Charles Stross's Blog, page 122

More Flame Bait

This is an oldie but a goodie, and I haven't written about it before — at least, not on my blog.

I'm writing this entry sitting on a sofa and using a Macbook Air. The desktop computer in my office is also a Mac. Why?

There are several good arguments for not using Apple's computers. For one thing, they're expensive; no cheap netbooks here. If money was all there was to it, I'd stick to generic cheap PCs — and indeed, I have run PCs in the past.

I'm on the public record as being a UNIX bigot...

Writing tools

I'm in the process of having another attack on "Rule 34", and I thought some of you might appreciate a rant about tools.

The business of writing novels is rather unlike most other office jobs in that it involves producing long — but structurally simple — text documents which may then be shared with other organizations over a period of years or decades.

Most business literature is ephemeral; even process manuals are seldom expected to last more than a double-handful of years, and the majority o...

Team Red

Yes, you can stop emailing me now to tell me about the systematic hacking attacks on Google.cn that appear intended to provide agencies of the Chinese government with access to the email of dissidents. You don't even need to tell me about the US State Department response. Finally, you really don't need to remind me that there's a book out there called "Halting State" that (cough) predicted something not dissimilar (cough) to this.

Game over: "Halting State" is history.

(I just hope they...

The sound of silence

I've been quiet lately because I've been in London, getting a life, trying not to break my neck on the icy pavements, and having a meeting with my UK editor. It's surprising how exhausting and time-consuming having a life can be, and it tends to take up moments that might otherwise have been spent blogging. (Who knew?)

There is, unsurprisingly, nothing new to report on the work front. I'm elbow-deep in the middle of "Rule 34", contemplating what I might do next — it's due to hit my editors...

Flame bait

Let's see ...

We've done "Dr Who is shite". Ditto "I hate Star Trek (and all your other crappy TV shows)". I've poked the hornet's nest that is the P7[*:] in SF fandom, albeit very gingerly. I've sent the space settlers' society to bed without their dinner a couple of times, railed against the Deep Greens with a side-swipe at the Conservatives and the Libertarians along the way — there's no point whacking the dead equine of Communism this decade — so who's left to persecute in the name of...

2009 Hugo nominations

It's that time of year again: members of the world science fiction association (basically folks who registered as members of last year's worldcon and this coming worldcon) can now nominate works for the 2010 hugo awards. The top five entries in each category go on a final ballot, voted on by members of Aussiecon 4. (If you want the details, you can find the Hugo rules here.)

If you're eligible to nominate for the Hugos? Please do so. We need breadth; in some of the minor categories only a few ...

Sitrep

In case you hadn't noticed, my blog — and the rest of my website — is undergoing a major facelift right now.

There are still some changes to go, and not everything is going to be re-skinned and imported into a content management system; the old Linux and Perl side of my site is, regrettably, moribund (hasn't really been updated since 2004, and isn't going to be updated now).

If you think something isn't working, leave a comment on this post. (Remember, though, that not everything is changing...

New Year's Resolutions

78% of new year's resolutions are doomed to failure, say psychologists who've conducted a large scale study of the matter; so you might think it's pretty useless to even bother with the things. And you'd be right. But that isn't going to stop me making a new year's resolution, even though I know it probably won't work.

I have a gadget habit, and it's a bit out of control. So, subject to five exceptions (below), my proposed New Year's Resolution for 2010 is: buy no computers. A computer, for...

2009 Redux (Part three)

More highlights from the past year of blogging:

The future, Indian style — you know you're living in the 21st century when you read about India setting up a new export industry ... Thorium cycle nuclear reactors.

Jeff Bezos eats kittens — in case you hadn't guessed, I really don't like Amazon.com. Here's why.

Why I hate Star Trek — in other news: Santa Claus doesn't exist.

News from the future front — an attempt to triangulate on near future technological trends in policing the UK.

How habitable...

2009 Redux (Part Two)

More highlights from 2009's blogging:

Retrograde — rail travel in different centuries.

How I got here in the end — my pre-writing work autobiography (in a dozen parts). Caution: includes memoirs of the computing industry in the early to mid 1990s.

Back to the Moon? — short answer: not with NASA.

False positives and the database state — more Jack Straw than George Orwell, unfortunately.

What have the romans done for us? — or, more accurately, what are the real civilian technological spin-offs of...