It really is frustrating when "experts" issue dire, yet vague, warnings about what you should NEVER do ("do not use solvent-based markers") and then don't follow with *specific* suggestions for what you *should* do.
I don't know what kind of marker would qualify as NOT solvent based. Alcohol and water are solvents, of course. Maybe they are included. Maybe not. Maybe one is but not the other.
The Sharpie marker beside me doesn't mention solvent or non-solvent on the label and smells like cherry Kool-Aid with the cap off. So, what does it use? Is this exactly the type of marker I should use, or is this what they're saying I shouldn't use? If the latter, what -- specifically -- SHOULD I use?
I'm not sure who modded you flamebait, but you're asking reasonable questions, IMO.
a) There's too much to cover here. I'm not willing to write an essay on it, but Microsoft clearly listened to what Java developers were asking for, and what Windows developers were asking for, and they delivered. Perhaps the best way to make my case without a long argument is to point out how "stable" the Java language was until the C# specs were released, and how suddenly the Java language started to evolve again, and what a remarkable coincidence it was that so many of the new Java features just happened to be features of C#.
b) Well, first, MS's C# compiler is free in every sense that Sun's Java compiler is free. Both are proprietary command line tools available for free download with no usage restrictions for commercial work.
Now, as far as MS caring about the developer community, they certainly DO NOT care about anything that won't yield a competitive advantage. Their self-proclaimed "innovation" is almost directly proportional to the strength of their competition in any given area.
But from a developer's perspective, I can say that when I complained about the lack of certain features in Java to Java reps, they were just Apple all over again: they explained to me how I wasn't as smart as they were and didn't really want what I said I wanted. Fortunately, they would explain, they WERE smart and knew best what I really needed, and that's what I would get.
When I made the same complaints about Java to Microsoft reps, they invariably took notes and asked lots of questions about my preferences.
So it came as no big surprise to me when C# came out that it was, in fact, better than Java. Unfortunately, the fact that it is Windows only really only lets me take advantage of it with client-side apps because I don't use Windows as a server platform. All I can say is that I hope Mono succeeds.
This bursting into flames business is just the hardware equivalent of what I see happening to software everyday. They should learn from us software guys that sacrificing goats doesn't really work, despite what they may have heard.
Real has evolved from a great, simple little player to nasty malware. I guess the admiration that the folks at "Progressive Networks" used to regularly express for leftist revolutionaries should have been a clue. Start off with "down with the Evil Empire, power to the people" and "progress" to "we don't care about feedback from the people because we ARE 'The People', so you'd better do what you're told".
A simple, clean player with a high-quality installer, available for all major consumer platforms (that means NOT primarily targeting Linux), and with a free server, could take advantage of this to take over this market, especially if it were capable of playing RealAudio format.
All the big broadcasters want is a large audience, and all the small ones want is a free server that's easy for non-techies to set up and a client that's easy for their niche listeners to install on a consumer machine. (Tip: simple, easy installers.) I hope the Open Source community can take advantage of this opportunity.
Seems the logic-impaired anti-American isn't just a stereotype.
Many people seem so desperate to feel superior to Americans that they assign American citizenship to every AC who posts something they feel they can criticise. Inventing a silly stereotype, inventing examples of the stereotype, then using this mental construct to bolster your fragile ego is a bit spurious, if not downright pathetic.
As a former professional translator and interpreter of Japanese scientific literature, I assure you that Japanese is not, as a language, more precise than English. I've never encountered anyone, Japanese or otherwise, who thought it was. One of the hardest parts of my job was having to be explicit in English about things that had been left vague in Japanese, because the rules of English required me to be more explicit than the rules of Japanese. (Occasionally the reverse is true, but it's less common.)
And as for Thomas Hardy's florid prose defining "well-crafted English", he was from a time when baroque meant "high class" and simple meant "low class" in all manner of things: literature, fashion, architecture, music, etc.
If you still feel that way, maybe you should put on your ruffled collar, pull up your frilly knee socks, and read more Hardy.
As for me, as a scientist, I prefer simple and clear to baroque and convoluted and don't consider the latter inherently more precise than the former.
I'm quite good at math and bad at sketching. I like your example.
Let me say this about being good at math. Not surprisingly, it's (almost) all about practice. I'm not denying the possibility of natural talent playing a role, but I think probably anybody could reach the calculus level without much need for natural talent, as long as there's no time pressure and you do a lot of work.
You have to do lots and lots of example problems. As you do, you start to develop a "feel" for them. If you do it enough to develop that feel before moving on to the next level, you'll be fine. If you're forced to go to the next level before you develop the feel, you won't "see" the new things properly, and you can't deal with what you can't "see".
You'll then be forced to figure out ways to get by that aren't real learning -- some combination of cheats and dodges and settling for less, etc. Then, without the proper foundation, if you're forced yet again to move on, things will go into a death spiral of lost confidence, bad grades, poor skills, tricks, playing the system, etc.
You need to go back as far as you need to go back, get a source of LOTS of sample problems, and do them again and again and again until you get the feel for it. Then move on in steps that are as slow and gradual as they need to be and keep doing LOTS of problems.
The natural talent issue may make you slower at this than some other people, but it probably can't stop you as long as you don't quit.
I solve math problems now for the most part by seeing through them, meaning that I recognize them and have a feel for them that comes from familiarity gained over years of practice. You may not have the interest to put that much time into it, which is fine, but then don't accuse yourself of being "bad at math" if you willingly decide not to take the time to become good at math. You probably could be, but you may be underestimating both yourself and the amount of work needed for anybody to become good at math.
Maybe a good tutor could help, maybe some good tutorial books could help, but NOTHING helps like practice, practice, practice.
It's possible, but far less likely. Real cryo storage is designed for extreme low temperature, long term, and no freeze/thaw cycling -- unlike Subway (I assume you mean the sandwich shop). All of these things *increase the chances* that recovery might be possible.
Increase the chances to what level? Nobody knows. Just up as high as we know how. If we knew a way to increase the chances even more (that wasn't prohibitively expensive), we'd do that, because nobody knows what the threshold for success will be.
If increasing the chances of success is of no importance to you, because you're certain that either success or failure is inevitable no matter what you do, or you just don't care about life extension, then wouldn't you be better off just doing nothing than opting for Subway?
Nobody has a "deep understanding" of anything substantial without a lot of facts being in his head -- memorized. You simply can't function at a master level if you have to rederive everything you do from first principles and look up each fact you need.
I'm not saying that a pile of memorized facts makes you a master. I'm saying that you can't be one without it. It's not sufficient, but it IS necessary.
Yeah, yeah, my mind is so extra...superfab...[doh!]...darn-diddly quick that it has already moved on to solving some theoretical physics problems, leaving my drooling moron of a body behind to finish posting on Slashdot with the rest of you geniuses....
That first sentence of the poster's submission is completely unnecessary and starts the entire question off on a bad note. If the submitter was really such a big genius he would have realized that and left the sentence off.
I don't know. It sort of reads like Stephen Wolfram's "New Science" book.
It's hard to be a master of anything without a lot of memorization. If you don't have the core information in your head already, you're not qualified for most serious professions, though I admit that having online access to so much information does affect even the way a master will allocate his study time and effort.
If you really want to try and change things, try for just "Computing," no silly science after it.
I definitely prefer "informatics" for the name of the science aspect. I think the real science in "computer science" is more akin to mathematics than to anything else. I'd like to see the discrete math, the information theory, the algorithmics, AI, programming language theory, etc. renamed "informatics" in the English-speaking world to emphasize the underlying theories of information, while deemphasizing any particular physical devices (computers) that are currently popular for implementation.
Another way to say it: a recursive Towers of Hanoi solution may be grown as a network of artificial neurons in a petri dish. It's still informatics, but it seems silly to call such a thing "computer science".
...and the icecast link is 404, too. Maybe it's because they're not broadcasting now, or maybe it's a bad link or just broken. Who knows? It's another production of the open source community! Yay! We're l33t rebels! Woohoo!
The exact law depends on the state, but the term "piercing the corporate veil" is the legal term for the approach used to defeat this scam in court. Anyone who transfers ownership of an asset from himself to himself via the game you cite risks having the court declare the corporations to be merely "veils" and the real party to the dispute to be the party behind the veils. Once that ruling has been made, the plaintiffs can sue the owner of the corporation directly.
2001 had a totally straightforward plot, if you read the book.
Yes, and it's pretty well known that the book was written *after* the movie, in part to explain the plot of the movie. A good movie (or book) shouldn't have to rely on a third party to provide comprehensibility. I still love the movie, but it's a pretty extreme example of a movie being great in some ways and terrible in others.
And thanks for the recommended reading list. I'll check out Revelation Space.
Vinge is good for a couple of good ideas in each book, but then he only makes a mediocre effort to create a world around those ideas. (Compare a Vinge story world to the level of detail in a Clancy story world, to get the sense in which I mean this.) The ideas are enough to keep me reading his books, though.
Vinge is a lot better than Gibson, IMO. Gibson's ideas are no deeper than they have to be to provide a framework for a black leather and sunglasses-at-night fashion show. Even when I was a pimply adolescent, his presumed audience for kewwl black leather-clad assasin chicks and burnout rebel heroes, I didn't find much to ponder there, but YMMV.
And I haven't tried Eric Nylund.
Re:Does it so well?
on
Singularity Sky
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think you missed the whole FICTION part.
I think you missed the whole IMAGINATION part.
Fiction doesn't require the environment to be cartoonish or absurd, nor does a detailed and realistic environment rule out detailed and realistic characters.
Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October has plenty of character interaction, and it's all played out in the amazing environment of real 1980s submarine technology and real 1980s international politics. When I was at the Naval Academy, midshipmen (the students) were required to read it for the many interacting issues of technology, politics, leadership styles, organizational structure, etc.
Now imagine something similar to Hunt for Red October but stretching to predict the technological, political, social, economic etc. circumstances of a generation or so from now. (And all of those aspects drive each other and provide real motivations for the characters.)
Assume a Clancy-like author who will put as much effort into his predicted details as the real Clancy does into his fiction. Despite the inevitable forecasting errors, a good, well-informed, careful Clancyish author who did a lot of interviews and a lot of study could create a story that would be far more interesting than just character interactions in the semi-void of a poorly developed environment.
Personally, I thought 2001 was incredibly boring.
I don't admire the plot, just the creation of realistic vignettes (based on what was known at that time) of a possible future. As soon as it got beyond Jupiter, it was just random noise as far as I was concerned, but those aspects aren't what I'm referring to.
If you want factually based forward thinking literature, go read NASA manuals.
I have, which is why I'm no longer satisfied with today's SF comic books. I think real life is far more interesting, and that goes double for realistic speculations on our future lives.
I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by NASA people when I was a kid, back when 2001 (movie) came out. I assure you that the NASA folks were entranced by the scenes from 2001 of the space station docking maneuvers, of the interactions of the human crew with the onboard computer (HAL) and other aspects of the movie. It spurred a lot of discussions.
Imagine such a movie or novel created today. Forget about aliens and hokey telepathic beings and other nonsense. If space is involved, it should just be a reasonable near-Earth industrial and scientific environment. The real thing is more amazing than any alien stories or other hokum. Or, just keep it on Earth.
Extrapolate today's infant technologies, social movements, economic changes, political changes, etc. with imagination and Clancy-like attention to detail, then (unlike 2001, but like Clancy) have a real plot with real characters against a background that seems even more plausible to the well-informed than to the general public.......and THAT is what I'd love to see.
Well, sort of.;-) But forget about the "in space". SF doesn't have to be in space, and there's plenty of interest to speculate about based on what is already underway right here on Earth.
If it's a movie, keep the LOTR production values, though.
Re:Does it so well?
on
Singularity Sky
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So you're saying he's good at writing SF that sucks?
The whole industry is.
What we need is today's equivalent of a "2001" (though we can do without the incomprehensible plot).
By that I mean SF that makes a serious attempt at creating a plausible future about a generation ahead that puts so much effort into the details that the more you know about the subject matter, the more impressed you are. An intriguing, thought-provoking and informative preview of a world that well-informed people consider so well thought out as to be worth studying and pondering for its implications.
If by "reviewer needs to get off his high horse" you mean he shouldn't consider something you like to be schlock, I disagree. That's what reviewers do. They apply their standards to the topic of review and report on how they fare by those standards.
Apparently you're offended that he set his standards higher than yours in some respect. All I can say is that I wish the whole SF industry would follow his example.
That's an excellent question, and I wish I had something useful to offer. I got so fed up with science fiction that I essentially abandoned it years ago (back around the time Neuromancer was published). I'm probably looking for something along the lines of a Tom Clancy story set about thirty years in the future. That level of research, that level of attention to detail, with a real (and interesting) plot showing solid, believable characters interacting in a world with some dramatic (and fascinating) changes and some things very much unchanged.
The only real titles that come to mind are Sagan's Contact (movie and book) and 2001 A Space Odyssey. 2001 is dated, now, but it was an excellent attempt at a possible 30-yr future, thirty-five years ago. It also shows just how far off even very bright, technically astute, and visionary people can be in just 30 short years. Still, it was an excellent attempt, and I've wondered for years when someone would make the "2001" of today based on extrapolations of the Net, biotech, nanotech, etc.
Contact isn't it, set essentially in the present, but they did a good job with it. Like 2001, it degenerates into virtual randomness at the end, which I'm not too pleased about, but what else can you do with a plot that requires contact with intelligent aliens at the end? Most of the movie leading up to the climax was pretty solid, as I recall.
I'd prefer a movie that didn't have to deal with contact with intelligent ETs, descents into black holes, the distant future, etc., since they are so unforseeable that pretty much anything you do will be hokey.
But there are plenty of existing technologies and societal changes, still in their infancy, that could make for a stunningly amazing experience if extrapolated carefully a couple of decades or so.
It's just that reality affects me emotionally more than nonsense like hobbits or guys in sunglasses shooting at software with bullets (Matrix), so attention to detail and accuracy makes a book or movie more moving to me.
It amazes me how many technical types go ga-ga over Gibson's writings or the Matrix movies. They're all atmosphere and no substance. Wow! Hot chick assassins in black leather and shades! Kewwwl!
I've spoken with Gibson. He knows little about either technology or Asia and doesn't deny it. He's not a phony. All he claims to be doing is "creating a mood", and he thinks it pretty odd that techies would consider him some sort of visionary.
I do, too. I don't mind atmosphere, but only when it's a natural-feeling background to a world that is substantially believable and interesting. For it to really grab me, it needs to feel like a sneak preview of a future that, based on what I know of the technologies and cultures, I consider to be enough of a realistic possibility that I want to pay attention. I want to learn about that future from the book and walk away with my head buzzing with new ideas.
Instead, I get black leather clad Bad Boy and Bad Girl rebel anti-heroes in sunglasses battling the Evil Big Corporations. Whoa. Deep. [yawn...]
Most serious programmers have tons of studying to do. So many tools and interacting technologies that change so rapidly....
A "classic", to me, is a book that puts the maximum amount of useful and usable knowledge in my head with the least amount of effort. This doesn't necessarily mean the shortest book. A "terse" book can take more time and effort to read than a longer book with better explanations.
But a book like this, with such a low useful_stuff/useless_fluff ratio, is not my idea of a classic.
Slashdot Mirror
It really is frustrating when "experts" issue dire, yet vague, warnings about what you should NEVER do ("do not use solvent-based markers") and then don't follow with *specific* suggestions for what you *should* do.
I don't know what kind of marker would qualify as NOT solvent based. Alcohol and water are solvents, of course. Maybe they are included. Maybe not. Maybe one is but not the other.
The Sharpie marker beside me doesn't mention solvent or non-solvent on the label and smells like cherry Kool-Aid with the cap off. So, what does it use? Is this exactly the type of marker I should use, or is this what they're saying I shouldn't use? If the latter, what -- specifically -- SHOULD I use?
Arrgh. Thanks for the expert advice.
I'm not sure who modded you flamebait, but you're asking reasonable questions, IMO.
a) There's too much to cover here. I'm not willing to write an essay on it, but Microsoft clearly listened to what Java developers were asking for, and what Windows developers were asking for, and they delivered. Perhaps the best way to make my case without a long argument is to point out how "stable" the Java language was until the C# specs were released, and how suddenly the Java language started to evolve again, and what a remarkable coincidence it was that so many of the new Java features just happened to be features of C#.
b) Well, first, MS's C# compiler is free in every sense that Sun's Java compiler is free. Both are proprietary command line tools available for free download with no usage restrictions for commercial work.
Now, as far as MS caring about the developer community, they certainly DO NOT care about anything that won't yield a competitive advantage. Their self-proclaimed "innovation" is almost directly proportional to the strength of their competition in any given area.
But from a developer's perspective, I can say that when I complained about the lack of certain features in Java to Java reps, they were just Apple all over again: they explained to me how I wasn't as smart as they were and didn't really want what I said I wanted. Fortunately, they would explain, they WERE smart and knew best what I really needed, and that's what I would get.
When I made the same complaints about Java to Microsoft reps, they invariably took notes and asked lots of questions about my preferences.
So it came as no big surprise to me when C# came out that it was, in fact, better than Java. Unfortunately, the fact that it is Windows only really only lets me take advantage of it with client-side apps because I don't use Windows as a server platform. All I can say is that I hope Mono succeeds.
This bursting into flames business is just the hardware equivalent of what I see happening to software everyday. They should learn from us software guys that sacrificing goats doesn't really work, despite what they may have heard.
Real has evolved from a great, simple little player to nasty malware. I guess the admiration that the folks at "Progressive Networks" used to regularly express for leftist revolutionaries should have been a clue. Start off with "down with the Evil Empire, power to the people" and "progress" to "we don't care about feedback from the people because we ARE 'The People', so you'd better do what you're told".
A simple, clean player with a high-quality installer, available for all major consumer platforms (that means NOT primarily targeting Linux), and with a free server, could take advantage of this to take over this market, especially if it were capable of playing RealAudio format.
All the big broadcasters want is a large audience, and all the small ones want is a free server that's easy for non-techies to set up and a client that's easy for their niche listeners to install on a consumer machine. (Tip: simple, easy installers.) I hope the Open Source community can take advantage of this opportunity.
Seems the logic-impaired anti-American isn't just a stereotype.
Many people seem so desperate to feel superior to Americans that they assign American citizenship to every AC who posts something they feel they can criticise. Inventing a silly stereotype, inventing examples of the stereotype, then using this mental construct to bolster your fragile ego is a bit spurious, if not downright pathetic.
Wow, such nonsense.
As a former professional translator and interpreter of Japanese scientific literature, I assure you that Japanese is not, as a language, more precise than English. I've never encountered anyone, Japanese or otherwise, who thought it was. One of the hardest parts of my job was having to be explicit in English about things that had been left vague in Japanese, because the rules of English required me to be more explicit than the rules of Japanese. (Occasionally the reverse is true, but it's less common.)
And as for Thomas Hardy's florid prose defining "well-crafted English", he was from a time when baroque meant "high class" and simple meant "low class" in all manner of things: literature, fashion, architecture, music, etc.
If you still feel that way, maybe you should put on your ruffled collar, pull up your frilly knee socks, and read more Hardy.
As for me, as a scientist, I prefer simple and clear to baroque and convoluted and don't consider the latter inherently more precise than the former.
I'm quite good at math and bad at sketching. I like your example.
Let me say this about being good at math. Not surprisingly, it's (almost) all about practice. I'm not denying the possibility of natural talent playing a role, but I think probably anybody could reach the calculus level without much need for natural talent, as long as there's no time pressure and you do a lot of work.
You have to do lots and lots of example problems. As you do, you start to develop a "feel" for them. If you do it enough to develop that feel before moving on to the next level, you'll be fine. If you're forced to go to the next level before you develop the feel, you won't "see" the new things properly, and you can't deal with what you can't "see".
You'll then be forced to figure out ways to get by that aren't real learning -- some combination of cheats and dodges and settling for less, etc. Then, without the proper foundation, if you're forced yet again to move on, things will go into a death spiral of lost confidence, bad grades, poor skills, tricks, playing the system, etc.
You need to go back as far as you need to go back, get a source of LOTS of sample problems, and do them again and again and again until you get the feel for it. Then move on in steps that are as slow and gradual as they need to be and keep doing LOTS of problems.
The natural talent issue may make you slower at this than some other people, but it probably can't stop you as long as you don't quit.
I solve math problems now for the most part by seeing through them, meaning that I recognize them and have a feel for them that comes from familiarity gained over years of practice. You may not have the interest to put that much time into it, which is fine, but then don't accuse yourself of being "bad at math" if you willingly decide not to take the time to become good at math. You probably could be, but you may be underestimating both yourself and the amount of work needed for anybody to become good at math.
Maybe a good tutor could help, maybe some good tutorial books could help, but NOTHING helps like practice, practice, practice.
It's possible, but far less likely. Real cryo storage is designed for extreme low temperature, long term, and no freeze/thaw cycling -- unlike Subway (I assume you mean the sandwich shop). All of these things *increase the chances* that recovery might be possible.
Increase the chances to what level? Nobody knows. Just up as high as we know how. If we knew a way to increase the chances even more (that wasn't prohibitively expensive), we'd do that, because nobody knows what the threshold for success will be.
If increasing the chances of success is of no importance to you, because you're certain that either success or failure is inevitable no matter what you do, or you just don't care about life extension, then wouldn't you be better off just doing nothing than opting for Subway?
And there's no REAL reason to believe we could fly in space. After all, everyone knows there's no air, so flapping your wings would have no effect.
Yep. It's pretty dumb to imagine they they'll be able to do things in the future that we don't know how to do already.
Nobody has a "deep understanding" of anything substantial without a lot of facts being in his head -- memorized. You simply can't function at a master level if you have to rederive everything you do from first principles and look up each fact you need.
I'm not saying that a pile of memorized facts makes you a master. I'm saying that you can't be one without it. It's not sufficient, but it IS necessary.
Yeah, yeah, my mind is so extra...superfab...[doh!]...darn-diddly quick that it has already moved on to solving some theoretical physics problems, leaving my drooling moron of a body behind to finish posting on Slashdot with the rest of you geniuses....
That first sentence of the poster's submission is completely unnecessary and starts the entire question off on a bad note. If the submitter was really such a big genius he would have realized that and left the sentence off.
I don't know. It sort of reads like Stephen Wolfram's "New Science" book.
It's hard to be a master of anything without a lot of memorization. If you don't have the core information in your head already, you're not qualified for most serious professions, though I admit that having online access to so much information does affect even the way a master will allocate his study time and effort.
If you really want to try and change things, try for just "Computing," no silly science after it.
I definitely prefer "informatics" for the name of the science aspect. I think the real science in "computer science" is more akin to mathematics than to anything else. I'd like to see the discrete math, the information theory, the algorithmics, AI, programming language theory, etc. renamed "informatics" in the English-speaking world to emphasize the underlying theories of information, while deemphasizing any particular physical devices (computers) that are currently popular for implementation.
Another way to say it: a recursive Towers of Hanoi solution may be grown as a network of artificial neurons in a petri dish. It's still informatics, but it seems silly to call such a thing "computer science".
...and the icecast link is 404, too. Maybe it's because they're not broadcasting now, or maybe it's a bad link or just broken. Who knows? It's another production of the open source community! Yay! We're l33t rebels! Woohoo!
The exact law depends on the state, but the term "piercing the corporate veil" is the legal term for the approach used to defeat this scam in court. Anyone who transfers ownership of an asset from himself to himself via the game you cite risks having the court declare the corporations to be merely "veils" and the real party to the dispute to be the party behind the veils. Once that ruling has been made, the plaintiffs can sue the owner of the corporation directly.
Thanks. Interesting virtual mod point to you. ;-)
2001 had a totally straightforward plot, if you read the book.
Yes, and it's pretty well known that the book was written *after* the movie, in part to explain the plot of the movie. A good movie (or book) shouldn't have to rely on a third party to provide comprehensibility. I still love the movie, but it's a pretty extreme example of a movie being great in some ways and terrible in others.
And thanks for the recommended reading list. I'll check out Revelation Space.
Vinge is good for a couple of good ideas in each book, but then he only makes a mediocre effort to create a world around those ideas. (Compare a Vinge story world to the level of detail in a Clancy story world, to get the sense in which I mean this.) The ideas are enough to keep me reading his books, though.
Vinge is a lot better than Gibson, IMO. Gibson's ideas are no deeper than they have to be to provide a framework for a black leather and sunglasses-at-night fashion show. Even when I was a pimply adolescent, his presumed audience for kewwl black leather-clad assasin chicks and burnout rebel heroes, I didn't find much to ponder there, but YMMV.
And I haven't tried Eric Nylund.
I think you missed the whole FICTION part.
...and THAT is what I'd love to see.
I think you missed the whole IMAGINATION part.
Fiction doesn't require the environment to be cartoonish or absurd, nor does a detailed and realistic environment rule out detailed and realistic characters.
Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October has plenty of character interaction, and it's all played out in the amazing environment of real 1980s submarine technology and real 1980s international politics. When I was at the Naval Academy, midshipmen (the students) were required to read it for the many interacting issues of technology, politics, leadership styles, organizational structure, etc.
Now imagine something similar to Hunt for Red October but stretching to predict the technological, political, social, economic etc. circumstances of a generation or so from now. (And all of those aspects drive each other and provide real motivations for the characters.)
Assume a Clancy-like author who will put as much effort into his predicted details as the real Clancy does into his fiction. Despite the inevitable forecasting errors, a good, well-informed, careful Clancyish author who did a lot of interviews and a lot of study could create a story that would be far more interesting than just character interactions in the semi-void of a poorly developed environment.
Personally, I thought 2001 was incredibly boring.
I don't admire the plot, just the creation of realistic vignettes (based on what was known at that time) of a possible future. As soon as it got beyond Jupiter, it was just random noise as far as I was concerned, but those aspects aren't what I'm referring to.
If you want factually based forward thinking literature, go read NASA manuals.
I have, which is why I'm no longer satisfied with today's SF comic books. I think real life is far more interesting, and that goes double for realistic speculations on our future lives.
I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by NASA people when I was a kid, back when 2001 (movie) came out. I assure you that the NASA folks were entranced by the scenes from 2001 of the space station docking maneuvers, of the interactions of the human crew with the onboard computer (HAL) and other aspects of the movie. It spurred a lot of discussions.
Imagine such a movie or novel created today. Forget about aliens and hokey telepathic beings and other nonsense. If space is involved, it should just be a reasonable near-Earth industrial and scientific environment. The real thing is more amazing than any alien stories or other hokum. Or, just keep it on Earth.
Extrapolate today's infant technologies, social movements, economic changes, political changes, etc. with imagination and Clancy-like attention to detail, then (unlike 2001, but like Clancy) have a real plot with real characters against a background that seems even more plausible to the well-informed than to the general public....
Well, sort of. ;-) But forget about the "in space". SF doesn't have to be in space, and there's plenty of interest to speculate about based on what is already underway right here on Earth.
If it's a movie, keep the LOTR production values, though.
So you're saying he's good at writing SF that sucks?
The whole industry is.
What we need is today's equivalent of a "2001" (though we can do without the incomprehensible plot).
By that I mean SF that makes a serious attempt at creating a plausible future about a generation ahead that puts so much effort into the details that the more you know about the subject matter, the more impressed you are. An intriguing, thought-provoking and informative preview of a world that well-informed people consider so well thought out as to be worth studying and pondering for its implications.
If by "reviewer needs to get off his high horse" you mean he shouldn't consider something you like to be schlock, I disagree. That's what reviewers do. They apply their standards to the topic of review and report on how they fare by those standards.
Apparently you're offended that he set his standards higher than yours in some respect. All I can say is that I wish the whole SF industry would follow his example.
That's an excellent question, and I wish I had something useful to offer. I got so fed up with science fiction that I essentially abandoned it years ago (back around the time Neuromancer was published). I'm probably looking for something along the lines of a Tom Clancy story set about thirty years in the future. That level of research, that level of attention to detail, with a real (and interesting) plot showing solid, believable characters interacting in a world with some dramatic (and fascinating) changes and some things very much unchanged.
The only real titles that come to mind are Sagan's Contact (movie and book) and 2001 A Space Odyssey. 2001 is dated, now, but it was an excellent attempt at a possible 30-yr future, thirty-five years ago. It also shows just how far off even very bright, technically astute, and visionary people can be in just 30 short years. Still, it was an excellent attempt, and I've wondered for years when someone would make the "2001" of today based on extrapolations of the Net, biotech, nanotech, etc.
Contact isn't it, set essentially in the present, but they did a good job with it. Like 2001, it degenerates into virtual randomness at the end, which I'm not too pleased about, but what else can you do with a plot that requires contact with intelligent aliens at the end? Most of the movie leading up to the climax was pretty solid, as I recall.
I'd prefer a movie that didn't have to deal with contact with intelligent ETs, descents into black holes, the distant future, etc., since they are so unforseeable that pretty much anything you do will be hokey.
But there are plenty of existing technologies and societal changes, still in their infancy, that could make for a stunningly amazing experience if extrapolated carefully a couple of decades or so.
It's just that reality affects me emotionally more than nonsense like hobbits or guys in sunglasses shooting at software with bullets (Matrix), so attention to detail and accuracy makes a book or movie more moving to me.
If anyone has a suggestion, please suggest.
It amazes me how many technical types go ga-ga over Gibson's writings or the Matrix movies. They're all atmosphere and no substance. Wow! Hot chick assassins in black leather and shades! Kewwwl!
I've spoken with Gibson. He knows little about either technology or Asia and doesn't deny it. He's not a phony. All he claims to be doing is "creating a mood", and he thinks it pretty odd that techies would consider him some sort of visionary.
I do, too. I don't mind atmosphere, but only when it's a natural-feeling background to a world that is substantially believable and interesting. For it to really grab me, it needs to feel like a sneak preview of a future that, based on what I know of the technologies and cultures, I consider to be enough of a realistic possibility that I want to pay attention. I want to learn about that future from the book and walk away with my head buzzing with new ideas.
Instead, I get black leather clad Bad Boy and Bad Girl rebel anti-heroes in sunglasses battling the Evil Big Corporations. Whoa. Deep. [yawn...]
Most serious programmers have tons of studying to do. So many tools and interacting technologies that change so rapidly....
A "classic", to me, is a book that puts the maximum amount of useful and usable knowledge in my head with the least amount of effort. This doesn't necessarily mean the shortest book. A "terse" book can take more time and effort to read than a longer book with better explanations.
But a book like this, with such a low useful_stuff/useless_fluff ratio, is not my idea of a classic.