That's an interesting point but you answered your own (unasked) question methinks. Anthologies would profit greatly from this treatment (and already do in some markets). IIRC Fictionwise used to sell single stories for a dollar or so. Not bad considering that there are authors I like whose short stories cannot be found on their own in the physical book world or that take a long time before being collected into their own anthology (just that author). This way, I could track individual authors and read their short stories as they are released for a dollar or two without spending ten bucks for additional authors who bore me.
Strangely enough, the publishers are far more ruthless than the record labels in preventing this for their cash cow authors. Who woulda thunk? I always imagined publishers to be richer versions of librarians - harmless and pleasant and stuff =). Far from it!
Of course, this wouldn't extend to novels or technical books/textbooks. Though in principle, you should be able to rent/purchase selected chapters of books/chapters for a school/college course. In other news, why the hell isn't the environmentalist movement getting involved in this? Such a radical way to prevent tree murder yeah? =)
The DMCA actually says that circumventing DRM is illegal; it doesn't matter if you do it to make a legal back.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it's distribution of the method to circumvent the DRM that is illegal.
I think that's correct. They would like to get people for the former but it's impossible to know that DRM circumvention has happened, especially if it's only for the purpose of making a personal backup (in case the licensor goes out of business and the DRM authorized device cannot be replaced). So, they try to stop things at the source - by preventing the distribution of the method. The only problem of course is that they hugely overestimate the difficulty of circumvention. I wonder if the future of ebook DRM is more like mp3s (absent) or like video game DRM (like Ubisoft for instance *shudder*) where you have to be connected to their server by 3G or otherwise to read the book =). It doesn't seem like that would be a practicable business model.
B&N does this (lending) on the Nook right now. The LendMe feature has been well received in the community (though I haven't used it yet) judging from the Nook message board on B&N. You lend it for 14 days, it disappears from your account and appears in your friend's account and reverts after the 14 day period. Not ideal but a good start. Of course, DRM-free is what's called for.
Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot. *Yawn* Eastern mysticism is even more obscurantist than western religion.
Also, to be perfectly clear, I was criticizing an attitude behind a profoundly meaningless statement. If that statement does not capture the essence of the attitude, then it is merely a lazy label for something else entirely and my criticism ends with it (and doesn't extend to the religion). Your choice.
Now, given all that, the purpose of your specific question eludes me.
The purpose was to elicit an answer, and possibly provoke some thought. Amazing that you could write so much without including the words "Yes" or "No" in there anywhere with regards to the question.
Vague questions get vague answers. *shrug* I asked for a clarification because I didn't fully understand your sentences. Didn't get it. Even so, I did answer it in conditional form (it would be SF if {conditionA} and no if {conditionB}). Best I can do with your question.
I would consider the novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" by Vernor Vinge to be a good example of such a story. I don't remember there being any technology in the story that was beyond the reach of modern science and engineering, and the story was better for it, in my opinion. But I would still consider it "Science Fiction".
Given my (much expressed) views on the lack of importance of such labels, you'll get no argument from me =). A good story is a good story.
Reality doesn't seem to support you in this. The social inertia of an entire network of friends is a massive thing. And these trends are more complicated by the fact that these are true networks - with horrendous connectivity (not like the social circles of yore that used to be dominated by a handful of people that largely controlled trends). Besides, if such a large scale fiasco couldn't push users away, I'm curious to see what will. The users are addicted, they're invested too heavily and at a personal level in this particular site. It would take massive failures in terms of loss of features to drive people away.
Also, think of the older users who don't like to migrate to new technologies. Added inertia. All in all, Zuckerberg's quite safe and he knows it.
Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.
Seems to have been an amazingly accurate prediction on their part. Dicks yes, but highly intelligent dicks =)
It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.
But that objection would carry weight only if there was some substantial threat behind it (the threat of large numbers of FB users quitting for instance). Even with massive mobilization, less than 0.01% of users did so after this latest debacle. That sends a clear message to FB that there are no consequences to privacy violations. Clearly, the users need it much more than the other way around. The users have no leverage by themselves (rather like politics in a large democracy). Note that they do have it in principle, but they shown that they are unwilling to use it in practice, which is why I say they don't have it (in effect).
What's curious is the anger is so impotent (and I say this without any snark). I heard a news piece on Canadian radio ("Search engine" by Jesse Brown) lately that talked about this. Apparently, with all the ruckus and "Quit FB" groups making noise, less than 0.01% of FB users actually quit over this. By the way, if you're Canadian, there's a class action lawsuit in the works representing all Canuck FBers (google it).
It's like expecting cocaine users to quit snorting because their dealer ratted them out to the Feds =)
When a FB user's entire social life is wrapped up in FB, he/she is at the mercy of the FB overlords. Only a loss in features would cause a substantial loss in users at this point. Otherwise, it's always gonna be business as usual. The users have no leverage over FB, it's entirely the other way around - why would you expect anything to change?
Demanding bounds on the data is not unreasonable. Expecting those demands to be acquiesced to without a single slip is... unrealistic. Expecting privacy to be actually enforced out of the kindness of their hearts is a bit unreasonable. Having faith that all that private data will NEVER (even by accident) fall into the wrong hands once its out there is remarkably naive. Shit happens. Whatever happened to reasonable personal precautions about privacy on the internet (no physical addresses or phone numbers)?. Hell, if nothing else, Lamebook is rife with examples of how one weak link in your friendslist can humiliate the fark out of you by exposing private data. FB is a social disaster waiting to happen for so many indiscreet people that I'm amazed how well things have gone so far.
+1
I had occasion to watch cable the other day at my parents' place. Felt like I'd left a quiet poolroom and entered a Chuck'e'Cheese (however that's spelled). Gawd, all those LOUD and stupid ads. Even with mute, it's like they're clawing at the inside of my brain o.O
The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction."
I do wish religious groups would stop projecting their own failings on all of humanity (even though I admit that's a common psychological defense mechanism). I am quite satisfied with my life thankyouverymuch. I'm not entirely happy but that's a small price to pay for satisfaction and I imagine there's lots of people like that in the world.
You miss the point entirely. Both GP and I were commenting on the fact that you reach a point in your reading life when genre labels become amusing playthings and getting hold of quality fiction period becomes difficult enough that its precise categorization becomes rather irrelevant. And even when I had the luxury of believing that it was relevant, the precise distinction between soft and hard SF was usually quite blurred for the reasons I explained above. Remember that there was a time when SF was not considered serious literature. There are still reactionary fools who believe this to be the case. However, our reaction to this (as connoisseurs of the genre) should not be to beg the literati to please accept us into their domain but to simply keep creating (for the gifted) and consuming (for the rest of us) in what is the most imaginative and frenetic and creative literary subfield in a space that is otherwise running out of new ideas. The wider problem has now come to subgenres of SF, with squabbling about hard and soft SF. You see where this going?
Now, given all that, the purpose of your specific question eludes me. What do you mean by me "having a $10M budget for modern, existing tech"? In any case, whether your example is SF or not would have nothing to do with the absolute level of tech of the fictional world since the question is always whether the tech is advanced or speculative compared to our own (the 'our' being whoever is contemplating this categorization). So, for instance, most of Jules Verne would no longer be SF, since we have all the tech (and more) that is described in his work. Wells' The invisible man would still be SF since we don't have that yet. So, you see, even the SF label sort of evolves in time - and why not? There is absolutely no reason for me to worship a classic if it is no longer wondrous to me, at this point of time (I do so anyway out of nostalgia or charity, but I do not believe that we are obliged to do so). Of course, I would be rather foolish for insisting on this categorization because it doesn't matter in the slightest. Apart from the entertainment value of a good story (that never goes out of date), any other importance of SF (as an educational medium or an inspiration for budding scientists for example) is purely contextual.
I always thought that THAT was the chief strength of SF - that it did not create unnecessary idols of the past whose visions must be held in awe forever. Rather those wonders came with expiry dates - the precise times when reality would surpass their imaginations (and the authors would be the first to rejoice at that - ONLY IN SF).
In fact, that's probably the only definition of an SF writer that I would not dismiss instantly - someone who would want the world to reach and then make obsolete, what must have been the grandest leap of the imagination for him/her. Anyway, this was too much rambling even for me and for that I apologize. I hope that made some sense given its resemblance to a water sprinkler.
YESH! I'm 28 and I nearly wet myself during that one =]. Reminded me vividly of the Stephen King story "The Sun Dog". Same kind of incremental menace as the story progresses...
But it has a lot more in common with 3rd Rock from the Sun which is a sitcom with aliens than it has to do with hard science fiction.
I would go further than that and compare Doctor Who to something like Eureka - an affectionate homage to the golden age of SF (without trying to be dead serious all the time and being able to laugh at itself). IMHO 3rd rock was just plain silly - sorta the Seinfeld of SF. Doctor Who is more like Terry Pratchett or Doug Adams, with some episodes being remarkably profound. I've only watched them all once so I don't recall episode names, but the one where the entire planet is stuck in traffic comes to mind. Several more but my memory sux:{
It still boggles the mind how they manage to make something that looks so ridiculous (the Daleks) take on a menace that is absolutely terrifying at times =). Sheer genius.
More than anything (at this point I've completely forgotten what I was replying to), Doctor Who keeps alive the swashbuckling sense of adventure that we got from SF movies in the 80's and early 90's (the Doctor is the closest thing to Han Solo we have today;) To say that it's just a kids' show is to do it a great injustice.
I completely agree. Time was (in my teen years) that I was one of these pricks who sneered at so-called soft SF and championed the cause of hard SF (of the Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Baxter kind). The problem is that the softness or hardness of SF (beyond the obvious Flash Gordon-esque stuff or the irritating "Bug" SF subgenre) depends entirely on the reader's level of scientific knowledge. As a result, once I went through grad courses in Physics, the so-called hard-SF started becoming really old (the same old shit - a more sophisticated version of Star Trek's technobabble). Anyway, today I try to be a lot more diverse about my SF menu. The Doctor Who universe is a sort of loving homage to SF, mostly harmless fun (and really good fun at that) but sometimes coming up with some charming gems of episodes that make me really think.
To end on point, the whole idea of "fantasy SF" is plain ridiculous. To me, at this point in my life, (much like you), when quality "hard-SF" (that's also entertaining - see, I no longer learn any S from hard-SF since I have the actual S on hand) is rare, I've developed a healthy respect for the softer genres, especially sociopolitical SF (a la L.M.Bujold or a very small number of other Baen authors - none of whom I'd call hard-SF writers, but who can write QUALITY literature. Well, David Weber excepted - his Honorverse is definitely hard SF, in addition to the sociopolitical stuff. It is extraordinarily rare that authors can do both so masterfully but I digress).
In other words, I'm at the point where a lack of explanation about some things actually enhances the verisimilitude in the story because it is so easy to spot obvious flaws (or spectacular versions of hand-waving) in convoluted physics/engineering explanations one sees in hard-hard-SF (H2SF?) works these days. The people who insist on making these distinctions should understand that the hard sciences are so-called precisely because its practitioners do not labor under the delusion that to name something is to understand it. "Explaining" the working of a fictional "anti-gravity" generator using some meaningless technobabble lifted from some science blog (that was further based on some obscure Arxiv article from hep-th or/gr-qc) is a remarkably futile (not to mention highly amusing) endeavor. The takeaway message is this - The good SF author knows when NOT to try to explain too much (and risk ruining the illusion). The good Doctor (you know which one) knew this intimately - reading his works made you believe that Psychohistory was a real science - there's a rare skill in weaving such a realistic illusion. Stephen King is another person who has that skill (even more so because he takes absolute absurdities and makes terrifyingly real worlds out of them).
The One Ring just spontaneously made people invisible, with no discussion as to the method.
Not to go off on a tangent here (well, I guess I am), but the whole invisibility shtick always seemed like a bit of a non sequitur to me. That would be akin to (bizarro universe's) George Lucas writing in the ultimate lightsaber with astonishing powers (like being able to instantly disable any other lightsaber on contact) and then saying - 'O btw, when turned off it can be used as a dildo by Padme'. Ya know? Just... weird.
How the hell is this modded troll? Seems like a legitimate matter of practicality to me. But (to the trigger-happy mod-) go ahead and live in your cozy comfortable world and assume that anyone can just "go out and play". Numbnut.
Of course, thanks to the tolerance in academia for differing opinions
The "scientific consensus" is that no form of inertial confinement will ever work,
Academia claim none of these designs will work,
According to academia non-uniform temperature distributions are impossible, and exchanging energy between magnetic fields and temperature is stupid.
This "academia" must be a real sonovabitch. Some cranks fail at publishing and academia is blamed. How delightful. The last statement I quote above is particularly ridiculous. Strawman much?
we better start sponsoring every last good and bad idea to build a working fusion reactor.
Funding is limited. People with ideas are a dime a dozen. People with good ideas are extremely rare. People with good ideas who (1) can do something with the idea or (2) put their fucking ego aside and collaborate with someone who can; are fourth-nipple-rare. This is far from my field but if you ever worked in academia, you'd realize just how many stupid people there are out there who think they are fucking geniuses. The emails I get stand as proud testament to that fact. That is not to say that some scientists don't do exactly that. It's just that for someone who took such pains to provide Wiki citations for his science, you're sure as hell vague about exactly who this "academia" person is (rather, what percentage of the field is being so negative). Also, I loathe the noobs who think that a scientist is being hostile when he/she is merely being apathetic. Ideas are cheap, fusion (today) is an engineering problem and won't be solved by armchair kooks. If you think you have a winning idea, use that intelligence to go the next step - diplomacy, tactics, whatever is needed to GET THE JOB DONE. If these geniuses are waiting around for some sugar daddy to throw a million bucks in their lap, they can just keep on dreaming - that's not how things work.
You must have replied to the wrong post. I (and the person I was correcting) was referring solely to the Slashdot moderation system (about which parent was laboring under a serious misunderstanding). I made no comment about Apple or any other thing.
Slashdot has -1 disagree that people use to hide comments that they can't rate as wrong,flamebait, troll or be bothered to reply to. Censorship.
Good job sneaking the cuckoo in with the pigeons =p
Slashdot does not hide any comments. YOU do. BY choice. Browse at -1 and voila! No more hiding. Any form of moderation that leaves the power to hide/show any post SOLELY in the hands of the individual user is NOT censorship (if it is, it's self-censorship - otherwise known as "I choose what I read"). WHY is this so difficult to understand? More importantly, why is the fundamental distinction between it and the other examples in your list elude so many (otherwise intelligent)/. users?
Slashdot Mirror
That's an interesting point but you answered your own (unasked) question methinks. Anthologies would profit greatly from this treatment (and already do in some markets). IIRC Fictionwise used to sell single stories for a dollar or so. Not bad considering that there are authors I like whose short stories cannot be found on their own in the physical book world or that take a long time before being collected into their own anthology (just that author). This way, I could track individual authors and read their short stories as they are released for a dollar or two without spending ten bucks for additional authors who bore me.
Strangely enough, the publishers are far more ruthless than the record labels in preventing this for their cash cow authors. Who woulda thunk? I always imagined publishers to be richer versions of librarians - harmless and pleasant and stuff =). Far from it!
Of course, this wouldn't extend to novels or technical books/textbooks. Though in principle, you should be able to rent/purchase selected chapters of books/chapters for a school/college course. In other news, why the hell isn't the environmentalist movement getting involved in this? Such a radical way to prevent tree murder yeah? =)
The DMCA actually says that circumventing DRM is illegal; it doesn't matter if you do it to make a legal back.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it's distribution of the method to circumvent the DRM that is illegal.
I think that's correct. They would like to get people for the former but it's impossible to know that DRM circumvention has happened, especially if it's only for the purpose of making a personal backup (in case the licensor goes out of business and the DRM authorized device cannot be replaced). So, they try to stop things at the source - by preventing the distribution of the method. The only problem of course is that they hugely overestimate the difficulty of circumvention. I wonder if the future of ebook DRM is more like mp3s (absent) or like video game DRM (like Ubisoft for instance *shudder*) where you have to be connected to their server by 3G or otherwise to read the book =). It doesn't seem like that would be a practicable business model.
B&N does this (lending) on the Nook right now. The LendMe feature has been well received in the community (though I haven't used it yet) judging from the Nook message board on B&N. You lend it for 14 days, it disappears from your account and appears in your friend's account and reverts after the 14 day period. Not ideal but a good start. Of course, DRM-free is what's called for.
Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot. *Yawn* Eastern mysticism is even more obscurantist than western religion.
Also, to be perfectly clear, I was criticizing an attitude behind a profoundly meaningless statement. If that statement does not capture the essence of the attitude, then it is merely a lazy label for something else entirely and my criticism ends with it (and doesn't extend to the religion). Your choice.
Now, given all that, the purpose of your specific question eludes me. The purpose was to elicit an answer, and possibly provoke some thought. Amazing that you could write so much without including the words "Yes" or "No" in there anywhere with regards to the question.
Vague questions get vague answers. *shrug* I asked for a clarification because I didn't fully understand your sentences. Didn't get it. Even so, I did answer it in conditional form (it would be SF if {conditionA} and no if {conditionB}). Best I can do with your question.
I would consider the novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" by Vernor Vinge to be a good example of such a story. I don't remember there being any technology in the story that was beyond the reach of modern science and engineering, and the story was better for it, in my opinion. But I would still consider it "Science Fiction".
Given my (much expressed) views on the lack of importance of such labels, you'll get no argument from me =). A good story is a good story.
Ha! I wish. No, that was entirely a product of the 'bad analogy' department of my brain =p. Rule 34 FTL =(
Reality doesn't seem to support you in this. The social inertia of an entire network of friends is a massive thing. And these trends are more complicated by the fact that these are true networks - with horrendous connectivity (not like the social circles of yore that used to be dominated by a handful of people that largely controlled trends). Besides, if such a large scale fiasco couldn't push users away, I'm curious to see what will. The users are addicted, they're invested too heavily and at a personal level in this particular site. It would take massive failures in terms of loss of features to drive people away.
Also, think of the older users who don't like to migrate to new technologies. Added inertia. All in all, Zuckerberg's quite safe and he knows it.
Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.
Seems to have been an amazingly accurate prediction on their part. Dicks yes, but highly intelligent dicks =)
It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.
But that objection would carry weight only if there was some substantial threat behind it (the threat of large numbers of FB users quitting for instance). Even with massive mobilization, less than 0.01% of users did so after this latest debacle. That sends a clear message to FB that there are no consequences to privacy violations. Clearly, the users need it much more than the other way around. The users have no leverage by themselves (rather like politics in a large democracy). Note that they do have it in principle, but they shown that they are unwilling to use it in practice, which is why I say they don't have it (in effect).
What's curious is the anger is so impotent (and I say this without any snark). I heard a news piece on Canadian radio ("Search engine" by Jesse Brown) lately that talked about this. Apparently, with all the ruckus and "Quit FB" groups making noise, less than 0.01% of FB users actually quit over this. By the way, if you're Canadian, there's a class action lawsuit in the works representing all Canuck FBers (google it).
It's like expecting cocaine users to quit snorting because their dealer ratted them out to the Feds =)
When a FB user's entire social life is wrapped up in FB, he/she is at the mercy of the FB overlords. Only a loss in features would cause a substantial loss in users at this point. Otherwise, it's always gonna be business as usual. The users have no leverage over FB, it's entirely the other way around - why would you expect anything to change?
Demanding bounds on the data is not unreasonable. Expecting those demands to be acquiesced to without a single slip is ... unrealistic. Expecting privacy to be actually enforced out of the kindness of their hearts is a bit unreasonable. Having faith that all that private data will NEVER (even by accident) fall into the wrong hands once its out there is remarkably naive. Shit happens. Whatever happened to reasonable personal precautions about privacy on the internet (no physical addresses or phone numbers)?. Hell, if nothing else, Lamebook is rife with examples of how one weak link in your friendslist can humiliate the fark out of you by exposing private data. FB is a social disaster waiting to happen for so many indiscreet people that I'm amazed how well things have gone so far.
+1
I had occasion to watch cable the other day at my parents' place. Felt like I'd left a quiet poolroom and entered a Chuck'e'Cheese (however that's spelled). Gawd, all those LOUD and stupid ads. Even with mute, it's like they're clawing at the inside of my brain o.O
Then most people either want to be peasant farmers or mafia bosses?
And if there's overlap - free fertilizer! Woot!
The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction."
I do wish religious groups would stop projecting their own failings on all of humanity (even though I admit that's a common psychological defense mechanism). I am quite satisfied with my life thankyouverymuch. I'm not entirely happy but that's a small price to pay for satisfaction and I imagine there's lots of people like that in the world.
You miss the point entirely. Both GP and I were commenting on the fact that you reach a point in your reading life when genre labels become amusing playthings and getting hold of quality fiction period becomes difficult enough that its precise categorization becomes rather irrelevant. And even when I had the luxury of believing that it was relevant, the precise distinction between soft and hard SF was usually quite blurred for the reasons I explained above. Remember that there was a time when SF was not considered serious literature. There are still reactionary fools who believe this to be the case. However, our reaction to this (as connoisseurs of the genre) should not be to beg the literati to please accept us into their domain but to simply keep creating (for the gifted) and consuming (for the rest of us) in what is the most imaginative and frenetic and creative literary subfield in a space that is otherwise running out of new ideas. The wider problem has now come to subgenres of SF, with squabbling about hard and soft SF. You see where this going?
Now, given all that, the purpose of your specific question eludes me. What do you mean by me "having a $10M budget for modern, existing tech"? In any case, whether your example is SF or not would have nothing to do with the absolute level of tech of the fictional world since the question is always whether the tech is advanced or speculative compared to our own (the 'our' being whoever is contemplating this categorization). So, for instance, most of Jules Verne would no longer be SF, since we have all the tech (and more) that is described in his work. Wells' The invisible man would still be SF since we don't have that yet. So, you see, even the SF label sort of evolves in time - and why not? There is absolutely no reason for me to worship a classic if it is no longer wondrous to me, at this point of time (I do so anyway out of nostalgia or charity, but I do not believe that we are obliged to do so). Of course, I would be rather foolish for insisting on this categorization because it doesn't matter in the slightest. Apart from the entertainment value of a good story (that never goes out of date), any other importance of SF (as an educational medium or an inspiration for budding scientists for example) is purely contextual.
I always thought that THAT was the chief strength of SF - that it did not create unnecessary idols of the past whose visions must be held in awe forever. Rather those wonders came with expiry dates - the precise times when reality would surpass their imaginations (and the authors would be the first to rejoice at that - ONLY IN SF).
In fact, that's probably the only definition of an SF writer that I would not dismiss instantly - someone who would want the world to reach and then make obsolete, what must have been the grandest leap of the imagination for him/her. Anyway, this was too much rambling even for me and for that I apologize. I hope that made some sense given its resemblance to a water sprinkler.
YESH! I'm 28 and I nearly wet myself during that one =]. Reminded me vividly of the Stephen King story "The Sun Dog". Same kind of incremental menace as the story progresses ...
But it has a lot more in common with 3rd Rock from the Sun which is a sitcom with aliens than it has to do with hard science fiction.
I would go further than that and compare Doctor Who to something like Eureka - an affectionate homage to the golden age of SF (without trying to be dead serious all the time and being able to laugh at itself). IMHO 3rd rock was just plain silly - sorta the Seinfeld of SF. Doctor Who is more like Terry Pratchett or Doug Adams, with some episodes being remarkably profound. I've only watched them all once so I don't recall episode names, but the one where the entire planet is stuck in traffic comes to mind. Several more but my memory sux :{
It still boggles the mind how they manage to make something that looks so ridiculous (the Daleks) take on a menace that is absolutely terrifying at times =). Sheer genius.
More than anything (at this point I've completely forgotten what I was replying to), Doctor Who keeps alive the swashbuckling sense of adventure that we got from SF movies in the 80's and early 90's (the Doctor is the closest thing to Han Solo we have today ;) To say that it's just a kids' show is to do it a great injustice.
I completely agree. Time was (in my teen years) that I was one of these pricks who sneered at so-called soft SF and championed the cause of hard SF (of the Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Baxter kind). The problem is that the softness or hardness of SF (beyond the obvious Flash Gordon-esque stuff or the irritating "Bug" SF subgenre) depends entirely on the reader's level of scientific knowledge. As a result, once I went through grad courses in Physics, the so-called hard-SF started becoming really old (the same old shit - a more sophisticated version of Star Trek's technobabble). Anyway, today I try to be a lot more diverse about my SF menu. The Doctor Who universe is a sort of loving homage to SF, mostly harmless fun (and really good fun at that) but sometimes coming up with some charming gems of episodes that make me really think.
To end on point, the whole idea of "fantasy SF" is plain ridiculous. To me, at this point in my life, (much like you), when quality "hard-SF" (that's also entertaining - see, I no longer learn any S from hard-SF since I have the actual S on hand) is rare, I've developed a healthy respect for the softer genres, especially sociopolitical SF (a la L.M.Bujold or a very small number of other Baen authors - none of whom I'd call hard-SF writers, but who can write QUALITY literature. Well, David Weber excepted - his Honorverse is definitely hard SF, in addition to the sociopolitical stuff. It is extraordinarily rare that authors can do both so masterfully but I digress).
In other words, I'm at the point where a lack of explanation about some things actually enhances the verisimilitude in the story because it is so easy to spot obvious flaws (or spectacular versions of hand-waving) in convoluted physics/engineering explanations one sees in hard-hard-SF (H2SF?) works these days. The people who insist on making these distinctions should understand that the hard sciences are so-called precisely because its practitioners do not labor under the delusion that to name something is to understand it. "Explaining" the working of a fictional "anti-gravity" generator using some meaningless technobabble lifted from some science blog (that was further based on some obscure Arxiv article from hep-th or /gr-qc) is a remarkably futile (not to mention highly amusing) endeavor. The takeaway message is this - The good SF author knows when NOT to try to explain too much (and risk ruining the illusion). The good Doctor (you know which one) knew this intimately - reading his works made you believe that Psychohistory was a real science - there's a rare skill in weaving such a realistic illusion. Stephen King is another person who has that skill (even more so because he takes absolute absurdities and makes terrifyingly real worlds out of them).
The One Ring just spontaneously made people invisible, with no discussion as to the method.
Not to go off on a tangent here (well, I guess I am), but the whole invisibility shtick always seemed like a bit of a non sequitur to me. That would be akin to (bizarro universe's) George Lucas writing in the ultimate lightsaber with astonishing powers (like being able to instantly disable any other lightsaber on contact) and then saying - 'O btw, when turned off it can be used as a dildo by Padme'. Ya know? Just ... weird.
How the hell is this modded troll? Seems like a legitimate matter of practicality to me. But (to the trigger-happy mod-) go ahead and live in your cozy comfortable world and assume that anyone can just "go out and play". Numbnut.
In the US, a dissident post on a message board may be deleted. In China, the poster gets deleted. Big difference =p
Of course, thanks to the tolerance in academia for differing opinions
The "scientific consensus" is that no form of inertial confinement will ever work,
Academia claim none of these designs will work,
According to academia non-uniform temperature distributions are impossible, and exchanging energy between magnetic fields and temperature is stupid.
This "academia" must be a real sonovabitch. Some cranks fail at publishing and academia is blamed. How delightful. The last statement I quote above is particularly ridiculous. Strawman much?
we better start sponsoring every last good and bad idea to build a working fusion reactor.
Funding is limited. People with ideas are a dime a dozen. People with good ideas are extremely rare. People with good ideas who (1) can do something with the idea or (2) put their fucking ego aside and collaborate with someone who can; are fourth-nipple-rare. This is far from my field but if you ever worked in academia, you'd realize just how many stupid people there are out there who think they are fucking geniuses. The emails I get stand as proud testament to that fact. That is not to say that some scientists don't do exactly that. It's just that for someone who took such pains to provide Wiki citations for his science, you're sure as hell vague about exactly who this "academia" person is (rather, what percentage of the field is being so negative). Also, I loathe the noobs who think that a scientist is being hostile when he/she is merely being apathetic. Ideas are cheap, fusion (today) is an engineering problem and won't be solved by armchair kooks. If you think you have a winning idea, use that intelligence to go the next step - diplomacy, tactics, whatever is needed to GET THE JOB DONE. If these geniuses are waiting around for some sugar daddy to throw a million bucks in their lap, they can just keep on dreaming - that's not how things work.
You must have replied to the wrong post. I (and the person I was correcting) was referring solely to the Slashdot moderation system (about which parent was laboring under a serious misunderstanding). I made no comment about Apple or any other thing.
You do realize that any moderation is pretty irrelevant unless YOU (the reader) want it to be, right? Browse at -1.
Slashdot has -1 disagree that people use to hide comments that they can't rate as wrong,flamebait, troll or be bothered to reply to. Censorship.
Good job sneaking the cuckoo in with the pigeons =p
Slashdot does not hide any comments. YOU do. BY choice. Browse at -1 and voila! No more hiding. Any form of moderation that leaves the power to hide/show any post SOLELY in the hands of the individual user is NOT censorship (if it is, it's self-censorship - otherwise known as "I choose what I read"). WHY is this so difficult to understand? More importantly, why is the fundamental distinction between it and the other examples in your list elude so many (otherwise intelligent) /. users?