Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

This came to my attention when I was recently browsing Amazon. Then I saw the review in the Globe & Mail recently. Now I'm very much interested in the novel. It's to be published in September/October, and coming in at over 800 pages, it's quite the size and scope for a first time novelist. If the novel takes off as expected, Clarke is expected to rise to stature of J.K Rowling. The comparisons to Rowling has already started. Clarke writes of two 'practical' magicians -- the young Jonathan Strange and the reclusive Mr. Norrell, living in 19th century England, who are persuaded by the government to help in its war against Napoleon. Their partnership eventually turns to rivalry -- the young and impetuous, pitted against the old and conservative. The magical world is replete with a magician-king, enchanted mirrors, faeries; phantom seahorses rescuing ships, Neapolitan zombies and an armada made of rain; -- the genre however, is a more than just fantasy. Clarke apparently writes with a precise use of the English language. Her novel apparently, can be as easily compared with the works of Jane Austen as it can with Rowling. Intriguing.

High Oil Prices

BusinessWeek has an article analyzing the current skyrocketed oil prices, why they are where they are, and what effects it will have on the world economy. Why the high oil prices? Political uncertainty in the big oil producing countries and unprecedented, unexpected demand [PDF] -- mostly due to the global recovery that's coming from everywhere at once, including the booming China [PDF]. In 2004, China will consume 830,000 barrels of oil a day more than last year. Meanwhile, OPEC countries haven't been investing in [PDF] developing new oil potentials to match growing demand. The Bush administration has made the situation worse by introducing uncertainty in the world -- instead of stabilizing Iraq (and Sadaam was doing a good job of that by himself), they've introduced anarchy to the Middle East. The good news in all of this is that the higher prices are leading to conservation efforts across many fronts. Whether the world sustains the new found interest in conservation, however, is another story.

DVD-R9 vs. DVD+R9

There are two new competing DVD standards set to deliver 8.5GB single-sided capacity to DVD discs. It doesn't look like one is all that better than the other, and there are much similarities. Since they are incompatible, and both are destined to reach the consumer market, here comes confusion!

New $20 Bill

Canada's new $20 bill hits the streets tomorrow. The new $20 will sport a new design featuring art by Bill Reid and will incorporate security features already in place in the other new bills, like the $100 bill.

Microsoft Offends

The Economic Times of India is running this story of Microsoft slip-ups that have cost the company millions. In Windows 95, Microsoft separated India from the disputed territory of Kashmir, by colouring it on a map differently from the rest of India. The Indian government banned Win95, forcing a recall. In the Spanish version of WinXP for Latin America, Microsoft asked customers to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," due to an error in translation. Tom Edwards of Microsoft, explained, "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world." Hmm ... must be the Americans.

Middle-Earth Online

Turbine Entertainment Software is bringing Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy to a massive multi-player online game. The game will allow you to create characters for yourself in Tolkien's world. You'll be able to take on whatever side you wish, and experience unique adventures of your own making. The graphics promises stunning art that's reminiscent of what we've come to expect from fantasy artists. It will all be ready sometime in 2005 -- having no life no included.

Fold Till You Drop

Slashdot is running a post on the origami convention that ran this past weekend. Check out some really amazing folds via the post's links.

Dat Linux Thang!

The folks at the International Open Source Network (IOSN) have produced a beginner's guide to Linux. If you've ever been curious, want to give it a try, but don't know where to start and what to do, worry no more. The guide assumes you have no PC knowledge, and will guide you through the introduction on Linux on PCs. It will give you enough to get started, get on the internet, use the file system and produce documents using OpenOffice. Cool!

Ballet by the Water

Members of the National Ballet of Canada will be performing excerpts from The Barber of Seville, Sleeping Beauty, The Marriage of Figaro and Orpheus, at the Harbourfront Centre -- Tuesday - Thursday, this week. All performances start at 8PM at the CIBC Concert Stage. They are also priced right -- FREE! Check out the arts in Toronto, eh!

TheOpenCD

In celebration of Softwware Freedom Day, on Aug. 28th, theopencd.org has released TheOpenCD v1.4.1 -- a collection of free and open source software for Windows. Check it out and stop paying for software today! Check out a review at PCWorld.

Khaan

'Nuff said.

Linux Patent Risk [PDF]

As if Linux's problems with the SCO Group isn't enough -- the Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) group recently released a study that found Linux could be exposed to 283 issued patents. This issue poses a serious threat to Linux. Even though no one seems to believe that the potential patent infringements aren't over technology critical to Linux, if patent holders wanted to throw Linux off the tracks, they could just litigate and watch customers abandon the OS. The real problem is the US patent system. The US patent office often issues patents for technology that already exists, and those who challenge the patent award are usually the ones that have to carry the burdensome costs of proving so. Apparently, resolving patent disputes in the courts can typically cost between $2-4M US.

Microsoft's Express Tools

Microsoft is out to "win the hearts and minds" of new developers. They're out to build their brand, expand their name, and in the process make a bazillion dollars, and maybe, just maybe take the bite out of Linux on the desktop. Microsoft has already succeeded in giving power to non-developer crowd, by incorporating and expanding its Office suite with VBScript. They've also given power to the lowly business analyst with Access. Now, they're upping the ante. They're introducing Express versions of some of their popular and powerful development tools, and aiming them directly at casual developers, hobbyists and students. The new tools include, Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition -- for building web sites and services; Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition -- to help beginners learn to program; and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. The Express products use the full blown .Net Framework, so there's hardly a functionality difference between what's developed using these tools and their heavyweight siblings. Microsoft has already signed up some powerful partners to develop starter kits for the Express too set -- eBay, PayPal and Amazon are already on board, and Microsoft is courting game development shops and consumer electronics producers. The thought here is that amateur developers will be able to use the Express tools to develop, customize and publish, their extension of popular games and devices. In the business world, some already see the Express tools energizing not only the business analyst toolkit, but also in-house development shops -- business users could potentially prototype solutions using the Express tools as part of a project's design phase, then handing it over to the development shop to port to more powerful languages and platforms, and productionize. Heck, even I might be tempted to crack my programming fingers again! Check out the article at eWeek.

IT Jobs

InformationWeek reports that there might be a slight up-swing in the IT job market in the US -- but it's not going back to the days of yore. The IT market has shrunk, and the increases are not in the commodity skills that have been outsourced to cheaper labour markets in Asia -- the increases are coming in the highly specialized skills area and management. The IT unemployment rate, which has stabilized around 5-6%, is probably going to remain there as new jobs are filled with new entrants to the field or those biting the bullet and retraining. The other factor helping American jobless IT workers is the backlash against the hiring of non-American contractors -- already, less H1-B visas are available for visiting workers.

American Politics

Here's another Wired article on the on going fun being made of Bush and Kerry, leading up to the election. If you haven't gotten enough of the one-liners, the presentations, flash animations or multimedia concoctions already, the article provides some really good links to tickle your funny bone.

Banner Report

Most people hate banner ads, and some people apparently, can't get enough of them. Wired reports that Tari Akpodiete has an unnatural fascination with the things, and over the past number of years, have been archiving them on her website. Check it out.

Olympic 100m

Having lunch today, I caught a few of the 100m heats, and saw the performance of Shawn Crawford of the United States -- what's with some athletes? He won his heat. Nice. But as his bio describes him, "Crawford has become one of the most dangerous 200m runners in the world." He looked dangerous. He screamed after winning -- and it didn't look like a happy scream. It looked like an angry scream. The camera that was at the finish line got the benefit of his close up grimace at winning. Other winners were happy. They jumped up. They cheered. Crawford looked like he was ready to punch out his opponents. I hope that was only a one time performance -- because what I saw today just made me think he's an asshole.

The other thought that occurred to me as I watched the runners today was that black athletes dominate the sport. I think there are only black athletes in the top 10 list of all time best performers, or 2004 best performers. With a few exceptions, the fastest runners are from first world countries (most from the USA) -- which implies that countries with more money to devote to athlete training get the top spots. It's one country pitting their black runners against another's. Francis Obikwelu, for instance -- a Nigerian runner, is now competing for Portugal. He's not native of Portugal. Which is not a wrong thing -- the athletes have to look out for their own careers as well. It just strikes me as interesting -- a little humorous maybe.

I also saw round two of the women's 100m. I was impressed by Merlene Ottey. She's 44-years old. It impressed me that she kept up with the younger runners, even though she didn't qualify for the final. In the semifinal, the youngest runner she ran against was 24 years her junior, who bested her by 0.18 second. Originally from Jamacia, Ottey now runs for (hold on to your hat) Slovenia. In 2000, she became the oldest female athletics medallist when she won the silver in the 4x100 relay.

One Thousand Reasons

Here's a site that is "relentlessly documenting the failures of the Bush administration." The site documents a thousand mistakes that Bush has made -- including coming to office I believe.

Hi-tech Activists

Flash radiojacking: using a special transmitter, reserved radio frequencies can be broken into to send message bursts before authorities can lock into the transmitter's location. More at the Bureau of Inverse Technology (BIT) site.

Bikes Against Bush: putting protestors on the ground without them ever leaving their home, Joshua Kinberg rides a bike equipped with a laptop, a webcam, GPS device, cell phone and a chalk spraying robot. He receives text messages sent by visitors to his site, selects what will be printed by his chalk spraying robot, and time stamps and GPS-maps the messages on his site.

These are just a couple of high-tech tools activists will be resorting to at the Republican National Convention in eight days. Apparently the four day event has a $76 million dollar budget, and 10,000 police officers. With that much facing protestors, placards, puppets and even go-old-fashion street riots will not be sufficient. This is better than the Olympics!

New Photos

I've updated my latest Webshots account with some new photos. In the last few weeks, the family have made trips to Stratford, Elora and the Ontario Renaissance Festival -- see below:

From the Ontario Renaissance Festival, I've also put a few 15-second videos online:

The Mud Show 1

The Mud Show 2

The Mud Show 3

The Mud Show 4

The Tartan Terrors

Zoltan the Adequate

Soldering in Space

Ever wonder what would happen if you tried to solder something in space? Something interesting happens. Solder is usually composed of lead, tin and rosin -- rosin is made from tree gum, and is used in solder to keep it flowing like a liquid and to remove oxidation from the melted solder and metal it's in contact with. In space, when solder is heated, a bubble forms, just like on Earth. But unlike on Earth, the rosin droplet that's usually burning off, forms in a small bubble and starts spinning around. No one knows why yet. Read more at NASA's science site, and watch a video of the spinning rosin in space.

CapGemini & Microsoft not in cahoots!

The Register reports that London's Newham Council has signed a 10-year deal with Microsoft, worth at least £5m. This is after a hard battle between Microsoft and the open source community. Newham Council hired CapGemini to conduct a study to determine which software technology would become their standard. Cap determined, among other things, that Microsoft was cheaper as well as more secure than the alternatives. So what's the punch-line? Microsoft funded the CapGemini study (but Cap is quite independent).

Have Blood, Will Travel

This is a new fact to me, from NASA's science site: every few seconds or so, more than 10 million red blood cells in your body die. They're being replenished on a regular basis by stem cells in your bone marrow. NASA is wondering just what long term exposure to cosmic rays will do to those cells. This is especially important if humans intend to do any long term work in space -- like traveling to Mars for instance.

Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles

They're known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) -- Canada being politically correct, calls them "Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles" -- I didn't know people inhabited aircrafts -- I thought they just flew in them. Canada's military is now experimenting with UAVs on Baffin Island to determine their military potential. Umm ... the American's have been using UAVs in their military for quite sometime now. Just accessing publically available information would tell us their military potential. Can we say waste of taxpayers dollars? Check out our military's tests: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

ID Fight

Wired reports of John Gilmore's fight to be allowed to move freely in his own country without having to show identification papers. Apparently this is a continuation of a previous fight, where Gilmore challenged the US government and the airlines to be allowed to travel by air, anonymously. The government asserts that requiring identification is part of their efforts to combat air piracy. When you think about it though, ever criminal that has ever boarded a plane and committed an act of air piracy, was carrying identification.

XP SP2

This is funny. ZDNet reports that Microsoft has published a knowledge base report on potential issues users could face on installing SP2 for XP -- applications could be impacted, including some of Microsoft's own applications. So what's the big deal? The firewall. Apparently, following good security measures for a change, Microsoft has turned on the firewall by default, resulting in a number of applications that require specific port access to work, to cease working. I'm not sure if all these issues are entirely bad things -- although Microsoft could have warned people before changing their world on them.

Deep Lake Water Cooling

Alec Baldwin will be in Toronto tomorrow for the official launch of Enwave's Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system. It is being billed as the largest alternative energy project to be undertaken by any city in the world. The concept is to tap into the permanent layer of cool (4�°C) water, 83 metres below the surface of Lake Ontario. The water is pumped to a pumping station at John Street, where it is used to cool water in the Enwave water supply loop.

The water from the loop then makes its way back to city buildings to act as an air cooling system. The lake water then continues on it's route to the city's water supply system. Enwave claims to have enough capacity to air condition 100 office towers or 8,000 homes. The environmental benefits appear to be tremendous. It saves 59 megawatts of electricity, not to mention reducing CFCs, HCFCs -- which damage the ozone layer -- and reducing CO₂ output from coal burning. It all seems great, but I wonder -- what's this doing to the Lake? Does it recover fast enough? (Alex Baldwin will be at the Steam Whistle Brewing, 255 Bremner Blvd., Toronto, at 10:30AM for those who care.)

Salad Days

From BusinessWeek magazine: Quick stats on what will be on the menu for the over 2 million meals at the Olympics ...

600,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables

240,000 pounds of meat

225,000 pounds of seafood

27,550 pounds of pasta

9,000 pounds of tofu

Special Einstein Issue

Discover magazine has a special Einstein issue this month. For anyone interested in physics and interested in the father of modern physics, this issue is your field guide. The issue has articles covering Einstein's physics, his philosophy, his life, his legacy and what the future holds for his science. Einstein is an unlikely celebrity scientist -- although revered, those who know him and worked with him paint a conflicting picture. He was a genius, that much is obvious, but at the same time, he made many mistakes, and in some respects, those mistakes are as important in understanding his thinking, as they are in understanding him (and the jury is still out on some of his 'mistakes'). He shared his political views whenever the opportunity presented itself -- so much so that he has quite the file with the FBI. Einstein was one of a kind in our recent history, and it may be a long time before another approach his stature. [For more on Einstein, check out The Einstein Archives; and Albert Einstein Online.]

Bubba Ho-tep

The premise for this movie is silly -- and it is a silly movie too, except it turned out to have superb acting by Bruce Campbell, as Elvis Presley, and Ossie Davis, as John F. Kennedy. The premise of the movie: Elvis ain't dead. It was some other guy. Elvis has grown old, and bitter and lives in a convalescence home in Texas waiting to die with JFK, who's now black. It was all a conspiracy with JFK you see. They dyed his skin, replace the part of his brain that took the bullet, with sand, and hid him away. Both old and frail, Elvis and JFK start getting suspicious when giant 'cockroaches' (scarab beetles) start appearing, rude Egyptian hieroglyphs are scratched into the walls of the visitor washroom stall and their fellow residents start dying. What evil is in their midst? A mummy! Bubba Ho-tep! And it's sucking the souls from the old folks via some interesting orifices. That's the premise. Bruce Campbell's portrayal of an aging Elvis however, stole the movie from the prankster shenanigans of the story. Getting old sucks. Especially when you look back on your life and realize the mistakes that were made, the wasted time -- the waste. Despite that, Elvis doesn't give in to wallowing self-pity -- he is determined to be the hero he has been in his fantasies -- even if it's only to save the souls of folks in the convalescence home. This was a nice surprise on DVD -- but I'm surprised that such a quirky story, with such great acting, didn't see a bigger release. In Toronto it showed up a local film festival and a month later it was on DVD.

Iron Monkey

I saw Iron Monkey last night on DVD -- it's been a while since I saw good kung-fu, chop-suey movie. The action was amazing! It's directed by Woo-ping Yuen, the man responsible for the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Matrix. Made in 1993, the movie is seeing wide release in North America, thanks to Quentin Tarantino. The movie follows the exploits of the Iron Monkey (Rongguang Yu), Wong Kei-Ying (Donnie Yen), Miss Orchid (Jean Wang) and Young Wong Fei-Hung (Sze-Man Tsang -- a girl playing a boy) -- the Iron Monkey is a Robin Hood character, that robs from the corrupt governor, who has a obsession with shark fin soup and his harem, and gives to the poor. Along the way, he must combat the bumbling local police as well as the Shaolin monks gone bad (yes, they like shark fin soup and women too). The final fight scene was out of this world. The Iron Monkey and Wong Kei-Ying battle the evil guardian of the Shaolin Golden Palm, while balanced on tall, thin, bamboo reeds, which are on fire, as is the ground around them. Cool!

2 Days in the Valley

I recently saw 2 Days in the Valley on DVD. It's a bit of sick and twisted movie (not gruesome), that tries hard to be a Quentin Tarantino movie, but falls short. It tells a number of stories that finally intersect to larger story of the film, and takes place in 48-hours in Los Angeles. There is a psycho-hitman and his girlfriend, who may have cheated on him with this guy who the psycho-hitman was hired to kill, by the ex-wife, for cheating on her with the psycho-hitman's girlfriend. There is a washed up hitman who was supposed to take the fall for the hit and 'accidentally' die, but turns out to have a knack for staying alive and cooking pasta. There is a rich asshole who verbally abuses everyone, including his personally secrectary, who falls for the washed up hitman. There is the step-sister of the rich asshole, who likes him despite him being an asshole, and falls for the washed up movie director who's suicidal. The bad guys die and the others live happily ever after -- more of less. It's a good movie to kill a few hours with.

Cure for Laziness

Nature reports that researchers have discovered the gene [PDF] that turns primates into workaholics. Like humans, primates procrastinate in tasks when the goals are far off, but work hard to make up for loss time when their goal is closer. The researchers injected DNA into each primate's brains to temporarily switch off a gene in the rhinal cortex -- an area of the brain that is associates visual cues with reward. The gene encodes a protein called a D2 receptor, which allows nerve cells to be more responsive to naturally occuring dopamine. With the gene turned off, the primates were unable to associate their tasks with their long term goal (or reward), and stopped procrastinating -- in fact, no only did they work harder, but they were also prone to less errors along the way. The researchers are hoping that their work will lead to a better understanding, and hopefully better treatments, for people who suffer from depression, as they commonly don't find work rewarding. Don't worry however, injections aren't coming our way soon -- researchers had to inject primates brains daily, in a number of areas, for the duration of the experiment, and such sustained injecting results in brain damage. [The monkeys did not give permission for the injections, and were most likely harmed during this research.]

NY City's Tidal Turbines

Nature online reports that New York City will be getting six electricity generating turbines in the East River this September, as part of Verdant Power's test of the concept. If successful, the project could expand to upwards of 300 turbines. Initially, the six turbines will generate electricity equivalent to what is needed to power 200 homes -- but if the concept is proven, there would be a lot more benefit to the environmentally friendly energy source.

Global Warming

BusinessWeek has a special report on global warming in its latest issue. It's worth the read even if you're already aware. The extent to our abuse of the planet is incredible. The article starts quite dramitically with an image of the Greenland ice sheet melting -- it's beautiful, but a terrible beauty, as it shouldn't be happening. Our CO₂ emissions have been rising at an alarming level -- due primarily to our burning of fossil fuels and oil. For 450,000 years, the CO₂ levels in the atmosphere has stayed below 290ppm -- today we spew more than 7 gigatons of CO₂ into the air, putting the levels at more than 370ppm. Correspondingly, there has been a steady rise in global temperature.

The World (or most of the world anyway) have bought into the fact that we're made a mess of our planet, and are in the process of a vast terraforming experiment. The world banded together and in 1992 opened the Kyoto protocol for signatures -- it was entered into force by the UN in 1994. Thus far, only 124 countries have signed on [PDF] -- alarmingly, some of the leading nations of the world have refused to -- including the United States -- mostly because the Bush administration, and George W. himself, thinks the whole thing is a farce. Thankfully, most Americans don't share Bush's ideals of screwing the world. The states are starting to adopt stringent laws to enforce emission control -- and surprisingly, businesses are starting to wake up and realize that there's money to be made from saving the world -- indeed, lowering CO₂ emissions is turning out to save millions of dollars [PDF]. It's a sad state of human affairs, when our very survival depends on how cost effective it is for us to be proactive. If we continue this way, I can forsee a day when some visitors passing by from another world will stop by to read the epitaph we've left on our dead Earth: "Here lies the remains of the human race. We died of our own stupidity."

Related links:

The Climate Group

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Resouces for the Future

MIT Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Change

EPRI: Science & Technology solutions for the global energy industry

Global Warming and Climate Change Policy Websites

Net Publishing

Wired Online has an article on a Net Publishing success -- Adam Engst's Take Control venture. It's a series of timely eBooks, written by a stable of writers that share 50% of the sales. The eBooks are published in PDF format, but contain no DRM -- rather, they rely on the honesty of the purchaser. They're priced cheaply, so it's not worth the trouble of pirating anyway. Not a bad model for budding publishers.

2TB Memory Card

Taiwan's Open Mobile Internet Alliance (OMIA) has announced that they've produced a 2TB memory card. The card, similar in size to today's memory cards used by cameras, PDAs and MP3 players, will boast transfer rates of 120MB/s, consume lower power and be compatible with today's existing memory cards. You could use one of those things to record every conversation you'll ever have and store every photograph you'll ever take!

Say yes to nukes

Enjoy this flash animation -- if you're an American, vote for Bush so he can put your nuclear arsenal to use!

Novell vs. SCO

As posted on Slashdot -- Novell is moving to dismiss SCO's slander claim. If you recall, when Novell waded into SCO's attempt to screw the free world out of Linux, it claimed that it never did transfer any copyright of System-V code to SCO. Sue-happy SCO then decided to sue Novell for making a knowingly false claim.

Venter's Origin of the Species

Wired Magazine's August cover issue has a report on J. Craig Venter's latest venture. After his shotgun mapping of the human genome, and being kicked out of Celera Genomics, Venter went away to lick his wounds. The scientific world had scorned his approach, which was basically to profit from human genes. The scorn was probably more for his ego however -- it's quite large, and Venter went about making himself a star, much to the contempt of his peers. Now, Venter, with his Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives is out create life from scratch and catalogue all the genes on the planet. Why all the genes on the planet? To start, it's a noble goal. Species are disappearing faster than we can catalogue them. Most of the life on Earth are bacteria and other microorganisms -- some of which challenge our current methods of classification -- and most haven't been identified as yet. Back in March, Venter's team discovered 1,800 new species and identified more than 1.2 million new genes from a sampling from the Sargasso Sea -- that find immediately doubled the number of known genes. Even more shocking, Venter made his find freely available on the public genetic database, GenBank -- and promises to do so from his current two year trip around the world to take samples and catalogue the genes found. So where does this all take us? The creation of new life for specific purposes. Venter's Sargasso's find alone identified 800 new genes that are involved in converting sunlight to energy. He plans on developing a method of creating new life based on specific genes to do everything to creating energy to gobbling up pollution.

Asinine Poetry

Not into poetry you say? Then this is a site for you. It's the unpoetry site. The site that balances all the published good poetry out there. If poetry had an evil twin, this site would its home. You'll be embarrassed when you get there.

Hawking Admits to Mistake

A few weeks ago at the International Conference of General Relativity and Gravitation, Stephen Hawking admitted he was wrong. The story begins back in 1916, after Einstein published his general theory of relativity. Karl Schwarzschild used Einstein's field equation to compute the possibility of a singularity -- a point where Einstein's beautiful space-time no longer makes any sense, and an outcome of Einstein's field equation that Einstein fiercely resisted up to his death in 1955 (Schwarzschild himself died a few months after working this out). A singularity forms from the collapse of star under its own gravitation -- the idea is that gravity is so overwhelming, that it sucks all the mass of the star into an infinitesimally small area -- gravity's intensity is so great that not even light escapes from it.

The term 'black hole' wouldn't coined until the 1960s by physicist John Wheeler. In the 1970s, Hawking came along and made a prediction that made perfect sense, but in effect, destroyed black holes -- proving that they shouldn't exist. One of the predictions of quantum electrodynamics, first proposed by Paul Dirac, is that the 'empty' universe is not really empty, but is in fact seething with virtual particles -- virtual, because while they are very much real, they exist for such a short period of time, that might as well not exist at all. Virtual particles pop in and out of existence all the time -- they come in pairs -- a particle and its anti-particle equivalent -- their existence as a pair, created from nothing, doesn't violate the laws of nature, because as a pair, they are in effect nothing -- and because they exist as a particle-anti-particle pair, they guarantee that they will annihilate each other and cease to exist.

Hawking's supposition was, what happens if virtual particles appear at the event horizon of a black hole? His mathematics predicted something remarkable would happen. One particle would be trapped by the event horizon and be sucked into the black hole, while the other could escape as thermal radiation. This is a problem. The nature of the cosmos requires a balance -- that's why virtual particles annihilate each other. In this scenario, they don't -- or they could, in which case, for a balance to occur, the black hole would need to lose mass equivalent to the mass of the escaping particle. Fine. Except another tenet of quantum physics says that information can't be destroyed -- and by destroying mass within a black hole, information would be destroyed. Hawking continued this line of thinking to the end. If virtual particle pairs are constantly popping into existence, then half of the pairs would be escaping from black holes, causing black holes to lose mass over time -- essentially, there shouldn't be black holes because they should all evaporate! That's the problem.

Hawking had made a bet with John Preskill -- Preskill felt something was wrong with Hawking's supposition that created the problem -- its just for 30-years, no one could figure it out. Hawking apparently did this year. He reworked his math, and came to a different conclusion -- apparently, 30-years ago, he was wrong. (There are more quandaries similar to this -- for instance, we see the effects of a black hole's gravity, and according to quantum mechanics, gravity is mitigated by the graviton particle -- but if nothing can escape from a black hole, gravitons shouldn't be able to -- so in effect, black holes by their very nature, should eventually stop being black. [Yes, it's a circular argument, and I ain't smart enough to do it justice, so I'll leave it at that.])

DVD-HD vs. Blu-ray

Another media war is in full swing, and just like the VHS vs. Beta war, there will likely be only one winner, and the best technology will not necessarily win. The competing technologies vying for standard acceptance as the next generation DVD format are: Blu-ray [PDF] -- backed by Sony, Panasonic, Philips, HP, Dell, Hitachi, Matsushita, LG, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, TDK and Thomson; and, DVD-HD (also known as Advanced Optical Disc - AOD) -- backed by Toshiba and NEC. Both technologies offer increased picture clarity, anti-piracy protection, along with the HD format. The new formats both offer increased storage capacity and transfer rates. Blu-ray's capacity is at 27GB single layer, while DVD-HD is at 20GB -- both promising transfer rates of 36Mbps, which is way over the 11Mbps offered by today's DVDs. Why the need for additional storage? (Other than just bigger is better, that is?) HD standard. A 2 hour recording using the HDTV standard requires about 27GB of storage, using the standard MPEG-2 compression used in today's DVDs. (DVD-HD solicited Microsoft to help it develop a compression algorithm that would fit a typical 2 hour HDTV recording on their 20GB discs.) But the applications are far more reaching than just HDTV -- which Hollywood hasn't really jumped into whole heartedly anyway. There are the data applications -- think of it -- a 50-cent disc being able to store 27GB of data -- and at transfer rates of 36Mbps ... enough to bring every geek out of the basement (and I don't even have a basement!). Both Blu-ray and DVD-HD achieve their higher capacity by increasing the density of pits used to encode data on the disc's recording track. Increasing the pit density was achieved by lowering the wavelength of the laser used to encode them from 650nm (red) to 405nm (blue), and in the case of Blu-ray, increasing the numerical aperature of the laser's objective lens from 0.60 to 0.85 -- DVD-HD uses the same objective lens as today's DVD, of 0.60, and has the added advantage in that it can be manufactured using the same plants making today's DVDs.

Securing the Games

Securing the games in Athens will cost over $1 billion, with just a third of that going to the IT security of the games. When you think about it, that's a tremendous amount of money being plopped down for a few weeks of competition -- but that's the kind of world we live in. There will be 10,500 workstations or servers on the Olympic network, which will not be connected to the internet -- located in 62 venues, supporting over 200,000 users and supported by 3,500 personnel -- 400 of them being IT security staff. That may seem as overkill, but when you think of the public exposure, and the target the games represent for not just cyber terrorists, but kids with their own special brand of attention deficit disorder, then it seems like nothing. Managing such an effort must be an amazing experience -- it's like an Olympic event in itself -- pretty much creating a company's infrastructure from scratch, and having it survive a few weeks of live test -- and if everything goes well, no one will ever know you were there.

Had enough?

Don't know when you've had too much to drink? Check out this flash game, and experience getting drunk at work! [Thanks for the link Garry.]

Gardenias

They are a local Toronto band -- playing in Spanish. Just goes to show you that our city does support a diverse cultural mix. The Gardenias sing in Spanish, so I haven't a clue what they're saying -- but they've go some interesting beats -- demos are available online.

Yonge-Dundas Square

Yonge-Dundas Square -- the new, outdoor plaza that took shape last year, and has been put in use most weekends, has its own website. If you're a Toronotian with not much to do, check out the site -- there's usually something free on to stave off the boredom.

Compact Flash Computer

C Data Solutions has managed to shoehorned a complete Linux computer system into a compact flash (CF) card, measuring less than 2"x2". The Compact Flash Computer (CFC) can be mixed and matched with other CF peripheral cards to build entire systems. Bloody brilliant! (C Data Solutions is British you know!)

The Village movie

I saw this last week Wednesday with my oldest. There is a surprise ending, to answer the first question most people will have about the latest M. Night Shyamalan's film. It is also not as spooky as his previous films. There are moments however -- there are always moments, but it's not scary -- it will make you jump though. The movie will make you think, as Shyamalan's previous films have done. It's a smart movie, smartly executed, and tells a 'what if?' tale. I can't say too much about it without disclosing the surprises, so instead, I'll tell you about Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron Howard, and star of the movie. She plays a blind character in the movie, and she's simply amazing. She gives her character emotion, strength, sincerity, and an innocence that begs for protection -- and when that innocence is lost, even though her strength protects her, you feel the loss. You also understand why her father makes the choices he makes in the movie for his children -- it's innocence like her's and love that would make one want to shelter and protect. Great movie!

I, Robot movie

I saw this with my youngest last week Tuesday. It was entertaining. It was fun. It didn't go heavy handed with the Asimov's laws -- which was probably a good thing, as I don't think that part of the fiction would translate well to the movie. Will Smith wasn't too bad in the movie either -- he was his usual self to some degree, but quite tempered -- his one-liner smart-ass comments were kept to a minimum -- which was refreshing -- maybe a bit of respect was being paid to Asimov? The star of the movie however was the special effects. Sonny was quite well done, as the robot who can and does break the laws. Unlike Asimov's stories, the movie will not leave you much with which to ponder in the end. It's typical Hollywood feeding pablum to the masses -- but if that's all you expect, then you'll be entertained. Don't go expecting the stories you read -- if you want that, pick up the book -- these days the collected stories sport a Will Smith/Spooner cover.

King Arthur movie

I saw King Arthur last week Monday -- the holiday Monday. The movie has a different take on the legend than previous Arthurian movies I've seen. This one tells a more 'realistic' story -- and the word is in quotes because it's far from real, but still, it's far more real than the previous movies I've seen that elevated the man to godhood. The movie stars some relative unknowns for the movies -- Clive Owen as Arthur and Ioan Gruffudd as Lancelot. The movie however was stolen by the 19-year-old Keira Knightley, who starred as Guinevere -- in my opinion of course. Previously, Guinevere has appeared as a fawning female character, instead of the warrior she is portrayed as in the movie. The real Guinevere was most likely a warrior, as it was custom of her people, the Celts, at that time -- although with scarce information, and more legend than facts, who knows. The other character I liked in the movie was Merlin, played by Stephen Dillane. The movie portrays him more a pagan leader than a sorcerer -- a portrayal that's probably closer to fact -- Merlin the Sorcerer is more the stuff of fantasy. It was quite a movie, lots of action, a few laughs, and a good pace.

Human Powered Helicopter

As reported in Slashdot -- a team of engineering students from UBC have completed a functioning human powered helicopter, in response to a competition by the American Helicopter Society. The competition has been open for the last 24 years, and in recent years, about 17 human powered helicopters have been built -- but none have meet the competition's criteria of staying aloft for 1 minute and reach a height of 3 metres. The UBC entry hopes to change that.

Billions to Save

InformationWeek has report on the current status of the supply chains in the business world -- and despite the efficiencies wrung from the re-engineering efforts of the last decade or so, there's still more to be gained, and lots more work to be done. Last year alone, $5 billion was spent on supply chain technologies -- and growth is expected towards $7 billion by 2008. The NIST estimates that a cost of 1.25% of total value of shipment is due just to lack of standards or interoperatabiity. Groups such as ebXML and RosettaNet are working to implement standard processes -- while standards may not be a competitve advantage, one thing for sure that they do is, reduce costs.

Taste of the Danforth

The weather is a bit iffy out there right now -- it can't decide if it's going to rain or give us some relief with sunshine -- nevertheless, the tasting of the Danforth continues through the weekend. The annual event runs on Danforth Avenue, between Broadway and Jones. There's the usual food and entertainment along the street, but this year, the Royal Mounted Police will be out in their scarlet uniforms to greet visitors of the city -- part of the province's 'Do Toronto' marketing campaign.

Induce Act [PDF]

Stupid laws should be challenged. In this case, it's a stupid act that two media-whore US senators, Orrin Hatch (got $159,860 campaign donations from TV, movie and music industries) and Patrick Leahy (got $220,450 campaign donations from TV, movie and music industries), are sponsoring. They would like to give the media industry the ability to now sue the technology companies that 'induce' people to pirate -- kinda like suing the gun manufacturers for 'inducing' people to use their guns to commit murder -- or like suing the media companies for 'inducing' people to go out and commit crimes. I think Hatch & Leahy should be sued for 'inducing' stupidity in the American population. Now a group of technology companies have banded together to protect themselves -- first response -- use P2P technologies to freely distribute the senate hearings on the Induce Act. Read more here.

Baraka

I saw this movie last night with the girls. If you've seen Koyaanisqatsi (or its sequels), you know what to expect from this movie. It's a beautiful film. Shot in 24 countries, it presents the balance of nature and humankind. It mesmerizes with beauty and saddens with destruction. The movie starts off slowly, showing various worshipping rituals from around the world, then juxtaposes the serenity of primitive life with bustle of modern city dwellers -- it grabs with heart wrenching scenes of the poor in our cities, and the poor of the third world, then shows the destruction humans have committed against the planet and against each other. It's a movie that requires multiple viewing. It will make you think. It will leave you overwhelmed.

Who owns your thoughts?

In Evan Brown's case, he doesn't. He didn't own his thoughts while working for Alcatel. A Texas court has ruled that Evan Brown's idea for reverse engineering an executable, is own by Alcatel, because he thought of it while working for them. It didn't matter that nothing of this idea was actually written down while working at Alcatel. I sure hope he didn't have children while working for Alcatel -- they would probably not be his. It sucks to be you Evan Brown.

Messenger Liftoff

NASA's Messenger spacecraft lifted-off yesterday on its mission to Mercury. It will do a flyby of Earth one year from now, then two flybys of Venus and finally three flybys of Mercury for gravity assists before settling into orbit in 2011 -- a 7.9 billion kilometer journey. Once there, the science will begin in earnest, as eventually, NASA will be unable to keep Messenger in orbit and it will crash into the planet.

Bill Clinton in TO

Billy 'not-two-willy' Clinton will be in Toronto tomorrow, Thursday, signing his book, and maybe picking up chicks -- Hillary will not be in attendance. The book signing will start at 11AM, in the Indigo at Manulife Centre (55 Bloor Street West). And I know the pen is mightier than the sword, but remember, the secret service agents assigned to Clinton carry guns -- so no fooling around if you drop by to see the Prez with the most!

DARPA's Grand Challenge

DARPA has announced the date for the 2005 Grand Challenge -- Oct. 8. The grand challenge is supposed to accelerate R&D in autonomous ground vehicles -- but basically, it's a big race with robotic vehicles. For 2005 however, DARPA seems to be taking the race a little more seriously. After most of the vehicles from 2004 failed to even finish the race, DARPA expects entrants to submit a video demonstrating their vehicle before they are accepted. Still, it's just another race!

Space Review

The Space Review bills itself as a place to find 'essays and commentary about the final frontier.' It's not a bad site at that. The article that caught my attention, was one describing the potential near-term return to the Moon using the Soyuz vehicle for transport. The article contends that the Soyuz spacecraft already makes regular missions to the ISS -- but by employing an additional module that could dock with the Soyuz, it could be sent on the six day round trip to the Moon. An interesting speculation -- too bad conservative minded officials at NASA won't do anything about it. Maybe the Russian cowboys will though.

Cult Brands

BusinessWeek has just published their annual ranking of the top 100 brands [PDF]. The criteria to make it into the list is quite heavy -- the top five brands are: Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Intel. The companies that make up the list are all well known -- I would be surprised if you didn't recognize all of them. What gives a brand cult status? Loyalty -- loyalty that defies logic. Loyalty that enables a relationship between the brand and the customer -- customers have a personal identification with the brand -- so much so that they take ownership of the brand -- it doesn't just belong to the company, it also belongs to the customers -- it's a shared relationship with the brand -- it's an experience.

Cyborg Democracy

If you're a cyborg, or a aspire to become one, this site should be a destination for you. These people may be wackos today -- they may also be at the forefront of something that the general populace isn't ready for today. In the site's own words:

Cyborg democracy is a nexus for progressive transhumanists, or as we say "for democratic transhumanists, nanosocialists, revolutionary singularitarians, non-anthropocentric personhood theorists, radical futurists, leftist extropians, bioutopians and biopunks, socialist-feminist cyborgs, transgenders, body modifiers, basic income advocates, world federalists, agents of the Culture and the Cassini Division, Viridians and technoGaians - transmitting a sexy, high-tech vision of a radically democratic future.

Other sites similar in vein: Orion's Arm -- Transhumanity -- World Transhumanist Association -- Creative Conscious Evolution -- Extropy Institute.

Gerontocracy

I learned a new word last week. Gerontocracy -- government based on rule by elders.

Taxpayer Money

Here's one from Slashdot -- this is an example of stupidity that begat stupidity. An Alabama sysadmin was fired after he go screenshots using a spyware, showing that his boss spent most of his time playing Solitaire. The boss got a reprimand. The superiors thought it was wrong for the sysadmin to spy on his boss, even is his boss was wasting taxpayers money. Remember -- this is Alabama -- and the department of Transportation no less. Explains everything when you think about it.

Jib-Jab Sues

Jibjab, who's distributing a parody of the presidential elections in the US, has sued to protect its right to parody. Apparently, the owners of the copyright to Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land is Your Land," are upset with the parody. Another case of stupid people suing smart people.

Qurbani

Another set of memories -- I remember seeing this movie in Guyana when I was a kid -- maybe 1980, or thereabouts. With one of the characters using my name, you've got to expect a kid to like the movie. It didn't hurt that it had great action, great songs, and that the good guy won despite the odds. ;-) Here's a few low bitrate (16kb) samples of the songs from the movie: Aap Jaisa Koi Meri, Qurbani (remix) and Laila Mai Laila. For something a bit different, check out this English version of Qurbani, sung by Sharon Prabhakar -- same music, just more funky -- it's only a sample mind you, so it's not complete.

Nanotech: Moving H2O by Light

Roland Piquepaille writes of a new discovery made by scientists from Arizona State U. -- the ability to move water molecules by light. This is important in the field of micofluidics, and could ease research efforts in analytical chemistry and pharmaceutical studies.

Filerush.com

Looking for videos online? Check out this site. It tracks and provides links to movie trailers, video games trailers, etc. I just downloaded the Doom 3 trailer -- whoa! I doubt my machine will be able to handle those graphics! Also got the Batman Begins Movie teaser -- cool! It looks like an origin story, or a Batman Year One story. Should be good.

FanFilms.com

My brother sent me the link to this site -- it hosts fan films made of mostly the SciFi / Comic Book genre. There is a focus on Star Wars, as the site is hosted by TheForce.net, but there's lots of movies, links, etc., of non-Star Wars content. Some cool and funny stuff -- especially some of the animations -- like the Ratrix, or The Sith Who Stole Christmas.

Carl Orff's O Fortuna (Carmina Burana)

I just listened to this -- it's cool! (More can be found here.) You can find a review of the piece here, and full text lyrics of Carmina Burana here. It might come as a surprise that this stuff was written by monks, considering some of the lyrics. I might actually enjoy this thing its entirety if I find it -- not for the lyrics, as it's all in Latin or German -- but for the sound. It actually does sound great!.

Edit as requested by Ozzyhead.com:

Take a listen to it here. [MP3]

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Saw this movie on DVD recently -- not bad for a French flick. The movie tries to mix the 18th century, some martial arts, native mysticism and horror -- a weird mix that isn't really pulled off well, but what it lacks in believability, it makes up in style. The movie follows Chevalier de Fronsac, an adventurer and his Mohawk brother, Mani, as they hunt a mysterious beast that's killing randomly in the French countryside. Cool concept, a bit of crappy dialogue, but a nice action film. [Order from Amazon.]

Way of the Gun

I saw this movie again, recently on DVD -- and again, it was a cool movie. It stars Benicio Del Toro, Ryan Phillippe (whom I never heard of before this -- or after for that matter), Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs and James Caan. If you've seen the movies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Reservoir Dogs or 2 Days in the Valley, you'll know what you're in for with this film. The film is slow in some spots, but the action ending keeps going and going. The film follows two down on their luck criminals, who kidnap a pregnant woman -- then watch as things take a turn for the worse -- and worse. [Order from Amazon.