News from the World of Science, Science Fiction and Distributed Computing
SF Signal » Classic Trailer: Krull
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:58:20 PDT
They don't make 'em like this anymore. Thankfully. I remember when Siskel and Ebert reviewed this (sadly, not in their archives)...Ebert pointed out one scene where a ship lands on some planet - you could actually see a the edge of the miniature special effects set they built and a "giant" car just beyond it. Yikes!...
SF Signal » Full Watchmen Comic Con 2008 Panel
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:02:27 PDT
If you just can't get enough Watchmen, they you'll probably be interested in the following video, which is the full Comic Con 2008 panel for the movie. It has all the cast and the director, and a very stilted MC. It's not as funny as the Galactica panel (no Kevin Smith), but it has it's moments (I'm looking at you Batman and Joker.) Sadly, we don't...
SF Signal » GIVEAWAY Results: The Greatest Sci Fi Movies Never Made
Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:17:57 PDT
Our contest to win one of five copies of The Greatest Sci Fi Movies Never Made is over, and we have our winners! Oliver T. from New York Mook H. K. from Highland Park Paul G. from Des Plaines (must...resist...Hervé Villechaize joke...) Philip C. from 29 Palms Brent C. from Vacaville Congratulations to our winners, your books should be arriving wit...
SF Signal » NOMINEES: 2008 World Fantasy Award
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:15:00 PDT
The nominees for the 2008 World Fantasy Award have been announced. The winners of the LIFE ACHIEVEMENT Award are:Leo & Diane DillonPatricia McKillipNOVELTerritory by Emma Bull [Tor]Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay [Viking Canada/Penguin Roc]Fangland by John Marks [Penguin Press]Gospel of the Knife by Will Shetterly [Tor]The Servants by Michael Marshall Sm...
SF Signal » SF Tidbits for 8/7/08
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:11:05 PDT
Interviews and Profiles:@The Nebula Awards website: Jack McDevitt (Cauldron, The Devil's Eye).@The Agony Column: Rick Kleffel interviews David Weber. [Thanks, Fred!]@Read 'Til You Drop: Gregory Frost and with Kat Richardson.@Reelz: A preview for when Alan Tudyk interviews Nathan Fillion later this week. [via Whedonesque] Free Fiction: Spider Robins...
SF Signal » Tube Bits for 08/07/2008
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:06:49 PDT
You may remember her as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show and A Different World. Now you can call her Maya on the US version of Life on Mars. She'll be playing the girlfriend of the show's hero, which, in the BBC version, is a very small role. I'd have to assume the role has been expanded for the US version. For those of you still sticking with Gal...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Phoenix perchlorate kerfuffle
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:53:07 PDT
A. J. S. Rayl has an excellent article, with just the right balance of humor and fact, on the Phoenix perchlorate business here. I was waiting for her to post before I added any commentary about it. I'll just add a few other random facts that I got from the press briefing and from email and phone conversations afterward. (If you haven't checked out...
SCIFI.COM » Terrorism Goes To The Dogs
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
Award-winning SF author Nancy Kress told SCI FI Wire that her latest novel, Dogs, explores issues of American preparedness for bio-terrorism and the enormous variety of human responses to threats....
SCIFI.COM » Thieriot Is A Prodigy
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
Max Thieriot has landed the title role in Prodigy, director Chuck Russell's SF action film from Intrepid Pictures and Kincine, according to The Hollywood Reporter....
SCIFI.COM » Fantasy Nominees Announced
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
Nominees have been announced for this year's World Fantasy Awards, which are presented annually to works of fantasy art and literature. Winners will be announced at the 2008 World Fantasy Convention, Oct. 30-Nov. 2, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A complete list of nominees follows....
SCIFI.COM » Ark's O'Connor Keeps The Faith
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
Renee O'Connor, who stars in the upcoming SCI FI Channel original movie Monster Ark, told SCI FI Wire that she plays a heroine who tries to save her former husband (Carnivale's Tim DeKay) and the world as well....
SCIFI.COM » Quantum Has Royal Premiere
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
The 22nd James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, will have its world premiere in London on Oct. 29 as a charity benefit, with Princes William and Harry in attendance, Variety reported....
SCIFI.COM » Knowing Takes On Big SF Ideas
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
Alex Proyas, director of the upcoming SF thriller film Knowing, told SCI FI Wire that the movie tackles big ideas on an intimate scale. "Well, the basic premise about Knowing is that it's about a man who discovers a list of predictions that have accurately predicted all of the major disasters that have happened on the planet in the last 50 years,"...
SCIFI.COM » Unknowns Voice Clone Wars
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
When Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuts next week, there will be a lot of familiar (albeit computer-animated) faces. And the voices will sound familiar. But they're not all who you think they are....
SCIFI.COM » New Battlestar Prequel Coming
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
SCI FI Channel announced that it will air a new Battlestar Galactica two-hour prequel movie, set to air in 2009 following the conclusion of the series....
SCIFI.COM » Wire's Top 10 Brilliant But Canceled
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
It's the sad fate of every science fiction fan to fall in love with amazing, creative television shows only to see them struggle in the ratings and eventually disappear into the land of repeats and DVD box sets. Here's our vote for the 10 best....
The Planetary Society Weblog » Chandrayaan-1 launch delayed to October
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:58:43 PDT
Just a brief launch date update: According to the Times of India, the Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 will now not launch before the second week of October. The previously stated launch date was mid-September, so this is a one-month delay. .......
The Planetary Society Weblog » Rosetta and Glaciers
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:42:45 PDT
Just pointing you to two new items on the website: I just posted a preview of the impending Rosetta flyby of the asteroid Steins, about 30 days away, including an encounter timeline. And there's a new installment -- the penultimate one, I'm sorry to say -- in Tyler Nordgren's "Stars Above, Earth Below" blog. As always, he has wonderful pictures. Th...
SF Signal » WolfeWiki
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 08:20:07 PDT
Earlier this year, I had a not-so-good reading experience with a short story by Gene Wolfe. I knew I was missing some references and lacked the proper decoder ring to figure them out. Dave Tallman just recently commented on that post and pointed me to WolfeWiki, a reference that strives to explain all the multi-faceted layers of Wolfe's writing. Fr...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Ustream chat archived
Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:51:52 PDT
A recording of today's Ustream chat is now available; you can also download the presentation (powerpoint format, about 2.7 MB) and the chat log. Unfortunately, I got tripped up on the MECA and TEGA acronyms in a couple of places on the presentation I originally posted. Those errors are now fixed in the powerpoint presentation you can download, but ...
SF Signal » Edgar Rice Burroughs Video Double Feature
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:28:41 PDT
Hulu recently began showing HD videos. And while you can't embed the awesomeness that is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and the other HD content is kinda lame, you can share the older (non-HD) stuff like these Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations. The Hulu descriptions preface each movie, but all you really need to know is that they both feature Doug M...
SF Signal » Tube Bits for 08/06/2008
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:15:16 PDT
The best show on Sci Fi is currently underway with its third season. I'm talking Eureka of course, and Monsters and Critics had a chance to talk with Mark Sheppard, Colin Ferguson and Jamie Paglia about the new season. There's a bit of spoilery stuff, but nothing major. I thought the first episode was good, not great. We'll see about the second epi...
SF Signal » SF Tidbits for 8/6/08
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:05:43 PDT
Interviews & Profiles:@io9: Ekaterina Sedia (Alchemy of Stone).Also @io9: A profile of William Barton (When Heaven Fell), the great unsung space opera writer.@Adventures in SciFi Publishing.: Nalo Hopkinson and Geoff Ryman.@Cult Pop: John Scalzi (Zoe's War).@Wyrdsmiths: Kat Richardson, author of the parnormal detective novel Underground.@Death + Ta...
SCIFI.COM » Who Is Batman's Next Foe?
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:00:00 PDT
As the Internet rumor mill heats up about a possible foe for the next Batman film, writer David S. Goyer (who got a story credit for The Dark Knight) told SCI FI Wire that it's possible the villain may not even be one you've ever heard of....
SIMAP » Untitled
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:00:00 PDT
No more workunits in August: The workunits for the preprocessing of the new environmental sequences caused several problems. The most serious issue is that some of the workunits had huge result files that had to be uploaded. For that reason we will not distribute the remaining workunits of this type, but crunch them locally on our servers. The inte...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Dawn Journal: We crave power!!
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:13:28 PDT
Here's our monthly checkup with the Dawn mission, contributed by Marc Rayman, the mission's Project System Engineer. Thanks Marc! Speaking of Dawn, don't forget to check out Friday's "webinar" featuring Lucy McFadden (an investigator on both the Dawn and Deep Impact missions) speaking about her experiences hunting meteorites in Antarctica. It is at...
The Planetary Society Weblog » What's up in the solar system for the week of August 4
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:36:50 PDT
Phoenix: A. J. S. Rayl has an in-depth story up on Thursday's press conference and is preparing an update based on this morning's phone briefing. I'll try to put up a post later today or tomorrow with some other high points from the briefing. But there weren't any surpises, just more depth and background on the detection of perchlorate in the Marti...
Rosetta@home » Project News Aug 5, 2008
Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT
The minirosetta application has been updated to version 1.32. Release information is available in this post. Please report problems in this thread. The recent down time was due to our fileservers crashing. We are still looking into the cause....
SF Signal » REVIEW: Seeds of Change edited by John Joseph Adams
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:46:21 PDT
REVIEW SUMMARY: Filled with good stories both entertaining and thought-provoking. MY RATING: BRIEF SYNOPSIS: 9 original stories written around the theme of technological, scientific, political and cultural change. MY REVIEW: PROS: 1 outstanding story; 7 more good stories. CONS: 1 mediocre story. BOTTOM LINE: A better-than average collection of st...
SF Signal » Transmissions From Beyond
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:15:31 PDT
Speaking of the future of short fiction... TTA Press has just announced a new podcast site called Transmissons From Beyond that will be used deliver short fiction to fans. The website is also augmented by a forum. From the website description: Transmissions From Beyond is the first podcast in the world by a major magazine publisher, offering short...
SF Signal » SF Tidbits for 8/5/08
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:08:00 PDT
The nominees for the 2008 Endeavour Award, honoring distinguished science fiction and fantasy written by a Pacific Northwest author, have been announced and include The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari, Bright of the Sky: Book One of the Entire and the Rose by Kay Kenyon, Not Flesh Nor Feathers by Cherie Priest, Powers by Ursula K. LeGuin, and The S...
Einstein@Home » Project News Aug 5, 2008
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:00:00 PDT
The server upgrade is mostly complete, and we are now distributing work for our new search, S5R4a. If your personal BOINC installation has behaved strangely in the past days, please be patient. In most cases this will now sort itself out. We still need to track down a few remaining issues: some of the project PHP pages are not working entirely as t...
The Planetary Society Weblog » The Phoenix flap
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:13:03 PDT
I love the Internet. Sitting here at home, I am hooked in to a worldwide network consisting of scientists and engineers working on active missions; of news and data, both raw and processed, coming out of those missions; of reporters, doing research and writing about those missions; and of enthusiasts, discussing all of the above, 24 hours a day, se...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Ustream Chat Wednesday, August 6 at 1900 UTC: Phoenix hoopla
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:30:24 PDT
I plan to do a Ustream chat on Wednesday at 19:00 UTC. There's going to be a lot to talk about on Phoenix; I will do a short presentation on what Phoenix' instruments are capable of detecting, then will discuss this weekend's speculation fest about the Aviation Week story. (Apropos of that, now would be a good time to try to stop speculating; I hea...
SF Signal » Latest Attempt to Get James Doohan Into Space Fails
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:51:03 PDT
The latest attempt get the remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan into space have failed once more. On Saturday, August 2nd, the rocket that carried the remains of 208 people, including Doohan and astronaut Gordon Cooper, was lost on its way to space:The accident occurred a little more than two minutes after launch, and the two-stage Falcon 1 rock...
SF Signal » Books Received: August 4, 2008 (+ Book Meme)
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:28:08 PDT
Here are the books we received this past week. And the usual meme: When considering the books above: Which book has the coolest cover?Which book has the worst cover?Which book do you most want to read? (Please Note: The quality of the PS Publishing covers are less than favorable as they have been slightly stretched.)...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Apparently there's something more exciting yet to be announced by Phoenix
Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:10:13 PDT
EDIT AGAIN: The Science rumor wasn't correct either. Go here for more info. EDIT: Here's a reason for the hush-hush about this news -- according to Leonard David, they're trying to keep whatever it is quiet so that it can go through peer-review and publication in Science. That makes sense; it's also a case in point of how terribly hard it is to mai...
The Planetary Society Weblog » Carnival of Space # 65, and more
Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:47:29 PDT
It's been a couple of weeks since I've been on the ball with an on-time contribution to the Carnival of Space, but I finally remembered this week. Go check it out at 21st Century Waves. And I haven't done a roundup of the new stuff on our website lately. So here goes: A. J. S. Rayl has lately posted the latest rover update, with the big news being ...
Docking@Home » Project News August 1, 2008 7:45:00 UTC
Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:45:00 PDT
We are generating 1hvi work-units and crunching them with charmm34 6.07....
Einstein@Home » Project News Aug 1, 2008
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:00:00 PDT
Work on Einstein@Home will continue through the weekend and will be finished some time on Monday Aug 4. A news item will be posted when all the work is finished....
POEM@HOME » Only Refinement Targets left
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:00:00 PDT
Today the last two Quality Assessment workunits for CASP will be finished. The only remaining CASP workunits then will be three refinement jobs, two of which will be finished on the fourth, with the final one running until the seventh. Thanks to your support, something could be submitted for all targets. No announcement was made, as to when the tar...
PrimeGrid » Riesel Sieve project information
Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:00:00 PDT
For those of you wondering what is the problem with Riesel Sieve, here is a word from BOINC side administrator Bryan: Basically, the project creator has disappeared. People have been in contact with him, but we haven't heard any resumption date or even if things will resume. For the time being, I'm focusing my efforts on getting the non-BOINC side ...
Docking@Home » Project News July 31, 2008 6:30:00 UTC
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:30:00 PDT
We are ready to distribute the new charmm application. More about the application is in the forum....
Cosmology@Home » Linux app issue fixed
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:00:00 PDT
The i686 Linux app issue has been fixed....
Spinhenge@home » Project News July 31, 2008
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:00:00 PDT
We had a server outage today. The Webserver crashed and after rebooting it can't mount the NFS. I'm very sorry for this. I fixed the problem. Now, all works again. Best regards Thomas...
BOINC » BOINC news July 30, 2008
Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT
BOINC 6.2.14 is now the recommended version for all platforms. Upgrade now....
Docking@Home » Project News July 30, 2008 4:30:00 UTC
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:30:00 PDT
The server will be down for ~30 minutes today at 5:00....
Milkyway@home » Project News: Reduced WU Queue
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:00:00 PDT
Due to the longer WU calculation time we've reduced the WU queue to 8 (from 20). Let us know if this causes any problems....
Leiden Classical » Project News 30 july 2008
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:00:00 PDT
At the end of August a BOINC gathering will take place at the Docking@home project: http://gcl.cis.udel.edu/EastCoast08. I'll be there too to talk about how Leiden Classical uses BOINC in teaching. Shortly afterwards, at least my presentation will be posted here too for those who couldn't make it ;-)....
RALPH@home » Project News July 29, 2008
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT
The minirosetta application has been updated to 1.31. This version is identical to 1.30 but we are testing packaging the minirosetta database along with the application to deal with backwards compatibility issues. Please post bugs in the 1.30 thread (link is below)....