The footage they show here is so incredibly close to the graphic novel, it’s spooky. This has the potential to be a fantastic movie.
YouTube – NBS Nightly News with Ted Philips, March 11th 1970.
ps: I’m also testing a few new WordPress tweaks with this post
While I traveled to VizWeek last week, I took a copy of Cory Doctorow’s new book "Little Brother". I’ve never read any of Cory Doctorow’s other books, but I’ve heard very good things about this one.
The book is the story of a small group of High School students who are caught skipping class during a terrorist attack on San Francisco, and are picked up by the military and suspected of being involved in the attack. Of course they’re quickly released, but find that Big Brother has moved into San Francisco and now monitors everything in the name of the "Patriot Act" and National Security. They then decide to get revenge on their former captors and re-liberate the City.
The book gets a little unnecessarily in-depth on various technologies like TOR and PGP. It’s a bit distracting in places when it goes from plot and action, to a 2-page technical paper on how TOR works and anonymizes data. However, it does make the book also a type of HandBook for security and subverting Big Brother.
It’s a great book, and I highly recommend it. After finishing this, I think I’m going to find a few of Cory’s other books.
[tag:corydoctorow][tag:review][tag:book][tag:littlebrother]
While I was at UGC08 in Seattle last week, I got the chance to do some reading. Here’s the 2 books I finally knocked off my list:
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First I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. It’s a story set in the future after a devastating attack on earth by the "Buggers", an alien insectoid race that nearly killed us all. The only way we survived was through the legendary attack of one man. Now we leave under constant fear of another invasion, so the government analyzes and recruits potential soldiers at very young (single digit) ages, and puts them through intricate battle games to prepare them for war. The book is the story of one exceptionally talended kid named Andrew "Ender" Wiggins.
It’s a great book with a several good twists toward the end. There are several sequels to the book, but I’m not sure if there is really any temporal order to them. |
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On the flight back I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It’s an interesting cross between Blade Runner and Snow Crash, a distant future where the "Matrix" ( a virtual world ala the MetaVerse) is the core of all computers in the world. A former elite hacker who fell victim to a virus that shattered his nervous system is recruited by a strange man to pickup a new terminal and do 1 more job. But it all spins out of control when he figures out who his boss is working for, and meets the other people involved.
It’s a very dark book, with alot of far-fetched lingo and ideas. It’s a great sci-fi run through various exotic locales on earth, in orbit, and in the "Matrix". |
I’ve heard alot about both books over the years, they’re both considers somewhat "required reading" for SciFi buffs.
[tag:book][tag:neuromancer][tag:endersgame]
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Long ago, back in college in fact, I read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Great book, I loved every page of it. Action packed, some interesting mix of religion, philosophy, and science, and alot of SciFi predictions (Gargoyles, the Metaverse, and much more). After that, I set out to find what else Neal Stephenson had written and came across Cryptonomicon, with some high praise. I quickly ordered it and started reading it.
Here it is 7 years later and I’ve finally finished it. This book is a hard read. Entire chapters are completely irrelevant to the story, establishing nothing important and merely setting up the "tone" of future events. It’s a confusing jumble of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse & Alan Turing in World War II, and his descendant Randall Waterhouse in the present. Lawrence is cracking codes and working on information theory, while Randall is attempting to build an ISP in the Phillipines. Other characters emerge across time, Bobby Shaftoe in WW2 and America Shaftoe in the present, but there’s nothing connecting them aside from genetics. Page after page drones on about strange military operations and math so thick I felt like I was trudging through my calculus textbooks again.
With alot of determination, I finally forced my way through the first 2/3rds of the book, to be rewarded with what finally pulls everything together in the end. Unfortunately, the book seems to culminate in the mindset of the Journey is more important than the destination, as the end of the book is rather weak compared to the previous contents. Also, the journey itself is so meandering and barely comprehensible that even that has little value.
The book has its moments, mostly revolving around Bobby Shaftoe, but I’m glad to be done with it and never have to look at it. After finishing it, I think that the best use of this book is as a book vault safe.
[tag:nealstephenson][tag:cryptonomicon][tag:book]
One of the books I took with me last week was Ervin Laszlo’s "Science and the Akashic Field". Like "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters", it’s an interesting part philosophy/part quantum physics book that mixes such eternal questions as "What is the meaning of the universe?" and "What does quantum entanglement mean?". When I saw the book, it immediately intrigued me as the "Akashic Field" is mentioned alot in the latest season of Eureka.
The book starts with some brief descriptions on what Quantum Physics predicts about the universe we know, and gets pretty quickly into the concept of Quantum Entanglement and nonlocality. What he then postulates is that, on a larger scale, everything in the universe is entangled. He then leads into various Gaia theories and paranormal activity (telekinesis, telepathy, after death experiences, etc) and theorizes that all of these are explainable by people becoming entangled with the environment or other people.
For example, he references many social experiments in telepathy and nonlocal communication. Many of these involve requiring a deep mental/physiological connection between the two subjects (lovers, relatives) but some are done with basic mandatory 20-minute prayer or meditation, and show surprising results.
The conclusion is that the reason animals are able to sense drastic weather changes (tsunami’s, hurricane’s, etc) is that they are "aware" of the environment in a extra-sensory way. This extra sense is provided via entanglement with the environment on a quantum level. They are "informed" by the environment of what’s going on on a subconcious level, and are more open to it that we are. In our more "civilized" way, we have mental blocks that prevent this information from rising to the conscious mind until we remove them through hypnosis, sleep, or careful study and practice. Everything in the universe, from animal/plant evolution to human conciousness and thought are continuously contributing to the information of the universe and continuously receiving information from it, even if not really aware of it. This universal information repository is referred to as the "Akashic Field", taken from the Indian world "Akasha" which describes the energy that makes the universe.
The ending conclusion is that neither evolution nor intelligent design are actually "correct", and infact both work together. We’re in a much later "iteration" of the universe we know, with each iteration being "informed" (via nonlocality & entanglement) by information created in the previous one. Animals evolve into more capable forms by exchanging information with their environment and creating mutations necessary or beneficial to existence. Human consciousness, the capacity for creative thought and everything else in our head, is possible only through interaction with this field. What initially created or seeded the knowledge within this field? The "Creator", be it God, Allah, or the flying spaghetti monster, or possibly even another Universe long gone.
It’s an interesting theory, and he provides a wealth of information to back up his claim (Both scattered inline throughout the book, and in the rather extensive bibliography and reference section in the back). I’m not sure how much of it I believe, but it certainly sounds fascinating and it’s something I plan to do more reading on. Even as much as I enjoyed the read, and it definately gave me some things to think about, I’ve got to give it a 3 out of 5. Why not higher? Well, it makes reference to some very suspect experiments performed long ago along the lines of Human Saliva responding to it’s host’s stimulus many miles away and using a lie detector on a plant, both as evidence of entanglement with the environment/host. Both of these have been proven as inaccurate (usually as accidentally picking up environmental stimuli) by several scientists, and the MythBusters.
[tag:akashicfield][tag:quantum][tag:book]
So, I spent today as I’m sure most of America did. This morning I picked up a copy of the 7th (final) book in the Harry Potter saga, The Deathly Hallows.
10 hours later, I’m done. I’m sore all over and my vision is a bit blurry, but I’m done. The book’s pretty good, and got a great ending to it. I won’t ruin it for you, but it’s a great way to wrap up the entire story. You get a great glimpse on Dumbledore’s past, a true answer on Snape, and even a teary-eyed conclusion. I would say more, but all my relatives read this blog occasionally and they’re all waiting for the book too. If I spoil it for them, I’ll wind up in Azkaban too.
[tag:harrypotter][tag:deathlyhallows][tag:book]
In my line of work, I read alot of technical books. Technical books tend to wind up as either incredibly useful reference manuals, or a memorial for the rain forest. Companies like O’Reilly typically hold the "gold standard" for good manuals, and I own quite a few. But earlier this week a got a copy of "Practical MythTV: Building a PVR & Media Center PC" from APress, and I have to admit I’m impressed. Granted, my MythTV box is pretty much finished and working just fine, but it’s helpful to have these kind of books around just for reference and ideas, and it seems the more that my friends hear me rant about the power of a MythTV, the more they want to have one too.
The book starts with an introduction of PVR’s, covering Windows Media Center, SageTV, and even the Tivo. After that is a great discussion of typical PVR Hardware, with discussions on Hard-Drives, Video cards, and Video Capture cards. They discuss linux kernel compatibilities, hardware acceleration, and cross-compatibility problems you’ll want to avoid. After that, they jump right into the Linux Install. While, personally, I would have recommended KnoppMyth or MythDora, they instead choose Ubuntu. Initially this seemed annoying, but with further thought I think they really took the right track. Projects like KnoppMyth and MythDora, while mentioned briefly in the book, change too quickly to really be properly covered in any book (By the time it reached print, another version is out). Building their entire MythTV rig on a standard distribution allows them to cover installation of Linux with some detail, and then installation and configuration of MythTV and all the associated modules (PVR drivers, plugins, system services, remote drivers, etc) in such a way that it will be useful for several versions to come.
From there the book quickly dives into the nuts and bolts. They spend a large portion of the book discussing how to setup recording schedules with the program guide, search functions, and even the "Advanced Scheduler" (This part I found particularly interesting as I haven’t figured out to make this work on my system yet). Resolving conflicts, setting up intelligent schedules, lots of great information in here, enough to fill up 80 pages of this 345 page book. Then they move into using themes, creating your own themes, all the major MythTV Plugins (downloaded from source and then compiled), how to setup multiple front-ends (This topic is at the heart of many, many mythtv discussions), and working with DVD’s. It’s a great resource, and one I plan to use frequently as my MythTV experiments grow in complexity. One chapter of particular interest is on "Expanding MythTV", which discusses concerns and tests you can run for adding new hard drives, adding new tuners, and setting up multiple backends.
If you’re interested in setting up a PVR, then this is definately a book to check out. APress sells the paper version for $30, and offers an eBook for $15. Amazon offers it for $19.79, but I doubt that price will last long. I definitely give this book a 5 out of 5, and plan to keep it right next to my MythTV. [tag:mythtv][tag:book][tag:reference]
I just finished reading Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters. It’s a book about the “new physics”, meaning Quantum Physics, and it’s similarities to eastern mysticism and religions. It’s a fascinating read and covers everything starting with Newton and his discoveries in physics, all the way through to Bell’s Theorem and Quantum Particle Theory. It stays pretty light with the math (thank goodness) but discusses alot of the theories and how they were discovered. Some of it seems pretty preposterous by modern comparison, like the “Ether” experiments and such, but alot of it is truly eye-opening.
Perhaps the biggest thing to take away from the book is how physics is becoming less and less like how we are traditionally taught it. Things like The Law of Conservation don’t really apply as rigidly as we once thought, and have now been replaced by 12 laws that apply to various aspects of reactions, and even they don’t apply all the time. The other thing to realize is that Quantum Physics is not an absolute explanation of processes like Newtonian physics, but rather a way to explain the results. What actually happens in the middle is a mystery, quantum physics just gives you a way to predict the result (in a large statistical sort of way). Overall, the final thrust of the book is that human logic and language are incapable of describing the way the universe works, but are capable of an inner experience of how it works. At a glance, it’s very similar to the “enlightenment” of eastern religions, and perhaps that’s no coincidence. It’s a fascinating read, and has definately got me wanting to read more.
Which is a good thing, since this book was published based on a talk in 1976, and is therefore missing all the latest advances like String Theory. I’m definately going to have to look around and try to find a newer book, and the Wikipedia entry has some good suggestions.
[tag:quantumphysics][tag:physics][tag:book][tag:dancingwulimasters][tag:zukav]
One nice thing about all the flying is that I have plenty of time to catch up on some reading. Right after the movie came out, I picked up a copy of the paperbook collection and started reading. As is usually the case, I didn’t finish.
So I picked it up again and resumed during the flights. In short, it’s an amazing read. The stories are easy to read, not bogged down with alot of details, and entertaining. What would take most writers pages to develop properly, battles and war scenes mostly, are instead “glossed over” and then covered in retrospect. This leaves alot to the reader’s imagination, which makes for a uniquely “personal” interpretation.
Also, I can now see why so many people call it a “christian fantasy”. When you read the rest of the material (outside of the Lion, the WItch, and the Wardrobe), you really start to see the parallels between Aslan the lion and Jesus or God. Worshiped by all who inhabit Narnia, he is responsible for both the creation of the land and eventually it’s destruction. His famous line of “I tell no one’s story but their own” is repeated again and again as an implication of a “grand plan” for the world. The story comes in 7 books that chronicle the creation of the world & the introduction of the white witch, through the most famous “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, and eventually through to the “armageddon” the ends the world.
It seems to me that this collection of books would be perfectly suited for a movie adaption, even moreso than the Harry Potter books. The stories are entertaining and colorful, each with important lessons and adventures. Unlike other stories, tho, the main characters vary somewhat from book to book. The 4 children of the main book return in a later book (the 4th: Prince Caspian), but the 3rd book (A Horse and his Boy, a clever play on who is actually the pet) contains none of them. The later books replace main characters with new characters until the final book reunites them. Such a story somewhat bypasses the problem of aging actors that is confronting Harry Potter.
In conclusion, go pick it up. It’s an easy read, so long as you’re familiar with british terms like bivouac. [tag:narnia][tag:book]
A story on SlashDot today mentioned that one of the bookstores at Princeton was now offering E-Books at a 33% discount to regular books to the students. The catch? After 5 months, the books automatically “shut down”, and can’t be used anymore. On the surface this seems harmless enough, but when you think about it a bit more you start to see how dangerous this can be.
The second one is the most disturbing. Universities are supposed to be championing the public’s ability to learn and read, the free (as in speech) exchange of information to further advance the public knowledge. By using these DRM‘ed textbooks, you’re ensuring that not only can students not refer to this knowledge after class, but attempts to do so are illegal under the DMCA. The federal government is already pressuring libraries to track checkouts of books containing “sensitive material”, in hopes of tracking terrorists. Librarians are surprisingly concerned about the public’s privacy and have fought this hard, unbeknownst to most of us sadly. But if DRM Books become more popular, it may become an inevitability controlled by the publisher, rather than the distributor.
For an example of the kind of stuff this could be leading to, Richard Stallman wrote an excellent piece called The Right to Read when the DMCA was first proposed. I highly recommend it.
