Most nations and peoples in the world were far worse at the 20th century's end than at the beginning. To use the cliched phrase, The rich got richer, and the poor got poorer.
You're just wrong. For one thing, life expentancies are way higher in virtually every nation now than in 1900. A major reason for that is the success in fighting diseases like smallpox.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, colonialism was alive and kicking in Africa and Asia. Maybe some of those post-colonial nations were left pretty disfunctional but at least they're free to plot their own courses.
Forget that "poor getting poorer" stuff. Hundreds of millions of people are probably not really better off than their ancestors were 100 years ago but it's also the case that for them to be any more poor they'd have to be dead. I've already explained how there's a lot less dying going on. Of course clean water is still an issue, that only makes them just as poor as before in that regard. Sure, the gap between the richest nations/people and the poorest nations/people is larger but the poorest are still better off than they were 100 years ago. The problem is not that our advances have done nothing for the poor but that they have not done enough.
I agree that we shouldn't be all "rah rah" about the 20th century. We should not overlook the continuing problems or the new ones the century brought but I strongly disagree with the statement I quoted.
I disagree with some of the Sterling's premises and conclusions but I approve of a lot of his proposals and attitude. As for his prose style, maybe he throws around too many french phrases, but the style should be easily understood by anyone as literate as a college graduate. Compared to other things the manifesto's audience probably reads, this is practially baby talk (not that that makes those other works better). Besides, there's nothing wrong with having to work a little to understand something, especially a manifesto. Maybe it does bark more than bite but being very familiar with Sterling's work, I know he already lives some of what he is espousing.
My first thought was a Beanie Baby worth $100K, like that million dollar bra from Victoria's Secret. Y'know the people have spoken and told the company to keep making them.
How about this: someone who tries to "improve" the algorithms gets them wrong but it finishes blocks faster and has a cool display that syncs with MP3s. The client becomes popular and SETI@Home is left with gigs of data which needs to be re-processed. Worse, the bad data may not be distinguishable from the good data so it's all ruined.
This is a scientific experiment. It's not a race, it's not a demonstration of the power of computers or computer communities.
Re:Stephenson vs. Sterling
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 1
I was also dissapointed by the Sterling interview and can also only partially blame the questions. I would definitely like to have a crack at interview questions for Stephenson too.
I've read just about everything by both these guys. I think Sterling still rates as my favorite, thanks to books like Schismatrix (short story collection), and Islands in the Net but his last two novels, Holy Fire and Distraction, just didn't have the head-kick density of previous stuff. Distraction, which has to do with near-future politics, owes a debt to Stephenson's Interface (co-written under the pseudonym Stephen Bury). And Cryptonomicon was a great way for Stephenson to make up for the flaws of The Diamond Age.
Sterling still a lot of fight in him, as demonstrated in the "Deep Eddy" short stories. If more people knew about 'spex, maybe more people would like Sterling.
Aw, why choose? I like them both.
I guess Stephenson is better known by the Slashdot crowd because of Snow Crash and more specifically the Metaverse. Gibson made cyberspace but Sterling has never really taken up the jacking-in thing, he's kept it meaty.
Sure, Sterling wrote Hacker Crackdown and gave it away but I don't think any of the books in that genre were truly popular and at this point it's old news. It mostly takes place when? 1990? '91? I'm guessing most/.ers didn't even have pubes then. It was a good book about that time but law enforcement has gotten a lot better at this stuff which is both good and bad. The worse problems have moved up the government food chain, especially the legislative branch.
I definitely recommend Interface, especially if you like Zodiac. If you're following excellent suggestions like reading Shockwave Rider, you have better things to do with your time than read The Cobweb, It's not bad but not really good either. Unless you have a large book-buying budget, don't spend money on reading The Big U. It's zany and juvenile so there is some funny stuff in it. The story arc will feel familiar.
In the US, state district court judges are often elected positions or have a single elected judge which oversees appointed judges. I believe this varies depending upon a state's constitution. Here's an example county: Travis County District Courts.
I think federal district court judges are not elected so "apocalypse's" comments are less applicable.
Does anyone else remember the online promotion for Johnny Mnemonic? It turned out to be a pretty crappy movie but the online contest was fun. It was basically a net scavenger hunt which was a popular activity at the time but they also re-used the 3D cyberspace graphics from the movie. You could "navigate" in 6 directions (left, right, forward, back, up, down) and also turn to face in the different directions. It would load a new page with a gif of the view from that cell of the "space." It was a part of the scavenger hunt to navigate it to find some clues. I don't remember how big it was, I think it had a 0,0,0 point then +6 and -6 in each direction. That would be 13 cubed times 6, 1 for each way you could face in each cell. That's 13,182 gifs which sounds about right.
Not every moment of their time is filmed. How do you know if they read the books? So what if they didn't? I *intend* to do all kinds of things but fail to.
Weapons? I never took more than a pocket knife camping. Where do you camp? Kosovo?
Did Mike really have control of himself when he was in the corner? Aren't there lots of examples of people doing *anything* when their lives are threatened?
So you think you heard Josh, so did they. But was it Josh?
"Lots of fun"? Uh, in a really, really sick way I guess. I also recommend Man Bites Dog to those that can stomach it (it's just a movie, it's just a movie, it's just a movie) but it replaced "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" as the most disturbing movie I've ever seen.
I don't know that they're really going to sue. One of the Blair Witch people did a daily diary for IndieWire and sat in front of some of the The Last Broadcast people on the plane over. He didn't mention any weirdness about it.
AIM is popular because 1)It's built into AOL which is itself popular 2)bundled with other software like Netscape Communicator 3)It's pretty and easy to use (unlike IRC software) 4)It's free
If they charge for access to the servers people will either switch to AIM-alike servers which are free or switch to a whole new instant messenger system. There is too much competition in the category trying to advertise their way to riches for AOL to go another way.
Maybe I should pick up Cryptonomicon, I've been scouring garage sales for the Big U once I realized how much it was worh (I read my roommates copy in college, thought it was mildly amusing but not earth shattering).
When I worked at UT@Austin it was in a research library (books aren't checked out). Apparently a former sci fi club at UT disbanded or something and all their books ended up in this place. I read The Big U there. They also had 1st editions of all of Bruce Sterling's stuff (natch) but I never got around to reading The Artifical Kid, the only Sterling book I haven't read and don't own (yes, I have Involution Ocean in paperback; not so hot).
In "Snow Crash", we had Hiro Protagonist. In "Crypto", we have Goto Dengo.
I apologize for being dense but what's so funny about "Goto Dengo"? I can see reading his family name as being like the BASIC instruction GOTO but that's not too funny. "Hiro Protagonist" is pretty funny and "Y.T." funny but less so.
In Cryptonomicon was amused by Randy's asumptions about the address root@eruditorium.org.
First, let me say I thought this was an excellent review and fully agree with the 10/10. I seem to have liked Snow Crash more completely than others but I'd already read The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind so I may have been more prepared for the chunks that get into that stuff.
If you like Stephenson's stuff you might want to check out the two books he's written with J. Frederick George (who's his uncle or something) under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. The first (and best) is Interface which is a modern day-ish thriller about electing a stroked-out politician with a computer chip in his brain as President of the United States. Their second book together is The Cobweb which takes place during the Persian Gulf War and is about Iraqs working on bio-warefare at U.S. universities. If you like Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon I recommend reading Interface. The Cobweb isn't terrible but there are better things to read.
I'm really glad that Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller was reprinted after Snow Crash's success because I really enjoyed it. I've also read Stephenson's first book, The Big U, which is pretty silly but if you enjoy Stephenson's style you might look for it at your local library. It's out of print and not worth the effort of tracking it down.
Of course there are different levels of knowledge. Your comment about their medium being data, not computers, is well taken. I think a CS student does need a good dose of that kind of thing but frankly some of what was described sounded pretty hard. If every CS student coming out is a highfalutin' Information Engineer, who's going to produce the grunt programmers?
My point is that I think undergraduate work should be broad (including lots outside your major) and only somewhat deep. I fear that getting too deep into the discipline won't leave room for other skills that are needed as a base for life-long learning.
What constitutes a CS or IT degree can vary drastically from institution to institution. The first guy who talked about not have a C/C++ requirement and learning Excel +VBA sounded more like an IT program.
I don't think the IT program I'm going to be entering at RIT will be useless in five years. One of the concentrations is "Training and Human Performance" and is largely concerned with Human Factors. That's concerned with the important touchy-feely stuff CS people can't be bothered with while they're tweaking their algorithms for a few percentiles of performance;-) There are always new ideas but I don't think humans will become obsolete in the next five years.
Slashdot Mirror
At the beginning of the 20th Century, colonialism was alive and kicking in Africa and Asia. Maybe some of those post-colonial nations were left pretty disfunctional but at least they're free to plot their own courses.
Forget that "poor getting poorer" stuff. Hundreds of millions of people are probably not really better off than their ancestors were 100 years ago but it's also the case that for them to be any more poor they'd have to be dead. I've already explained how there's a lot less dying going on. Of course clean water is still an issue, that only makes them just as poor as before in that regard. Sure, the gap between the richest nations/people and the poorest nations/people is larger but the poorest are still better off than they were 100 years ago. The problem is not that our advances have done nothing for the poor but that they have not done enough.
I agree that we shouldn't be all "rah rah" about the 20th century. We should not overlook the continuing problems or the new ones the century brought but I strongly disagree with the statement I quoted.
I disagree with some of the Sterling's premises and conclusions but I approve of a lot of his proposals and attitude. As for his prose style, maybe he throws around too many french phrases, but the style should be easily understood by anyone as literate as a college graduate. Compared to other things the manifesto's audience probably reads, this is practially baby talk (not that that makes those other works better). Besides, there's nothing wrong with having to work a little to understand something, especially a manifesto. Maybe it does bark more than bite but being very familiar with Sterling's work, I know he already lives some of what he is espousing.
My first thought was a Beanie Baby worth $100K, like that million dollar bra from Victoria's Secret. Y'know the people have spoken and told the company to keep making them.
How about this: someone who tries to "improve" the algorithms gets them wrong but it finishes blocks faster and has a cool display that syncs with MP3s. The client becomes popular and SETI@Home is left with gigs of data which needs to be re-processed. Worse, the bad data may not be distinguishable from the good data so it's all ruined.
This is a scientific experiment. It's not a race, it's not a demonstration of the power of computers or computer communities.
I've read just about everything by both these guys. I think Sterling still rates as my favorite, thanks to books like Schismatrix (short story collection), and Islands in the Net but his last two novels, Holy Fire and Distraction, just didn't have the head-kick density of previous stuff. Distraction, which has to do with near-future politics, owes a debt to Stephenson's Interface (co-written under the pseudonym Stephen Bury). And Cryptonomicon was a great way for Stephenson to make up for the flaws of The Diamond Age.
Sterling still a lot of fight in him, as demonstrated in the "Deep Eddy" short stories. If more people knew about 'spex, maybe more people would like Sterling.
Aw, why choose? I like them both.
I guess Stephenson is better known by the Slashdot crowd because of Snow Crash and more specifically the Metaverse. Gibson made cyberspace but Sterling has never really taken up the jacking-in thing, he's kept it meaty.
Sure, Sterling wrote Hacker Crackdown and gave it away but I don't think any of the books in that genre were truly popular and at this point it's old news. It mostly takes place when? 1990? '91? I'm guessing most /.ers didn't even have pubes then. It was a good book about that time but law enforcement has gotten a lot better at this stuff which is both good and bad. The worse problems have moved up the government food chain, especially the legislative branch.
What have you read in, say, the last five years that felt like slipstream fiction to you?
I definitely recommend Interface, especially if you like Zodiac. If you're following excellent suggestions like reading Shockwave Rider, you have better things to do with your time than read The Cobweb, It's not bad but not really good either. Unless you have a large book-buying budget, don't spend money on reading The Big U. It's zany and juvenile so there is some funny stuff in it. The story arc will feel familiar.
I think federal district court judges are not elected so "apocalypse's" comments are less applicable.
1998 WIRETAP REPORT
1997 WIRETAP REPORT
This is from 1996 so it's not too current but I think it's safe to assume the amount of wiretapping hasn't gone down in the past few years. ACLU Calls on Congress To Kick Wiretap Habit...
Somone's been reading Cryptonomicon ;)
I was with you right up til you listed Event Horizon as a great horror movie. Event Horizon was crap, period.
Does anyone else remember the online promotion for Johnny Mnemonic? It turned out to be a pretty crappy movie but the online contest was fun. It was basically a net scavenger hunt which was a popular activity at the time but they also re-used the 3D cyberspace graphics from the movie. You could "navigate" in 6 directions (left, right, forward, back, up, down) and also turn to face in the different directions. It would load a new page with a gif of the view from that cell of the "space." It was a part of the scavenger hunt to navigate it to find some clues. I don't remember how big it was, I think it had a 0,0,0 point then +6 and -6 in each direction. That would be 13 cubed times 6, 1 for each way you could face in each cell. That's 13,182 gifs which sounds about right.
Not every moment of their time is filmed. How do you know if they read the books? So what if they didn't? I *intend* to do all kinds of things but fail to.
Weapons? I never took more than a pocket knife camping. Where do you camp? Kosovo?
Did Mike really have control of himself when he was in the corner? Aren't there lots of examples of people doing *anything* when their lives are threatened?
So you think you heard Josh, so did they. But was it Josh?
"Lots of fun"? Uh, in a really, really sick way I guess. I also recommend Man Bites Dog to those that can stomach it (it's just a movie, it's just a movie, it's just a movie) but it replaced "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" as the most disturbing movie I've ever seen.
I don't know that they're really going to sue. One of the Blair Witch people did a daily diary for IndieWire and sat in front of some of the The Last Broadcast people on the plane over. He didn't mention any weirdness about it.
"Dang, I left my GNU sources in my pocket and they went through the wash again!"
Mmmm, toast. Melba?
A big, rich company like Universal could afford a dynamic backend like WebObjects and protect their depths with ever-changing URLs to content.
AIM is popular because
1)It's built into AOL which is itself popular 2)bundled with other software like Netscape Communicator
3)It's pretty and easy to use (unlike IRC software)
4)It's free
If they charge for access to the servers people will either switch to AIM-alike servers which are free or switch to a whole new instant messenger system. There is too much competition in the category trying to advertise their way to riches for AOL to go another way.
When I worked at UT@Austin it was in a research library (books aren't checked out). Apparently a former sci fi club at UT disbanded or something and all their books ended up in this place. I read The Big U there. They also had 1st editions of all of Bruce Sterling's stuff (natch) but I never got around to reading The Artifical Kid, the only Sterling book I haven't read and don't own (yes, I have Involution Ocean in paperback; not so hot).
I apologize for being dense but what's so funny about "Goto Dengo"? I can see reading his family name as being like the BASIC instruction GOTO but that's not too funny. "Hiro Protagonist" is pretty funny and "Y.T." funny but less so.
In Cryptonomicon was amused by Randy's asumptions about the address root@eruditorium.org.
If you like Stephenson's stuff you might want to check out the two books he's written with J. Frederick George (who's his uncle or something) under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. The first (and best) is Interface which is a modern day-ish thriller about electing a stroked-out politician with a computer chip in his brain as President of the United States. Their second book together is The Cobweb which takes place during the Persian Gulf War and is about Iraqs working on bio-warefare at U.S. universities. If you like Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon I recommend reading Interface. The Cobweb isn't terrible but there are better things to read.
I'm really glad that Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller was reprinted after Snow Crash's success because I really enjoyed it. I've also read Stephenson's first book, The Big U, which is pretty silly but if you enjoy Stephenson's style you might look for it at your local library. It's out of print and not worth the effort of tracking it down.
Of course there are different levels of knowledge. Your comment about their medium being data, not computers, is well taken. I think a CS student does need a good dose of that kind of thing but frankly some of what was described sounded pretty hard. If every CS student coming out is a highfalutin' Information Engineer, who's going to produce the grunt programmers?
My point is that I think undergraduate work should be broad (including lots outside your major) and only somewhat deep. I fear that getting too deep into the discipline won't leave room for other skills that are needed as a base for life-long learning.
What constitutes a CS or IT degree can vary drastically from institution to institution. The first guy who talked about not have a C/C++ requirement and learning Excel +VBA sounded more like an IT program.
;-) There are always new ideas but I don't think humans will become obsolete in the next five years.
I don't think the IT program I'm going to be entering at RIT will be useless in five years. One of the concentrations is "Training and Human Performance" and is largely concerned with Human Factors. That's concerned with the important touchy-feely stuff CS people can't be bothered with while they're tweaking their algorithms for a few percentiles of performance