Core Dump

A very interesting article from the Brussels Journal, reporting on a talk by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who "fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech he delivered in Brussels last week Mr Bukovsky called the EU a “monster” that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a fullfledged totalitarian state."

A US company has developed the world's first single-chip microphone, putting the mike and all of its control electronics on one 4 mm. square chip. This means it will soon be possible to put microphones into the bezels of monitors, for example, or make arrays of inexpensive mikes for better sound processing.

I've been wondering why CD-R prices in Canada haven't been falling the way they have in the US, and this article by Michael Giest explains why - it's because of the levy that the recording industry gets on blank CD media, currently $.21/disk. Given that you can generally buy 100 CD-Rs for less than $40, half the price is going to the recording industry.

Google has introduced yet another web-based service, Google Page Creator. It's a web-based page designer with a few standard themes and layouts. PC World has a brief write up on it. This could be handy for quick one-offs, though anyone who has Dreamweaver or Front Page will find it pretty limiting.

I've visited the lift locks in Peterborough, Ontario a few time. They have to be one of the best examples still around of Victorian heavy engineering. I thought when I first saw them, that we'd have trouble duplicating them economically today. Well there is a modern equivalent, the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland, a lift lock that is even cooler than the Peterborough locks. It's also one of the strangest looking structures I've ever seen. Definitely worth having a look at. Another interesting aspect of the design is how little energy it takes to lift the boats.

Google Video has just put up a whole bunch of NASA movies from the 60s and 70s. Most of these are about Apollo and the early space program and are about 30 minutes long. Video playback is through a Flash applet and is decent quality, though not up to full-screen playback. This is part of Google's plan to put the contents of the National Archive up on the web.

The ABC television network will be picking up the Masters of Science Fiction series, a series of one-hour shows based on classic SF stories. This is a good thing -- I don't think that SF novels translate well to movies or TV (at least, based on some of the attempts so far), but there are many great short stories and novellas that would be perfect for a one-hour TV episode, a la The Outer Limits.

Writer Michael Tolkin ("The Rapture," "The Player") will adapt and direct one episode. Discussions are underway to feature such works as "The Discarded" by Harlan Ellison, "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov, and for Ray Bradbury to adapt his own "Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed."

"We are excited by the response we're getting from the creative community," said Industry Entertainment partner Keith Addis. "We are in advanced discussions with distinguished screenwriters and directors to bring the works of these science fiction icons to a broad audience in the most compelling and entertaining way."

Writing Revisable Manuals is the online version of the book Writing Revisble Manuals: A Guidebook for Business and Governemt.

The guidebook covers all types of revisable manuals, including policy and procedure manuals, computer end-user manuals, training manuals, and equipment operating manuals. While the contents of these manuals are different, the process of developing them is the same. The simple step-by-step process outlined in this guidebook is the same one used today by most professional manual writers. You don’t need to be the subject matter expert to write a manual—in fact, it’s probably better if you’re not. Just follow the steps outlined here and you’ll produce an effective manual that you and your organization will be proud of.

This looks to be an especially useful site for anyone who isn't a professional technical writer, but still has to produce documentation. Unfortunately, the templates mentioned on the site are no longer available for download. Thanks to Scott Nesbitt for pointing this one out.

Sci-Fi.com is reporting that Valve software will be releasing at least two expansion packs for Half-Life 2. This is good news for my wife, who is almost finished the game, but bad news for me, because I won't get to play the game until she finishes it. The original Half-Life was the best computer game I've ever played, and from what I've seen looking over Nancy's shoulder, Half-Life 2 is even better.

Science Fiction Weekly is reviewing a new mockumentary, CSA: The Confederate States of America, which is a mock documentary based on the South winning the Civil War. It's out in theatres this month; I hope it plays somewhere in Toronto, because I really want to see this.

Viewed as a work of alternate history, C.S.A. is fascinating and absorbing, if a little less successful. The Confederate subjugation of the North is more than plausible, as is the conquest of South America, based as it is on the real-life plans of some Confederate leaders. Its history of the 20th century is interesting as well, with most of the world's civil-rights innovations, not to mention the development of rock 'n' roll, taking place in Canada. As divergent as the timeline becomes, though, it seems unlikely that this world's 1960 would find John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon locked in battle for the presidency, even with the amusing conceit that Nixon is the Democrat and Kennedy the Republican. (The Republicans are Lincoln's party, after all.)

But the primary function of CSA is not as science fiction per se, but as social satire. By those lights, it's frightening to consider how much the world of the movie resembles our real world, with its Watts riots, its unwinnable wars and its empty sanctimony.

Vernor Vinge has a new novel coming out, Rainbows End, reviewed on SF Reviews.net (a site I really do have to take a closer look at). This is good news - Vinge is not a prolific author. And he's a very good author - A Fire Upon the Deep is my pick for the best SF novel of the 1990s, and A Deepness on the Sky is almost as good. I may spring for the hardcover on this one.

Today's picture on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site is one of the most amazing space pictures I've seen in a long time.

Who dunnit? Like a scene from a space mystery movie, a spacesuit floated away from the International Space Station earlier this month, but no investigation was needed. It was pushed out by the space station crew. Dubbed Suitsat-1, the unneeded Russian Orlan spacesuit filled mostly with old clothes was fitted with a faint radio transmitter and released to orbit the Earth. Suitsat-1 will orbit once every 90 minutes until it burns up in the Earth's atmosphere within a few weeks. The suit circled the Earth twice before its radio signal became unexpectedly weak. Pictured above, the lifeless spacesuit was photographed as it drifted away from the Earth-orbiting space station earlier this month.

In the Forbes article, The Future of Money, SF author and futurist Bruce Sterling writes about what money will become in the future.

nstead of "socially responsible investment," we might be confronted with money that refuses to let itself be spent. Electronic funds might double check themselves against a blacklist before they move from one chip to another. Touch a terrorist bank account, and you might find yourself with not just a refusal of funds but also with instant taps on your phone and e-mail.

SF Signal has a post with links to classic SF radio shows Dimension X and X Minus One that are now online in MP3 format. There are radio versions of some classic SF stories, for example, Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills of Earth and Fritz Leiber's First Contact. I remember hearing some of these when I was a kid, and it's neat to have them available again.

The Washington Post has a long article, Invasion of the Computer Snatchers, about botnets and the people behind them. If you're not familiar with the term, botnets are networks of PCs that have been taken over by rouge software, which is usually installed without the owner's consent or knowledge.

In the six hours between crashing into bed and rolling out of it, the 21-year-old hacker has broken into nearly 2,000 personal computers around the globe. He slept while software he wrote scoured the Internet for vulnerable computers and infected them with viruses that turned them into slaves.

New Scientist is reporting that glaciers in Greenland are melting faster than expected. This could result in sea levels rising faster than their current rate of 3 mm. per year. That swampland in Florida is going to be underwater soon - better sell now.

ENIAC was the first real digital computer, a room-sized beast considerably less powerful than the first IBM PC. ComputerWorld has an interview with ENIAC's co-inventor, J. Presper Eckert. He debunks some of the myths that have grown up around ENIAC, including the one that it dimmed the lights in Philadelphia when it ran. It's fascinating reading, especially when you think that it's been only about 50 years and how far computers have come in that time.

Popular Mechanics has a first look at the Congressional committee report on Hurricane Katrina. They aren't very happy with it.

At 2:00 this afternoon, the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina will release its final report after more than five months of investigation. POPULAR MECHANICS obtained excerpts of a draft copy of the report last night.

We've given the report an initial read and found it riddled with poor logic, internal contradictions and exaggerations. This is no 9/11 Commission Report. We’ll have a fuller review once we get our hands on the official copy.

They go on to discuss some of the reports findings and what they consider key shortcomings. There's also a lilnk to their March cover story on Hurrican Katrina, which is well worth reading.

VTD-XML is a new, opes source XML parser that claims to be thw world's fastest XML processor.

On an Athlon64 3400+ PC, VTD-XML significantly (1.5x~2x) outperforms SAX parsers with NULL content handler, delivering 50~60 MB/sec sustained throughput, without sacrificing random access. Its memory usage is typically between 1.3x~1.5x the size of the XML document, with 1 being the XML itself.

I wonder if anyone at Quadralay has seen this?

The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed is a loving look at what might have been - the "real" Aliens 3 and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the Star Wars Episodes, VII, VIII, and IX, and the other great SF movies that should have been, but weren't. This is one of the best articles about SF films that I've read in a long time. I could add a few to the list, the Stranger in a Strange Land movie, and Childhood's End. But not to carp - if you like SF, this is a must read.

Everyone remembers the exact moment when they realized that their Phanom Menace sandwich was filled with shit. For me, it was the scene on Tatooine where Qui-Gon is talking and Jar Jar is snatching fruit from the bowl with his tongue, eating like an insect. Annoyed, Qui-Gon reaches out and snatches his tongue out of the air and holds it in his fist while he talks. That was when I realized I was watching a cartoon. Worse, it was a cartoon I already knew the ending to. Let's examine what went wrong:

If nothing else, it's worth reading for the link to William Gibson's script for Alien 3 (no kidding!). That's something I'd have paid money to see.

The Shuttle is scheduled to launch again in May. What will be the eventual fate of the program? Will NASA succeed in completed the planned schedule of launches to complete the International Space Station? Or will something force cancellation of the Shuttle program? Space Daily has an interesting opinion piece by Jeffrey Bell that discusses this subject.

n recent months Griffin has redone the Shuttle budget plan using sensible assumptions and has been shocked... shocked to learn that there is a funding shortfall of $3-5B over the next four years.

This has "forced" Griffin to propose radical budget cuts in the 2007 NASA budget. Everyone's pet ox has been gored: aeronautics research, space science, the Search for Life, even Mars missions have all been cut after many months of fervent promises by Griffin that this would never happen.

The Content Wrangler site pointed me to another white paper on DITA, this one called Success in Standards-Based Content Creation at Global Comanies: Understanding the Rapid Adoption of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Adobe and Autodesk are the two companies discussed in the paper.

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) has seen rapid adoption and implementation. This is especially true when you compare the adoption of DITA with other standards-based approaches to content creation and distribution. Here we are less than a year after DITA 1.0 has been approved and major companies are shipping large multi-language documentation and Help sets that have been created using DITA. We can also point to DITA-specific user groups and conferences, and a myriad of vendors who are now touting DITA support in their products. All of this activity is over and above the use of DITA at IBM, the company that developed DITA originally and has been actively promoting it through the OASIS standards body.

If you're into gaming, the big choice is whether to go for Microsoft's new Xbox 360 or wait for Sony's Playstation 3. (If you have kids, they've probably already made the choice for you). Kikizo Games has the first detailed look at Sony's Playstation 3 that I've seen on the web.

Nancy and I went to see the new Harrison Ford movie, Firewall, on the weekend. On the whole, I'm glad we didn't pay for it (we had passes). It was typical big-buget, Hollywood formula, (hero saves family in distress), flashy and well produced, but completely forgettable otherwise. For a pretty much dead-on review, see this Wired article. The IMDB rates it at 6.1, which is close to my rating of 6.

Much better was Lord of War, which we watched on DVD. I picked it up expecting a mindless thriller and instead got a thoughtful black comedy. I'm not sure Kevin Spacey was the right actor for the title tole, but other than that quibble it's a fine film. I don't know how I missed hearing about this when it came out, as I thought it was just a B-budget thriller. Instead, it's one of the best movies of 2005.

I've seen several articles about turntables using a laser beam to read the groove rather than a needle. But until now, I've never seen a practical production model. The ELP Laser Turntable uses a 5-beam laser to pick up the music, without any wear and tear on your precious grooves. The only downside is that you'll need $14,500 US to hook one of these up to your stereo system.

I've often wondered what the world would be like if Canada was a superpower rather than the US. Somebody else has had the same thought - Worth100 has a photoshopping contest in which on the theme of "If Canadians Ruled". And it's hilarious - I haven't laughed so hard in months. I'm not sure which picture I liked the most - maybe the Canadian keyboard with the Eh key.

Web Design from Scratch has a very interesting article which tries to summarize the current state of the art in web design.

I'm glad to say that web design in 2006 is better than ever. And it's not just because there are more web sites out there, so more good stuff to look at. There's still an awful lot of crud too. I just think that more web designers know more about how to design than ever before.

The examples below (which I'll roll over time) show excellent modern graphic design technique. They all look good, and are clear and easy to use.

When rock promoter Bill Graham died several years ago, he left behind a huge archive of memorabilia, including concert posters, tickets, photographs, and most important, thousands of hours of live performances taped at the Fillmore West and other concert halls. His collection was purchased and is now being sold over the Internet, from the web site Wolfgang's Vault. So you can now purchase vintage Fillmore posters, convert photographs, tickets, and other stuff in mint condition. It's fun just to browse through - I found a poster for a Jefferson Airplane concert I attended at Detroit's Grande Ballroom.

But the most exciting part is the music. They're now streaming classic performances from the 60s and 70s over Wolfgang's Vault Radio. As I type this, I'm listening to a blistering performance of 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds by the Jefferson Aiplane. I am a big Airplane fan, and I have a good chunk of what Airplane performances circulate in the music trading world, and what I'm listening to right now is both uncirculated and outstanding, both musically and sonically. It's better than any of the commerically released live Airplane recordings, and most of the bootlegs I've heard. I do hope that Wolfgang's Vault, whoever they are, can work out a way to sell some of these performances.

If you like classic rock, this is the best thing to come along since MP3s. This page lists the current playlist. The player, when you launch it, will give you information about the performance and the sound quality is excellent (assuming you have a broadband connection).

When rock promoter Bill Graham died several years ago, he left behind a huge archive of memorabilia, including concert posters, tickets, photographs, and most important, thousands of hours of live performances taped at the Fillmore West and other concert halls. His collection was purchased and is now being sold over the Internet, from the web site Wolfgang's Vault. So you can now purchase vintage Fillmore posters, convert photographs, tickets, and other stuff in mint condition. It's fun just to browse through - I found a poster for a Jefferson Airplane concert I attended at Detroit's Grande Ballroom.

But the most exciting part is the music. They're now streaming classic performances from the 60s and 70s over Wolfgang's Vault Radio. As I type this, I'm listening to a blistering performance of 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds by the Jefferson Aiplane. I am a big Airplane fan, and I have a good chunk of what Airplane performances circulate in the music trading world, and what I'm listening to right now is both uncirculated and outstanding, both musically and sonically. It's better than any of the commerically released live Airplane recordings, and most of the bootlegs I've heard. I do hope that Wolfgang's Vault, whoever they are, can work out a way to sell some of these performances.

If you like classic rock, this is the best thing to come along since MP3s. This page lists the current playlist. The player, when you launch it, will give you information about the performance and the sound quality is excellent (assuming you have a broadband connection).

Webmonkey has a preview of the latest beta of Internet Explorer 7. Major improvements include tabbed browsing, better favourites management, and the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds. CSS support has been improved, but is still not as good as Firefox. It'll definitely be an improvement if you're still using IE6, but I'll stick with Firefox myself.

For some years now,astronomers have been using adaptive optics (basically mirrors that change their shape based on atmospheric conditions) to improve the resoution of ground-based telescopes. The results can be spectacular. Now, at least one company is trying to build a pair of spectacles that will do the same thing for the human eye. The technology has the potential to give people better than 20/20 vision, or at least substantially improve the vision they have. Hey, maybe I could pass a drivers test in a few years.

The Day the Saucers Came is a poem by author Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Ananzi Boys), in the online magazine, Spiderworlds.

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

According the New York Times, there have been several instances of Bush administration officials attempting to "control the flow of scientific information from the agency." NASA's administrator, Michael Griffin, issued a statement in which he stood up for his scientists, saying: "It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff." I wonder how long he'll get to keep his job, or what NASA's budget will be like next year?

I posted a link to another NYT article about this subject last month -- unfortunately, it's now behind the New York Times' paywall, so you'll have to buy it if you want to read it. (You really have to wonder how long the NYT is going to remain relevant if they keep this inane policy going). Fortunately, you can find out at lot more about this controversy on the Bad Astronomy Blog. I suspect that very few of Bush's minions have ever heard of Lysenko. Episodes such as this are yet another sign of the decline of the US as a world power.

Quadralay recently released a patch for WebWorks Publisher 2003 that lets it work with FrameMaker 7.2. If you're considering installing this patch, be careful if you use more than one version of FrameMaker -- it's designed to work ONLY with FrameMaker 7.2. For more information about this, and some other issues with the patch, see Bill Swallow's blog.

The US Department of Labor published an Occupational Outlook Handbook, and writers and editors have their own section.

Writers and authors develop original fiction and nonfiction for books, magazines, trade journals, online publications, company newsletters, radio and television broadcasts, motion pictures, and advertisements. (Reporters and correspondents, who collect and analyze facts about newsworthy events, are described elsewhere in the Handbook.) Editors examine proposals and select material for publication or broadcast. They review and revise a writer’s work for publication or dissemination. Technical writers develop technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendixes, or operating and maintenance instructions. They also may assist in layout work.

They forecast a good outlook for technical writers:

Opportunities should be best for technical writers and those with training in a specialized field. Demand for technical writers and writers with expertise in areas such as law, medicine, or economics is expected to increase because of the continuing expansion of scientific and technical information and the need to communicate it to others. Legal, scientific, and technological developments and discoveries generate demand for people to interpret technical information for a more general audience. Rapid growth and change in the high-technology and electronics industries result in a greater need for people to write users’ guides, instruction manuals, and training materials. This work requires people who not only are technically skilled as writers, but also are familiar with the subject area.

The annual Locus Awards ballot is online. The Locus Awards are sponsored by Locus, the newsmagazine of the science fction and fantasy genre. You don't have to be a subscriber to vote. The award nominees are largely drawn from their recommended reading list, but you can vote for any title not on the list. Their list is a great starting point if you want to find some good reading material.

This site explains how to cook an egg using two cell phones. Apparently it takes only about three minutes. You have to wonder what a cell phone could be doing to your brain, if it has enough power to cook an egg.

Update: Seems I got took - it's a hoax. I should have known beter, sigh.

David Pogue has a fascinating column in the New York Time about trends in photography, which now means digital photography pretty much exclusively (92 percent of all cameras sold are digital, s statistics that I find kind of mind-boggling). I used to work in a camera store, and got into photography pretty seriously for a while, and I find myself rather amazed at the speed at which digital photography has developed. I think there's a couple of reasons for that - it's more immediate than film and you can play with your images in ways that you never could before.

Brian Jones' Office XML Formats blog has a long post about how the Office 12 XML formats will work in Microsoft Word. I haven't read it in detail, so I'm not sure how much new information is in the post, but it is a good introduction to WordML.

Although Microsoft Word is good for single, small and medium sized documents, it definitely isn't something you'd want to use to write a book with - espeically if the book consists of several files. Although the master document feature has been improved in recent versions of Word, the general consensus among technical writers is that it's best avoided if you value your files.

There is an alternative - OpenOffice.org Writer has a master document feature and this NewsForge article explains how to use it to create a book. I haven't used OpenOffice.org Writer for a book project (though I use it at home for personal documents, and I like it), but from reading the article it looks like it's significantly better than Word for this kind of project - for example, it has Page styles (equivalent to FrameMaker's master pages) - something that Word desperately needs.

Wired has an article about observers who try to spot top-secret reconaissance and spy satellites. The main subject of the article lives lives in Toronto.

Molczan, an energy conservation consultant, was just becoming known for his skill at a most unusual hobby. In his spare time, he likes to take binoculars and a stopwatch onto the balcony of his high-rise apartment and track clandestine US spy satellites. There are thousands of amateur satellite observers active today, but Molczan is a leader of an informal group of 20 or so who specialize in so-called black satellites, the orbits of which are not disclosed, and the existence of which is often classified. Molczan and his band of associates monitor some 140 classified US satellites, like the Lacrosse radar imaging satellites, which can see through cloud cover and darkness and produce photo-quality images of targets on Earth.