News briefs
Assorted items gleaned from cnn.com and elsewhere today:
I always thought it would be cool to network together the Sim games. There could be a SimEarth world containing thousands of SimCities; each city would contain houses populated by The Sims; in the back yards there would be SimAnt games going on; and so on. Not quite the same thing, but The Sims Online launches in December: it's a networked version of The Sims, letting your Sims interact with other people's Sims. I predict that it'll be as popular as EverQuest.
Various small police departments have decided to allow advertisers to buy ad space on patrol cars. Wacky.
The next Harry Potter movie will be directed by the guy who directed Y Tu Mama Tambien.
I've always been fascinated by the notion of hooking up bots to talk with each other. Back in high school, we used to wish we had a copy of Racter (the computer program that "wrote" The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed) (also the source of longtime Hartman/Evans catchphrase "I need electricity. I need it for my dreams") so we could (among other things) set up conversations between Racter and Eliza. Now there are somewhat more sophisticated chatbots (though, honestly, I have yet to be impressed by any program that's won the Loebner Prize), and someone hooked up one of them to itself, with entertaining results.