Author: Anders Monsen (Page 74 of 83)

Vinge’s keynote address from Accelerating Change 2005 is available as an MP3 download. Recorded 9/17/05, the speech runs around 40 minutes. Very interesting stuff, and quite timely in terms of my discovery of this, as I’m currently working on a review of Ray Kurtzweil’s non-fiction book, The Singularity is Near.

Chris Hibbert reviews Prometheus Award nominated novel, RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone. Perhaps too many spoilers in the second-to-last paragraph, but overall a positive review.

Sci Fi Wire reports on the announcement that Steve Gould’s novel, Jumper, will be adapted for the big screen. “Fight Club writer Jim Uhls will rewrite a script by David S. Goyer (TV’s Threshold). Production will begin in the spring.”

Indeed. This did not take long. Sony rootkit tehcnology opens the door to hackers.

In a previous post I mentioned the DRM that Sony installs on Windows PC. Now it appears Sony CDs also account for Mac OS X and installs some form of copy-protection. Now, I’m against piracy, but this move is not the right way to go, in my opinion.

Via Claire Wolfe’s blog, a link to a story about MPAA thuggery at a movie-plex. The author seems to think “movie studios are losing revenue because of the increasingly poor movie-going experience and general low-quality of the movies they are making.” Perhaps. In my case, I hate rude fellow patrons, and inevitably I have people right behind me talking through the movie. That makes me prefer viewing a DVD at home. The last movie I saw, Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was a matinee. As the lights dimmed, I seemed to be the only person in the theatre. But then, a moment later, two older women hobble in, both talking. They proceeded to talk through-out the entire movie, despite loud comments and muttered curses from me, thereby ruining the movie. Yes, I probably could have alerted the manager, but would that have stopped them/ probably only for a few minutes, and I would have lost screen-time in the time it would have taken to find a person. No, I prefer to watch the movie on my own time, at home, although the screen is smaller, and I have to keep the volume down to not wake the infant.

From CNET News, an article about SonyBMG loading spyware on your PC. Turns out some copy protected CDs, such as Van Zant’s Get Right with the Man, will implant a copy-prevention utility on your Windows PC. I use a Mac, but just the same, once you buy a CD you should be able to copy this for you own use without any restrictions. Amazon does warn buyers: [CONTENT/COPY-PROTECTED CD]. I’m going to think twice before purchasing any SongBMG product from now on.

Not only will sf writer Vernor Vinge’s latest novel appear in early 2006, but at least one of his long out of print books will see light again. Tatja Grimm’s World appears on Tor’s schedule for January, 2006 with a gorgeous cover. (I tried uploading just the cover but ran into Blogger errors, so here’s the closest thing I could manage.)

The Lew Rockwell Center posts a bestseller list compiled from Amazon.com referral sales, and two Prometheus Award nominated novels made the list. A third novel, John Twelve Hawks’ The Traveler, was reviewed in the Fall 2005 issue of Prometheus. The two Prometheus Award nominees? Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman’s Rebelfire at No. 3, and Vin Suprynowicz’s The Black Arrow at No. 13. (See list below for current list of nominees.)