Charles Stross's Blog, page 123

Why I don't (usually) use Windows: Part 2

So. I finally got Win7 working on the Vaio P11Z. Next up: Ubuntu 9.10.

My first stop was an external hard disk and a freeware disk image backup utility, just in case. Having thus secured my ass, I downloaded and burned an Ubuntu 9.10 install CD image, plugged in the DVD drive, and rebooted (having first mashed my finger on the F2 key and brainwashed the BIOS into booting off an external USB device before spinning th hard disk).

The Ubuntu 9.10 install is very anticlimactic. My only deviation...

Oh no, Russel T. Davies, no!

Speaking of SF on television, while round at $FRIEND's place for the traditional December 25th protein'n'booze overdose, someone insisted on switching on the telly for the Queen's speech Dr Who Christmas Special.

I do not normally watch Dr Who for much the same reason that I don't habitually dig up my grandmother: I have fond but distant memories of her and don't want to spoil them by renewing our acquaintance (aside from some casual necrophilia when the rebooted series was just getting under ...

2009 Redux

Working today. (What, you thought I took Christmas off work? Hardly — but I've been lying on my back panting for the past week, having finished the first half third of "Rule 34", and you've got to go back to work sooner or later ...)

Meanwhile, unearthed from the archives for your delectation, here are some of the more significant of 2009's 147 blog entries for you to marvel at (or mock). Feel free to poke me via the comments ...

Dr Strangecraft, I presume? — on the intersection of existential...

2010: Part one

I confess: I'm 45, and running low on flexibility. I need to limber up and try new things.

What do you think I should try in 2010?

(Note: I have no desire to get myself arrested/sent to gaol. Nor would extreme sports/serious adrenaline surges be a good idea, health-wise. I'm monolingual — in English — and do not have access to a bottomless purse with which to buy a ticket to the space station/a yacht/a medium-sized or larger heroin habit. In short, I'm a boringly average middle-class British...

Teaser

By the way, those of you who like my Laundry books might want to keep an eye on Tor.com over the next week.

Gadget Patrol: 21st century phone

(This isn't a product review, it's a big-picture overview brought to you from the universe of "Halting State".)

It shouldn't be news to anyone that smartphones — as a category — really took off in the second half of the noughties. Before 2005, few people bothered with PDAs, and fewer still with phones that had keyboards and could browse the web or send email. Current projections, however, show 25% of all phones sold in 2010 being smartphones — and today's smartphone is a somewhat more...

Why I don't (usually) use Windows

December 11th, 2pm

So in late November, I cracked and bought a Vaio P11Z/B as a travel typing machine. (Half price, two year extended warranty thrown in — they were discontinuing it. What can I say?)

It's a nice piece of hardware, except for the software. It came running Vista, and lumbered with Sony's usual crapware. There are also fun issues surrounding the GMA500 graphics chipset and Linux — hopefully they'll be fixed in 2010, but in the meantime, I'm being cautious and not switching OSs on ...

What are the long-term consequences ...?

As you may have noticed, in the second half of 2008 we had a minor whoopsie in the banking sector — what is laughingly known as a "liquidity crisis". Now here's the sound of another shoe dropping. The Observer reports:

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds...

Friday round-up

Ever wondered where books come from, from the publisher's point of view? Marty Halpern explains how The Atrocity Archives came to be, with bits of our email correspondence from, oh, 2002 or thereabouts. Marty has edited the Laundry novels, first for Golden Gryphon, and now as external copy editor for Ace; it's an unusual look into how the business works from the other side of the desk, and well worth reading.

Meanwhile, new technology has interesting side-effects. Google Wave has sometimes...

Gadget Patrol: Sony PRS-300 ebook reader

I read ebooks. I've been doing so since around 1997, on a variety of handheld gadgets; the convenience factor of having a bookshelf in your pocket over a few kilograms of dead tree in your shoulder bag shouldn't be underestimated, and if you travel a lot, well — a random empirical test suggests the average mass market paperback weighs about 250 grams, and a hardbound novel about 660 grams.

Reading ebooks on a PDA or phone has two drawbacks: battery life, and screen size. Battery life probably ...