I re-read his books regularly. I just finished my fifth read of the Lyonesse trilogy a few months ago.
The reason he's re-readable is because his books aren't about "how the story turns out". They're about atmosphere, imagination, whimsy, and most of all, dialogue. I loved Niven & Pournell's Mote in God's Eye, but when I tried to re-read it I was bored to tears. Not so with Vance's material.
However, I suspect that that's not for everyone. In fact, I think my own tastes have changed - when I was young, reading was about plot, plot, and plot.
The Tschai books (collected as Planet of Adventure) are whacking good fun. A bit slow until the protagonist meets Zarfo, half-way through the second book, but then Vance pulls out the stops and makes up for it. I see that I haven't read it since 2001, so it looks like that just went to the top of my list for summer reading.
Interesting. I just read about a normal guy who turned pedophile, was discovered to have a 'massive' brain tumor, had it removed, and promptly returned to being normal.
I'm talking about "Xbox", which MS has had for over a decade.
Yeah, I figured that out while I was posting something else.
Do they tolerate domains like "xboxclub.org", etc? If not, they might still have a problem.
AIUI, you *have* to complain against people who use your trademark, or else you lose it. If that's the case, they should have complained about this a long time ago. (Though finding everything with "xbox" in it might be recognized as an intractable problem.)
You'd think they'd at least do a quick type-it-into-their-browser before the launch.
Get some ideas for names, do the searches (including for other products, as well as domains), throw out any problem names, pick the best of what's left, then file for trademark and domain names and announce the product all on the same day.
This isn't just misleading advertising. Many journals put the dates right on the paper in the publication. I've got one on my desk right now that says "Recieved: 29 November 2006 / Revised: 2 April 2007 / Accepted: 12 April 2007 / Published [...]".
Note that the second gap is much shorter, because if the initial submission was good, all that is needed is enough time to verify that the revision addresses all the issues raised by the reviewers during the first gap. If that's what the "4 days" refers to, it's a non-issue.
OTOH, if the first gap was only 4 days, there is cause for alarm. The publisher has to do a little preprocessing to figure out who would be appropriate reviewers, write them, wait for them to respond, try again if too many say no (or don't bother responding at all), then get the paper to the reviewers and allow them enough time to review it (often a month or more).
It isn't the responsibility of reviewers or editors to ensure correctness or to catch fraud. The primary responsibility of editors and reviewers is to check whether a paper is potentially interesting to the readers of a journal. Its correctness is then determined by the community.
You vastly overstate the actual situation.
Reviewers are not expected to reproduce the author's work, but they are expected to check whether the authors did their homework, conformed to well known facts, provided sources for other claims, identified and justified assumptions, followed good experimental procedure, drew logical conclusions from their observations, and stated enough information in the paper so that readers can determine that all that stuff was actually done.
Unfortunately, reviewing is almost always voluntary work (something academic scientists are expected to do as part of their job, but far from top priority), so there is a tendency to get lazy and do a not-so-careful review, or delegate it to a graduate student, with a result that things that should have been caught sometimes aren't.
Working against that is the fact that the publisher usually gets 3-5 reviewers, so some catch what others miss.
You are correct, however, that going through this formal phase of peer review doesn't make a paper's claims true, and the post-publication peer review never really ends for a good paper. For example, people are still chewing on stuff Einstein published 100 years ago.
In at least one case, the same image appears twice with different captions, and in several others, the labels contain the wrong data. So far, nobody is accusing the authors of intentional wrongdoing, but the incident does raise concerns about papers not being properly edited or reviewed before acceptance.
Don't know about Cell, but lots of journals have the authors submit the paper (including revisions) with all the images collected at the back, presumably a holdover from pre-electronic typesetting/layout techniques. So the case of one image appearing with two different captions, it's at least possible that the error was made by the publisher rather than the authors.
In the paper, it is recorded that the journal Cell accepted this paper just 4 days after submission. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the pre-publication peer review had to be a little hasty?
Four days isn't long enough to hear back from reviewers whether they're willing to do it. Something is *seriously* wrong with this picture.
Only because government ignored actual laws designed for those situations and decided to make it up as they went along. I have no idea why people let them get away with it.
Actually, a lot of it was because earlier in that decade our legislators foolishly repealed some laws that had been established during the Great Depression to prevent exactly this kind of thing.
When private enterprise screws up, you as a taxpayer don't have to foot the bill...
Oh wait.. that's the theory. It doesn't quite work though as we saw in 2008
It never worked that way. Private enterprise has to charge you enough for their products and services to make a profit after all their inefficiencies and screwups.
We have this go on all the time in the US with defense spending.
SOP, whether working for a government or another company: bid low, and count on problems and changing requirements to make it profitable before it's done.
Slashdot Mirror
The middle book of the trilogy (The Green Pearl) is my favorite book, bar none. I've read it seven times.
I used to use Orlo's quips in my .sigs: "A notable scheme has occurred to me", "I also am of noble blood, or so it seems to me".
I re-read his books regularly. I just finished my fifth read of the Lyonesse trilogy a few months ago.
The reason he's re-readable is because his books aren't about "how the story turns out". They're about atmosphere, imagination, whimsy, and most of all, dialogue. I loved Niven & Pournell's Mote in God's Eye, but when I tried to re-read it I was bored to tears. Not so with Vance's material.
However, I suspect that that's not for everyone. In fact, I think my own tastes have changed - when I was young, reading was about plot, plot, and plot.
The Tschai books (collected as Planet of Adventure) are whacking good fun. A bit slow until the protagonist meets Zarfo, half-way through the second book, but then Vance pulls out the stops and makes up for it. I see that I haven't read it since 2001, so it looks like that just went to the top of my list for summer reading.
...in a world where grey goo and mutant GMO crops fight over the last remains of human civilization.
I got dibs on the movie rights!
Or "must haz brainz" syndrome.
Theethinks he doth protest too much?
I'm one hour away from full decryption and sellout of the entire USA economy, and you can't stop me.
Is the US economy encrypted?
Maybe that's why I have so much trouble understanding it...
I see we're into the land of "Monster until proven Person" now...
That's the assumption I make when I hear an unidentified noise at night.
Or vice versa?
Interesting. I just read about a normal guy who turned pedophile, was discovered to have a 'massive' brain tumor, had it removed, and promptly returned to being normal.
Glad you weren't ever alone in a room with him.
Chatter on criminal web sites show a rising sense of panic as fortunes have disappeared in an instant.
Are you sure this wasn't just a MMORPG?
keep nude photos of themselves on their own computer?
Narcissism?
I'm talking about "Xbox", which MS has had for over a decade.
Yeah, I figured that out while I was posting something else.
Do they tolerate domains like "xboxclub.org", etc? If not, they might still have a problem.
AIUI, you *have* to complain against people who use your trademark, or else you lose it. If that's the case, they should have complained about this a long time ago. (Though finding everything with "xbox" in it might be recognized as an intractable problem.)
You'd think they'd at least do a quick type-it-into-their-browser before the launch.
Get some ideas for names, do the searches (including for other products, as well as domains), throw out any problem names, pick the best of what's left, then file for trademark and domain names and announce the product all on the same day.
The (current) owner *is* using MS' trademark in the domain name, so they've got a decent case.
Did MS have it trademarked at the time the domain was acquired? If not, I would think MS was the one that has a problem.
Don't piss off the rich guy.
This isn't just misleading advertising. Many journals put the dates right on the paper in the publication. I've got one on my desk right now that says "Recieved: 29 November 2006 / Revised: 2 April 2007 / Accepted: 12 April 2007 / Published [...]".
Note that the second gap is much shorter, because if the initial submission was good, all that is needed is enough time to verify that the revision addresses all the issues raised by the reviewers during the first gap. If that's what the "4 days" refers to, it's a non-issue.
OTOH, if the first gap was only 4 days, there is cause for alarm. The publisher has to do a little preprocessing to figure out who would be appropriate reviewers, write them, wait for them to respond, try again if too many say no (or don't bother responding at all), then get the paper to the reviewers and allow them enough time to review it (often a month or more).
It isn't the responsibility of reviewers or editors to ensure correctness or to catch fraud. The primary responsibility of editors and reviewers is to check whether a paper is potentially interesting to the readers of a journal. Its correctness is then determined by the community.
You vastly overstate the actual situation.
Reviewers are not expected to reproduce the author's work, but they are expected to check whether the authors did their homework, conformed to well known facts, provided sources for other claims, identified and justified assumptions, followed good experimental procedure, drew logical conclusions from their observations, and stated enough information in the paper so that readers can determine that all that stuff was actually done.
Unfortunately, reviewing is almost always voluntary work (something academic scientists are expected to do as part of their job, but far from top priority), so there is a tendency to get lazy and do a not-so-careful review, or delegate it to a graduate student, with a result that things that should have been caught sometimes aren't.
Working against that is the fact that the publisher usually gets 3-5 reviewers, so some catch what others miss.
You are correct, however, that going through this formal phase of peer review doesn't make a paper's claims true, and the post-publication peer review never really ends for a good paper. For example, people are still chewing on stuff Einstein published 100 years ago.
In at least one case, the same image appears twice with different captions, and in several others, the labels contain the wrong data. So far, nobody is accusing the authors of intentional wrongdoing, but the incident does raise concerns about papers not being properly edited or reviewed before acceptance.
Don't know about Cell, but lots of journals have the authors submit the paper (including revisions) with all the images collected at the back, presumably a holdover from pre-electronic typesetting/layout techniques. So the case of one image appearing with two different captions, it's at least possible that the error was made by the publisher rather than the authors.
In the paper, it is recorded that the journal Cell accepted this paper just 4 days after submission. Perhaps, under the circumstances, the pre-publication peer review had to be a little hasty?
Four days isn't long enough to hear back from reviewers whether they're willing to do it. Something is *seriously* wrong with this picture.
(No pun intended.)
Only because government ignored actual laws designed for those situations and decided to make it up as they went along. I have no idea why people let them get away with it.
Actually, a lot of it was because earlier in that decade our legislators foolishly repealed some laws that had been established during the Great Depression to prevent exactly this kind of thing.
When private enterprise screws up, you as a taxpayer don't have to foot the bill...
Oh wait.. that's the theory. It doesn't quite work though as we saw in 2008
It never worked that way. Private enterprise has to charge you enough for their products and services to make a profit after all their inefficiencies and screwups.
LoL.
But I'm sure there's some kind of fakery involved.
...posting to Slashdot.
I think I'll go investigate this "outside" that I keep hearing about.
They should have kept their mouths shut and sold the finished product to North Korea.
We have this go on all the time in the US with defense spending.
SOP, whether working for a government or another company: bid low, and count on problems and changing requirements to make it profitable before it's done.