George Allen Miller One Geek's take on all things SciFi

Is Gliese 581D really habitable? Does it have liquid oceans? Did Dvice just jump the Penguin? Do you know what it means to jump the Penguin? It's not pleasant. Imagine playing hopscotch, backwards,  with a people with giant beaks. It can get messy. For all those that don't know, some time ago a planet was found in the sweet spot. A planet that could possible hold life. It was named Gliese 581D. Everyone got excited, everyone jumped up and down, and then it faded into the back of the internet. Some time later Nasa reportedly found 55 potential planets in the habitable zone and 5 really really good candidates. Suffice to say, there's likely a bunch of earth's out there. So, was Dvice just milking it when it reported that this one is confirmed to be habitable? Is it true? In a phrase, how they hell do they know? A computer model. The same bad guys that are going to take over the world in fifty years want us to get on a space ship and travel 20 light years away, find nothing, and ... More

I think everyone can agree that Stephen Hawking is a genius. Recently, though, he's made two somewhat controversial statements. First, if aliens find us, they will kill us all, and we should hide from them. I really take exception to that. I just don't see it that way. Granted, I am no where near as smart as Mr. Hawking, but if a species that has advanced enough to be able to travel the stars to another planet, do we really have to be afraid of them? The technology to do that, and the technology to support that, has to be such that anything they can do, they can do on their own. They would see us as ants on an ant hill. Now, sure, they could choose to squash us, but again, any species that has advanced that far has had to learn a few things. I would hope one of those is how to get things down with out breaking out the magnifying glass and burning some bugs on the ground. We also know now that planets like this one are probably all over the place, ... More

Well, SyFy has shown some balls and told the geek world why they axed StarGate Universe. It's the ratings stuipd! Honestly, though, are we stupid? Of course it's going to be the ratings. I have to say though it's good to see the execs at SyFy just calling it like it is. When Farscape was canceled, and replaced with Tremors the Series, SyFy, then SciFi, stayed quiet. At least this time they had some balls and said, look, if you would have watched it more, we would have left it on. You can't really blame the execs. If the channel itself doesn't make any money then the channel is going to go belly up. If the channel goes belly up, i'm not going to be very happy. Lets not forget there are a lot of really good scifi shows on syfy. Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, Being Human and WWE monday night raw. Ok, ok, but I get to have a jab in there myself. So, ok fine, you have told us what's what Syfy. STU just didn't pull in the numbers. And ya know, I see ... More

I was at a bar some time ago with friends and one of them mentioned how Cloud computing was the next greatest thing on the planet and thousands of tech jobs will go away. I thought he was an idiot. Turns out he is an idiot. But what just is cloud computing? Why is it going to change the world? Is it even anything new? I love it when marketing teams re-brand something, give it a new identity, people buy into it and bam, you have a new product. What really happened was they put a ribbon on their grand father's toy truck and tried to sell it as brand new. Sometimes it works, sometimes it flops. Amazon, and Microsoft soon, have taken the bull by the horns on this one and are running with it. In it's most simple terms, cloud computing is basically letting someone else worry about putting your computer, and therefore your software, on the Internet. So, therefore, you are in the "cloud". But, wait a minute. I was doing that in 2001. Websites have been doing that since the web ... More

I know I'm late on this one but it was a busy weekend. Kidfest at the boy's school and wife's crazy,though very cool, milfy friends showed up and drank until 2am. And I learned that afgan women don't take showers, they just use oils to cleanse themselves. Kinky. Anyway, I can finally post something about Fringe and the season finale. We finally got to see Peter get in the damn machine and turn it on. What happened? His dad had an awesome twist setup for him. Turned out that that old crazy scientist Walter was behind everything. Who knew the steward of Gondor was so smart? In case you haven't seen the episode, stop now, spolier alerts abound! Though, honestly, if you haven't seen it yet, what the fuck are you doing on this blog? So, Walter build the crazy machine and sent it back in time. He, and Peter and Agent Dunham, are the first people. That's does explain a few things honestly. The machine was tuned to Peter because Walter tuned it to him. Albeit in the future. What would even ... More