SF Signal

The spammer trial revealed some of the inner working of ass-clown spammers. Convicted spammer Jaynes (pictured in the CNN story) operated on 16 high-speed lines – the equivalent connectivity of a 1,000 person company (cost: $50,000 a month). What boggles my mind is how he made $400,000 to $750,000 a month – and that with only one response from every 30,000 emails sent. The jury recommened a 9 year prison term. (One year for each character in the term “ass-clown”, although I suspect that it’s just a bizarre coincidence. Or is it?)

Jaynes’ ass-clown defense attorney admits that his client was a bulk email distributor, but his argument was that the prosecution could not prove the emails were unsolicited. Yeah, like the 92 million AOL customers who had their email addresses stolen asked to receive offers for “V|4gra”. Ass-clown.

Filed under: Computers

Sci Fi Wire reports that Nicholas Cage is set to star in an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Golden Man“.

I think I was one of the few people who actaully liked Minority Report and also thought Paycheck was watchable. So I have some high hopes for this as well. I’ll stick with PKD film tradition and read the story before seeing the movie. Well, OK, I didn’t read the short stories on which Total Recall and Screamers were based until after seeing the movie, so maybe it’s not really a tradition. But hey.

Filed under: Movies

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION

Who is your favorite superhero from The Incredibles?

RESULTS

20% – Mr. Incredible

20% – Elastigirl

0% – Violet

20% – Dash

0% – Jack-Jack

40% – Frozone

(Total votes: 5)

The good news is that my favorite hero, Frozone, was the clear winner by a large percentage. The bad news is that the measly participation yielding only 5 votes renders the results statistically meaningless. Maybe the first week of release was too soon? Come on people, get out of the house…go see a movie!

Filed under: Polls

Not to be confused with The Cartoon Laws of Physics, National “We’re More Than Just Nude Pygmies!” Geographic offers us this article: The Science of Superheroes.

[Link via Locus Online]

Filed under: Science and Technology

Marvel is suing NCSoft stating that it allows the game to create characters that are too similar to its own comic book characters. My question – so what?!

Filed under: Games

Microsoft unveiled a new search engine this week which many see as a move to capture limelight away from Google. PC Magazine reviewed the new search engine and cited these pros and cons:

• PROS: New features retrieve answers, not just results; some answers come directly from Encarta online; Search Builder allows ranking by fresh/static, popular/less-popular, exact/approximate match.
• CONS: Tuned for Internet Explorer, but may not work well with other browsers. Still beta, so many features not complete.
• BOTTOM LINE: A worthy challenger to Google, especially when all of the new answer-oriented features are fully functional.

For kicks (because this is how I get my kicks) I did a comparison between the two using the quoted search term “science fiction”. Here are the top sites returned by each…

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Filed under: Web Sites

REVIEW SUMMARY: Strong start, but overall a mediocre book.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Crossover fantasy in which down-and-out thirty-something Theo Vilmos steps into the world of Faerie and must save our mortal world.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Clear, easy-to-read writing; doesn’t take itself too seriously; the land of Faerie is interestingly urbanized.

CONS: Very Longwinded – could easily have been half the length; not enough happens and when it does, it’s predictable; one-dimensional characters (except Applecore, the faerie with an attitude).

BOTTOM LINE: Mediocre fantasy.

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Filed under: Book Review

…actually it was more of a nightmare — I dreamt that everyone in the world, regardless of their body shapes, were dressed like the characters of City of Heroes. I woke up drenched in cold sweat but was relieved that it was only a horrible nightmare, or was it??

Filed under: Games

Well TNT will be showing a new movie in December where the ‘repository for humanity’s greatest secrets’ lies deep under the Metropolitan Public Library. They call it The Librarian, and it stars Noah Wyle, Paul Atriedes, sorry Kyle MacLachlan and some other people, most notbale Bob Newhart (lets hope its not a dream) and Jane “You Ignorant Slut” Curtain. And its from the Dean Devlin who brought you such important SF works as Stargate and Independence Day. This one may be a Tivo candidate.

I wonder if they let you check out the Ark and what the late fees are?

Thanks to SciFi Rant Girl for the link.

Filed under: TV

Lots o’ SF news today. Nothing earth shattering, but still rather interesting.

• From the PR wire, we see that there is a new, 6(!) volume young adult SF series from LaRene R. Ellis called ‘Stones’ Quest. It looks to be a mixture of SF and Fantasy and I’ve never heard of Ellis before either so I’m not sure how good this is. I’m assuming it won’t be the SF equivalent of Harry Potter, but it is a SF book aimed at the younger folks. Which is always a good thing.
• Next up, a reportfrom Baltimore detailing the troubles the Baltimore Science Fiction Society is having in trying to convince a judge that they are, in fact, a literary society and therefore are an educational institution. This stems from the fact the Society’s tax exempt status was removed from them. I do agree that SF, and its promotion, are in fact educational because you can learn quite a bit of popular science by reading and it will cause people to investigate further. I think the judge in this case is horribly misguided and needs to spend a few days with JarJar as punishment.
• The News Tribune, from Tacoma, WA, has a nice article on Ursula K. Le Guin, inspired by the SF Channel’s upcoming Earthseamini-series (the commercial for it looks intriguing BTW). Nothing huge here, but nice to see a well know SF author getting coverage in the papers.
• Dreamworks SKG has announced their acquisition of the US distribution rights to the Japanese live action SF epic, Casshern. I’ve been waiting for this to hit the US, but no word on when exactly Dreamworks will release it. I may have to force my brother to get the DVDs and then camp out at his place to watch it. In fact, I extend an invitation, on behalf of my brother, to everyone to come see it when he gets it!
• And last for all you miniature gamers out there, you know who you are. The Figure Trader, a British gaming company, will be releasing a SF-based table-top miniature game called Sabotge. No word on whether it will be cheaper than the Warhammer 40K, but they’d have to work hard to make their stuff moreexpensive. 

  Share and enjoy!

Filed under: Tidbits

From Engadget, there is now a new xray scanner in use in Heathrow airport that seems to do a similar job to the one we saw in Total Recall. Although I am not sure I would want to be “scanned” by one of these things…

Filed under: Science and Technology

From /., there is an interview on Yahoo! with Jim Ward about the future of Star Wars and gaming.

Filed under: Star Wars

As a disclaimer to our readers, this post has very little to do with Science Fiction, and is a rant about something I have taken notice of. It is my opinion and is not representative of management of SFSignal. I am giving this warning to help ensure folks don’t come here (although given the nature of our readers – I expect comments) that this is not a news item nor is it a link post. I have put the content of the rant in the Extended Section as a courtesy. Disclaimer ends…

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Filed under: Games

Well, those lucky Brits have been able to see 4 epsiodes of the new Battlestar Galactica which is airing on Sky One. We don’t get it in the states until January 2005.

SyFyPortal is giving it mixed reviews. They have reviews for all four episodes that have aired to date: “33” (the premiere episode. Trailers available.), “Water“, “Bastille Day” (guest starring Richard Hatch of the original series. Here’s another reviewer’s take) and “Act of Contrition“.

See TV Tome for the epsiode list and guide.

Filed under: TV

REVIEW SUMMARY:

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: An unemployed software developer/architect is called to investigate an issue at a plant where his wife works that is building nanomachines

in the desert. The problem is that some of these machines have gotten loose and are learning fast! The question is now who is the hunter and who is the Prey? (Note the key use of the title of the book in the synopsis.)

MY REVIEW:

PROS: It does flow well, and there are very few low points. There is a fair amount of suspense near the end, and I felt that was the best part of the book – but then got predictable (hence the Con as well).

CONS: Standard Crighton writing where he bashes you with a given idea until your sick of it. It was somewhat predictable at the end. The continual discussion about

agent based programming and how important that is was somewhat goofy. I feel that it does have its place, but it is not as end all as he would have you believe.

BOTTOM LINE: Non-tech folks would probably enjoy this take on a human creation gone awry. We who actually have a clue would probably not like it that much.

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Filed under: Book Review

REVIEW SUMMARY:

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Its the future and a planet is under attack by maurading space orcs. The Imperium’s finest warriors, the Space Marines, are here to turn the tide. Do they succeed? What other foul forces are at play on this planet? Dawn of War allows you to make that decision.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Excellent graphics, Ties in well with the GW WH40K mythos, focuses on tactics and combat than collecting resources

CONS: Only 11 missions in a single campaign all played from a single race perspective

BOTTOM LINE: If you like RTS games and Warhammer 40k, this is a game for you. The campaign told a good story, but left me wanting.

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Filed under: Games

I got my bonus Locus Magazine last week (the freebie included with a new subscription). It was the August 2003 issue which featured several very interesting articles on the so-called “New Space Opera”. It included interviews with Alastair Reynolds and Charles Stross (who looks suspiciously like Peter Jackson. Seriously…have you ever seen the two of them together?). I though it might make a worthy post, even 15 months after the fact, and then I saw that earlier today Coalescent posted a good summary of the article that included 5 reviews of space opera books/movie. Now excuse me while I go try to think of something insightful to add.

Filed under: Books

Not that I troll sites run by people who troll Star Wars sites of anything, but this link to the Revenge of the Sith video game comes to use from James at Big Dumb Object. Looks cool. And it comes complete with a CGI version of the eternal Hayden Christensen sneer that JP loves so much. I wonder how much, if anything, in the game trailer is a precursor to what we’ll see in the film?

Filed under: Games • Star Wars

Got a chance to look at the backend code for the MT-Scode Captcha plugin and figured out there was a conflict with MT-Blacklist. Once I modified MTBLPost.pm (by adding the same security check at line 75 that was added to comments.pm), the security check started working!

Woo-hoo! Take that, ass-clown spammers!

With this new security measure in place, I will soon work on re-opening all the old posts…

[UPDATE: All old posts have been re-opened for comments.]

Filed under: Meta

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION

How many science fiction/fantasy conventions have you attended?

RESULTS

62% – None.

8% – One.

31% – Two or more.

(Total votes: 13)

It’s understandable that some people might go to a sf/f convention just out of curiosity. But 31% of voters (4 people) actually went back again. I give you the uber-geek, ladies and gentlemen.

Filed under: Polls