January 15, 2004

The Preliminary Ballot for the 2003 Nebula Awards has been released. The award will be voted upon by active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and will be awarded on Saturday, April 17th. My choice for Best Novel would be Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove for its detail and imaginative reuse of lines from the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to produce a completely new Shakespearean play. They might as well not bother to count the votes, Best Script will go to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. 10:49:55 PM

No Go For TO Following the awarding of the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver, Toronto is not trying for the 2012 Summer Games there by avoiding the spectacle of Toronto politicians flying around the world in a search for votes. In fact biding on any games before 2032 is probably a waste of time for Toronto. 10:48:48 PM

C|net News reports that in an idiotic decision a Chicago federal judge on Wednesday upheld a $512 million patent verdict against Microsoft that could ultimately force major changes in many of the most common Internet software products. The decision, which Microsoft will appeal, upholds the ruling that Microsoft violated a patent held by the one-person software company Eolas Technologies and the University of California on the use of plugins in web browsers. As a result Microsoft introduced some workarounds for its Internet Explorer browser including ones that make web pages bigger and others that add a pointless OK dialog box that you must press before a plug in loads. Many computer scientists and developers including the developer of Lotus Notes, Ray Ozzie and Perry Pei-Yuan Wei who created the Viola browser that both predated Eolas’ work and included support for plugins plan to argue in support of Microsoft. The article does not mention if they were able to. Critics of Microsoft that think this ruling would only apply to Internet Explorer should consider what would happen if the owner of Eolas Technologies ever decides he wants more money. Once the patent is upheld Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and any other alternative browsers could be next. 12:33:14 AM

PSA for Geeks Canadian science fiction channel Space will be showing the new two part Battlestar Galactica mini-series this Saturday January 17th at 9pm EST and Sunday January 18th at 9pm EST. The American SF Channel is still undecided if it will return as a series. 12:22:15 AM

The Toronto Star’s Thomas Walkom trivializes the actions of Hitler, Nazism, and the Holocaust in his ridiculous comparison of the actions of US President George W. Bush with Hitler. More reasons why I don't subscribe to the Toronto Star. There are similar comments by Counterpunch's resident anti-Semite Alexander Cockburn, but it their publication is not surprising. 12:06:56 AM