Slashdot Mirror

Don't worry, your tickler won't forget.

Glen Larson wrote a book back in the late 1970's: http://www.goodreads.com/book/... In this book, the Cylons were not machines but a living race. Elite or upper echelon Cylons underwent operations to get additional brains added to them (or something along those lines). And Baltar dies. (Thank the Gods, and I never really liked him in either series). Read the reviews from the link above. Well worth the read if you can get your hands on a copy. If the series is rebooted again, I would prefer that they model it off this book. I have a feeling that you, too, would like this one as well.

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever

EVER

Believe a thing NASA says is true.

NASA censors Everything, which your tax dollars fully pay for. You are not allowed to know the true nature of your reality. You sure are unintelligent anuses and have nothing better to do but argue about trump and hillary

There's a book titled (roughly) "Think Samsung" that was published in 2010 (link). It's said to give a disturbing picture of Samsung's corruption, and was even reviewed in The New York Times. It was written by Samsung's former chief legal counsel.

In his book, Mr. Kim depicts Mr. Lee and “vassal” executives at Samsung as bribing thieves who “lord over” the country, its government and media. He portrays prosecutors as opportunists who are ruthless to those they regard as “dead” powers, like a former president, but subservient to and afraid of Samsung, which he calls the “power that never dies.”

TFS is wrong. She drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.

source - https://www.goodreads.com/work...

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley argues that human individualism creates the conditions for totalitarian rule.

Only if your mind is very shallow.

BNW shows that totalitarianism is what *remains* when you breed the individualism out of people. It shows a world where creativity is kept on a very tight leash so that people do not think very much about their world or that they are slaves.

It shows what the world bigoted and divided by people much like yourself, so I highly support your recommendation, officer of the ministry of truth.

by Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://www.goodreads.com/book... Hilarious and insightful.

Daemon could be considered SkyNet's nice little brother.

1984 argues that humanity is destroyed by totalitarianism; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley argues that human individualism creates the conditions for totalitarian rule.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, by Samuel P. Huntington.

Cuckservatives: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America

Love it or hate it, the alt-right is growing in influence and most of us would be wise to learn more about what they think and what they want.

https://www.goodreads.com/book...
"Hugh Pine, a porcupine genius, works with his human friends to save his less intelligent fellow porcupines from the deadly dangers of the road."

Anyone who saw the video version of this on CBS Storybreak might remember the refrain: "Looks like it's gonna be a hot day today":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

More seriously, ecological and evolutionary theory (including island biography) shows how the size of a habitat and how habitats are connected affects the distribution and genetics of organisms in habitats, so habitat fragmentation has consequences.

A great SF on more-or-less this theme: Greener than you Think. The protagonist's fecklessness rivals Ignatius J. Reilly.

"He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election! We should have a revolution in this country!"

"The phony electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one! We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided! Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us. More votes equals a loss ... revolution! This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy! Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble ... like never before. The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy."

"there might be someone with tomatoes in the audience. If you see them, knock the crap out of them"

"In the old days, protesters would be carried out on stretchers.

"Let's pull together. it's time to bind the wounds of division."

Everyone hear that? Let's pull together. Let by-gones be by-gones. All for one, and one for all. Yea team! We're number one! Hi mom!

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

That is just messy... One person, one vote...

Which means? What? That's not describing a situation, that's just a platitude.

There is no reason to do anything else, otherwise you run into "your vote kinda sorta counts some of the time" situations.

Either your vote counts, or it doesn't.

Exactly what we have with Winner-Take-All, and First-Past-the-Post. Didn't vote for the winning candidate? Your vote achieved nothing. And if more than 2 people are on the ballot, then it is possible for none to have a majority. Not only could your vote achieve nothing, vastly more people could have voted for anybody else than the guy who is taking office. Which is why Run-offs do exist in a few states, and Instant Run-offs were chosen in Maine.

Sorry, but the reality is, we have "your vote kinda sorta counts some of the time" situations based entirely on the way things are.

And so people voted for the blabbering airhead instead of the lizard.

And that's what happens if you don't vote for the lizard.

http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

Yup. Bernie could have won against Trump. Biden could have won against Trump (although I understand the issue there is he didn't really want to run.) I even think Elizabeth Warren could have won against Trump.

Virtualy any serious (or indeed unserious) person willing to project a a sensible anti-establishment persona, and not say the kind stupid horseshirt Trump has said, and also not be trailing decades of sordid little establishment-class skeletons like Hillary... I tend to believe any of those people could have beaten Trump. We wanted a person in charge for a change; the democratic establishment instead gave us a lizard. One of the more reptilian lizards to saunter by in a while, really.

And so people voted for the blabbering airhead instead of the lizard. People of or for the left: please learn your lesson. Reform politics. Create an "alt-left"... or just continue down your current path, keep making your token snide remarks and behold as the right destroys everything.

Jesus fucking Christ. I didn't want this (as my posting record will certainly show), but there is that smug desire to wag fingers and say I told you, isn't there?

The moment Brexit happened, I strongly suspected Trump was headed for the White House. Two completely unrelated things, you say? Not at all. The point is this: Project Fear has run its course. If you tell people "Oh No, if you don't vote for the status quo, warts and all, things will get so so bad!", they will be inclined to tell you to go fuck yourself up an ass with a cactus. And if the Brits were willing to do that, for fuck's sake, Americans surely were as well.

Should I say it? Does it need to be said? Bernie could have won, easily. Probably a dozen others could've done the same. I personally think Biden could've easily won because the man is not a phony. Elizabeth Warren might have easily won too; I'm not sure. For millennia, people haven been bitching thatpoliticians are phony and yet it's somehow impossible to elect someone who isn't phony. Guess what? It's not impossible. Now, in this case I'm pretty sure people settled on a rank phony-ness of a much different sort, a non-standard phonyness over the standard one, but...

But Jesus fucking Christ, all of this dumb shit about racism and sexism... all of these red herrings that NO ONE on the fence gave a crap about after the man gave you a mountain of potent ammunition to use against him. Scream and scream and scream hysterically at us if we don't agree he's "orange Hitler". No, no he's not Hitler or a racist, obviously fucking not. He's an airhead who barely pays attention to what he's even saying, a sycophant, a man who was a registered Democrat not that long ago, someone who was able to broach a few important topics that no one else was willing to broach, even if he make a complete mess if it every time he tried to talk sense. Just broaching the topic was enough.

Instead of a curse, I'll try to end with a blessing:

May the old guard of the Republicans finally disintegrate entirely, may the evangelicals slowly grow quiet and chasten with the realization that genitalia-centered regulation and shaming is no longer going to be a priority in this country, may the alt-right toss out its more vile elements and turn into something that's actually worth listening to now and then, and may the left in this country grow the fuck up and realize that merely being less anti-intellectual and more "moderate" (especially compared to the left in other Western democracies) is not enough.

This wasn't the way to do it; definitely wasn't the smart way to do it, and I risk spraining my neck from shaking my head but at the same time... alone in the kitchen, coming in for a quick snack but then finding myself pacing absentmindedly and staring at the ceiling... I have to admit cracking a smile or three. Moronic and foot-shooting as this whole thing has been, it does give me a little bit of hope. If reasonableness fails against cynicism, I guess stupidity and bombast can sometimes carry the day, for whatever Pyrrhic victory that's worth.

Now let's just hope we can all survive the next four years.

Which each new post you continue to prove my original point. I suggest you call it a day.

consensus in practice is part of the scientific method. It's not the super simplified schoolboy version that non scientists like to spout, but in real science it's there.

vs

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
  Galileo Galilei ... and no one "cherry picked" anything (let me guess - you spout random words in debates hoping that eventually you'll get something right?). The grandparent talked about the 70s. I quoted from one of the well known articles about it. Nothing in it has been "debunked" (again, random spouting of words) - the statements by the scientists in that article are as correct today as when they were written. Nothing was wrong with their observations.

I don't think you've ever read a scientific article actually.

http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

Archive.org plays it dumb when archived content becomes unavailable due to a domain drop catcher placing a robots.txt archiving exclusion on the domain.

This would not be quite so suspicious if it were not for the fact that when the original author of the material "memory holed" by archive.org pays the extortion to the domain drop catcher, archive.org and requests that archive.org restore the content for the public, archive.org will frequently (always?) fail to do sodo so.

Archive.org's motive?

What is Google's motive for making its Usenet archives virtually unusable?

He who controls the past...

No mention of Iain M. Banks.

Did you mean Iain Banks the great writer who made the Time's list of top 50 British post-war writers ( http://www.goodreads.com/topic... ) or Iain _M_ Banks the SciFi writer who never got acknowledged outside of SciFi awards?

[ Yes I do know. Proves the article's point really - best way for great SciFi writers to get recognised seems to be to write "mainstream" fiction under another name... ]

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

Some of the radiation passes out into space over the horizon, so Earth is certainly visible, even if it at a distance only is detectable as a noise level change.

The limit of many TV transmitters are caused by the fact that Earth is round, and only direct wave is considered. A lot of the radiation at higher frequencies slips out into space except when you have a phenomenon called tropo ducting where VHF and sometimes UHF can travel great distances along the surface of the Earth.

Then we can always argue that one reason why we haven't seen aliens is because we scare them - the same way colorful animals usually are dangerous we radiate a lot and we are pretty aggressive when you look at us. For an amusing read on that matter I'd suggest Pandora's Planet.

This entire discussion is rubbish. The Matrix is just recent bad Science Fiction. It has no Scientific, Philosophical or Theological foundation. Anybody who takes any of it the least bit seriously needs psychological... adjustments.
A good start would be the Ethics of Aristotle. Once one _gets_ the difference between man-made Ethics, and dispensed Morality, one can see that the last is always fictional, and thus The Matrix, or any variation thereof that invokes some kind of Predestination by a higher or greater Force, is Balderdash.

Or, one could actually read the works of Aristotle's teacher, Plato, specifically The Allegory of the Cave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

which fortunately has its own wikipedia page and is freely available online, being a bit out of even the DMCA copyright range at this point. The Matrix is clearly (and correctly) listed as being one of several works derivative from some very serious philosophical foundation -- very nearly all of Idealism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

is also fundamental to The Matrix, noting that in the final Matrix movie, they discover that the "reality" they broke out into is itself a supersimulation at a still higher order. The Matrix isn't even the first, or the best, SciFi work to explore the theme of the Cave. James Gunn wrote a triplet of novellas released as "The Joy Makers":

https://www.goodreads.com/book...
https://sciencefictionruminati...

which would have been an even better prequel to The Matrix than the half-baked idea that one can generate more "power" by feeding people IV nutrients than one can get directly from those nutrients used as a power source. That's the really stupid thing about The Matrix that makes it bad SF -- the physics is laughably wrong on the very first page, so to speak. Gunn's Hedonic principle -- straight out of Aristotle and Utilitarianism, BTW -- makes a much better foundation and even corresponds to having a computational overlord whose responsibility it is to keep those in the simulation "happy", as opposed to "alive".

Or, if you prefer, there is Descartes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

or the entire contemporary range of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

argumentation. Note well that the philosophical underpinnings of this aren't even exclusively western:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the Maya principle is that this world we appear to see with our eyes and smell with our nose and hear with our ears and taste with our tongue and feel with our skin is not the real world. The real world is Atman joined with Brahman, and is the master of the illusions presented by the senses: From the Kena Upanishad:

Not that which the eye can see, but that whereby the eye can see: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which the ear can hear, but that whereby the ear can hear: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which speech can illuminate, but that by which speech can be illuminated: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore;

Not that which the mind can think, but that whereby the mind can think: know that to be Brahman the eternal, and not what people here adore.

Idealism is truly ancient, and The Matrix a

Uh...is road building a natural monopoly?

Not in the general case. For example, Tokyo has competing subway/commuter rail lines in the city. Why can't Manhattan?

For another example, there are multiple ways to drive from Boston to NYC — why can't those multiple roads compete with each other? I-95 can emphasize quality facilities, while the Merritt Parkway/I-91 combo could advertise being scenic. In their effort to attract more customers, they may push for higher speed-limit — and eliminate police "speed traps". And so on. It is perfectly possible. We are spending billions of dollars every year on building/maintaining roads — not using the free market to its fullest is a horrendous waste...

Your source isn't credible.

Well, it is a fairly acclaimed work of a reasonably famous economist, which is frequently cited by his fellows in their publications. You are a Slashdot poster...

It's clear and obvious that the very laws of physics create situations where a single firm can occupy the only feasible way to accomplish a task.

While you may be able to come up with a few contrived examples (why haven't you?), usually that is simply not true. It may seem wasteful to lay multiple cables/run multiple pipes to the same house, but in the obvious and tangible reality, those one-shot things are small potatoes compared to the permanent and ongoing damage a monopoly's complacency is doing us all.

Churchill's quote: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

This situation and post has literally nothing to do with Apple, yet at the time of writing there's around a third of the threads talking about Apple and some fantasy reaction they may or may not have had if faced with this circumstance. People - for gawd's sake give it a rest.

The War on Drugs is a globalist plot to erode American civil liberties, control global drug supply (for example, the US military is protecting the Afghan poppy fields which generate over 80% of the world's opium, a very profitable crop), and imprision vast numbers of otherwise non-criminals, particularly brown ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group

The globalists tried to assassinate both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Afterwards, both presidents were much more compliant to the globalist agenda to erode civil liberties and create a more docile populace, ready to embrace control over their lives in exchange for control of some vague threat of "drugs" or "terrorism" (that happened later, of course).

Step out of line and they will kill you today as always.

> Presidents are selected, not elected.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

> Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

  Woodrow Wilson

> The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of diversity. It is more despotic then monarchy. More insolent than autocracy. More selfish then bureaucracy. I see the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country, will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people. Until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

  Abraham Lincoln

The War on Drugs is a globalist plot to erode American civil liberties, control global drug supply (for example, the US military is protecting the Afghan poppy fields which generate over 80% of the world's opium, a very profitable crop), and imprision vast numbers of otherwise non-criminals, particularly brown ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group

The globalists tried to assassinate both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Afterwards, both presidents were much more compliant to the globalist agenda to erode civil liberties and create a more docile populace, ready to embrace control over their lives in exchange for control of some vague threat of "drugs" or "terrorism" (that happened later, of course).

Step out of line and they will kill you today as always.

> Presidents are selected, not elected.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

> Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

  Woodrow Wilson

> The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of diversity. It is more despotic then monarchy. More insolent than autocracy. More selfish then bureaucracy. I see the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption will follow and the money power of the country, will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people. Until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

  Abraham Lincoln

Not sure why there are so many open questions about this find - I just finished reading "Proxima" by Stephen Baxter, and he described it pretty thoroughly... it's a red dwarf star which means the Goldilocks planet is tidally locked. But there's enough atmosphere to keep heat circulating, thus there is liquid water in the warm areas. A relatively simple but well-developed ecosystem exists including a reasonably intelligent species dubbed the Builders who live in harmony with the other plants and animals - possibly devolved from earlier, more technological stages. And there's a weird hatch, deep under Mercury - but I've said too much already...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/...

He wrote a novel called, "The Water Knife." It is his second novel after "The Windup Girl." About "The Water Knife" to see why it popped into my head. http://www.goodreads.com/book/...

Isn't that a good reason to interdict in gun culture?

Please tell me what you mean by "gun culture" and where you got your supporting evidence; also please tell me exactly how you propose to "inderdict", and then perhaps we can discuss it.

The "gun culture" in the USA includes hunters, former military, NRA members, etc. and despite the vicious slandering of the gun culture by (e.g.) the mainstream media, politicians, etc. overall they are good people who aren't the problem. (Have you ever attended a shooting event? I have, and the people I met were friendly and polite people.)

The problem is violent criminals such as drug-dealing gangs, plus outright crazy people, plus jihadis who want to kill Americans to make some kind of a statement. You may choose to collapse those last two categories into one.

I invite you to read a good book on the gun culture of the USA. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3682152-the-gun-culture-and-its-enemies

So, what you're saying is that the United States has a uniquely violent and fucked up culture, and that's why we have more gun massacres than other cultures?

What I'm saying is that I invite you to read The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy which I don't think I can summarize in a few words. If I did try I'd screw it all up, and you would sieze upon any mistakes I made, and probably insult me a few times for disagreeing with you.

Isn't that a good reason to interdict in gun culture?

I'm not sure what you are proposing here. But given recent events, it might make more sense to "inderdict" Muslims. The bloodshed in Florida was committed by a Muslim. "But wait," I hear you thinking, "not all Muslims are violent murderous jihadis!" Yet here you are, proposing to "interdict in gun culture" when it wasn't "the gun culture" who shot all those people in the night club.

So how about this: anything you want to propose, we'll do it to Muslims first and see how it goes. It would be fair of you to demand the same of me. Okay, what I propose is to allow the law-abiding to exercise all their rights under the Constitution, which includes the Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment. I propose to let Muslims do that the same as everyone else (including "the gun culture.")

Remember the massacres in Paris? Those assault rifles (full-auto AK-47s) and explosives were not legally purchased, yet those guys had them. Do you really think you would be able to prevent the next jihadi attack by passing strict gun control laws?

I might actually support you in this if you could first get laws passed making it illegal to have crack cocaine, and then show me that nobody is able to get crack cocaine anymore. Of course any machine shop can make guns, so guns would be a bit harder to inderdict than drugs, but showing me that some kind of "war on drugs" would succeed in getting rid of all drugs would go a long way towards convincing me that a gun ban might work.

P.S. Having a discussion with you is unpleasant. I have the feeling that you are not trying to persuade me of the correctness of your position, but rather you just enjoy using strong language against anyone who disagrees with you.

I gave some talks on different books that'll be interesting for technical people, and in the end compiled them in a list in goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/list...

Like I said something to do with lizards, or possibly titanium taxes.

Voting for Trump is voting for Hitler's re-election.

And in 60 years, assuming anyone survives the war this time, people will wonder how we ever allowed such a man to be elected.

And people will respond: "We thought we were free.".

With rating movies statistically there are a number of methods:

- Box office takings, such as Box Office Mojo

- DVD and Video sales

- Movie audience figures (when broadcast on television or similar)

- Industry awards, such as the Academy Awards or the Baftas

- Ratings from critics, such as Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic - Ratings from general users, such as IMDB

- and finally, "Best of" listings voted on by critics or interest groups.

I include the last not because it is really a very good statistical comparison as compared to any of the other methods, but because it is the only one analogous to the sorts of lists being considered in the Worlds Without End rankings.

To get a good statistical ranking for books or movies we need to get a comprehensive set of data that covers all (or most) of the entries, and which applies the same rankings to each. None of the rankings for Movies which I have listed really does that, but some do better than others in some ways at least. For example, ticket and unit sales cover all movies, though they have the problem that the number of people going to movies, and the price they pay per ticket, have increased over time so that the ranking metric isn't the same for all movies. It also has the disadvantage that ticket sales are not necessarily related to how good a movie is. Industry awards can probably be assumed to cover all movies released in a given year and therefore cover the whole population, but have the problem that the award givers may not cover all entries equally, and may be subject to bias. Critical judgement, whether from professional critics or members of the public, also have the problem of coverage - I personally cannot expect to be able to see every movie made, and the ones I do see will be affected by by things like advertising budgets which are not necessarily related to how good the movie actually is.

With books we do have some similar data sets. Figures for number of books printed, or sales on the likes of Amazon can be compiled, though these have the same problem of not being related to quality. I don't know of any compilation sites for professional book critics (anybody?), but there are sites such as Goodreads where members of the public can give their subjective rankings. Industry awards also exist, such as the Hugo or Nebula awards, but these have the disadvantage of being subject to politics (*cough* Puppies vs SJW anyone?). Finally, there are "Best of" lists, such as the ones cited by Worlds Without End.

Books have a problem compared to movies in that far more books get published than movies get made. While a good critic can expect to see all the movies that come out in a year (at least all those released theatrically), reading every book that is published is impossible. This eats into the quality of critical rankings out there, or even into Industry awards. Any "Best of the Year" list can't really hope to be definitive, because a book - especially a ground breaking, iconoclastic new classic - will take time to find a wide audience and be widely recognised.

For my money, I think the likes of Goodreads are probably the best bet as an objective, comprehensive and timely statistical source for

Methusalah's Children

I think the "left-wing" label mostly only exists in the minds of these activists - it's a catch-all for "any work that discusses topics or espouses positions that we are uncomfortable with".

The typical Sad Puppies member is not so much decrying "left-wing" as decrying SJW-ish works. Have you read "If You Were a Dinosaur My Love"? I refuse to believe that it was the best short fiction in its year, but it got nominated for the Hugo. Was it because it checked the right boxes... SJW themes, written by a woman?

http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/

http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2015/02/10/the-hugo-awards-dinosaurs-and-me/

I would absolutely classify most of John Scalzi's books as "swashbuckling fun", but they hate Scalzi.

I think it's not so much that they hate his books, and more that they hate Scalzi the man, and that pretty much because he hated them first.

My respect for Scalzi plummeted when I read him taunting Larry Correia on Twitter. I've met 5-year-old children with more good manners and dignity.

Larry Correia collected the juvenile taunts in this blog posting: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6846396-hugo-aftermath-post

The other part of it is that they hate Scalzi because they believe he is connected with the behind-the-scenes clique or cliques that used to decide who got the Hugo. I've never met anyone who genuinely believed that Redshirts was the best novel of its year, deserving of Hugo status; I've heard it is a light and fun read ("swashbuckling" maybe?) but it can't have been the best novel published that year. Somewhat more egregiously, Scalzi published a book of stuff from his blog and that won a Hugo also, and then as part of the Sad Puppies firestorm the cliquish types claimed that some of the Sad Puppies nominations were not sufficiently scholarly and were an insult to the Hugo. I don't know about you, but I hate double standards, and here a double standard was applied to the benefit of Scalzi.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/03/31/sad-puppies-update-the-melt-down-continues/

I suspect they don't like Lois McMaster Bujold very much either, since she frequently explores gender issues - but most of her books are also pure space opera.

Oh no, not at all. The Sad Puppies are not a homogeneous bunch, but on the whole they love Lois McMaster Bujold. If you know only one thing about a book, that it was published by Baen, you know that the Sad Puppies probably like that book. Not a slam dunk, but that's the way to bet.

Lois McMaster Bujold writes entertaining books. The Sad Puppies like entertaining books. Her books aren't loaded down with SJW freight; it's interesting to see how a strong and independent woman from Beta Colony reacts to the strangely backward society of Barrayar.

Remember how the Sad Puppies nominated Toni Weisskopf? She's the senior editor at Baen. She edited Lois McMaster Bujold's books. The Sad Puppies nominated her for a Hugo for editing.

Check out Misspent Youth: http://www.goodreads.com/book/... It doesn't touch yet the scenario where it is solved but it's the first book of multiple ones. Continue with "Pandora's Star" where you will find exactly what you are looking for (and much more). ;)

Jack Vance wrote one: To Live Forever

I liked it. I like pretty much everything he's written though.

As it happens, I read Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley about a week ago, and it's still on my desk. It's a great book. If you like this kind of stuff (I know I do) this book contains as much material on the subject as can reasonably fit in under 400 pages. If you like this stuff, read it.

The pertinent chapter for this thread is titled "A Little Bit Stupid" in which John Draper exploits recently automated [*] "busy verification" to eavesdrop on a primary line of the San Francisco FBI. How do you like them apples, with the roles reversed? (Hint: not very much, not very much at all.)

[*] It had become a little bit too automated in certain large American cities, which additionally qualifies this material for the Boy Scout merit badge "Stolid and Stupider", though that's a much harder-to-tell story about design incompetence internal to greed-addled AT&T.

Even though Draper bragged to a turncoat, he was still protected by the FBI's nearly impenetrable internal aura of "impossible things can't happen to us" until Draper demonstrated the technique while his turncoat buddy made a tape recording.

"All hell broke loose," recalls an anonymous source familiar with the investigation. " ... Headquarters wanted this case solved, fast," the source remembers. "In thirty years, it's the most freedom I've ever seen special agents given in a case. All they had to do was sneeze and say, 'I need a Lincoln Continental' and there would be one parked out in front of the building. Headquarters wanted it solved, whatever it would take, and there were no questions asked.

Why so much fuss? To protect the rectitude of lovable Uncle Sam? Probably not so much. Because tight-assed officialdom in positions of power say a great many things they definitely don't wish to defend against the harsh light of day? You be the judge.

Really, I don't know how Lapsley managed to write this entire book and not intrude more into the obvious. Perhaps two hundred pages of draft manuscript hit the floor in the editing process. (I know every third sentence in my first draft would have contained judgmental invective.)

Here's another thing that freaked out the FBI. The hackers weren't even savvy enough to try to market their incredible capability to the highest bidder (Sold!—to the secret undercover double-agent Flim Colby) and they weren't actually taking any money! or drugs! or prostitutes! so you can't even release the scent hounds.

Alfred Hitchcock

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there.

Action is where your crepuscular adversary has taped your intimate moments of conspiratorial graft and offered it up to the highest bidder. The FBI loves action.

Suspense is where your glazed-doughnut adversary has recorded your intimate moments of conspiratorial graft, and doesn't even give a shit, so pretty soon compromising cassette tapes are bouncing around on the dashboard of some horrible mid-seventies beater or tossed randomly into a shoe box of bad Country and Western ($2 obo) at someone's yard sale. The FBI hates suspense.

You see? I'm terribly prone to editorialising.

Anyway, my point about the SS7 hack is pretty much "dog bites man". This kind of thing has been ubiquitous since the first long-hair envious AT&T engineer included "observability" in his desiderata concerning globally distributed systems undergoing a Groundhog Day–esque eternal-September late pubescent growth spurt.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

Emerson could certainly spell. But he went on to say "To be great is to be misunderstood" so maybe you are correct in that assertion.

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

I just want to point out that there is a world of difference between being misunderstood because your ideas are so much loftier than your audience and being misunderstood because you are a gibbering moron. Those with lofy ideas will immediately understand this distinction.

Emerson could certainly spell. But he went on to say "To be great is to be misunderstood" so maybe you are correct in that assertion.

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

Possibly, but I also get the same melodramatic feeling sometimes when I think back to the 80's and 90's and what the future was supposed to be. It's not the end of the world, but it sure as hell wasn't this.

What? 80's and 90's - that was way past the high water mark. We're talking about the 60's and '70's here.

Groovy.

what could possibly go wrong

What indeed? Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters

But the fallacy is saying the little fish "certainly did nothing wrong." In a nation of lawbreakers, by definition there's no way to say that with confidence about anyone. The only realistic way to give you any comfort is to say, "hey, whether or not you did anything wrong, we're not going to come along later and say you did." Whether there should be such a blizzard of broad/vague/obscure laws is another issue, but for better or for worse that's where we are.

Most of the tech you enjoy came about from the Department of Defense.

This, 1000 times. Don't like it? Stop using that digital computer (a product of developing machines to calculate ballistic tables), to post on the Internet (a product of DARPA to create a packet switching network to survive nuclear attack). I could go on and on....

A few years ago Michio Kaku was talking about the decline of funding for basic research in the U.S. since the end of the Cold War. He had this to say:

http://www.goodreads.com/quote...

“After that cancellation [of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas, after $2 billion had been spent on it], we physicists learned that we have to sing for our supper. ... The Cold War is over. You can't simply say “Russia!” to Congress, and they whip out their checkbook and say, “How much?” We have to tell the people why this atom-smasher is going to benefit their lives.”

There are about 250,000,000 people in the USA. Your friend dying is no tragedy.

Not true (yes, I just quoted Stalin :) )

...sez who? Anyway, what do you mean by "responsibility" anyway? is that something like "Duty"? If so, I refer you to one far more eloquent than I am:

"Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please - this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your timeâ"and squawk for more!
So learn to say No-and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)â
- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/205.Robert_A_Heinlein