Beware of learning foreing languages, some of them could play tricks with your mind, like the one in Babel 17 (ok, wasnt exactly an alien language, but should count as one).

The illustrated version of The Last Hero was pretty great for a gift. It really gives a meaning to have a paper book.

My first tought when i saw 12 monkeys was that it was loosely based in P.K.Dick's The Skull. Anyway the idea that traveling to the past don't change it for much you try, but at most make it happen exactly as it was, was explored by more authors.

In the opposite side, in Clarke's Childhoods End aliens and the devil looked pretty similar.

10 degrees of global temperature increase? 6 would be bad enough to care a lot about even more.

For a LOT of sites, you have name base virtual hosting. You have a single IP, a lot of domains that ends on it, and the server directs to the right domain based on the headers the browser sends thru http 1.1. With IPv6 wouldnt be a so big problem, you have enough addresses to identify each domain with its own unique…

Tought that memetics could had helped in that direction

In the next episode of CSI: Hubble someone will say "Enhance!"

Freedom of choice, as long as you choose what i do? Those alternative platforms give something unique to the arena, something that the rest could be lacking or doing it differently (i.e. multitasking or ways to task switching, for starters). WebOS, Meego, Tizen, or others, could give reasons and ways for the others to…

So with high enough magnetic fields we should see strange things? I think i saw here talking about far away objects (fast spinning quasars? weird galaxies? something like that) with magnetic fields orders far above anything that could be made in this solar system. If things that so high magnetic fields are still in…

Dan Simmons wrote in some other genres before hitting science fiction with Hyperion, but what a hit it was, at least for me. And probably Ender's Game falls into the same category too.

"... afraid of watching TV"

He got confused because the clouds passing behind the moon

I think we are living a version the diamond age right now. For me is about a small girl getting a "smart book" becoming smarter. We have internet, we have kids exploring it, with numbers big enough some of them will change the world.

Predicting the future is nice, specially when you can't affect if it happens or not. In the other hand, self-fulfilling predictions usually have bad results, and actually knowing the future opens the door to blue butterflies.

One thing is reporting that some OS is dying because not every maker is including it in every potential device, and another is trying to activelly kill it blaming everyone that makes something for it, for whatever reason.

Predator over The Mist or The Blob? really?

Open formats do a great help standarizing things. EPUB is such kind of formats, at least the DRM-free ones. Not sure how open is this new Amazon format to have a chance to end being standard in some future or not.

What about adults? Learning new languages, playing games, exercising, eating the right food, even sleeping affects can affect iq too (not sure about physical brain structure), even old people improved their iq with the right activity.

Won't be surprised if that isnt Earth of the past, but a parallel dimension one or a far away present planet (with a similar, but closer moon) reached by some kind of portal. Going to the past, but being unable to leave something for the future, while keeping getting people from the same future should mean a big plot…