Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 196
September 30, 2011
Ebook Updates!
Smashwords will distribute to all you Sony Reader, iPad, and Kobo users, though it may take some weeks for this to appear in all catalogs.(The formatting problems mentioned in an earlier post have all been resolved. Download with a free heart!)If you prefer print, the Night Shade trade paperback is still widely available.Days of Atonement is now available on Kobo, Apple, Diesel, and...
September 28, 2011
Hardwired Available! (But Cursed) Crowdsourcing Plea Follows
So the Hardwired ebook is available for Nook and Kindle. Two cheers!But the file is in some strange way cursed. The text in the Kindle file may . . . for some readers . . . have an extra-wide left margin, which looks a little odd but in no way impairs readability. For other readers, there's no problem at all. Go figure.If this sort of thing bothers you, the best thing to do is download the Nook file, then convert it to Kindle format with this handy Epub to Kindle converter, which y0u can ...
September 27, 2011
No Money Changed Hands
I would like to salaam in the direction of author Jo Walton, who has once again defied Internet tradition by committing another unsolicited act of total niceness. In other words, she wrote another discerning essay for Tor.com about my work, in this case Metropolitan and City on Fire.Honestly, I'm not paying this woman.I'll let you read the essay (or not) on your own, but I would like to quote just one line: This is a world where when you're caught up in a revolution your grandmother...
September 26, 2011
Market Value? What Market Value?
Wondering why you may not have heard of hacking collective Anonymous for a while? Because, as it appears, the ad hoc organization has been busy assembling Anonymous Analytics, a public equity research entity (and we venture to guess focused mostly on the short side) whose motto is "Acquiring information through unconventional means" and follows up with "You should have expected us."Anonymous is certainly off to a terrific start in their new venture, releasing a highly detailed report on ...
Truth To The Powerless
Here we see a video of trader Alessio Rastani telling startled BBC interviewers that the world economic system is going to collapse, that millions will lose their money, and Goldman Sachs will rule the world (if it doesn't already).
Why is he telling saying this in public? Because nothing we do matters, that's why. All the important decisions have already been made.
Maybe we should all start preparing our pitchforks and torches.
(Via Zero Hedge.)
Why is he telling saying this in public? Because nothing we do matters, that's why. All the important decisions have already been made.
Maybe we should all start preparing our pitchforks and torches.
(Via Zero Hedge.)
September 22, 2011
"Flying Pigs Now Ice-Skate in Hell," says Physicist.
A fundamental pillar of physics – that nothing can go faster than the speed of light – appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity – the famous E (equals) mc2 equation – just doesn't happen . . . CERN now...
September 20, 2011
Global Groove
It's September in New Mexico, and that means Globalquerque, our yearly festival of music where hardly anybody sings in English.There were three stages with bands rotating on and off all the time, which means that wherever you are, you're missing two-thirds of the music. This also means that however much fun you are having, you're always nagged by the suspicion that you might be having a better time if you were somewhere else.In addition to the music, there are booths huckstering local arts ...
September 19, 2011
Muscular Academics
The web site of Trinity College, Dublin, has been vastly improved by the presence of a new English professor, one Conan T. Barbarian, Ph.D. (I could have sworn his middle initial was D.)According to the professor's biography: Dr Conan T. Barbarian was ripped from his mother's womb on the corpse-strewn battlefields of his war-torn homeland, Cimmeria, and has been preparing for academic life ever since . . . He completed his PhD, entitled "To Hear The Lamentation of Their Women:...
September 16, 2011
Heavy Lifting
"Today, NASA revealed its plans for the new heavy-lift launch system intended to carry large payloads—including, perhaps, missions to send humans beyond Earth orbit.
"The NASA authorization bill that Congress passed nearly a year ago demanded not only that NASA build a new heavy-lift rocket, but also that the new system use space shuttle components. The new program, called the Space Launch System, didn't disappoint in that regard. Its first stage and boosters will be similar to the...
SETI Discovers Tatooine . . .
"The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet — a planet orbiting two stars — 200 light-years from Earth.
"Unlike Star Wars' Tatooine, the planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of...
