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katlalog

080703 01:21 Media

The average age of TV viewers is now 50! I wonder where all the young people went ;)

080702 23:36 Computing

Women write better code.

080601 18:10 War

Charlie Stross invites suggestions on what we could have done with the money spent on the Iraq war.

...the direct costs of the Iraq war exceed the maximum cost estimate for a manned Mars expedition, infrastructure and all, by 20%. If we take $20Bn as the cost per mission and $450Bn as the cost to develop the technology to go there, the direct cost of the Iraq war would be sufficient to develop a gold-plated Mars expeditionary capability and send six crews of astronauts to Mars (and bring them back afterwards).

080524 00:38 Computing

Bletchley Park faces bleak future.

Historians have postulated that, without Bletchley Park, the Allies may never have won the war.

But, despite an impressive contribution to the war effort, the Bletchley Park site, now a museum, faces a bleak future unless it can secure funding to keep its doors open and its numerous exhibits from rotting away. [...]

Bletchley Park - code-named Station X to keep its location from the Germans - and its outstations were responsible for intercepting German radio signals intended for broadcast to the army, navy and air force, and decoding them into meaningful messages. The job was thought to be next to impossible: German encryption was so secure that the chances of decoding it with random guesses were 150 quintillion to one.

Nine thousand staff worked around the clock at the Buckinghamshire site to break the German codes, eventually gleaning enough information to head off critical enemy manoeuvres.

I lived near Bletchley Park for a while but didn't find out about it until i'd moved to Manchester (Alan Turing's city). I visited Bletchley Park around 2001. It was pretty bleak and run down (but my impression might have been tainted by the general grey of England) but it was enormously interesting. Apart from the old codebreaker huts from the war and the Enigma-related exhibitions there was a huge exhibition on the history of computers. You needed at least a full day to see everything. Go visit before it's gone.

080521 23:54 Movies

The new Indiana Jones movie is the best one yet. It opens with another great joke on the Paramount logo and there are lots of iconic moments that satisfy the fans and reinforce the myth: the hat - in any situation, Indy's silhouette in front of mayhem... I liked the action, especially the motorcycle chase and the car chase through the jungle. It was also very funny. Even the obvious jokes made me laugh. Harrison Ford was great as an older but no more sensible Indy. Ok, Karen Allen's grin got a bit annoying after a while but Shia LaBeouf was great. I hated him in Transformers and didn't expect much but was pleasantly surprised. Him riding into the film as Marlon Brando was brilliant.

And can i just remind people who complain about the plot: Hello! It's fantasy! It's a comic book, an old B-movie. It's not real. It's not supposed to be plausible. You didn't complain about the ghosts in the arc or the bloodthirsty kali-ritual or the healing power of the grail, so why moan about aliens.

Actually i think the alien plot tied the locations together really well. It gave us some of the 50s most famous/infamous sites: Roswell and the Nevada nuclear testing sites, which also dropped us right into the tense atmosphere of the time, of cold war angst and internal communist hunts. And moments later we are whisked away to the obligatory jungle with the usual menagerie of gross insects.

No, the plot isn't the weak point of the film. It's Cate Blanchett. She is totally wasted on the boring, bland, stereotypical villain character.

The high point came at the very end, where Indy doesn't hand over the torch (his hat, that is) just yet.

080519 19:11 TV

Bureau 42 sums up Battlestar Galactica in one sentence:

If the rest of the season keeps going at this level, we're never going to be satisfied with anything else on TV ever again.

080511 00:36 Population

On Friday the estimated population of the world reached the 6,666,666,666. The world population has doubled in my lifetime and i can tell you, it's noticeable.

080508 00:33 Movies / TV

Noooooooooooooo! Don't touch MacGyver!

0805003 23:19 SciFi, Society

io9.com asks "Do We Need Graphic Torture in Our Dystopias?"

Let's return to Battlestar Galactica's torture with these two examples in mind. Unlike The Hills Have Eyes, BSG is not about torture. It's about a horrific dystopia where torture has become part of everyday life. Like Cube, BSG uses torture to explore the urgency of the situation its characters are in. So do we need the torture to feel that urgency?

My personal opinion is, yes, it needs to be there. I don't like watching it and i've had problems with the torture scenes in Battlestar Galactica but it would be so dishonest to avoid addressing the issue, because in a situation like this (the urgency, as the article calls it) it is very likely that torture would be used. It's human, sadly. Maybe by being shown how we are, being disgusted by our potential for cruelty, we might actually learn.

080424 04:15 War

I'm so glad Arthur C. Clarke didn't live to see this happening.

080423 02:41 TV

Battlestar Galactica has done it again. Undoubtedly the best writing in Scifi. In the latest episode they led you to an emotional and shocking but ultimately predictable and cop-out end, where you caught yourself suppressing a moan. For a moment you were actually disappointed. But maybe that was a cunning plan to distract you, so that - wham - you didn't see that coming at all. Damn. Just when we started to like the cylons.

Here's io9's spoiler-filled summary of the episode.

080412 23:52 Business

When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission

The New York Times is running a piece on how some emerging companies in the tech industry are focusing on social missions rather than profits despite having successful business methods. The startups are modeling themselves after organizations like Mozilla and TechSoup, who have both grown to significantly affect their respective markets. The article also discusses some of the non-profit support groups, such as the EFF, who contribute specific services to the field.

080412 01:41 Media and Fear

Yesterday i listened to WNYC's radiolab podcast about Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radioshow, about how mass media can create panic, and today i'm getting suckered in by 12 Ways To Prepare For The Next Great Depression.

I know, i know, i've been watching too much post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but i've always thought that this was a likely scenario. Currently i'm getting increasingly paranoid about the BBC's recent focus on the world food crisis.

You always thought that a crisis was decades away. And suddenly decades have gone past and you realize that things are happening far more gradual than you expected. But they are happening, and are getting more urgent.

Need to find me a unicorn chaser now. Pictures of cute kittens.

...and tomorrow i'm gonna go and stock up on beans and rice.

080406 21:11 Comix / Science

The laugh-out-loud moment of the day.
Background story.

080406 05:26 D&D

Wired Celebrity D&D Characters:

George W. Bush

17th -level politician
Chaotic Neutral Human
Strength: 11
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 6
Constitution: 12
Dexterity: 10
Charisma: 16
Special Abilities: Always wins eligible elections, takes no damage for corporate connections, has the ability to prevaricate perfectly, and always goes first in initiative in attacks via other countries.

Richard Dawkins

22th-Level Evolutionary Biologist
Lawful Neutral Human
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 13
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 18
Wisdom: 22
Charisma: 25
Special Abilities: Spell Resistance Infinite (because magic is not real).
All Cleric-Priest within 60 feet gain 2 negate levels due to logical paradox.
Special Equipment: Spectacles of Trueseeing (always sees things as they really are).

080404 23:36 Podcasts

Just found another great podcast: WNYC's Radio Lab. Get the one about laughter.

080402 01:09 TV

Yippie! Flash Gordon Cancelled. Finally they cancelled a series that actually deserved it.

080328 01:50 This is no April Fools

The news today are so weird (in the sense of really scary) that i keep thinking it's the 1st of April already and i'm being taken for a ride. Unending civil liberty violations, violent tribalism, superstition, corruption, slavery... wtf is going on?

• Anti-emo pogroms rage throughout Mexico
• Woman told to remove nipple rings for SoCal flight
• One million dollar bond set this week for man who conned $20 from store in 1990
• Iraqi astronomer goes on TV to explain why Earth is flat
• Sisters rescued from horrific circus sideshow
• State Department makes bank by outsourcing passport production to dodgy overseas contractors
• Sex offender ordered to keep warning signs on car and house

Someone tell me this is a joke. Please?

080328 00:33 TV

[Spoiler warning]

Thank you thank you thank you, Jericho, for ending it so well. Some excellent writing and everything tied up nicely. Highlights: the nod to Gerald McRaney's character, Beck coming around, Eric's not-losing-the-humanity speech. And while Jericho finally starts to breathe again, Jake gets to do the hero thing and fly a plane. Oh and count on the Texans to come riding in to start a war.

Thanks, Jericho, for ending it in the first place instead of leaving us with unresolved story arcs or a cliffhanger into nothing. Thanks for bringing it to a conclusion we can live with. The possibly coming civil war is another story.

...which makes it so abundantly clear why the show was cancelled. In a moral and economic crisis they don't want people to see stuff like that.

Wrapping up the story in only 7 episodes was not an easy task but executed well and probably not even such a bad idea. BBC series are usually 8-12 episodes. Keeps the narrative more succinct, gets rid of the soapy stuff and filler episodes, brings out the best in the writers.

There's life for Jericho still. I don't believe that the rumours of it being shopped around in search for a network to pick it up will come to much. But just like the Firefly community is still going strong, Jericho will be around for a long long time to come. I can see Major Beck becoming a favourite at conventions. Just watch the DVD sales. In fact, buy the DVD! Let's show them!

Here's some justified criticism of the last episode.

In related news: It's devastating... don't watch this program; it's not an easy ride.

080325 20:16 TV

Bye-bye Jericho.

I spent the last 3 days in a pumped adrenalin state rewatching the existing 28 episodes, gearing up to the final one that is on tonight. The Nuts Campaign brought it briefly back to life but couldn't save it all together.

This is a prime example of a show getting better and better as the story evolves. Sometimes story and characters have to be given time to develop, something that the network wasn't willing to do.

This show has grown from a slightly clunky soap opera to an irresistible thriller with a very science-fictional critique of a future corporate-dominated dystopia. [source]

I remember the first time i came across this corporations-replacing-governments theme. It was in Marge Piercy's 1991 novel Body of Glass. Scary but all too real already. Just consider how many public services are now privatized: health service, prison management, transportation, water, military... all run by corporations. It is not a far step to the world that Jericho shows us. Why wouldn't corporations seize this opportunity to become the government? No longer only 'in all but name'.

Here's an excellent review of the second-to-the-last episode.

080325 18:33 Society

There's a proposal to build a 5,000-foot high tower that will house one million people, which will be organised by floors into neighbourhoods with local governments and provide shopping malls and entertainment, so that you never really have to go outside anymore.

Sounds familiar? If you've played Simcity then you're already familiar with Arcologies. But something else that immediately popped into my mind was J.G.Ballard's 1977 novel High Rise. From the back of the book:

Within the concealing concrete of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of self-destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for technological mayhem.

Human society slips into violent reverse and the inhabitants, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

High-Rise is a modern fable, a commentary on the hideous possibilities of advanced technology and the rat-like nature of trapped human beings...

080301 00:32 Comix

Warren Ellis' online comic, Freakangels, features some beautiful art work by Paul Duffield. Check out the rainbow in the first panel of page 5 of the most recent episode. And now go back and start reading at the beginning.

080229 23:49 Internet

I have a Rocketmail account that i set up in 1997! Rocketmail was the first web-based email, long before Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. In fact, Yahoo bought Rocketmail to start its own web-based email service. So, it's Yahoo now but my email address still reads @rocketmail.com. I'm proud of that.

080218 15:39 Web dev

HTML 5 has finally come up with a solution to a document structure problem i've been struggling with for years. I often mark up very long documents with headings and subheadings. Sometimes there's a subheading with several paragraphs within a text section. So far it was impossible to mark up a following paragraph as belonging not to the subheading but to the heading before that, e.g.

The fact that the last paragraph semantically belongs to header 1 can't be made clear in the mark-up. Sometimes a section is not finished when the subsection finishes, sometimes there's another paragraph whose content belongs under header 1. So how do you mark it up so that it isn't a paragraph within h2 but h1?

Here's how it will be done in HTML 5:

Other notables: <acronym> is deprecated in HTML 5, once and forever ending the acronym versus abbreviation wars, table mark-up is changing quite a bit, it seems, and, surprisingly, they're getting rid of 'accesskey'.

080217 18:27 TV

Some TV news again for a change. Jericho is back for its 7-episode second season - the breadcrumbs they are throwing to the fans after cancelling the show right after its season 1 cliffhanger (how stupid can you be?). Well, it's back and it's good, and it's a pity. They set up enough mystery and suspense in the first 2 episodes to cover another 3 seasons. No idea how they're going to resolve all that in the 5 episodes they got left.

I wasn't too sure about Jericho at first. I watched the pilot last year right after watching the Eureka pilot. Big mistake. After watching Eureka, which takes the piss out of SciFi quite a bit, i just didn't get it. Were they serious? Atombombs on american cities? For several episodes i waited for this to turn out to be joke. Instead it developed into a survivalist's wet dream. Once i understood that, i started enjoying it. Now i don't want it to stop.

No chance that any TV execs are reading this, but please don't kill Jericho - or Pushing Daisies while we're at it. Thanks.

And while on the subject, Summer Glau is horribly miscast as a robot in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She's much more a constantly pouting doll. Not being allowed to act with her face is not doing her career any good. The Sarah Connor character of the serie's title is pretty much obsolete. Thomas Dekker steals the show with his 'Time to stop running. Time to be the hero i'm supposed to become.' attitude. They should have just called it The John Connor Chronicles.

080129 00:26 Movies

Some films are so iconic they should never be remade. The Omega Man is one of them. I'm not saying the new Will Smith - I am Legend - is bad. On the contrary. It's extremely scary and heavily emotional. And it's still close enough to the story (although they did actually shoot another ending, a happy end, which - thank heaven - they dropped for the movie release).

There are some major aspects missing, though. While in The Omega Man there was a cult, people with social structure and culture, and the underlying question whether these people don't have the same right to live and that Neville actually is the monster, there's nothing of that in the new film. The only hint we get is one of the zombie creatures obviously giving the orders. Otherwise it's brainless kamikaze beasts. (In the book by Richard Matheson they were vampires.)

So it lost some of its intelligence but it is still very watchable. Still, i wish they hadn't done it.

And i really hope they are going to leave Soylent Green alone.

080125 14:51 Environment

The term climate porn really pisses me off. There are people who have been warning about the effects of our treatment of the environment for decades, but now that it has finally become a topic that is generally acknowledged as true, thoses dedicated long-term activists are dismisses and ridiculed. The best example is Al Gore. You can say whatever you want about him but this is not a bandwagon he jumped onto when it became popular. He's been involved in the climate change debate for 3 decades and he's passionate about it. The expression climate porn is nothing but bad conscience and a way of getting back at those who can't stop themselves from smugly saying "We told you so!"

Here's the BBC programme covering the topic: One Planet: Climate Porn (podcast available for one week).

080118 15:50 Law

Amazon is breaking french law with its free shipping but they decided to pay the fine rather than drop the free delivery.

On one hand one could get enraged about companies with money being able to defy laws. On the other hand, if it wasn't for courageous civil disobedience stupid laws would never change.

080117 23:41 Disability

Did you know...?

It started as "night writing", a system of communication to be used by soldiers in trenches. But the soldiers couldn't understand it, the army rejected it, and night writing was adapted by Louis Braille, then a pupil at school for the blind in 19th century Paris. He simplified it into a system of six raised dots that can be used to represent letters and numbers. It's not a language but a way of reading and writing one. Despite initial difficulties - the teacher at Braille's school for the blind banned it at first - Braille is now used by millions of visually impaired people worldwide, in languages from Albanian to Zulu. Louis Braille, one of the most famous Frenchmen ever, is buried in the Pantheon in Paris, France, reserved for national heroes.

Found in COLORS Magazine 72 - Without Colors

080114 22:53 Entertainment

While the writers' strike continues (Just give them their money, I'm running out of stuff to watch. - heard on The SCiFi Guys Show), the Golden Globe ceremony was cancelled. So they unceremoniously announced the winners. Nothing to write home about, though.

080114 22:49 Darwin Award

The 2007 Darwin Award Winners have been announced.

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

080103 20:00 Technology

Excellent interview with Ray Kurzweil on BBC World Service's Culture Shock about the technological future, nanotech, the singularity, the human/tech merger. The interview is only available until next Monday (6th of Jan).

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