Bryan Fuller Discusses the Future of Heroes

Bryan Fuller worked on the first season of NBC's hit series Heroes, before leaving for ABC's Pushing Daisies. When that show ended, Fuller was snatched back up by NBC for Heroes. Now, Fuller has spoken to SCI FI Wire about the show and where he sees the future of the show going.

When asked what he wanted to accomplish with the new scripts, Fuller answered "I just really wanted to get everything back to a character base. I think character was shoved aside for plot. The second year with the virus was interesting, but then it got complicated and techno-babbly. With "Villains," it started out interesting and then became about formula. When they started talking about how we were injected with our powers and it became sci-fi ghetto storytelling, I became disconnected." Fuller continued "Mohinder went from a noble scientist to being a mad scientist with Jeff Goldblum hair and wardrobe. Claire became so strident and unlikable because she was just whining, bitching and holding a gun. I was just concerned the wheel had been jerked so sharply in the wrong direction with what had worked about the first season, which was ordinary people with extraordinary powers. Everything ordinary about their lives went out the window, and everything was extraordinary. That was my frustration."

Fuller also addressed Ali Larter's new character, Tracy Strauss, who seemed to die in the climax of Cold Snap. Asked if that was the last we would see of her, Fuller said "Oh, no. There was a lot of debate over whether she's winking, but no, she's not winking. She's blinking, and a tear comes down. There was miscommunication with the visual effects, where you were only supposed to see one of her eyes. It was definitely a blink and a shedding of a tear. Tracy comes back in a really big way later on in the season." Fuller went on to say that Tracy had a journey ahead of her which was going to be about regaining her humanity. "What she learned from her encounter with Micah/Rebel made a huge impact on her," Fuller said. "She is going to be following that through-line the next season. There is that realization she has been approaching politics from the wrong angle. In the fourth year, Tracy will have a new perspective that may not be right, but it's more understandable than before.

Finally, Fuller offered the following teases about the final four episodes of the fourth season:

There's actually a lot of really fun character work happening in the last four episodes that the writing staff is proud of. We'll see Matt retaliate against Danko in a very interesting way. We'll also see Sylar strike at the heart of HRG's life in a way that causes things for him to unravel. The episode after that is essentially "Company Man" for Angela Petrelli, where we'll be doing a flashback to her life in 1961 and the events that happened there, which really motivates who she is now. In episode 24, we get to the heart of Sylar's identity crisis, and we clearly understand what his agenda is, what he's after and who the people in his life are that made the biggest impact. Episode 25 is our big finale.

Malaysian GP - Ferrari: Our performance is unacceptable

Reigning constructors' champions Ferrari were searching for a quick fix after both cars finished outside the points at the rain-shortened Malaysian Grand Prix, a week after a similar scoreless weekend in Australia.

A tropical storm over the Sepang circuit brought an abrupt end to the second race of the season and while Brawn GP's Jenson Button was able to celebrate a second consecutive victory,

Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen were never a factor, with Brazilian Massa finishing five places ahead of his team mate in ninth.

After an error of judgment ruined his qualifying session on Saturday, Massa believes the Italian outfit must rebuild from scratch ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai in a fortnight.

"It was a bad result and we need to start again from zero," said Massa.

"We need to get together to understand where we can improve things. To clear up our mistakes and fine-tune our strategies.

"We (have not gone from being) great in the past to suddenly stupid now, although last year we had a better car. But we have to work quickly to get this season back on track."

Team principal Stefano Domenicali echoed his driver's concerns and after both cars failed to finish in the season-opening race in Melbourne, he stressed the need for a positive reaction.

"It was the second bad weekend in a row and we have to react really immediately to this," the Italian said.

"Things are not going well and our performance is not acceptable and I will not accept it. We need to make sure we resolve any technical issues with the car and also cut down on the mistakes we are making with our strategies."

Under pressure from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, Domenicali explained the team needed results to improve by the next grand prix on April 19.

"From a performance point of view, we have to work on the aerodynamics of the car... the downforce," he added.

"We need to work day and night to make this better and we also need to see why the car is so competitive in practice at the start of a race weekend but struggles in qualifying and on raceday.

"The car is very sensitive to fuel load and tyres right now, something we need to fix as it should not be this way."

Dell Adamo vs Apple MacBook Air

It’s the world’s slimmest, sexiest and most stylish Windows notebook, but how does Dell’s new Adamo stack up against the MacBook Air?

Design

Take it from us: the Adamo looks like no other Dell you’ve ever seen. The company which made its name building boxes and helping turn the PC into a commodity has invested heavily in design and research over the past few years.Indeed, we’d suggest that if Steve Jobs had unveiled an Apple-badged Adamo as last year’s new-look MacBook Pro, the applause would have just as loud and the lustful sighs just as longing. That’s a compliment to Dell’s design team, because good design lives outside the false boundary of brands.

The Adamo follows a straight-cut and decidedly modernistic European mode compared to the tapered and organic futurist conceit of the sylph-like MacBook Air.

In keeping with its ‘luxe laptop’ positioning the Adamo is cast from a machined aluminium frame, finished with a stylishly eye-catching pattern etched on the lid and a scalloped backlit keyboard. Fashionistas will appreciate that the Adamo will be available in Onyx and Pearl, compared to the single silver sheen of the MacBook Air.Given that taste is largely subjective we could declare this catwalk shoot-out a tie. But this is our comparison, and our take is that the Adamo is the world’s most stylish laptop.
Winner: Adamo.

The world’s thinnest laptop?

Dell claims that Adamo is “the world’s thinnest laptop”. Well, yes and no (but mainly yes).Apple has a little wiggle room to hold onto bragging rights thanks to the MacBook Air’s tapered design, which goes from 0.4 cm (0.16 inches) at the leading edge to 1.94 cm (0.76 inches) at the rear.

Adamo’s consistent height from front to back gives it a profile of 1.64 cm (0.65 inches) – so while Adamo is noticeably thicker at the front, it’s thinner than the MacBook Air when overall width is taken into account.
Winner: Adamo (but we’ll allow that the MacBook Air’s slivered shape could make it feel thinner).

The world’s lightest laptop?

This crown still belongs to the MacBook Air, which barely nudges the scales at 1.36 kg (3 pounds). At 1.81 kg (4 pounds) the Adamo has bugger-all body fat, and just like the MacBook Air it’ll often make you stop and wonder if you remembered to put your laptop in your bag.

The Adamo also has a slightly larger footprint than the MacBook Air – it’s 33 cm (13.4 inches) wide by 24.1 cm (9.5 inches) deep, against the MacBook Air’s 32.5 cm (12.8 inches) and 22.7 cm (8.94 inches).

We’re not trying to split hairs – any notebook that’s not much larger than a sheet of A4 paper and weights less than 2 kg is still brilliant – but a win’s a win.
Winner: MacBook Air.

Performance

While both the Adamo and MacBook Air are fitted with the latest 45nm Penryn-class Core 2 Duo processors, the MacBook Air has the meatier powerplant in Intel’s low-voltage SL series, with a choice between 1.6GHz (SL9300) and 1.8GHz (SL9400).

Dell opted for the less power-hungry but equally less powerful ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo SU, running at 1.2GHz (SU9300) or 1.4GHz (SU9400).And there’s much more to this than clock speed: the MacBook Air’s SL chips are packed with 6MB of cache and run through a 1066MHz front size bus, giving them a clear edge over the 3MB cache and 800MHz bus of the parsimonious SU processors

For graphics, Adamo relies on Intel’s embedded GMA X4500HD engine while Apple favours NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M graphics processor.

The Adamo wins back a point for being able to take 4GB of RAM whereas the MacBook Air is stuck on 2GB, but the MacBook Air still has more muscle to begin with.
Winner: MacBook Air.

Battery

We’re going to have to base this one off the vendor’s stated battery life figures until we can do a side by side test under identical circumstances. Of course, the manufacturer’s battery figures are best viewed through rose-coloured glasses, and in most cases are attainable only under the most aggressive power management settings – low screen brightness, minimal usage and certainly no wireless Internet.

So while Dell rates the Adamo’s six-cell lithium polymer slab as good for five hours, against Apple’s allowance of ‘up to 4.5 hours of wireless productivity’, we don’t feel confident to call this in Dell’s favour without some real-world benchmarking.

It’s also worth noting that the batteries of both the Adamo and MacBook Air are sealed into the chassis rather than be replaceable by the end-user.
Winner: This one’s a tie.

Connectivity: wireless

Dell takes this round without breaking a sweat. While both the Adamo and MacBook Air pack the mandatory 11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1, only Dell lets you option up with integrated 3G (in the higher-spec $4,299 model).For bonus points, the wireless card also includes a GPS receiver and is rated to 7.2Mbps on both the 2100MHz 3G and 850MHz Next G bands (although not 900MHz, which Optus and Vodafone are using for their national mobile broadband network extensions).Best of all, you’re not tied to a single telco. While the 3G model of the Adamo will include a Vodafone SIM card and come preloaded with Vodafone’s software (and most likely some sort of sign-up wizard or link), the SIM card’s not activated – leaving it up to the buyer to choose one of the Vodafone plans on offer or sign up to another carrier. The modem isn’t locked to Vodafone, although Dell cautions that it’s not certified for any other network.
Winner: Adamo

Connectivity: wired

This is a simple game of count the ports. The MacBook Air infamously shorts its buyers with a single USB port while the Adamo has three, one of which also doubles an an eSATA port.With the Adamo you also get Gigabit Ethernet (missing from the MacBook Air) and a standard DisplayPort socket rather than a far-from-common Mini DisplayPort socket (so you need to shell out $45 for an adaptor available only from Apple).The only caveat we’d make is that the Adamo relegates all these ports to the rear of the chassis. We doubt there’d be sufficient room on the low profile side panels for anything but the tiny headphone socket, which indeed sensibly lives on the right side panel. While this out-of-sight arrangement undoubtedly benefits the Adamo through clean uncluttered lines, it’s a headache when you need to plug in a USB memory key, iPod or similar device which has only a short-term connection to your notebook.
Winner: Adamo

Display

The Adamo’s 13.4 inch panel provides a barely noticeable boost over the MacBook Air’s 13.3 inch display, but pumps the pixels up from Apple’s 1280 x 800 to a hi-res 1366 x 768 for 720p HD (WXGA 16:9). Yum.
Winner: Adamo

Storage

Both of these bantamweights are stocked with a 128GB solid state drive, but Apple also offers a 120GB hard drive in the entry-level MacBook Air. We’d rather have SSD any day, but the price difference means you can get a MacBook Air for $2,899.
Winner: MacBook Air, for no other reason that choice (and a cheaper price tag) is good

Rumor: Apple Orders 3.2 Megapixel Camera Sensors for Next iPhone

Chinese online newspaper Digitimes is citing industry resources stating that Apple has ordered 3.2 megapixel image sensors for the third version of the iPhone. Apple has also reportedly ordered a 5-megapixel sensor for a mystery product. From Digitimes:

OmniVision has received 3.2-megapixel CMOS image sensor (CIS) orders for Apple's next-generation iPhone, according to market sources. The company is also said to have secured 5-megapixel CIS orders for another Apple product expected to be launched later in the year.

OmniVision beat out STMicroelectronics and Aptina Imaging for the Apple orders, the sources added.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine' leaked online

A high-quality, full-length work print of the 20th Century Fox film, which is set for release May 1, appeared online Tuesday. The film focuses on the beginnings of Hugh Jackman's clawed Marvel superhero Wolverine.

Fox said in a statement Wednesday the version of the film posted online was not complete and vowed that the source would be prosecuted. It said the FBI and MPAA are investigating.

All New 2009 Toyota Wish Revealed

Toyota put the new Toyota Wish minivan on showroom floors in Japan today, marking the first change to the Wish line since the 2005 facelift. The compact seven-seater will hit Toyota's domestic market with force, as the company expects to sell nearly 6,000 units every month.

The six different trims are available with one of two engines. With the ultra-efficient base unit, the customer gets a 1.8-liter engine that pulls the car for 16 kilometers per liter of fuel (6.25l/100km). It comes standard as a front-wheel-drive, but can be upgraded with either a more responsive CVT Sport Mode, four-wheel drive, or both.

Not enough power for your family? You can also step up to a 2.0-liter engine which is available with Dynamic Sport Mode. DSM uses traction control and electric power steering to give better responsiveness. Unfortunately, with this option you lose one seat, but at least you will still feel like a man when you plow through corners with five whiny kids in the car complaining about Dora the Explorer's new look.

Kia Unveils KND-5 Concept Car at 2009 Seoul Motor Show

Kia unveiled their latest concept car earlier today. The Kia KND-5 upmarket sedan was introduced hours before its debut at the Seoul Motor Show.

A representation of Kia's upcoming "near-luxury sedan," codenamed the Kia VG, this concept gives us a bit of insight into Kia's short-term plans. It comes with a strong 3.5-liter V6 Lambda engine, which produces around 275 hp. At 4,945mm long and 1,475mm high, the car has very similar measurements to the Honda Accord. The KND-5 is 1,850mm wide (5mm wider than the Accord), and has a 2,845mm wheelbase.

The new concept includes body-colored door handles, panorama sun-roof, LED headlamps, and big 20-inch alloys. In many ways, the vehicle looks near-production ready. In front, the car has taken on "Kia's family-look radiator grille which is based on a symbolic representation of a tiger's roaring countenance," whatever that means.

Kia's new concept, the Kia KND-5, will be on display throughout the Seoul Motor Show.

Japan Has Gone to Far with Rape Simulation Game

With Jack Thompson, the longtime face of the anti-game-violence movement, recently banned from practicing law in Florida. There hasn't been any outcrys about video games in awhile. Well now is a good time to resurrect Jack Thompson from the cave he was buried in. Fresh out of Japan comes RapeLay, a rape simulation game.

Rapelay begins with a man standing on a subway platform, stalking a girl in a blue sundress. On the platform, you can click “prayer” to summon a wind that lifts her skirt. She blushes. Once she’s on the train, the assault begins. Inside the subway car, you can use the mouse to grope your victim as you stand in a crowd of mute, translucent commuters. From here, your character corners his victim-in a station bathroom, or in a park with the help of male friends-and a series of interactive rape scenes begins.

This game was available on Amazon.com but was recently banned. With pirating at the common level that it is now, your average middle school student can download it for the PC. There's a push to make a country wide ban on the game but what good will it make? Games are getting naughtier and naughtier as the days go by. As sexual images become more acceptable in culture, what could this lead to in the future?

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman Talk Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Sci Fi Wire recently spoke with Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen screenwriters/producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman about the film. Here's a brief segment of the interview below, where Orci talks about the inception of the sequel's plotline.

The theme started coming out of Sam leaving home, now. It's two years later, he's going to college. ... What are the responsibilities and the cutting off that goes on when you leave home? And that mirrors the fact the Transformers themselves are away from home. And in a new home. And what are your responsibilities as you kind of step out into the world on your own without your support system? ...

It sort of started coming out of that very real place. Again, the first one was about ... [the] child getting his first car and how that leads you to adulthood and sexuality and all these kinds of things. It's a very simple [story]. A lot of people say, "Oh, it's a classic cliche." Well, it's a cliche because we all go through it. And it's the same with ... heading off to college and letting your parents go and becoming the adult and trying to find out who you are and ... what you're going to do with the rest of your life.

Hotter Nissan GT-R to Slot Above SpecV is on the Way

As hot as the Nissan GT-R SpecV is, it is not going to be the last word in the highly-engaging GT-R saga. After the InsideLine team spent some time driving the SpecV in Japan, their initial delight was turned into feverish excitement. This was caused by SpecV chief engineer Mr Kazutoshi Mizuno casually telling the team that "the SpecV, in contrast to what you might be thinking, is not the high-performance version of the GT-R."

The GT-R was launched in 2007 after a long period characterised by speculation and spy pictures. In its basic form it makes 353kW (480hp) and 588Nm of torque from its twin-turbo 3.8-litre V6 engine. The engine is mated to a six-speed dual clutch transmission and together they can hurl the AWD Nissan from 0 - 60mph in about 3.5 seconds. Top speed is estimated at around 309km/h.

In 2008 Nissan infamously claimed the production car lap record at the Nürburgring with a car that was said to be stock, bar one or two items. Additionally, it was reported that the SpecV was tested independently and, although inconclusive, found to be slower than the stock car around a famous Tsukuba race track.