Slashdot Mirror

Stavo asks: "I'm looking for a robust, reliable personal knowledge management solution. As a professional researcher, I read a lot of text-based content. I prefer to mark up content, by underlining or adding margin notes. I also need to retrieve and search content. The low tech solution is printing the text and using a pen to mark up, then filing the papers. If I want to quote a source, I have to type the quote. With the advent of Tablet PCs and similar tech, I'd like to find a way to keep the content digital. In other words, if I download an journal article in PDF or HTML, how can I mark it up, save it, and later search/retrieve it? Shouldn't computers provide a better solution than voluminous file cabinets filled with dead trees?"

Reader bughunter contributed the review below of K.W. Jeter's Noir, which sounds like a good book to not read aloud to your small children, but otherwise intriguing: Dark, twisty speculation in the same vein as William Gibson and other pioneers.

Noir author K. W. Jeter pages 496 publisher Bantam Spectra rating 8 reviewer bughunter ISBN 0553576380 summary A dark-as-its-name novel in the tradition of cyberpunk but with even more cynical twists.

Mixing metaphors like cheap liquors, K. W. Jeter manages to meld an unlikely combination of fiction elements with the surprisingly palatable success of a Long Island Iced Tea. Add to that an almost gleefully cynical look at the future of copyright law, unrestrained capitalism, and the rocky bottom of our credit-driven economy's slippery slope. With a sometimes disorienting stream-of-consciousness style, stringing together metaphors like a psychedelic chain of pearls, Jeter introduces his audience to one brilliantly disturbing and fascinating concept after another, and in the end Jeter uses every one of them to wrap up the conflict. It's a nonstop freak show, a simultaneous dirty joke, horror tale, and social commentary. It's especially rewarding, coming from the author of the bestselling sequels to Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human and Blade Runner: Replicant Night.

On one level, Noir feels like cyberpunk: it is set in a postmodern dystopia recovering from collapse, populated by cybernetically enhanced misanthropes, with a plot that skirts the edge of a metaphorical landscape. But in this novel, there's no Cyberspace; just "The Wedge," a sexually deviant skid row ruled by a mysterious goddesslike figure. Those who dare can visit The Wedge in the flesh, but most visitors to the Wedge employ replicant avatars, "prowlers," which download their Wedge experiences to their owners, delivering accumulated memories served straight.

This brings me to a warning; Noir is not for the weak of stomach. Jeter wantonly and graphically sodomizes, decapitates, disembowels, dissolves and immolates his characters with intentional disregard for good taste, exploiting the same psychological niche as rotten.com, alt.tasteless and Hannibal. It has the attraction of a car wreck -- at first tolerable only in short doses, but ultimately irresistible. Part of this irresistibility is the intelligence, wit, and cynicism of Jeter's future vision.

Predictably enough, the protagonists are anti-heroes. But to Jeter's credit, their predictability ends there. John McNihil is an asp-head - a licensed bounty hunter of copyright violators, and a man who sold his wife into purgatory in favor of buying a set of optical implants that give him a film noir view of the world. Forget rose-colored glasses, he has smoke- and whiskey-colored contact lenses.

Self-employed heroine November is more likable, but a ruthless character nonetheless, with fingertip EMP implants that allow her to induce orgasmic epileptic fits in her stalkers-slash-victims, then casually ventilate their craniums with their own guns.

The story opens with the death of a mid-level corporate exec, Travelt. McNihil and November are hired by the antagonist, Harrisch, to track down his intellectual property lost in the Edge, somehow uploaded into Travelt's prowler. In contrast to the merely dislikable McNihil and November, Harrisch is revolting. He is the devious, manipulating and ruthless chief executive of DynaZauber, a megacorporation with interests in every aspect of society. Harrisch habitually murders his freelance operatives rather than paying them, and prefers to do the wetwork himself, rendered immune to prosecution by pre-emptory payoffs to local authorities, who themselves have been reduced to agents of corporate interest.

The first third of the story revolves around Harrisch's increasingly sadistic attempts to coerce McNihil into taking the job. November is Harrisch's insurance, the second-string operative, whom he also uses as a means to coerce McNihil. Be patient; Jeter uses these events to introduce concepts that foreshadow the climactic scene. And even after McNihil and November being their hunt for Travelt's lost prowler, we continue to be exposed to essential concepts that at the time appear to be mere gratuitous depravity and cynicism.

These ideas are what make Noir worthy of a Slashdot review, and I shall attempt to relate some of them without spoiling the plot, but in doing so, I cannot reproduce their sledgehammer impact on the story:

• The elevation of intellectual property to the ultimate standard of value.
• Violation of copyright becomes punishable by death, and later by the imprisonment of the violator's seat of intellect within "trophies" - such as toasters and audio equipment - delivered to the copyright holder.
• The rights of debt holders become supreme, outlasting even the death of the debtor. Those who die in debt are reanimated until they work off their debt, if they can.
• Corporate management philosophy becomes modelled after that of the street pimp; psychological destitution of the employee is embraced as the optimal strategy for human resource management.
• In the ultimate victory of marketing over content, TIAC, or Turd In A Can, becomes the overt ideal of capitalism: use marketing and packaging to sell the customer as little value as possible, for the maximum price.

And with many brilliantly unpredictable plot twists, these devices and many, many more are used to escalate and then resolve the story's conflict in a feat of literary genius. Just admitting that much to a potential reader is a spoiler -- Jeter pulls off what seems to be impossible, but foreknowledge of this feat also allows one to appreciate Jeter's skill on the first read, rather than only in retrospect. Noir is perhaps the only novel that can be simultaneously compared with Brave New World , The Name of the Rose, The Diamond Age, and Hannibal. It shines darkly like polished obsidian, complete with a razor edge.

You can purhase this book at Fatbrain.

This one isn't worded for the easily offended, but I laughed my (strong word) off. Kent Dahlgren sent us a bit from his page that rips the OSI network model apart, and proceeds to compare the 7 level OSI network model to a Taco Bell 7 Layer Burrito. It's funny- laugh. I did.

This one isn't worded for the easily offended, but I laughed my (strong word) off. Kent Dahlgren sent us a bit from his page that rips the OSI network model apart, and proceeds to compare the 7 level OSI network model to a Taco Bell 7 Layer Burrito. It's funny- laugh. I did.

gman has started a new site, linuxhardware.net in an effort to create help newbies learn and share information about Linux and Hardware. nickm an insane link designed to bring arts and culture to the Unix community. Apparently Dogman has created a hilarious page entitled "Installing a network PostScript printer on a Sun workstation running SunOS As illustrated through interpretive dance. Whoever said learning can't be fun never saw this. Or maybe they did and just created a mental block so they didn't have to think about that guy dancing. Jerome ALET sent us a link to the Linux Slogans Database Matthew Astley wrote in to where you can buy 25x25mm self-adhesive domed plastic badges featuring Tux to attach to your computer case in that little logo spot. The Phly sent in links to a new Bible for Linux page is up. jgalun wrote in to send us a link to a Washington Post that comapres Sys Admin Salaries average system admin salaries, in which they note that Mac sys admins seem to make very little. Hmm, wonder why...Also noted is that Linux sys admins had the greatest pay raises last year. More to come, hopefully! darius sent us a link to the new apple ad campaign which features the one, the only, HAL 9000. BigZaphod wriote in to announce a new games site:Legions. And rounding in to the more tasteless part of the quickies, kweiheri sent us an great parody of realdoll.com- except this one is (ahem) realhamster.com. What is this world coming to? GraZZ wrote in to send us an amusing parody of Star Wars and the Starr Thing.

gman has started a new site, linuxhardware.net in an effort to create help newbies learn and share information about Linux and Hardware. nickm an insane link designed to bring arts and culture to the Unix community. Apparently Dogman has created a hilarious page entitled "Installing a network PostScript printer on a Sun workstation running SunOS As illustrated through interpretive dance. Whoever said learning can't be fun never saw this. Or maybe they did and just created a mental block so they didn't have to think about that guy dancing. Jerome ALET sent us a link to the Linux Slogans Database Matthew Astley wrote in to where you can buy 25x25mm self-adhesive domed plastic badges featuring Tux to attach to your computer case in that little logo spot. The Phly sent in links to a new Bible for Linux page is up. jgalun wrote in to send us a link to a Washington Post that comapres Sys Admin Salaries average system admin salaries, in which they note that Mac sys admins seem to make very little. Hmm, wonder why...Also noted is that Linux sys admins had the greatest pay raises last year. More to come, hopefully! darius sent us a link to the new apple ad campaign which features the one, the only, HAL 9000. BigZaphod wriote in to announce a new games site:Legions. And rounding in to the more tasteless part of the quickies, kweiheri sent us an great parody of realdoll.com- except this one is (ahem) realhamster.com. What is this world coming to? GraZZ wrote in to send us an amusing parody of Star Wars and the Starr Thing.

Ken Broadfoot wrote to relay a message from Vladimir Eflov Dear colleagues! We are small new group of the Linux users from Petrozavodsk State University Russia Unfortunately, our activity has coincided with the new financial crisis in our country. As a result, we can not receive the books and other materials connected with Linux (cost of one book is equal to half of salary of the professor of university and equal to two mounths salary of associate professor). The resources of our Internet server Internet are too weak to get the distribution kit of Linux online. If you have possibility to send us any editions on Linux, GNU C ++, GNU Java & etc. unnecessary to you, and also the distribution CD's of Linux we would be extremely grateful to you." Read more below. His address is: Prof. Vladimir Eflov, CAD department, Petrozavodsk Linux User Group, Petrozavodsk State University, Petrozavodsk, Lenina 33-508, RUSSIA, POBox 185640

Brian Knotts has sent us an interesting link and a quick comment:"Basically, Jai Singh is taking the position that Compaq's acquisition of Digital is the final nail in the coffin for all things non-Wintel."