Blackmoor Vituperative

“You got your Edsels, diesels, Dumonts, and Eddie Wilson all together forming our own incredible monument to nothing. Here’s to nothing, fellas, here’s to nothing.”

If you haven’t seen Eddie And The Cruisers, you won’t get it. You might think you do, but you don’t.

I have not been writing as much on Spider Season as I’d hoped. I need to put forth more effort to write more. Zelazny once said in an interiew that he aimed to write something at least four times per day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences. I am going to try and adopt this.

I did manage to get a few lines into the rape scene. That is going to be difficult. I have done a lot of reading in the past week of accounts from rape victims in real life, and frankly it’s pretty horrific stuff. I considered taking that scene out of the book entirely. But it’s her motivation for several short-term goals which are important later, and it also explains her aversion to intimacy. On the other hand, it does seem awfully hackneyed. I am sick to death of having a sexual assault trotted out in every book by every half-assed hack novelist as though it’s a requirement like a copyright notice. (I am looking at you, Piers Anthony). Am I vain to think that I am doing anything better?

I think I am doing something better.

Operations of global software companies, financial institutions and government offices in India’s main technology hub shut on Wednesday after activists called a strike over a border dispute with a neighboring state.

The 12-hour stoppage in Bangalore, the capital of the southern state of Karnataka, was called by groups disputing claims by next-door Maharashtra over a small border town.

“The strike is going on very well all across the state. All works in government departments have come to a complete standstill,” L. Byrappa, president of the Karnataka Government Employee’s Association, told Reuters.

The streets of Bangalore, home to over 1,500 Indian and multinational tech firms like Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and IBM, were deserted as companies and shops shut down. Schools closed and traffic was sparse.

(from eWeek, Software Giants Shut as Strike Hits Indian Tech Hub)

This is what happens when you outsource your IT services to a third-world country.

If your copy of Vista does not pass Microsoft’s anti-piracy sniff test, you won’t be able to use the Aero user interface, Windows Defender anti-spyware and ReadyBoost memory-expanding technologies that will be built into the premium versions of Vista. (Will other Vista elements, like Vista Ultimate Extras, get the WGA lock-down? The Softies had no comment when I asked.)

[…]

There are also some WGA and Volume Activation 2.0 myths that Microsoft is out to debunk, officials said. If a Vista machine doesn’t pass WGA or Volume Activation 2.0 muster, Microsoft cannot and will not “shut it off,” officials said. (If you fail to activate Vista in 30 days, however, it sounds like your Internet access is shut down after an hour. Sure sounds like a “kill” switch by any other name.)

(from ZDNet, What Microsoft still isn’t saying about WGA and Volume Activation 2.0

Remember: at least 20% at least 42% of the 60 million people hassled by WGA (aka Windows Genuine Aggravation) are licensed users who have obtained the software legitimately.

Just say “no thanks” to Vista.

Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.

Defective By Design presents ten things you can do today to fight the Digital Rights Mafia.

Jesse Ruderman, a Mozilla security staffer, attended the presentation and was called up on the stage with the two hackers. He attempted to persuade the presenters to responsibly disclose flaws via Mozilla’s bug bounty program instead of using them for malicious purposes such as creating networks of hijacked PCs, called botnets.

“I do hope you guys change your minds and decide to report the holes to us and take away $500 per vulnerability instead of using them for botnets,” Ruderman said.

The two hackers laughed off the comment. “It is a double-edged sword, but what we’re doing is really for the greater good of the Internet. We’re setting up communication networks for black hats,” Wbeelsoi said.

(from ZDNet, Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox)

On the bright side, the idiot hackers have publically confessed, so the federal case against them when their crime goes to court should be a slam dunk. Say hello to your new cellmate, hacker scumbag.

Update:

Apparently it was just a joke. Just good-natured fun. Those wacky hackers.

Warning: spoilers follow.

I wrote another 1,000 words on Spider Season over the last few days.

I have several ideas I want to get on paper before I forget them.

Rain goes to a village where a werewolf is chained up and is going to be killed. He says he is innocent of the crime he is accused of, and Rain believes him. She finds out who really did it and saves him. Or maybe he really did it but she finds out that he had good reason. Or maybe he’s an evil bastard and he deserves to die.

The iron ring acts as a barrier to magic. Not sure if it works both ways. Maybe she just can’t affect anyone else with magic while she wears it. That’s what the antagonist sorcerer really wants. Rain thinks he wants the magic book.

When Rain meets Scratch, he asks her to name him. The naming of something has great symbolic significance, he says. Scratch pretends to be her familiar, but really he is the familiar of the antagonist sorcerer the entire time. He’s a spy, or a double agent. At the end of the book he chooses to be Rain’s familiar. The antagonist sorcerer commands Scratch to do something — pick up the magic ring and bring it to him, maybe? — and calls him by the name that sorcerer gave him. Scratch walks over to the ring (or whatever), and says that XXX is not his name anymore. His name is Scratch. And he gives Rain the ring (or whatever).

It is Scratch that suggests that Rain goes to the Ivory Tower and ask for Subreiland’s help. This is a ruse to bring the ring to Subreiland. Does he send her on three pointless quests to prive her sincerity, or does his underling do that? Or maybe she goes through trials on the way there.

Intel’s lab in Pittsburgh, affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, is showing off a technology concept at the Intel Developer Forum here this week called Dynamic Physical Rendering, which could ultimately lead to a shape-shifting fabric.

Apply the right voltage and software program and the flat piece of fabric turns into a 3D model of a car. Change those parameters and it transforms into a cube. Dynamic Physical Rendering has grown out of the ongoing Claytronics project headed up by CMU professor Seth Goldstein.

“Rather than look at a 3D model on a CAD (computer-aided design) program, a physical model would be manifested on your desk,” said Babu Pillai, who, along with Jason Campbell, is heading up the project. “The material would change shape under software control.”

(from ZDNet, Attack of the killer prototype robots)

Intel literally has, in hand, the first prototype of a new type of nonvolatile memory chip that its executives think could someday supplant flash memory and thus change the face of the industries such as cellular phones, music players and possibly even PCs.

Intel, as part of a lengthy joint venture with ST Microelectronics, has produced the first Phase Change Memory or PCM chips — nonvolatile memory chips that work well for both executing code and storing large amounts of data, giving it a superset of the capabilities of both flash memory and dynamic random access memory.

This means it can both execute code with performance, store larger amounts of memory and also sustain millions of read/write cycles.

It’s necessary to invest in technologies such as PCM because flash memory will eventually hit a wall in which it can no longer scale with silicon manufacturing.

(from eWeek, Intel Previews Potential Replacement for Flash)