It started when I had to go to Seattle over the Labor Day weekend. That's the traditional weekend of the World Science Fiction Convention, only this year Worldcon was in Glasgow, Scotland. When Worldcon is not in the United States, there is always a North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), and this year that was in Seattle.
Not only did I have a full schedule in early September (this column deadline being only a part of it), but I had already been to Seattle twice this summer, once for my wife's brother's fiftieth wedding anniversary, then again in August to be a presenter in the Writers of the Future awards. I was planning to skip NASFiC when I found out I couldn't: the Heinlein Society was presenting the Heinlein Medal for Lifetime Achievement to Larry Niven and myself. I couldn't miss that.
Dr. Amy Baxter, adopted granddaughter of Robert and Virginia Heinlein, with her husband Dr. Louis Calderon, Jerry Pournelle, and Larry Niven after Niven and Pournelle received the Heinlein Medal at the awards dinner in Seattle September 4, 2005. Amy is wearing a gown and jewelry left to her by Mrs. Heinlein.
The result was that I was in Seattle during much of the Katrina aftermath, which was no great hardship; but I also missed the second episode of the HBO historical drama "Rome." I had seen the first episode and enjoyed it immensely, and if you haven't seen it I can recommend it: they seem to have got most of the characters right. Caesar is shown as a man who can lead men. Young Octavius is a physical coward able to overcome his fears, who has an absolute genius for Roman politics. Anthony is a lecher of great cunning and military ability. And so forth. The upshot was that I much wanted to see the second episode, and as it happens, most of the reruns were at times when I just couldn't.
Extending Enterprise Value with Web 2.0 In this webcast we will talk about how to simply build and quickly remix Web 2.0 applications and the role of the IT department and how they support mashups. We will discuss how IBM can help IT teams adapt existing enterprise systems as well as develop unique ones that can support end user driven mashups in a reliable, scalable and secure way. We will highlight a simple scenario adapting an enterprise information source for mashups and how to test it. We will also cover how IBM can help you build agile, fast and simple web applications based on dynamic scripting languages that dramatically reduces development time. Wednesday, September 24, 2008 - 12pm PT / 3pm ET
2008 International Mathematica Conference Dr. Dobb's interviews Wolfram Research's Theo Gray, co-founder and Director of User Interfaces, and Roger Germundsson, Director of Research and Development, about the upcoming 2008 International
Mathematica Conference.
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
