The Three-Body Problem IS hard SciFi. Well... it starts as such. Sorta.
But then the supposed hard SciFi turns into science fantasy with deus ex machinae around every corner. A big part of the story is about aliens building a proton-sized computer by "folding-out" a proton to 11 dimensions, then folding it back in.
Which would not be such a huge problem - if the said alien civilization wasn't forced to invade Earth on account of its own solar system's inhospitableness reaching critical levels. Said civilization also has 1/100th of light speed capability (and faster) ships and other really advanced tech, their home is HIGHLY inhospitable (far more than say... Mars) and unstable - yet there is simply no other solution for them other than complete extermination of humanity. A task in which they will be aided by Earthly pan-species-commies and ecologists. No... Really.
And then there's the second book. And boy... if you have a short fuse for "everyone is stupid" episodes of Star Trek or some other SciFi show where every otherwise smart character acts like a complete idiot in order to serve the plot... well... "Because reasons" everyone on Earth decides to lay all their hopes into supersecret plans of 4 "wall facers" - scientists and statesmen who are given unquestionable and nearly unlimited authority to create supersecret plans to save humanity in the upcoming war with the aliens.
One of them being a slacker we meet at the beginning of the book. Who is pining for an imaginary waifu he imagined on a dare - a stereotypical Chinese mail-order bride turned up to 11. And then with the help of a detective friend and a global database of every human on the planet - he finds her. Well... he finds a girl up to the specifications he imagined as "perfect". All the cringing while going through their romance does wonders for one's muscle tone though. And then the day is saved by playing the Mutually Assured Destruction card in the pan-galactic game of Everyone Always Defects In Prisoner's Dilemma. Meanwhile, ants still don't give a fuck.
Scifi in Liu's book isn't really bad... but the plotting is horrible with supposedly brilliant geniuses acting like complete idiots any time anyone walks through a door. On the other hand, there is a built-in level of "strangeness" on account of cultural differences.
Tesla hired a German contractor, Eisenmann, to build a paint shop. Eisenmann then hired ISM Vuzem, a Slovenian company, who then hired the said Slovenian electrician. Who then had an accident, ended up in a hospital and who is now suing all three for following reasons:
From TFA:
Eisenmann USA wrote letters to the U.S. Embassy on behalf of Lesnik and as many as 200 foreign workers stating they would supervise employees at a U.S. auto plant. Most of the Vuzem workers were nonsupervisory laborers and tradesmen. Tesla issued company security badges to the foreign workers, recorded their time on site and shared responsibility for setting safety conditions. Vuzem required foreign employees to regularly work between 60 and 70 hours a week. Vuzem paid Lesnik an average of 800 euros per month, or about $900, for a rate of less than $5 per hour. Lesnik was promised an equal amount when he returned home, but the company never paid the balance. The companies violated wage and employment laws and benefitted from the cheap labor of foreign workers. Workers were promised $12.70 an hour based on a standard workweek. The suit estimates they are due $2.6 million in overtime and premium pay.
All in all, Tesla is the least responsible party in this case. In fact, they could probably sue Eisenmann USA for failing to meet their requirements "to hire and pay their workers appropriately", as they claim is their practice. That is, unless it turns out they were simply turning a blind eye and just looking at the bottom line. Like everyone else.
More from TFA:
Vuzem provides teams of Eastern European workers to build manufacturing plants in Europe and the U.S. It counts Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford and Saab as clients, according to its website.
...
In 2003, an Alabama sheet metal workers union protested Eisenmann hiring a contractor that brought in Polish workers to complete a Mercedes-Benz paint shop. The company was cleared of any wrongdoing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Officials with the agency declined to answer questions about the investigation and denied a Freedom of Information Act request for materials related to the probe. Eisenmann declined to respond to written questions about the case.
Ten years later, ICE fined Infosys a record $34 million for circumventing H-1B and B1 regulations and unlawfully using visa holders for skilled work around the country, among other offenses, according to a court settlement.
This month, Bitmicro Networks Inc. of Fremont was fined about $168,000 for giving substandard wages to workers brought in from the Philippines.
It's not a case of Tesla or emigrants or cheap labor. It's just another example of corporations in the US being subsidized at the expense of US citizens. Everyone does it, everyone pretends it is not an issue... until they get sued.
Also... Back in my teenage days I once got SOOOO drunk my pals thought it would be fun to test if I had any sensation left - by putting a lighter under my left index finger. Permanently altered that fingerprint due to scar tissue.
I'm pretty sure there are various other ways one could alter one's fingerprints rather easily and quickly. Causing those 1 to 9 odds to suddenly look a lot more like 100%. Look like being the operative word.
A couple of divisions in a society numbering in the billions does not make for a militaristic society.
A - that's called a social elite. B - book starts with our man Rico leveling half an alien city all by himself. C - yet, despite "not" being a militaristic society, his middle-aged father somehow breezes through the training created to make teenagers into career soldiers. How does the logistic work out for that exactly? He lies about his age? Dyes his hair or something? Quits smoking and starts taking vitamins which give him the abilities of a teenager again?
Zim outranked our hero Juan ultimately.
And his father outranked him in the beginning. But he still got the be the boss of both of them. And to keep on advancing in the ranks.
It doesn't matter if your superior-made-inferior eventually rises to the same or similar level as you or even higher - what matters is that YOU got to be his boss. I.e. You were better, you got better, you are better and you will always be better than him. That's how the juvenile power fantasies work. And that's what awaits you if you join up! Pure meritocracy! Isn't army great?
Nor does a top income tax rate down around 2% (yes, he mentioned the income tax rate at one point) pay for much of a military.
A - Colonies. Lotsa paychecks. B - Army is made out of 1-man city-leveling flying tanks. How many of those are needed exactly? C - Who ever said that Heinlein thought it through? He supposedly also thought that he was not describing a fascist society - but he was.
And most importantly... D - It's not 2%. It's just described as "poll tax". In the same breath and on the same page that exults this as the ultimate authority. Wait... isn't that... Oh...
Major Reid paused to touch the face of an old-fashioned watch, "reading" its hands. "The period is almost over and we have yet to determine the moral reason for our success in governing ourselves. Now continued success is never a matter of chance. Bear in mind that this is science, not wishful thinking; the universe is what it is, not what we want it to be. To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives - such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force, if you will! - the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force."
"But this universe consists of paired dualities. What is the converse of authority? Mr. Rico." He had picked one I could answer. "Responsibility, sir."
"Applause. Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history. The unique 'poll tax' that we must pay was unheard of. No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple."
You'll catch on to FTL bit rather quickly. Like in the first few pages.
About at the time when you realize that the book doesn't start on Earth. That Kovacs gets killed on Harlan's World. That Kovacs gets beamed 180 light years to solve a crime. Which took place in the last 48 HOURS.
180 light years. 48 hours.
Until then, as someone else probably also missed that bit... there's a citation JUST FOR THAT.
Kovacs is an ex Envoy, a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare. Faster-than-light travel is only possible by subspace transmission, called needlecasting, of a digitally stored consciousness to "download centers"[2] where resleeving into physical bodies can be carried out.
Problem with Richard Morgan's writing is that he thinks he's creating these complex worlds and making these insightful social commentaries - when it is all just a juvenile macho fantasy, so everything is subjugated to THAT idea. The characters, the world, the physics...
There's no need for his book to start 180 light years away... but he wants a YUUUGE universe. There's no need for his character to die 180 light years away and be resurrected on Earth... but he wants him to be a YUUUGE badass. Back from the grave and all that. Why not start a book 180 years ago? Have him already being shipped back to Earth and picked for solving the crime cause he's the best available on such a short notice - NOT THE BEST MEGA YUUUGE NINJA MacKiller PRO DETECTIVE SPECIAL FORCES SUPERGUY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. Nope. One of the richest people IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE (and we're talking hundreds of light years in every direction, literally billions of billions humans out there somewhere probably) - picks our badass with an OMG! Japanese slash Somewhere East European name.
He wrote his alter ego into a Deadpool - minus the 4th wall awareness and any sense of satire. The badassest maddafakka in the Verse. Boiiii!
But since Morgan thinks of himself as this smart and socially insightful and sensitive guy... he then piles a bunch of juvenile understanding of social issues on top of his juvenile macho fantasy. Which starts to show particularly whenever his characters rant for a while about this or that social issue, asking easily answerable questions or making easily refutable arguments. And just as they are about to reach the pinnacle of their carefully constructed rant... something explodes. I.e. All his arguments are irrefutable because OMG! LOOK BEHIND YOU! A THREE HEADED MONKEY!
because Morgan clearly explains both those things.
No he doesn't. He handwaves it. Then he presents a world which clearly doesn't follow his handwave.
It's a world with FASTER THAN LIGHT information transfer. FTL information transfer means you can pick up the phone and call yesterday. I.e. Always bet on the right horse. Always be right. Always growing economy. Never make an error. It's beyond eat cake and have it too economy. It's all cake all the time economy.
People usually only go through two bodies because bodies are expensive and supply is limited.
You are looking at the finger pointing at the Moon.
His bodies COULD theoretically* be expensive IF people were swapping bodies. Which they are not doing. They copy themselves into built-in hard-drives. That is why a dead person can be "restored" from a backup. Memories stored on the "stacks" are the REAL bodies. NOT the flesh bodies which are exchangeable as a pair of pants.
There is nothing to be expensive cause everyone has a stack and since you can be brought back when you die... nobody really dies. Unless they REALLY want to die or someone REALLY wants them dead.
------ * Theoretically there could be a shortage of bodies if and only if there is no such thing as cloning AND body transfer was made body-to-body. Not body implant to body implant. But he even sidesteps that excuse for a body shortage as he needs a simple excuse for Kovacs to be highly attractive to his female partner in book 1. So she just can't control herself and she simply MUST fuck him. But without being a SLUT-slut. She just can't help herself. And if Morgan can somehow use that same excuse for wearing such a sexy body to somehow shoehorn slavery into a FTL economy - even better.
And that's just the start. Stupid, stupid paranoid boy. Haven't you heard about Br'er Rabbit's Briar Patch? We got ya men, ya guns, ya nukes... Oh, please, please! Don't send any more!
Starship Troopers was a book about how people living in a fascist society would view living in that society. The book made it plenty clear that they were brainwashed throughout schooling, so of course the characters accepted the society as normal, even admirable.
...
There no preaching either way about fascism in Starship Troopers, as it wasn't a bedtime story. It was an insightful exploration of why a fascist society holds together despite being so evil as seen from the reader's perspective.
At best you could argue that the book (and its author) are not CONSCIOUSLY praising fascism - but militarism. Which, to an outsider to military life, like say... someone with a more intellectualist, university, more opened exchange of ideas, philosophical, but with not enough experience, or someone living a more sheltered life provided by a civilized society... may seem the same as fascism. Or more crudely - to a foureyed bearded commie pinko hippie any uniform is a fascist uniform.
And the book really does read like a book on how army will "make real men out of boys" and about "brotherhood of men" and how such a bond transcends any other - including love of family. Hint - story culminates with the main character BOTH outranking his own father AND being praised AND exonerated by him - while his father admits (through tears, no less) that he was the one who was wrong all along. So they hug - but not as a father and son, but as soldier-brothers. The happy few. And that's AFTER all the numerous baptisms with fire that the main character goes through - becoming a new and stronger man with each one, until he ultimately outranks BOTH his fathers. I.e. Both his dad and his instructor. Isn't army great? Where else can you become both your dad's and your boss's boss simply by being better?
BUT... That does not make only Rico superior to his father - it makes TRUE values of a military life superior to a soft LIE of civilized life. Civilization is a lie - war is the truth. Just like "20th century's democracies" were a lie, so they met their ultimate failure. Which is why citizens are NOT indoctrinated and "brainwashed throughout schooling" to accept such a society. Oh no siree! Rico doesn't join up cause he's indoctrinated into the story how great it is in the army. He joins out of youthful rebellion.
And then he keeps "discovering" how wrong all his acquired ideas of the army really are. How all that pain and torture is actually out of love and how much the superior officers actually care and self-sacrifice for their subordinate soldiers. Just like how those military instructors are placed in highschools TO DISSUADE the weak-minded from ever taking up military service.
In a society where you are free to lead your little life of pretend-importance. While real men do all the real fighting and real standing on them real walls so you could live a luxury of comfortable ignorance. So, because you are too soft to handle the truth you are handed a LIE. A construct created by the military in order to have a place for all the good-for-no-military-role runts. Kids' pool where they can splash about without actually endangering themselves or others with their own ineptitude. A lie those runts call "civilization".
And that's not just fascism - that's a FASCIST UTOPIA. Society where not only does the elite rule by banding together and holding both all the strings AND all the axes of the society... Oh no. It also has NO internal opponents as they are not only emasculated of any real power - anything but fascism is "mathematically provable as wrong". AND on top of that it is a society which MUST remain in a state of permanent war forever - as long as there is any other hostile species out there. So not only is fascism presented as the only way - it is also the only MORALLY CORRECT way for ANY species.
Heinlein MAY HAVE started the book as a purely militaristic one, but he fell into his
He already beams people at FTL speeds across the galaxy because something-something money. I.e. Detaches them from the world they live in - which is the same thing as waking up in the future, with new rules and a new world.
His "umm... rich make it so... yeah..." rule is also retarded cause his world is one where there is literally no motivation to be rich. Hell... he handwaves that most people just don't bother with transfers into a new body after a few lives because... something.
Ignoring completely that when you live in a hard-drive inside a fleshy body all that flesh is just meat - which is really tricky to do when so much of that world revolves around those hard drives. I.e. You don't die when flesh dies. You go to sleep. He ignores that when it suits him - thus everyone in that world is stupid. He even has people living in virtual worlds... yet he fails to make the connection that by shifting a human life into a hard-drive (which is nearly indestructible compared to a regular human body) he has created a world where material wealth is pointless. Hard drive doesn't care about food, warmth, clothes, looks, cars, homes, tracts of land... expensive. It's all just empty bottles to a skeleton. Expensive becomes just a memory of a word.
And few bodies down the line it even has no idea of family. Live a thousand years through couple a dozen bodies and your grandpa may end up being your grandson. And you're his mother and his sister... and his aunt neighbor roommate boss acquaintance.
And then he even creates an even bigger "life eternal" deus ex machina in the third book... which is completely unnecessary for anything but his white knight complex. And I'm not talking about the conclusion of the trilogy where the main character finds hope in the DeM to save the one he couldn't save (from her own stupidity of marrying into a fundamentalist religious cult) - something a functional immortal in that position could do anyway by investing a few decades into it. I'm talking about the main character getting to fuck (and save) Jesus Che Guevara MacLenin von Yeats of that universe. WHAT A TWIST!
Besides that, you can't have something be both ubiquitous AND so expensive nearly no one can afford it (yet everyone can). Economy of scale kills expensive. Interest and inflation (both necessary for a functional economy) kills expensive. Technology (which just gets dropped by Alien Space Bats) kills expensive. Had his magical tech been reliant on some extremely rare AND LIMITED IN QUANTITY magical resource which can't be synthesized... maybe. But then that story can't have entire populations of body jumping individuals.
Or had he given his villains actual motivation other than space cash. Problem is he'd have to write them as human beings then. And while he CAN make himself to accept that religious fundamentalists are humans too... after he has his own private genocide of them (but they've deserved it first) - he can't make his rich villains evil for anything more than being rich. His "living forever is evil because it denies people paradise" religious kooks are still human, but his "oligarchy" is evil because... something-something money power.
But if you really wanna taste of just how stupid and retarded he is about economy, geopolitics, humans and everything else - pick up Market Forces. It's hilarious. Executives of a Baddy McEvil company which finances wars and literal hostile takeovers of countries fight amongst themselves in their James Bond cars while every character (particularly the main one) does increasingly stupider things. Did I mention it's a near future dystopia and that corporations run everything? But there is blood! And sex! And economic inequality just because! No eternal life though. Just a possibility of a life in a Scandinavian Utopia.
What I'm saying is that you are a patsy for nationalistic corporatism and the European police state.
Darn it! You've seen through our plans! We'll have to give you and your family cancer with our secret European police state satellites much faster now.
Run to your hole paranoia-boy! It won't help you! We've put it in your water too!
Believe it or not... people do have lives away from Slashdot.
But while I did at least reply, all you're doing is feigning (to whom?) some supposed higher ground in defense of a silly (or your could say retarded) theory - while priding yourself with refusing to even read a comment on it. Which is very much in line with a theory which considers ignorance as positive.
There the life extension is through the ability to transfer minds into implanted mind-hard-drives.
Which should in any logical universe lead to permanent youth for everyone AND elimination of poverty cause everyone could basically live off of interests on their savings, while sleeping for centuries in between, right? Or buggering off to new frontiers and living happily forever there, right? OR... and check this out... NEVER HAVING AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM ON ACCOUNT OF FASTER THEN LIGHT INFORMATION TRANSFER. TIME TRAVEL FOR FUCKS SAKE! Naaah... Because Morgan really, REALLY, fails to understand the basics of economy (and much more) - he decides such a world has to be a dystopia, despite also being a world of wast frontiers thanks to quite literal alien space bats. Then he also piles on that such a society is both full of religious fundamentalism AS WELL AS tolerance of religious fundamentalism. And less is said about his idea of sex and/or gender in a world where people can switch bodies on a whim the better.
The universe he builds doesn't hold water. Just like his idea of spray-on replacement for condoms. Then again, most people don't really know how those things work anyway.
What he DOES do well is creating villains you'd really want to see beaten to a pulp. And then he puts them through a wood chipper. And then pours gasoline all over it and lights it all on fire. And then he defecates on the steaming remnants of the villain and the wood chipper. Mini revenge fantasies.
But no... he's simply not capable of imagining a world where people are given what is basically an infinite lifespan. Let alone a prolonged one.
It's one thing if you want the BBC to take down an article they wrote because it's supposed to be a fact-checked objectively written and newsworthy story in the first place.
Want don't get.
Read again.
However, this right would be restricted in some cases, for instance when the data is needed for historical, statistical and scientific purposes, for public health reasons or to exercise the right to freedom of expression.
The rest of your concerns all fall under that paragraph as well. The vision of gloom and doom that exists in your mind is not an accurate portrayal of reality.
This is not some reverse-DMCA thing where billions of individuals would storm your offices on a hunch that you have their data on your servers. This is assurance for individuals that Company X and Government Y can't do whatever it pleases for as long as it pleases with data said individuals are now unwittingly leaving everywhere they go. With certain exceptions even to that.
Google has already received 280000 "right to be forgotten" requests.
As for Wikipedia, European courts have no jurisdiction over it anyway.
RUN GOALPOSTS! RUN! INTO THE HORIZON! All 280000 cases are German murderers I suppose? What? Oh right... you ran out of arguments trying to argue that there, so you are now just shifting goalposts.
And low information voters like you think that's a good thing.
And paranoid schizos like you fail to provide a single plausible reason why exempting a foreign commercial interest in a law designed to protect private individuals, which would not benefit anyone but said foreign commercial interests AT THE EXPENSE of said private individual - why would THAT be a good thing.
All you people got is some fluff and scaremongering about "murrrrrrdererrrrs" erasing their history. Then when you are called out on your unsubstantiated bullshit - you shift goal posts to encompass some even fluffier case.
What's next? A Zionist conspiracy? Come on! Don't fail us now! Show the world your TRUE CRAZY COLORS!
But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
To such a wide thrown net, from McD employees to police officers... there's no single answer.
But McD is a good place to start... compared to a classy restaurant. Do you tip your server at your local McD joint? Do you clean up after yourself at your local Le Snott, picking up dishes, taking them back? Some service positions will become automated, some will become prestigious - some will be shifted onto the consumer. Cashiers are already going the way of the fast food joint waiter with self checkout.
Another group of jobs will go to idealists and what are today known as hobbyists. Why only do your own garden when you can do ALL the parks in the city? You wanna fight crime? Stop jerking off to Batman and join the police. You can afford it. It's a middle class job - with a gun. Wanna keep the city clean in another way, that for some reason can't be covered by robots, AND get paid? RISE ecofreaks!
And then there's that thing where with an increase of automation and lowered employability for basic, menial, jobs - having a job becomes an issue of prestige. Meaningless lives gain purpose with a job. One is needed and relied on. One commands power when one's existence implies a function too. "This whole place would fall apart without me." - said a screw.
AND THEN there's all those people who want a shiny thing that their basic income can't provide.
My god.. the stupidity of that site is unbounded. And I could refute many of their "points" just by looking at the same evidence that they were presenting.
Never go here. You might suffer an aneurism. And then they'll replace you with a double.
The "right to be forgotten" never applied to German news organizations. It was always intended to limit foreign search engines.
Except all you're able to point at is a single case of one guy's lawyers trying to make Wikipedia and Deutschlandradio internet archives to remove his name - and failing at that.
Ergo... how did you put it... You keep demonstrating your own ignorance and bigotry. And a rather large dose of "stick it to big US companies" paranoia.
The new rules appear to strengthen the old ones.
Except they specifically list exemptions for legal, archival, scientific research, public interest, freedom of expression etc.
(42) Derogating from the prohibition on processing sensitive categories of data should also be allowed if done by a law, and subject to suitable safeguards, so as to protect personal data and other fundamental rights, where grounds of public interest so justify and in particular for health purposes, including public health and social protection and the management of health-care services, especially in order to ensure the quality and cost-effectiveness of the procedures used for settling claims for benefits and services in the health insurance system, for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes, or for archive services . [Am. 21]
(53) Any person should have the right to have personal data concerning them rectified and a 'right to erasure ' where the retention of such data is not in compliance with this Regulation. In particular, data subjects should have the right that their personal data are erased and no longer processed, where the data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which the data are collected or otherwise processed, where data subjects have withdrawn their consent for processing or where they object to the processing of personal data concerning them or where the processing of their personal data otherwise does not comply with this Regulation. However, the further retention of the data should be allowed where it is necessary for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes, for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, for exercising the right of freedom of expression, when required by law or where there is a reason to restrict the processing of the data instead of erasing them. Also, the right to erasure should not apply when the retention of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract with the data subject, or when there is a legal obligation to retain this data. [Am. 27]
Seriously... get yourself some enema. Being so full of shit is not healthy.
Wait... you mean that literal "3s" retardation, which proudly ignores calorie intake completely along with any attempt at recognizing the difference between different kinds of foods, serving sizes and metabolisms? Diet which treats a plate of pork the same way it would a bowl of soup? Diet which is strict - except on weekends? Diet which takes pride in ignorance?
That's much too rational and straightforward. Come on, REALLY, why is this diet so much better?
You wouldn't take diet advice from a fat person, why take it from a fat book? Weighing in at just 14 words, the No S Diet is the ultra featherweight of diet plans.
(Yes, I know, I've now written a book myself -- but it's a wee little thing. You can easily read it in a day. And of course, for the bare essentials of the system, all you need is the cover.)
I was actually hoping you weren't referring to that, and that you were just suffering from a form of appeal to nature fallacy combined with some appeal to tradition. if you're buying into that crap... wow... you have bigger issues. Hey! Issues also has 3 Ss in it! Why not call it "I have issues diet"?
Slashdot Mirror
The Three-Body Problem IS hard SciFi. Well... it starts as such. Sorta.
But then the supposed hard SciFi turns into science fantasy with deus ex machinae around every corner.
A big part of the story is about aliens building a proton-sized computer by "folding-out" a proton to 11 dimensions, then folding it back in.
Which would not be such a huge problem - if the said alien civilization wasn't forced to invade Earth on account of its own solar system's inhospitableness reaching critical levels.
Said civilization also has 1/100th of light speed capability (and faster) ships and other really advanced tech, their home is HIGHLY inhospitable (far more than say... Mars) and unstable - yet there is simply no other solution for them other than complete extermination of humanity.
A task in which they will be aided by Earthly pan-species-commies and ecologists.
No... Really.
And then there's the second book.
And boy... if you have a short fuse for "everyone is stupid" episodes of Star Trek or some other SciFi show where every otherwise smart character acts like a complete idiot in order to serve the plot... well...
"Because reasons" everyone on Earth decides to lay all their hopes into supersecret plans of 4 "wall facers" - scientists and statesmen who are given unquestionable and nearly unlimited authority to create supersecret plans to save humanity in the upcoming war with the aliens.
One of them being a slacker we meet at the beginning of the book.
Who is pining for an imaginary waifu he imagined on a dare - a stereotypical Chinese mail-order bride turned up to 11.
And then with the help of a detective friend and a global database of every human on the planet - he finds her.
Well... he finds a girl up to the specifications he imagined as "perfect". All the cringing while going through their romance does wonders for one's muscle tone though.
And then the day is saved by playing the Mutually Assured Destruction card in the pan-galactic game of Everyone Always Defects In Prisoner's Dilemma.
Meanwhile, ants still don't give a fuck.
Scifi in Liu's book isn't really bad... but the plotting is horrible with supposedly brilliant geniuses acting like complete idiots any time anyone walks through a door.
On the other hand, there is a built-in level of "strangeness" on account of cultural differences.
Tesla hired a German contractor, Eisenmann, to build a paint shop.
Eisenmann then hired ISM Vuzem, a Slovenian company, who then hired the said Slovenian electrician.
Who then had an accident, ended up in a hospital and who is now suing all three for following reasons:
From TFA:
Eisenmann USA wrote letters to the U.S. Embassy on behalf of Lesnik and as many as 200 foreign workers stating they would supervise employees at a U.S. auto plant.
Most of the Vuzem workers were nonsupervisory laborers and tradesmen.
Tesla issued company security badges to the foreign workers, recorded their time on site and shared responsibility for setting safety conditions.
Vuzem required foreign employees to regularly work between 60 and 70 hours a week.
Vuzem paid Lesnik an average of 800 euros per month, or about $900, for a rate of less than $5 per hour. Lesnik was promised an equal amount when he returned home, but the company never paid the balance.
The companies violated wage and employment laws and benefitted from the cheap labor of foreign workers.
Workers were promised $12.70 an hour based on a standard workweek.
The suit estimates they are due $2.6 million in overtime and premium pay.
All in all, Tesla is the least responsible party in this case.
In fact, they could probably sue Eisenmann USA for failing to meet their requirements "to hire and pay their workers appropriately", as they claim is their practice.
That is, unless it turns out they were simply turning a blind eye and just looking at the bottom line.
Like everyone else.
More from TFA:
Vuzem provides teams of Eastern European workers to build manufacturing plants in Europe and the U.S. It counts Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford and Saab as clients, according to its website.
In 2003, an Alabama sheet metal workers union protested Eisenmann hiring a contractor that brought in Polish workers to complete a Mercedes-Benz paint shop.
The company was cleared of any wrongdoing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Officials with the agency declined to answer questions about the investigation and denied a Freedom of Information Act request for materials related to the probe.
Eisenmann declined to respond to written questions about the case.
Ten years later, ICE fined Infosys a record $34 million for circumventing H-1B and B1 regulations and unlawfully using visa holders for skilled work around the country, among other offenses, according to a court settlement.
This month, Bitmicro Networks Inc. of Fremont was fined about $168,000 for giving substandard wages to workers brought in from the Philippines.
It's not a case of Tesla or emigrants or cheap labor.
It's just another example of corporations in the US being subsidized at the expense of US citizens.
Everyone does it, everyone pretends it is not an issue... until they get sued.
How about a dog?
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/190633.php
Actually... since the tech behind it is based on these sensors and since dogs can already be trained to detect bacteria and prostate cancer by smell, while bladder cancer can be detected by smell as well...
The answer is probably yes.
1 finger unlocks the phone, other 9 wipe it.
Also... Back in my teenage days I once got SOOOO drunk my pals thought it would be fun to test if I had any sensation left - by putting a lighter under my left index finger.
Permanently altered that fingerprint due to scar tissue.
I'm pretty sure there are various other ways one could alter one's fingerprints rather easily and quickly.
Causing those 1 to 9 odds to suddenly look a lot more like 100%.
Look like being the operative word.
A couple of divisions in a society numbering in the billions does not make for a militaristic society.
A - that's called a social elite.
B - book starts with our man Rico leveling half an alien city all by himself.
C - yet, despite "not" being a militaristic society, his middle-aged father somehow breezes through the training created to make teenagers into career soldiers.
How does the logistic work out for that exactly? He lies about his age? Dyes his hair or something?
Quits smoking and starts taking vitamins which give him the abilities of a teenager again?
Zim outranked our hero Juan ultimately.
And his father outranked him in the beginning.
But he still got the be the boss of both of them. And to keep on advancing in the ranks.
It doesn't matter if your superior-made-inferior eventually rises to the same or similar level as you or even higher - what matters is that YOU got to be his boss.
I.e. You were better, you got better, you are better and you will always be better than him.
That's how the juvenile power fantasies work.
And that's what awaits you if you join up! Pure meritocracy! Isn't army great?
Nor does a top income tax rate down around 2% (yes, he mentioned the income tax rate at one point) pay for much of a military.
A - Colonies. Lotsa paychecks.
B - Army is made out of 1-man city-leveling flying tanks. How many of those are needed exactly?
C - Who ever said that Heinlein thought it through? He supposedly also thought that he was not describing a fascist society - but he was.
And most importantly...
D - It's not 2%. It's just described as "poll tax". In the same breath and on the same page that exults this as the ultimate authority.
Wait... isn't that... Oh...
Major Reid paused to touch the face of an old-fashioned watch, "reading" its hands.
"The period is almost over and we have yet to determine the moral reason for our success in governing ourselves.
Now continued success is never a matter of chance. Bear in mind that this is science, not wishful thinking; the universe is what it is, not what we want it to be.
To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives - such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day.
Force, if you will! - the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force."
"But this universe consists of paired dualities. What is the converse of authority? Mr. Rico."
He had picked one I could answer. "Responsibility, sir."
"Applause. Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential.
To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.
The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history.
The unique 'poll tax' that we must pay was unheard of.
No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority.
If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple."
You'll catch on to FTL bit rather quickly. Like in the first few pages.
About at the time when you realize that the book doesn't start on Earth.
That Kovacs gets killed on Harlan's World.
That Kovacs gets beamed 180 light years to solve a crime. Which took place in the last 48 HOURS.
180 light years. 48 hours.
Until then, as someone else probably also missed that bit... there's a citation JUST FOR THAT.
Kovacs is an ex Envoy, a military unit formed to cope with the challenge of interstellar warfare.
Faster-than-light travel is only possible by subspace transmission, called needlecasting, of a digitally stored consciousness to "download centers"[2] where resleeving into physical bodies can be carried out.
Problem with Richard Morgan's writing is that he thinks he's creating these complex worlds and making these insightful social commentaries - when it is all just a juvenile macho fantasy, so everything is subjugated to THAT idea.
The characters, the world, the physics...
There's no need for his book to start 180 light years away... but he wants a YUUUGE universe.
There's no need for his character to die 180 light years away and be resurrected on Earth... but he wants him to be a YUUUGE badass. Back from the grave and all that.
Why not start a book 180 years ago? Have him already being shipped back to Earth and picked for solving the crime cause he's the best available on such a short notice - NOT THE BEST MEGA YUUUGE NINJA MacKiller PRO DETECTIVE SPECIAL FORCES SUPERGUY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.
Nope. One of the richest people IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE (and we're talking hundreds of light years in every direction, literally billions of billions humans out there somewhere probably) - picks our badass with an OMG! Japanese slash Somewhere East European name.
He wrote his alter ego into a Deadpool - minus the 4th wall awareness and any sense of satire.
The badassest maddafakka in the Verse. Boiiii!
But since Morgan thinks of himself as this smart and socially insightful and sensitive guy... he then piles a bunch of juvenile understanding of social issues on top of his juvenile macho fantasy.
Which starts to show particularly whenever his characters rant for a while about this or that social issue, asking easily answerable questions or making easily refutable arguments.
And just as they are about to reach the pinnacle of their carefully constructed rant... something explodes.
I.e. All his arguments are irrefutable because OMG! LOOK BEHIND YOU! A THREE HEADED MONKEY!
because Morgan clearly explains both those things.
No he doesn't. He handwaves it.
Then he presents a world which clearly doesn't follow his handwave.
It's a world with FASTER THAN LIGHT information transfer.
FTL information transfer means you can pick up the phone and call yesterday.
I.e. Always bet on the right horse. Always be right. Always growing economy. Never make an error.
It's beyond eat cake and have it too economy. It's all cake all the time economy.
People usually only go through two bodies because bodies are expensive and supply is limited.
You are looking at the finger pointing at the Moon.
His bodies COULD theoretically* be expensive IF people were swapping bodies. Which they are not doing.
They copy themselves into built-in hard-drives. That is why a dead person can be "restored" from a backup.
Memories stored on the "stacks" are the REAL bodies. NOT the flesh bodies which are exchangeable as a pair of pants.
There is nothing to be expensive cause everyone has a stack and since you can be brought back when you die... nobody really dies.
Unless they REALLY want to die or someone REALLY wants them dead.
------
* Theoretically there could be a shortage of bodies if and only if there is no such thing as cloning AND body transfer was made body-to-body. Not body implant to body implant.
But he even sidesteps that excuse for a body shortage as he needs a simple excuse for Kovacs to be highly attractive to his female partner in book 1.
So she just can't control herself and she simply MUST fuck him. But without being a SLUT-slut. She just can't help herself.
And if Morgan can somehow use that same excuse for wearing such a sexy body to somehow shoehorn slavery into a FTL economy - even better.
Stopped reading at
You really have issues with continuous reading. You should check that. Might be something serious.
And that's just the start.
Stupid, stupid paranoid boy. Haven't you heard about Br'er Rabbit's Briar Patch?
We got ya men, ya guns, ya nukes... Oh, please, please! Don't send any more!
Starship Troopers was a book about how people living in a fascist society would view living in that society. The book made it plenty clear that they were brainwashed throughout schooling, so of course the characters accepted the society as normal, even admirable.
There no preaching either way about fascism in Starship Troopers, as it wasn't a bedtime story. It was an insightful exploration of why a fascist society holds together despite being so evil as seen from the reader's perspective.
At best you could argue that the book (and its author) are not CONSCIOUSLY praising fascism - but militarism.
Which, to an outsider to military life, like say... someone with a more intellectualist, university, more opened exchange of ideas, philosophical, but with not enough experience, or someone living a more sheltered life provided by a civilized society... may seem the same as fascism.
Or more crudely - to a foureyed bearded commie pinko hippie any uniform is a fascist uniform.
And the book really does read like a book on how army will "make real men out of boys" and about "brotherhood of men" and how such a bond transcends any other - including love of family.
Hint - story culminates with the main character BOTH outranking his own father AND being praised AND exonerated by him - while his father admits (through tears, no less) that he was the one who was wrong all along.
So they hug - but not as a father and son, but as soldier-brothers. The happy few.
And that's AFTER all the numerous baptisms with fire that the main character goes through - becoming a new and stronger man with each one, until he ultimately outranks BOTH his fathers.
I.e. Both his dad and his instructor.
Isn't army great? Where else can you become both your dad's and your boss's boss simply by being better?
BUT...
That does not make only Rico superior to his father - it makes TRUE values of a military life superior to a soft LIE of civilized life.
Civilization is a lie - war is the truth. Just like "20th century's democracies" were a lie, so they met their ultimate failure.
Which is why citizens are NOT indoctrinated and "brainwashed throughout schooling" to accept such a society.
Oh no siree!
Rico doesn't join up cause he's indoctrinated into the story how great it is in the army. He joins out of youthful rebellion.
And then he keeps "discovering" how wrong all his acquired ideas of the army really are.
How all that pain and torture is actually out of love and how much the superior officers actually care and self-sacrifice for their subordinate soldiers.
Just like how those military instructors are placed in highschools TO DISSUADE the weak-minded from ever taking up military service.
In a society where you are free to lead your little life of pretend-importance.
While real men do all the real fighting and real standing on them real walls so you could live a luxury of comfortable ignorance.
So, because you are too soft to handle the truth you are handed a LIE.
A construct created by the military in order to have a place for all the good-for-no-military-role runts.
Kids' pool where they can splash about without actually endangering themselves or others with their own ineptitude.
A lie those runts call "civilization".
And that's not just fascism - that's a FASCIST UTOPIA.
Society where not only does the elite rule by banding together and holding both all the strings AND all the axes of the society... Oh no.
It also has NO internal opponents as they are not only emasculated of any real power - anything but fascism is "mathematically provable as wrong".
AND on top of that it is a society which MUST remain in a state of permanent war forever - as long as there is any other hostile species out there.
So not only is fascism presented as the only way - it is also the only MORALLY CORRECT way for ANY species.
Heinlein MAY HAVE started the book as a purely militaristic one, but he fell into his
Not in a world Morgan creates.
He already beams people at FTL speeds across the galaxy because something-something money.
I.e. Detaches them from the world they live in - which is the same thing as waking up in the future, with new rules and a new world.
His "umm... rich make it so... yeah..." rule is also retarded cause his world is one where there is literally no motivation to be rich.
Hell... he handwaves that most people just don't bother with transfers into a new body after a few lives because... something.
Ignoring completely that when you live in a hard-drive inside a fleshy body all that flesh is just meat - which is really tricky to do when so much of that world revolves around those hard drives.
I.e. You don't die when flesh dies. You go to sleep. He ignores that when it suits him - thus everyone in that world is stupid.
He even has people living in virtual worlds... yet he fails to make the connection that by shifting a human life into a hard-drive (which is nearly indestructible compared to a regular human body) he has created a world where material wealth is pointless.
Hard drive doesn't care about food, warmth, clothes, looks, cars, homes, tracts of land... expensive.
It's all just empty bottles to a skeleton.
Expensive becomes just a memory of a word.
And few bodies down the line it even has no idea of family.
Live a thousand years through couple a dozen bodies and your grandpa may end up being your grandson. And you're his mother and his sister... and his aunt neighbor roommate boss acquaintance.
And then he even creates an even bigger "life eternal" deus ex machina in the third book... which is completely unnecessary for anything but his white knight complex.
And I'm not talking about the conclusion of the trilogy where the main character finds hope in the DeM to save the one he couldn't save (from her own stupidity of marrying into a fundamentalist religious cult) - something a functional immortal in that position could do anyway by investing a few decades into it.
I'm talking about the main character getting to fuck (and save) Jesus Che Guevara MacLenin von Yeats of that universe. WHAT A TWIST!
Besides that, you can't have something be both ubiquitous AND so expensive nearly no one can afford it (yet everyone can).
Economy of scale kills expensive. Interest and inflation (both necessary for a functional economy) kills expensive. Technology (which just gets dropped by Alien Space Bats) kills expensive.
Had his magical tech been reliant on some extremely rare AND LIMITED IN QUANTITY magical resource which can't be synthesized... maybe.
But then that story can't have entire populations of body jumping individuals.
Or had he given his villains actual motivation other than space cash. Problem is he'd have to write them as human beings then.
And while he CAN make himself to accept that religious fundamentalists are humans too... after he has his own private genocide of them (but they've deserved it first) - he can't make his rich villains evil for anything more than being rich.
His "living forever is evil because it denies people paradise" religious kooks are still human, but his "oligarchy" is evil because... something-something money power.
But if you really wanna taste of just how stupid and retarded he is about economy, geopolitics, humans and everything else - pick up Market Forces.
It's hilarious.
Executives of a Baddy McEvil company which finances wars and literal hostile takeovers of countries fight amongst themselves in their James Bond cars while every character (particularly the main one) does increasingly stupider things.
Did I mention it's a near future dystopia and that corporations run everything?
But there is blood! And sex! And economic inequality just because! No eternal life though. Just a possibility of a life in a Scandinavian Utopia.
Morgan has some serious "teenager-angry-after-dis
We're coming for your guuuuunnnsssssss...
What I'm saying is that you are a patsy for nationalistic corporatism and the European police state.
Darn it! You've seen through our plans!
We'll have to give you and your family cancer with our secret European police state satellites much faster now.
Run to your hole paranoia-boy! It won't help you! We've put it in your water too!
Believe it or not... people do have lives away from Slashdot.
But while I did at least reply, all you're doing is feigning (to whom?) some supposed higher ground in defense of a silly (or your could say retarded) theory - while priding yourself with refusing to even read a comment on it.
Which is very much in line with a theory which considers ignorance as positive.
There the life extension is through the ability to transfer minds into implanted mind-hard-drives.
Which should in any logical universe lead to permanent youth for everyone AND elimination of poverty cause everyone could basically live off of interests on their savings, while sleeping for centuries in between, right?
Or buggering off to new frontiers and living happily forever there, right?
OR... and check this out... NEVER HAVING AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM ON ACCOUNT OF FASTER THEN LIGHT INFORMATION TRANSFER.
TIME TRAVEL FOR FUCKS SAKE!
Naaah... Because Morgan really, REALLY, fails to understand the basics of economy (and much more) - he decides such a world has to be a dystopia, despite also being a world of wast frontiers thanks to quite literal alien space bats.
Then he also piles on that such a society is both full of religious fundamentalism AS WELL AS tolerance of religious fundamentalism.
And less is said about his idea of sex and/or gender in a world where people can switch bodies on a whim the better.
The universe he builds doesn't hold water. Just like his idea of spray-on replacement for condoms.
Then again, most people don't really know how those things work anyway.
What he DOES do well is creating villains you'd really want to see beaten to a pulp.
And then he puts them through a wood chipper. And then pours gasoline all over it and lights it all on fire.
And then he defecates on the steaming remnants of the villain and the wood chipper.
Mini revenge fantasies.
But no... he's simply not capable of imagining a world where people are given what is basically an infinite lifespan.
Let alone a prolonged one.
It's one thing if you want the BBC to take down an article they wrote because it's supposed to be a fact-checked objectively written and newsworthy story in the first place.
Want don't get.
Read again.
However, this right would be restricted in some cases, for instance when the data is needed for historical, statistical and scientific purposes, for public health reasons or to exercise the right to freedom of expression.
The rest of your concerns all fall under that paragraph as well.
The vision of gloom and doom that exists in your mind is not an accurate portrayal of reality.
This is not some reverse-DMCA thing where billions of individuals would storm your offices on a hunch that you have their data on your servers.
This is assurance for individuals that Company X and Government Y can't do whatever it pleases for as long as it pleases with data said individuals are now unwittingly leaving everywhere they go.
With certain exceptions even to that.
Google has already received 280000 "right to be forgotten" requests.
As for Wikipedia, European courts have no jurisdiction over it anyway.
RUN GOALPOSTS! RUN! INTO THE HORIZON!
All 280000 cases are German murderers I suppose? What?
Oh right... you ran out of arguments trying to argue that there, so you are now just shifting goalposts.
And low information voters like you think that's a good thing.
And paranoid schizos like you fail to provide a single plausible reason why exempting a foreign commercial interest in a law designed to protect private individuals, which would not benefit anyone but said foreign commercial interests AT THE EXPENSE of said private individual - why would THAT be a good thing.
All you people got is some fluff and scaremongering about "murrrrrrdererrrrs" erasing their history.
Then when you are called out on your unsubstantiated bullshit - you shift goal posts to encompass some even fluffier case.
What's next? A Zionist conspiracy?
Come on! Don't fail us now! Show the world your TRUE CRAZY COLORS!
That's what they want you to think.
Naah... You just failed to read.
But who is going to decide that instead of sitting home and watching TV, they're going to wait tables, or flip burgers, or enforce laws, or collect trash, or be a retail cashier?
To such a wide thrown net, from McD employees to police officers... there's no single answer.
But McD is a good place to start... compared to a classy restaurant.
Do you tip your server at your local McD joint? Do you clean up after yourself at your local Le Snott, picking up dishes, taking them back?
Some service positions will become automated, some will become prestigious - some will be shifted onto the consumer.
Cashiers are already going the way of the fast food joint waiter with self checkout.
Another group of jobs will go to idealists and what are today known as hobbyists.
Why only do your own garden when you can do ALL the parks in the city?
You wanna fight crime? Stop jerking off to Batman and join the police. You can afford it. It's a middle class job - with a gun.
Wanna keep the city clean in another way, that for some reason can't be covered by robots, AND get paid? RISE ecofreaks!
And then there's that thing where with an increase of automation and lowered employability for basic, menial, jobs - having a job becomes an issue of prestige.
Meaningless lives gain purpose with a job. One is needed and relied on. One commands power when one's existence implies a function too.
"This whole place would fall apart without me." - said a screw.
AND THEN there's all those people who want a shiny thing that their basic income can't provide.
My god .. the stupidity of that site is unbounded. And I could refute many of their "points" just by looking at the same evidence that they were presenting.
Never go here. You might suffer an aneurism. And then they'll replace you with a double.
Why ask me? Ask wunderground.com.
The "right to be forgotten" never applied to German news organizations. It was always intended to limit foreign search engines.
Except all you're able to point at is a single case of one guy's lawyers trying to make Wikipedia and Deutschlandradio internet archives to remove his name - and failing at that.
Ergo... how did you put it... You keep demonstrating your own ignorance and bigotry.
And a rather large dose of "stick it to big US companies" paranoia.
The new rules appear to strengthen the old ones.
Except they specifically list exemptions for legal, archival, scientific research, public interest, freedom of expression etc.
(42) Derogating from the prohibition on processing sensitive categories of data should also be allowed if done by a law, and subject to suitable safeguards, so as to protect personal data and other fundamental rights, where grounds of public interest so justify and in particular for health purposes, including public health and social protection and the management of health-care services, especially in order to ensure the quality and cost-effectiveness of the procedures used for settling claims for benefits and services in the health insurance system, for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes, or for archive services . [Am. 21]
(53) Any person should have the right to have personal data concerning them rectified and a 'right to erasure ' where the retention of such data is not in compliance with this Regulation.
In particular, data subjects should have the right that their personal data are erased and no longer processed, where the data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which the data are collected or otherwise processed, where data subjects have withdrawn their consent for processing or where they object to the processing of personal data concerning them or where the processing of their personal data otherwise does not comply with this Regulation.
However, the further retention of the data should be allowed where it is necessary for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes, for reasons of public interest in the area of public health, for exercising the right of freedom of expression, when required by law or where there is a reason to restrict the processing of the data instead of erasing them.
Also, the right to erasure should not apply when the retention of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract with the data subject, or when there is a legal obligation to retain this data. [Am. 27]
Seriously... get yourself some enema. Being so full of shit is not healthy.
Wait... you mean that literal "3s" retardation, which proudly ignores calorie intake completely along with any attempt at recognizing the difference between different kinds of foods, serving sizes and metabolisms?
Diet which treats a plate of pork the same way it would a bowl of soup?
Diet which is strict - except on weekends?
Diet which takes pride in ignorance?
http://nosdiet.com/
That's much too rational and straightforward. Come on, REALLY, why is this diet so much better?
You wouldn't take diet advice from a fat person, why take it from a fat book? Weighing in at just 14 words, the No S Diet is the ultra featherweight of diet plans.
(Yes, I know, I've now written a book myself -- but it's a wee little thing. You can easily read it in a day. And of course, for the bare essentials of the system, all you need is the cover.)
I was actually hoping you weren't referring to that, and that you were just suffering from a form of appeal to nature fallacy combined with some appeal to tradition.
if you're buying into that crap... wow... you have bigger issues.
Hey! Issues also has 3 Ss in it! Why not call it "I have issues diet"?