Link Dump

Well, I lost power for a good portion of the day, and it’s looking like I might not have much time tonight, so here are a few links:

• After the Coup by John Scalzi: A short story that takes place in the Old Man’s War universe. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks interesting.
• Watching the Watchmen Trailer: A Detailed Analysis: Amazing shot-by-shot breakdown of the Watchmen trailer. While you’re at it, might as well check out the Watchmen Video Journals over at Trailer Addict. I’ve been following the production of Watchmen for some time now, and am really looking forward to the movie.
• 2008 US Movie Box Office: Interesting chart of 2008 movies, arranged by weekend gross. As you might expect, the first weekend is almost always the largest for any given film. You can see the various spikes as well, notably the Batman spike.
• Libra: I’ve been messing around with this application which lets you catalogue your library of books, DVDs, music, etc… It’s a neat little program, though it clearly needs some work. For instance, it crashed about 10 times while I entered my DVD library into it, and it also seems to crash every time I search for “Cryptonomicon.” The search results were also very strange, and I found myself sometimes having to find the item on Amazon first, then using the ASIN to find it in Libra. It would also be nice if it used a richer data source as well, because you really don’t get much meta data with it. You can add tags to each item… but you have to do it manually. Probably not something I’ll maintain, but it’s interesting, and it provides a neat export functionality – see my DVD collection here (Some DVDs still not entered, but this is a good portion of what I have).)

That’s all for now…

I’ve recently run across some interesting webcomics, so I figured it was time for another edition of linking to someone new:

• Abstruse Goose: Another minimalist nerd comic, but it’s actually pretty good. Just don’t compare it to xkcd (which is, of course, impossible – especially when he creates comics like this). This SETI comic is brilliant.
• Theater Hopper: Topical, movie-themed comic. The latest one features a rather obscure reference, but most of them are great, and he’s apparently been doing this for over 5 years (sooo, I’m a little late on this one, but it’s good anyway).
• Stolen Pixels: Ok, I cheated. I already linked this, but how can I not link to Shamus’ new, video-game themed comic? Great stuff so far. Now featuring legitimate webcomic navigation!

That’s all for now.

Time is short this week and I will be travelling this weekend so no entry on Sunday (perhaps one on Tuesday when I get back). Anwyay, here are some links to chew on while I’m away:

• As a follow up to the last entry, this pie chart of the ingredients of Soylent Green is pretty good (warning: Spoiler! But if you don’t know this spoiler by now, where have you been?)
• Directors’ Cameos in Films: This is an interesting collection. Some directors are very subtle with their cameos, some are not so much. Some work well and fit into the movie, others stick out like a sore thumb. For my money, no one does a cameo better than Hitchcock. Often, they’re difficult to find, but sometimes they take on added meaning and symbolize an important theme (for instance, Hitch downing the champagne in Notrorious (scroll down)).
• Interesting color coded map of generic names for soft drinks. I tend to use soda or Coke (interesting that a specific brand is often used as a “generic” name for soft drinks)..
• How to quit Assassin’s Creed on a PC: This is an absurdly stupid interface (pretty, but stupid)… except that it’s probably much better for consoles. A lot of games that are developed for consoles have menu problems when ported to the PC (see: Unreal Tournament 3).
• One Of The Best Pitches Ever Made: I can’t imagine this happening in any sort of professional league, but it’s brilliant.
• Tim Burton’s Concept Art for Superman Lives: I’m not a big fan of Burton, but when this now-defunct project was announced, I was pretty intrigued, mostly by the choice of Kevin Smith to write the script. Of course, the film probably wouldn’t have been that great, but then we’d miss out on Smith’s brilliant story of writing the script (and dealing with the producer).

That’s all for now. Again, probably no entry on Sunday, as I’ll be out of town with no access to internet…

I have a few ideas of longer type posts, but nothings gelling at the moment, so here are a few links I’ve run across lately:

• Mind Meld: Today’s SF Authors Define Science Fiction – It’s an interesting question, and there are lots of interesting answers here (don’t miss part 2). I tend to favor a more broad definition that some of the authors, something akin to John Scalzi’s or David Louis Edelman’s definitions. It’s hard to say though. How does one classify something like The Baroque Cycle. The whole thing takes place in the distant past, and there’s not much in the way of scientific speculation (the characters are speculating I guess, but we’re not), but it’s clearly got a handle on science and technology and Stephenson is clearly a SF writer. I don’t know that a definition that excludes The Baroque Cycle is a bad one, but I’d kinda like mine to do so.
• Fledge is a Singularity Skeptic – My problem with the singularity is that no one really knows what it would look like. We can speculate and doing so makes for fun SF, but still, I share Fledge’s skepticism for a lot of it:
  

  The proponents of AI argue that if we just add levels of complexity eventually we will have something approximating the real thing. The approach is to add more neural net nodes, add more information inputs, and [something happens]. But my sense of the human brain (which is partly religious and partly derived from my career as an MRI physicist specializing in neuroimaging) is that the brain isn’t just a collection of N neurons, wired a certain way. There are layers, structures, and systems within whose complexities multiple against each other.

  I’ll say that I think a singularity is possible, but I have no idea when. I’m pretty sure it won’t be happening in the next 15 years, as Verner Vinge has speculated. Of course, he freely admits the possibility of singularity failure…

• SF Starship Size Comparisons – Interesting. I always thought Star Destroyers were larger than they are…
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spaceship Captains – Not as comprehensive as it sounds, but still fun. References to the obvious (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc…) and the not so obvious (Futurama).

That’s all for now…

I’m a little brain dead right now, so here are a few things that have caught my eye recently:

• SFWA’s Awesome T-Shirt: Was this funnier when I didn’t know the origins of the t-shirt? Maybe, but it’s awesome anyway. (Via Scalzi)
• The High Frontier, Redux by Charlie Stross: A total buzzkill, but worthwhile reading on the likelihood (well, unlikelihood) of colonizing space. Needless to say, we won’t be sending out the colony ships anytime soon. It’s detailed and interesting, and there are a ton of comments.
• How Many HTML Elements Can You Name in 5 Minutes?: I got 48 out of 91 on my first try. I kicked myself for not remembering most of the remaining ones.
• Retro-Future: To The Stars!: Classic scifi illustrations from the 1930s to 1970s, many from former Soviet countries.
• Air Traffic Video: John Robb points to an awesome video that shows all air transportation flows over the US. It’s mesmerizing.
• Infringement Nation (.pdf): Interesting article on how everyone regularly commits copyright infringement without even knowing it (i.e. this is without even taking into account p2p downloads, etc…):
  

  To illustrate the unwitting infringement that has become quotidian for the

  average American, take an ordinary day in the life of a hypothetical law professor

  named John. For the purposes of this Gedankenexperiment, we assume the worstcase

  scenario of full enforcement of rights by copyright holders and an

  uncharitable, though perfectly plausible, reading of existing case law and the fair

  use doctrine. Fair use is, after all, notoriously fickle and the defense offers little ex

  ante refuge to users of copyrighted works.

  In the morning, John checks his email, and, in so doing, begins to tally up the

  liability. Following common practice, he has set his mail browser to automatically

  reproduce the text to which he is responding in any email he drafts. Each

  unauthorized reproduction of someone else’s copyrighted text-their email-

  represents a separate act of brazen infringement, as does each instance of email

  forwarding. Within an hour, the twenty reply and forward emails sent by John

  have exposed him to $3 million in statutory damages.

  And it goes on from their, until we reach this conclusion:

  By the end of the day, John has infringed the copyrights of twenty emails, three legal articles, an architectural rendering, a poem, five photographs, an animated character, a musical composition, a painting, and fifty notes and drawings. All told, he has committed at least eighty-three acts of infringement and faces liability in the amount of $12.45 million (to say nothing of potential criminal charges). There is nothing particularly extraordinary about John’s activities. Yet if copyright holders were inclined to enforce their rights to the maximum extent allowed by law, he would be indisputably liable for a mind-boggling $4.544 billion in potential damages each year. And, surprisingly, he has not even committed a single act of infringement through P2P file sharing. Such an outcome flies in the face of our basic sense of justice. Indeed, one must either irrationally conclude that John is a criminal infringer — a veritable grand larcenist — or blithely surmise that copyright law must not mean what it appears to say. Something is clearly amiss. Moreover, the troublesome gap between copyright law and norms has grown only wider in recent years.

  I wonder how much I’ve tallied up as a result of quoting his article on this blog entry? In any case, it sounds like we’re in need of some copyright law revisions.

• The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings: I recognize the name, but I’ve never read any of the comics he’s illustrated. Nevertheless, you don’t need to read comic books to enjoy this smackdown. (via Galley Slaves)