Who could possibly know more vibrant economies...
on
Red Herring Comes Back
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
...than the French?
A more interesting question is what the under/over line is for the Euro collapsing. Given that France and German are blithely ignoring the deficit constraints required by the Euro agreement, it's only a matter of time. By then, all investments outside France, even in a failed American dot-com magazine, will look farsighted.
Primates capitulards et tou-jours en quete de harengs.
...except, of course, when it acts like a particle.;-)
Lets face it: If this guy's theories could really predict the future, he would have already applied them to get rich on Wall Street, not write a book about them.
Let me know when the author gets to be worth $1 billion, then I'll start taking him seriously.
Howard is the only science fiction writer I know who doesn't even own a computer. (I think even Gene Wolfe finally bought one.) He uses a pencil. As Howard is wont to say, "Whenever my word processor crashes, I just sharpen it up again!"
Dream Collaborations
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Howdy Neil. Me again. (Because three hours of asking you questions for Nova Express just wasn't enough.) You've collaborated with a wide range extremely talented people, including Terry Prachett (Good Omens), Gene Wolfe (A Walking Tour of the Shambles), numerous illustrated projects with David McKean, and, of course, an ever-rotating cast of artists on your many graphic novels. If you could collaborate on a future project with any living writer/artist/etc., that you haven't already collaborated with, who would it be and why?
...is like fighting an infestation of fleas by dousing your house with gasoline and setting it afire. Sure, it works, but the solution is worse than the problem.
You tax something, you get less of it. Taxing the internet would mean slowing down growth and innovation (real innovation, not the Microsoft kind). Moreover, once passed, that tax will NEVER be repealed. Besides, how are you going to collect that tax from all those people who are already breaking laws by forging headers, and on all those offshore spammers? Far better to pass laws aimed specifically at spammers, than to hope they're taken out by carpet-bombing everyone on the Internet with an e-mail tax.
As P. J. O'Rourke once said, giving money and power to the federal government is liking giving liquor and car keys to a teenage boy.
Follow the instructions in this chain letter EXACTLY, or HORRIBLE things will happen to you! Mr. L. Penguin threw away this letter, and was sentenced to five years in a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison for UNIX(c) patent infringement. Meanwhile, B. Gates followed the instructions to the letter, and made a million dollar gain in the stock market the very next day!
Step 1: Send $660 to the first name on this list.
Step 2: Move the first name on the list to the third position on the list, and move the other names up one place.
Step 3: Do NOT put your own name on the list, or you too will be sent to a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
Step 4: Pass this letter on to all your friends who use Linux.
Name #1
Darl McBride
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #2
Darrell McBride
The Santa Cruz Operation
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #3
The Darlmeister
SCO SCO KaChoo
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
P.S. THIS IS 100% LEGAL UNLESS SOME STUPID JUDGE STOPS US, AND EVEN IF THEY DO WE'VE ALREADY DUMPED OUR STOCK!
SPECS: 350-MHz Intel Pentium II, 256 Mbytes RAM, 4-Gbyte Ultrawide SCSI hard disk
COST: $84 in scrap aluminum, abrasives, screws, and LEDs; $1,800 in computer components
$1800 for a 350 MHz Pentium II? Did you perchance ride a short bus to school every day?
"The horrible beige box drove me to it." Uh, I know this may come as a shock to you, but there's a cure for that now. And it is a hell of a lot faster than 350 MHz...
Gosh, oddly enough every single story here seems to talk about what a nasty, horrible person George W. Bush is, and how America is an evil capitalist empire bent on global domination. There are just two big problems with this:
1. It isn't true.
2. In no way, shape or form is this "censored news."
Point 1 I'll leave as an exercise for the reader (it's not like I have all day to puncture liberal theories that have already been punctured quite extensively elsewhere), but for Point 2, just take a look at their #1 "censored story": "The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance".
Let's ignore the usual liberal ignorance in using the word "neoconservative" to vilify anyone who supported the liberation of Iraq, never mind that most of them have be unhyphenated conservatives their entire lives (Richard Pearle or Donald Rumsfeld, anyone?). Can anyone seriously suggest that this story has been "censored"? Liberals have been bitching about "neoconservative" this or "Wolfowitz" that for well over a yeaar. It's no secret. There's no way in hell that this "story" has been "censored." It's merely that Americans have heard their theories and rejected them.
In fact, none of these can be called "censored stories." Did George W. Bush or Dick Cheney send armed thugs to shut down The Nation's printing press? No? Did they arrest people for publishing any of these stories? No? Hell, they didn't even arrest that asshat Geraldo for giving away our troop's positions. Some "censorship."
All this really amounts to is one long whine: "The American media hasn't unquestioningly taken up the radical liberal view that George W. Bush is worse than Hitler! That's censorship!" No it isn't. It's a sign that America doesn't buy your conspiracy theories. It's amazing that in a country where 86% of journalists regularly vote for Democrats, these people just don't think that the American media is liberal enough.
If this were a real list of censored stories, would every single one of them support liberals and attack conservatives? No. How about kidnapped Americans being held against their will in Saudi Arabia? There's a real under-reported story, but you won't hear about it here because it doesn't support liberal policy goals.
Slashdot, if you want to slam the Bush administration so badly, why don't you just post an editorial and be done with it. Not only is the linked list not true, not balanced, and not fair, it's not even remotely news.
The thing that impressed me most about Neil when I interviewed home for Nova Express back in 1999 (he had just started working on American Gods), was how generous he was with his time and how his tremendous success had left him largely untouched. Despite his enormous popularity, he was quite generous about signing things for a never ending stream of people, and seemed genuinely interested in talking to every one among the legions of his fans at Armadillocon. Certainly there are others who have let far less success go to their head.
There are lots of cool people among my fellow SF scribblers, but Neil has remained one of the coolest, and not to mention perhaps the most level-headed. And then there's his considerable talent...
I know more about string and particle theory than 99% of the population, which means I'm still a comparative dumbass on the subject in relation to people who really know what they're talking about.
However, here's a spiffy chart of the current "standard model" to help people get up to speed. Especially helpful for those who don't normally deal with Mesons and Antibayrons on a regular basis...
There's a large amount of economic ignornace on display in this thread. The largest fallacy is posters don't seem to realize: In a growing economy, the highest income percentile will always outpace others because there's no place else for it to go.
Here's a greatly simplified example of five people and their yearly incomes, from lowest to highest:
Bob: $20
Tim: $40
Doug: $60
David: $80
Roy: $100
Now suppose that it was a banner year for the economy, and everyone's income rose 10%. The next year everyone's income would look like this:
Bob: $22
Tim: $44
Doug: $66
David: $88
Roy: $110
So, things are peachy, right? Not according to the newspapers or class warriors, because the gap between rich and poor increased. The gap between rich and poor, between Bob and Roy, went from $80 to $88.
Now, suppose that next year, despite no economic growth, Bob wins $500 from the lottery. Yee-ha! So now the income chart looks like this:
Tim: $44
Doug: $66
David: $88
Roy: $110
Bob: $522
So, things weren't so hot for the economy as a whole, but the poor did well, right? Again, not according to the newspapers or class warriors. Even though Bob got rich the gap between rich and poor increased again. The gap between rich and poor went from $88 to a whopping $478! How did that happen? Because Bob is now in the highest percentile, he no longer counts as poor, so his economic gains accrue not to the lowest income level, but to his new income level, now the highest. Note that Bob doesn't need to go up to the highest fifth for this effect to take place, he only has to reach the next economic plateau for his economic gains no longer to accrue to "the poor." In fact, the effect is far more pronounced with far more people.
The lesson, once again: The gains of the highest income brackets will always outpace those in lower income brackets because there's no place else for the income to go. This does not mean the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.
For more information on this subject, see the Michigan Income Study, which found huge levels of economic mobility in America.
This is clearly a case of "home cooking," since Worldcon was held in Sawyer's back yard. It's very sad that Sawyer won a Hugo before (and here's just a partial list) Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Pat Cadigan, China Mieville, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, John Kessel, Iain Banks, Michaael Bishop...
Well, the list of science fiction writers better than Robert J. Sayer who haven't won a Hugo just goes on and on, doesn't it?
While it is always dangerous to assume that a Slashdot reviewer actually knows what they're talking about, the review does present me with several reasons I might not want to read the book:
1. Calling Marvel's Silver Age comics "the most famous run of comic books in history" is a highly subjective and arguably mistaken statement. More famous than the early years of DC, with Batman and Superman? I don't think so.
2. While I have no objection to a book about Stan Lee per se, calling it The Rise and Fall of The American Comic Book suggests a rather serious overreach. The fact is that the decline in the quality of Stan Lee's Marvel stable happened at the same time of perhaps the most impressive ferment in comics and graphic novels in history, i.e. the mid-to-late 1980s, a renaissance lead by a handful of exceptionally influential DC titles (especially Alan Moore's Watchman, Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman), together with a number of important independent comics (Dave Sims' Cerebus, etc.).
3. The review does not mention it, but the true "Fall of the American Comic Book" occured in the mid-1990s due to largely economic circumstances, i.e. the collapse of the speculator market and a disasterous consolidation of comic distribution companies set in motion by Marvel's decision to make Heroes World their sole distributor. (I published an article by Paul T. Riddell on this very subject in the Fall/Winter 2000 isssue of Nova Express, but there are also several online summaries of those events you can Google.) The fact that the book focuses on Stan Lee, and that the review makes no mention of this (an event quite apart from the Dotcom-like collapse of Stan Lee Media) makes me fear that this book either gives a very distorted view of this economic cataclysm, or no view at all.
That is not to say that it might not be interesting to Stan Lee fans. But Stan Lee != American Comic Books, no matter emblamatic his work may have been in the 1960s.
Think about it: They act crazy, they say the have awesome weapons that will destroy their enemies, but won't let anyone look at them, they make ridiculous threats against enemies several orders of magnitude more powerful than they are, then beg for money.
The only difference is that North Korea might have nukes, and we all know that SCO has squat...
let's not forget that for many years Macintosh (and specifically Mac-OS) reigned supreme as the simplest platform for which to write viruses. And virus writers certainly took advantage of it.
At the time at which the first Mac viruses appeared, there were already severl hundred DOS viruses in the wild. In fact, I don't believe there were ever more than 24 or so Mac viruses in total. In fact, nVar was, I think, the last major one, and that was circa 1990. By contrast, there were already several thousand DOS viruses (many written in Russia) in existence by the time Microsoft introduced Windows.
In the future, you may wish to actually know what you're talking about before posting...
I find it fascinating that Slashdot A.) Found the story interesting enough to post, and B.) Automatically reached for reasons to deride it. I find it interesting that the idea of a doll that can't say "shit" or "fuck" offends the Slashdot ethos. Lurking behind this story being posted at all, and most of the comments on the subject thus far, seems to be the idea that parents trying to shield their children from obscenity isn't merely futile, but is, in fact, actively evil.
Why is that?
I get the impression that the vast majority of Slashdot readers don't have children. (Insert the obvious "don't have girlfriend" jokes on your own.) One doesn't have to be John Ashcroft or Oral Roberts to believe that maybe six-year-olds don't need to learn the word "cocksucker."
I am far from a prude. I've used lots of those four-letter words in my own fiction, when needed, and laughed my ass off at "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker" from South Park: The Movie. And I myself don't have kids. But oddly enough, despite that, I can still imagine why parents might want a doll that can't say obscenities. I find it rather interesting that, thus far, not a single Slashdot poster seems willing to consider the fact that such a doll might indeed have a useful purpose...
I think the reviewer needs to define just what the book's scope is, and just what "virtual worlds" consist of. The phrase "a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design," makes me believe that he's only considering the chief designers at high-profile commercial MMORPGs, leaving out everyone who might design non-online gaming worlds, sub-designers, etc. Not to mention all those people creating things off in Hollywood. Not to mention pen-and-paper game designers. And not to mention my science fiction writing breathern, of which there are, at a minimum, some 200 or so making their living from designing "virtual worlds" consisting of words on a page...
Unless the pull another ontological shift that undermines the fundamental stupidity of the "human battery" backstory, the series will end with a whimper rather than a bang.
So here, in it's nakedest form, is the liberal opinion of government and society: Everyone has a right to the taxpayer's money, but no one has a right to be accountable for it.
The story poster seems shocked, SHOCKED to find out that the elected representatives of the American taxpayer have the audacity to want to know where their money is going. How dare those who pay the piper also call the tune?
Here's a clue for you: There is no constutional right to subsidy or to any material goods. Those taking the taxpayers money SHOULD have to jump through hoops to justify their need of it, including tracking. Or do you believe that everyone has a "right" to taxpayer subsidies, and no obligation to justify them?
I live in Austin, and I can testify from personal observation what police have known for years: The vast majoirty of "homeless" people who panhandle on street corners are alcoholics or drug addicts who use that money to support their habits. If private people want to help them, fine. But public subsidies for transients merely subsidizes indigents and pushers at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers.
Want to avoid being tracked by the government? Don't take the government's money. It's that simple.
"smart" machines can accurately infer your intents and help you to take better decisions or avoid mistakes.
Guy: Hey bartender, another beer!
Smart Machine: That is highly inadvisable. You've already had two beers, and a third would leave your cognative functioning impaired.
Guy: Look, metal dude, I can totally handle it!
Smart Machine: My sesnsors indicate that a third beer would put you over the legal blood alcohol limit for this state. You cannot risk it.
Guy: Shut the HELL up already! Goddamn machine! (drinks beer) Hey, she's sort of hot.
Smart Machine: She's wearing a Harley Davidson brand jacket and has a heart tattoo on her leg with the name "Spike" written across it. I calculate a 65% probability of her having a biker boyfriend that would beat you to a pulp if you so much as talk to her.
Guy: That is IT! I'm NOT bringing you with me to the bar EVER again!
Why? Because the X-Box business was designed to be a high volume, low-profit enterprise, and with X-Box mired way back behind the PS2, it just wasn't high volume enough to make up for the thin margins.
Moreover, because they were so concerned with X-Box, NVidia took their eye off the ball and let ATI catch up and even pull slightly ahead. I would not be at all surprised if the same thing happened to ATI this time around. There's only so much graphic card technical talent available to throw at a problem, and with so many of them working on X-Box2, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that 6 month product rev cycle shipping to nine months or a year.
According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, the story originally came out in 1953. (It's one of the Dick stories I haven't read yet.) Dick always was waaaaay ahead of the curve. (Anyone else notice how dead-on the youth-culture extropilations of Time Out of Joint were?)
Maybe we can hope for John Woo to return to his previous form of Hard Boiled and The Killer.
One underlying assumption of this article, that the United States has no experience with widespread civil disobediance, is simply wrong.
I can think of at least two widespread laws that are regularly broken in America: Speeding laws (probably broken by the vast majority of driving adu;ts at one time or another), and marijuana prohabition laws (probably broken by tens of millions of people at the very least). And let's not forget historical examples such as alcohol prohabition. The author's selective ignorance of this matter (together with suggesting that a "Pacifica" successionist movement is "widespread") make anything he says rather suspect.
Besides, the real solution to bad laws is not just ignoring them; doing that only gives a chance for the ruling party to selectively enforce those laws against its enemies. The problem is to repeal bad and unnecessary laws. We need far fewer laws, but have those fewer laws better enforced.
Slashdot Mirror
...than the French?
A more interesting question is what the under/over line is for the Euro collapsing. Given that France and German are blithely ignoring the deficit constraints required by the Euro agreement, it's only a matter of time. By then, all investments outside France, even in a failed American dot-com magazine, will look farsighted.
Primates capitulards et tou-jours en quete de harengs.
...except, of course, when it acts like a particle. ;-)
Lets face it: If this guy's theories could really predict the future, he would have already applied them to get rich on Wall Street, not write a book about them.
Let me know when the author gets to be worth $1 billion, then I'll start taking him seriously.
Howard is the only science fiction writer I know who doesn't even own a computer. (I think even Gene Wolfe finally bought one.) He uses a pencil. As Howard is wont to say, "Whenever my word processor crashes, I just sharpen it up again!"
Howdy Neil. Me again. (Because three hours of asking you questions for Nova Express just wasn't enough.) You've collaborated with a wide range extremely talented people, including Terry Prachett (Good Omens), Gene Wolfe (A Walking Tour of the Shambles), numerous illustrated projects with David McKean, and, of course, an ever-rotating cast of artists on your many graphic novels. If you could collaborate on a future project with any living writer/artist/etc., that you haven't already collaborated with, who would it be and why?
...is like fighting an infestation of fleas by dousing your house with gasoline and setting it afire. Sure, it works, but the solution is worse than the problem.
You tax something, you get less of it. Taxing the internet would mean slowing down growth and innovation (real innovation, not the Microsoft kind). Moreover, once passed, that tax will NEVER be repealed. Besides, how are you going to collect that tax from all those people who are already breaking laws by forging headers, and on all those offshore spammers? Far better to pass laws aimed specifically at spammers, than to hope they're taken out by carpet-bombing everyone on the Internet with an e-mail tax.
As P. J. O'Rourke once said, giving money and power to the federal government is liking giving liquor and car keys to a teenage boy.
Follow the instructions in this chain letter EXACTLY, or HORRIBLE things will happen to you! Mr. L. Penguin threw away this letter, and was sentenced to five years in a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison for UNIX(c) patent infringement. Meanwhile, B. Gates followed the instructions to the letter, and made a million dollar gain in the stock market the very next day!
Step 1: Send $660 to the first name on this list.
Step 2: Move the first name on the list to the third position on the list, and move the other names up one place.
Step 3: Do NOT put your own name on the list, or you too will be sent to a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison.
Step 4: Pass this letter on to all your friends who use Linux.
Name #1
Darl McBride
The SCO Group
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #2
Darrell McBride
The Santa Cruz Operation
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
Name #3
The Darlmeister
SCO SCO KaChoo
355 South 520 West
Suite 100
Lindon, Utah 84042
P.S. THIS IS 100% LEGAL UNLESS SOME STUPID JUDGE STOPS US, AND EVEN IF THEY DO WE'VE ALREADY DUMPED OUR STOCK!
$1800 for a 350 MHz Pentium II? Did you perchance ride a short bus to school every day?
"The horrible beige box drove me to it." Uh, I know this may come as a shock to you, but there's a cure for that now. And it is a hell of a lot faster than 350 MHz...
Gosh, oddly enough every single story here seems to talk about what a nasty, horrible person George W. Bush is, and how America is an evil capitalist empire bent on global domination. There are just two big problems with this:
1. It isn't true.
2. In no way, shape or form is this "censored news."
Point 1 I'll leave as an exercise for the reader (it's not like I have all day to puncture liberal theories that have already been punctured quite extensively elsewhere), but for Point 2, just take a look at their #1 "censored story": "The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance".
Let's ignore the usual liberal ignorance in using the word "neoconservative" to vilify anyone who supported the liberation of Iraq, never mind that most of them have be unhyphenated conservatives their entire lives (Richard Pearle or Donald Rumsfeld, anyone?). Can anyone seriously suggest that this story has been "censored"? Liberals have been bitching about "neoconservative" this or "Wolfowitz" that for well over a yeaar. It's no secret. There's no way in hell that this "story" has been "censored." It's merely that Americans have heard their theories and rejected them.
In fact, none of these can be called "censored stories." Did George W. Bush or Dick Cheney send armed thugs to shut down The Nation's printing press? No? Did they arrest people for publishing any of these stories? No? Hell, they didn't even arrest that asshat Geraldo for giving away our troop's positions. Some "censorship."
All this really amounts to is one long whine: "The American media hasn't unquestioningly taken up the radical liberal view that George W. Bush is worse than Hitler! That's censorship!" No it isn't. It's a sign that America doesn't buy your conspiracy theories. It's amazing that in a country where 86% of journalists regularly vote for Democrats, these people just don't think that the American media is liberal enough.
If this were a real list of censored stories, would every single one of them support liberals and attack conservatives? No. How about kidnapped Americans being held against their will in Saudi Arabia? There's a real under-reported story, but you won't hear about it here because it doesn't support liberal policy goals.
Slashdot, if you want to slam the Bush administration so badly, why don't you just post an editorial and be done with it. Not only is the linked list not true, not balanced, and not fair, it's not even remotely news.
Is it too hard to
The thing that impressed me most about Neil when I interviewed home for Nova Express back in 1999 (he had just started working on American Gods), was how generous he was with his time and how his tremendous success had left him largely untouched. Despite his enormous popularity, he was quite generous about signing things for a never ending stream of people, and seemed genuinely interested in talking to every one among the legions of his fans at Armadillocon. Certainly there are others who have let far less success go to their head.
There are lots of cool people among my fellow SF scribblers, but Neil has remained one of the coolest, and not to mention perhaps the most level-headed. And then there's his considerable talent...
I know more about string and particle theory than 99% of the population, which means I'm still a comparative dumbass on the subject in relation to people who really know what they're talking about.
However, here's a spiffy chart of the current "standard model" to help people get up to speed. Especially helpful for those who don't normally deal with Mesons and Antibayrons on a regular basis...
Here's a greatly simplified example of five people and their yearly incomes, from lowest to highest:
Bob: $20
Tim: $40
Doug: $60
David: $80
Roy: $100
Now suppose that it was a banner year for the economy, and everyone's income rose 10%. The next year everyone's income would look like this:
Bob: $22
Tim: $44
Doug: $66
David: $88
Roy: $110
So, things are peachy, right? Not according to the newspapers or class warriors, because the gap between rich and poor increased. The gap between rich and poor, between Bob and Roy, went from $80 to $88.
Now, suppose that next year, despite no economic growth, Bob wins $500 from the lottery. Yee-ha! So now the income chart looks like this:
Tim: $44
Doug: $66
David: $88
Roy: $110
Bob: $522
So, things weren't so hot for the economy as a whole, but the poor did well, right? Again, not according to the newspapers or class warriors. Even though Bob got rich the gap between rich and poor increased again. The gap between rich and poor went from $88 to a whopping $478! How did that happen? Because Bob is now in the highest percentile, he no longer counts as poor, so his economic gains accrue not to the lowest income level, but to his new income level, now the highest. Note that Bob doesn't need to go up to the highest fifth for this effect to take place, he only has to reach the next economic plateau for his economic gains no longer to accrue to "the poor." In fact, the effect is far more pronounced with far more people.
The lesson, once again: The gains of the highest income brackets will always outpace those in lower income brackets because there's no place else for the income to go. This does not mean the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.
For more information on this subject, see the Michigan Income Study, which found huge levels of economic mobility in America.
>they do not dissapoint
That is, if you're not bothered by details like scientific plausability, plot, characterization, etc.
I have not read Hominids (although the reviews of it I have seen have not been promising), but I did read Starplex, which was a Hugo and Nebula finalist, and that was such a singularly wretched novel that I haven't read another Sawyer novel since.
This is clearly a case of "home cooking," since Worldcon was held in Sawyer's back yard. It's very sad that Sawyer won a Hugo before (and here's just a partial list) Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Pat Cadigan, China Mieville, Paul Di Filippo, Rudy Rucker, John Kessel, Iain Banks, Michaael Bishop...
Well, the list of science fiction writers better than Robert J. Sayer who haven't won a Hugo just goes on and on, doesn't it?
While it is always dangerous to assume that a Slashdot reviewer actually knows what they're talking about, the review does present me with several reasons I might not want to read the book:
1. Calling Marvel's Silver Age comics "the most famous run of comic books in history" is a highly subjective and arguably mistaken statement. More famous than the early years of DC, with Batman and Superman? I don't think so.
2. While I have no objection to a book about Stan Lee per se, calling it The Rise and Fall of The American Comic Book suggests a rather serious overreach. The fact is that the decline in the quality of Stan Lee's Marvel stable happened at the same time of perhaps the most impressive ferment in comics and graphic novels in history, i.e. the mid-to-late 1980s, a renaissance lead by a handful of exceptionally influential DC titles (especially Alan Moore's Watchman, Frank Miller's Dark Knight, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman), together with a number of important independent comics (Dave Sims' Cerebus, etc.).
3. The review does not mention it, but the true "Fall of the American Comic Book" occured in the mid-1990s due to largely economic circumstances, i.e. the collapse of the speculator market and a disasterous consolidation of comic distribution companies set in motion by Marvel's decision to make Heroes World their sole distributor. (I published an article by Paul T. Riddell on this very subject in the Fall/Winter 2000 isssue of Nova Express, but there are also several online summaries of those events you can Google.) The fact that the book focuses on Stan Lee, and that the review makes no mention of this (an event quite apart from the Dotcom-like collapse of Stan Lee Media) makes me fear that this book either gives a very distorted view of this economic cataclysm, or no view at all.
That is not to say that it might not be interesting to Stan Lee fans. But Stan Lee != American Comic Books, no matter emblamatic his work may have been in the 1960s.
Think about it: They act crazy, they say the have awesome weapons that will destroy their enemies, but won't let anyone look at them, they make ridiculous threats against enemies several orders of magnitude more powerful than they are, then beg for money.
The only difference is that North Korea might have nukes, and we all know that SCO has squat...
At the time at which the first Mac viruses appeared, there were already severl hundred DOS viruses in the wild. In fact, I don't believe there were ever more than 24 or so Mac viruses in total. In fact, nVar was, I think, the last major one, and that was circa 1990. By contrast, there were already several thousand DOS viruses (many written in Russia) in existence by the time Microsoft introduced Windows.
In the future, you may wish to actually know what you're talking about before posting...
I find it fascinating that Slashdot A.) Found the story interesting enough to post, and B.) Automatically reached for reasons to deride it. I find it interesting that the idea of a doll that can't say "shit" or "fuck" offends the Slashdot ethos. Lurking behind this story being posted at all, and most of the comments on the subject thus far, seems to be the idea that parents trying to shield their children from obscenity isn't merely futile, but is, in fact, actively evil.
Why is that?
I get the impression that the vast majority of Slashdot readers don't have children. (Insert the obvious "don't have girlfriend" jokes on your own.) One doesn't have to be John Ashcroft or Oral Roberts to believe that maybe six-year-olds don't need to learn the word "cocksucker."
I am far from a prude. I've used lots of those four-letter words in my own fiction, when needed, and laughed my ass off at "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker" from South Park: The Movie. And I myself don't have kids. But oddly enough, despite that, I can still imagine why parents might want a doll that can't say obscenities. I find it rather interesting that, thus far, not a single Slashdot poster seems willing to consider the fact that such a doll might indeed have a useful purpose...
...since I collect first edition science fiction hardbacks, I really don't have any standing to cast aspersions on someone else's collecting madness...
But he's no rocket scienti--
Oh, wait.
I think the reviewer needs to define just what the book's scope is, and just what "virtual worlds" consist of. The phrase "a few dozen people in the world currently make their living at virtual world design," makes me believe that he's only considering the chief designers at high-profile commercial MMORPGs, leaving out everyone who might design non-online gaming worlds, sub-designers, etc. Not to mention all those people creating things off in Hollywood. Not to mention pen-and-paper game designers. And not to mention my science fiction writing breathern, of which there are, at a minimum, some 200 or so making their living from designing "virtual worlds" consisting of words on a page...
Can be found here. Short answer: Not much.
Unless the pull another ontological shift that undermines the fundamental stupidity of the "human battery" backstory, the series will end with a whimper rather than a bang.
So here, in it's nakedest form, is the liberal opinion of government and society: Everyone has a right to the taxpayer's money, but no one has a right to be accountable for it.
The story poster seems shocked, SHOCKED to find out that the elected representatives of the American taxpayer have the audacity to want to know where their money is going. How dare those who pay the piper also call the tune?
Here's a clue for you: There is no constutional right to subsidy or to any material goods. Those taking the taxpayers money SHOULD have to jump through hoops to justify their need of it, including tracking. Or do you believe that everyone has a "right" to taxpayer subsidies, and no obligation to justify them?
I live in Austin, and I can testify from personal observation what police have known for years: The vast majoirty of "homeless" people who panhandle on street corners are alcoholics or drug addicts who use that money to support their habits. If private people want to help them, fine. But public subsidies for transients merely subsidizes indigents and pushers at the expense of law-abiding taxpayers.
Want to avoid being tracked by the government? Don't take the government's money. It's that simple.
Guy: Hey bartender, another beer!
Smart Machine: That is highly inadvisable. You've already had two beers, and a third would leave your cognative functioning impaired.
Guy: Look, metal dude, I can totally handle it!
Smart Machine: My sesnsors indicate that a third beer would put you over the legal blood alcohol limit for this state. You cannot risk it.
Guy: Shut the HELL up already! Goddamn machine! (drinks beer) Hey, she's sort of hot.
Smart Machine: She's wearing a Harley Davidson brand jacket and has a heart tattoo on her leg with the name "Spike" written across it. I calculate a 65% probability of her having a biker boyfriend that would beat you to a pulp if you so much as talk to her.
Guy: That is IT! I'm NOT bringing you with me to the bar EVER again!
Why? Because the X-Box business was designed to be a high volume, low-profit enterprise, and with X-Box mired way back behind the PS2, it just wasn't high volume enough to make up for the thin margins.
Moreover, because they were so concerned with X-Box, NVidia took their eye off the ball and let ATI catch up and even pull slightly ahead. I would not be at all surprised if the same thing happened to ATI this time around. There's only so much graphic card technical talent available to throw at a problem, and with so many of them working on X-Box2, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that 6 month product rev cycle shipping to nine months or a year.
Here's the IMDB listing for the movie.
According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, the story originally came out in 1953. (It's one of the Dick stories I haven't read yet.) Dick always was waaaaay ahead of the curve. (Anyone else notice how dead-on the youth-culture extropilations of Time Out of Joint were?)
Maybe we can hope for John Woo to return to his previous form of Hard Boiled and The Killer.
One underlying assumption of this article, that the United States has no experience with widespread civil disobediance, is simply wrong.
I can think of at least two widespread laws that are regularly broken in America: Speeding laws (probably broken by the vast majority of driving adu;ts at one time or another), and marijuana prohabition laws (probably broken by tens of millions of people at the very least). And let's not forget historical examples such as alcohol prohabition. The author's selective ignorance of this matter (together with suggesting that a "Pacifica" successionist movement is "widespread") make anything he says rather suspect.
Besides, the real solution to bad laws is not just ignoring them; doing that only gives a chance for the ruling party to selectively enforce those laws against its enemies. The problem is to repeal bad and unnecessary laws. We need far fewer laws, but have those fewer laws better enforced.