the untamed planet of Calypso. The unique and secure Real Cash Economy allows you to transfer your accumulated PED back into real world funds.

Online around the clock for decades to come, the Entropia Universe is continually enhanced with new content every month and supported by the Entropia Universe Support Department.

So like Second Life, it is not a game (a dirty word it seems), but a community with its own economy. Entropia does include shoot-em-up action in the form of hunting, but is not the only activity. Any number of skills can be developed to make money (and cash out in the real world), there is even an cultural city to show off and sell your creations.

So at least game players have at least the possibility of a monetary return for obscene amounts of time invested… but let’s not talk about opportunity costs or ROI.