Tie for 2010 Hugo Award For Best Sci-fi Novel

The 2010 Hugo Awards were announced last weekend in Melbourne, Australia. As I expected, China Miéville's acclaimed novel The City & The City (see MadProfessah's B+ review) was the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel. That's not a surprise. What is a surprise is that there was another winner, despite the fact that the voting process used is preference voting (like the Oscar ballots, voters rank the nominees in order of their preference for what they want to win the prize).

The other Hugo Award winner for Best Novel is Paolo Bacigalulpi's The Windup Girl, which Time magazine listed as one of the Top 10 reads of 2009. I haven't read it, yet, but it is now on my Amazon wishlist.

The organizers of AussieCon4 have released statistics of the vote (pdf) in this year's Hugo awards and the Best Novel balloting is fascinating:

The City & The City by China Miéville (winner)	The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (winner)
240	240
240	240
264	254
292	275
323	308
380	380

The two winners were tied in 3 of the 6 rounds, with Miéville having a lead in the unimportant middle rounds. The only rounds which are determinative are the 1st and last rounds, and there the two were completely tied. The last time there was a tie in the Hugo Award for Best Novel it was between two of my favorite books of all time, in 1993 Doomsday Book (read MadProfessah's A review) by Connie Willis and A Fire Upon The Deep (see MadProfessah's A review) by Vernor Vinge.

It should be noted that the only time there has ever been a tie in Oscar voting is in 1968 for Best Actress when Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter and Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl tied. The Academy sadly does not release the results (ever!) of Oscar balloting.

WATCH: Fighter Jet Crash Caught On Tape

Google (Docs) Has A Draw Program!

I needed to produce a document for an elementary school math festival I am participating and organizing on Friday in Glassell Park. I don't really know how to use any Draw programs and I am not "artistic" at all but the above diagram I literally created in 15 minutes in Google Docs. I heard about the program from my husband but you can read more about it here. You simply "Insert Drawing" and you get a wonderful graphical interface which is very intuitive to use.

Thanks, Google!

iPhone 3G Reduced to $99; iPhone 3G S Out June 19

Apple announced on Monday that they will be introducing the new iPhone 3G S on June 19th. They have also cut the price of the iPhone 3G (shown above) to $99 (8G) and $199 (16G). The new features of the iPhone 3G S include:

• As the name implies, the new iPhone 3G S is supposed to be faster. Apple boasts that you can load Web pages and launch apps twice as fast as the previous model. It also promises improved 3D graphics for games.
• A 3-megapixel camera with autofocus. You can also focus by tapping on the screen. It will also have settings for white balance, exposure, low-light sensitivity, and a macro mode for close-up photos.
• A camcorder. You can shoot VGA-quality video in 30 frames per second, and after you're done, you can trim the video by adjusting the start and end points. You can then send the video via MMS (included in iPhone OS 3.0) to a friend, to your MobileMe account, or even to YouTube, directly from the phone.
• Voice control, but not just for calls. Not only can you manage phone calls with your voice, you can use your voice to play music. You can ask the phone what song is playing, ask it to play a particular song from an artist or an album, and even to play songs that are similar to the currently playing track.
• A built-in digital compass. It automatically reorients the map to the direction you're facing. It works in conjunction with Maps to give you street view as well.
• Bluetooth tethering is allowed, which means you can use the iPhone 3G S as a wireless modem with your laptop. However, this is not available from AT&T for now.
• Voiceover, an accessibility setting on the new iPhone 3G S that acts as a gesture-based screen reader.
• Compatibility with Nike+ iPod, where it detects the Nike+ sensor in your shoe to track your runs.
• Improved battery life. Apple promises that the iPhone 3G S can hold up to 9 hours in Wi-Fi, 10 hours on video playback, 30 hours on audio playback, 12 hours talk time on 2G networks, and 5 hours talk time on 3G networks.
• The 16GB model will be $199 with a new contract and the 32GB model will be $299 with a new contract. They will be available June 19, 2009.

The new iPhone 3.0 operating system will also be available for older versions of the iPhone for free starting June 19th. It contains all sorta of goodies like copy and paste, multimedia messaging and voice recording.

Smart People Oppose Prop 8

Some of the smartest people in the world work in Silicon Valley, at places like Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook and Cisco. Now comes word that the leaders of the technology revolution have joined together to oppose Proposition 8.

As Silicon Valley leaders, we are committed to equality and fairness. We are opposed to Proposition 8 because it would change our state constitution to take away rights from one group of people. It would set our state, and our country, back in the fight for fundamental fairness and equal rights.

Please join us by reaching out to friends and neighbors and asking them to stand for fairness: Vote No on Proposition 8 on November 4th.

Silicon Valley Leaders Say NO on Proposition 8
(titles are for identification purposes only)

HONORARY CO-CHAIRS
Sergey Brin, Founder, Google, Inc.
Bill Campbell, Chairman, Intuit Inc.
David Filo, Founder, Yahoo! Inc.
Chuck Geschke, Founder & Chairman, Adobe Systems, Inc.
John Morgridge, Former CEO & Chairman, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman, eBay Inc., Founding Partner, Omidyar Network
Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google, Inc.
Jerry Yang, Founder, Yahoo! Inc.

LEADERS (partial list)
Deborah Barber, Principal, Jackson Hole Group
John Battelle, Chairman & CEO, Federated Media
Larry Birenbaum, Former Senior Vice President, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Lorna Borenstein, President, Move, Inc.
Larry Brilliant, Executive Director, Google.org
Owen Byrd, President, Byrd Development
John Chisholm, Chairman & CEO, CustomerSat, Inc.
Barry Cinnamon, CEO, Akeena Solar
Tod Cohen, Director of Government Affairs, eBay Inc.
LaDoris Cordell, Administrator, Stanford University
Sue Decker, President, Yahoo! Inc.
Jack Dorsey, Chairman, Twitter
David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development & Chief Legal Officer, Google, Inc.
Donna Dubinsky, CEO, Numenta, Inc.
Alan Eustace, SVP, Engineering and Research, Google, Inc.
Naomi Fine, President & CEO, Pro-Tec Data, Inc.
Rachel Glaser COO/CFO, Reunion.com
Carl Guardino, President & CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group
Andre Haddad, CEO, Shopping.com
Jeff Hawkins, co-Founder Palm, Handspring, and Numenta
David Karnstedt, Investor
Scott Kaspick, Managing Director, Kaspick & Co.
Steve Kirsch, Serial Entrepreneur
John Koza, CEO, Third Millennium
Ross LaJeunesse, Head of State Policy Western US, Google, Inc.
Gary Lauder, Managing Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Laura Lauder, General Partner, Lauder Partners Venture Capital
Len Lehman, Investor
John Luongo, Former CEO, Vantive Corporation
Roger McNamee, Managing Director & co-Founder, Elevation Partners
Ken McNeely, President, AT&T California
Michael Moritz, Partner, Sequoia Capital
Susan Packard Orr, CEO, Telosa Software, Inc.
Randy Pond, Executive Vice President, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Amy Rao, Founder & CEO, Integrated Archive Systems
Jana Rich, Managing Director, Russell Reynolds
Miriam Rivera, Former Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Google, Inc.
Dan Rosensweig, Investor
Dan Rubin, Partner, Alloy Ventures
Hilary Schneider, Executive Vice President US Region, Yahoo! Inc.
Len Shustek, Chairman, Computer History Museum
Jeff Skoll, Former President, eBay Inc.
Stephanie Tilenius, SVP, eBay North America
Joy Weiss, President & CEO, Dust Networks
Steve Westly, former California State Controller & former SVP eBay Inc.
Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter

Previously, Google and Apple had announced their official corporate opposition to Proposition 8, and donated money.

Google Opposes Proposition 8!

Google has officially come out against Proposition 8!

As an Internet company, Google is an active participant in policy debates
surrounding information access, technology and energy. Because our company
has a great diversity of people and opinions -- Democrats and Republicans,
conservatives and liberals, all religions and no religion, straight and
gay -- we do not generally take a position on issues outside of our field,
especially not social issues. So when Proposition 8 appeared on the
California ballot, it was an unlikely question for Google to take an
official company position on.

However, while there are many objections to this proposition -- further
government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text -- it
is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of
our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While
we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of
this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope
that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 -- we should not
eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry
the person they love.

Posted by Sergey Brin, Co-founder & President, Technology

REVIEW: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

Saw Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D Friday as an opening act for The Dark Knight. I enjoyed watching Beowulf in 3-D last fall and I believe the technology has a great future for the movie industry.



This is the first live-action 3-D movie that I have seen and generally I would say that the 3-D effects were not really necessary for most of the film but they were extremely effective when incorporated with more standard visual effects like floating individual water droplets, flying luminescent birds and snapping fish.



Interestingly, the credits were surprisingly exciting because they moved towards the viewer rather rapidly. In fact, any sudden moves of objects towards the viewer are pretty fun. The 3-D effects applied to water in multiple different forms (spraying droplets, undulating waves and falling water) were definite standouts.



It's definitely a kid's movie but it is relatively engrossing for the 90 minute running time although it is somewhat marred by completely implausible physics which are offensive to any scientifically trained individual.(Stable equilibria for magnetic objects in magnetic fields do not exist!) Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson and Anita Briem are all agreeable and have reasonable chemistry.



OVERALL GRADE: B-.

IMAGERY: B+.

ACTING: C+.

PLOT: C-.

IMPACT: B-.

MOVIE REVIEW: WALL-E

Saw the movie WALL-E last week and it has taken me awhile to think about my review. It is definitely another hit in Pixar's amazingly long list of consecutive succesful films, both artistically and commercially. Wall-E is the ninth film in a row from the computer anination geniuses who brought the world Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Ratatouille.

As many other critics have said, the first half of the film is quite extra-ordinary--practically a silent film with almost no dialogue for 45 minutes. It really can't be emphasized enough how unusual and effective this bit of film making is.

The message of the film has started to get attention from both liberal and conservative commentators.

The film depicts a future for the earth in which the planet has been abandoned due to a complete depletion of natural resources and uncontrolled dumping of trash which resulted in piles of garbage taller than most skyscrapers. WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is left behind on Earth for 700 years to clean up the mess. Andrew Stanton, the writer and director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E, came up with the idea of the lonely robot left behind all alone on Earth for hundreds of years cleaning up after them. WALL-E falls in love with another robot, EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) and eventually follows her off-planet when EVE leaves to return to the former inhabitants of Earth who have been cruising around in space in cosseted comfort for centuries.

When we finally see the humans they are morbidly obese, mainly white and spend all their time being catered to be robots while gliding around in motorized comfy chairs with personalized video screens in a zero gravity atmosphere. This portrayal of humans (apparently Americans) as fat, pampered, oblivious creatures wasting away their lives consuming whatever the mega-corporation Buy-N-Large puts in front of them has been recognized by other reviewers as an unsubtle critical commentary on contemporary American living.

Overall, the movie is sad but also entertaining, and it makes you think about your own circumstance, just like great art should, because that's what it is.

GRADE: A-.

The New IPhone

The new Apple IPhone is being made available on Friday July 11. (hat/tip Joe Hawkins)
I plan on picking up my own pretty soon after.

Agreement Reached On Instant Replay in Tennis

Finally! The governing body of tennis, the International Tennis Federation, in conjunction with the Women's Tennis Association and the Association of Tennis Professionals as well as the Grand Slam committee (which organizes the four annual major tournaments) have agreed on a standard, common protocol for electronic line calling.



Starting at next week's Sony Ericsson Open in Miami, there will be three (incorrect) player challenges per set, with an extra challenge added during the tiebreak. If the player is correct in the challenge to a call, they do not lose it. In matches where sets are not decided by a tiebreak, the number of challenges re-sets to 3 each after every twelve games.

Although three challenges is better than the two that player's have been working with at the U.S. Open and most other tournaments, I am in the camp of Mary Carillo. Why should there be any limit to the challenges a player makes? If the umpire feels that the player is abusing the system, they should have the authority to give them a warning "You are abusing the challenge system, from now on you will have 3 challenges remaining." And that would solve the problem.


Eventually software and hardware will improve so that a computer will be able to call every line anyway.

Fun Quote About Computers and Cars

This is a fun quote:

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine

Gay MSFT Millionaire Leaves $65M to LGBT Groups

365gay.com and Pam's House Blend have the scoop on the will of Microsoft millionaire Ric Weiland which resulted in a windfall of $65 million dollars to numerous LGBT groups. Weiland was Employee Number 5 at Microsoft and went to high school with Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Interestingly, the largest single chunk ($19m) of the money goes to the Pride Foundation, with the rest to be distributed to the following groups over an 8-10 year period:

* The Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR)
* Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
* Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
* In The Life
* International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)
* Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
* National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF)
* Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
* Project Inform
* Servicemembers Legal Defense Network

Notice the Human Rights Campaign is not on this list!

Blurring the line between science and science-fiction

Via WaPo - Their Deepest, Darkest Discovery

Researchers in New York reported this month that they have created a paper-thin material that absorbs 99.955 percent of the light that hits it, making it by far the darkest substance ever made -- about 30 times as dark as the government's current standard for blackest black.

The material, made of hollow fibers, is a Roach Motel for photons -- light checks in, but it never checks out. By voraciously sucking up all surrounding illumination, it can give those who gaze on it a dizzying sensation of nothingness.

Maybe that whole "Washington black" line from Psych the other day was more than just a joke. It was the first thing that came to my mind anyway. But the story soon leaves Psych far behind and moves into the realm of Harry Potter and Star Trek:

But scientists are not satisfied. Using other new materials, some are trying to manufacture rudimentary Harry Potter-like cloaks that make objects inside of them literally invisible under the right conditions -- the pinnacle of stealthy technology.

Both advances reflect researchers' growing ability to manipulate light, the fleetest and most evanescent of nature's offerings. The nascent invisibility cloak now being tested, for example, is made of a material that bends light rays "backward," a weird phenomenon thought to be impossible just a few years ago.

Known as transformation optics, the phenomenon compels some wavelengths of light to flow around an object like water around a stone. As a result, things behind the object become visible while the object itself disappears from view.

Honestly, if the article were written on April 1st instead of February 20th I wouldn't believe it. It would seem that they can't yet make things invisible to the naked eye, but I'm guessing it will be just around the corner. Amazing!

Addicted to the Internet?

I don't doubt it. I know a few people that probably fall into that category, myself included.

Via NYT - In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession

Up to 30 percent of South Koreans under 18, or about 2.4 million people, are at risk of Internet addiction, said Ahn Dong-hyun, a child psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul who just completed a three-year government-financed survey of the problem.

They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.

I don't really get angry when I can't log on, but I often spend waaaay more than 2 hours a day on the Internet. But if I have to go to boot camp, I can think of at least a couple of people that I'm planning to drag along with me.

Electronic Line Calling Defended

Electronic line calling is being defended by it's creator in today's Times of London

In the third game of the fourth set, with Roger Federer a break down and
serving at 30-30, he did not play at a ball near the baseline. He thought that
it was out, the line judge thought it was out, the umpire thought it was out and
a BBC freeze frame seemed to confirm this, too.

[...]

Hawkins said that the ball had landed in by 1mm. He claimed that the naked
eye was deceived because of the way a tennis ball compresses and skids on
landing.

“The ball will be in contact with the ground for about 10cm,” he said.
“In the very first impact, it will compress so that the bottom half is flat.
Then it will start to roll and skid and uncompress. The freeze frame the BBC
used showed the ball about 7cm after it touched the ground.” He said tests had
showed that his technology was accurate to within 3mm. “The ball was definitely
in,” he added.

Hmmmm, how do you know the call was in by 1mm if the error is +/- 3mm? Any engineer knows that if the result is within yuor margin of error you really can't make the call. The ball might have been 2mm out. But, regardless I doubt that Federer or the umpire could distinguish that difference.

LAPD Getting Bigger, More Diverse

I heard a story on 89.3 FM KPCC yesterday that the Los Angeles Police Department is on track to make their recruitment goals this year to reach a milestone of 10, 000 active duty police officers by next year and that it currently has 9, 567 officers. I tried googling for about an hour to find a source for the KPCC story (there was nothing on it that I could find at their website) but I found some other interesting stories instead. Did you know that the LAPD is planning on becoming the first police force to accept text messages to 911? That they receive over 2 million calls per year? They want to accept multimedia text messages, but they do not think they will have that capacity for another 3 years. Also, the LAPD is actually pretty diverse: "The breakdown is 12.4% Black, 38% Latino, 40% Caucasian, 6.3% Asian and 1.8% Filipino. 18.6% of the sworn population is Female."

Eventually, I found this Daily News article by Rick Orlov "LAPD speeds toward goal of 10,000-cop department" which was most likely the source of the KPCC report I heard yesterday and thought "I should blog about that!"

Beefing up the LAPD's ranks has been a top priority of Chief William Bratton, who had fewer than 9,000 under his command when he was hired in 2002.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa set the overall hiring goal for the department and pushed through a hike in the garbage-collection fee last year to pay for more officers.

At the time, officials hoped to have 10,000 cops by 2010. Earlier this year, the department hit the 9,400-mark, and officials predicted there would be 10,000 officers by 2009.

Strangely, there's nothing in the Times that I could see on the story. The Daily News also has an article by Rachel Uranga and the indefatigable Rick Orlov reporting that it is very likely that Police Chief William Bratton will receive an official 5-year re-appointment from the Los Angeles Police Commission today. Kevin over at LA Observed calls it "inevitable."

I could think of some other adjectives to use.

Frustrations abound

To make a long story short - Vista sucks, LexMark tech support sucks, and my internet provider sucks! However, after about 24 hours of frustration, irritation, redoing the same task multiple times and even traveling to an alternate location for internet service, my LexMark X1270 All-in-One now seems to properly function with my son's laptop. I wish I had just stayed in the garden.