While not Van Eck Phreaking, being able to eavesdrop on what is being typed in a different room by monitoring the common ground wire of the electic outlet is still cool. The BBC’s article Snooping through the power socket outlines the attack.
The Topless Robot Blog listed it’s top 8 Sci-Fi Fantasy Books Which Most Desperately Need Movies, and Neal came in at Number two with Snow Crash. The Full List
abyrneseyeview stumbled upon what appears to be a guide to the language Orth (which is featured in Anathem). The guide doesn’t seem to be completed, and having not read Anathem at this point, I am not certain of it’s relevance. You can check it out here.
The IO9 blog let us know that FORA.tv has posted a video of the Stephenson talk at Gresham College. It is implied that you can only watch the highlights of the presentation, but the whole thing is playing for me. Science Fiction as a Literary Genre.
Ilya was once again right on top of Amazon.co.uk changing the cover image. The UK cover is substantially different from the US version (and IMO more aesthetically pleasing).
Recently in the Geekdad Blog on Wired Blogs, part of Neal’s parenting philosophy is discussed.
He pointed to an unfinished kayak under a tarp. He said he was slowly working on it, in part to mentor his kids, even though they did no work on the boat, nor express the least bit of interest in this project. None-the-less he continued puttering on the undertaking while they were home. Stephenson said when he was a kid, his dad was constantly tinkering on some garage project or another, and despite Neal’s complete indifference for any of his dad’s enthusiasms at the time, he was influenced by this embedded tinkering. It was part of the family scene, part of his household, like mealtime style, or the pattern of interactions between siblings. [More]
Amazon.co.uk has posted a marketing blurb for Anathem,
Here is another brilliantly original novel from the cult author of “Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon”.Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world, an endless landscape of casinos and megastores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors, and teachers are summoned forth without warning into the unknown.
