I still think they're starting from the wrong angle by aiming for books that are similar rather than for books that someone who liked one book will also like. Their feature for finding something different sounds like it will require a user to specify how it should be different in a way that's potentially a lot of work for the user.
There are a fairly large number of journals that can be accessed through scientific associations, such as ACM or IEEE, which have huge digital libraries available to their members at relatively reasonable costs.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of domains that exist but do not have websites! Is there something inherently wrong with this? I think not. I hope nobody thinks so.
I think so in some cases. It's almost a type of cybersquatting. When there are really obvious names like "america.com" that have had nothing on them, web-wise, for a number of years I'm temped to say the owner should have web rights stripped of them and given to someone else.
I also wonder what people think of the tendency to register lots of unrelated domain names to pull people into a generic commercial site, sich as how america.org and Top50.com both send you the same site.
Personally, both these sites (and usa.com {looksmart and infospace content channelled through a different name/site} ) are a pet peeve of mine. I'd like to see or put something up about my own country using the name of the country as a domain that isn't a clone of 500 other portals. At least USA.org is part of the open directory project.
For a while people really were squatting on these names and auctioning them off. (and yes, there is active auctioning on america.info and usa.info that I'm hoping will either go to someone creative and/or be screwed by the start-up phase away from the registrars that are trying to pump the price and to (randomly selected) registrars with smaller-time non-rich folk using them.)
The cost of living varies according to where you live and how you live. Americans are amazing consumers. Teenagers these days have more expendable income than whole other countries.
If you buy prepackaged preprepared food stuffs (especially at restaurants) instead of raw ingredients, new clothes, new CDS, books and movies, own a low gas milage vehicle which you use to commute or travel far, and go to or rent movies recently released, you are likely spending hundreds of dollars on highly unnecessary stuff.
And throwing away tons and tons of valuable resources while you do it, without even thinking about it.
And do you pay for cable as a "resource" for your family? Ditch the cable and stick to high speed internet. Help your family get a life instead of watching TV. They might even have time to grow some of that expensive food you're complaining about.
That said, the tax burden in the states is significant, and too high in my opinion. That and property/rental rates in some cities can make life expensive. But keep in mind that in comparing someplace like urban russia to someplace like a US. Suburb, "upper middle class" goes from someone who owns or rents a 2-bedroom flat with questionable space to park a possible single car to someone who owns or rents a three- or four-bedroom house with a two-car garage and two cars to fill it.
At least that's how it was when I visited Moscow.
-netmouse
PS. I knew a group of college students who rented an entire house in Bozeman, MT for $100 a month. There are perfectly safe places to live for cheap. They just aren't major metro locations. Life's a series of compromises; don't let your brain's attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance convince you that the position you're in is the only one possible.
Well, a conventional explosive won't do too much. You'll need a lot of them in order to really damage a country's infrastructure, and that takes a lot of time, effort and money (e.g. Gulf War, Bosnia to use US examples).
Not really good examples. In neither case were they aiming to cripple the countries' infrastructures, though in the gulf war they did try to destroy the top brass.
Ironically, it is much easier to disruptively destroy the infrastructure of a technologically advanced country than that of a third world country. Take out Union stations in Chicago and New York City, and airports in Chicago, Dallas, New York, Washington, LA, Houston and Seattle and you will seriously mess up the daily operation of this country. All you need to take out an airport is to destroy the radar equipment and conning towers and lay some land mines on the runways. Do it while planes are in the air and low on fuel and you might even take out large sections of our air fleets.
Of course, we'd adapt in a couple weeks...
Easily doable with conventional weapons. Even easier with Nukes. Part of the reason I don't live in Chicago anymore. Living in the blast radius of a military target made me itchy.
there's very little to hold one back from being the first (an possibly last) to use it....
Actually, I would say the pressures to restrict the use of this are about the same as for nuclear weapons, and we keep maintaining those, but don't use them. But you're right that people probably won't have the same visceral reaction to it as they do with nukes. I mean, take World War II - the U.S. killed more people in the burning of Tokyo than in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But most people have forgotten that by now.
Eh, the worst part about it is the "Maybe once I'm old enough I'll move away." attitude, like making sure you don't feel personally responsible and ashamed is going to make the world any better.
There are more active things you can do. Follow the precedent of Henry David Thoreau and refuse to pay your taxes. It's called Civil Disobedience.
Maybe you'll make it onto Letterman and have the chance to make a difference.:P
Seriously though, get out there and grow up. The U.S. has potential. "America -- Love it or Leave it" is supposed to be the catch phrase of the conservative assholes, not the intelligent next generation who could actually make a positive impact.
Not that I support it, but what the British and US Air Forces are doing right now is trying to keep Iraq in line with an agreement it made with the UN. Something about maintaining a no-fly zone and not aggressing against its neighbors.
Although there's tons of official debate over whether or not Iraq has nuclear weapons, people in Iran who fought against Iraq in the last war presented symptoms of radiation sickness, of which many died.
The real mystery is why we are bombing the edge of Iraq and killing only occassional peon soldiers and civilians, and not the head of Iraq, who is known to have committed war crimes not to mention crimes against his people, who are starving.
They aren't talking about putting nuclear weapons in space. That really would be a huge waste of money. Nukes don't need velocity to do the dirty deed, and things falling from high up don't need explosives. They just need enough protection from the atmosphere to survive getting to their target. Gravity does the rest.
Einstein may have been right when he said the next big war would be fought with sticks and stones... a nice big stone thrown from space would really fucking hurt!
when they do a study of 10,000 gamers streached across many backgrounds, then we'll start to have something.
They don't even have to have 10,000 gamers. It doesn't take that many samples to find out if different groups of people belong to different means and distributions of a trait (like reaction time, say, or years of school completed). But they do need to randomly select samples of people out of the gaming community if they want a representative study
How about it's true title: "The Times". Americans get a bit confused because their Times has a city name in its title: "The New York Times".
There's also The Chicago Sun Times and, well, anyway, there's at least a dozen American papers with "Times" in the name. And I would say the vast majority of Americans don't read the "New York" variety...
--netmouse
it's: contraction of "it is" its: possessive form of "it"
It sounds to me like this study is comparing different social classes and deciding that any factors that correlate with gaming must be caused by playing games.
Quite so. It's an unfortunately common myth in the media that correlation translates into causality. In this case it's very easy to see the probable reverse causality: People who have superior concentration and coordination are more likely to be found at gaming competitions than in normal nonathletic social circles.
The study selected its subjects in a way that biased the study. The only real way to determine causality would be to randomly select 100 tykes and assign who gets to play computer games and who doesn't. Then take a look at their coordination, athletic participation, and social skills five years later. Unfortunately, that's unethical, but when you read a study like this you kind of wish they'd do it anyway.
In any case, studies of high performance competitors aren't really going to tell you much about everyday people.
fundamentalism
Function: noun
Date: 1922
1 a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching b : the beliefs of this movement c : adherence to such beliefs
2 : a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles
Fundamentalist Christians believe the words written in the bible to be literally true. One would suppose true fundmentalists of any religion would turn to the textual sources of that religion and follow them to the letter. As someone pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the Taliban may be doing some of that, perverting passages meant in a specific historical time of war to be applicable today.
There's certainly nothing in the dictionary definition of fundamentalism about rejecting the accepted standard. The Taliban certainly appears to be "stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles" but since they aren;t principles that any other practicing Muslims recognize as Muslim, I would continue to argue that though they might be fundamentalist Talibanians, they are not fundamentalist Muslims.
As I've mentioned to some of my muslim friends here in Canada, I think part of the reason "fundamentalist muslim" reads more provocatively than "fundamentalist christian" is because there is now a long history of protestantism and various splinter churches re-interpreting christianity. When one delares the fundamentalist christians believe one thing, or the branch Davidians believe another, we don't assume that their actions stem logically from the catholic faith and that all the millions of other Christians believe as they do, only to a lesser, more temptered degree.
On the other hand, in the current world dialogue, discussion of the Taliban constantly raises fears and complaints regarding other muslim peoples; there's only been one major split in the Muslim faith and most westerners don't know about it. And it is true that a muslim taking drastic political or military action will more likely be called a Muslim Extremist in the media than a member of whatever political or military group is actually moving him to act. We are accepting the implication that Islam promotes violence against non-believers, even as its religious leaders tell us that's just not true.
Religion is in the eye of the believer no matter what, and if these people believe they are following the Quaran(sp?) then they are.
This is an amazing statement. The Qoran is a book, rather like the new Testament or the Old testament. It talks about things like how one should fast as part of the spiritual path, how a mother should take responsibility for educating her children. In fact, Muslims share most if not all of the old testament with Jews and Christians.
What you're saying, if I understand you correctly, is that if any Joe shmoe believes himself to be following the principles of a religion, no matter how deluded he is or whether or not he has actually, say, read or followed any of the holy scriptures of that religion, then as you say, so long as he believes he's following it, well then, he is.
Actually it's a combination of western propoganda in the media and western ignorance everywhere else, mixed in with an understandable level of fear and resentment when many people in a region who happen to share a religion with someone declare that your entire people are sinful and deserve to die.
I know a number of Islamic people, though I have not read many of its texts, and I have to agree with the following:
Taliban are an evil group of individuals and their activites are NOT endorsed by ISLAM. Similarly Hitler was a devil and his activities are not endoresed by Christianity.
I get very frustrated now everytime I hear the Taliban referred to as fundamentalist muslims. Their beliefs are very far from what is fundamental to the Islamic faith. We have seen times when the military in Afghanistan has bullied the religious leaders into declaring things to be Islamic. They are radicals, not fundamentalists. What they are doing to the people in their country - not only how they are treating women but also the starvation and horrible economic state -is worse than criminal.
"...it does seem that retroactively modifying vintage television shows long after they have aired does tend to dilute the mindshare of the people who created them in the first place. It also tends to dilute our culture ( what little of it there is,) while at the same time loosening our grip on the past. "
It doesn't just loosen our grip on the past, it loosens our grip on the present. How do you know if a TV series was filmed recently or a long time ago? You know it is old if:
you have seen the episode before
you're familiar with the show, and know it is old
you're familiar with one or more actors on the show, and know they are now i) older ii) not acting on TV anymore or iii) dead.
setting, clothing and props are out-of-date
[if you're keen to these things, the directing and script will give it away]
So, products, billboards and fashionable clothes are a huge part of the setting and props. People have already commented how dead people are showing up in ads. They also run constantly in re-runs. But what about the time-travel aspects of new products showing up in old shows? How will the next generation know if new television material is no longer being produced if what they see displays all the logos, fashions and products they can pick up online or at their local store?
If new products can be placed in old material, will there be a financial motive to maintain a creative staff?
I guess it's very important what order you read him in, in order to get a good impression. I picked up The Business and Feersum Endjinn, as well as Use of Weapons, because I had recently heard much fooferaw about this Iain Banks fellow and those were the books I found when I went out looking. I read a lot of SF and a lot of books in general, and I didn't even get to Use of Weapons because neither Feersum Endjinn nor The Business held my interest long enough for me to finish reading it.
Feersum Endjinn was also confusing enough [and annoying enough- huge parts of it are written phonetically] that, while bits of it were interesting, I didn't care enough to find out what happened next.
I'll try to hunt down Complicity or one of the other books recommended here (thanks folks) before I give up on Banks as an author completely. His ideas are obviously unique but that isn't enough to carry a book.
You know, what I wonder is this: if Napster is, as you claim, helping the RIAA make money, why are they fighting Napster tooth and nail? Money talks, and if indeed Napster was pushing CD sales up, like so many Napster defenders claim, then the RIAA would be shutting up.
I dunno, but having a tooth-and-nail fight in the courts is a fantastic way to get media coverage these days. Causality is hard to determine, but maybe their sales are up despite a shitty year of production because national and front-page headlines are about music, and acquiring music.
If Napster is about to start making billions, this media coverage doesn't hurt it none, either.
Quite so. What seems most exaggerated in this account is the person's concern about the following:
"I've been told that they may speak to me, and may also talk to the company I currently work for."
Oh my gosh, someone may speak to him! (or his employer. More on that below) --People have jumped to the conclusion that this is a threat, but actually it is a third person rumor. Probably one of his friends at the company giving him a heads-up that the company knows what he wrote.
It is appropriate that he ask what recourse his old company can take, and those answers have been posted: they can't sue if it's not libel (that is, if what he said was true) and if he really didn't sign anything saying he'd keep his mouth shut. If that's not the case, he should consult legal counsel for further info.
But I'd like to return to the concern quoted above, that they might speak to his current company. If you have said something that has blackmail strength with regard to your current employer's hearing it, then it was a poor decision to say it publicly. If what you said was fair, not slanderous, and useful to the public discussion, but you think that your old company might speak to your employer about it in a way that makes you look bad, beat them to the punch.
You should perhaps have a precautionary discussion with your manager about the situation. You don't necessarily have to give specifics about what you said, just tell them you're happy to be honest with them and you hope they have enough respect for you that if this company, which for good reason no longer employs you, should call them, they will take what they say with a grain of salt and discuss it openly with you before drawing any conclusions about your character or your actions.
furthermore, going back to the third-party nature of the message that sparked these concerns, your former employer may have no strong-arm intentions. I would hope that in a civilized society it would be okay for someone to call someone and say "Geez, that made us look bad. It made us feel bad. We're trying to do better, and we'd like to apologize and hope you don't feel like posting more bad things," without that person being sued for blackmail.
calm down a little.:)
Hope it turns out well,
--netmouse
Re:But the net IS creating a new geography
on
The New Geography
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· Score: 1
to fix this, you need to find a solution for this problem in human nature
Actually, there's an unsolved logistical problem here that is just as firmly entrenched as human nature. It is in fact fairly difficult to help a people get on their feet and develop. (I once heard a speaker say, "You cannot give power to people.") If you just give them things you think are appropriate, often they are wasted or you create slightly richer dependent people rather than independent people with the capacity for making themselves better off.
Ideally you can work with people to assess what they can use and how they can use it, integrated with their own knowledge and the strengths of the people and the land. That takes a lot of time and effort and can be culturally very dificult, because people from 'developed' countries have a strong idea of what such a country -their own- looks like, and have to work to understand that there can be more than one type of civilized society.
People who have posted here that some countries are 'leap-frogging' into more advanced technologies are certainly correct. There are a surprisingly large number of projects in many countries (including many African ones) to bring information technologies into poorly developed places. Telecenters in rural areas and suchlike.
If you're interested in such issues, check out the
Global Knowledge Partnership. Sponsored by the World Bank, this group is bringing together people all over the world who are working on these issues and on projects to address them. Their discussion list, Global Knowledge Development, is an interesting source of news and debates from around the world on local progress.
--netmouse
Re:If you can clone an extinct animal...
on
TigerCloning
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· Score: 1
*nod*
It is a concern.. we may be able to recreate animals and even teach the young behaviors that resemble how they would have behaved in the wild, but what we don't know how to recreate are the relationships that species had with other species of plants, insects and animals.
We have the same problem with forestry right now. Sure, we can regrow any tree given a seed and some knowledge about the tree, but when we cut down all the old growth in a forest (or especially when we slash and burn the whole thing) we're destroying an entire ecosystem along with our only chance to study it and find out how it worked.
The first thing it brought to my mind was a line from the old broadway musical Peter Pan. Captain Hook is trying to choose a tempo for his song.. "Tempo, tempo..." after considering a few options he lights on one.
"Ah! A Tarentella!"
and the music begins... This is, I believe, the uplifting self-adulatory yet creepy tune that rings out with such stirring choruses as
Robert Heinlein once wrote a story ("Lifeline," reprinted in Expanded Universe) in which an inventor is sued by an industry for damaging its profits. As the judge lifts the injunction against the inventor, he pauses to comment on the theory implied by the prosecution when they claimed damage to their client:
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Heinlein wrote that story in 1939. This current flap seems to suggest that many lawmakers and corporations of today follow "this strange doctrine" and intend to make it into law. Don't forget to tell your congressional representatives if you think that's a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I still think they're starting from the wrong angle by aiming for books that are similar rather than for books that someone who liked one book will also like. Their feature for finding something different sounds like it will require a user to specify how it should be different in a way that's potentially a lot of work for the user.
There are a fairly large number of journals that can be accessed through scientific associations, such as ACM or IEEE, which have huge digital libraries available to their members at relatively reasonable costs.
I think so in some cases. It's almost a type of cybersquatting. When there are really obvious names like "america.com" that have had nothing on them, web-wise, for a number of years I'm temped to say the owner should have web rights stripped of them and given to someone else.
I also wonder what people think of the tendency to register lots of unrelated domain names to pull people into a generic commercial site, sich as how america.org and Top50.com both send you the same site.
Personally, both these sites (and usa.com {looksmart and infospace content channelled through a different name/site} ) are a pet peeve of mine. I'd like to see or put something up about my own country using the name of the country as a domain that isn't a clone of 500 other portals. At least USA.org is part of the open directory project.
For a while people really were squatting on these names and auctioning them off. (and yes, there is active auctioning on america.info and usa.info that I'm hoping will either go to someone creative and/or be screwed by the start-up phase away from the registrars that are trying to pump the price and to (randomly selected) registrars with smaller-time non-rich folk using them.)
perhaps I'm an optimist
If you buy prepackaged preprepared food stuffs (especially at restaurants) instead of raw ingredients, new clothes, new CDS, books and movies, own a low gas milage vehicle which you use to commute or travel far, and go to or rent movies recently released, you are likely spending hundreds of dollars on highly unnecessary stuff.
And throwing away tons and tons of valuable resources while you do it, without even thinking about it.
And do you pay for cable as a "resource" for your family? Ditch the cable and stick to high speed internet. Help your family get a life instead of watching TV. They might even have time to grow some of that expensive food you're complaining about.
That said, the tax burden in the states is significant, and too high in my opinion. That and property/rental rates in some cities can make life expensive. But keep in mind that in comparing someplace like urban russia to someplace like a US. Suburb, "upper middle class" goes from someone who owns or rents a 2-bedroom flat with questionable space to park a possible single car to someone who owns or rents a three- or four-bedroom house with a two-car garage and two cars to fill it.
At least that's how it was when I visited Moscow.
-netmouse
PS. I knew a group of college students who rented an entire house in Bozeman, MT for $100 a month. There are perfectly safe places to live for cheap. They just aren't major metro locations. Life's a series of compromises; don't let your brain's attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance convince you that the position you're in is the only one possible.
Ironically, it is much easier to disruptively destroy the infrastructure of a technologically advanced country than that of a third world country. Take out Union stations in Chicago and New York City, and airports in Chicago, Dallas, New York, Washington, LA, Houston and Seattle and you will seriously mess up the daily operation of this country. All you need to take out an airport is to destroy the radar equipment and conning towers and lay some land mines on the runways. Do it while planes are in the air and low on fuel and you might even take out large sections of our air fleets.
Of course, we'd adapt in a couple weeks...
Easily doable with conventional weapons. Even easier with Nukes. Part of the reason I don't live in Chicago anymore. Living in the blast radius of a military target made me itchy.
Actually, I would say the pressures to restrict the use of this are about the same as for nuclear weapons, and we keep maintaining those, but don't use them. But you're right that people probably won't have the same visceral reaction to it as they do with nukes. I mean, take World War II - the U.S. killed more people in the burning of Tokyo than in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. But most people have forgotten that by now.--netmouse
There are more active things you can do. Follow the precedent of Henry David Thoreau and refuse to pay your taxes. It's called Civil Disobedience. Maybe you'll make it onto Letterman and have the chance to make a difference. :P
Seriously though, get out there and grow up. The U.S. has potential. "America -- Love it or Leave it" is supposed to be the catch phrase of the conservative assholes, not the intelligent next generation who could actually make a positive impact.
--netmouse
Not that I support it, but what the British and US Air Forces are doing right now is trying to keep Iraq in line with an agreement it made with the UN. Something about maintaining a no-fly zone and not aggressing against its neighbors.
Although there's tons of official debate over whether or not Iraq has nuclear weapons, people in Iran who fought against Iraq in the last war presented symptoms of radiation sickness, of which many died.
The real mystery is why we are bombing the edge of Iraq and killing only occassional peon soldiers and civilians, and not the head of Iraq, who is known to have committed war crimes not to mention crimes against his people, who are starving.
Einstein may have been right when he said the next big war would be fought with sticks and stones... a nice big stone thrown from space would really fucking hurt!
--netmouse
They don't even have to have 10,000 gamers. It doesn't take that many samples to find out if different groups of people belong to different means and distributions of a trait (like reaction time, say, or years of school completed). But they do need to randomly select samples of people out of the gaming community if they want a representative study
That's not what this is.
There's also The Chicago Sun Times and, well, anyway, there's at least a dozen American papers with "Times" in the name. And I would say the vast majority of Americans don't read the "New York" variety...
--netmouse
it's: contraction of "it is"
its: possessive form of "it"
Quite so. It's an unfortunately common myth in the media that correlation translates into causality. In this case it's very easy to see the probable reverse causality: People who have superior concentration and coordination are more likely to be found at gaming competitions than in normal nonathletic social circles.
The study selected its subjects in a way that biased the study. The only real way to determine causality would be to randomly select 100 tykes and assign who gets to play computer games and who doesn't. Then take a look at their coordination, athletic participation, and social skills five years later. Unfortunately, that's unethical, but when you read a study like this you kind of wish they'd do it anyway.In any case, studies of high performance competitors aren't really going to tell you much about everyday people.
--netmouse
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed! You're telling me Katz is being obvious! Why not let me draw my own conclusions?
Oh wait, expressing an opinion (and pointing to a study) doesn't stop me from having my own conclusions. Wow. That's a relief.
Fundamentalist Christians believe the words written in the bible to be literally true. One would suppose true fundmentalists of any religion would turn to the textual sources of that religion and follow them to the letter. As someone pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, the Taliban may be doing some of that, perverting passages meant in a specific historical time of war to be applicable today.
There's certainly nothing in the dictionary definition of fundamentalism about rejecting the accepted standard. The Taliban certainly appears to be "stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles" but since they aren;t principles that any other practicing Muslims recognize as Muslim, I would continue to argue that though they might be fundamentalist Talibanians, they are not fundamentalist Muslims.
As I've mentioned to some of my muslim friends here in Canada, I think part of the reason "fundamentalist muslim" reads more provocatively than "fundamentalist christian" is because there is now a long history of protestantism and various splinter churches re-interpreting christianity. When one delares the fundamentalist christians believe one thing, or the branch Davidians believe another, we don't assume that their actions stem logically from the catholic faith and that all the millions of other Christians believe as they do, only to a lesser, more temptered degree.
On the other hand, in the current world dialogue, discussion of the Taliban constantly raises fears and complaints regarding other muslim peoples; there's only been one major split in the Muslim faith and most westerners don't know about it. And it is true that a muslim taking drastic political or military action will more likely be called a Muslim Extremist in the media than a member of whatever political or military group is actually moving him to act. We are accepting the implication that Islam promotes violence against non-believers, even as its religious leaders tell us that's just not true.
This is an amazing statement. The Qoran is a book, rather like the new Testament or the Old testament. It talks about things like how one should fast as part of the spiritual path, how a mother should take responsibility for educating her children. In fact, Muslims share most if not all of the old testament with Jews and Christians.
What you're saying, if I understand you correctly, is that if any Joe shmoe believes himself to be following the principles of a religion, no matter how deluded he is or whether or not he has actually, say, read or followed any of the holy scriptures of that religion, then as you say, so long as he believes he's following it, well then, he is.
That's pure bullshit, that's all I can say.
--mouse
Oh, but this would be an excellent time for a wireless revolution in Afghanistan. Are there any commercial satelites that pass over there?
-mouse
Actually it's a combination of western propoganda in the media and western ignorance everywhere else, mixed in with an understandable level of fear and resentment when many people in a region who happen to share a religion with someone declare that your entire people are sinful and deserve to die.
I know a number of Islamic people, though I have not read many of its texts, and I have to agree with the following:
I get very frustrated now everytime I hear the Taliban referred to as fundamentalist muslims. Their beliefs are very far from what is fundamental to the Islamic faith. We have seen times when the military in Afghanistan has bullied the religious leaders into declaring things to be Islamic. They are radicals, not fundamentalists. What they are doing to the people in their country - not only how they are treating women but also the starvation and horrible economic state -is worse than criminal.
It doesn't just loosen our grip on the past, it loosens our grip on the present. How do you know if a TV series was filmed recently or a long time ago? You know it is old if:
you have seen the episode before
you're familiar with the show, and know it is old
you're familiar with one or more actors on the show, and know they are now i) older ii) not acting on TV anymore or iii) dead.
setting, clothing and props are out-of-date
[if you're keen to these things, the directing and script will give it away]
So, products, billboards and fashionable clothes are a huge part of the setting and props. People have already commented how dead people are showing up in ads. They also run constantly in re-runs. But what about the time-travel aspects of new products showing up in old shows? How will the next generation know if new television material is no longer being produced if what they see displays all the logos, fashions and products they can pick up online or at their local store?
If new products can be placed in old material, will there be a financial motive to maintain a creative staff?
I guess it's very important what order you read him in, in order to get a good impression. I picked up The Business and Feersum Endjinn, as well as Use of Weapons, because I had recently heard much fooferaw about this Iain Banks fellow and those were the books I found when I went out looking. I read a lot of SF and a lot of books in general, and I didn't even get to Use of Weapons because neither Feersum Endjinn nor The Business held my interest long enough for me to finish reading it.
Feersum Endjinn was also confusing enough [and annoying enough- huge parts of it are written phonetically] that, while bits of it were interesting, I didn't care enough to find out what happened next.
I'll try to hunt down Complicity or one of the other books recommended here (thanks folks) before I give up on Banks as an author completely. His ideas are obviously unique but that isn't enough to carry a book.
I dunno, but having a tooth-and-nail fight in the courts is a fantastic way to get media coverage these days. Causality is hard to determine, but maybe their sales are up despite a shitty year of production because national and front-page headlines are about music, and acquiring music.
If Napster is about to start making billions, this media coverage doesn't hurt it none, either.
Quite so. What seems most exaggerated in this account is the person's concern about the following:
"I've been told that they may speak to me, and may also talk to the company I currently work for."
Oh my gosh, someone may speak to him! (or his employer. More on that below) --People have jumped to the conclusion that this is a threat, but actually it is a third person rumor. Probably one of his friends at the company giving him a heads-up that the company knows what he wrote.
It is appropriate that he ask what recourse his old company can take, and those answers have been posted: they can't sue if it's not libel (that is, if what he said was true) and if he really didn't sign anything saying he'd keep his mouth shut. If that's not the case, he should consult legal counsel for further info.
But I'd like to return to the concern quoted above, that they might speak to his current company. If you have said something that has blackmail strength with regard to your current employer's hearing it, then it was a poor decision to say it publicly. If what you said was fair, not slanderous, and useful to the public discussion, but you think that your old company might speak to your employer about it in a way that makes you look bad, beat them to the punch.
You should perhaps have a precautionary discussion with your manager about the situation. You don't necessarily have to give specifics about what you said, just tell them you're happy to be honest with them and you hope they have enough respect for you that if this company, which for good reason no longer employs you, should call them, they will take what they say with a grain of salt and discuss it openly with you before drawing any conclusions about your character or your actions.
furthermore, going back to the third-party nature of the message that sparked these concerns, your former employer may have no strong-arm intentions. I would hope that in a civilized society it would be okay for someone to call someone and say "Geez, that made us look bad. It made us feel bad. We're trying to do better, and we'd like to apologize and hope you don't feel like posting more bad things," without that person being sued for blackmail.
calm down a little. :)
Hope it turns out well,
--netmouse
Actually, there's an unsolved logistical problem here that is just as firmly entrenched as human nature. It is in fact fairly difficult to help a people get on their feet and develop. (I once heard a speaker say, "You cannot give power to people.") If you just give them things you think are appropriate, often they are wasted or you create slightly richer dependent people rather than independent people with the capacity for making themselves better off.
Ideally you can work with people to assess what they can use and how they can use it, integrated with their own knowledge and the strengths of the people and the land. That takes a lot of time and effort and can be culturally very dificult, because people from 'developed' countries have a strong idea of what such a country -their own- looks like, and have to work to understand that there can be more than one type of civilized society.
People who have posted here that some countries are 'leap-frogging' into more advanced technologies are certainly correct. There are a surprisingly large number of projects in many countries (including many African ones) to bring information technologies into poorly developed places. Telecenters in rural areas and suchlike.
If you're interested in such issues, check out the Global Knowledge Partnership. Sponsored by the World Bank, this group is bringing together people all over the world who are working on these issues and on projects to address them. Their discussion list, Global Knowledge Development, is an interesting source of news and debates from around the world on local progress.
--netmouse
It is a concern.. we may be able to recreate animals and even teach the young behaviors that resemble how they would have behaved in the wild, but what we don't know how to recreate are the relationships that species had with other species of plants, insects and animals.
We have the same problem with forestry right now. Sure, we can regrow any tree given a seed and some knowledge about the tree, but when we cut down all the old growth in a forest (or especially when we slash and burn the whole thing) we're destroying an entire ecosystem along with our only chance to study it and find out how it worked.
-mouse
"Ah! A Tarentella!"
and the music begins... This is, I believe, the uplifting self-adulatory yet creepy tune that rings out with such stirring choruses as
An interesting association indeed.
--netmouse-netmouse