Here is a list and some comments about books that I have enjoyed over the years. There's a lot of good stuff out there which I haven't even gotten close too.... Asimov: Foundation, Caves of Steel, Nightfall. Asimov is great at taking an idea and running with it. They might not be the most realistic stuff out there, but they're good. Heinlein: Citizen of the Galaxy- Great Juvenile aout slavery and adventure, Have Spacesuit will Travel-Juvenile, fun Tunnel in the Sky- Juvenile, fun Starship Troopers- Great, thought provoking book, political ideas and thoughts about duty and civic responsibility abound The Moon is a Harsh Mistress- Allegorical book about the American Revolution, more politics. The Puppet Masters: Entertaining cold war tract about Communism, in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers He has many more books, like Stranger in a Strange Land that I also liked. I feel his later work is a little weaker than his early stuff. Arthur C. Clarke: Never really got into Clarke, but Rendezvous with Rama is great. H.G. Wells: Utterly classic stuff, and unbelievably prescient in many of his predictions. Books I consider must reads: The Island of Dr. Moreau (Genetic engineering, humanity and barbarism) The War of the Worlds (Colonialism, for an interesting study, try reading this and Heart of Darkness back to back) The Time Machine (Socialism) Frank Herbert: Dune. Classic. Must read Octavia Butler: Bloodchild and other stories. Wonderful stories. This is the only thing I have read by her, but on its basis I would highly recommend her. William Gibson: Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, COunt Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. His early stuff is great, later stuff is weak as far as I am concerned. George Alec Effinger: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss. Maybe not for a 13 year old, but give it a couple of years. Entertaining Cybperunk in an Arab milieu. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash Great, funny, thought provoking cyberpunk. Anything with a main character named Hiro Protagonist is the bomb. David Brin: Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War. Great series of intergalactic chicanery, hijinks, complete with dolphins. Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game. Great book about a young boy training for war. Some people liked the rest of the series, I wasn't a fan. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War Total classic, heavily influenced by Vietnam Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination Great story of a shipwrecked nebbish who is left to die by a passing ship and dedicates his life to vengeance. The Demolished Man is also supposed to be good. James Tiptree Jr.: Brightness Falls from the Air Wonderful story about a strange planet with rumblings of a holocaust in the air Phillip K. Dick: Great author, rare insight, sometimes a little addled. Would recommend: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (made in to Blade Runner), The Man in the High Castle (What if Nazis win WWII?), We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (Story, made into Total Recall), Flow my Tears the Policeman Said. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.. Funny stuff. David Feintuch: Midshipman's Hope. Fun updating of Horatio Hornblower to deep space. Larry Niven: Ringworld. Great idea, great hard SF. Niven and Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye: great idea, great hard SF. HP Lovecraft: More horror than SF, but I have to give him a plug for being an inventive bridge betwween Poe and Stephen King. Lois McMaster Bujold: Miles Vorkosigian series is good stuff. You should also definitely check out Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. This is fun!
Great. It's wonderful to be altruistic, when you have another job, programming or web designing or whatever. Some people actually produce work that they would like to sell in order to get paid. Why should all software be free? THe Linux movement is nice, and is a way of combating MS, but people who write software for it as a means of making a living still need to be paid.
I just have a question related to the Linux Journal piece. The question, what do all you pirateers do for money? Judging by your copying philosophies, you must not produce software or any other information form, because you'd just give it away. Well, people work on software. For money. People work on recording songs. For money. People write books. For money. This should not be a news flash. If I slaved away on a book for 2 years, I would be pissed as hell if the whole world copied it for free. Software shouldn't be copyrighted my ass! If you want to use the damn thing, why don't you pay for it? If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it. I remember the shareware movement, which kinda folded because of all the good people out there who couldn't be bothered to send the poor schlubs who wrote the software $15 to register the stuff. I mean, come on guys, copy the stuff if you want to, but don't pretend to be philosophical and moral about it. If you don't want to pay, that's one thing, but there is no right to free software, music or whatever. There hasn't ever been, going back ages.
A cliched plot does not a bad movie make. It's all in the execution. For instance, the original Star Wars was a big cliche, the book Dune had an unbelievably cliched plot as well, but they were both good, thanks to their execution.
I was impressed by the Matrix. It had a plot, it constructed a world view, and it stuck to its concepts. It was consistent in its logi In my opinion, if you like intellectual science fiction (not sci-fi, or the latest flavor of Star Trek or whatever), I think the Matrix should be right up your alley.
Yes, yes all very nice. But if anyone should have been working on all these problems in Yugoslavia, you'd think it should have been the EU. Of course, since Germany can't really deal effectively with Yugoslavia thanks to their past history in the region, I guess the EU was just tongue tied on the problem. This Albania problem is not new, I know that. The Balkan problems have always been problematic. I remember doing a report on the fears that the war in Bosnia would spread to Kosovo in '92. You'd think someone would have done something about it. That's the problem with the US as well though, when they go in, they go in, half assed. This bombing campaign is fairly ridiculous, a bombing campaign has yet to win a war on its own. If you're going to do something, do it right. People have got to realize, though, that foreign policy is never really cconsistently just. The US needs Turkey badly, so no one says much about the Kurds. China is scary and a huge market, so the US doesn't do too much about it either. The US picked this battle as an example; whether they worsened the problem is very much up for questioning.
If Europeans would just ake care of business in their own backyard rather than waiting for the US to do something all the damn time, things might be different. You can't have it both ways; people cried about Bosnia for years, but no one did a damn thing until the US finally got involved. If Europe wants to be a superpower, then they should start acting instead of talking. Of course, they could do what they've done for all the time after World War II, sit on their ass, talk, and rake in the money any way they can, ethics be damned.
AMD's goose is cooked. The K6-3 is costly to produce and slower than the Celeron that Intel charges very little for, forcing AMD to charge less than they would like. Intel is bludgeoning them to death... They're going to twist people's arms to optimize for the PIII instructions, something AMD was unable to do for 3dNow, and Intel retains its FPU and graphics advantadges. Super high end users with too mucchmoney will buy the PIII and the budget buyers will buy Celerons. AMD better do something to shake em up,.
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Here is a list and some comments about books that I have enjoyed over the years. There's a lot of good stuff out there which I haven't even gotten close too.... Asimov: Foundation, Caves of Steel, Nightfall. Asimov is great at taking an idea and running with it. They might not be the most realistic stuff out there, but they're good. Heinlein: Citizen of the Galaxy- Great Juvenile aout slavery and adventure, Have Spacesuit will Travel-Juvenile, fun Tunnel in the Sky- Juvenile, fun Starship Troopers- Great, thought provoking book, political ideas and thoughts about duty and civic responsibility abound The Moon is a Harsh Mistress- Allegorical book about the American Revolution, more politics. The Puppet Masters: Entertaining cold war tract about Communism, in the vein of Invasion of the Body Snatchers He has many more books, like Stranger in a Strange Land that I also liked. I feel his later work is a little weaker than his early stuff. Arthur C. Clarke: Never really got into Clarke, but Rendezvous with Rama is great. H.G. Wells: Utterly classic stuff, and unbelievably prescient in many of his predictions. Books I consider must reads: The Island of Dr. Moreau (Genetic engineering, humanity and barbarism) The War of the Worlds (Colonialism, for an interesting study, try reading this and Heart of Darkness back to back) The Time Machine (Socialism) Frank Herbert: Dune. Classic. Must read Octavia Butler: Bloodchild and other stories. Wonderful stories. This is the only thing I have read by her, but on its basis I would highly recommend her. William Gibson: Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, COunt Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive. His early stuff is great, later stuff is weak as far as I am concerned. George Alec Effinger: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, The Exile Kiss. Maybe not for a 13 year old, but give it a couple of years. Entertaining Cybperunk in an Arab milieu. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash Great, funny, thought provoking cyberpunk. Anything with a main character named Hiro Protagonist is the bomb. David Brin: Sundiver, Startide Rising, The Uplift War. Great series of intergalactic chicanery, hijinks, complete with dolphins. Orson Scott Card: Ender's Game. Great book about a young boy training for war. Some people liked the rest of the series, I wasn't a fan. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War Total classic, heavily influenced by Vietnam Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination Great story of a shipwrecked nebbish who is left to die by a passing ship and dedicates his life to vengeance. The Demolished Man is also supposed to be good. James Tiptree Jr.: Brightness Falls from the Air Wonderful story about a strange planet with rumblings of a holocaust in the air Phillip K. Dick: Great author, rare insight, sometimes a little addled. Would recommend: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (made in to Blade Runner), The Man in the High Castle (What if Nazis win WWII?), We Can Remember it for you Wholesale (Story, made into Total Recall), Flow my Tears the Policeman Said. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, etc.. Funny stuff. David Feintuch: Midshipman's Hope. Fun updating of Horatio Hornblower to deep space. Larry Niven: Ringworld. Great idea, great hard SF. Niven and Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye: great idea, great hard SF. HP Lovecraft: More horror than SF, but I have to give him a plug for being an inventive bridge betwween Poe and Stephen King. Lois McMaster Bujold: Miles Vorkosigian series is good stuff. You should also definitely check out Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light. This is fun!
Great. It's wonderful to be altruistic, when you have another job, programming or web designing or whatever. Some people actually produce work that they would like to sell in order to get paid. Why should all software be free? THe Linux movement is nice, and is a way of combating MS, but people who write software for it as a means of making a living still need to be paid.
I just have a question related to the Linux Journal piece. The question, what do all you pirateers do for money? Judging by your copying philosophies, you must not produce software or any other information form, because you'd just give it away. Well, people work on software. For money. People work on recording songs. For money. People write books. For money. This should not be a news flash. If I slaved away on a book for 2 years, I would be pissed as hell if the whole world copied it for free. Software shouldn't be copyrighted my ass! If you want to use the damn thing, why don't you pay for it? If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it. I remember the shareware movement, which kinda folded because of all the good people out there who couldn't be bothered to send the poor schlubs who wrote the software $15 to register the stuff. I mean, come on guys, copy the stuff if you want to, but don't pretend to be philosophical and moral about it. If you don't want to pay, that's one thing, but there is no right to free software, music or whatever. There hasn't ever been, going back ages.
A cliched plot does not a bad movie make. It's all in the execution. For instance, the original Star Wars was a big cliche, the book Dune had an unbelievably cliched plot as well, but they were both good, thanks to their execution.
I was impressed by the Matrix. It had a plot, it constructed a world view, and it stuck to its concepts. It was consistent in its logi In my opinion, if you like intellectual science fiction (not sci-fi, or the latest flavor of Star Trek or whatever), I think the Matrix should be right up your alley.
Yes, yes all very nice. But if anyone should have been working on all these problems in Yugoslavia, you'd think it should have been the EU. Of course, since Germany can't really deal effectively with Yugoslavia thanks to their past history in the region, I guess the EU was just tongue tied on the problem. This Albania problem is not new, I know that. The Balkan problems have always been problematic. I remember doing a report on the fears that the war in Bosnia would spread to Kosovo in '92. You'd think someone would have done something about it. That's the problem with the US as well though, when they go in, they go in, half assed. This bombing campaign is fairly ridiculous, a bombing campaign has yet to win a war on its own. If you're going to do something, do it right. People have got to realize, though, that foreign policy is never really cconsistently just. The US needs Turkey badly, so no one says much about the Kurds. China is scary and a huge market, so the US doesn't do too much about it either. The US picked this battle as an example; whether they worsened the problem is very much up for questioning.
If Europeans would just ake care of business in their own backyard rather than waiting for the US to do something all the damn time, things might be different. You can't have it both ways; people cried about Bosnia for years, but no one did a damn thing until the US finally got involved. If Europe wants to be a superpower, then they should start acting instead of talking. Of course, they could do what they've done for all the time after World War II, sit on their ass, talk, and rake in the money any way they can, ethics be damned.
AMD's goose is cooked. The K6-3 is costly to produce and slower than the Celeron that Intel charges very little for, forcing AMD to charge less than they would like. Intel is bludgeoning them to death... They're going to twist people's arms to optimize for the PIII instructions, something AMD was unable to do for 3dNow, and Intel retains its FPU and graphics advantadges. Super high end users with too mucchmoney will buy the PIII and the budget buyers will buy Celerons. AMD better do something to shake em up,.