Tag: Geek Stuff

Robert Buettner’s Orphan Series

I’ve been promising to do more posts on Godless Sodomite Fiction and thus far failed to deliver much. Well I’m going to help correct that slightly right here and right now. For those of you whom like military science fiction I present you with a great series written by Robert Buettner called the Orphan or Jason Wander series (Yeah it doesn’t really have a series title like The Lost Fleet or Vampire Earth series. Also note that the link isn’t a referral link.). For the purposes of this post I’m going to call it the Orphan series to make life easy on me.

Buettnet’s Orphan series consists of five books: Orphanage, Orphan’s Destiny, Orphan’s Journey, Orphan’s Alliance, and Orphan’s Triumph. The entire series follows the life of Jason Wander who starts as a new military recruit in book one and ends up retired at the end of the series.

I’m not going to go through each book, that’s up to you if you decide to read the series. But I do have to go through Orphanage to establish a groundwork upon which to write about the series. Although there are going to be slight spoilers they will consist of nothing more that can be obtained by reading the back of the book’s cover.

Anyways Orphanage is a tribute to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. The stories are very similar and that’s by plan not a lack of originality. An alien species had parked its butt Ganymede and decided to start throwing really large rocks at Earth. The rocks are guided and the alien race has the ability to render our nuclear weapons inert. Needless to say Terra gets pummeled pretty hard. Enter Jason Wander, a kid with no real outlook on life. As is typical in a book an event happens that changes his life (Because that’s what makes a book interesting and worth reading). See Jason is a fuck up and keeps appearing before a specific judge. The judge gets sick of seeing Jason’s ugly face and finally gives him a choice, join the military or go to prison. Jason chooses the first option and enlists in the army.

Meanwhile the aliens keep hating on Earth. Eventually Jason’s family is killed leaving him an orphan (Clever huh? I bet you didn’t see that coming when you read the name of the series.). Shit happens and eventually he finds himself recruited for a mission that is heading to Ganymede to fuck the alien’s collective shit up. The mission consists only of soldiers who are war orphans and hence are felt to be the most pissed off and therefore qualified to kill alien scum.

That’s the premise of the first book. Needless to say Buettner’s tribute to Starship Troopers is beautifully executed and he adds enough of his own ideas and story elements to make Orphanage a great book that doesn’t feel too much like it’s idol. In the next four books the story comes into it’s own.

One of my pet peeves in books is poor pacing. I’m not a fan of boring parts in books and very often stop reading a story for quite some time because I hit a lull. Buettner shows an amazing skill for proper pacing. The end of each chapter leaves something interesting to be unlocked in the next one. I always found it hard to put these books down because the answer to something I was dying to know seemed to lay on the next few pages. When I obtained me answer an new puzzle would present itself and I found myself having to read more yet. Putting down these books and going to sleep required an act of extreme will.

Buettner also does an excellent job on character development. Too many series end up having characters stagnate in later volumes. The Orphan series seems to always manage to further embellish characters without making it appear over the top. Jason goes from being a worthless punk kid to a grown man capable of accomplish his work. Other characters are given equal amounts of attention as well. It’s rare for me to have strong memories of side characters but I can rattle off the names and general situations involving almost all of the major side characters in this series.

Of course being a science fiction godless sodomite fiction series there are plenty of gadgets and gizmos. The practicality of the advanced technology mentions written by Buettner impress me. The soldiers in the series wear powered armor called Eternads. The armors contain water purifiers, water storage systems, air conditioners, heaters, oxygen generators, and even a pad on one arm for wiping snot from your nose. All of these features of powered by a battery that recharges itself via the movements of the person wearing the Eternad. Because of the nature of the aliens being fought the guns later in the series fire flechette ammunition.

Being this is a military science fiction series geopolitical politics comes into play. Many events from Jason’s career are brought to light including those involving being a military “consultant” for other countries. This is more important of an event at the series progresses but I can’t really expand on it without giving away plot points and spoiling some of the series.

I really like Buettner’s portrayal of soldiers. He’s very Heinleinesqe in that he has a positive portrayal of the foot soldier. It’s a nice change in pace from many stories that portray soldiers as wanton killing machines with the IQ of a wild boar. I do appreciate this aspect of the series.

Anyways the series is a great way to spend some quality time reading. I urge you to take a look at the first book if you’re into science fiction of any kind.

Vision, This Man Had It

When it comes to the technology field we get some great predictions and quotations. For instance take this article written in 1995 for Newsweek:

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

That’s what I call a visionary! Oh and:

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Yeah there’s now way that online shopping thing could catch on. Never!

What’s Mine is Mine and What’s Your’s is Mine To

File this article under further proof digital “rights” management means you don’t own your content. Apparently Sony, Ubisoft, and EA have decided to do everything they can to thwart you from buying used games without them getting a cut.

There is a list of games in the article that will not allow you to access certain parts of the games unless you register it online. If you purchased a used game that has been previously registered then you have to pay the publishers $20.00 to get a new registration code.

This kind of practice is really sickening. What the three mentioned publishers are really saying is that you don’t actually own your content and have no rights to use it as you see fit. But what’s really fucked up is this quote:

Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform, but the launch of the PSPgo and the ability to access the PlayStation Store directly from PSP-3000 were significant steps towards fighting piracy and getting consumers to download digital games legally.

Buying a used game isn’t piracy anymore than buying a used CD. The fact that somebody actually implied it here is simply retarded. Digital “rights” management is a scan through and through. I’m hoping gamers out there are smart enough to simply refuse to buy these titles. These kinds of practices need to be discouraged.

It’s funny to me how we treat digital media different than physical media. Let’s use the stereotypical car example for this. Let’s say you purchased a new Government Motors (Not that I’m picking on anybody) car. Government Motors decides you need to register your car in order to unlock the radio and heater. This registration is uniquely tied to your person so when you see it another person can’t use the radio or heater until they reregister it with Government Motors. In order for the a new owner to register it Government Motors will require a $5,000 fee.

That sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it?

Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs, No Dinosaurs Evolved From Birds

Paleontology has always been one of my hobbies and nothing quite as cool as dinosaurs has existed on this planet since their extinction. Needless to say I spend a lot of time reading up on these extinct creatures and one of the debates that’s gone on for a while is whether or not dinosaurs evolved into birds. Well new research is suggesting that dinosaurs and birds evolved from a common ancestor and existed in a state of parallel evolution instead:

Almost 20 years of research at OSU on the morphology of birds and dinosaurs, along with other studies and the newest PNAS research, Ruben said, are actually much more consistent with a different premise — that birds may have had an ancient common ancestor with dinosaurs, but they evolved separately on their own path, and after millions of years of separate evolution birds also gave rise to the raptors. Small animals such as velociraptor that have generally been thought to be dinosaurs are more likely flightless birds, he said.

“Raptors look quite a bit like dinosaurs but they have much more in common with birds than they do with other theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus,” Ruben said. “We think the evidence is finally showing that these animals which are usually considered dinosaurs were actually descended from birds, not the other way around.”

This is bloody cool and certainly sheds some light on my arch-nemesis the velociraptor (Clever girls). Seriously though it’s amazing how the science of extinct creatures is constantly changing and we are always finding out new things about these old buggers.

Another Invention That Can Be Used For Good or Evil

Uh oh we have yet another invention on the market that can be used by both good guys and bad guys. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I learned about this amazing invention.

The device is called the Impressioner. It’s an electronic device that can tell locksmiths how to cut a key for a lock. This would allow a locksmith to easily create a new key for a car lock without the whole trial and error things. Of course the article points out the device can be used by thieves as well.

What the article fails to point out is that car locks are incredibly insecure. With a simple device called a Slim Jim (A flat piece of sheet metal with a notch cut out of it) you can open the lock on almost any car door in a matter of seconds. In fact it’s much faster than trying to make a key. In other words people are getting worried about something that’s already broken.

A Novel Idea

I found a rather novel idea today. A person by the name of Darrel Ince is requesting scientists to release the source code for applications used in their research. It’s mostly directed at the Al Gore’s Apocalypse group of “scientists” but is a good idea in general. From the article:

Computer code is also at the heart of a scientific issue. One of the key features of science is deniability: if you erect a theory and someone produces evidence that it is wrong, then it falls. This is how science works: by openness, by publishing minute details of an experiment, some mathematical equations or a simulation; by doing this you embrace deniability. This does not seem to have happened in climate research. Many researchers have refused to release their computer programs — even though they are still in existence and not subject to commercial agreements. An example is Professor Mann’s initial refusal to give up the code that was used to construct the 1999 “hockey stick” model that demonstrated that human-made global warming is a unique artefact of the last few decades. (He did finally release it in 2005.)

A software application is, in essence, little more than a series of mathematical algorithms. No scientist will be taken seriously if they come to a conclusion but refuse to publish the math. Seriously try to get a scientific paper published without including the algorithms you used to come to your conclusion. You’re research paper will hit the shredder faster than the speed of light (Which will require some research into how that happened).

But somehow when the math is done on a computer nobody thinks it needs to be published. Software is never perfect. Computers aren’t good at doing most tasks outside of basic arithmetic. Doing floating point math on a computer without writing a library specifically aimed at the task is an estimation at best. At least if the code is published other people can see the logic being performed and find any bugs that could lead to an improper result. The scientific process need to remain an open debate otherwise it’s no longer science.

I would also go so far as to publish the exact specifications of the computer the software was run on. There have been quite a few problems found in processors that lead to incorrect answers under specific conditions.

Back to Firefox For Now

I’ve been using Chrome for Mac for a while now and honestly I really like the browser. But there is one fatal flaw, the inability to extensions to tie deeply into the browser. What am I getting at here? Simple, extensions like NoScript and Flash Blocker can’t work properly in Chrome.

Most of the extensions in Firefox I use revolve around making the browser more secure. To this end one of the first extensions I install is NoScript. NoScript is an extension that allows you to block all scripting on sites you don’t specifically white list. This is useful for blocking malicious behavior on many websites. The extension also prevents cross site scripting attacks. Well I’ve been curious when or even if NoScript will be made available for Chrome. The bottom line is it never will be since there are no hooks in Chrome to allow extensions to selectively interact with scripting elements.

To further compound the issue Chrome’s cookie handling, at least on the Mac version, is unusable. When I hope the cookie browser in Chrome it just hangs there and I get the spinning beach ball of death until I have to force quit Chrome. Of course I’ve been seeing a lot of tracking cookies popping up which has gotten to the point I’m finding absurd. There are no extensions for Chrome that allow me to block all cookies except those I specifically white list and I really want this behavior.

This means I’m forced back to Firefox which I’m not horribly fond of. In Chrome each tab is a separate process which means you close it all the memory is freed properly. Firefox on the other hand never seems to properly free up memory from closed tabs and windows which leads it to eventually consume insane amounts of memory. Hopefully the newly release 3.6 will be better than previous versions. If it’s not you’ll be seeing more browser oriented bitching coming up on this blog.

The iPad

My friend Chris summed up my thoughts on the new iPad as well:

Its perfect, I was just thinking the other day: Wouldn’t it be great if I had an iPhone that didn’t fit in my pocket and couldn’t make phone calls? Or a netbook with no keyboard and 50% glass.

Yeah I’m not impressed. I’ll also add wouldn’t it be great to have an e-reader with an LCD screen so I can replicate the experience of reading books on my laptop. I really don’t see where Apple is going with this thing.