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It seems the big consumer shows like Macworld, CES, and CeBit tend to get the most coverage, but for me the most impressive show (that I didn’t attend) was the Intel Developer Forum. There aren’t a lot of world-changing products at consumer shows - just a lot of rehash. Like we need more megapixels in camera phones or bigger TV’s or yet another mp3 player. Meanwhile the IDF rolled out some major announcements that simply blew my mind. Here are what I think were the highlights of this show. (more…)

Ok everyone, get your flamethrowers primed. I’m about to dis one of the holy men of Sci Fi. I tried to read Diamond Age many moons ago, and quit after the first 50 pages. Everyone said that Diamond Age is not one of Stephenson’s better works. So I decided to read Snow Crash, a book that is widely regarded as seminal Stephenson. I found Snow Crash a miserable slog of a read. I’ll give Neil credit. He is an original thinker, and some of the concepts were ahead of their time. I had to keep reminding myself that this was all written before IM and the Internet came into widespread usage. However a lot of his universe was just too difficult to swallow. I found myself unable to suspend my disbelief in a world where organized crime ran everything and government became non-extent. The hyperbole was amusing as social satire, but made his dystopia hard to believe. I found Neil’s prose style very cumbersome. The story could have been easily a two hour Sci-Fi Network Original movie, but somehow Neil managed to stretch it out for an agonizing 400+ page vanity piece. The author always went out of his way to show how smart and clever he is - often going on long rambling tangents about Sumerian history or comp sci theory - just to show you how much he knows. I found the story to be so long-winded and disengaging that I fell asleep with only two pages left in the book. That I must say does take talent.