"We should just test their competence to make a simple decision."
This is where my problem lies. I don't believe the government has the right to dictate its definition of competence on voters. While I think it is outrageos and bad for the country that stupid people vote stupidly I don't think it is appropriate for the government to say that their reason for voting how they do is invalid. It is not the governments place to say that voting for someone because they used to own your favorite baseball team or because they seem like the kind of guy who would be fun to hang out with at a BBQ, or whatever other bizzare reason a stupid person comes up with, is an invalid reason to vote. What you are proposing is essentially tiered citizenship based on intelligence, and as you may hopefully know intelligence is more often than not deterermined by factors beyond the control of the individual (e.g. being born into a ghetto, having bad parents, going to bad schools, etc.).
The point is who are we to say why or how they should vote? Maybe they like the guys hair, or maybe he used to own their favorite baseball team. It's not anyones place to say you can't vote anymore because you vote irrationally. I agree stupidity in the electorate is a massive problem, but the solution isn't to get the stupid people out. That is like burning down the village to save it. I really think the most plausible solution is to revitalize political discourse, it needs to be more engaging. People need to feel that it matters to them and that they can get involved easily, then they will want to educate themselves about it. It'd help if the media covered things better too...
I figure after a certain number of years living in the US they have a good idea of how things work here and opinions on where things should be going, moreso they have an investment in how the country works. Essentially, if the US is their home they should have a say in how it works - even if they aren't officially a citizen. It's semi-arbitrary, but I figure after about 7 years or so of living here they should be given voting rights. Preferably they would just get citizenship, but that can be a very difficult process and I've met non-citizens who really want citizenship but are scared of applying and don't want to blow money on an immigration lawyer. The whole idea of citizenship seems semi-arbitrary for a class of people living in America, they live here, work here, pay taxes here, but they can't vote here because they aren't "officially" Americans. It just seems fair that if they meet all these criteria then they should be given a say in how things work. I understand it not being a very big concern, there aren't that many resident aliens.
One other idea: If they were given the right to vote, perhaps an expiration could be attached to it - unless they get citizenship within X years they lose the right.
I definitely agree, I think the problem here though is the debasement of popular political discourse. Politics as portrayed in the mass media seems boring, shallow, and largely irrelevant to a majority of the people. It doesn't resonate with popular culture. It doesn't provide significant entertainment value in a media environment dominated by entertainment.
I do disagree with the age limit requirements and with disenfranchising felons, those are two areas I might be willing to support limited knowledge tests to grant a right to vote. Say any citizen under 18 who wants to be able to vote can go take a test at the DMV, or anyone with felony conviction can regain the right to vote immediately upon release from prison if they pass a test, or automatically after a short period of time (say 1 year or so). I'm not opposed to letting resident aliens vote if they have lived here a long time either, I don't see what is wrong with that at all.
"Remember all the Star Trek: TNG episodes where the 8-10 year olds were studying Calculus? They didn't get there by being told that they're special the way they are........."
Uh, didn't they get there by being written into the script? I do get your point, but the problem is a lot of people are born stupid (or born with a predisposition towards poor learning abilities, however you want to express it) and stupid people have rights. I'm sure you've heard the saying that in a democracy the people get the government they deserve, if you don't like it then work to educate them. You can't exclude your fellow citizens from the vote because they are uninformed (or more often, misinformed) without sacrificing a fundamental element of democracy: popular suffrage. It's been done in the past to exclude the unwanted (e.g. the poor) and was used to consolidate power by the already powerful. There is no reason to doubt that it couldn't turn into a similiar situation now. We already have way too many people not voting in this country as it is, we don't need to actively disenfranchise more people.
"If you're a human, you deserve human rights. If you're not, then you don't. Simple as that."
You never answered his question: What about posthumans, do they deserve rights? And how do you square your argument that humans are superior and can do whatever they want to their inferiors with something that is superior to humans? (Specifically a posthuman, but I suppose an alien species could count as well).
Additionally, who defines what is superior? If as you say, life is exploitation until extinction, then wouldn't it be perfectly moral for posthumans to annihilate humanity, or at the very least, to eat humans?
"I'm not suggesting that we exterminate everything that isn't human for whatever short term gain that might provide for us."
And if there were a long-term gain for our species, what then?
"What I'm saying is that we should not afford any special status or rights to animals, plants, and the environment in general, because they certianly will not return the favor."
And if they reciprocated? What of humans who do not believe in rights, or who are incapable of understanding the concept of rights? What of human cultures who lack political traditions based on rights, do we have the right to do whatever we want to them?
"How many modern Luddites, who are terrified of modern biomedical research, do you know who refuse blood transfusions, x-rays, antibiotics, or painkillers?"
How many luddites do you know? I've met quite a few "luddites", but none of them outright rejected technology. Rather they took issue with certain elements of technology or with specific lines of scientific research. The best example is biotech/genetics, the vast majority of the "luddites" I've met doubt the safety and usefulness of GM crops, but take no issue with other methods of crop modification (e.g. seed saving). The issue for them is specifically the methods used to modify the crops (and often the secondary issue of who and why the crops are being modified). Generally speaking, they do not ouright reject technology or science as a whole.
Reading your post it strikes me that you have never met a "luddite", or if you have you have met the most extreme kind posible. I find "luddites" to be rare in the general population, but the impulse behind the philosophy is prevalent - many people distrust change and we live in an age of rapid change driven by science. Often people portray these conservatives as luddites, but I think that is a mischaracterization. Like calling a classical liberal a libertarian, or a neoliberal a fascist.
Have you or anyone you know personally ever been accused of shoplifting? Two friends of mine were in an upscale grocery store not that long ago, the one who was doing the shopping was hungry so she picked up a piece of focacia bread and ate it as she shopped. By the time they got to check-out an hour later they had forgotten about the bread. An off-duty cop who was acting as a security guard came down from the camera room and started yelling at them, rifling through their things and generally making a big scene. Eventually he led them up to an interogation room where they spent several hours being repeatedly searched and berated for being criminal scum. All because this one guy watched one of them eat a piece of bread on the store's CCTV and then forget to pay for it an hour later when they checked-out. It would of been much easier to just ask her to pay for it. Even though only one of them was actually shopping and she was the one who ate the bread and forgot to pay for it, they are now both banned from the store. If either of them are spotted in it again (or even in the parking lot) they will be arrested.
My point is that crime is often defined by the individual responsible for stopping it, and if that person is an asshole they can do whatever they want. Adding these kinds of technologies into the mix is problamatic because it seems there are serious flaws (e.g. the involvement of a third-party), combine this with the arbitrary and absolute power often given to the enforcers of security and you have a recipe for even more honest mistakes being treated as crimes, and more false positives. Ultimately these sorts of things are bad for business, not to mention the civil liberty implications of having databases out there which contain detailed purchase records. I have no doubt at all that these databases would be prime targets for governments with an unhealthy interest in the details of their citizens lives. It's bad enough private entities have this sort of information, I certainly don't want governments to have it.
"Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, after all, are not known for their economic views, which is what the title "neoconservative" typically refers to."
Perhaps you are thinking of the term "neoliberal"? Neoconservatism has a very distinct foreign policy vision, and the US playing a greater role in the Middle East is in fact a major component of it. The gist of neoconservative thought on economics is: "capitalism is good, but sometimes it needs a little regulation". Thats about all they have to say on economic theory, their interesting parts are social policy (e.g. welfare) and foreign policy.
If you want to go read the neoconservative foreign policy masterplan, check out the book "Present Dangers", edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol - two leading neoconservatives. It has a series of essays in it, including one my Richard Perle about how to take down Iraq (it was written in 1998 or 1999. Wolfowitz also has an essay in there on diplomacy (ironic huh?).
Its kind of funny how so many people assume that Democrat=Anti-Guns, the wonders of GOP propaganda!
Dean in particular is well known for his "A" rating from the NRA. I think he is also a relatively eloquent speaker on gun rights, much more so than any Republican I've ever seen talk about the subject. I'm sure he's been in a lot of debates with his fellow Democrats, so he knows the kind of rhetoric that is effective at not alienating your audience.
Re:appears to be similar David Brin's Kiln People
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Altered Carbon
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· Score: 1
I actually had just finished Kiln People right before I began Altered Carbon (im 3/4th into it now), and they are radically different books. The fundamental concept, of copying human conciousness is vaguely similiar - and both are essentially detective stories narrated in the first person. Oh, and both are quality books (although so far I'm liking Altered Carbon better). Other than that...
I'm 3/4th into it, my impressions:
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Altered Carbon
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I would agree that it is a quality piece of work, very impressive for a first novel. My only issue with the book is the sex scenes. Of course I haven't finished it yet, so perhaps the level of detail in the few sex scenes does ultimately serve some purpose - but right now they seem completely pointless. The 2 pages of porno-esque description each of the sex scenes has taken up feels to me like it does nothing for the plot or tell me anything about the characters, not that the scenes shouldn't be there at all, I'm no prude - its just there was no reason to get into it so graphically. A minor problem really, I chalk it up to an easy first-time author mistake, or perhaps a miscalculation of what gives quality SF broad appeal;)
That said, the rest of the book is great. The main character is funny without being over the top, and his background is pretty well fleshed out so that he feels like a real character with the flaws and self-awareness lacking in so much SF. The book is well paced, and the plot is (so far) interesting and sufficiently hard to predict to keep me suprised. The setting and technology is very well done, although this is not Hard SF, so details on how things work aren't very in-depth (although the low level descriptions given are plausible, particularly coming from the main character as they are in keeping with his knowledge level). It is definitely a very cyberpunk inspired book, and reminds me a little of Gibson's Sprawl setting, and the writing style sometimes feels Gibson-esque. Not that its an imitation of Gibson, or any other of the great cyberpunk authors, the author definitely has his own voice and vision.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of mystery, SF/cyberpunk, or action and am definitely looking forward to picking up the next book when it finally comes out in the US . Speaking of which, anyone know why all the quality SF comes out in the EU first? Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, etc. Sure they are all euro authors, but so what? Why can't they be published simultaneously here? Another observation, anyone noticing the emergence of a new school of British/Scottish SF in the past few years? Almost all the new quality SF authors seem to be from the UK these days.
The website we run at work was defaced by "Hackers Against War", they exploited a bug in the software we use (php-nuke) to replace all the stories on the front page with an inane antiwar statement and comments in French about their feelings for some girl. The pathetic thing is that our site already had a lot of antiwar articles up on it, so if their true motives were to express an antiwar opinion they failed horribly in that they obscured substantive antiwar commentary with their drivel AND forced us to take the site offline while we fixed things.
While I'm sure there are some groups out there with genuine political motives, based on this and some other things I've seen I really believe that this is just scriptkiddies looking for something trendy to do.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt
The gameplay of Doom 1 & 2 was definitely a lot of fun - but the GFX are crap compared to contemporary FPS rendering methods. Why not do this with quake1?
Ken is a former programmer in Scotland who now writes full time. I'd recommend any and all books from the "Fall Revolution" series (it's not exactly a series, but they are all set in the same world - the order you read them in isn't important). They are all really great books, although some people complain you need a degree in political philosophy to understand parts of them (I personally enjoy this). I would highly recommend starting with the Cassini Division or the Stone Canal.
Alastair Reynolds is a physicist working for the Euro Space Agency. He writes the best cyberpunk-esque "space opera" I've ever read. It's dark, clever, and supposedly accurate to real-world physics. His books are really long too. I personally think Chasm City is the best of them, so I'd probably recommend starting with that one, although if you read it before his first (Revelation Space) it could throw things off for you a little bit.
This is a really great point which is missed by many in the gaming world - this is also something that is particularly important to gamers with lower end machines. The case in point would be back in the early days of hardware acceleration.
Anyone remember the second generation Renditition Verite? It looked like crap in benchmarks - barely hitting 25-30fps on what was then a high-end PC. The thing is - it would also hit around there on a low-end PC. AND - more importantly it never dipped below that range. I ran one on my old crappy P100 system - I didn't have HIGH framerates in GLQuake but I did have CONSISTENT framerates, regardless of what went on in the game. I got the card for a 1/3 of what a Voodoo cost and got better performance out of it on my machine than I would have from a Voodoo (since my CPU wasn't powerful to push the thing).
I've never seen a benchmark which takes this sort of thing into account, the only way to tell is to physically sit and play with the card to see how it feels and to watch the FPS counter rise and dip.
Maybe I am having some kind of weird deja vu thing, but I could of sworn they already knew this about geckos! I remember explaining it to a friend of mine 10 or so years ago and he didn't believe me and insisted that geckos have sticky slime glands in their feet.
From the article: "His novel 1984, written in 1948, contained the foremost prophecy of the cold war: that technological advancement would render Stalinism unstoppable, with individual liberty the inevitable casualty."
I've read 1984 a few times, and in my opinion it is about a lot more than technology's effect on Stalinism. My guess is that most people would agree with that; I have never heard or read of anyone simplifying the book as being "Stalinism +Technology=1984"
Also from the article: "Indeed, in the period from 1989 to 1991 we watched democracy and liberty spread (like a plague--to Communists) first through the Soviet satellites and then into the heart of the Soviet Union itself."
We did? It looks a lot more like we saw the degeneration of the Soviet empire into a fragmented lawless group of failed States controlled by mafias and under siege by theocrats.
Other than that the article is way too optimistic and deterministic: "Technology--especially infomation and communications technology--has been the most liberating force in history."
This is probably true, but I don't think it necesarily follows from this that technological progress will make us all free. People have to desire liberty before they can have it, and they have to use it if they want to keep it. Technology (as I think it's defined in the article) can't solve those kinds of problems.
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I don't think most people (or most of the people who control society) really want liberty. So regardless of "liberating technology" freedom doesn't seem likely to do much other than diminish.
#1 China is not a "commie country". Sure the government is dominated by the "Communist Party" and is the product of a "communist revolution", but that doesn't make it a "commie country" in anything other than name.
#2 Communism means a lot of things. In the case of China their brand is "Maoist", or used to be anyways. In traditional Marxism Communism is the end state of a historical process, the idea being that a strong State run by "the Workers" will be created first to restructure society in the interest of people (i.e. along Socialist lines). Eventually the State will "whither away" and the Communist utopia will be created.
#3 Marx anticipated this happening in an advanced industrialized Capitalist system. Then along came Marxist-Lennism (i.e. the Russian Revolution) and the Maoists. Both of which were lead by peasants.
#4 Soviet Russia and Communist China are both really bad examples of theoretical Communism or Socialism, they are both very unique systems which, though influenced by Communism/Socialism, are not at all true to their foundation. (Which perhaps says something about the feasibility of said foundation).
#5 Both Soviet Russia and Communist China have been hugely succesful if you measure success along the lines of literacy or economic growth.
Re:Even the abstract has cardboard characters
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The Chronoliths
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· Score: 1
well in this book the braniac chick is a lesbian and the alienated techno geek starts off as an ex-pat partying it up in an asian resort town, living on the beach, hanging out with a drug dealer, and generally being a carefree fun loving kind of guy (which gets him in trouble, but go read the book if you want to know about that).
I'm a pretty picky reader, but I this book was recommended to me, so I decided to give it a try. I was very suprised by how much I got into it. It is a little predictable occasionally, and there are a few spots where it feels a little sparse, but overall it's a very solid book. It is both well written and entertaining, and the author does a good job of explaining the ideas he is exploring without detracting from the plot.
I got the feeling that the author strongly identified with his characters and did his best to imbue them with realistic traits and emotions, which is something sci-fi isn't really known for.
Slashdot Mirror
"We should just test their competence to make a simple decision."
This is where my problem lies. I don't believe the government has the right to dictate its definition of competence on voters. While I think it is outrageos and bad for the country that stupid people vote stupidly I don't think it is appropriate for the government to say that their reason for voting how they do is invalid. It is not the governments place to say that voting for someone because they used to own your favorite baseball team or because they seem like the kind of guy who would be fun to hang out with at a BBQ, or whatever other bizzare reason a stupid person comes up with, is an invalid reason to vote. What you are proposing is essentially tiered citizenship based on intelligence, and as you may hopefully know intelligence is more often than not deterermined by factors beyond the control of the individual (e.g. being born into a ghetto, having bad parents, going to bad schools, etc.).
The point is who are we to say why or how they should vote? Maybe they like the guys hair, or maybe he used to own their favorite baseball team. It's not anyones place to say you can't vote anymore because you vote irrationally. I agree stupidity in the electorate is a massive problem, but the solution isn't to get the stupid people out. That is like burning down the village to save it. I really think the most plausible solution is to revitalize political discourse, it needs to be more engaging. People need to feel that it matters to them and that they can get involved easily, then they will want to educate themselves about it. It'd help if the media covered things better too...
I figure after a certain number of years living in the US they have a good idea of how things work here and opinions on where things should be going, moreso they have an investment in how the country works. Essentially, if the US is their home they should have a say in how it works - even if they aren't officially a citizen. It's semi-arbitrary, but I figure after about 7 years or so of living here they should be given voting rights. Preferably they would just get citizenship, but that can be a very difficult process and I've met non-citizens who really want citizenship but are scared of applying and don't want to blow money on an immigration lawyer. The whole idea of citizenship seems semi-arbitrary for a class of people living in America, they live here, work here, pay taxes here, but they can't vote here because they aren't "officially" Americans. It just seems fair that if they meet all these criteria then they should be given a say in how things work. I understand it not being a very big concern, there aren't that many resident aliens.
One other idea: If they were given the right to vote, perhaps an expiration could be attached to it - unless they get citizenship within X years they lose the right.
I definitely agree, I think the problem here though is the debasement of popular political discourse. Politics as portrayed in the mass media seems boring, shallow, and largely irrelevant to a majority of the people. It doesn't resonate with popular culture. It doesn't provide significant entertainment value in a media environment dominated by entertainment.
I do disagree with the age limit requirements and with disenfranchising felons, those are two areas I might be willing to support limited knowledge tests to grant a right to vote. Say any citizen under 18 who wants to be able to vote can go take a test at the DMV, or anyone with felony conviction can regain the right to vote immediately upon release from prison if they pass a test, or automatically after a short period of time (say 1 year or so). I'm not opposed to letting resident aliens vote if they have lived here a long time either, I don't see what is wrong with that at all.
"Remember all the Star Trek: TNG episodes where the 8-10 year olds were studying Calculus? They didn't get there by being told that they're special the way they are........."
Uh, didn't they get there by being written into the script? I do get your point, but the problem is a lot of people are born stupid (or born with a predisposition towards poor learning abilities, however you want to express it) and stupid people have rights. I'm sure you've heard the saying that in a democracy the people get the government they deserve, if you don't like it then work to educate them. You can't exclude your fellow citizens from the vote because they are uninformed (or more often, misinformed) without sacrificing a fundamental element of democracy: popular suffrage. It's been done in the past to exclude the unwanted (e.g. the poor) and was used to consolidate power by the already powerful. There is no reason to doubt that it couldn't turn into a similiar situation now. We already have way too many people not voting in this country as it is, we don't need to actively disenfranchise more people.
"If you're a human, you deserve human rights. If you're not, then you don't. Simple as that."
You never answered his question: What about posthumans, do they deserve rights? And how do you square your argument that humans are superior and can do whatever they want to their inferiors with something that is superior to humans? (Specifically a posthuman, but I suppose an alien species could count as well).
Additionally, who defines what is superior? If as you say, life is exploitation until extinction, then wouldn't it be perfectly moral for posthumans to annihilate humanity, or at the very least, to eat humans?
"I'm not suggesting that we exterminate everything that isn't human for whatever short term gain that might provide for us."
And if there were a long-term gain for our species, what then?
"What I'm saying is that we should not afford any special status or rights to animals, plants, and the environment in general, because they certianly will not return the favor."
And if they reciprocated? What of humans who do not believe in rights, or who are incapable of understanding the concept of rights? What of human cultures who lack political traditions based on rights, do we have the right to do whatever we want to them?
Aren't the vast majority of porn stars already modified through plastic surgery? Don't most of them take viagra and other drugs to perform their jobs?
"How many modern Luddites, who are terrified of modern biomedical research, do you know who refuse blood transfusions, x-rays, antibiotics, or painkillers?"
How many luddites do you know? I've met quite a few "luddites", but none of them outright rejected technology. Rather they took issue with certain elements of technology or with specific lines of scientific research. The best example is biotech/genetics, the vast majority of the "luddites" I've met doubt the safety and usefulness of GM crops, but take no issue with other methods of crop modification (e.g. seed saving). The issue for them is specifically the methods used to modify the crops (and often the secondary issue of who and why the crops are being modified). Generally speaking, they do not ouright reject technology or science as a whole.
Reading your post it strikes me that you have never met a "luddite", or if you have you have met the most extreme kind posible. I find "luddites" to be rare in the general population, but the impulse behind the philosophy is prevalent - many people distrust change and we live in an age of rapid change driven by science. Often people portray these conservatives as luddites, but I think that is a mischaracterization. Like calling a classical liberal a libertarian, or a neoliberal a fascist.
Have you or anyone you know personally ever been accused of shoplifting? Two friends of mine were in an upscale grocery store not that long ago, the one who was doing the shopping was hungry so she picked up a piece of focacia bread and ate it as she shopped. By the time they got to check-out an hour later they had forgotten about the bread. An off-duty cop who was acting as a security guard came down from the camera room and started yelling at them, rifling through their things and generally making a big scene. Eventually he led them up to an interogation room where they spent several hours being repeatedly searched and berated for being criminal scum. All because this one guy watched one of them eat a piece of bread on the store's CCTV and then forget to pay for it an hour later when they checked-out. It would of been much easier to just ask her to pay for it. Even though only one of them was actually shopping and she was the one who ate the bread and forgot to pay for it, they are now both banned from the store. If either of them are spotted in it again (or even in the parking lot) they will be arrested.
My point is that crime is often defined by the individual responsible for stopping it, and if that person is an asshole they can do whatever they want. Adding these kinds of technologies into the mix is problamatic because it seems there are serious flaws (e.g. the involvement of a third-party), combine this with the arbitrary and absolute power often given to the enforcers of security and you have a recipe for even more honest mistakes being treated as crimes, and more false positives. Ultimately these sorts of things are bad for business, not to mention the civil liberty implications of having databases out there which contain detailed purchase records. I have no doubt at all that these databases would be prime targets for governments with an unhealthy interest in the details of their citizens lives. It's bad enough private entities have this sort of information, I certainly don't want governments to have it.
"Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, after all, are not known for their economic views, which is what the title "neoconservative" typically refers to."
Perhaps you are thinking of the term "neoliberal"? Neoconservatism has a very distinct foreign policy vision, and the US playing a greater role in the Middle East is in fact a major component of it. The gist of neoconservative thought on economics is: "capitalism is good, but sometimes it needs a little regulation". Thats about all they have to say on economic theory, their interesting parts are social policy (e.g. welfare) and foreign policy.
If you want to go read the neoconservative foreign policy masterplan, check out the book "Present Dangers", edited by Robert Kagan and William Kristol - two leading neoconservatives. It has a series of essays in it, including one my Richard Perle about how to take down Iraq (it was written in 1998 or 1999. Wolfowitz also has an essay in there on diplomacy (ironic huh?).
Its kind of funny how so many people assume that Democrat=Anti-Guns, the wonders of GOP propaganda!
Dean in particular is well known for his "A" rating from the NRA. I think he is also a relatively eloquent speaker on gun rights, much more so than any Republican I've ever seen talk about the subject. I'm sure he's been in a lot of debates with his fellow Democrats, so he knows the kind of rhetoric that is effective at not alienating your audience.
I actually had just finished Kiln People right before I began Altered Carbon (im 3/4th into it now), and they are radically different books. The fundamental concept, of copying human conciousness is vaguely similiar - and both are essentially detective stories narrated in the first person. Oh, and both are quality books (although so far I'm liking Altered Carbon better). Other than that...
I would agree that it is a quality piece of work, very impressive for a first novel. My only issue with the book is the sex scenes. Of course I haven't finished it yet, so perhaps the level of detail in the few sex scenes does ultimately serve some purpose - but right now they seem completely pointless. The 2 pages of porno-esque description each of the sex scenes has taken up feels to me like it does nothing for the plot or tell me anything about the characters, not that the scenes shouldn't be there at all, I'm no prude - its just there was no reason to get into it so graphically. A minor problem really, I chalk it up to an easy first-time author mistake, or perhaps a miscalculation of what gives quality SF broad appeal ;)
That said, the rest of the book is great. The main character is funny without being over the top, and his background is pretty well fleshed out so that he feels like a real character with the flaws and self-awareness lacking in so much SF. The book is well paced, and the plot is (so far) interesting and sufficiently hard to predict to keep me suprised. The setting and technology is very well done, although this is not Hard SF, so details on how things work aren't very in-depth (although the low level descriptions given are plausible, particularly coming from the main character as they are in keeping with his knowledge level). It is definitely a very cyberpunk inspired book, and reminds me a little of Gibson's Sprawl setting, and the writing style sometimes feels Gibson-esque. Not that its an imitation of Gibson, or any other of the great cyberpunk authors, the author definitely has his own voice and vision.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of mystery, SF/cyberpunk, or action and am definitely looking forward to picking up the next book when it finally comes out in the US . Speaking of which, anyone know why all the quality SF comes out in the EU first? Alastair Reynolds, Ken MacLeod, etc. Sure they are all euro authors, but so what? Why can't they be published simultaneously here? Another observation, anyone noticing the emergence of a new school of British/Scottish SF in the past few years? Almost all the new quality SF authors seem to be from the UK these days.
forgot to include a URL for anyone who wants to see the site, it's http://resnet.evergreen.edu
we left one of their messages up there if you want to see it, it should be down the page some by now, its title is "Hackers Against War"
The website we run at work was defaced by "Hackers Against War", they exploited a bug in the software we use (php-nuke) to replace all the stories on the front page with an inane antiwar statement and comments in French about their feelings for some girl. The pathetic thing is that our site already had a lot of antiwar articles up on it, so if their true motives were to express an antiwar opinion they failed horribly in that they obscured substantive antiwar commentary with their drivel AND forced us to take the site offline while we fixed things.
While I'm sure there are some groups out there with genuine political motives, based on this and some other things I've seen I really believe that this is just scriptkiddies looking for something trendy to do.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt
The gameplay of Doom 1 & 2 was definitely a lot of fun - but the GFX are crap compared to contemporary FPS rendering methods. Why not do this with quake1?
Ken Macleod & Alastair Reynolds.
Ken is a former programmer in Scotland who now writes full time. I'd recommend any and all books from the "Fall Revolution" series (it's not exactly a series, but they are all set in the same world - the order you read them in isn't important). They are all really great books, although some people complain you need a degree in political philosophy to understand parts of them (I personally enjoy this). I would highly recommend starting with the Cassini Division or the Stone Canal.
Alastair Reynolds is a physicist working for the Euro Space Agency. He writes the best cyberpunk-esque "space opera" I've ever read. It's dark, clever, and supposedly accurate to real-world physics. His books are really long too. I personally think Chasm City is the best of them, so I'd probably recommend starting with that one, although if you read it before his first (Revelation Space) it could throw things off for you a little bit.
This is a really great point which is missed by many in the gaming world - this is also something that is particularly important to gamers with lower end machines. The case in point would be back in the early days of hardware acceleration.
Anyone remember the second generation Renditition Verite? It looked like crap in benchmarks - barely hitting 25-30fps on what was then a high-end PC. The thing is - it would also hit around there on a low-end PC. AND - more importantly it never dipped below that range. I ran one on my old crappy P100 system - I didn't have HIGH framerates in GLQuake but I did have CONSISTENT framerates, regardless of what went on in the game. I got the card for a 1/3 of what a Voodoo cost and got better performance out of it on my machine than I would have from a Voodoo (since my CPU wasn't powerful to push the thing).
I've never seen a benchmark which takes this sort of thing into account, the only way to tell is to physically sit and play with the card to see how it feels and to watch the FPS counter rise and dip.
I would highly recommend Ken MacLeod's "Fall Revolution" series.
Also, Alastair Reynolds - if you want some high quality cyberpunkish space opera.
Maybe I am having some kind of weird deja vu thing, but I could of sworn they already knew this about geckos!
I remember explaining it to a friend of mine 10 or so years ago and he didn't believe me and insisted that geckos have sticky slime glands in their feet.
From the article:
"His novel 1984, written in 1948, contained the foremost prophecy of the cold war: that technological advancement would render Stalinism unstoppable, with individual liberty the inevitable casualty."
I've read 1984 a few times, and in my opinion it is about a lot more than technology's effect on Stalinism. My guess is that most people would agree with that; I have never heard or read of anyone simplifying the book as being "Stalinism +Technology=1984"
Also from the article:
"Indeed, in the period from 1989 to 1991 we watched democracy and liberty spread (like a plague--to Communists) first through the Soviet satellites and then into the heart of the Soviet Union itself."
We did? It looks a lot more like we saw the degeneration of the Soviet empire into a fragmented lawless group of failed States controlled by mafias and under siege by theocrats.
Other than that the article is way too optimistic and deterministic:
"Technology--especially infomation and communications technology--has been the most liberating force in history."
This is probably true, but I don't think it necesarily follows from this that technological progress will make us all free. People have to desire liberty before they can have it, and they have to use it if they want to keep it. Technology (as I think it's defined in the article) can't solve those kinds of problems.
Maybe I'm a pessimist but I don't think most people (or most of the people who control society) really want liberty. So regardless of "liberating technology" freedom doesn't seem likely to do much other than diminish.
#1 China is not a "commie country". Sure the government is dominated by the "Communist Party" and is the product of a "communist revolution", but that doesn't make it a "commie country" in anything other than name.
#2 Communism means a lot of things. In the case of China their brand is "Maoist", or used to be anyways. In traditional Marxism Communism is the end state of a historical process, the idea being that a strong State run by "the Workers" will be created first to restructure society in the interest of people (i.e. along Socialist lines). Eventually the State will "whither away" and the Communist utopia will be created.
#3 Marx anticipated this happening in an advanced industrialized Capitalist system. Then along came Marxist-Lennism (i.e. the Russian Revolution) and the Maoists. Both of which were lead by peasants.
#4 Soviet Russia and Communist China are both really bad examples of theoretical Communism or Socialism, they are both very unique systems which, though influenced by Communism/Socialism, are not at all true to their foundation. (Which perhaps says something about the feasibility of said foundation).
#5 Both Soviet Russia and Communist China have been hugely succesful if you measure success along the lines of literacy or economic growth.
well in this book the braniac chick is a lesbian and the alienated techno geek starts off as an ex-pat partying it up in an asian resort town, living on the beach, hanging out with a drug dealer, and generally being a carefree fun loving kind of guy (which gets him in trouble, but go read the book if you want to know about that).
I'm a pretty picky reader, but I this book was recommended to me, so I decided to give it a try. I was very suprised by how much I got into it. It is a little predictable occasionally, and there are a few spots where it feels a little sparse, but overall it's a very solid book. It is both well written and entertaining, and the author does a good job of explaining the ideas he is exploring without detracting from the plot.
I got the feeling that the author strongly identified with his characters and did his best to imbue them with realistic traits and emotions, which is something sci-fi isn't really known for.