As of now I’m not quite done this book, but it is one of the few fictional stories that I’ve ever gotten into. (Without revealing secrets) This book opens with the announced death of a software giant/genius dyeing after a long battle with brain cancer and seemingly unrelated events and people converge on what could be considered a turning point in history: when it is possible to murder someone from beyond the grave (as quoted from the book) "When you’re safely dead".
On Audible this book is in a half-dramatized, half-narrated story with different characters voice by different actors or actresses, which conveys nicely because this book can be downloaded using Audible’s new ‘E’ format (which bring the file size for this book to about 500MB). This is one of the best applications of the audiobook medium yet; the high quality, great narrators, and a great story. Keep in mind that this book is a significant investment of time, at 15 hours and 57 minutes.
If you like this book, it’s author has a sequel premiering in 2010, Freedom. You can take a look at free chapters on the authors site, here.
Or get this book in dead-tree format for $16.98 from Amazon.
**PS With credits this book can cost as low as $7.49, or using a sponsored trial (such as from TWiT) you can get it free (with new signup)**
(Publisher’s Summery)
Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can’t always be said for the people who design them.
Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer – the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company’s stock price. But Sobol’s fans aren’t the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol’s secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it’s up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy – or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .
Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.
Here’s how you can try all of the desktop environments on Linux without reinstalling versions. First, you open terminal.
(You follow these commands to install the ones you want–if you already have one there is no ned to reinstall it under normal circumstances)
Type: sudo su and give your admin password.
To get:
GNOME: apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
KDE: apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
xfce: apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
Type: exit to get out of superuser mode.
Now when you get to hte login screen you have the option to pick an environment and can chose a default. (That is found under the ‘Session’ menu).
Linux is just a kernel, the underpinnings of the operating system and doesn’t specify the desktop environment. When it comes to desktop environments you have a few conventional choices: KDE, and GNOME, xfce.
These all have grown alike in that they have the conventions of a “desktop” with folders and icons, an area that minimized windows go to, and a “tray” of service-type application status icons. However they also have vast differences; take how GNOME has a Mac-like menu bar at the top of the screen and KDE has a more Windows-like metaphor with a panel resembling the Start Menu, which is triggered to appear when a Start Button-type button is pressed.
Ubuntu is a very common and in most cases the recommended distro of Linux recommended, especially to beginners (to Linux). Ubuntu in it’s default package comes with the GNOME desktop environment, however from the same project you can also chose from: Kubuntu (as I did) or Xubuntu. (The former being packaged with KDE and the latter being packaged with xfce.) However, just because your copy of Linux ships with one desktop environment doesn’t mean you can’t change over and test the others–and the best part is that (if your computer is capable of running the environments and has enough disk space) you can chose between them from the login screen and try them all!
I found this neat video circa 1994 [UPDATE]1997-8[/UPDATE] showcasing BeOS (a revolutionary OS that disappeared a short time later; their last hope would have been to be purchased by Apple, however NeXT won… long story). This video is a promotional video–and what I find amazing is what they could do with on a dual Pentium 2 266MHz!
The day after tomorrow, June 17 (Wednesday) the world will be able to download the latest update to the iPod Touch and iPhone… here are the top 6 reasons why I am going to get it:
Spotlight Searching (system wide)–with this feature you will be able to swipe to the screen left of the hope screen and you are given a search screen which searches your apps, your apps data, your songs, notes, and podcasts. So cool
Landscape keyboard system wide!–enough said…
Shake to shuffle–because it makes a good demo
This may be the most important… APIs – The latest apps will use the new APIs which Apple will use in 3.0… meaning that if you don’t upgrade you will not be able to use the latest apps… call me blasphemous, but this does seem a lot like an issue you would see from Microsoft, not Apple.
Faster Safari, hopefully using some of the Safari 4 (for desktop) javascript technology
And lastly and most requested, copy and paste (with cool gestures). This will be a cool demo feature, especially because I wasn’t alive to see Steve Jobs demo the original clipboard on the macintosh in 1984, so this is just as monumental. Now I can demo this to all of my friends who may have already used a clipboard on their Blackberrys or desktops, but this is on an iPod; so it’s cool.
**A note on the many new APIs Apple has included in the SDK, of which I don’t possess as I am not a registered developer, there are thousands. It is important to talk about the APIs for notifications, which have not yet been given highlight from the media, even though it may prove to be the most influential of them all.
Bittorrent. I have found what I consider to be the holy grail of bittorrent clients for the Mac, Transmission. Transmission is simply a front-end to a historic backend bittorrent engine and has been built to be (according to developer’s site), “Easy, Lean, Native, Powerful, Free” which I have interpreted as a very cutdown interface (especially when compared with Vuze, formally Azureus) and uses very little resources and memory; it just seems fast. The other point is that it feels ‘Mac’, it completely utilizes Growl, dock notifications, and complies with the GNOME HID Guidelines. The other features include encrypted connections, selective file downloading and prioritizing, fast resume, bandwidth management, HTTPS, IPv6, and DHT support. And what I consider to be the best feature, if you click and drag a hyperlink from a webpage on to the program screen, it automatically downloads the linked torrent file and starts downloading; you never have to see another .torrent file again!
**Of course in pointing you in this direction I do not ever intend for you to break copyright laws in your local jurisdiction, and do not accept any liability for your doing so. Bittorrent is not all evil and has legitimate uses, such as my primary use, downloading Linux distributions while saving bandwidth $$ for the host.**
As of now I’m not quite done this book, but it is one of the few fictional stories that I’ve ever gotten into. (Without revealing secrets) This book opens with the announced death of a software giant/genius dyeing after a long battle with brain cancer and seemingly unrelated events and people converge on what could be considered a turning point in history: when it is possible to murder someone from beyond the grave (as quoted from the book) "When you’re safely dead".