Charles Stross's Blog, page 129

Reminder

I'm back home from visiting relatives, but I'm off to Montreal tomorrow for the world science fiction convention. If you're going, you can find my (public) schedule here. I'll update it as/when I have any updates to make.

As I'm spending today filling a suitcase and tomorrow filling an Airbus passenger seat, and presumably spending Wednesday recovering and Thursday through Monday running around like a blue-arsed fly, I may not be posting here much.

Today's bone of contention: on immigration and na

Hiatus

I am currently in Leeds, city of my birth, visiting relatives. When I get home I'll have about 36 hours to run the washing machine and re-pack, then I'm off to Montreal for the worldcon.

I'll try to find something interesting to blog about, but I may be a bit quiet for the next few days due to too many trains, planes, and automobiles.

The answer!

SF author Pat Cadigan has finally figured out the cause of the obesity epidemic: it's a well-known fact that TV cameras add ten pounds to your weight, and with the emergence of the surveillance society we're all under the gaze of at least four CCTV cameras whenever we step outside our front door!

The solution to the obesity epidemic is left as an exercise to the student. (Hint: more privacy.)

Institutional Longevity

(I'm back — been away for a weekend at local SF convention Satellite 2 in Glasgow.)

Over on Hacker News, GraffitiTim points out something interesting: "The first civilization started in Mesopotamia around 5000 BCE (more or less), which is 7,000 years ago. If you live until age 80, that's more than 1% of the history of civilization." So you can expect to live for more than 1% of the life span of human civilization to this date.

Of course, human permanent settlements have existed for at least 9,500

FAQ: Inviting Charles Stross to speak - what you need to know

This is an informational posting, prompted by my having to turn down two speaking invitations this week ...

If you're thinking of inviting me to talk at an event, please be aware that I'm booked up for the remainder of 2009, most of 2010, and already have bookings for 2011.

If you still want to invite me to your event, read on.

Guesswork

(I used to earn my crust writing features for computer magazines. The urge still occasionally bites me. YMMV.)

"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk" — Steve Jobs, October 2008, on the netbook market.

I'm a member of the cult of Mac by way of the UNIX lineage; back in the day I'd have given my left nut for a NeXT workstation, and the way Apple's platform (if not their consumer app lock-in) has evolved over the past decade has given me a much nicer alternative to the

Worldcon schedule

Early next month I'm going to be in Montreal for Anticipation, the 67th world science fiction convention. Here's my more-or-less final schedule. (Yes, there's a missing item: my book signing slot clashed with another event, so it's being rearranged. I'll post an update here when I know what time and day it's been moved to.)

Thursday August 4th, 5pm (Location: P-511CF)
Title: In Conversation: Paul Krugman and Charles Stross
Description: 90 minutes of Charles Stross discussing SF, economics, and ot

What have the Romans done for us ...?

Or: more accurately, in strictly economic terms — what has the space program done for us?

Well, for starters: without the space program we'd probably be dead. Spy satellites are the very keystone of arms verification; without spysats the cold war would quite possibly have turned hot by the early 1960s, due to misinformation and fear permeating the chain of command on either side. Subsequently, gamma-ray detector satellites such as the American Vela constellation and its Soviet equivalents gave so

False Positives and the Database State

There is, in the UK (as elsewhere) a prevailing climate of paranoia about adults interacting with children.

In an attempt to be seen to Do Something, in the wake of a particularly gruesome multiple murder, the British government established a new agency, the Independent Safeguarding Authority, "to help prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults." Working with the Criminal Records Bureau, the ISA "will assess every person who wants to work or volunteer with vulnerab

Inbound maintenance!

Later today I'm going to try and update all the blogs on this server to a newer version of Movable Type. I've been running on 3.33 for a couple of years; my wife's blog was running on a separate MT 3.2 install on the same server. We've now successfully moved all the blogs to the same instance of the content management system, and that makes the years-overdue upgrade a lot easier.

What this means: some time in the next few hours, I'm going to disable comments on all blog entries, on all our blogs