HoodedHawk

The wonderful Polish Science Fiction writer Stanislaw Lem has died. Great writer, whose works include:

• 1961 Pamietnik znaleziony w wannie (Memoirs Found in a Bathtub); Powrot z gwiazd (Return from the Stars); Solaris (Solaris)
• 1964 Niezwyciezony (The Invincible); Summa Technologiae
• 1965 Cyberiada (The Cyberiad)
• 1966 Wysoki Zamek (Highcastle)
• 1968 Opowiesci o pilocie Pirxie (Tales of Pirx the Pilot); Glos Pana (His Master’s Voice)

No, other than the setting, the movie “Solaris” (even though “based on the novel”) is nothing like Lem’s book. The book is so much better!

It’s not often that I need an online word-processor, but if I do I’ll use ajaxWrite. It’s fast, and was able to open up some fairly complex Microsoft Word documents I threw at it. Seems to have all you need to create a “rich-text” (ala Microsoft Word) document online. It’s not perfect (it’s a V 0.9 release) but it’s free. I wouldn’t use it to edit something private, as it does send info back to a server. Also, it may be awhile before I relinquish desktop apps for online apps, but this would do in a pinch.

I spent the day yesterday at the BEA Dev2Dev seminar in Tyson’s Corner, VA. A lot of marketing hype was presented among the technical presentations. Basically covered BEA’s new Weblogic 9, and Studio, and how they are “blending” in open source tech. Tomcat is a first-class citizen, with support from BEA. Studio will let you target deployment on any server, not just Weblogic (or Tomcat). Studio is a collection of Eclipse plugins. The demos were interesting, though not technical enough for my tastes. They did show off what Studio can do. I’m interested in trying it out, especially (unlike Workshop for 8.1) since you aren’t (technically) locked into any one server. Once I get to play with it some, I’ll post a note.

I did record the lectures, and I put up the PDF of the presentation slides. See the audio section of this site.

I must have missed something when I went to hear Michael Crichton give a talk a few months ago. I didn’t think he really hit on anything I took as controversial. He did touch on global warming, but I didn’t come away with the idea that he didn’t believe it was happening; at worst he thought it wasn’t happening as much as the “media hype”. He focused more on complexity and complex systems. I need to go back and listen to his talk again. Or, I can just read his talk, since a copy is on his website. I do know that while he mentioned his book a few times, he didn’t focus on it.

What made me think of this and resolve to find the time to read his book, “State of Fear”, (hey, I have a copy already) was something I read in Locus: “‘State of Fear’ – which denies the existence of global warming – received a journalism award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists“. Sheesh! Global warming does exist, as any rational person will agree. There’s a big difference between denying the existence of global warming, and debating the amount of warming. The National Academy of Sciences states unequivocally in it’s report (see summary):

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century. Secondary effects are suggested by computer model simulations and basic physical reasoning. These include increases in rainfall rates and increased susceptibility of semi-arid regions to drought. The impacts of these changes will be critically dependent on the magnitude of the warming and the rate with which it occurs.