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Makes you wonder.. by CausticWindow · 2003-05-22 23:43 · Score: 0, Funny · on Trend Micro Quarantines Letter P

could you write most emails without using that letter?

Or Slashdot comments for that matter. (I'm doing fine so far) Maybe one could discard that letter totally. It's clearly just redundant.

What about writing an entire novel without using the most common letter of the english (or french) language ("e")? Take a look at "The Void" ("La Disparition") for example.

Re:Whats the point? by danny · 2003-05-05 16:14 · Score: 1 · on From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog

Speaking as a reviewer, I tend not to write many negative reviews because I usually don't bother reading bad books. Also, with so many books out there, helping people avoid bad ones is less useful than helping them find good ones.

But I have written some pretty negative reviews:

(Maybe I should add a "bad books" page to the site.)

Danny.

Re:Whats the point? by danny · 2003-05-05 16:14 · Score: 1 · on From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog

Speaking as a reviewer, I tend not to write many negative reviews because I usually don't bother reading bad books. Also, with so many books out there, helping people avoid bad ones is less useful than helping them find good ones.

But I have written some pretty negative reviews:

(Maybe I should add a "bad books" page to the site.)

Danny.

Re:Whats the point? by danny · 2003-05-05 16:14 · Score: 1 · on From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog

Speaking as a reviewer, I tend not to write many negative reviews because I usually don't bother reading bad books. Also, with so many books out there, helping people avoid bad ones is less useful than helping them find good ones.

But I have written some pretty negative reviews:

(Maybe I should add a "bad books" page to the site.)

Danny.

another review of GGS by danny · 2003-04-28 12:09 · Score: 1 · on On The Collapse of Complex Societies

People might be interested in my review of Guns, Germs and Steel .

Danny.

Re:OMG! by dutky · 2003-03-22 03:55 · Score: 1 · on Handheld Programming?

Yes, I was on vacation (in an exotic and beautiful locale) for a month and I wanted to be able to code from time to time. That may sound absolutely nuts but there is one thing most folks here probably don't understand: There was a considerable amount of 'down time' on the vacation, most of it during travel.

First (and last) there is the 18 hour flight over the Pacific ocean. I managed to watch all the in-flight movies about half-way through (including the Hindi ones) and was almost tempted to listen to the religious audio channel (readings from the Quaran, no less). Second, most travel within Viet Nam isn't all that speedy, especially when travelling along the coast (and the scenery gets a bit monotonous after the first couple of days: something like eastern-shore Maryland if you replace corn/tobacco with rice). Third, after trekking around the city all day, Lina was pooped and I was ready for some relaxation from the relaxation: something less exotic than everything I'd been seeing and doing all day, something that streatched other (more familliar) parts of my brain.

So I'm a geek, I need to unwind by writing some recreational code every thirty or forty hours. At least I was able to pack a few good books that could tide me over.

1st edition was pretty good by danny · 2003-03-06 01:03 · Score: 1 · on Firewalls and Internet Security, 2nd Ed.

My review of the first edition might be of interest, though a lot has changed since then! The first edition was one of the first ever books on firewalls - also the first review copy I got from a publisher, so I have fond memories of it.

I've just asked for a review copy of the new edition.

Danny.

Re:Snowcrash references by evenprime · 2003-01-08 06:02 · Score: 1 · on Metaverse Launched?

>>Snowcrash's "metaverse" served as
>>the inspiration for the development of VRML
>
>The idea was out there in one form or another
>for a lot longer than Snow Crash has been around.

Thanks for the correction. You are of course, correct; other cyberpunk authors had similar stuff in mind for quite a while before snowcrash.

I'll try to partially redeem myself by pointing out that snowcrash's publication date was a half decade before the date that VRML became an ISO standard. I suppose I will have to settle for saying that Snow Crash was highly inspirational to the development of VRML. :)

Re:Looks like a duck, walks like a duck by danny · 2002-12-12 10:14 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Should You Trust Website Customer Reviews?

I write reviews for my own web site, not for Amazon, but most of mine are positive (though fewer than 10% make it onto my "best" list). The reason for that is that with several million books in print and hundreds of thousands of new ones printed each year, people need help finding the good ones, so negative reviews aren't as useful.

I make the occasional exception for very popular books which I think are overrated.

Danny.

Re:Gould? by danny · 2002-12-04 11:46 · Score: 2 · on Shapes of Time

few (non-marxist) evolutionary biologists consider Gould's writing on alternatives in evolution to be interesting

That's just completely false. Shapes of Time is one counter-example, as is Patterns and Processes in Vertebrate Evolution , but there are thousands of other non-marxist biologists who have used Gould's ideas on evolution. Check the citation record for Ontogeny and Phylogeny sometime!

Danny.

Sigh, not more dialectical things, I hope? by BerntB · 2002-12-02 04:55 · Score: 2, Informative · on Shapes of Time

For a historical classification of this, see e.g. anti-Darwinianism in talkorigins.org.

To see where the reviewer, and most modern criticism against evolutionary biology, comes from -- see The Dialectical Biologist.

I stopped reading the popular criticism after coming to the opinion that there are two different religions that have dogmatic problems with evolution -- Xians/Muslims and Marxists.

I think I understand why the Xians have problems accepting that some (tendencies to) behavior are built into humans. I never read up enough on Marxism to understand their problem. I leave that to people with more religious needs.

my sf reviews and best list by danny · 2002-12-01 22:20 · Score: 2 · on What Makes Great Science Fiction?

I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to check out my science fiction reviews (35 so far). Books that made it onto my highly recommended list include Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), and A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge).

Danny.

my sf reviews and best list by danny · 2002-12-01 22:20 · Score: 2 · on What Makes Great Science Fiction?

I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to check out my science fiction reviews (35 so far). Books that made it onto my highly recommended list include Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), and A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge).

Danny.

my sf reviews and best list by danny · 2002-12-01 22:20 · Score: 2 · on What Makes Great Science Fiction?

I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to check out my science fiction reviews (35 so far). Books that made it onto my highly recommended list include Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), and A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge).

Danny.

my sf reviews and best list by danny · 2002-12-01 22:20 · Score: 2 · on What Makes Great Science Fiction?

I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to check out my science fiction reviews (35 so far). Books that made it onto my highly recommended list include Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), and A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge).

Danny.

my sf reviews and best list by danny · 2002-12-01 22:20 · Score: 2 · on What Makes Great Science Fiction?

I don't want to repeat myself, but you might want to check out my science fiction reviews (35 so far). Books that made it onto my highly recommended list include Lord of Light (Roger Zelazny), Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy), and A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge).

Danny.

Doubtful it's an improvement by MichaelPenne · 2002-12-01 14:09 · Score: 2 · on Hi-tech Work Places no Better than Factories?

their jobs are actual improvements over their rural standards of living.

But one of course had to define how far back one is going to measure these 'rural standards of living', which often were better for average peasents before industrial farming methods (see Scott's "Weapons of the Weak" for a good description of how the coming of modern farming practices often reduces the living standards of average peasants.

Of course, after labor has been replaced by tractors and small land owners have been kicked off their family plots, their living standards are often quite bad, and working for barely under subsistance wages in a factory may be a marginal improvement, in an 'out of the frying pan into the fire' sort of way (Scott goes into that as well, pointing out the similarites to the Highland Clearences in the dawn of the Industrial Revolution

If mine is a "quasi-pastoral view of underdevelopment" fine, no matter how many syllables you throw at me, I still say that if it would be exploitation to treat an American that way, it is exploitation to treat a Malay that way. Call me simple minded if you like.

I find it hard to believe that there are large externalities associated with spinning cotton into fiber.

While the environmental impacts of more chemically intensive industries are often much easier to measure, making cheap jeans has a negative impact as well:

Denim jeans are made from cotton - the world's most popular fibre, which still provides as much yarn as all the 'modern' artificial fibres put together. Cotton crops cover 34 million hectares of the surface of the earth and use 25% of all the world's pesticides. An estimated one million cases of pesticide poisoning and 20,000 deaths per year are attributable to cotton.

And then there is the synthetic indigo dye that makes 'em blue...

for a book length treatment by danny · 2002-09-07 12:18 · Score: 2 · on A History of the Digital Copyright Struggle

I recommend Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright .

Danny.

some Utopian novels by danny · 2002-08-19 17:14 · Score: 2 · on Slashback: Pop-Ups, Books, Qmail

A small list:

Islandia (Austin Tappan Wright)
The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy)

Be warned, however, that some of these are reasonably depressing, despite being about utopias...

Danny.

some Utopian novels by danny · 2002-08-19 17:14 · Score: 2 · on Slashback: Pop-Ups, Books, Qmail

A small list:

Islandia (Austin Tappan Wright)
The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Woman on the Edge of Time (Marge Piercy)

Be warned, however, that some of these are reasonably depressing, despite being about utopias...

Danny.

my review of the Stein book by danny · 2002-08-08 12:25 · Score: 2 · on Web Development with Apache and Perl

I reviewed How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site many years ago - and agree that it was an excellent book.

Danny.