This is not actually a joke, if you read the description of the spec change history (http://www.gibsonmagic.com/specification.html) you'll see Revision 2.4: "Added copy protection bit."
Without a doubt Herbert is a fantastic writer. His abundant use of italics to indicate the internal thoughts of the story characters is unusual and to me were a major reason why so many of his books are so good. This same device in his books are a major reason why they don't translate to movies very well, e.g. the few used in Dune (via voice-overs) just didn't work.
I was simply blown away when Asimov linked all the Foundation story to the Robot Novels. He managed to link so many of his books together so well, and these are books that he wrote long before Foundation.
Respectfully I would argue that the child pornography issue is a perfect example
of censorship derived from political ideology. The argument against child
pornography is that it promotes child abuse, so the elimation of it would
lower child abuse. After all, politically speaking, who could be against
protecting the children.
It is fairly well known that a vast majority of child abuse
is committed by family members and people known by the family, not by some
wierdo who likes child pornography. However, by using this anti-child-porno
stance political ideology can be promoted by the "Big Brother" tactics
required to combat it. And all the while the real group of offenders
escape the scrutiny of the masses.
An excellent article on exactly this topic was on Salon recently,
link here.
psyfir
I had meant to post this when the last article on Metcalfe was on/. but couldn't find it.
From the September 16, 1996 issue of Newsweek, an article by Steven Levy on the topic of
Metcalfe's prediction that the Internet was soon to "melt down".
[excerpts]
(After talking about the slowness of the Internet) "Such annoyances are commonplace on the
Net these days, but to Bob Metcalfe, networking pioneer turned cyberalarmist, they are
evidence of impending disaster. In his thinking, the Net is a fish already hooked; those
routine brownouts are but the first few twinges at its mouth. Soon the fish will find
itself reeled in, and we will witness the pathetic spectacle of the once mighty
Internet, the darling of our economy and the object of our millennial dreams, flopping
aimlessly like snagged red snapper on a boat deck. Web sites will become cobweb sittes.
E-mail will be dead-lettered. Stock prices will fall to Earth."
"'Maybe the Internet has already collapsed,' Metcalfe says to me later that day,
in a lecture that lasts the dinner hour. 'Everyone complains about brownouts every
day. But it's going to get worse. Worse! Worse! Worse!' The inventer of the Ethernet
networking system and founder of the 3Com corporation has risked his considerable
reputation by publicly predicting a 'gigalapse' - in which a billion hours of access
time are lost - by the end of the year."
I definitely agree with this statement. We have to use Word at work, and often
I have had to compose in WordPerfect and import it into Word because I just
couldn't get Word to do it correctly. (Tables is a biggie here.) It's
unfortunate that so many companies standardize on Word because it's shoved
down their throats by the Micro$oft, not because it's a better product.
I characterize WordPerfect as the Ultimate Front-End for Word.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if copies of these are worth anything?
This is not actually a joke, if you read the description of the spec change history
(http://www.gibsonmagic.com/specification.html)
you'll see Revision 2.4: "Added copy protection bit."
Psyfir
Without a doubt Herbert is a fantastic writer. His abundant use of italics to indicate the internal thoughts of the story characters is unusual and to me were a major reason why so many of his books are so good. This same device in his books are a major reason why they don't translate to movies very well, e.g. the few used in Dune (via voice-overs) just didn't work.
I was simply blown away when Asimov linked all the Foundation story to the Robot Novels. He managed to link so many of his books together so well, and these are books that he wrote long before Foundation.
What an amazing writer.
The Pretender series on Fox (?) really stole a lot of concepts from this book.
Respectfully I would argue that the child pornography issue is a perfect example of censorship derived from political ideology. The argument against child pornography is that it promotes child abuse, so the elimation of it would lower child abuse. After all, politically speaking, who could be against protecting the children.
It is fairly well known that a vast majority of child abuse is committed by family members and people known by the family, not by some wierdo who likes child pornography. However, by using this anti-child-porno stance political ideology can be promoted by the "Big Brother" tactics required to combat it. And all the while the real group of offenders escape the scrutiny of the masses.
An excellent article on exactly this topic was on Salon recently, link here.
psyfir
I had meant to post this when the last article on Metcalfe was on /. but couldn't find it.
From the September 16, 1996 issue of Newsweek, an article by Steven Levy on the topic of
Metcalfe's prediction that the Internet was soon to "melt down".
[excerpts]
(After talking about the slowness of the Internet) "Such annoyances are commonplace on the Net these days, but to Bob Metcalfe, networking pioneer turned cyberalarmist, they are evidence of impending disaster. In his thinking, the Net is a fish already hooked; those routine brownouts are but the first few twinges at its mouth. Soon the fish will find itself reeled in, and we will witness the pathetic spectacle of the once mighty Internet, the darling of our economy and the object of our millennial dreams, flopping aimlessly like snagged red snapper on a boat deck. Web sites will become cobweb sittes. E-mail will be dead-lettered. Stock prices will fall to Earth."
"'Maybe the Internet has already collapsed,' Metcalfe says to me later that day, in a lecture that lasts the dinner hour. 'Everyone complains about brownouts every day. But it's going to get worse. Worse! Worse! Worse!' The inventer of the Ethernet networking system and founder of the 3Com corporation has risked his considerable reputation by publicly predicting a 'gigalapse' - in which a billion hours of access time are lost - by the end of the year."
The rest of the article is just as amusing.
I definitely agree with this statement. We have to use Word at work, and often I have had to compose in WordPerfect and import it into Word because I just couldn't get Word to do it correctly. (Tables is a biggie here.) It's unfortunate that so many companies standardize on Word because it's shoved down their throats by the Micro$oft, not because it's a better product.
I characterize WordPerfect as the Ultimate Front-End for Word.