Slashdot Mirror
Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor
There is nothing better than a Slashdot interview with someone who not only reads and understands Slashdot but can out-troll the trolls. Admittedly, the questions you asked Neal Stephenson were great in their own right, but his answers... Wow! let's just say that this guy shows how it's done.
1) right to keep and bear code - by arashiakari
Do you think that hacking tools should be protected (in the United States) under the second amendment?
Neal:
Such is the intensity of issues like this that I can't tell whether this is a troll. I'm going to assume it's not, and answer the question seriously.
I'm no constitutional scholar but I'm pretty sure that the Founding Fathers were thinking of flintlocks, not perl scripts, when they wrote the Second Amendment. Now you can dispute that and say "No, anything that enables citizens to defend themselves against an oppressive government is covered by the Second Amendment." There might be something to such an argument. But pragmatically, the question is whether you can get nine (or at least five) non-hacker Supreme Court Justices to see it that way. I suspect the answer is no. It's just too easy for them to say "it is not a weapon." To me it seems a lot easier simply to invoke the First Amendment.
Also, remember that there might be unwanted side effects to classifying code as weapons. In the U.S., where the right to bear certain weapons is written into the Constitution, it might seem like a clever way to secure access to such code. But authorities in other countries might say "look, even the U.S. Government defines this string of bits as a weapon---so we are going to outlaw it."
It's difficult to form an intelligent opinion on issues like this without doing a lot of work. One has to learn a lot about the issues and then think about them pretty hard. I haven't really done so, and so I'm inclined to trust people who have, like Matt Blaze. At crypto.com he has posted some interesting material that is germane to this topic.
See http://www.crypto.com/masterkey.html
and especially
http://www.crypto.com/hobbs.html
To make a long argument short, what I have learned from Matt's writings on the topic is that (1) it's not a new issue, (2) it's a First Amendment issue, and (3) it's best in the long run, for all concerned, if vulnerabilities are exposed in public.
2) The lack of respect... - by MosesJones
Science Fiction is normally relegated to the specialist publications rather than having reviews in the main stream press. Seen as "fringe" and a bit sad its seldom reviewed with anything more than condescension by the "quality" press.
Does it bother you that people like Jeffery Archer or Jackie Collins seem to get more respect for their writing than you ?
Neal:
OUCH!
(removes mirrorshades, wipes tears, blows nose, composes self)
Let me just come at this one from sort of a big picture point of view.
(the sound of a million Slashdot readers hitting the "back" button...)
First of all, I don't think that the condescending "quality" press look too kindly on Jackie Collins and Jeffrey Archer. So I disagree with the premise of the last sentence of this question and I'm not going to address it. Instead I'm going to answer what I think MosesJones is really getting at, which is why SF and other genre and popular writers don't seem to get a lot of respect from the literary world.
To set it up, a brief anecdote: a while back, I went to a writers' conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we'd exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me "And where do you teach?" just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another "And which distro do you use?"
I was taken aback. "I don't teach anywhere," I said.
Her turn to be taken aback. "Then what do you do?"
"I'm...a writer," I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.
"Yes, but what do you do?"
I couldn't think of how to answer the question---I'd already answered it!
"You can't make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?" she tried.
"From...being a writer," I stammered.
At this point she finally got it, and her whole affect changed. She wasn't snobbish about it. But it was obvious that, in her mind, the sort of writer who actually made a living from it was an entirely different creature from the sort she generally associated with.
And once I got over the excruciating awkwardness of this conversation, I began to think she was right in thinking so. One way to classify artists is by to whom they are accountable.
The great artists of the Italian Renaissance were accountable to wealthy entities who became their patrons or gave them commissions. In many cases there was no other way to arrange it. There is only one Sistine Chapel. Not just anyone could walk in and start daubing paint on the ceiling. Someone had to be the gatekeeper---to hire an artist and give him a set of more or less restrictive limits within which he was allowed to be creative. So the artist was, in the end, accountable to the Church. The Church's goal was to build a magnificent structure that would stand there forever and provide inspiration to the Christians who walked into it, and they had to make sure that Michelangelo would carry out his work accordingly.
Similar arrangements were made by writers. After Dante was banished from Florence he found a patron in the Prince of Verona, for example. And if you look at many old books of the Baroque period you find the opening pages filled with florid expressions of gratitude from the authors to their patrons. It's the same as in a modern book when it says "this work was supported by a grant from the XYZ Foundation."
Nowadays we have different ways of supporting artists. Some painters, for example, make a living selling their work to wealthy collectors. In other cases, musicians or artists will find appointments at universities or other cultural institutions. But in both such cases there is a kind of accountability at work.
A wealthy art collector who pays a lot of money for a painting does not like to see his money evaporate. He wants to feel some confidence that if he or an heir decides to sell the painting later, they'll be able to get an amount of money that is at least in the same ballpark. But that price is going to be set by the market---it depends on the perceived value of the painting in the art world. And that in turn is a function of how the artist is esteemed by critics and by other collectors. So art criticism does two things at once: it's culture, but it's also economics.
There is also a kind of accountability in the case of, say, a composer who has a faculty job at a university. The trustees of the university have got a fiduciary responsibility not to throw away money. It's not the same as hiring a laborer in factory, whose output can be easily reduced to dollars and cents. Rather, the trustees have to justify the composer's salary by pointing to intangibles. And one of those intangibles is the degree of respect accorded that composer by critics, musicians, and other experts in the field: how often his works are performed by symphony orchestras, for example.
Accountability in the writing profession has been bifurcated for many centuries. I already mentioned that Dante and other writers were supported by patrons at least as far back as the Renaissance. But I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission. Probably there was a collection of legends and tales that had been passed along in an oral tradition---which is just a fancy way of saying that lots of people liked those stories and wanted to hear them told. And at some point perhaps there was an especially well-liked storyteller who pulled a few such tales together and fashioned them into the what we now know as Beowulf. Maybe there was a king or other wealthy patron who then caused the tale to be written down by a scribe. But I doubt it was created at the behest of a king. It was created at the behest of lots and lots of intoxicated Frisians sitting around the fire wanting to hear a yarn. And there was no grand purpose behind its creation, as there was with the painting of the Sistine Chapel.
The novel is a very new form of art. It was unthinkable until the invention of printing and impractical until a significant fraction of the population became literate. But when the conditions were right, it suddenly became huge. The great serialized novelists of the 19th Century were like rock stars or movie stars. The printing press and the apparatus of publishing had given these creators a means to bypass traditional arbiters and gatekeepers of culture and connect directly to a mass audience. And the economics worked out such that they didn't need to land a commission or find a patron in order to put bread on the table. The creators of those novels were therefore able to have a connection with a mass audience and a livelihood fundamentally different from other types of artists.
Nowadays, rock stars and movie stars are making all the money. But the publishing industry still works for some lucky novelists who find a way to establish a connection with a readership sufficiently large to put bread on their tables. It's conventional to refer to these as "commercial" novelists, but I hate that term, so I'm going to call them Beowulf writers.
But this is not true for a great many other writers who are every bit as talented and worthy of finding readers. And so, in addition, we have got an alternate system that makes it possible for those writers to pursue their careers and make their voices heard. Just as Renaissance princes supported writers like Dante because they felt it was the right thing to do, there are many affluent persons in modern society who, by making donations to cultural institutions like universities, support all sorts of artists, including writers. Usually they are called "literary" as opposed to "commercial" but I hate that term too, so I'm going to call them Dante writers. And this is what I mean when I speak of a bifurcated system.
Like all tricks for dividing people into two groups, this is simplistic, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there is a cultural difference between these two types of writers, rooted in to whom they are accountable, and it explains what MosesJones is complaining about. Beowulf writers and Dante writers appear to have the same job, but in fact there is a quite radical difference between them---hence the odd conversation that I had with my fellow author at the writer's conference. Because she'd never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer---one so new or obscure that she'd never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn't be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.
All of this places someone like me in critical limbo. As everyone knows, there are literary critics, and journals that publish their work, and I imagine they have the same dual role as art critics. That is, they are engaging in intellectual discourse for its own sake. But they are also performing an economic function by making judgments. These judgments, taken collectively, eventually determine who's deemed worthy of receiving fellowships, teaching appointments, etc.
The relationship between that critical apparatus and Beowulf writers is famously awkward and leads to all sorts of peculiar misunderstandings. Occasionally I'll take a hit from a critic for being somehow arrogant or egomaniacal, which is difficult to understand from my point of view sitting here and just trying to write about whatever I find interesting. To begin with, it's not clear why they think I'm any more arrogant than anyone else who writes a book and actually expects that someone's going to read it. Secondly, I don't understand why they think that this is relevant enough to rate mention in a review. After all, if I'm going to eat at a restaurant, I don't care about the chef's personality flaws---I just want to eat good food. I was slagged for entitling my latest book "The System of the World" by one critic who found that title arrogant. That criticism is simply wrong; the critic has completely misunderstood why I chose that title. Why on earth would anyone think it was arrogant? Well, on the Dante side of the bifurcation it's implicit that authority comes from the top down, and you need to get in the habit of deferring to people who are older and grander than you. In that world, apparently one must never select a grand-sounding title for one's book until one has reached Nobel Prize status. But on my side, if I'm trying to write a book about a bunch of historical figures who were consciously trying to understand and invent the System of the World, then this is an obvious choice for the title of the book. The same argument, I believe, explains why the accusation of having a big ego is considered relevant for inclusion in a book review. Considering the economic function of these reviews (explained above) it is worth pointing out which writers are and are not suited for participating in the somewhat hierarchical and political community of Dante writers. Egomaniacs would only create trouble.
Mind you, much of the authority and seniority in that world is benevolent, or at least well-intentioned. If you are trying to become a writer by taking expensive classes in that subject, you want your teacher to know more about it than you and to behave like a teacher. And so you might hear advice along the lines of "I don't think you're ready to tackle Y yet, you need to spend a few more years honing your skills with X" and the like. All perfectly reasonable. But people on the Beowulf side may never have taken a writing class in their life. They just tend to lunge at whatever looks interesting to them, write whatever they please, and let the chips fall where they may. So we may seem not merely arrogant, but completely unhinged. It reminds me somewhat of the split between Christians and Faeries depicted in Susannah Clarke's wonderful book "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." The faeries do whatever they want and strike the Christians (humans) as ludicrously irresponsible and "barely sane." They don't seem to deserve or appreciate their freedom.
Later at the writer's conference, I introduced myself to someone who was responsible for organizing it, and she looked at me keenly and said, "Ah, yes, you're the one who's going to bring in our males 18-32." And sure enough, when we got to the venue, there were the males 18-32, looking quite out of place compared to the baseline lit-festival crowd. They stood at long lines at the microphones and asked me one question after another while ignoring the Dante writers sitting at the table with me. Some of the males 18-32 were so out of place that they seemed to have warped in from the Land of Faerie, and had the organizers wondering whether they should summon the police. But in the end they were more or less reasonable people who just wanted to talk about books and were as mystified by the literary people as the literary people were by them.
In the same vein, I just got back from the National Book Festival on the Capitol Mall in D.C., where I crossed paths for a few minutes with Neil Gaiman. This was another event in which Beowulf writers and Dante writers were all mixed together. The organizers had queues set up in front of signing tables. Neil had mentioned on his blog that he was going to be there, and so hundreds, maybe thousands of his readers had showed up there as early as 5:30 a.m. to get stuff signed. The organizers simply had not anticipated this and so---very much to their credit---they had to make all sorts of last-minute rearrangements to accomodate the crowd. Neil spent many hours signing. As he says on his blog
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp
the Washington Post later said he did this because he was a "savvy businessman." Of course Neil was actually doing it to be polite; but even simple politeness to one's fans can seem grasping and cynical when viewed from the other side.
Because of such reactions, I know that certain people are going to read this screed as further evidence that I have a big head. But let me make at least a token effort to deflect this by stipulating that the system I am describing here IS NOT FAIR and that IT MAKES NO SENSE and that I don't deserve to have the freedom that is accorded a Beowulf writer when many talented and excellent writers---some of them good friends of mine---end up selling small numbers of books and having to cultivate grants, fellowships, faculty appointments, etc.
Anyway, most Beowulf writing is ignored by the critical apparatus or lightly made fun of when it's noticed at all. Literary critics know perfectly well that nothing they say is likely to have much effect on sales. Let's face it, when Neil Gaiman publishes Anansi Boys, all of his readers are going to know about it through his site and most of them are going to buy it and none of them is likely to see a review in the New York Review of Books, or care what that review says.
So what of MosesJones's original question, which was entitled "The lack of respect?" My answer is that I don't pay that much notice to these things because I am aware at some level that I am on one side of the bifurcation and most literary critics are on the other, and we simply are not that relevant to each other's lives and careers.
What is most interesting to me is when people make efforts to "route around" the apparatus of literary criticism and publish their thoughts about books in place where you wouldn't normally look for book reviews. For example, a year ago there was a piece by Edward Rothstein in the New York Times about Quicksilver that appears to have been a sort of wildcat review. He just got interested in the book and decided to write about it, independent of the New York Times's normal book-reviewing apparatus. It is not the first time such a thing has happened with one of my books.
It has happened many times in history that new systems will come along and, instead of obliterating the old, will surround and encapsulate them and work in symbiosis with them but otherwise pretty much leave them alone (think mitochondria) and sometimes I get the feeling that something similar is happening with these two literary worlds. The fact that we are having a discussion like this one on a forum such as Slashdot is Exhibit A.
3) Singularity - by randalx
What are your thoughts on Vernor Vinge's Singularity prediction. Is it inevitable? Will humans become a part of it or be left behind by this new "species"?
Neal:
I can never get past the structural similarities between the singularity prediction and the apocalypse of St. John the Divine. This is not the place to parse it out, but the key thing they have in common is the idea of a rapture, in which some chosen humans will be taken up and made one with the infinite while others will be left behind.
I know Vernor. To know him is to respect him. He kicked my ass (as well as J. K. Rowling's and Greg Bear's and a few other people's) at the 2000 Hugo Awards, and on top of that he knows more physics than I ever will. So I don't for a moment think that he is peddling any such ideas with his prediction of a singularity. I am only telling you why I have a personal mental block as far as the Singularity prediction is concerned.
My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater.
4) Who would win? (Score:5, Funny) - by Call Me Black Cloud
In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
Neal:
You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.
The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.
The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.
Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling's professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers' conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.
5) What are you reading these days? - by IvyMike
Since you're Neal Stephenson, I suspect the answer could be something like "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems".
If that's the case, please include a work of modern fiction or two in your list; something you think that a fan of your work might also enjoy. :)
Neal:
Fiction I have lately read and enjoyed:
Set this House in Order by Matt Ruff
Ilium by Dan Simmons
Iron Council by China Mieville
Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart
The I Love Bees alternate reality game
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
The Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland (in galleys; soon to be published)
Short story collections by Etgar Keret: The Bus Driver who Wanted to be God, and The Nimrod Flip-out. Last time I checked, The Nimrod Flip-out was only available from an Australian publisher named Picador, but this should pose only the most minor of challenges to Slashdot readers. Keret is a young Israeli writer who has also done some work in film and graphic novels.
Nonfiction:
Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and Lincoln's Cooper Union address
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
6) storygramming -by Doc Ruby
You programmed computers before you wrote novels. Greg Egan shares that hyphenated career, and continues to illustrate his stories with Java applets [netspace.net.au]. Do you still program, possibly targeting the same subjects with your word processor as your compiler?
As _Snow Crash_ was originally designed as an interactive game, and such landmarks as _Myst_ have regenerated as (usually bad) novels, do you see the arrival of a truly multimedia story, delivered simultaneously in multiple media, anytime soon? By whom, specifically or generally?
Neal:
It has already happened in the form of the I Love Bees alternate reality game, which, as many of you must know, is a promotional campaign for Halo 2. I know the people who did it, but I have lost track of what I promised not to reveal publicly, and so will shut up for now.
I still program, but I tend to do it as a diversion from writing, and so there is little crossover between it and fiction writing. Modern programming is hairy and difficult for me to get a grip on. This is because (1) there is so much user interface code, which kind of makes my eyes glaze over, and (2) GNU type code is crammed with macros, compiler directives and switches that make it very difficult for me to read the source files. Lately my platform of choice has been Mathematica, which is expensive (compared to gcc) but makes it easy to do anything with a few lines of code. Mathematica makes it easy to do proper documentation, in that you can mix narrative material freely with executable statements.
For Cryptonomicon I needed to generate some illustrations of a cutaway view of the mountain where Goto Dengo was building his tunnels. It needed to have a rough, natural-looking profile that maintained its roughness, but still had the same overall shape, when I zoomed in on it for more detailed illustrations. I did this with a Mathematica notebook that used the classic fractal technique of midpoint displacement.
For the Baroque Cycle books I needed to convert my manuscripts, which were all TeX files, into a Quark format used by the publisher. So I wrote an emacs lisp program that churned through the TeX files looking for TeX escape codes and converting them to their equivalents in Quark. This was nasty and tedious but, in the end, reasonably satisfying.
7) Money - by querencia
One of the major themes in Cryptonomicon that carried over (in a big way) to The Baroque Cycle is money. You introduced some "futuristic" views of currency and of where money might be going in Cryptonomicon, and you skillfully managed to do the same thing, while explaining some of the history of modern monetary systems, in the most recent books.
You've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about money lately. Is there anything going on in the modern world with monetary systems (barter networks, for example) that you find particularly interesting?
What do you see on the horizon with respect to money?
Neal:
Actually, what's interesting about money is that it doesn't seem to change that much at all. It became fantastically sophisticated hundreds of years ago. Back before people knew about germs, evolution, the Table of Elements, and other stuff that we now take for granted, people were engaging in financial manipulations that seem quite modern in their sophistication. So if I had to take a wild guess---and believe me, it is a wild guess---I'd say that money and the way it works is going to be a constant, not a variable.
8) BeOS - by Coryoth
When you wrote "In the Beginning was the Command Line," you were very much in love with BeOS. As nice as BeOS was, it is now mostly gone. Do you still use BeOS 5, or have you acquired YellowTab from Zeta? Or, instead have you embraced the new UNIX based MacOS X as the OS you want to use when you "Just want to go to Disneyland"?
Neal:
You guessed right: I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of "In the beginning was the command line" is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely.
9) Travel tips for modern primitives? - by timothy
Mr. Stephenson:
I greatly enjoy your travel stories, both non-fiction (Mother Earth, Motherboard) and in particular your descriptions of the Philippines in Cryptonomicon.
Can you share some of the ideas you've developed for savvy trav'lin? For instance, how do you deal with carrying sufficient technology (whatever level you deem this to be) while minimizing the risk of theft, breakage, or loss by other means? Do you dress native or carry your entire wardrobe? [And broader, do you travel with something close to nothing, picking up necessary items as the need arises? What do you not leave home without?]
Do you carry any sort of self-defense means in some places, and if so What and Where?
Neal:
I haven't done that much in the way of adventuresome travel lately. Even when I was doing so, I was never the sort of hardened third-world travel geek that you are imagining. The thing is that when you go to such countries you can typically get a room in a five-star hotel for less than a hundred bucks a night. At that rate, it's easy to be a sellout and wallow in luxury. Staying in a dive is more romantic, but makes it harder to write. My excuse (if I need one) is that typically I'm not writing about backpackers and rural people in those countries; I'm writing about well-heeled expats whose natural habitat is airport bars and Shangri-La hotels. So that's where I tend to end up.
Re "self-defense means:" I am reminded of a history book I read recently entitled "Skeletons on the Zahara" by Dean King. It is about some American sailors who get shipwrecked on the Atlantic Coast of Africa and go through hell. Eventually most of them make it back to freedom with the help of some Arab traders based in Morocco. These traders range across the Sahara on incredibly arduous journeys. They are just about the toughest and meanest hombres you can possibly imagine. They've been through all kinds of fights and ambushes, plagues of locusts, sandstorms, etc. and come out on top. Because of their success they have acquired camels, horses, and weapons: not only swords and daggers but rifles and shotguns too. After having rescued the Americans, these guys go out on another journey in the desert, and find themselves surrounded by a few dozen people who are wretched even by the standards of the Sahara: no animals, little in the way of clothing, and no weapons except for bags containing stones. A fight breaks out. The traders discharge their weapons and kill everyone they shoot at: maybe half a dozen. Then before they can reload they are all killed by flying stones.
The best "self-defense means" when you are surrounded by a hundred million people of some other culture is to avoid dangerous places and figure out some way to get along with the folks around you.
10) Confidential Proposal, Off shore data haven (Score:5, Funny) - by SlashDread
Greetings to you in the name of the most high God, from my beloved country Nigeria.
I am sorry and I solicit your permission into your privacy. I am Barrister Leonardo Akume, lawyer to the late Dr. Koffi Abachus, a brilliant Nigerian mathematician.
My former client, late Dr. Koffi Abachus, died in a mysterious plane crash in the year 1994 on the way to a scientific conference to make an announcement of the utmost importance to mankind.
He was planning to present a paper regarding his extensive work on data storage. It is said the data storage device he had developed, would be roughly ten times more secure compared to the latest quantum excyption techniques. The device was about the size of a steamer trunk, and stored on a privately owned island close to the coast of Nigeria. Dr Koffi Abachus is also the King of the local tribe by heritage...
Neal:
Your proposition sounds quite reasonable. In order for me to provide you with the support that you need, I will need for you to wire $100,000 into my Swiss bank account...
Oh well.. Should there BE a data haven? If so, where?
Neal:
At this point, that is probably a technical question that I might not be competent to answer. I can carry a gig of encrypted data on a thumb drive now, and it doesn't cost much. Soon it'll be smaller and cheaper. Millions of people in different countries carrying gigs of data on thumb drives, iPods, cellphones, etc. make for a pretty robust distributed data storage system. It is difficult to imagine how one could build a centralized, hardened facility that would be more robust than that. But perhaps there's some technical or regulatory angle that I'm failing to appreciate here. I have not kept up to speed on this since Cryptonomicon.
11) Blue Origin - by Concerned Onlooker
The Wikipedia lists you as a part-time advisor for Blue Origin [blueorigin.com], a company that is working to "develop a crewed, suborbital launch system." What is it that you do for them and has the recent winning of the X-Prize by the Spaceship One team had any effect on Blue Origin's plans? What are your visions of future private space flight?
Neal:
Like Spock on the deck of the Enterprise, I sit in the corner and await opportunities to jump out and yammer about Science. Unlike Spock, I don't have anyone reporting to me and I never get to sit in the captain's chair and aim the phasers. This is probably good.
Though the X-Prize is cool and good, Blue Origin never intended to compete for it. Consequently, it has had no effect, other than destroying productivity whenever a SpaceShipOne flight is being broadcast.
As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.
12) Do new publishing models make sense? - by Infonaut
Have you contemplated using any sort of alternative to traditional copyright for your works of fiction, such as a flavor of Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] license? Do you feel that making money as a writer and more open copyright are compatible in the long term, or do you think that writers like Lessig who distribute electronically via CC are merely indulging in a short-lived fad?
Neal:
Publishing is a very ancient and crafty industry that existed and flourished before the idea of copyright even existed. When copyright came into existence, the publishing industry dealt with it and moved on. My suspicion is that everything that's been going on lately will amount to a sort of fire drill that will force publishing to scurry around and make some new arrangements so that they can get back to making money for themselves and for authors.
You can use the brick-and-mortar bookstore as a way to think about this. There was a time maybe five years ago when many people were questioning whether brick-and-mortar bookstores were going to survive the onslaught of online retailers. Now, if you take the narrow view that a bookstore is nothing more than a machine that swaps money for books, then it follows that there's no need for a physical store. But here we are five years later. Some bookstores have gone out of business, it's true. But there are big, beautiful bookstores all over the place, with sofas and coffee bars and author appearances and so on. Why? Because it turns out that a bookstore is a lot more than a machine that swaps money for books.
Likewise, if you think of a publisher as a machine that makes copies of bits and sells them, then you're going to predict the elimination of publishers. But that's only the smallest part of what publishers actually do. This is not to say that electronic distribution via CC is just a fad, any more than online bookstores are a fad. They will keep on going in parallel, and all of this will get sorted out in time.
Do you think that hacking tools should be protected (in the United States) under the second amendment?
Neal:
Such is the intensity of issues like this that I can't tell whether this is a troll. I'm going to assume it's not, and answer the question seriously.
I'm no constitutional scholar but I'm pretty sure that the Founding Fathers were thinking of flintlocks, not perl scripts, when they wrote the Second Amendment. Now you can dispute that and say "No, anything that enables citizens to defend themselves against an oppressive government is covered by the Second Amendment." There might be something to such an argument. But pragmatically, the question is whether you can get nine (or at least five) non-hacker Supreme Court Justices to see it that way. I suspect the answer is no. It's just too easy for them to say "it is not a weapon." To me it seems a lot easier simply to invoke the First Amendment.
Also, remember that there might be unwanted side effects to classifying code as weapons. In the U.S., where the right to bear certain weapons is written into the Constitution, it might seem like a clever way to secure access to such code. But authorities in other countries might say "look, even the U.S. Government defines this string of bits as a weapon---so we are going to outlaw it."
It's difficult to form an intelligent opinion on issues like this without doing a lot of work. One has to learn a lot about the issues and then think about them pretty hard. I haven't really done so, and so I'm inclined to trust people who have, like Matt Blaze. At crypto.com he has posted some interesting material that is germane to this topic.
See http://www.crypto.com/masterkey.html
and especially
http://www.crypto.com/hobbs.html
To make a long argument short, what I have learned from Matt's writings on the topic is that (1) it's not a new issue, (2) it's a First Amendment issue, and (3) it's best in the long run, for all concerned, if vulnerabilities are exposed in public.
2) The lack of respect... - by MosesJones
Science Fiction is normally relegated to the specialist publications rather than having reviews in the main stream press. Seen as "fringe" and a bit sad its seldom reviewed with anything more than condescension by the "quality" press.
Does it bother you that people like Jeffery Archer or Jackie Collins seem to get more respect for their writing than you ?
Neal:
OUCH!
(removes mirrorshades, wipes tears, blows nose, composes self)
Let me just come at this one from sort of a big picture point of view.
(the sound of a million Slashdot readers hitting the "back" button...)
First of all, I don't think that the condescending "quality" press look too kindly on Jackie Collins and Jeffrey Archer. So I disagree with the premise of the last sentence of this question and I'm not going to address it. Instead I'm going to answer what I think MosesJones is really getting at, which is why SF and other genre and popular writers don't seem to get a lot of respect from the literary world.
To set it up, a brief anecdote: a while back, I went to a writers' conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we'd exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me "And where do you teach?" just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another "And which distro do you use?"
I was taken aback. "I don't teach anywhere," I said.
Her turn to be taken aback. "Then what do you do?"
"I'm...a writer," I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.
"Yes, but what do you do?"
I couldn't think of how to answer the question---I'd already answered it!
"You can't make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?" she tried.
"From...being a writer," I stammered.
At this point she finally got it, and her whole affect changed. She wasn't snobbish about it. But it was obvious that, in her mind, the sort of writer who actually made a living from it was an entirely different creature from the sort she generally associated with.
And once I got over the excruciating awkwardness of this conversation, I began to think she was right in thinking so. One way to classify artists is by to whom they are accountable.
The great artists of the Italian Renaissance were accountable to wealthy entities who became their patrons or gave them commissions. In many cases there was no other way to arrange it. There is only one Sistine Chapel. Not just anyone could walk in and start daubing paint on the ceiling. Someone had to be the gatekeeper---to hire an artist and give him a set of more or less restrictive limits within which he was allowed to be creative. So the artist was, in the end, accountable to the Church. The Church's goal was to build a magnificent structure that would stand there forever and provide inspiration to the Christians who walked into it, and they had to make sure that Michelangelo would carry out his work accordingly.
Similar arrangements were made by writers. After Dante was banished from Florence he found a patron in the Prince of Verona, for example. And if you look at many old books of the Baroque period you find the opening pages filled with florid expressions of gratitude from the authors to their patrons. It's the same as in a modern book when it says "this work was supported by a grant from the XYZ Foundation."
Nowadays we have different ways of supporting artists. Some painters, for example, make a living selling their work to wealthy collectors. In other cases, musicians or artists will find appointments at universities or other cultural institutions. But in both such cases there is a kind of accountability at work.
A wealthy art collector who pays a lot of money for a painting does not like to see his money evaporate. He wants to feel some confidence that if he or an heir decides to sell the painting later, they'll be able to get an amount of money that is at least in the same ballpark. But that price is going to be set by the market---it depends on the perceived value of the painting in the art world. And that in turn is a function of how the artist is esteemed by critics and by other collectors. So art criticism does two things at once: it's culture, but it's also economics.
There is also a kind of accountability in the case of, say, a composer who has a faculty job at a university. The trustees of the university have got a fiduciary responsibility not to throw away money. It's not the same as hiring a laborer in factory, whose output can be easily reduced to dollars and cents. Rather, the trustees have to justify the composer's salary by pointing to intangibles. And one of those intangibles is the degree of respect accorded that composer by critics, musicians, and other experts in the field: how often his works are performed by symphony orchestras, for example.
Accountability in the writing profession has been bifurcated for many centuries. I already mentioned that Dante and other writers were supported by patrons at least as far back as the Renaissance. But I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission. Probably there was a collection of legends and tales that had been passed along in an oral tradition---which is just a fancy way of saying that lots of people liked those stories and wanted to hear them told. And at some point perhaps there was an especially well-liked storyteller who pulled a few such tales together and fashioned them into the what we now know as Beowulf. Maybe there was a king or other wealthy patron who then caused the tale to be written down by a scribe. But I doubt it was created at the behest of a king. It was created at the behest of lots and lots of intoxicated Frisians sitting around the fire wanting to hear a yarn. And there was no grand purpose behind its creation, as there was with the painting of the Sistine Chapel.
The novel is a very new form of art. It was unthinkable until the invention of printing and impractical until a significant fraction of the population became literate. But when the conditions were right, it suddenly became huge. The great serialized novelists of the 19th Century were like rock stars or movie stars. The printing press and the apparatus of publishing had given these creators a means to bypass traditional arbiters and gatekeepers of culture and connect directly to a mass audience. And the economics worked out such that they didn't need to land a commission or find a patron in order to put bread on the table. The creators of those novels were therefore able to have a connection with a mass audience and a livelihood fundamentally different from other types of artists.
Nowadays, rock stars and movie stars are making all the money. But the publishing industry still works for some lucky novelists who find a way to establish a connection with a readership sufficiently large to put bread on their tables. It's conventional to refer to these as "commercial" novelists, but I hate that term, so I'm going to call them Beowulf writers.
But this is not true for a great many other writers who are every bit as talented and worthy of finding readers. And so, in addition, we have got an alternate system that makes it possible for those writers to pursue their careers and make their voices heard. Just as Renaissance princes supported writers like Dante because they felt it was the right thing to do, there are many affluent persons in modern society who, by making donations to cultural institutions like universities, support all sorts of artists, including writers. Usually they are called "literary" as opposed to "commercial" but I hate that term too, so I'm going to call them Dante writers. And this is what I mean when I speak of a bifurcated system.
Like all tricks for dividing people into two groups, this is simplistic, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But there is a cultural difference between these two types of writers, rooted in to whom they are accountable, and it explains what MosesJones is complaining about. Beowulf writers and Dante writers appear to have the same job, but in fact there is a quite radical difference between them---hence the odd conversation that I had with my fellow author at the writer's conference. Because she'd never heard of me, she made the quite reasonable assumption that I was a Dante writer---one so new or obscure that she'd never seen me mentioned in a journal of literary criticism, and never bumped into me at a conference. Therefore, I couldn't be making any money at it. Therefore, I was most likely teaching somewhere. All perfectly logical. In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.
All of this places someone like me in critical limbo. As everyone knows, there are literary critics, and journals that publish their work, and I imagine they have the same dual role as art critics. That is, they are engaging in intellectual discourse for its own sake. But they are also performing an economic function by making judgments. These judgments, taken collectively, eventually determine who's deemed worthy of receiving fellowships, teaching appointments, etc.
The relationship between that critical apparatus and Beowulf writers is famously awkward and leads to all sorts of peculiar misunderstandings. Occasionally I'll take a hit from a critic for being somehow arrogant or egomaniacal, which is difficult to understand from my point of view sitting here and just trying to write about whatever I find interesting. To begin with, it's not clear why they think I'm any more arrogant than anyone else who writes a book and actually expects that someone's going to read it. Secondly, I don't understand why they think that this is relevant enough to rate mention in a review. After all, if I'm going to eat at a restaurant, I don't care about the chef's personality flaws---I just want to eat good food. I was slagged for entitling my latest book "The System of the World" by one critic who found that title arrogant. That criticism is simply wrong; the critic has completely misunderstood why I chose that title. Why on earth would anyone think it was arrogant? Well, on the Dante side of the bifurcation it's implicit that authority comes from the top down, and you need to get in the habit of deferring to people who are older and grander than you. In that world, apparently one must never select a grand-sounding title for one's book until one has reached Nobel Prize status. But on my side, if I'm trying to write a book about a bunch of historical figures who were consciously trying to understand and invent the System of the World, then this is an obvious choice for the title of the book. The same argument, I believe, explains why the accusation of having a big ego is considered relevant for inclusion in a book review. Considering the economic function of these reviews (explained above) it is worth pointing out which writers are and are not suited for participating in the somewhat hierarchical and political community of Dante writers. Egomaniacs would only create trouble.
Mind you, much of the authority and seniority in that world is benevolent, or at least well-intentioned. If you are trying to become a writer by taking expensive classes in that subject, you want your teacher to know more about it than you and to behave like a teacher. And so you might hear advice along the lines of "I don't think you're ready to tackle Y yet, you need to spend a few more years honing your skills with X" and the like. All perfectly reasonable. But people on the Beowulf side may never have taken a writing class in their life. They just tend to lunge at whatever looks interesting to them, write whatever they please, and let the chips fall where they may. So we may seem not merely arrogant, but completely unhinged. It reminds me somewhat of the split between Christians and Faeries depicted in Susannah Clarke's wonderful book "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." The faeries do whatever they want and strike the Christians (humans) as ludicrously irresponsible and "barely sane." They don't seem to deserve or appreciate their freedom.
Later at the writer's conference, I introduced myself to someone who was responsible for organizing it, and she looked at me keenly and said, "Ah, yes, you're the one who's going to bring in our males 18-32." And sure enough, when we got to the venue, there were the males 18-32, looking quite out of place compared to the baseline lit-festival crowd. They stood at long lines at the microphones and asked me one question after another while ignoring the Dante writers sitting at the table with me. Some of the males 18-32 were so out of place that they seemed to have warped in from the Land of Faerie, and had the organizers wondering whether they should summon the police. But in the end they were more or less reasonable people who just wanted to talk about books and were as mystified by the literary people as the literary people were by them.
In the same vein, I just got back from the National Book Festival on the Capitol Mall in D.C., where I crossed paths for a few minutes with Neil Gaiman. This was another event in which Beowulf writers and Dante writers were all mixed together. The organizers had queues set up in front of signing tables. Neil had mentioned on his blog that he was going to be there, and so hundreds, maybe thousands of his readers had showed up there as early as 5:30 a.m. to get stuff signed. The organizers simply had not anticipated this and so---very much to their credit---they had to make all sorts of last-minute rearrangements to accomodate the crowd. Neil spent many hours signing. As he says on his blog
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp
the Washington Post later said he did this because he was a "savvy businessman." Of course Neil was actually doing it to be polite; but even simple politeness to one's fans can seem grasping and cynical when viewed from the other side.
Because of such reactions, I know that certain people are going to read this screed as further evidence that I have a big head. But let me make at least a token effort to deflect this by stipulating that the system I am describing here IS NOT FAIR and that IT MAKES NO SENSE and that I don't deserve to have the freedom that is accorded a Beowulf writer when many talented and excellent writers---some of them good friends of mine---end up selling small numbers of books and having to cultivate grants, fellowships, faculty appointments, etc.
Anyway, most Beowulf writing is ignored by the critical apparatus or lightly made fun of when it's noticed at all. Literary critics know perfectly well that nothing they say is likely to have much effect on sales. Let's face it, when Neil Gaiman publishes Anansi Boys, all of his readers are going to know about it through his site and most of them are going to buy it and none of them is likely to see a review in the New York Review of Books, or care what that review says.
So what of MosesJones's original question, which was entitled "The lack of respect?" My answer is that I don't pay that much notice to these things because I am aware at some level that I am on one side of the bifurcation and most literary critics are on the other, and we simply are not that relevant to each other's lives and careers.
What is most interesting to me is when people make efforts to "route around" the apparatus of literary criticism and publish their thoughts about books in place where you wouldn't normally look for book reviews. For example, a year ago there was a piece by Edward Rothstein in the New York Times about Quicksilver that appears to have been a sort of wildcat review. He just got interested in the book and decided to write about it, independent of the New York Times's normal book-reviewing apparatus. It is not the first time such a thing has happened with one of my books.
It has happened many times in history that new systems will come along and, instead of obliterating the old, will surround and encapsulate them and work in symbiosis with them but otherwise pretty much leave them alone (think mitochondria) and sometimes I get the feeling that something similar is happening with these two literary worlds. The fact that we are having a discussion like this one on a forum such as Slashdot is Exhibit A.
3) Singularity - by randalx
What are your thoughts on Vernor Vinge's Singularity prediction. Is it inevitable? Will humans become a part of it or be left behind by this new "species"?
Neal:
I can never get past the structural similarities between the singularity prediction and the apocalypse of St. John the Divine. This is not the place to parse it out, but the key thing they have in common is the idea of a rapture, in which some chosen humans will be taken up and made one with the infinite while others will be left behind.
I know Vernor. To know him is to respect him. He kicked my ass (as well as J. K. Rowling's and Greg Bear's and a few other people's) at the 2000 Hugo Awards, and on top of that he knows more physics than I ever will. So I don't for a moment think that he is peddling any such ideas with his prediction of a singularity. I am only telling you why I have a personal mental block as far as the Singularity prediction is concerned.
My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater.
4) Who would win? (Score:5, Funny) - by Call Me Black Cloud
In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
Neal:
You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.
The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.
The second time was a few years later when Gibson came through Seattle on his IDORU tour. Between doing some drive-by signings at local bookstores, he came and devastated my quarter of the city. I had been in a trance for seven days and seven nights and was unaware of these goings-on, but he came to me in a vision and taunted me, and left a message on my cellphone. That evening he was doing a reading at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Swathed in black, I climbed to the top of the hall, mesmerized his snipers, sliced a hole in the roof using a plasma cutter, let myself into the catwalks above the stage, and then leapt down upon him from forty feet above. But I had forgotten that he had once studied in the same monastery as I, and knew all of my techniques. He rolled away at the last moment. I struck only the lectern, smashing it to kindling. Snatching up one jagged shard of oak I adopted the Mountain Tiger position just as you would expect. He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head. From there, the fight proceeded along predictable lines. As a stalemate developed we began to resort more and more to the use of pure energy, modulated by Red Lotus incantations of the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives. But as they were only peasants, we did not care.
Our third fight occurred at the Peace Arch on the U.S./Canadian border between Seattle and Vancouver. Gibson wished to retire from that sort of lifestyle that required ceaseless training in the martial arts and sleeping outdoors under the rain. He only wished to sit in his garden brushing out novels on rice paper. But honor dictated that he must fight me for a third time first. Of course the Peace Arch did not remain standing for long. Before long my sword arm hung useless at my side. One of my psi blasts kicked up a large divot of earth and rubble, uncovering a silver metallic object, hitherto buried, that seemed to have been crafted by an industrial designer. It was a nitro-veridian device that had been buried there by Sterling. We were able to fly clear before it detonated. The blast caused a seismic rupture that split off a sizable part of Canada and created what we now know as Vancouver Island. This was the last fight between me and Gibson. For both of us, by studying certain ancient prophecies, had independently arrived at the same conclusion, namely that Sterling's professed interest in industrial design was a mere cover for work in superweapons. Gibson and I formed a pact to fight Sterling. So far we have made little headway in seeking out his lair of brushed steel and white LEDs, because I had a dentist appointment and Gibson had to attend a writers' conference, but keep an eye on Slashdot for any further developments.
5) What are you reading these days? - by IvyMike
Since you're Neal Stephenson, I suspect the answer could be something like "surveys of ancient Sumerian accounting systems".
If that's the case, please include a work of modern fiction or two in your list; something you think that a fan of your work might also enjoy. :)
Neal:
Fiction I have lately read and enjoyed:
Set this House in Order by Matt Ruff
Ilium by Dan Simmons
Iron Council by China Mieville
Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart
The I Love Bees alternate reality game
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
The Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland (in galleys; soon to be published)
Short story collections by Etgar Keret: The Bus Driver who Wanted to be God, and The Nimrod Flip-out. Last time I checked, The Nimrod Flip-out was only available from an Australian publisher named Picador, but this should pose only the most minor of challenges to Slashdot readers. Keret is a young Israeli writer who has also done some work in film and graphic novels.
Nonfiction:
Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and Lincoln's Cooper Union address
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
6) storygramming -by Doc Ruby
You programmed computers before you wrote novels. Greg Egan shares that hyphenated career, and continues to illustrate his stories with Java applets [netspace.net.au]. Do you still program, possibly targeting the same subjects with your word processor as your compiler?
As _Snow Crash_ was originally designed as an interactive game, and such landmarks as _Myst_ have regenerated as (usually bad) novels, do you see the arrival of a truly multimedia story, delivered simultaneously in multiple media, anytime soon? By whom, specifically or generally?
Neal:
It has already happened in the form of the I Love Bees alternate reality game, which, as many of you must know, is a promotional campaign for Halo 2. I know the people who did it, but I have lost track of what I promised not to reveal publicly, and so will shut up for now.
I still program, but I tend to do it as a diversion from writing, and so there is little crossover between it and fiction writing. Modern programming is hairy and difficult for me to get a grip on. This is because (1) there is so much user interface code, which kind of makes my eyes glaze over, and (2) GNU type code is crammed with macros, compiler directives and switches that make it very difficult for me to read the source files. Lately my platform of choice has been Mathematica, which is expensive (compared to gcc) but makes it easy to do anything with a few lines of code. Mathematica makes it easy to do proper documentation, in that you can mix narrative material freely with executable statements.
For Cryptonomicon I needed to generate some illustrations of a cutaway view of the mountain where Goto Dengo was building his tunnels. It needed to have a rough, natural-looking profile that maintained its roughness, but still had the same overall shape, when I zoomed in on it for more detailed illustrations. I did this with a Mathematica notebook that used the classic fractal technique of midpoint displacement.
For the Baroque Cycle books I needed to convert my manuscripts, which were all TeX files, into a Quark format used by the publisher. So I wrote an emacs lisp program that churned through the TeX files looking for TeX escape codes and converting them to their equivalents in Quark. This was nasty and tedious but, in the end, reasonably satisfying.
7) Money - by querencia
One of the major themes in Cryptonomicon that carried over (in a big way) to The Baroque Cycle is money. You introduced some "futuristic" views of currency and of where money might be going in Cryptonomicon, and you skillfully managed to do the same thing, while explaining some of the history of modern monetary systems, in the most recent books.
You've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about money lately. Is there anything going on in the modern world with monetary systems (barter networks, for example) that you find particularly interesting?
What do you see on the horizon with respect to money?
Neal:
Actually, what's interesting about money is that it doesn't seem to change that much at all. It became fantastically sophisticated hundreds of years ago. Back before people knew about germs, evolution, the Table of Elements, and other stuff that we now take for granted, people were engaging in financial manipulations that seem quite modern in their sophistication. So if I had to take a wild guess---and believe me, it is a wild guess---I'd say that money and the way it works is going to be a constant, not a variable.
8) BeOS - by Coryoth
When you wrote "In the Beginning was the Command Line," you were very much in love with BeOS. As nice as BeOS was, it is now mostly gone. Do you still use BeOS 5, or have you acquired YellowTab from Zeta? Or, instead have you embraced the new UNIX based MacOS X as the OS you want to use when you "Just want to go to Disneyland"?
Neal:
You guessed right: I embraced OS X as soon as it was available and have never looked back. So a lot of "In the beginning was the command line" is now obsolete. I keep meaning to update it, but if I'm honest with myself, I have to say this is unlikely.
9) Travel tips for modern primitives? - by timothy
Mr. Stephenson:
I greatly enjoy your travel stories, both non-fiction (Mother Earth, Motherboard) and in particular your descriptions of the Philippines in Cryptonomicon.
Can you share some of the ideas you've developed for savvy trav'lin? For instance, how do you deal with carrying sufficient technology (whatever level you deem this to be) while minimizing the risk of theft, breakage, or loss by other means? Do you dress native or carry your entire wardrobe? [And broader, do you travel with something close to nothing, picking up necessary items as the need arises? What do you not leave home without?]
Do you carry any sort of self-defense means in some places, and if so What and Where?
Neal:
I haven't done that much in the way of adventuresome travel lately. Even when I was doing so, I was never the sort of hardened third-world travel geek that you are imagining. The thing is that when you go to such countries you can typically get a room in a five-star hotel for less than a hundred bucks a night. At that rate, it's easy to be a sellout and wallow in luxury. Staying in a dive is more romantic, but makes it harder to write. My excuse (if I need one) is that typically I'm not writing about backpackers and rural people in those countries; I'm writing about well-heeled expats whose natural habitat is airport bars and Shangri-La hotels. So that's where I tend to end up.
Re "self-defense means:" I am reminded of a history book I read recently entitled "Skeletons on the Zahara" by Dean King. It is about some American sailors who get shipwrecked on the Atlantic Coast of Africa and go through hell. Eventually most of them make it back to freedom with the help of some Arab traders based in Morocco. These traders range across the Sahara on incredibly arduous journeys. They are just about the toughest and meanest hombres you can possibly imagine. They've been through all kinds of fights and ambushes, plagues of locusts, sandstorms, etc. and come out on top. Because of their success they have acquired camels, horses, and weapons: not only swords and daggers but rifles and shotguns too. After having rescued the Americans, these guys go out on another journey in the desert, and find themselves surrounded by a few dozen people who are wretched even by the standards of the Sahara: no animals, little in the way of clothing, and no weapons except for bags containing stones. A fight breaks out. The traders discharge their weapons and kill everyone they shoot at: maybe half a dozen. Then before they can reload they are all killed by flying stones.
The best "self-defense means" when you are surrounded by a hundred million people of some other culture is to avoid dangerous places and figure out some way to get along with the folks around you.
10) Confidential Proposal, Off shore data haven (Score:5, Funny) - by SlashDread
Greetings to you in the name of the most high God, from my beloved country Nigeria.
I am sorry and I solicit your permission into your privacy. I am Barrister Leonardo Akume, lawyer to the late Dr. Koffi Abachus, a brilliant Nigerian mathematician.
My former client, late Dr. Koffi Abachus, died in a mysterious plane crash in the year 1994 on the way to a scientific conference to make an announcement of the utmost importance to mankind.
He was planning to present a paper regarding his extensive work on data storage. It is said the data storage device he had developed, would be roughly ten times more secure compared to the latest quantum excyption techniques. The device was about the size of a steamer trunk, and stored on a privately owned island close to the coast of Nigeria. Dr Koffi Abachus is also the King of the local tribe by heritage...
Neal:
Your proposition sounds quite reasonable. In order for me to provide you with the support that you need, I will need for you to wire $100,000 into my Swiss bank account...
Oh well.. Should there BE a data haven? If so, where?
Neal:
At this point, that is probably a technical question that I might not be competent to answer. I can carry a gig of encrypted data on a thumb drive now, and it doesn't cost much. Soon it'll be smaller and cheaper. Millions of people in different countries carrying gigs of data on thumb drives, iPods, cellphones, etc. make for a pretty robust distributed data storage system. It is difficult to imagine how one could build a centralized, hardened facility that would be more robust than that. But perhaps there's some technical or regulatory angle that I'm failing to appreciate here. I have not kept up to speed on this since Cryptonomicon.
11) Blue Origin - by Concerned Onlooker
The Wikipedia lists you as a part-time advisor for Blue Origin [blueorigin.com], a company that is working to "develop a crewed, suborbital launch system." What is it that you do for them and has the recent winning of the X-Prize by the Spaceship One team had any effect on Blue Origin's plans? What are your visions of future private space flight?
Neal:
Like Spock on the deck of the Enterprise, I sit in the corner and await opportunities to jump out and yammer about Science. Unlike Spock, I don't have anyone reporting to me and I never get to sit in the captain's chair and aim the phasers. This is probably good.
Though the X-Prize is cool and good, Blue Origin never intended to compete for it. Consequently, it has had no effect, other than destroying productivity whenever a SpaceShipOne flight is being broadcast.
As for my visions of future private space flight: here I have to remind you of something, which is that, up to this point in the interview, I have been wearing my novelist hat, meaning that I talk freely about whatever I please. But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet). I do not freely disseminate my thoughts on this one topic because I have agreed to sell those thoughts to Blue Origin. Admittedly, this feels a little strange to a novelist who is accustomed to running his mouth whenever he feels like it. But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.
12) Do new publishing models make sense? - by Infonaut
Have you contemplated using any sort of alternative to traditional copyright for your works of fiction, such as a flavor of Creative Commons [creativecommons.org] license? Do you feel that making money as a writer and more open copyright are compatible in the long term, or do you think that writers like Lessig who distribute electronically via CC are merely indulging in a short-lived fad?
Neal:
Publishing is a very ancient and crafty industry that existed and flourished before the idea of copyright even existed. When copyright came into existence, the publishing industry dealt with it and moved on. My suspicion is that everything that's been going on lately will amount to a sort of fire drill that will force publishing to scurry around and make some new arrangements so that they can get back to making money for themselves and for authors.
You can use the brick-and-mortar bookstore as a way to think about this. There was a time maybe five years ago when many people were questioning whether brick-and-mortar bookstores were going to survive the onslaught of online retailers. Now, if you take the narrow view that a bookstore is nothing more than a machine that swaps money for books, then it follows that there's no need for a physical store. But here we are five years later. Some bookstores have gone out of business, it's true. But there are big, beautiful bookstores all over the place, with sofas and coffee bars and author appearances and so on. Why? Because it turns out that a bookstore is a lot more than a machine that swaps money for books.
Likewise, if you think of a publisher as a machine that makes copies of bits and sells them, then you're going to predict the elimination of publishers. But that's only the smallest part of what publishers actually do. This is not to say that electronic distribution via CC is just a fad, any more than online bookstores are a fad. They will keep on going in parallel, and all of this will get sorted out in time.
Slashdot editor "Timothy" gets one of his own questions selected and answered.
You're spot-on, though. An open eye, a well-guarded money-belt, and a careful itinerary are your best defenses overseas. Shockingly enough, the vast minority of the world's population wants to attack tourists.
(I don't know whether or not Baltimore qualifies as a foreign land, but the missus and I would be happy to act as local guides next time you're in town. We know where the good beer is...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
(the sound of a million Slashdot readers hitting the "back" button...)
C'mon Neal...you should know slashdotters better than that. We don't hit the back button, we use mouse gestures.
-Pinkoir
That would imply that trolls were allowed to ask Neal Stephenson questions, which is impossible because the moderation system elminates all trolling before it reaches a score of +5. Can we get the story amended? All in all a pretty good interview though... very detailed response on encryption tools as weapons.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
The best interview with a writer I've read in a long time. I have never read any of Stephenson's books (only "In the Beginning was the Command Line"), but will run out and buy the three Baroque cycle books.
He pulled off his wireless mike and began to whirl it around his head
But, but... it's a wireless mike.
You know, I'm beginning to suspect that that whole answer might have had a little embellishment in it.
I am in the process of reading all of his works. Digesting his responses here will probably set me back a week! It is nice to see such thoughtful, well constructed answers.
5/14 NEVER FORGET America has declared war on science fiction writers!
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
...but I hated the last answer.
This has got to be one of the longest interviews on Slashdot. but then again this is the author that used 5 pages to describe a character eating cereal. (captain crunch in Cryptonomicon)
...who gets paid by the word.
"In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous."
(removes mirrorshades, wipes tears, blows nose, composes self)
And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater.
:P
I guess he doesn't play any computer games on his space heater...
Nice interview with some interesting ideas, but tailed off rather abruptly.
You can get this interview in printed form as a five book boxed set. Thank you. ;)
Heh, you won't be finishing the Baroque Cycle books anytime soon, then ... :-7
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
"In the U.S., where the right to bear **certain** weapons is written into the Constitution..."
My own emphasis on the word "certain." This is a common mistake, fostered by our educational system. The 2nd amendment doesn't specify "certain" or "specific" weapons for protection. It protects **all** weapons. The key phrase here is "Congress shall make no law..." And even though your government-approved social studies teacher told you that the Constitution is a "living document" and is "open to interpretation," I submit to you that "Congress shall make no law" means what it says and says what it means.
Remember this document was written by people who had just won a war, by a long shot, against the most powerful and oppressive empire in their world. One of the reasons they won is because the **individual** colonists had better rifles than their government overlords. This would be like individual Americans having better assault rifles than the American government. Which, of course, is forbidden by federal and state laws.
while I enjoyed his answers, the endings tended to fall a little flat.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
How do you "whirl a wireless mike"?
Imagine a...
Seriously though, Neal says that the contrast between popular authors making money and literary authors not making money "IS NOT FAIR and [...] MAKES NO SENSE" but to me it's perfectly logical. The strength in any system belongs to the masses, whether they realize it or not. The public (myself included) wants good yarns more than great literary works. Do I care that Neal's fiction is, while incredible bright and interesting, essentially mental popcorn? Hell no. I just want to be entertained and his books provide me the greatest entertainment per page and per dollar, so I buy them. I would prefer to read Zodiac rather than Wuthering Heights because it does a superior job of entertaining me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Imagine... Neal Stephenson writing this phrase with a Big Huge Grin.
Since he mentioned Beowulf writers, I'd like to designate this thread as a place for all Beowulf cluster jokes. Just think of it as a public service.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Start with snowcrash,
but my wife and I actually prefer "The Diamond Age"
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I understand his position, and why he has to say that, but the system does make sense in this way: he took the risk. The academic writers have worked very hard to get where they are, but their career choices have followed a path of risk avoidance.
I work in academia, and I have made the same decisions they have. Do I work on writing software that people (the masses) will use and pay for, or do I cling to the safety of Alma Mater? I'm still here, clinging, critiquing other people's work instead of taking the risks of failure and rejection by writing my own.
Real programmer? Ha.
sigs, as if you care.
Fuck, for the life of me I still can't tell the difference between the two.
Anyone have any mnemonic devices to help me out?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Yes, it's true. Knighted by the queen of England. She took a sword and said: "kneel, Stephenson".
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night. And tell Seinfeld I said hello!
I see responses to you suggesting Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I would like to second (or third, or nth, or whatever) those suggestions. The baroque cycle books are good, but SC and DA (aka A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) are much better.
he does
But private space flight is an area where I wear a different hat (or helmet).
he's obviously wearing his tinfoil hat.....
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Need cliff notes! I don't have 8 hours to read this while at work!
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
For anyone preparing themselves to shout "fanboy!" - I've never read any of this guy's books in my life. I think that might have to change now ;)
You've obviously never gone to Zombocom
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I can generally restrain myself from laughing out loud at work, but I wasn't able to help myself as I read through the accounts of your three fights with Bill Gibson. To make things worse, my directorate manager (a corporate vice-president) happened to choose that particular moment to walk right past my office. He gave me a quizzical glance and went on his way.
which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof and the loss of eight hundred lives.
Aha! So even the great Neal Stephenson makes grammar mistakes! I think you missed a 'led' there, Mr. Stephenson...
(chant: 'I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy....')
So, time to do a little digging. The design of his website is painful to navigate, but I have every intention of tracking down a book or two by him because that interview was one of the most interesting things I've read on Slashdot in four years. In particular the bifurcation and accountability issues raised in question two--that's a useful and engaging summary for writing class students.
it turns out that a bookstore is a lot more than a machine that swaps money for books.
People who've read The Salmon of Doubt should appreciate that line all the more. :)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
It is absolutely impossible to view this page if you're blind...
Ya don't say?
And most importantly, Jamby was actually trying to sell a product, while zombocom just tries to be stupid and annoying.
That is why Jamby > NealStephenson > Zombo
He dodged the only interesting question he was asked, the one on the future of publishing and copyrights. It'll get sorted out in time, eh? Wow, visionary stuff that...
Think a lapel microphone where there's a tiny mic clipped to your tie and a transmitter box in your pocket or some such connected by a wire to the microphone. Not a handheld wireless microphone.
I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
Picture the type with an electret mike that clips to the lapel with a wire to the Tx/Rx box - not the handheld type.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
As noted by a previous comment, most wireless lavalier mikes have a microphone bud which is connected by a wire to a belt-mounted transmitter.
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
[... really long answer to Question 2 ...] The fact that we are having a discussion like this one on a forum such as Slashdot is Exhibit A.
Wow, a 2820-word answer ending with the word "A". Neal Stephenson is the master.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Telepathically, duh!
The answer to question 4 is exactly why I love Neal Stephenson's fiction. Just love it. And in 100 pages I'll be done with The System of the World.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Stephenson in-joke, very funny if you've read his books
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
A wireless microphone is actually made up of two (or three, depending on whether or not you count the antenna) pieces. You have the microphone, which is the small black cylinder you see clipped on the lapels of TV interviewees. The microphone is attached by cable to the transmitter box, which includes a battery, power switch, volume slider, and belt clip (the antenna is attached to that transmitter box). Therefore, one could very easily grasp the microphone in their hand and whirl the transmitter box around.
If you want to really analyze the whirling, while it is theoretically possible (you have a cable and a massive object on the end of it - that's all you need) to whirl, it may not be useful in this situation, as the microphone and cable could very well pop out of their socket in the transmitter box, thus allowing the transmitter box to follow its natural trajectory tangent to the circular whirl-path.
Oh well.
Nike. Just jew it.
Your big words tire me mentally. However, you give me hope that humanity has a future. If we ever meet ET - you talk first. I definitely will never compete directly with your niche as I could never keep on track for such a mental distance. Thanks for making the world a bit brighter by existing.
Junpei knows, as should you: Leet ninj4 ski11z.
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
But I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission. Probably there was a collection of legends and tales that had been passed along in an oral tradition
A collection of legends, like a cluster of them?
The actual microphone is connected via a cord (several feet) to the wireless transmitter that you wear on your belt or in your pocket or something.
He responded with thought and humour. Are you *sure* he's a Slashdot reader?
Neal's last answer about the book industry makes a point that the Music industry has been missing, and more to the point the "downloadable music" industry is missing. The internet will not destroy the music industry because they do more than make and distribute CDs. They promote. They are the ones who get you air time on the radio stations (those playlists come from somehwere). They get the concert tours together. They get you gigs at the festivals. They make things happen that all have the end result of people buying a CD they otherwise wouldn't. That's called Marketing (cynically, it's making you buy something you don't want to).
But blogs, but user communities, but but but! you say!
The average person on the street doesn't do all those things. If you want someone to buy your book or buy your CD you have to get to them where they live, not make them come to you. In the book industry this may be done with reviews in well read magazines and getting your book on Oprah. With music it's done through Clearchannel and MTV.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
It was like an episode of dbz, except two of my favorite authors were beating the snot out of each other instead of constipated, blonde aliens.
WACHOO~~
no
Most wireless mikes I have seen on TV involve a small microphone connected to a much larger powerpack/tranmitter which is cliped to the body somehow.
So it is pretty easy to whirl one of those if you keep hold of the box bit
The "militia" clause has been a long-time issue of contention, and it is widely believed that courts in the U.S. don't have any issues with gun control (many cities have very strict gun ordinances which are very often violated) as the 2nd Amendment applies to, as you say, serving in the National Guard. The only people who seem to believe that the 2nd Amendment outlaws gun control laws are members of the NRA, who are a group with a cause rather than people with official standing.
With that said, I think there is a larger issue here than only th people in the U.S. who want to run around with guns as they see fit. If the 2nd Amendment is held to not mean much of anything with regard to enabling gun ownership, perhaps all of the other amendments could be just as readily dismissed. The First Amendment has been given an expansive and broad interpretation while the 2nd Amendment has been given the narrowest of interpretations -- what is to keep it that way?
IANACS (I am not a constitutional scholar) but let me offer my take on the 2nd Amendment. The Militia historically refered to the adult (male) citizenry who would be expected to take up arms to defend the Republic, not to the Texas Air National Guard or related institutions. A well-regulated Militia refers to those adult males having sufficient training with arms that they know how to shoot straight. There are historical precedents. You haven't told us what part of the EU you hail from, but every adult male Swiss is required to have not only a gun, but something quite capable like an H-K stashed away in their closet. They don't get to keep the ammunition, but they are required to have that automatic weapon at the ready. Going back in time, there were English kings who required the male citizenry to able to shoot a cross bow, the H-K of its day in terms of capabilities. The training to handle a cross bow is no small undertaking.
So, the intent of the 2nd amendment is that all adult males in good standing be not restricted in owning, acquiring, and practicing with the type of firearms necessary to acquire good shooting skills. Can we bar felons from guns? We bar them from voting. Can we restrict the kind of gun? In my opinion, we can restrict the type of gun to what is reasonable to use in training and practicing shooting skills. Can we restrict where you can take a gun? Why not -- the 2nd Amendment protects the right to own guns, not the right to wave them around. Is the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment important to people who want nothing to do with guns? Yes, because then all of the other amendments are in peril.
He didn't have to answer the one about his nick on Slashdot :(
...except for the lame ending.
My bad, I meant long bow, not cross bow.
by the antenna?
-- Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations?
Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of SF is shit. Well, >99% of software is.
Best Slashdot Co
The small directional microphone which typically clips on to a lapel or the like is connected via a wire to a transmission device (aka mic pack) that is generally fastened to the belt in the center of the back.
The speaker may move around freely and is not tethered to a base. Hence the wirelessness of the wireless mic.
When removed, a wireless mic is good for both "whirling" and / or "twirling". The determinant of the aforementioned action is often one's mood or the presence of evil doers.
Depending on the sort of person I'm aiming my book-recommendation-gun at, I sometimes use Zodiac as the payload, if the person is not a True Geek. It takes place in a modern city and keeps the sci-fi stuff to a managable level for "normal" people.
Also, its a damn good book, and short too.
The Baroque cycle is for freaks whith good wrist, to support the huge weight of its massive volumes. Snowcrash and Diamond Age are for science fiction afficionados, Cryptonomicon is for engineers and Lord of the Rings fans.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just been made aware that perfecting the Red Lotus incantations would not suffice to bring down my target... how foolish I've been. Back to the dojo!
You can't take the sky from me...
is an art at the best. It's better to use an empirical methodology involving standoffs with the Treasury Department. The rest of us will take note of the results of your experimentation.
How do you "whirl a wireless mike"?
I refer you to this site for visual aides.
You can't take the sky from me...
The best "self-defense means" when you are surrounded by a hundred million people of some other culture is to avoid dangerous places and figure out some way to get along with the folks around you.
I have a feeling he wasn't talking about tourism...
It seems appropriate here, in a thread about/by Neal S., maaestro of the historical novel, to examine some of the history around the Second Amendment and how well it applies to the modern day.
(Quick point - after reading the Baroque Cycle, go re-read Crypto. Many suprises abound!)
OK then. At the time the Second Amendment was penned:
1) There was no such thing as a representative democratic republic. Governments were monarchies or oligarchies of one sort or another, and the common people had little or no say in the mechanisms of government. Government was something that _happened to you_ rather something that you _participated in_
As such, the only real way to deal with a tyrrany was violent revolution.
In the modern day, there exist elections. If you want to get rid of the government of the day, you are given regular opportunities to do so - in the US, one is coming up very quickly, and I rather expect to see one government removed and another installed in its place.
The requirement for violent revolution is pretty much past - one might even claim that the success of the American Revolution and the democratic republic it established is the _direct cause_ of violent revolution being made obsolete as a tool of political science.
2) The standard infantry arm of the day was the smoothbore musket - smoothbore, because it allowed for greater rates of fire than a rifled musket (the rifling makes it tough to ram the ball home)
Smoothbore muskets project great force to a reasonable distance, but the individual accuracy of the weapon suffers quite a bit compared to a rifle. Attempting to hit an individual with an aimed shot at any distance other than point-blank is wasted effort.
In order to make smoothbores work, you need to collect a bunch of them into a group and fire en masse. While individuals cannot hit individuals, a mass firing crates a wall of fast-moving lead roughly the width of the frontage of the firing unit and roughly 10 feet high. Anything occupying this space has a very high probability of being struck. Increase the rate of fire (as you can with a smoothbore) and the probability of being struck rises proportionately.
Yes, you can get good results using irregulars/skirmishers with rifles, who gain accuracy (and with it, effectiveness) at the cost of a slower rate of fire. That slow ROF though, means that your rifled skirmishers are unable to hold ground in the face of a massed formation of smoothbores. They are harrassing troops, not war-winners.
That the American Revolutionary Army, being composed primarily of skirmishers, defeated the British regular army, speaks more to the amount of strategic value placed on America by the British than to the superiority of the rifle over the massed formation. Note that in the American Civil War 100 years later (ish) it was massed formation vs massed formation.
The point of all that? If you're going to overthrow a government by strength of arms, and assuming that government actually intends to stick it out and fight (as one would assume any home-grown American government would) you're going to need a lot of muskets concentrated in one place. A LOT of muskets.
The flip side? A lone nutcase with a musket can't cause all that much damage.
Now then, fast forward to today. A modern assault rifle is accurate out to 600m (as in, at 600m I assume that a single aimed shot will hit its target) The rate of fire of a good shot is about 2 aimed shots per 3 seconds. A typical magazine holds 30 rounds, and the normal battle load is between 5 to as many as 12 magazines.
A single modern rifleman - or anybody equipped with a modern battle rifle - carries more firepower than a typical 18th century regiment.
Give that rifleman a modern LMG (a belt-fed, portable weapon like the Minimi) And you double his firepower yet again.
Want to trade ROF for distance? Modern sniper rifles have ranges measured in KILOMETRES (a Canadian sniper scored a kill at 2400m in Afgan
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
From my viewpoint and reading of the U.S. Constitution, absolutely!
Now at the same time, the possession of a nuclear warhead would require you to file environment impact statements if you are going to store it in your basement, and the 10000% federal excise tax on its purchase may also discourage you from actually purchasing it, considering that you would have to purchase components through interstate trade.
Also, if that same said bomb gets used you would be financially liable for the damage done by that same device, and subject to criminal prosecution if you kill anybody. Trafficing in the sale of a nuke to terrorist organizations may also be a capital crime.
The point is that while specifically "congress may make no law prohibiting..." there still are ways to regulate the possession of nukes by private individuals, even if ultimately Wm. H. Gates III is the only citizen that could afford to buy one.
sounds like a super troll to me
did you forget to take your meds?
Actually, I'm going to step further out and say that I love intelligent people.
I guess, more accurately, I love the fact that there are intelligent people in the world.
Note to Cmdr Taco, et. al.: We need more writing like this on here. Do what you can to make that happen. Thanks. Carry on.
Of course, no answer to my question re: the strong connections between Stephenson's work and Pynchon's. Let's do a quick comparison chart:
Mason & Dixon
The Baroque Cycle
I think I could write up a similar chart about Gravity's Rainbow and Cryptonomicon.
I wish Stephenson had answered some questions about this. This isn't intended as trolling, it's just that very few people have read the Pynchon books so most people may not be aware of the strong connections between these two authors.
is pretty good then?
No one has ever accused Neal of being to concise. :D
before anyone gets in a huff. that's what I like about his writing, Barouqe Cycle excluded of course.
Interesting to note that his definition of a Beowulf Writer is essentially a writer that is supported by what might be described as a Beowulf Cluster of Fans.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
How does he pronounce his name?
I don't recall any characters in Neal's novels with names like Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck.
That was 5 pages of skillful character-building. He laid out a side of Randy Waterhouse that all geeks will recognize instantly, and which (maybe) might be accessible to ordinary readers too..!
If all you noticed was 5 pages of eating cereal, then Stephenson did an even better job than I thought =)
There are also wireless dynamic mics, which are one piece. Not whirlable.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
what neal doesn't address and what drives me nuts is the fact that science fiction is never taught in schools. there are many bad science fiction novels but there are many good ones as well with themes relating to racism or love or whatever you want. everything in school is either from novels that are hundreds of years old or sanitized politically correct and therefore incredibly boring modern works about tribesmen in africa. either way its difficult to get young students interested in reading with literature that they can't relate to. students should explore new things, so i'm not saying everything should be science fiction, but if we want our kids to be interested in reading, give them something they want to read!
that I just spent a good half hour reading your replies and some of the comments. It's been a long time since I posted, but your interview was thought provoking and entertaining. Thanks, you made my day.
You know, ever since I read "Islands in the Net" I suspected that Sterling was building a guerilla army somewhere in Africa. I had no notion he might go the WMD route, though.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
That may be oft-repeated, but I don't care who might have believed it, I just don't buy it.
:-/
I mean, Jefferson also believed in slavery, and was a slave owner. This is not to rag on him, but it does point out that their oppinions are hardly infallable, and I *can* tell you that the courts aren't going to buy that explanation. If anything, you'll wind up like McVeigh & co.--that was their reasoning (if indeed it can be called such) in what they did, after all.
When no less a conservative and no less a gun enthusiast than the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Rhenquest, comes out and says your rationale is rediculous, you *might* want to rethink it.
The right to bear arms, after all, is subservient to our right to LIFE, liberty and the persuit of happiness. You may notice "LIFE" being at the top of that list.
But what am I talking about? Nobody seems to care who they kill anymore, so long as they can rationalize those people as being somehow unworthy of life. The felons (including those retarded or juvenile), terminally ill, terrorists, small (rather than larger and supposedly more intelligent) blobs of cells whatever their species, Iraqis, insurgents, the poor, people in poor African countries, anyone you disagree with strongly enough... the list goes on, and on, and on...
And more entertaining than many other serials I've eaten (metaphorically speaking)...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
While he makes the point that the Founding Fathers probably had in their minds flintlocks (and sabers, cannon, horse-cavalry) when they were thinking of the arms that the people might keep and bear, at the same time their view of the press was those with manual printing presses, paper and quill-pens, not radio, TV, high-speed automatic presses and the internet. (Remember that any successful argument limiting the scope of one article of the Bill of Rights can immediately be used in the same form against another... precedent can be a bitch.)
I would point out that the intention of the Founding Fathers was that the militia, both organized and unorganized, be equipped with such weapons as are customary for the time. (For those who won't RTFLink, the militia is every able bodied male from 17 to 45 that is a citizen or has declared their intention to become one, plus any female that have joined an organized militia, state or national. Religious conscientious objectors are excused from combat duty, and may be assigned noncombatant roles. Still on the books and in effect... if you're American and male, you're a militiaman.) In order to avoid having an standing army in peace-time, the militia would be relied upon to handle defence against an aggressor until an army could be raised. Furthermore, in order that the standing army not be used as an instrument of oppression after it is raised, the militia would be armed alike to the standing army. Indeed, a few years after the Constitution was established, the Militia Act of 1792 was established requiring all men that could afford it to procure a musket, bayonet, shot, powder and associated gear (i.e. the "assault weapons" of the time). Sunday mornings were spent in worship, exercising their hard earned rights; Sunday afternoon were spent at the local firing range, practicing in order to defend those rights.
I think it is clear that the intention of the Founding Fathers was very clear: if the military can have it, the people can have it. It does not, however, follow that the government shall provide it to any individual of the people. Domestic builders of tanks are under contract with clauses to provide them only to the government, so you'll have to build your own, and you can't import them. Want hacking tools? Well, the military doesn't have to give you theirs, but you can write your own.
So the question posed by arashiakari is interesting: if the government is to classify something as an "arm", then they may not infringe the right of the people to keep and "bear" it, even if it is a Perl script, but they don't have to make it easy to acquire. Which does not mean that you can export it, which is where I think the source of the question came from (i.e. the prohibition on the export of cryptographic devices under their classification as a "munition").
When one is unclear as to the intention of the Founding Fathers, the Internet can bring you some of their insight in the form of the Federalist Papers, thanks to Project Gutenberg.
Canadians can do that without even trying :P
We're lucky he responded to us with wit and humor... he sounds really dangerous when he gets pissed off.
Assuming I am under contract to produce code on a deadline, and I read your account of combat with Gibson, and snorted coffee all over my keyboard, rendering my computer inoperable and causing me to miss my contractual deadline, can I sue you for tortious interference?
Hmmmmm....
And don't forget that every time he describes the scene, a few dozen new bowls of cereal are introduced so that eventually you have a ton of interreleated cereal bowls of which the majority are getting stale because he only writes about the first and last ones...
Not bad, "Neal" (real name?), not bad at all. Have you considered writing for publication?
and some people shouldn't write at all!
You know, like critics.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Yep. ala Word vs. Word Perfect, IE vs. Navigator, and Excel vs. Lotus (well MicroSoft was the third mouse in that case, after Borland).
Finding flaws in a master's work is strangely satisfying.
"...the third Sung group, which eventually to the collapse of the building's roof..."
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
money and the way it works is going to be a constant, not a variable
Interestingly enough, the constancy of money's function is a direct consequence of it's essential variability, that is, it's inherent nature as an abstract index (of the perceived relative value of goods & services).
Shit man, I don't even know how long I've been married! (Yep- firefight happened on my wedding night. Even worse crime? fucking cabbie tried to rip me off (North Charles st vs South Charles! What do I look like? A fucking Rube? NO TIP! ))
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This is effectively Gregory Nagy's (and others') account of how we came to have the epic poetry transmitted to us under the name of Homer. (One interesting phenomenon, of many, in all this, is that Homer treats this very theme in the Odyssey, where he has Odysseus "sing for his dinner.") One small difference is that "official" patronage was crucial for making the transition from an oral tradition to a written one: the Athenian "tyrant" Peisistratus commissioned a definitive written version to be assembled from various rhapsodes' performances. To this end, he provided funding for contests at which the poems were sung.
If you want to know more, check out Nagy's books "Poetry as Performance" or "The Best of the Achaeans."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
my article published concerning enhanced search and cross-referencing's ability to promote niche and over throw the media machine. In response to Wired's Niche article and details the social impacts of growing niche markets.
After all, if a professor produces 10 grad students during a 30-40 year career, only one of them can get his job. Worse yet, English professors are more likely to be replaced after retirement by several part-time adjuncts rather than by another full time professor. All the effort of getting a PhD, then years of non-tenure track jobs, is a taking a considerable risk with a decade or more of your life on the chance of getting an academic job.
You may have a better chance of becoming an academic making the $20,000 a year a starting English prof makes in many universities than you do of being a writer who makes that much, but I'm not sure the chances are that much better and taking a chance at being a writer doesn't take the decade of time that taking a chance at being an English professor does.
nothing suspicious about that at all. get yours here.
I'm glad Neal didn't beg off replying to a request for a list of books that he's recently read. Anyone in a postition to notice if there is a slashdot effect in the world of print? Will the servers (publishers) experience lag?
---And as for publishers. Well, that seems to have been conveniently skipped over. I mean I happen to have some small publishers in my family and in my experience they're first and foremost precisely about changing books for money and that role is indeed quite threatened by the Net---
Actually, publishers make a lot more money selling books directly to customers, rather than going through a reseller like Amazon or a book store. The net is wonderful for this, and Google's new Print function may drive even more buyers to go directly to a publisher's site. A publisher can sell a book to a buyer at a 10% discount and make more money than selling the same book to Amazon for a 25% discount. And the buyer gets the book for 10% less than on Amazon.
An open eye is important, but an open mind and brain is more important. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you find you're making friends much faster than you expect, they might not be friends. If you feel out of place, you probably look out of place, etc.
He's also right about getting along with the folks around you. Chances are, you'll always stand out, but if you make an effort to fit in it will help. For example, in many places, people wear long pants even when it's very hot out. If you wear shorts, you stand out, and you *look* like a tourist -- a tourist is a target. If you wear long pants, you may still look like a tourist, but you may be mistaken for a tourist who has been around for long enough that he won't fall for the scams.
Hey! If my GF can't cross stitch anymore, she'll drag me back up to the bedroom. Please oh please don't make her do that- Vote to allow "Cross Stitching" for personal use only. If you don't, I don't know how my prostate will hold up...
*please note needles and scissors should still be banned from planes, wheras sharp metal pens and tubes of metallic epoxy should be allowed
Read it again. He thinks it isn't fair that the people doing "Great Literature" don't make any money. It's a perfectly fine system where SF is concerned.
It's funny that Apple insists on selling mice with a single button and then their browser requires a 2-key combination to do one of the most common tasks. Try Opera - everyone else is simply copying it (and, most of the time, getting it horribly wrong).
Amazing that the booksellers see stephansen as attracting 18-35 males, When my introduction to and discussions about his writing have always been between 35- women!.. I recommend stephansen to SF readers from behind the checkout counter, but the only people who have come back to me have been the women... This news is encouraging as the 18-35 male group was also given credit for electing in the current CA. gov. TJ
The above poster's remark is truly deluded.
I'm a fiction writer who works in industry. I love teaching and have strong credentials (taught at prestigious colleges both here and abroad).
We may bemoan the type of writer who works in (and depends on) academia, but academic opportunities are sadly so rare in the humanities that only a tiny fraction of talented writers can actually obtain academic employment. (Demand is different in engineering and computer science; don't assume that the longtime Petrarch scholar/poet will have a reasonable chance of finding a job in business).
It takes an incredible leap of faith for literary types to "pay their dues" for 10-15 years in adjunct teaching jobs while waiting for a professor to pass away. I for one was not willing to risk it.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
I heard that he wrote this interview by first carving it into a limestone tablet using a sharp piece of flint. Then he transcribed that using a feather and cow's blood on paper that he creted himself from a tree which he gnawed down with his very own teeth. From that, blindfolded, he typed it into an email using only his toes and sent it in.
But it is a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel.
Congratulations, Neal! You can now have polygamous sex with every woman and man you can find, including but not limited to your redheaded, barely-pubescent, twin female clones! And your mother!
You must be so proud.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Contrary to NS, I think there is a place for reviewers to pronounce a writer arrogant. This is when the writing lacks clarity. Or brevity.
Do I think NS is unclear or verbose? I can't say. I don't have the patience to figure his writing out.
Slashdot responses get elevated scores simply for more words (among other things). This does not promote brevity. But I could be old skuul.
C'mon Neal...you should know slashdotters better than that. We don't hit the back button, we use mouse gestures.
C'mon, dude...you should know slashdotters better than that. We can't use mouse gestures, because we have carpal tunnel syndrom.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I don't know how you can say that about Zombocom. You can do anything at Zombocom. The only limit is yourself.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
That's the *only* bit that you find to question? :-)
His words may have been big, but they said exactly what he meant. They also probably said it in fewer words than if he'd used smaller, less precise words. In fact, this paragraph of mine should be a counter example :P
This is in stark contrast to Jesse Jackson. To hear him is to hear a random selection of big words, some of which aren't even real words.
/Not for internal use/
"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. Well, I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!" - Ned Flanders
"I find the defendant not guilty. As for Science vs Religion, I'm issuing a restraining order. Religion must stay 500 yards from Science at all times." - Judge Snyder
Spine World
That is seriously fucked up. Nice to see some new and innovative trolling..
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I think we should start a new urban myth around this line (akin to the tales such as the Nova not selling well in Mexico). Let's hope that the end result of their work is something really ugly, then we can tell everyone about a conversation that must have gone like this:
Mr. X: I want to develop a crewed, suborbital launch system.
Mr. Y: No worries there! We can make it as crude as you like.
..wayne..
Wotcher,
/Cities of the Red Night/ more than any other text.
If one would want to pursue a lit-crit bent inre NS, suggestion: compare in general to WS Burroughs in his "Boy's own adventure" mode. Particularly
NS's style has alot of WSB's cut-up technique applied. And, in terms of criticism, usually doesn't apply sufficient editing from a "literary novel" point of view. NS probably wont become cannon, unlike WSB, but WSB was aiming at an entirely different audience.
Actually, what's interesting about money is that it doesn't seem to change that much at all. It became fantastically sophisticated hundreds of years ago... people were engaging in financial manipulations that seem quite modern in their sophistication... So if I had to take a wild guess---and believe me, it is a wild guess---I'd say that money and the way it works is going to be a constant, not a variable.
One word: derivatives. I'm not talking options, which have been around a long, long time, 1500s at least.
Consider this: usually when you place a bet with a bookie or the card dealer, you're betting on the appearance of a certain outcome. When you buy equities, you're hoping for a rise in price (and maybe a dividend distribution, but that's old-skool.)
Today, you can make a bet with your bookie (erm, trader) that a certain market index or rate is going to follow certain pattern during a period of time. That pattern is defined by upper and lower bounds, and it can change up or down, but generally the spread (difference between the bounds) stays the same (on some instruments it can vary.)
To place this bet and win, you need to be at least as smart at math and market(s) in question as the quantitative analyst (usually with a PhD, in physics, engineering or math) who's engineering the other side of that bet.
There's infamous case of the former treasurer of Orange County, Calif., Robert Citron, where he laid a billion in taxpayer dollars on the table and lost it all.
The underlying financial instruments in these bets is generally not an equity, but something that relates to the price of an equity (or option, etc.) There's no value traded, necessarily, usually; instead, these bets are placed as contingencies or hedges (generally.)
Anyway, my point is that money is leveraged in huge mountainfuls these days, and one of the outcomes is that the value of your home currency is constantly decreasing in value, much faster than prior to the advent of sophisticated markets. The cost for delivering water to your tap, or an apple to your grocer, is relatively fixed in terms of the underlying infrastructure and all. But one of the forces behind costs that keep spiraling up is currency values declining due to the huge forces that affect value these days.
That is what's different from centuries ago. Maybe that wasn't so clear, but it's worth checking out. It's a global scam, no less.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
this may sound weird, but i think the roughcut hardcover edition of the baroque cycle books are physically the nicest books i've ever held. everything from the paper texture and weight to how easily the books sit flat on a table while open.
People have seen comparisons to Pynchon (Lot 49 particularly) in William Gibson novels as well. He blogs about it here, if you're interested. Gibson says he thinks it's to do with the abrupt endings, which apply to Stephenson as well (more so, really).
My take is that cyberpunk is an outgrowth of the new wave, and the new wave placed value on non-realistic Pynchon, Kafka etc. (Norman Spinrad talks about this a bit in his book Science Fiction In The Real World).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
"By "run out" he means "Open a new browser window and type 'amazon'"."
Or go to Usenet, and download.
"6) storygramming -by Doc Ruby
You programmed computers before you wrote novels. Greg Egan shares that hyphenated career, and continues to illustrate his stories with Java applets [netspace.net.au]. Do you still program, possibly targeting the same subjects with your word processor as your compiler?
As _Snow Crash_ was originally designed as an interactive game, and such landmarks as _Myst_ have regenerated as (usually bad) novels, do you see the arrival of a truly multimedia story, delivered simultaneously in multiple media, anytime soon? By whom, specifically or generally? "
I recommend reading "Joystick Nation by J.C. Herz" Page 150-151. Myst isn't a novel, so much as it is "Virtual Tourism".
Was recently showcased in Zoetrope All-Story magazine, and lucky for us, is actually published on their web site.
you had me at #!
I guess I need to start reading more. I've never even heard of this guy. First thing tomorrow I'm gonna get one of his books from the library. The answers he gave were very well written and well thought out. If his books are anything like that, I'm sold.
Seems like The Nimrod Flip-Out, by Etgar Keret, is in the net.t ory&story_id=229
http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_s
Man, I don't BELIEVE that I missed Matt Ruff's new book release.
For those who don't know him, go find Fool on the Hill. NOW!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
The novel is a very new form of art. It was unthinkable until the invention of printing and impractical until a significant fraction of the population became literate. But when the conditions were right, it suddenly became huge.
What does he consider "new" or "art?"
The "Hyakumanto Darani" was a printed document reproduced in Japan in the 760s. The Tale of Genji was released around 1010. That's almost a millenium ago. Gutenberg demonstrated movable type in 1448. New compared to cave paintings? Not really, but compared to the numerous contemporary art forms, printed novels are pretty old hat.
Military defense is a job usually given to a designated part of society.
Some U.S. states have an old law on the books (spottily enforced at best) stating that every able-bodied adult male citizen is part of the state militia.
Besides, to educate people, you often have to give them books. To defend people, you don't need to give them weapons -- that's why you're defending them.
Why do we educate people? Shouldn't we be educating them to defend themselves?
I have yet to pick up one of mr Stephenson's books, (have made note to self to pick some up next shop) but on the subject of poor endings, may i recommend anything by Iain M Banks.
I don't see his name floated on slashdot that often, so i suspect he isn't quite as big in the states as perhaps he deserves to be.
his Culture novels are a joy to read, and his story telling is state of the art. His books are strong throughout, and are crafted as a whole, none of the 90% syndrome that quite a lot of other science fiction i've read suffers from.
he has a rare talent for pacing and suprise. He is particuarly fond of starting a story in the middle, showing the history at the same time as advancing the plot, and of course it is only when we discover exactly how the path began, that we fully appreciate where the plot has ended up (quite often in a radically different place than we had assumed).
I was at that reading at UW's Kane Hall, and Stephenson's description isn't quite like I remember it...
For one thing it was no stalemate; Gibson definately kicked his ass. Secondly Stephenson didn't even mention the six hours he spent tied to the Fremont Troll while Gibson chain-smoked and burned him with the cigs.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
There might be some superficial similarities with Pynchon (yes, I'm a fan of his...) but I think Neal reminds me more of Victor Hugo. Long, luscious, convoluted plots; vast tracts of exposition (Les Miserables spends about 100 pages on the background to the Battle of Waterloo and another 50 pages on conditions in a Parisian convent at the turn of the 19th Century); and make-you-smile coincidence at every turn of the page. Hugo's work was the ultimate Beowulf writing (most of Paris turned out on for Hugo's funeral), but would anyone dare to claim that Hugo doesn't belong in the pantheon of literary grea I'm half way through The Confusion. The Baroque Cycle is a masterpiece. Popular or not.
Start with Cryptonomicon; it is brilliant. I had Neal sign a paperback at USENIX 2003. I felt like a heel, having him sign a paperback, but... it's an incredible read.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
When did they thaw out Robert Heinlein?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If it's not too late for moderation, the parent is so ignorant I can only wonder how it was modded up at all unless there is a sea of profound ignorance out there.
Most moans about Neal's endings are primarily about the bits the moaners wanted to hear about and didn't, much like parent. Somehow parent expects a writer to expound on the state of the publishing industry, something that is extremely rare to hear from writers for some very good reasons (hint: career).
Parent doesn't understand the economics of bookshops although parent claims to have spent hours in one doing something mysterious and point to relatives who also apparently don't understand the economics of bookshops. This is apparently Neal's fault too.
Parent has obviously not read the Baroque Cycle or would have realized it is in part about the point at which in Western civilization money went from essentially tangible to essentially intangible. Apart from suggesting a study of economics, I'm not sure what parent expects of money beyond an intangible glue, perhaps credit-chip implants. What would be so original about that?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Against a government that can maintain complete air and space superiority, control all major transportation lines, and airlift things around small pockets of isolated resistance, what sort of weapons WOULD be sufficient to overthrow it?
Lots of shoulder-fired missiles would only be the smallest start for a rebellion against a government with air superiority. And last I checked shoulder-fired missiles weren't covered under what any private citizen could own. Too useful to terrorists, you know.
"This is not the place to parse it out, but the key thing they have in common is the idea of a rapture, in which some chosen humans will be taken up and made one with the infinite while others will be left behind."
This is perhaps not the place to parse out a reply, but rapture is a theological creation with comparatively little basis in the Bible. And unless I'm very wrong, the idea of rapture comes mainly from the other apocalyptic texts in the bible.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I hope you're talkin' "Windows ME"-style "upgrade" here.
If not...holy shit.
I wonder if Herr Stephenson has been reading X/1999 lately...
It's the new "boxers or briefs".
Liberty uber alles.
Actually, I think it (money and money-relationships) recently changed and could therefore change again.
Until only a few years ago, owning a large amount of money was not a stable position. Typically, money had to be paid to protect money - negative interest. If you didn't pay someone to protect your money, it would be more likely to be stolen - still negative. Money had to be used just to keep it.
With the abstraction of money into just numbers, and the advent of banks which invest their customers' money, we have the opposite effect. Money is not easily stolen, is easily protected, and, crucially, it grows.
It strikes me that this is an enormous change that will have ramifications for generations... the rich (above some threshold) will now get richer by doing nothing at all, where previously they had to continue making money in order to stay in the same place.
Comments? Neal?
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Well, sure that much is obvious, anybody can see that. I mean, hell, I said as much to myself over coffee this morning, but that's the kind of thinking that could potentially lead us into a mental cul-de-sac, unless we look at the details within the context of the big picture. Sure the trees are important, but don't forget about the forest.
Oops, look at the time, I have another meeting I need to get to. Why don't you write all this up and send it to everybody as a summary, or better yet, just send it to me and I'll pass it along at the board meeting next week.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
As for the overweight thing, as I understand it, we're pretty bad on average (fast food society and all), but I've noticed that most of this seems to be either people mildly obese (carrying only 20-30 extra pounds, usually in the form of a belly) or the small set of extremely morbid cases where their thighs overlap their knees. *shrug* Most people I know are actually well within weight guidelines.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Like the saying goes, "Violence may be a matter of last resort, but it is a valid choice and the only one some people will listen to."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
> Do you carry any sort of self-defense means in some places, and if so What and Where?
Only an American would ask this question.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Funny you should say that... .edu. Five have IP addresses that do not resolve (I'm sure that's a violation of RFC something-or-other)
About a week ago, the link in my sig was a relevant to a discussion, so I pointed this out, and lo, the site's traffic went up by c.1000%.
The site is....well, go and have a look and you'll see. The point is, I build and admin the site, so I have access to the logs. And it's always nice to see a traffic spike. It's something you can spend time admiring. And analysing.
F'rinstance, Slashdotters come from all over the World, from (in this case) Japan to Finland, but of those leaving trails in this log, about half are at college/university in the US, and have domains ending in
The (semi-)relevant bit, however, is that over 70% of accesses were by non-IE browsers, with Mozilla at the top of the list. I guess that's what happens when Microsoft's own staff recommend it.
P.S. Kudos to the Slashdotter surfing from a WAP-phone in Holland :)
There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
* * *
To read too many books is harmful.
We can learn what we did not know. We are not only good at destroying the old world, we are also good at building the new.
Taxes prevent this to some degree. Everytime the money changes hands it is taxed, and death forces the change of hands every generation. Also, the growth may be taxed depending on the classification of the money and how it grows.
Also, much wealth is held as property that can be taxed locally.
So, the rich are paying the government to protect their money.
As the founding partner of The Brewer's Art I have to take issue with this. Never in the 8 years we have been open has there been a firefight at our place (although a knife was drawn as part of a fistfight some years ago). When did this supposedly happen? Neil, come by for a beer, and if you are really worried, bring that flintlock, ha ha...
OTOH, code clearly is considered a weapon from a legal POV - you need an export license for some kinds of cryptography software.
[1] Yes, I know there are/were flintlock, muzzle loading rifles e.g. the Baker. You get my point though.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Books by Neal Stephenson at Amazon
Attention Slashbots: Yes, that is an affiliate link. That doesn't mean it isn't useful for people!