LibArc Blogs

Quick link only today: Sikon over on SDN has posted several very interesting essays in the last few days, and this one is one I like since I have debated it a couple months ago.

He explains how FTL concepts coming from real scientists are still just as outrageous and impossible as pure magic FTL, and why they are looked at anyway.

He also goes on to discuss hard sci fi ideas with no FTL at all, complete with some awesome looking artwork. Take a look:

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=2438568#2438568

The important thing I think to note is FTL is not possible at all, so if you want it in your stories, do what I always advise: just make something up that fits the plot you want to tell and handwave the rest of it.

Hello and welcome back. First off, I would like to apologize for going so long without saying anything. I have been busy with a lot of other things in the last weeks, and since each of these significant posts takes me some time to research and write, I simply haven't had the time to commit to them. Tonight, I have some time to spare, but it has been a while, and I pretty much forgot what I wanted to talk about when I closed my last long post back in February, so this is probably going to be a little disjointed. I can also make no promises about when I will return to post again after this; I'll try to get back into it at least once a week, but if I have stuff to do, I'm afraid the blog is just not a high priority.

Moving on, Winchell Chung has added a new section to Atomic Rockets discussing Future measurement, and that has prompted me to write a little about the measurement system in my own universe. I am going to talk about time in this post, and hopefully, work out other thing at a later time. Time is important since there is a good practical reason to work out something, whereas changing the other units of measure would pretty much be just for appearances. (Though an interchange unit with aliens would be good, but Winch discusses this on Atomic Rockets, so I won't rehash it here.)

In a sci-fi civilization, measuring the time of day and the time of year may be a difficult task. On Earth, we have time zones to account for time of day, but for the actual length of the day, and the length and time of year, it is the same for everyone. However, in a sci-fi civilization, people may be living in space or on other planets, where this is not the case. Relativistic time dilations might also make a difference, but this difference is probably going to be negligible on the scale of a human lifetime, unless your starships have magic to go to that kind of speed, or if your FTL also equals time travel. Since it is probably negligible though, I am not going to talk further about it here.

I would think that at any point in the civilization, there will be at least two time measures: local time and some form of centralized time. Like with our time zones, local time is dependant on where you are, and central time is the local time at a specific location. This specific location may be anywhere; perhaps a place which is convenient for spacers (a well traveled spaceport), perhaps the time at the nation's capital. It should be something everyone agrees on, however, so it is useful for coordination.

An interesting case would be those of space stations or ships. In space, there is no local time like there is on Earth, to the stations and ships can set their clocks to any time they want. I would imagine this would be one of four things: local time as the departure point, local time at the destination, local time at the ship's home port (or space station's parent country or control center), or standardized to central time. The latter seems best to me for space stations or orbital habitats; this makes coordination very easy. When traveling, there is no need to worry about crossing a time zone.

A space economy might also benefit from everyone going to bed at the same time. A company in station X serving all the space stations in the local orbital area wouldn't need to stay open 24 hours a day to serve customers who are just waking up as you are going to bed from the other side of the world.

There is also the problem of being on different planets. If there are two worlds with different periods of rotation, simple time zones will not be enough. For example, if planet X has a day that is 23 hours long, it will complete an additional day compared to Earth every few weeks! So central time can't just be an adjustment for hours, it must also be a separate calendar, with day and year lengths adjusted to the capital (or whatever) as well. Again, this isn't much of a problem for space stations; they can control the lengths of their day, and the time of the year is relevant only to astrogators (since seasons are also dialed up at will). Space navigators will probably be using orbital positions for their plotting instead of regular time anyway, since it is more precise and works for more places in the solar system.

It would get confusing when talking about local days vs central days vs local days on planet Y and so on. I propose a different set of words when referring to central days, and when talking about local time, if it is to other people close to you, nothing special is needed, but if talking to someone in another place in the solar system, your planet and time zone must also be included, however, I think sticking to central time when talking to another planet is easier. Let your computers do the automatic conversions back and forth from central time and local time for display.

The choice of words for central time is up to you. You might still call them days, years and hours. You might call them central days like I have been here. I personally like taking the words from the classic Battlestar Galactica and putting meaning to them: a yahron, no matter where you are in the empire, always means one year at the capital. A secton is one day at the capital, and from there, you can make up the rest.

You could also ditch the idea of central time being local time entirely. Maybe central time is metric time based on the number of seconds since event X (or something else you like), and local time is always years based on your current planet. Metric time isn't pretty for a calendar though, but you still might be able to make it work. You could have stardate XXXX.X, where the X is the number of kiloseconds since the epoch. This stardate would be several digits soon - if the epoch is Jan 1, 1970, and one year is about 32,000 kiloseconds, then Jan 1, 2000 would be stardate 960,000.0! (As a computer programmer, I can't look at 32,000 without thinking of 32768, which is 2^16 / 2, which is seen in hexadecimal as 8000, and much more easier to work with once you get used to it, but even hex would get unwieldy quickly. Nevertheless, using hexadecimal as the number system in sci-fi would be somewhat cool, although you would have to explain why people with 10 fingers aren't using the intuitive base 10...).

A potential solution to the long stardate problem is being able to leave off several digits from the front when speaking. As a comparison, when saying the date, do you always specify the year out loud? Of course, when storing time, it would all have to be saved, but that could be done automatically by the computer. Another solution is use megaseconds instead of kiloseconds, but that lacks precision when talking day to day. A kilosecond is about 20 minutes, but a megasecond is closer to 2 weeks!

Nevertheless, I don't think metric time is very nice to work with, so I would prefer to stick to a central time based on regular time and date at the capital. Again, the awesome thing is space stations can be adjusted to be equal to central time, which is still quite easy to work with, and that is the solution I like the best.

Well, that is all I have for tonight. As I said, I will try to post again by this time next week, but I can make no guarantees. Until next time, thanks for reading.

It isn't everyday you're shocked. As the whole world knows by now, not so long ago in Virginia a South Korean exchange student took up a pair of pistols and attacked the fellow members of his college. I've already read a number of news report on it and a number of editorals some blaming the fact that the campus was a "gun free zone" others blaming the fact there are guns in the US. I've decided I'm not going to get into that, I'm not going to use this international tragedy as a platform, not here, not today.

There is one thing I will do however and that is honor a man who showed real heroism that day, though it cost him his life. This section is called Heroes for a reason, and Professor Liviu Librescu deserves to be here.

Professor Librescu was born in Romania, the city of Ploiesti during the year 1930. His family was Jewish, his father was a lawyer. In the dark years of WWII and Nazi domination he would first be interned at a labor camp in Transnistria, then moved for the rest of the time to the ghetto of Focsani.

After the war, Liviu studyed at Polytechnic University of Bucharest graduating in the year 1952, he would continue at the same university in the sucessful pursuit of his masters. In 1969 he would be rewarded for his ongoing work when he earned a P.h.D in Fluid Mechanics from the Academia de Ştiinţe din România, in 1969. He would continue as a researcher in Bucharest until 1975.

Professor Librescu had desired to immigrate to Isreal (I am told this is called making Aliyah) this action was forbidden under the Romanian Communist Government. Professor Librescu would lose his job has well when he refused to swear loyality to the Communist government. When the Isreali Prime Minster Menachem Begin made a direct appeal on his behalf to President of Romania Nicolae Ceauşescu, the Romanian government relented and allowed Professor Librescu to move to Isreal in 1978.

Form 1979 to 1986 (despite taking a year sabbatical to Virginia in 1985) Professor Librescu was a Professor of Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University and taught at Haifa Technion. He would permently move to Virginia

From that time on he taught at Virginia Tech.

During the Virgina Tech Attack he wedged himself against the door of his class, preventing the shooters entry. He held the door shot denying the shooter entry despite being shot through the door. Urging his students to escape, they fled through the windows. He would killed in this action, but in the words of one of his students...

“but all the students lived - because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad.

He would be posthumously awarded the Star of Romania of the order of the Grand Cross (2nd highest of 6 orders) by the President of Romania and honored the President of the US.

During his life he recieved:

2007 Invited Key Note Lecture at the 17th International Congress on Thermal Stresses, June 4-7, 2007, Taipei, Taiwan, “Joule Heating and its Implications on Crack Detection/Arrest in Electrically Conductive Circular Cylindrical Shells”.( Z. Qin, L. Librescu and D. Hasanyan)
2006 Awarded a diploma by the 17th International Conference on Adaptive Structures and Technology for the paper “Robust Aeroelastic Control of Composite Aircraft Wings in Incompressible Flow” by Yoon, G. C., Na, S. S., Librescu, L., and Baek, S. C., Taiwan, ICAST 2006, October 13-17.
2005 Appointed Chair of the International Organizing Committee of the 6th International Congress on Thermal Stresses '05 May 26-29, 2005, Vienna, Austria
2005 Invited Plenary Lecture at the 6th International Congress of Thermal Stresses '05 May 26-29, 2005, Vienna, Austria "Thin-Walled Beams Used in Turbomachinery and Space Applications Made-Up of Functionally Graded Materials and Operating in a High Temperature Environment: Vibration and Instability" by L. Librescu, S-Y Oh and O. Song
2005 Selected as a member of the Board of Experts of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Scientific Research
2005 Awarded a diploma by the International Congress on Thermal Stresses, Vienna, Austria, May-June, 2005, ``In recognition for the achievements in the field of Thermal Stresses, for organizing the Fifth International Congress of Thermal Stresses, and for the contributions to the Journal of Thermal Stresses, as an author and as a member of the Editorial Board.''
2005 Awarded a diploma by the ASME, 20th Biennal Conference on Mechanical Vibration and Noise, Long Beach, CA, September 24-28, 2005 expressing the deep appreciation for the valuable services in advancing the engineering profession.''
2005 Frank J. Maher Award for Excellence in Engineering Education
2004 Plenary Key Note Lecture to the Third European Conference on Structural Control July 12-15. 2004, Vienna, Austria “Advances in the Linear/nonlinear Control of Aeroelastic Structural Systems” by L. Librescu and P. Marzocca
2003 Member of the Executive Committee of the International Congress of Thermal Stresses, (1999-2003) and re-appointed for (2003-2007)
2003 General Chair of the 5th International Congress of Thermal Stresses and Related Topics, June 8-11, 2003, Blacksburg, VA
2000 Recipient of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania
2000 Elected member of the Academy of Sciences of the Shipbuilding of Ukraine
1999 Recipient of The 1999 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, College of Engineering VPI&SU
1999 Elected Foreign Fellow of the Academy of Engineering of Armenia
1998 Invited Plenary Lecture at the Session dedicated to the great Italian Scientist Professor Placido Cicala, Torino, June 25, 1998, Italia “Aeroelastic Tailoring of Advanced Aircraft Wings Carrying External Stores”, with Dr. F. H. Gern
1988 Plenary Key Note Lecture to the Second International Conference on Composite Science and Technology, June 9-11, 1998 Durban, South Africa” Recent Developments in the Modelling and Behavior of Advanced Sandwich Constructions”
1972 Laureate of the prize “Traian Vuia” of the Romanian Academy of Science

He was published in:

1. G. Polli, L. Librescu and F. Mastroddi, Aeroelastic Response of Composite Aircraft Swept Wings Impacted by a Laser Beam, AIAA, Vol. 33, No, 2, pp. 382-391, 2006
2. Na, S. S., Librescu, L., Rim, S. N. and Yoon, G. C., Vibration and Dynamic Response Control of Non-Unifom Composite Rotating Blades, International Journal of Rotating Machinery, 2006, ID 13807, pp. 1-9, 2006
3. Librescu, L., Oh, S-Y. and Hohe, J., Dynamic Response of Anisotropic Sandwich Flat Panels to Underwater and In-Air Explosions, International Journal of Solids and Structures, Vol. 43, No. 13, pp. 3794-3816, June, 2006
4. Hause, T. and Librescu, L., Flexural Free Vibration of Sandwich Flat Panels with Laminated Anisotropic Face Sheets, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol. 297, Nos. 3-5, pp. 823-841, 2006
5. Librescu, L. and Song, O., Composite Thin-Walled Beams: Theory and Application, Springer, 615, 2005

Information found at:

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Herald Tribune

I enjoy my anthropology class, it's interesting. The only real drawback is to get to class I have to get up at fucking 6'o damn clock in the morning and sit on a bloody bus for an hour.

Today in Anthro we finished up a video on human body art. It covered tribal tattooing, scarification (basically they cut you in a certain part of the body to create a pattern of scars) and modern tattooing. I was cool with the whole thing until it got to the floor show.

I'll expand. The modern tattooing section covered a tat convention in Olso Norway (during a national holiday, pretty blonde girls dressed up waving flags, I approve of this)now most of this was pretty cool. I like a nice tattoo and full out body murals don't really bother me, provided they're done well.

The floor show as I am calling it was a group of proformance artist who did alot of what fakirs used to do in dusty streets in by gone days. Lay on beds of nails and what not. Not to enthralled by that honestly, seems to flashy if you'll forgive the term. But that ain't what got my goat so to speak.

The led proformer then had hooks jabbed into his back and was hung form the ceiling for the amusement of a crowd of gawkers. This annoys me. Why do you ask? Because it's bloody well part of the old plains indain Sun Dance that's why!

The men who did this rite were warriors seeking visions and blessing from patron spirits. The ritual took a variety of forms, from being hung by hooks in a ledge to having a bone needle run through your chest skin and tied to to a pole and you trying to rip it out while dancing in one of the 4 cardinal directions. In many of these rituals the person is committing to doing this not just once but as many has 4 times over 4 years. There are differences in each of the rituals. There are however, major common themes inherent in the act.

It's an act of sarifice. Done not just for yourself but for the community as a whole. It is meant to attract the attention of the communities patron spirits and their blessing. For the sake of the whole you are suffering and shedding blood. As a Christian this touches me pretty deeply.

It's an act of respect. Respect for tradition, respect for the community and respect for the patron spirit.

It is an serious act. It is not meant for fucking entertainment!

I'm honesty not annoyed at the guy who did it, odds are high that he didn't know about the real meaning of the act and intended no disrespect. But it is a part of a trend that pisses me off at times. New Agers, Neo Pagans or whatever the hell they are calling themselves this month tend to rip off their rituals from the tribes who lived here in North America first and they do so without even a token attempt to understand the background and meaning of those acts. Worse they turn them into bland mush. Meaningless chantings and dancing around a vortex for good vibes. Even Hollywood gets in on the act turning the great vareity of religions and traditions into a plastic comformatity oatmeal version and then selling it as "spirituality." I'm barely part Cherokee and drives me nuts.

Look, kids, pay attention real quick here. My forefathers did not sit in a circle chanting shit to "feel good" and "get in tune with the trees" or whatever your damn guru told you. Their rituals were sarifices, often deeply personnal ones meant to help the community as a whole and gain greater insight into the world around them. They meant something and it was a powerful something. They did not dance around a vortex, most shamens would assume you ate a bad berry if you blabbered that to them in the old times and to be frank you would deserve it. There simply was no spiritual power without sarifice and no knowledge without effort. Your playacting is really just that, an act, a shadow play of older more meaningful and more personally expensive beliefs and rituals that bound peoples and nations togather in common. Stop pissing in their pool, I think enough as been done to them.

The beliefs and traditions of the Cherokee tribe were not the same as the other tribes. Plain indains did different things then indains on the east coasts and so on. So someone tell Hollywood to stop having SW indains going on Plain indain religious rituals please? It's like watching a movie and having the Protestant Christian family go to mass and ask for a cardinal's blessing. It's just fucking wrong.

To boil it all down, these rituals have deep, powerful and sometimes even dark meanings. They involve sarifice and devotation that should be respected and given it's due. If you're going to copy and steal shamelessly at least try to get the meaning right and if you're not, don't act as if you're accessing some old truth, because frankly all you're doing is putting on a play.

This may offend some folks. I can live with that. Because if the above offends you, consider how your actions may be offending others to the point that I would write this. I'm Christian in my religion not tribal, I'm white in my appearence and in most of my background. Yet this set of actions jars me so terribilly that here I am writing about it. Consider.

This post came out of a post in SDN which is here.

Games for Windows is a certification program started by Microsoft in their whole “Windows” branding/marketing campaign. It is similar to Certified to work with Vista, and Certified For Vista branding campaigns.

To start out, what is Games for Windows? Acording to Microsoft:

The Windows Vista Games Explorer (GE) is similar in concept to the Windows XP folders “My Documents” or “My Pictures.” The idea behind all three of these is to centralize similar content in one place and allow for easier organization and context-sensitive activities. The GE extends the My Documents or My Pictures concept by allowing richer organization and control over games. The GE allows gamers to view, organize, modify and interact with all the games installed on their system. It also offers the opportunity to game publishers to communicate important game information more effectively. The system is completely data-driven, so it is very easy for a game publisher to update game information over time. In this way, the Games Explorer enables gamers to keep up to date with game communities, tips & tricks, etc.

In other words, time to do what consoles have had forever!

A quickrundown of it’s features from Wikipedia.

An “Easy Install” option that installs the title on your PC in the fewest possible steps and mouse clicks
Compatibility with the Windows Vista Games Explorer (see below)
Compatibility with the Xbox 360 controller (where applicable)
Installs and runs properly on x64 versions of Windows Vista and is compatible with 64-bit processors (though the game itself can be 32-bit)
Supports normal and widescreen resolutions, such as 4:3 aspect ratio (800 x 600), 16:9 aspect ratio (1280 x 720), and 16:10 aspect ratio (1152 x 720)
Launching from Media Center (Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate have Media Center)

Some of the better features are as follows. Taken from the MS Developers network.

The game must be visible within the Games Explorer on Windows Vista.

The game must not create shortcuts on the desktop, in the Start menu, or in any other location to launch the game. Instead, this functionality should be exposed through the Games Explorer through the game’s icon and associated tasks list.

Tasks and shortcuts for uninstall must not be created. Users should be able to remove the game using the Programs control panel (known as Add/Remove Programs on Windows XP and previous versions).

controls, not that anyone cares. With a tidbit regarding gamers being forced to use admin mode. This bears repeating. With Games for Windows, you will no longer be forced to use Admin Mode to game, this is an important security step.

All games must execute within the context of a Standard User in order to allow Windows Vista Parental Controls-enabled accounts to play the game. Installation, patching, and removal may require elevated rights, subject to the requirements in section

also forces intergration with Xbox360 controller, which can only be a good thing, and Live, which again, is not bad.

Quite abit of information regarding 64-bit and security, summed up in:

Every executable file (.EXE extension) must have an embedded manifest that defines its execution level.

To maintain compatibility with x64 versions of Windows:

Titles and title installers must not contain any 16-bit code or rely on any 16-bit component.

If the game is dependent on kernel-mode drivers for operation, x64 versions of these drivers must be available. The game setup must detect and install the proper drivers and components for the 64-bit Windows OS.

All executable code files (e.g., .EXE and .DLL extensions) must be signed with an Authenticode certificate.

se of installation:

Games with a traditional installation must provide a simplified path in their setup user interface:

Display a maximum of one EULA

Provide default and custom installation options. The default option must bypass all selections for the install (such as installation folder, component selections, etc.), assume the default selections and then run the game or launcher upon successful install without addition prompts.

Install any required OS components (such as the DirectX and Visual C runtimes) silently without prompting or guarded by component version checks using the correct Microsoft redistribution package(s).

Provide removal only via the Programs control panel for both the game application as well as user-generated game files. This must ensure all installed files are removed and all settings (firewall, registry, etc.) are cleared. Redistributed OS components must not be removed.

Vista Game Explorer is an issue, covered by several developer blogs. In a nutshell, it forces them in how to display certain things, like ESRB information and settings, not inherently bad, just limiting.

The other possible issue is covered by Rahul Sood(VoodooPC CEO, good blogger) here.

Microsoft is working to create a community experience similar to Xbox Live called Windows Live, where people can chat, set up games, and play. In the future, PC and Xbox 360 gamers will even be able to play with and against each other, a cross-platform experience that sounds really cool to me. My concern is that Microsoft will charge a membership fee to those who want to be part of this. So long the fee is $50 per year or less, it’ll probably be a good deal for users, but game developers that support the GFW cause may have to give up their recurring revenues to Microsoft.

Generally however, it can only be a good thing, if it makes releases stabler, enforces proper interaction standards with the OS, etc. I am quite sure I am not the only gamer who is sick with lack of standards regarding games, Games installation, user right abuse, etc. Any step towards solving this mess is a good step.