Sure, there's been a lot of genre entropy in some places of science fiction. This happens everywhere.
However, science fiction is an incredibly broad genre. When one uses the generally-accepted definition of any story taking place in the future, then one can write about almost anything and call it sci-fi. Sure, you get the usual crap space ships and moon colonies, with authors who would rather be visionaries than writers, but you also philosophical works such as Philip K. Dick's Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep?. Works such as these just go to show that if you can fit hard boiled detective fiction into sci-fi, you can fit just about anything, leaving a nearly infinite number of possibilites. After all, you are no longer constrained to a story that makes sense in today's world.
So, while there will always be talentless hacks turning out the same old man-fucks-alien-at-moonbase crap, there will also always be innovation in the genre. As an aside, I truely hope to never see a science fiction novel on a bestseller list. Call me elitist, but I have not yet come across an original, clever novel that was widely endorsed by the book-buying public.
Or how about this: when implantation starts becoming widespread, will someone find a way to modify the signals produced to induce an optical illusion in the user? How would reality change if someone's sense are showing them something that isn't really "there".
Better yet, if these malfunction in conjunction with other sense that may be "bionicized", in such a manner as someone is led to believe that they are stumbling over a chair or running into a wall, does this mean they really are? I mean, if you "scrape" yourself on something rough, even though you haven't, and you look at your arm and it appears bloody (even though other people see that it is uninjured), and then touch it and feel the wetness of blood, have you been injured?
This kind of thing would probably work better from a third person omniscient perspective. That way you don't have to confuse the reader about what's going on by thinking in the vernacular, and you can more effectively satirize Walmart security. For example, have them do something stupid, but don't explain what the thinking was behind what they did.
Other than that, this looks like it could be a pretty interesting serial. Keep writing!
No shit. I was referring to the last time there was a PWP problem, where flarners submitted a patch to slashcode on sourceforge and jamie let it sit for weeks while he "argued" that it shouldn't be included because it was a bug in IE, so it wasn't their problem.
I'd give it two months, if you submit a patch that fixes everything right now. That way, Jamie will have plenty of time to bitch about how trolls are exclusively destructive before quietly adding the fix to the "production" code.
Earl, so good to see you whoring up your karma by submitting Slashdot articles! Maybe someday you'll move out of your parents' basement and stop harassing people on IRC!
That's not really what he's talking about. What he means is that the Slashdot editors are trolling by deliberately posting an article which they know will get an avalanche of poorly-written, angry responses refuting it. But, hey, they need the banner hits to stay afloat, so it's justified, right?
Umm, yeah, except all those you just mentioned are legally banks, which is something that PayPal is not. As such, they aren't regulated as a bank and can do all sorts of things with customers' money that customers probably wouldn't like.
Obviously, they need to collect data on which websites their customers visit the most so that traffic to those sites can be given priority at their routers and such. Not to mention that they could offer colocation to companies such as Yahoo so that the requests don't even have to leave Comcast's network.
If they really wanted to invade your privacy and sell your information to other companies, they'd have done it already without being so open about it. Hell, they control the mail servers and the proxy servers, they already have all your data. I trust them, why doesn't anyone else?
I'm deeply disturbed by the recent spate being reported on this site of the donations being made to free software coders. This kind of system is exactly what is ruining today's free market by allowing the people who can't make it with a real product under a real license putz around on someone else's dime.
This results in substandard code being churned out by the people who are least qualified to do so.
And another thing, why does this guy have to survive on donations if the GPL is, indeed, a viable license? Wouldn't this just reinforce the argument that the GPL works to unemploy legitimate programmers, with only those who have enough stature in the open source community getting by on the largesse of generous contributers who really don't know better?
OK, I see now. Quite a valid point. Probably won't happen though, unless there is some kind of large grassroots push for something like this, which isn't likely to happen if it's just a portion of the Slashdot audience clamoring for it.
I'd probably file it under "great idea, wishful thinking," simply due to the sheer inertia of the configuration of large networks such as Comcast.
Yes, but see, there again lies the problem. Right now, cable and DSL works essentially as burstable bandwidth; when you need it, it's there to use. When you don't need it, it frees it up for someone else. This is what allows these companies to charge such low fees for the kind of bandwidth that they're doling out to consumers.
By rate limiting the connection instead of charging for overuse, everyone's going to get absolutely terrible connections (think around 128kbps up/down) at guarenteed bandwidth, which is a lot less than I can get on a bad day on my cable modem right now. Besides, no one really needs this dedicated bandwidth, because the vast majority of users are not going to be running high traffic internet servers that are going to be getting a constant stream of requests.
Basically, it would be an incredible waste of bandwidth resources on the head end.
Slashdot Mirror
Hint: it's at +2, in this article, and contains the word "fucking".
Anyone who has to call it a "social life" is clearly making it up. Loser.
sporky! you retarded cum-snuffler, how the fuck are you?
Do you even know what a thin client is?
Would your link be referring to the Two Towers thing, or did you father Elizibeth Hurley's son?
However, science fiction is an incredibly broad genre. When one uses the generally-accepted definition of any story taking place in the future, then one can write about almost anything and call it sci-fi. Sure, you get the usual crap space ships and moon colonies, with authors who would rather be visionaries than writers, but you also philosophical works such as Philip K. Dick's Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep?. Works such as these just go to show that if you can fit hard boiled detective fiction into sci-fi, you can fit just about anything, leaving a nearly infinite number of possibilites. After all, you are no longer constrained to a story that makes sense in today's world.
So, while there will always be talentless hacks turning out the same old man-fucks-alien-at-moonbase crap, there will also always be innovation in the genre. As an aside, I truely hope to never see a science fiction novel on a bestseller list. Call me elitist, but I have not yet come across an original, clever novel that was widely endorsed by the book-buying public.
Better yet, if these malfunction in conjunction with other sense that may be "bionicized", in such a manner as someone is led to believe that they are stumbling over a chair or running into a wall, does this mean they really are? I mean, if you "scrape" yourself on something rough, even though you haven't, and you look at your arm and it appears bloody (even though other people see that it is uninjured), and then touch it and feel the wetness of blood, have you been injured?
I claim this FP for all those who have the balls to log in. Death to all ACs.
This kind of thing would probably work better from a third person omniscient perspective. That way you don't have to confuse the reader about what's going on by thinking in the vernacular, and you can more effectively satirize Walmart security. For example, have them do something stupid, but don't explain what the thinking was behind what they did.
Other than that, this looks like it could be a pretty interesting serial. Keep writing!
No shit. I was referring to the last time there was a PWP problem, where flarners submitted a patch to slashcode on sourceforge and jamie let it sit for weeks while he "argued" that it shouldn't be included because it was a bug in IE, so it wasn't their problem.
I'd give it two months, if you submit a patch that fixes everything right now. That way, Jamie will have plenty of time to bitch about how trolls are exclusively destructive before quietly adding the fix to the "production" code.
"H-E-double-hockey-stick"? How old are you, nine?
Earl, so good to see you whoring up your karma by submitting Slashdot articles! Maybe someday you'll move out of your parents' basement and stop harassing people on IRC!
That sound you hear is the sound of me flying over head at Mach 3 to bring you this first post!
That's not really what he's talking about. What he means is that the Slashdot editors are trolling by deliberately posting an article which they know will get an avalanche of poorly-written, angry responses refuting it. But, hey, they need the banner hits to stay afloat, so it's justified, right?
Let it be known that TROLLAXOR.COM is truely back.
TROLLAXOR.COM! TROLLAXOR.COM! TROLLAXOR.COM!
BLINK! BLINK! BLINK!
"All your account are belong to us."
Umm, yeah, except all those you just mentioned are legally banks, which is something that PayPal is not. As such, they aren't regulated as a bank and can do all sorts of things with customers' money that customers probably wouldn't like.
- Don't live in the D.C. area if the safety provided by cameras really bothers you.
- Just pay for books with cash. I do that regardless, less hassle with bills at the end of the month.
Not that hard. I don't see what the big panic is all about.Using that logic, wouldn't that mean Linux is dogshit? This desire to have your ideological cake and eat it too is deeply disturbing.
If they really wanted to invade your privacy and sell your information to other companies, they'd have done it already without being so open about it. Hell, they control the mail servers and the proxy servers, they already have all your data. I trust them, why doesn't anyone else?
Finally! A word to describe my attention span!
This results in substandard code being churned out by the people who are least qualified to do so.
And another thing, why does this guy have to survive on donations if the GPL is, indeed, a viable license? Wouldn't this just reinforce the argument that the GPL works to unemploy legitimate programmers, with only those who have enough stature in the open source community getting by on the largesse of generous contributers who really don't know better?
There has to be a better way to do this.
I'd probably file it under "great idea, wishful thinking," simply due to the sheer inertia of the configuration of large networks such as Comcast.
By rate limiting the connection instead of charging for overuse, everyone's going to get absolutely terrible connections (think around 128kbps up/down) at guarenteed bandwidth, which is a lot less than I can get on a bad day on my cable modem right now. Besides, no one really needs this dedicated bandwidth, because the vast majority of users are not going to be running high traffic internet servers that are going to be getting a constant stream of requests.
Basically, it would be an incredible waste of bandwidth resources on the head end.