Dev Null was an animated virtual reality character created in 1996 by Leo Laporte for MSNBC's computer and technology TV series The Site . Espresso barista Dev talked with host Soledad O'Brien each weeknight in a five-minute segment. Laporte was awarded a 1997 Northern California Emmy for his nightly performances as cyber character Dev Null. [1]
Dev was animated in real time on a million-dollar Silicon Graphics Onyx computer. [2] Laporte generated both the voice and actions while wearing a VR motion capture suit. When O'Brien sat at the espresso bar to read email from viewers, Dev flirted with her while answering her computer questions. She recalled, "One of the reasons that segment of the show worked is that I could not see him as I was talking to him, and the segment was unscripted. He was funny, and his jokes were not gags." [3]
While O'Brien looked at a piece of tape on the wall indicating Dev's virtual position, the VR suit captured Laporte's actions, and a computer program translated his body movements to create the character, while other human operators controlled facial expressions and accentuated movements of his hair. The control room juxtaposed O'Brien and Dev on the same set using a switcher.
Laporte recalled arriving at NBC with a 90-page treatment:
Producer David Bohrman remembered, "She would do real-time Q&A with this cartoon character who was the smartest person in the world when it came to technology issues. It was great." [4]
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am Eastern/11:37 pm Central and 12:37 am Mountain in the United States. From 1993 until 2000, Andy Richter served as O'Brien's sidekick; following his departure, O'Brien was the show's sole featured performer. The show's house musical act was The Max Weinberg 7, led by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg.
The Screen Savers is an American TV show that aired on TechTV from 1998 to 2005. The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV on May 11, 1998. The Screen Savers originally centered on computers, new technologies, and their adaptations in the world. However, after it was taken over by G4, the show became more general-interest oriented and focused somewhat less on technology. The final episode of The Screen Savers aired on March 18, 2005. Repeat episodes continued to air until March 25, 2005 when its replacement program, Attack of the Show! began 3 days later on March 28, 2005. Two spiritual successors to The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech on the TWiT Network with Leo Laporte and Tekzilla on Revision3 with Patrick Norton, were started after the original show concluded. On April 19, 2015, Leo Laporte announced The New Screen Savers, which began airing on TWiT network May 2, 2015.
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In some operating systems, the null device is a device file that discards all data written to it but reports that the write operation succeeded. This device is called /dev/null on Unix and Unix-like systems, NUL: or NUL on DOS and CP/M, nul on newer Windows systems, NIL: on Amiga operating systems, and NL: on OpenVMS. In Windows Powershell, the equivalent is $null. It provides no data to any process that reads from it, yielding EOF immediately. In IBM DOS/360, OS/360, OS/390 and z/OS operating systems, such files would be assigned in JCL to DD DUMMY.
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María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien is an American broadcast journalist and executive producer. Since 2016, O'Brien has been the host for Matter of Fact with Soledad O'Brien, a nationally syndicated weekly talk show produced by Hearst Television. She is chairwoman of Starfish Media Group, a multi-platform media production company and distributor that she founded in 2013. She is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The Site, hosted by Soledad O'Brien, is an hour-long TV program devoted to the Internet revolution. It debuted in July 1996 with MSNBC's launch and aired Monday through Saturday, reaching 35 million homes. The Site was a forerunner to an entire technology channel called ZDTV, later renamed TechTV, which merged to become G4.
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Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, podcaster, and producer. He is best known for writing in Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons and hosting Late-night talk shows like Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and Conan. Since 2010, he has been hosting Conan on the cable channel TBS.
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