Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "inner-struggle", something quite lacking in a work where the main character doesn't even give a damn that his girlfriend died. The author's conclusion is that life is cheap and humans are sheep.
"To be, or not to be?" Does the author understand this question? "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" is not a concept the character even considers. He's too busy purchasing a pretty sweater as she dies.
Perhaps I am simply expecting too much from the average slashdotter.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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And lost. In the end, Winston Smith is a broken person, who embraced the ideology of his torturers and quietly awaits his inevitable execution. There's no hope left.
Exactly why Orwell's point rang so clearly! Who is the enemy of this story? What is the character struggling against? Oh wait, he's not struggling. He doesn't even give a damn. His humanity wasn't stripped from him by force, he simply isn't human. What kind of story is that?
Society had reached a point where one character's death didn't make much more of an impact over another beyond vague guilt. I believe that is the entire point of the book infact.
Then this is a failure of the author to *study* the liberal arts. The very idea behind those arts is that some things are inherent in the makeup of mankind. This things are both his strengths and weaknesses. A great deal of literature has been produced on both of those concepts. In other words, *society* may not give a damn (not a good situation), but why doesn't the individual? If he had a personal tie to this person, where was his humanity when her life was on the line? Did anyone take it from him by force? No, the author pretends that this humanity does not exist.
An example of a better ending would be that the character DOES care about her death, but no one around him can understand or care about his feelings on the issue. THAT would serve as a warning against such a future and warn others to not so easily part with their concern for others.
Just because it's not a happy ending doesn't mean it's drivel, use your head.
Sir, I am using not only my head, but also my heart. This book is either very poor writing, or a reprehensible attempt to subvert society through the younger generation. Its ending leaves the reader with the idea that man should LIKE the idea of becoming mindless sheep. In this society, there is no pain, no emotion, no true happiness. There is only despair masked by the distraction of a constant information flow.
Where are the characters who make a bold statement against this society, and what would they be fighting against? If the author is to be believed, they have no enemy other than laziness.
The same could be said here. By having it end on such a depressing note, it reminds us that, once done, something like this is hard to undo. The only way to stop it is to prevent it from starting.
Allow me to point out that the 1984 character struggled against the reality in which he found himself. This allows Orwell's warning to ring loud and clear. This book instead would have us believe that humans have become such sheep as to prefer a nonexistence of life and freedom.
From everything I've heard about this book, there is no specific force attempting to subvert society. Rather, individuals go along with it because they *LIKE* it that way. That's a very disturbing idea to be putting in the minds of young adults.
Very strong sarcasm aimed at the author. Perhaps its a result of having a family to protect, but I simply find it difficult to believe that anyone can be so callous as to write a story ending with no real concern over a pointless loss of a loved one. I'm even more disgusted by the fact that the author chose to present this garbage to impressionable young adults who lack a solid enough grasp on the depth of reality to effectively judge the content for themselves.
Re:The future sucks, it always does
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It's easy. Futures that seem to perfect, actually are. Man has decided to ignore all the problems instead of dealing with them. This results in stories like when a "perfect" guys of the future accidentally trips across some information that could unravel the false reality and expose the puppet-masters. This sends him on an adventure where his life is in danger and his family kidnapped. To save them, he must expose the world for what it really is...
In other words, utopian and dystopian futures are easily used to show how people sometimes ignore reality. In the former case, they live an illusion that hurts them without their awareness. In the later case, man has ignored the issues in hopes of a utopian society and instead brought disaster on himself.
BTW, you didn't mention the third type of Sci-Fi story. The one where the future is neither utopian or dystopian, but rather has characters who deal with many of the same issues that we have today. These stories often serve as a way of contrasting our lives against a new backdrop to shake out any points that we've taken for granted or simply failed to take notice of. Another type of story like this is designed to give mankind a future to strive for. e.g. The "Star Trek" type future where everything isn't quite perfect, but things have greatly improved.
Because I do not feel like filling my head with such drivel. Shouldn't the point be to avoid a future like this instead of merely accepting it? What kind of lessons are we teaching our children if their literature tells them that there is no hope?
Personally, I find this book rather disgusting. The fact that the "girlfriend" dies while attempting to obtain an implant only furthers the idea that life is cheap and emotions are pointless. The author should have more carefully chosen his pen name. "M.T. Anderson" is not synonymous with "M.T. Soul".
To answer my own question, the reviews on Amazon suggest that the end of the story is that his girlfriend dies and life goes on. Well whoop-de-do. This sort of ending can be acceptable in a short story where the author wishes to bring attention to an issue, but is completely unacceptable in a novel. One of the core points of good literature is the struggle of human-kind to improve himself. How does this novel meet that goal if the author provides no solution to averting this future? The very literary purpose of dysotopian futures is to demonstrate that such a future is possible, and demonstrate how it might be avoided. Leaving the reader with no hope is not the way to accomplish this.
To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.
Doh! Actually, I meant DSP playback. The term FM Synthesis was just stuck in my head, I guess. Ah, I remember those days. Windows was not much more than Microsoft's pipe-dream, VOC files ruled the world, and a few clever programmers hacked the PC's internal speaker to play voice. Things were so simple then.
If you can do that then you must have a pretty discerning palate. To be able to not only sense each ingredient but to determine the measurement of it would outdo the greatest of gourmands.
Bull. It's not that hard. "Hmm... this cookie tastes like it's a standard cookie recipes with chocolate chips and a hint of something else. What could that be... AH HA! A touch of Molasses!"
Then you go to the kitchen and tinker with the recipe until it works out the way you want it.
Looking under the hood of a modern car would be pretty much worthless and a service manual wouldn't be much better. You may get an idea of how it works but not why it works.
True, but you could take it apart and eventually discern the workings of a combustion engine. If you already have that knowledge, you can build on it by comparing how different engines function. By paying attention to the details, you should eventually understand what design features and tuning the engineers put into each engine.
These things are not dissimilar to software. When Wing Commander first came out, it was an amazing technical feat. Yet it was quite easy for experienced developers to figure out "how they did it." By simply looking at the graphics, it was easy to see that the ships were sprites instead of true 3D. Through additional viewing, one could discern that these sprites had been pre-rotated, thus producing a small amount of jerkiness as a scene rotated.
The view of the cockpit provided a further optimization for the developers to leverage. Since the actual play area was only about half the screen, only about half the screen was repainted for each frame. Even the game's wonderful music was easily distinguishable as MIDI output instead of FM synthesis.
And here I was hoping the author was sharing his secrets on finding time to *build* games on a tight 40-60 hour workweek. Taking the time to build even simple games results in a massive reduction in sleeping hours.
80 billion people?! Where in the world are you finding numbers to support the idea that the population will reach 80 billion?! There are only about 7 billion people in the world today, and that number hasn't budged much in 20-30 years! At the current rate of population increase, we should have a problem... errm... lemme see... NEVER!
I was *so* close. Of course, both are incorrect anyway. They're nothing more than transliterations of the Cyrillic name. (Since Slashdot is too lame to accept Cyrillics, you can view his name here.)
Even then it would still br Americanized. In Russia, the middle name is always used. The middle name is a "standard" variation on the father's name. Thus Mr. Gagarin would be known as Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin or simply Yuri Alekseyevich in conversation.
And why you needed to know this? No idea. I just figured I had to do something useful because I misspelled the guy's name.;)
No, it's not supposed to be a new form of transit. It's a new form of developing space hardware in the private sector. Early NASA and USSR flights focused on putting a man up high enough, then bringing him back down. That allowed them to test airframe, recovery methods, and engines without jumping straight to building a Saturn V. The knowledge gained from these flights was then used to put Yuri Gugarin (sp?) and John Glenn into actual orbit.
The point of the 100km flight is to reproduce much of that research. If we end up with 10 engines that can make the altitude, then at least some of those engines and airframes may be scalable to orbital flight. Even if they aren't, certain points in their design may be useful in designing cheaper and better airframes and engines.
Plutonium in liquid solution is more likely to become critical than solid plutonium. The shape of the mass must also be considered where criticality is concerned.
It's worth pointing out that this is not a problem with Pu-238. It'll get hot, but it shouldn't fission at a critical rate. Obviously, a mixed batch like what you'd find in a reactor will tend to contain both Pu-238 and Pu-239, so it could go critical. The worst stuff is the stuff used in warheads, which is almost entirely Pu-239.
How is it going to get into the food chain? It's too dense for plants to use as a material, and any animal that tries to eat it will most likely pass it through without digesting it.
Pu-238 is great for a radioisotope generator. Imagine if your cell phone had a battery that lasted 20 years before being recycled into a new battery! Pu-239 can't even boil water, but it's that stuff that can be used for Nuclear Fission. I'm doubting that anyone would dispose of that.
Pu-241 is pretty rare AFAIK. I think it can be used for fission. If it can't, it would be great for batteries. If I understand this info correctly, Its decay is entirely beta and alpha particles! That makes it even safer (in a seal container) than Pu-238!
Slashdot Mirror
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "inner-struggle", something quite lacking in a work where the main character doesn't even give a damn that his girlfriend died. The author's conclusion is that life is cheap and humans are sheep.
"To be, or not to be?" Does the author understand this question? "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?" is not a concept the character even considers. He's too busy purchasing a pretty sweater as she dies.
Perhaps I am simply expecting too much from the average slashdotter.
That'll teach me to proofread.
Futures that seem to perfect, actually are.
"Futures that seem too perfect, actually aren't"
And lost. In the end, Winston Smith is a broken person, who embraced the ideology of his torturers and quietly awaits his inevitable execution. There's no hope left.
Exactly why Orwell's point rang so clearly! Who is the enemy of this story? What is the character struggling against? Oh wait, he's not struggling. He doesn't even give a damn. His humanity wasn't stripped from him by force, he simply isn't human. What kind of story is that?
Society had reached a point where one character's death didn't make much more of an impact over another beyond vague guilt. I believe that is the entire point of the book infact.
Then this is a failure of the author to *study* the liberal arts. The very idea behind those arts is that some things are inherent in the makeup of mankind. This things are both his strengths and weaknesses. A great deal of literature has been produced on both of those concepts. In other words, *society* may not give a damn (not a good situation), but why doesn't the individual? If he had a personal tie to this person, where was his humanity when her life was on the line? Did anyone take it from him by force? No, the author pretends that this humanity does not exist.
An example of a better ending would be that the character DOES care about her death, but no one around him can understand or care about his feelings on the issue. THAT would serve as a warning against such a future and warn others to not so easily part with their concern for others.
Just because it's not a happy ending doesn't mean it's drivel, use your head.
Sir, I am using not only my head, but also my heart. This book is either very poor writing, or a reprehensible attempt to subvert society through the younger generation. Its ending leaves the reader with the idea that man should LIKE the idea of becoming mindless sheep. In this society, there is no pain, no emotion, no true happiness. There is only despair masked by the distraction of a constant information flow.
Where are the characters who make a bold statement against this society, and what would they be fighting against? If the author is to be believed, they have no enemy other than laziness.
The same could be said here. By having it end on such a depressing note, it reminds us that, once done, something like this is hard to undo. The only way to stop it is to prevent it from starting.
Allow me to point out that the 1984 character struggled against the reality in which he found himself. This allows Orwell's warning to ring loud and clear. This book instead would have us believe that humans have become such sheep as to prefer a nonexistence of life and freedom.
From everything I've heard about this book, there is no specific force attempting to subvert society. Rather, individuals go along with it because they *LIKE* it that way. That's a very disturbing idea to be putting in the minds of young adults.
Very strong sarcasm aimed at the author. Perhaps its a result of having a family to protect, but I simply find it difficult to believe that anyone can be so callous as to write a story ending with no real concern over a pointless loss of a loved one. I'm even more disgusted by the fact that the author chose to present this garbage to impressionable young adults who lack a solid enough grasp on the depth of reality to effectively judge the content for themselves.
It's easy. Futures that seem to perfect, actually are. Man has decided to ignore all the problems instead of dealing with them. This results in stories like when a "perfect" guys of the future accidentally trips across some information that could unravel the false reality and expose the puppet-masters. This sends him on an adventure where his life is in danger and his family kidnapped. To save them, he must expose the world for what it really is...
In other words, utopian and dystopian futures are easily used to show how people sometimes ignore reality. In the former case, they live an illusion that hurts them without their awareness. In the later case, man has ignored the issues in hopes of a utopian society and instead brought disaster on himself.
BTW, you didn't mention the third type of Sci-Fi story. The one where the future is neither utopian or dystopian, but rather has characters who deal with many of the same issues that we have today. These stories often serve as a way of contrasting our lives against a new backdrop to shake out any points that we've taken for granted or simply failed to take notice of. Another type of story like this is designed to give mankind a future to strive for. e.g. The "Star Trek" type future where everything isn't quite perfect, but things have greatly improved.
I bet you're the kinda guy who's watching a movie and asks people, "What's going to happen next?"
No, I'm the guy who yells from the back row, "WHAT THE HELL KIND OF ENDING WAS THAT?!" An appropriate platitude for drivel like this book.
Because I do not feel like filling my head with such drivel. Shouldn't the point be to avoid a future like this instead of merely accepting it? What kind of lessons are we teaching our children if their literature tells them that there is no hope?
Personally, I find this book rather disgusting. The fact that the "girlfriend" dies while attempting to obtain an implant only furthers the idea that life is cheap and emotions are pointless. The author should have more carefully chosen his pen name. "M.T. Anderson" is not synonymous with "M.T. Soul".
To answer my own question, the reviews on Amazon suggest that the end of the story is that his girlfriend dies and life goes on. Well whoop-de-do. This sort of ending can be acceptable in a short story where the author wishes to bring attention to an issue, but is completely unacceptable in a novel. One of the core points of good literature is the struggle of human-kind to improve himself. How does this novel meet that goal if the author provides no solution to averting this future? The very literary purpose of dysotopian futures is to demonstrate that such a future is possible, and demonstrate how it might be avoided. Leaving the reader with no hope is not the way to accomplish this.
To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.
...do the characters actually *do* anything about it, or does his rebellious girlfriend die and life goes on?
Doh! Actually, I meant DSP playback. The term FM Synthesis was just stuck in my head, I guess. Ah, I remember those days. Windows was not much more than Microsoft's pipe-dream, VOC files ruled the world, and a few clever programmers hacked the PC's internal speaker to play voice. Things were so simple then.
If you can do that then you must have a pretty discerning palate. To be able to not only sense each ingredient but to determine the measurement of it would outdo the greatest of gourmands.
Bull. It's not that hard. "Hmm... this cookie tastes like it's a standard cookie recipes with chocolate chips and a hint of something else. What could that be... AH HA! A touch of Molasses!"
Then you go to the kitchen and tinker with the recipe until it works out the way you want it.
Looking under the hood of a modern car would be pretty much worthless and a service manual wouldn't be much better. You may get an idea of how it works but not why it works.
True, but you could take it apart and eventually discern the workings of a combustion engine. If you already have that knowledge, you can build on it by comparing how different engines function. By paying attention to the details, you should eventually understand what design features and tuning the engineers put into each engine.
These things are not dissimilar to software. When Wing Commander first came out, it was an amazing technical feat. Yet it was quite easy for experienced developers to figure out "how they did it." By simply looking at the graphics, it was easy to see that the ships were sprites instead of true 3D. Through additional viewing, one could discern that these sprites had been pre-rotated, thus producing a small amount of jerkiness as a scene rotated.
The view of the cockpit provided a further optimization for the developers to leverage. Since the actual play area was only about half the screen, only about half the screen was repainted for each frame. Even the game's wonderful music was easily distinguishable as MIDI output instead of FM synthesis.
As part of the deal with Apple making fixes they need to get Bash to version 10 ASAP for Bash X marketing.
Umm... this has me slightly worried that Grandma will see the IRC client and freak...
And here I was hoping the author was sharing his secrets on finding time to *build* games on a tight 40-60 hour workweek. Taking the time to build even simple games results in a massive reduction in sleeping hours.
80 billion people?! Where in the world are you finding numbers to support the idea that the population will reach 80 billion?! There are only about 7 billion people in the world today, and that number hasn't budged much in 20-30 years! At the current rate of population increase, we should have a problem... errm... lemme see... NEVER!
I was *so* close. Of course, both are incorrect anyway. They're nothing more than transliterations of the Cyrillic name. (Since Slashdot is too lame to accept Cyrillics, you can view his name here.)
;)
Even then it would still br Americanized. In Russia, the middle name is always used. The middle name is a "standard" variation on the father's name. Thus Mr. Gagarin would be known as Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin or simply Yuri Alekseyevich in conversation.
And why you needed to know this? No idea. I just figured I had to do something useful because I misspelled the guy's name.
No, it's not supposed to be a new form of transit. It's a new form of developing space hardware in the private sector. Early NASA and USSR flights focused on putting a man up high enough, then bringing him back down. That allowed them to test airframe, recovery methods, and engines without jumping straight to building a Saturn V. The knowledge gained from these flights was then used to put Yuri Gugarin (sp?) and John Glenn into actual orbit.
The point of the 100km flight is to reproduce much of that research. If we end up with 10 engines that can make the altitude, then at least some of those engines and airframes may be scalable to orbital flight. Even if they aren't, certain points in their design may be useful in designing cheaper and better airframes and engines.
Good luck, Godspeed, and give 'em hell!
So I can't say I have been waiting 24 years to see it on the big screen. I'll wait until it arrives on a small one in my living-room.
You know, 24 is 42 backwards...
Just a thought.
Plutonium in liquid solution is more likely to become critical than solid plutonium. The shape of the mass must also be considered where criticality is concerned.
It's worth pointing out that this is not a problem with Pu-238. It'll get hot, but it shouldn't fission at a critical rate. Obviously, a mixed batch like what you'd find in a reactor will tend to contain both Pu-238 and Pu-239, so it could go critical. The worst stuff is the stuff used in warheads, which is almost entirely Pu-239.
How is it going to get into the food chain? It's too dense for plants to use as a material, and any animal that tries to eat it will most likely pass it through without digesting it.
CNN is on behind me, and they've been talking about nothing but Google's IPO. Seems like really bad timing for Google. :-(
Pu-238 is great for a radioisotope generator. Imagine if your cell phone had a battery that lasted 20 years before being recycled into a new battery! Pu-239 can't even boil water, but it's that stuff that can be used for Nuclear Fission. I'm doubting that anyone would dispose of that.
Pu-241 is pretty rare AFAIK. I think it can be used for fission. If it can't, it would be great for batteries. If I understand this info correctly, Its decay is entirely beta and alpha particles! That makes it even safer (in a seal container) than Pu-238!