Reading List : The Illuminatus Trilogy

A classic of inspired lunacy. Difficult to read it all at once, but well worth it.

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What has microsoft ever done for us?

This post on the Oracle and Open Source blog points to a Sydney Morning Herald article bemoaning Microsoft's lack of innovation, despite the quality of their research staff and their huge R&D budget.


This reminded me of an conversation a couple of weeks ago when I was challenged to come up with something microsoft had actually invented. I failed.



Without getting into an anti-Microsoft rant, can anyone think of any?

The best I can come up with at the moment are wheel mouse and ODBC

Reading List : Update

I've not been keeping this up to date (who does), so here is a list of what I've read since the last post.

Effendi	John Courtenay Grimwood	7/10
Followup to Pashazade. Another mystery in which the here of the first book, Ashraf Bey, has to defend his fiance's father against accusations of war crimes.
Fellahen	John Courtenay Grimwood	6/10
Third book in the trilogy.
Newton's Wake	Ken Macleod	6/10
Ken's first series The Fall Revolution was brilliant. His second Engines of Light, was no more than OK. This is better but not back to his best. He has some fun with politics as usual and this must be the only SF book with a Glasgow gang as one of the dominant forces in galactic civilisation
Market Forces	Richard Morgan	2/10
To be honest, I haven't finished this. It was too unremittingly horrible and I wasn't sure where it was going. I like Richard Morgan's other stuff a lot, but I am less sure about this one. I'll need to try it again when I'm less depressed.
The Men Who Stare at Goats	John Ronson	9/10
A look at various mad new age ideas which have been investigated and used as weapons by the US army and intelligence services. Some of the stuff seems to be in current use in Iraq. (The "stare at goats" phrase was that people were being trained to kill by power of thought alone.)
The Autobiography	Monty Python	4/10
Not very interesting really. I patchwork of reminiscence of the Python days by the Python team. Above all, its NOT FUNNY.
The Algebraist	Iain M Banks	7/10
Lightweight Banks. No startlingly clever ideas, and the story is only slightly engaging. The usual good jokes and set pieces.

Creationists pushed back in Georgia

The creationist promotion of ignorance has had a setback in Georgia, where the Supreme court has decreed that their anti-evolution stickers infringe the laws on religion in schools.There is a Guardian report here.

While this is obviously good news, I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be best to let the nutters take over America and let the whole place disappear up their own fundamentalism. On the other hand, might turn out like the Taliban with nukes.

Reading List : Toast by Charles Stross

A collection of early short stories. Pretty decent, but I suspect substantially different from his novels. There is a Lovecraft homage which is a cold war leading on to war, but the weapons are Lovecraftian monsters rather than nukes. The best one is 1984 with computers.