There were a large number of women in India who didn't think Mother Theresa was any kind of humanitarian at all. Saint, being a religious term, she may be by decree. This doesn't mean she was kind to those who disagreed with her religious doctrines.
He may be saying that, but it probably isn't correct.
OTOH, the amount of possible improvement is probably minimal, and would likely come at the cost of considerable increase in complexity. E.g., you could, if you wanted, construct a bulb based around a hot filament where the filament would need to run significantly hotter, and the resulting UV radiation was captured by a secondary emitter. Unfortunately, this is just in inefficient version of a fluorescent bulb. But it *should* have less flicker, and by adjusting the secondary emitters you could select the wavelengths you wanted the light to produce.
So, technically, it's quite possible to improve the incandescent bulb, for certain meanings of incandescent and improve. Most simpler changes which have more wide spread agreement that they constitute improvement, have already been made. Using tungsten filaments, e.g., and vacuum filled bulbs are examples of agreed upon improvements. An inner bulb filled with an inert gas surrounded by an exterior bulb filled with vacuum is another possible improvement. But probably not worth the cost. (The bulbs would be more expensive, and the only advantage is the bulbs wouldn't dim from evaporating filament depositing on the glass.)
IOW, you can't expect much, if any, improvement in filament bulbs, because the improvements would increase the cost with minimal improvement in bulb characteristics, or they would drasticly increase the cost with at best insufficient improvement in the characteristics of the bulb.
The thing is, reversible computation doesn't appear to allow the answer to be extracted. So it's not clear what use it is. And it hasn't been actually built, so I'm not convinced that it's feasible.
I've seen serious claims that "reversable computation" can be done with no energy input at all. What this doesn't cover, of course, is setting up the initial conditions, or extracting the results of the computation. One requirement is that at the end of the computation, the state of the system should be identical to the initial state.
I must admit that I don't understand either the utility, or the feasibility, of such a system. But there have been serious claims that computation does not, itself, require any energy at all.
OTOH, I don't see this experiment as any proof that all writing of a bit requires a minimal amount of energy. It shows that using THIS technology it requires THAT minimal amount of energy. This is a *far* different statement.
Yes, it will kill jobs. It will also enable everyone having their own chauffeur.
By killing jobs without destroying economic production, it will benefit the owners of lobbyists. So it will pass. Lots of other people will also like it. Not many people earn their living from driving, so there won't be massive resistance. Then the next step in automation will occur.
The basic truth is that our economic system doesn't work well for anyone but the rich. This has been true since around the invention of agriculture. If there isn't a redistribution of wealth to around the level of the 1950's, things are going to get worse. OTOH, people seem to need the kind of hierarchy which is currently manifesting as disparity of wealth. OTTH, when the angle at the top of the pyramid gets too narrow, the bottom layers collapse. I think that even in the 1950's we had too sharp an angle, but at that point economic growth was happening rapidly enough that it didn't matter much. Currently, however, the economic growth isn't benefiting anyone except those at the very top. This is very bad for the democratic portions of society, and strengthens both the autocratic elements and those who see no value in supporting the system (i.e., criminals, revolutionaries, etc.) Revolutionaries are currently weak in the West because they depend on a large proportion of the population being of late adolescence to very early adult, so it's currently manifesting as disregard of a legal system that offers them no benefits or protection.
It makes a big difference whether or not you need to lift part way up the fuel to take you the rest of the way up. That's the basic reason that rockets are so much less efficient than jet engines. (Jets only need to lift half their fuel.) With this approach you need to lift hardly any of the fuel you would use to get to orbit. Only enough to allow maneuvering. Of course, you still need the fuel that you're going to use while in space, but for that you can use one variety or another of electric rocket, and eject your fuel at relativistic velocities. Not much impulse, but great for propulsive efficiency.
I wouldn't say it's a factor of 10 too expensive. Instead I'd say that a lot of development work needs to be done on simpler projects...like mag-lev trains for cross-continental travel, and a few other sub-components. Each one of the needed technologies can be developed in the process of constructing something useful, so you don't need to charge the developmental work against the launch device.
As for magnetic problems, Faraday cages are old technology that still works, and anything built out of steel can become one without much effort. If you build it out of aluminum, then you need to line it with iron foil, and take a few other steps. But it's still easy.
I'm less convinced that it will be able to launch things of arbitrary size. I suspect that the sizes that any particular launcher will launch will be rather restricted. So there is likely to be a lot of assembly required in orbit for anything sizable, and small things will probably need to be grouped together into modules of about the correct size. I also believe that the packaging will need to be, itself, a space vehicle.
I'd rate this as much easier than a space elevator (on earth), but not quite as useful (cost / kilo to orbit will be higher). And I still prefer a Pinwheel, but this, if it is built, will have definite advantages over a pinwheel. E.g., a pinwheel requires attaching to a moving cable high in the air. (How high varies depend on various system configuration choices, but several miles up, anyway.) OTOH, a pinwheel must both raise and lower freight & passenger modules. But it also requires about as much freight coming down as going up. The mag-lev doesn't have that problem. And my guess is that the cost of a pound to orbit would be about the same.
Still, a track 1000 km long? At hypersonic velocities? Not going to be easy. The pinwheel would probably be easier to build AND maintain. Neither has an obvious failure mode that is very destructive (outside of a local area). But the mag-lev would be easier to sabotage.
OTOH, the smaller, freight only version of the mag-lev has definitely attractive features. And that's the only one we should even consider building right now. And it could be used to launch equipment to allow the building in orbit of a preferred alternative.
It's also a hard thing to do because there is no clear way to stand up to the authorities without making things worse. At some point it will get so bad that a violent revolution will seem like a reasonable option, but for now that doesn't look desirable. At least not to me. Passive resistance only works when the powers that be are possess a sense of shame. Consider how effective Gandhi would have been if he were opposing the NAZIs rather than Queen Victoria. (The British were brutal. Of this there is ample evidence. But they did have a reasonable moral sense...which I don't believe the current US politicians have, though they're quite accomplished as spinning the news, and de-emphasizing anything inconvenient.)
As it is...I'll probably vote for some third party or other, as both of the major parties are totally lost to shame, ethics, morality, and justice. But I don't expect this to accomplish anything, as the election is clearly rigged.
Wish I had mod points. You got informative, but you deserved insightful.
When power is not coupled with responsibility for decisions, abuse is to be expected. The more power an individual has, the more vulnerable they should be to legal penalties for abuse of their position. How this could be made to work, when the most powerful control the legal machinery I have no idea.
Charles Stross did a blog entry on that last year. He didn't provide exact numbers, which continually change anyway and are thus worthless, but ranges of values and relative weights.
His answer is that a quality e-book would cost *about* the same as a mass market paperback. (I remember it as plus or minus 10%, but that is obviously my interpretation of what he said. The language is in my idiom, not his, so it's just how I evaluated things after reading his article.)
OTOH, I don't like e-books. I don't own an e-book reader, but if I were to buy one it would be around $250 (wild guess, I haven't priced them recently) which is equivalent to 50 books before ANY books have been purchased. No thanks. I have lots of books that I've kept over three decades. I don't have any electronic devices that I've kept a long as one decade. This is another factor making me think e-books are a bad idea.
Still, in the future my eyesight my decline to where many books can't be read. At that point I might be interested in an e-book reader with a large screen that was easy to read, and which could conveniently display a magnified version of the text. But the screen would need to be sharp enough that it wouldn't degrade the image that my fading eyesight was trying to read, and the e-book format would need to automatically adjust to the size of the screen and the level of magnification, so I didn't need to keep scrolling sideways as well as up and down. Such things may exist, though I haven't seen them. After all, I don't need that kind of assist yet. Currently I find books a lot easier to read than computer screens, though I understand that newer screens are better, and that some e-books have particularly sharp screens. However, most of the screens are also quite small, as they emphasize portability over convenience in reading large page formats. (HTML *CAN* be good at adjusting to varying screen sizes, but recent slashcode proves that it can also be quite bad at that. YUCK! My screen isn't arbitrarily wide, and sometimes I need the browser window to be somewhat narrower that at other times.)
The times I've heard of the Linux Foundation, it has either seemed a PR group, or actually opposed to FOSS. I'm not at all sure I should be pleased that they are getting another influential member. Remember, the name is not the thing. OTOH, I've only seen them mentioned in an occasional story, and read a few of their PR pieces. These aren't highly reliable sources.
So what does the "Linux Foundation" do that is supportive of FOSS?
Considering that cartoons can qualify as "child porn", I'd be really hesitant to make a judgement as to what was found. The label may not refer to the thing you were thinking of.
If might be more interesting if we find that there *isn't* a Higgs boson. And that's beginning to look more plausible. Most likely energy levels have already been investigated. OTOH, since there aren't that many more places to look, the current searches can be more focused.
But if there is no Higgs boson, then we need a new theory. (Well, we already know we need a new threory...but this would make it clearer.) The question is, what is the evidence that this new theory would need to establish itself? Knowing that the current theory is wrong doesn't tell you how it should be improved. (Which has just recently been shown to be an NP hard problem.)
IIUC, the atmosphere is realatively opaque to gamma radiation. So how much is the question. (Be rather bad for any space habitats, though.)
Also, one needs to wonder how directional it is. If it's not very directional, the ship might get a much higher dosage of radiation/cm^2 than anyplace else at the destination. If it's very directional, you might easily miss hitting a planet by a bit, and the folks there might take *severe* umbrage at being so menaced.
Because people who don't like Gnome3 have lost a lot of interest in Gnome news. E.g., I'm using LXDE after using Gnome2 after using KDE3. Each step was a downgrade in functionality, but better than the alternatives. KDE4 *could* eventually become useable. Gnome3 would require new hardware...and it's "fall back to Gnome2 mode" is unusably ugly...and not easily customizable. (Besides, why should I trust them not to break things again after they broke it without warning last time. KDE4 at least had the decency to give an option to NOT make the change, even if there wasn't any way back.)
So, why should I care about Gnome3.4? I doubt that my opinions are uncommon. You don't see me bashing MS much anymore, either. I no longer deal with it in any way, so I don't have much interest in what they do. (I haven't even read any of the articles about MSWind8.) With Gnome, well, I'll get new hardware some day, and maybe Gnome or KDE will be usable again by then. So I keep following their news, but with much less interest than when it directly affected me.
No. When forgiveness is given, there is no further penalty. It's just that it must be earned. It doesn't come from merely saying "Oops, sorry", unless that really looks like an accident. Even then you've got to make reasonable restitution.
You are not forgiven. First the ameliorations, THEN the public repentence, THEN the forgiveness.
Calling it complicated does NOT excuse you. Particularly when I see no evidence that you aren't already planning on doing the equivalent again. Bastard.
I wish there were criminal sanctions against not only the person who lied about reviewing the case, but also against their manager, and significant civil penalties against all the managers all the way to the top, tripling at each level. And I'm including the members of the board of directors as a part of the chain of managers.
If wishes were horses... But if someone *does* start killing Rumblefish executives, I won't shed any tears.
I see no evidence of Rumblefish "doing the right thing". I can see no even possibly valid reason for this action. I would accept error, but not when you are claiming to have reviewed the claim.
I am presuming that you are a shill for Rumblefish rather than an ordinary troll, or I wouldn't bother to respond. (It still doesn't make much sense, as I doubt that you have the morals or ethics to be able to understand why you revolt people.)
I'll agree that it isn't much better. But it's "different". Like "37 views of Mt. Fuji". (For some reason both of the existing examples I can think of are set in Japan, even when the author is american. My other example was Rashomon. Note that in neither case was frequent switching back and forth desireable, but in both cases the design called for an unimplementable random switch in viewpoint at particular points.)
This isn't "better", but it's different. There are effects that one can't get with a single narrative train. They aren't usually desireable, but sometimes they are. Choosing when to use this would be as important as any other artistic judgement involved in creating the narrative.
P.S.: I don't expect this to EVER become common in literature, as opposed to games. (Well, ever is a long time. An intelligent story-teller could use this to adjust his story to his audience. So it probably once was common, and it may again become common. But not in "pre-written" literature.)
Traditionally the major difference between an indentured servant and a slave is that the indenture only lasted a certain amount of time. And you were no supposed to act in such a way as to permanently damage them. (But "damage" was subject to argument, and, as always, the courts tended to side with the wealthy party.)
N.B.: Slavery also came in lots of gradations. E.g., Roman slaves could own property, and even sometimes buy their own freedom. This probably changed from time to time, and you didn't need to respect their lives, but... that was actually pretty much true of even the lower class non-slaves, at least if you were powerful enough.
I think you are mixing presentation with narrative. I'll agree that the presentation is inextricable linear. But so is any sequence of orderable events. And if the event is composed of a finite number of bits, then it, too, can be linearized. Cf. downloadable movies. Isomorphic to linear.
But the narrative, isn't inherently linear. It's intended to be handled by a parallel processor with multiple chaning internal linkages (i.e., a mind). It is only linear if everything that we can know is linear. Merely because a medium is linear doesn't mean that the encoded message is also linear.
(P.S. I will admit, however, that I believe that EVERYTHING is linearizable. This is because I don't believe in the actual existence of irrational numbers, or an infinite universe. And I believe that reality is discrete. True, the level at which it is discrete is probably at or below 10^-33 cm, and the limit of extent is probably at or beyond 10^33 cm. Etc. This is a metaphysical position, because I don't believe that there is any way that we can prove it. But I also don't believe that there's any way to disprove it, even though it's a statement about physical reality. N.B.: This implies that I deny that there is always a point between every to other points on a line. I reject the continuity theory of differential calculus. This has no practical result, however, because I believe that space-time is continuous to levels far below what we can see with our most powerful instruments. So calculus appears to work, because we never get close enough to the limit. )
Again, what you're doing is a reference work, not literature. The above example of 1001 nights was much better, even if the stories were simply nested rather than complexly linked.
Well, the initial writing would be difficult, but once the individual stories have been published, the hyperlinks could be additional chances to sell "parallel linked works".
If the idea catches on, then it would aid prolific writers, and hinder new writers from getting started. But I'm seeing it more as telling narratives from the points of view of different characters. True, they could be linked in only a single scene out of much longer separated narratives...
I think that this would require new models of narrative to be workable, but I also think that it could be done. It might, however, require drastic changes in copyright law to be able to even be developed. Generally one author can't do extended viewpoints from several of his characters at once. Some of the better ones can, and occasionally do. But doing it well is difficult. OTOH, different authors often have very different ideas about how the story should develop, and maintaining consistency is a major problem. (Even single authors tend to have major problems with maintaining internal consistency, especially if they do a sequel years, or decades, later.)
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There were a large number of women in India who didn't think Mother Theresa was any kind of humanitarian at all. Saint, being a religious term, she may be by decree. This doesn't mean she was kind to those who disagreed with her religious doctrines.
He may be saying that, but it probably isn't correct.
OTOH, the amount of possible improvement is probably minimal, and would likely come at the cost of considerable increase in complexity. E.g., you could, if you wanted, construct a bulb based around a hot filament where the filament would need to run significantly hotter, and the resulting UV radiation was captured by a secondary emitter. Unfortunately, this is just in inefficient version of a fluorescent bulb. But it *should* have less flicker, and by adjusting the secondary emitters you could select the wavelengths you wanted the light to produce.
So, technically, it's quite possible to improve the incandescent bulb, for certain meanings of incandescent and improve. Most simpler changes which have more wide spread agreement that they constitute improvement, have already been made. Using tungsten filaments, e.g., and vacuum filled bulbs are examples of agreed upon improvements. An inner bulb filled with an inert gas surrounded by an exterior bulb filled with vacuum is another possible improvement. But probably not worth the cost. (The bulbs would be more expensive, and the only advantage is the bulbs wouldn't dim from evaporating filament depositing on the glass.)
IOW, you can't expect much, if any, improvement in filament bulbs, because the improvements would increase the cost with minimal improvement in bulb characteristics, or they would drasticly increase the cost with at best insufficient improvement in the characteristics of the bulb.
The thing is, reversible computation doesn't appear to allow the answer to be extracted. So it's not clear what use it is. And it hasn't been actually built, so I'm not convinced that it's feasible.
I've seen serious claims that "reversable computation" can be done with no energy input at all. What this doesn't cover, of course, is setting up the initial conditions, or extracting the results of the computation. One requirement is that at the end of the computation, the state of the system should be identical to the initial state.
I must admit that I don't understand either the utility, or the feasibility, of such a system. But there have been serious claims that computation does not, itself, require any energy at all.
OTOH, I don't see this experiment as any proof that all writing of a bit requires a minimal amount of energy. It shows that using THIS technology it requires THAT minimal amount of energy. This is a *far* different statement.
Yes, it will kill jobs. It will also enable everyone having their own chauffeur.
By killing jobs without destroying economic production, it will benefit the owners of lobbyists. So it will pass. Lots of other people will also like it. Not many people earn their living from driving, so there won't be massive resistance. Then the next step in automation will occur.
The basic truth is that our economic system doesn't work well for anyone but the rich. This has been true since around the invention of agriculture. If there isn't a redistribution of wealth to around the level of the 1950's, things are going to get worse. OTOH, people seem to need the kind of hierarchy which is currently manifesting as disparity of wealth. OTTH, when the angle at the top of the pyramid gets too narrow, the bottom layers collapse. I think that even in the 1950's we had too sharp an angle, but at that point economic growth was happening rapidly enough that it didn't matter much. Currently, however, the economic growth isn't benefiting anyone except those at the very top. This is very bad for the democratic portions of society, and strengthens both the autocratic elements and those who see no value in supporting the system (i.e., criminals, revolutionaries, etc.) Revolutionaries are currently weak in the West because they depend on a large proportion of the population being of late adolescence to very early adult, so it's currently manifesting as disregard of a legal system that offers them no benefits or protection.
It makes a big difference whether or not you need to lift part way up the fuel to take you the rest of the way up. That's the basic reason that rockets are so much less efficient than jet engines. (Jets only need to lift half their fuel.) With this approach you need to lift hardly any of the fuel you would use to get to orbit. Only enough to allow maneuvering. Of course, you still need the fuel that you're going to use while in space, but for that you can use one variety or another of electric rocket, and eject your fuel at relativistic velocities. Not much impulse, but great for propulsive efficiency.
I wouldn't say it's a factor of 10 too expensive. Instead I'd say that a lot of development work needs to be done on simpler projects...like mag-lev trains for cross-continental travel, and a few other sub-components. Each one of the needed technologies can be developed in the process of constructing something useful, so you don't need to charge the developmental work against the launch device.
As for magnetic problems, Faraday cages are old technology that still works, and anything built out of steel can become one without much effort. If you build it out of aluminum, then you need to line it with iron foil, and take a few other steps. But it's still easy.
I'm less convinced that it will be able to launch things of arbitrary size. I suspect that the sizes that any particular launcher will launch will be rather restricted. So there is likely to be a lot of assembly required in orbit for anything sizable, and small things will probably need to be grouped together into modules of about the correct size. I also believe that the packaging will need to be, itself, a space vehicle.
I'd rate this as much easier than a space elevator (on earth), but not quite as useful (cost / kilo to orbit will be higher). And I still prefer a Pinwheel, but this, if it is built, will have definite advantages over a pinwheel. E.g., a pinwheel requires attaching to a moving cable high in the air. (How high varies depend on various system configuration choices, but several miles up, anyway.) OTOH, a pinwheel must both raise and lower freight & passenger modules. But it also requires about as much freight coming down as going up. The mag-lev doesn't have that problem. And my guess is that the cost of a pound to orbit would be about the same.
Still, a track 1000 km long? At hypersonic velocities? Not going to be easy. The pinwheel would probably be easier to build
AND maintain. Neither has an obvious failure mode that is very destructive (outside of a local area). But the mag-lev would be easier to sabotage.
OTOH, the smaller, freight only version of the mag-lev has definitely attractive features. And that's the only one we should even consider building right now. And it could be used to launch equipment to allow the building in orbit of a preferred alternative.
It's also a hard thing to do because there is no clear way to stand up to the authorities without making things worse. At some point it will get so bad that a violent revolution will seem like a reasonable option, but for now that doesn't look desirable. At least not to me. Passive resistance only works when the powers that be are possess a sense of shame. Consider how effective Gandhi would have been if he were opposing the NAZIs rather than Queen Victoria. (The British were brutal. Of this there is ample evidence. But they did have a reasonable moral sense...which I don't believe the current US politicians have, though they're quite accomplished as spinning the news, and de-emphasizing anything inconvenient.)
As it is...I'll probably vote for some third party or other, as both of the major parties are totally lost to shame, ethics, morality, and justice. But I don't expect this to accomplish anything, as the election is clearly rigged.
Wish I had mod points. You got informative, but you deserved insightful.
When power is not coupled with responsibility for decisions, abuse is to be expected. The more power an individual has, the more vulnerable they should be to legal penalties for abuse of their position. How this could be made to work, when the most powerful control the legal machinery I have no idea.
Charles Stross did a blog entry on that last year. He didn't provide exact numbers, which continually change anyway and are thus worthless, but ranges of values and relative weights.
His answer is that a quality e-book would cost *about* the same as a mass market paperback. (I remember it as plus or minus 10%, but that is obviously my interpretation of what he said. The language is in my idiom, not his, so it's just how I evaluated things after reading his article.)
OTOH, I don't like e-books. I don't own an e-book reader, but if I were to buy one it would be around $250 (wild guess, I haven't priced them recently) which is equivalent to 50 books before ANY books have been purchased. No thanks. I have lots of books that I've kept over three decades. I don't have any electronic devices that I've kept a long as one decade. This is another factor making me think e-books are a bad idea.
Still, in the future my eyesight my decline to where many books can't be read. At that point I might be interested in an e-book reader with a large screen that was easy to read, and which could conveniently display a magnified version of the text. But the screen would need to be sharp enough that it wouldn't degrade the image that my fading eyesight was trying to read, and the e-book format would need to automatically adjust to the size of the screen and the level of magnification, so I didn't need to keep scrolling sideways as well as up and down. Such things may exist, though I haven't seen them. After all, I don't need that kind of assist yet. Currently I find books a lot easier to read than computer screens, though I understand that newer screens are better, and that some e-books have particularly sharp screens. However, most of the screens are also quite small, as they emphasize portability over convenience in reading large page formats. (HTML *CAN* be good at adjusting to varying screen sizes, but recent slashcode proves that it can also be quite bad at that. YUCK! My screen isn't arbitrarily wide, and sometimes I need the browser window to be somewhat narrower that at other times.)
The times I've heard of the Linux Foundation, it has either seemed a PR group, or actually opposed to FOSS. I'm not at all sure I should be pleased that they are getting another influential member. Remember, the name is not the thing. OTOH, I've only seen them mentioned in an occasional story, and read a few of their PR pieces. These aren't highly reliable sources.
So what does the "Linux Foundation" do that is supportive of FOSS?
Considering that cartoons can qualify as "child porn", I'd be really hesitant to make a judgement as to what was found. The label may not refer to the thing you were thinking of.
People have also been arrested for filming the police. Check the current status in your local jurisdiction.
If might be more interesting if we find that there *isn't* a Higgs boson. And that's beginning to look more plausible. Most likely energy levels have already been investigated. OTOH, since there aren't that many more places to look, the current searches can be more focused.
But if there is no Higgs boson, then we need a new theory. (Well, we already know we need a new threory...but this would make it clearer.) The question is, what is the evidence that this new theory would need to establish itself? Knowing that the current theory is wrong doesn't tell you how it should be improved. (Which has just recently been shown to be an NP hard problem.)
IIUC, the atmosphere is realatively opaque to gamma radiation. So how much is the question. (Be rather bad for any space habitats, though.)
Also, one needs to wonder how directional it is. If it's not very directional, the ship might get a much higher dosage of radiation/cm^2 than anyplace else at the destination. If it's very directional, you might easily miss hitting a planet by a bit, and the folks there might take *severe* umbrage at being so menaced.
Because people who don't like Gnome3 have lost a lot of interest in Gnome news. E.g., I'm using LXDE after using Gnome2 after using KDE3. Each step was a downgrade in functionality, but better than the alternatives. KDE4 *could* eventually become useable. Gnome3 would require new hardware...and it's "fall back to Gnome2 mode" is unusably ugly...and not easily customizable. (Besides, why should I trust them not to break things again after they broke it without warning last time. KDE4 at least had the decency to give an option to NOT make the change, even if there wasn't any way back.)
So, why should I care about Gnome3.4? I doubt that my opinions are uncommon. You don't see me bashing MS much anymore, either. I no longer deal with it in any way, so I don't have much interest in what they do. (I haven't even read any of the articles about MSWind8.) With Gnome, well, I'll get new hardware some day, and maybe Gnome or KDE will be usable again by then. So I keep following their news, but with much less interest than when it directly affected me.
No. When forgiveness is given, there is no further penalty. It's just that it must be earned. It doesn't come from merely saying "Oops, sorry", unless that really looks like an accident. Even then you've got to make reasonable restitution.
You are not forgiven. First the ameliorations, THEN the public repentence, THEN the forgiveness.
Calling it complicated does NOT excuse you. Particularly when I see no evidence that you aren't already planning on doing the equivalent again. Bastard.
I wish there were criminal sanctions against not only the person who lied about reviewing the case, but also against their manager, and significant civil penalties against all the managers all the way to the top, tripling at each level. And I'm including the members of the board of directors as a part of the chain of managers.
If wishes were horses... But if someone *does* start killing Rumblefish executives, I won't shed any tears.
*Why* should I believe you?
I see no evidence of Rumblefish "doing the right thing". I can see no even possibly valid reason for this action. I would accept error, but not when you are claiming to have reviewed the claim.
I am presuming that you are a shill for Rumblefish rather than an ordinary troll, or I wouldn't bother to respond. (It still doesn't make much sense, as I doubt that you have the morals or ethics to be able to understand why you revolt people.)
I'll agree that it isn't much better. But it's "different". Like "37 views of Mt. Fuji". (For some reason both of the existing examples I can think of are set in Japan, even when the author is american. My other example was Rashomon. Note that in neither case was frequent switching back and forth desireable, but in both cases the design called for an unimplementable random switch in viewpoint at particular points.)
This isn't "better", but it's different. There are effects that one can't get with a single narrative train. They aren't usually desireable, but sometimes they are. Choosing when to use this would be as important as any other artistic judgement involved in creating the narrative.
P.S.: I don't expect this to EVER become common in literature, as opposed to games. (Well, ever is a long time. An intelligent story-teller could use this to adjust his story to his audience. So it probably once was common, and it may again become common. But not in "pre-written" literature.)
Traditionally the major difference between an indentured servant and a slave is that the indenture only lasted a certain amount of time. And you were no supposed to act in such a way as to permanently damage them. (But "damage" was subject to argument, and, as always, the courts tended to side with the wealthy party.)
N.B.: Slavery also came in lots of gradations. E.g., Roman slaves could own property, and even sometimes buy their own freedom. This probably changed from time to time, and you didn't need to respect their lives, but... that was actually pretty much true of even the lower class non-slaves, at least if you were powerful enough.
I think you are mixing presentation with narrative. I'll agree that the presentation is inextricable linear. But so is any sequence of orderable events. And if the event is composed of a finite number of bits, then it, too, can be linearized. Cf. downloadable movies. Isomorphic to linear.
But the narrative, isn't inherently linear. It's intended to be handled by a parallel processor with multiple chaning internal linkages (i.e., a mind). It is only linear if everything that we can know is linear. Merely because a medium is linear doesn't mean that the encoded message is also linear.
(P.S. I will admit, however, that I believe that EVERYTHING is linearizable. This is because I don't believe in the actual existence of irrational numbers, or an infinite universe. And I believe that reality is discrete. True, the level at which it is discrete is probably at or below 10^-33 cm, and the limit of extent is probably at or beyond 10^33 cm. Etc. This is a metaphysical position, because I don't believe that there is any way that we can prove it. But I also don't believe that there's any way to disprove it, even though it's a statement about physical reality.
N.B.: This implies that I deny that there is always a point between every to other points on a line. I reject the continuity theory of differential calculus. This has no practical result, however, because I believe that space-time is continuous to levels far below what we can see with our most powerful instruments. So calculus appears to work, because we never get close enough to the limit.
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Again, what you're doing is a reference work, not literature. The above example of 1001 nights was much better, even if the stories were simply nested rather than complexly linked.
Well, the initial writing would be difficult, but once the individual stories have been published, the hyperlinks could be additional chances to sell "parallel linked works".
If the idea catches on, then it would aid prolific writers, and hinder new writers from getting started. But I'm seeing it more as telling narratives from the points of view of different characters. True, they could be linked in only a single scene out of much longer separated narratives...
I think that this would require new models of narrative to be workable, but I also think that it could be done. It might, however, require drastic changes in copyright law to be able to even be developed. Generally one author can't do extended viewpoints from several of his characters at once. Some of the better ones can, and occasionally do. But doing it well is difficult. OTOH, different authors often have very different ideas about how the story should develop, and maintaining consistency is a major problem. (Even single authors tend to have major problems with maintaining internal consistency, especially if they do a sequel years, or decades, later.)