Core Dump

The Web page is a compilation of data from various satellites and computer
models, and it explains why and how NASA investigates hurricanes. It also
covers the relationship of NASA's research focus as compared to other
agencies' operational emphasis.

The site provides access to data about active hurricanes and famous past
storms. Users can search by hurricane topic, such as how storms are formed;
how they are measured; and how they affect land or ocean life. The
multimedia section of the site features animation, satellite, video, and
still images of hurricanes.

All space-bound rockets consist largely of fuel tanks and booster stages that fall back to earth when spent, never reaching orbit. In landlocked Baikonur, Russia's primary launching complex in Kazakhstan, these spaceships crash to earth. This photo essay visits the areas where the supporting rockets land, and shows the people living under the flight paths who contend with flaming spaceship wrecks several times each month

The best science-fiction authors seldom try to predict the future, says David Brin, author of the novel "Earth," which was published in 1989. It's an indirect result of their creativity, he says. Before Web pages were popular, Mr. Brin portrayed them in his novel as a way to seek information.
"We try to explore possibilities or plausibilities," Mr. Brin says. "When you do that, you're trying to make drama."

Maybe it’s not obvious that this process was utterly idiosyncratic and unique to Hunter. Other writers more or less turned in manuscripts that were more or less finished, or needed some editorial tweaking. If further revisions were required, we sent them back for rewriting. With Hunter, these deadline sessions were part Mardi Gras part falaqua. And that’s not even mentioning that there were just as many feints and false starts during these twenty-three years as there were pieces that worked out (despite Jann’s psychic ability).

While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for "word-of-mouth" to spread about Battlestar Galactica.

Flare will have a very similar work flow to RoboHelp and will be able to import legacy RoboHelp content. This means that existing RoboHelp customers will be able to leverage years of existing work directly into the Flare environment. Just as RoboHelp made the creation of RTF-based systems in the early 90's and HTML-based systems in the late 90's possible for non-technical writers and business professionals Flare will bring this same power, flexibility, and ease of use to XML-based authoring.

Quadralay has officially announced WebWorks ePublisher Pro (code named Atlas). The information is up on their web site. A Word version will be out in June, followed by the FrameMaker version in July.

A few of the nifty new features (from their press release):

• Project-Based Workflow – Multiple documents and multiple outputs can be managed all from one project. Shared customizations among multiple formats saves time.
• Multiple Outputs – Next-generation single-source content delivery! Any supported format's settings are automatically shared in an open project.
• PDF Support – Automatic processing of variables and conditions for your PDF output.
• GUI-Based Advanced Customizations – User-friendly, point-and-click windows for the common customizations necessary for robust online content: breadcrumbs, Related Topics, mini-TOCs, drop-down text, TOC entries, and more.
• File Manager – New and improved file-managing support for user-defined groupings and virtual folders with drag-and-drop support, and additional support for managing support folder files.
• Create Your Workspace – ePublisher Pro for FrameMaker's interface can be configured in nearly unlimited ways to satisfy your personal preferences. Windows may be docked or floating, horizontal or vertical, and all toolbars are fully customizable.

And that's just a few - read the press release on their web site for more. The press releases are interesting too - the Word and FrameMaker versions are obviously aimed at very different audiences.

Now that RoboHelp has been sunsetted, Quadralay has a real opportunity here to become the dominant player in the help authoring market. I just hope the reality lives up to the press release.

Beth Meacham recently complained that SF seems to consist largely of
two sorts of books: very mainstream-style books with one modest SFnal
idea; or very wildly SFnal books that demand from the reader an
intimate knowledge of the field's tropes. Robert Sawyer vs. Charles
Stross, one might suggest. _Spin_, I think, is a counter-example. It
is based on a truly audacious central idea, and the idea is quite
cleverly extrapolated -- its implications are nicely explored. Yet the
heart of the book is an extended look at one man's lifelong
friendship/love affair with his boyhood neighbors, a pair of twins,
brother and sister; set in a near future not too terribly different
from today.

Forty years on and we're now living in a world in which SF has become a default mode. In which the tropes of SF have spread into the world. Fantasy in its many forms has become a staple of the media. And we, as the people who were here first, who built this city on pulp and daydreams and four-colour comics, are coming to terms with a world in which we find several things they didn't have to worry about in 1965.

Charlie Kaufman created the two finest science fiction films of all time so far: "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof have created "Lost," the finest television science fiction series of all time … so far.

Through-line series like Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Alfred Gough's and Miles Millar's "Smallville" have raised our expectations of what episodic sci-fi and fantasy ought to be. Whedon's "Firefly" showed us that even 1930s sci-fi can be well acted and tell a compelling long-term story.

And another problem was looming. As it turned out, the crew management application, unbeknownst to anyone at Comair, could process only a set number of changes—32,000 per month—before shutting down. And that's exactly what happened. On Christmas Eve, all the rescheduling necessitated by the bad weather forced the system to crash. As a result, Comair had to cancel all 1,100 of its flights on Christmas Day, stranding tens of thousands of passengers heading home for the holidays. It had to cancel nearly 90 percent of its flights on Dec. 26, stranding more.