Iain M Banks - famous for being famous?
on
Look to Windward
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· Score: 1
really, his sf books aren't as great as all that. For a start they are waaay to long, usually padded out with wholly irelevant episodes. And while they often have a half-decent tale in the middle somewhere, they NEVER have a decent ending. Also, they're not particularly inventive, as claimed: Consider Phlebus, the last i read, was totally lame (warmed up Ringworld, mostly) and it amazes me when I see people commending it. I favour anything by Ken Mcleod, another Scot and a friend of IMB, especially The Cassini Division or The Sky Road; intellegent, tight, funny sf without the need to wade thru 500+ pages of fluff.
i'm so tired of self-loathing moaning yanks (on slashdot, particularly) always complaining about what someone else "says" like it broke their bones or something. The idea of free speech, that many americans claim to value so highly, is that people can make unsolicited comments that others may not like. The world doesn't owe you polite conversation. Meanwhile, the logic of my initial statement is incontrovertible, and if you read it again a few times (slowly, or get a grown-up to help)maybe you'll see that
Then it would obviously be in Microsoft's interests to have the code stolen and published widely, because then they'd have the legal right to sue almost anyone they wanted for copyright infringement. I mean, what is this "don't download, don't read" shit? Like it's gonna burn your eyeballs or something? What say you saw it by "accident" - honest, your Honour, someone stuck it in front of my face.. I'm just glad your fucked-up US legal system is basically meaningless outside your borders. Despite what you may think to the contrary.
looks like Lem isn't as unknown as all that
on
Solaris
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· Score: 1
going by all the comments posted here from people saying he's their favourite sf author. Of course he is well known in science fiction, on account of being almost the only sf writer from the East of the Iron Curtain during the "Space Age" and subsequent boom in sf's popularity.
Which begs the question - why does Slashdot post this kind of sf book review? The books chosen seldom rate a mention on genuine sf sites -- or, like this review, they're "old classics" that you might not have heard of (but then, how could they be classics): as in "Wasn't Dune great?" (yeah, when I was 12)
a lot of it happening round here. anyway, this thread is the most entertaining on the whole topic, even if it is about nonsense mostly. isn't that the point? the cut and thrust of discourse?
For starters, it's so much closer than mars by many magnitudes of difficulty; I'm not saying India should be going, but there's much more real exploration that could be done. the apollo missions weren't really about science, they only ever sent one scientist (who paid his way by confirming volcanic material on the surface, as i remember..) Thirty years on, we've got new technologies and sciences that could be put to work. Ultimately, as a base for space exploration it has big advantages over earth where a zero-g environment it not suitable, thanks to its very low-gee and zero atmosphere.. it even keeps one face to the planet for permanent comms. Fabulous place, you should visit.
i think the problem, addressed by Arthur C Clarke in some huge book once, would be that as they climb there is growing a difference between the orbital speed of the people at the top and the poeple at bottom. So instead they could use one of their geosynchronous sats to lower a rope to hold them..
there is no way this should be +5 funny, it's just a bad joke. how about a rocket powered by the melted fat of obese americans? we should be able to reach andromeda with that.
Of course India has rocket scientists, being a country of half a billion people with nuclear power plants and cars and computers and everything (not just rickshaw drivers and cow worshippers, as some seem to think). Which is not to say they have the money to do do much, but hey, this is how things get talked about by scientists.. indian scientists have made great contributions to space science, its not just the techno-buddhas of the west who can have bright ideas.
hmm. Kazakhstan use their leverage over Baikonur to push the Russians around for all sorts of reasons.. I don't suppose there was all that much concern that one would fall on anyone nearby, that's why it's out in the boonies after all. No doubt the russian rockets are suffering from the sort of funding starvation that's evident in all russian affairs these days. remember the international space programme is really about poltitics, one way of keeping the injured Bear stable for a while. But this political game of demanding they front up to comercial space contracts when they can't keep their population fed is a tiresome diversion, and one of the reasons this ISS programme is doomed to be a long and expensive albatross around the neck of the world's space industry for a long time.
yes, but this space station isn't it. this is the greatest of all white elephants, the last pyramid project, a folly of astronomical cost. because of the engineering specs demanded, it's already outta date and because its so integrated it can never be updated. In twenty years it'll be a pile of expensive junk, that is until they crash it into the pacific. they should develop a utility platform in orbit, while they trash/update the space shuttle so we have a truly cost effective, modern, environmentally friendly system of getting out of the gravity well when we like. Then we can build Castles in the Air.
I agree totally. What's needed, somehow, is a new approach to space development, and I don't think the current space programmes are creative enough. rather than a incomprehensibly expensive, wholly integrated space station, at this stage they should have concentrated on forming a utility platform in space, maybe a backbone superstructure. much smaller modules for limited life support, power supplies, and motors for maintaining orbit could be added as needed, in the back of a space shuttle or by cheap rocket. both the US and Russia have a lot of experience in the sort of dockiing work required (among mixed results). I imagine a few domed greenhouses, a spehrical observatory, robots nearby reprocess spacejunk for spares... wow, it'd be just like an Arthur C. Clarke story.
Good thing foreign policy isn't run by university students I think. "We can't trust the Russians" is the most lucid thought you came up with in two years? It might have escaped your notice that Russia has a few funding problems these days, and they don't have the only space programme plagued by cost overuns and missed deadlines. Me, I don't think the ISS will be worth the money (it will be the most expensive object in human history once completed, and cost up of 30 billion a year to run, is my understanding) and I think a better idea would be to shunt the shuttle fuel tanks up and knock together a workable utility platform: that way it could evolve as needed, instead of being ten years out of date by the time its launched. But anyway, what do I know about Manifest Destiny..
Come on, give them some credit for being able to spot the obvious; I suppose they'll ad more powersupplies/arrays as the project grows module by module. The russians are justifiably proud of their space programe, for all its faults and inefficiencies, Mir was an engineering miracle despite its obvious limitations. I commend Bryan Burroughs "Dragonfly", a boook on American involvement in the Mir programme, for a look at how it hung together. Don't think NASA comes across all that well. From your use of the antiquated measure "feet" I suppose you might be American. In which case, be sure to check that you have properly converted between feet and metres in your calculations, or you might miss the target, so to speak.;)
that's what gets me about this story: the basic maths is all wrong. if someone tells you they got a system to compress a full video stream down a copper phone line, you've gotta ask how?.. sure that was a trade secret, but wasn't their some rational explanation, other than "we've got some off the shelf parts in a new configuration." Yes, it is like the story of Cold Fusion, but remember that got taken out by scientist within a week and none fronted up 20 million bucks, or signed up The Who there. And the guy who was training other people to use the system, responsible for the encoding of baseball games and such.. he didn't spot the basic fallacy? Anyway, investors lost their money, that's the way it goes sometimes. tough eh?
I don't want to offend anyone too much, but I think the religious angle of this scam is somewhat telling. Stanley must have known he couldn't deliver from the very start, but his letter to his wife and other reported activities reveal a religious belief that he could "defy reality". It seems his faith in whatever God he invoked exceeded his grip on reality. Many Christians and preachers of other faiths invite followers to reject reason and accept only faith, and this sort of tale may be the result of those teachings.
this sounds a lot like television text services, not the web. it's clear the user is expected to key in a number on a keypad to access a relevant page of information. oh and it has to be across phone lines. So I guess we can leave number-accessed teletext services over phone lines for them to make a fortune from (ha) . Of course BT's claim would be stronger if they'd ever gotten off their fat corporate behind and developed the damned thing, but this ridiculous case fits their MO as the simply biggest impediment to technological advancement in Europe in this or the last century.
Slashdot Mirror
really, his sf books aren't as great as all that. For a start they are waaay to long, usually padded out with wholly irelevant episodes. And while they often have a half-decent tale in the middle somewhere, they NEVER have a decent ending. Also, they're not particularly inventive, as claimed: Consider Phlebus, the last i read, was totally lame (warmed up Ringworld, mostly) and it amazes me when I see people commending it. I favour anything by Ken Mcleod, another Scot and a friend of IMB, especially The Cassini Division or The Sky Road; intellegent, tight, funny sf without the need to wade thru 500+ pages of fluff.
i'm so tired of self-loathing moaning yanks (on slashdot, particularly) always complaining about what someone else "says" like it broke their bones or something. The idea of free speech, that many americans claim to value so highly, is that people can make unsolicited comments that others may not like. The world doesn't owe you polite conversation. Meanwhile, the logic of my initial statement is incontrovertible, and if you read it again a few times (slowly, or get a grown-up to help)maybe you'll see that
i said what you "may" feel to the contrary. If you don't feel that, then the statement doesn't apply, numbnuts
Then it would obviously be in Microsoft's interests to have the code stolen and published widely, because then they'd have the legal right to sue almost anyone they wanted for copyright infringement. I mean, what is this "don't download, don't read" shit? Like it's gonna burn your eyeballs or something? What say you saw it by "accident" - honest, your Honour, someone stuck it in front of my face.. I'm just glad your fucked-up US legal system is basically meaningless outside your borders. Despite what you may think to the contrary.
going by all the comments posted here from people saying he's their favourite sf author. Of course he is well known in science fiction, on account of being almost the only sf writer from the East of the Iron Curtain during the "Space Age" and subsequent boom in sf's popularity. Which begs the question - why does Slashdot post this kind of sf book review? The books chosen seldom rate a mention on genuine sf sites -- or, like this review, they're "old classics" that you might not have heard of (but then, how could they be classics): as in "Wasn't Dune great?" (yeah, when I was 12)
which is why you use windows on your machine, right?
He means he invented the first really crap RPG
so better you don''t take it too personally :)
but I think the russians had a probe there first, presumably with a flag on it somewhere.. maybe could constitute a "stake" if the Duma makes it law..
a lot of it happening round here. anyway, this thread is the most entertaining on the whole topic, even if it is about nonsense mostly. isn't that the point? the cut and thrust of discourse?
For starters, it's so much closer than mars by many magnitudes of difficulty; I'm not saying India should be going, but there's much more real exploration that could be done. the apollo missions weren't really about science, they only ever sent one scientist (who paid his way by confirming volcanic material on the surface, as i remember..) Thirty years on, we've got new technologies and sciences that could be put to work. Ultimately, as a base for space exploration it has big advantages over earth where a zero-g environment it not suitable, thanks to its very low-gee and zero atmosphere.. it even keeps one face to the planet for permanent comms. Fabulous place, you should visit.
no of course yr right, it's "three quarters of a million miles" 93 milion is to the SUN. doh
i think the problem, addressed by Arthur C Clarke in some huge book once, would be that as they climb there is growing a difference between the orbital speed of the people at the top and the poeple at bottom. So instead they could use one of their geosynchronous sats to lower a rope to hold them..
it's 93 million miles, about the distance a very old car might travel in its lifetime
there is no way this should be +5 funny, it's just a bad joke. how about a rocket powered by the melted fat of obese americans? we should be able to reach andromeda with that.
.. and make the world a better place for everybody
Of course India has rocket scientists, being a country of half a billion people with nuclear power plants and cars and computers and everything (not just rickshaw drivers and cow worshippers, as some seem to think). Which is not to say they have the money to do do much, but hey, this is how things get talked about by scientists.. indian scientists have made great contributions to space science, its not just the techno-buddhas of the west who can have bright ideas.
hmm. Kazakhstan use their leverage over Baikonur to push the Russians around for all sorts of reasons.. I don't suppose there was all that much concern that one would fall on anyone nearby, that's why it's out in the boonies after all. No doubt the russian rockets are suffering from the sort of funding starvation that's evident in all russian affairs these days. remember the international space programme is really about poltitics, one way of keeping the injured Bear stable for a while. But this political game of demanding they front up to comercial space contracts when they can't keep their population fed is a tiresome diversion, and one of the reasons this ISS programme is doomed to be a long and expensive albatross around the neck of the world's space industry for a long time.
yes, but this space station isn't it. this is the greatest of all white elephants, the last pyramid project, a folly of astronomical cost. because of the engineering specs demanded, it's already outta date and because its so integrated it can never be updated. In twenty years it'll be a pile of expensive junk, that is until they crash it into the pacific. they should develop a utility platform in orbit, while they trash/update the space shuttle so we have a truly cost effective, modern, environmentally friendly system of getting out of the gravity well when we like. Then we can build Castles in the Air.
I agree totally. What's needed, somehow, is a new approach to space development, and I don't think the current space programmes are creative enough. rather than a incomprehensibly expensive, wholly integrated space station, at this stage they should have concentrated on forming a utility platform in space, maybe a backbone superstructure. much smaller modules for limited life support, power supplies, and motors for maintaining orbit could be added as needed, in the back of a space shuttle or by cheap rocket. both the US and Russia have a lot of experience in the sort of dockiing work required (among mixed results). I imagine a few domed greenhouses, a spehrical observatory, robots nearby reprocess spacejunk for spares... wow, it'd be just like an Arthur C. Clarke story.
Good thing foreign policy isn't run by university students I think. "We can't trust the Russians" is the most lucid thought you came up with in two years? It might have escaped your notice that Russia has a few funding problems these days, and they don't have the only space programme plagued by cost overuns and missed deadlines. Me, I don't think the ISS will be worth the money (it will be the most expensive object in human history once completed, and cost up of 30 billion a year to run, is my understanding) and I think a better idea would be to shunt the shuttle fuel tanks up and knock together a workable utility platform: that way it could evolve as needed, instead of being ten years out of date by the time its launched. But anyway, what do I know about Manifest Destiny..
Come on, give them some credit for being able to spot the obvious; I suppose they'll ad more powersupplies/arrays as the project grows module by module. The russians are justifiably proud of their space programe, for all its faults and inefficiencies, Mir was an engineering miracle despite its obvious limitations. I commend Bryan Burroughs "Dragonfly", a boook on American involvement in the Mir programme, for a look at how it hung together. Don't think NASA comes across all that well. From your use of the antiquated measure "feet" I suppose you might be American. In which case, be sure to check that you have properly converted between feet and metres in your calculations, or you might miss the target, so to speak. ;)
that's what gets me about this story: the basic maths is all wrong. if someone tells you they got a system to compress a full video stream down a copper phone line, you've gotta ask how?.. sure that was a trade secret, but wasn't their some rational explanation, other than "we've got some off the shelf parts in a new configuration." Yes, it is like the story of Cold Fusion, but remember that got taken out by scientist within a week and none fronted up 20 million bucks, or signed up The Who there. And the guy who was training other people to use the system, responsible for the encoding of baseball games and such.. he didn't spot the basic fallacy? Anyway, investors lost their money, that's the way it goes sometimes. tough eh?
I don't want to offend anyone too much, but I think the religious angle of this scam is somewhat telling. Stanley must have known he couldn't deliver from the very start, but his letter to his wife and other reported activities reveal a religious belief that he could "defy reality". It seems his faith in whatever God he invoked exceeded his grip on reality. Many Christians and preachers of other faiths invite followers to reject reason and accept only faith, and this sort of tale may be the result of those teachings.
this sounds a lot like television text services, not the web. it's clear the user is expected to key in a number on a keypad to access a relevant page of information. oh and it has to be across phone lines. So I guess we can leave number-accessed teletext services over phone lines for them to make a fortune from (ha) . Of course BT's claim would be stronger if they'd ever gotten off their fat corporate behind and developed the damned thing, but this ridiculous case fits their MO as the simply biggest impediment to technological advancement in Europe in this or the last century.