Perhaps people don't use the default browser as much? I use Chrome and Dolphin on both my phone and tablet. I used Opera on my previous Android phone. On my tablet I generally don't visit Wikipedia, or any other Wikimedia site since I have a widget that does it for me. TFA says "browser" not OS, so who really knows.
So, where is the evidence of Android raining down destruction upon iOS?
Who cares? I don't want either to "win", as that wouldn't be good for me, the customer. Sales figures say Android has a greater market share, I'll take them over Wikipedia-based, and anecdotal, inference. Also maybe there isn't a big market for your SDK on Android, it is a different ecosystem after all. Maybe there is something similar that does a better job, or is more popular. Perhaps no one perceives a need. Perhaps you didn't market it right to a different audience... There is a plethora of factors that can contribute to discrepancies between platforms. Imagine the differences between products on Linux, Windows, and OS X... Different markets.
Why does everyone get to hot and bothered about whose "winning"? Why should I care. I like my Android devices, my friends like their iOS gidgets... Oh no, people prefer different things than me! Heathens.
No, Reagan wasn't all bad, but he started the end of American industry, and the whole "help the rich, fuck the poor, everyone magically benefits" train that we've followed since (Democrat or Republican), he increased military pork, decided we need more religion forced down our throat, started a fair share of unethical (if not illegal) actions in South America. Lets not forget the Iran Contra fiasco, and the continuation of Soviet paranoia. Oh, or the "war on drugs" and all the nice things that came from that. Or the fact that the economy wasn't really a bed of roses, either. Hell, I'm not saying he's the worst we've had, he was just pretty bad. Perhaps no worse than anyone since.
True, but it's going to have to compete with free, or more convenient alternatives that people are getting used to. I don't see Apple winning here, their prices are rather insane, and their rentals are overly restrictive. The networks will also fight anyone who manages to find a cheap easy way to compete with torrents and streaming sites.
If someone could clear those hurdles, though, there would be some nice money. Hell, if someone could do it, I would buy it.
For awhile I thought Hulu had the magic sauce... they managed to cut my... alternate ways of acquiring media, to basically zero. I also started watching more television (i.e. ads) than I had in almost a decade. Then they killed it. We need someone to go be iTunes or Amazon (between them I haven't torrented a song in a long time), convenient, fairly priced, and nonrestrictive.
I could use a car analogy, but they've become trite.
NCA;DR (no car analogy).
Seriously though... I pretty much agree with you. I really don't understand the partisan nature of Apple/Android discussions (well, I do, cognitive dissonance, and good old fashioned trolling). But then again I've been railing against the OS wars for decades now.
Apple TV isn't going to do much. I don't know a single person, even among my Apple loyal friends, who care. TV isn't exciting. And Apple TV is just copying many other solutions. The whole idea feels dead. The internet is going to win. Torrents are going to win. Something open is the only hope for re-monetizing TV, the door is already open, and the cows are long gone. The mythical 7" iPad isn't going to do it either, since the 7" market is one of commodity, not luxury (Apple's forte). Amazon, Google, and (to a much lesser extent) Barnes and Noble have carved out that niche, and made the discussion more about cost than functionality. 7" isn't status, its a toy.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Apple had something new up their sleeves though. They have some smart people there, and if some slobs on/. can see it, they saw it a year or two ago.
Though right now I'm pretty happy with the market, and for the first time I hope that Microsoft can compete in it. Having three equally large, and equally powerful players, with different strategies and strengths, excites me, as a customer. Competition breeds innovation. As a customer, you'd have to be insane or stupid to actually hope that one team wins, since you, inevitably, lose.
They make some nice cases for tablets these days. My tablet can have a nice bottom dock that pretty much turns it into a 10" netbook, and protects the whole thing. The default soft-cover for iPads is very nice, and protects them well. Microsoft's surface has a very nice screen protector, which doubles as a keyboard. This is pretty much a solved problem. When I do go places with my tablet, rarely since I generally have better things to do, or am carrying a book in a more convenient form-factor, I stick in my old leather laptop case, that I used with my long gone iBook (bought for $40 on a vacation to Milwaukee).
[1] - I don't believe there actually is a tablet market. Just an iPad market. No one wants tablets, just something that makes them look cool and hip. Like everyone else.
I doubt this. I own a tablet, and I have very rarely actually taken it outside of my house. It replaced my laptop for my "morning coffee on the patio" computer. I was very much in the market for a tablet, meaning there is a tablet market. I would have bought an iPad, but for the price it had less stats (i.e. future-proofing), and didn't really fit my sense of values or aesthetics.
Though amusingly earlier this weekend I drove a friend to get an Android tablet (he had an iPad, but sold it since it wasn't really as useful as he wanted, or not as useful to justify the price) just by leaving it in the living room and having him pick it up and play with it.
I really doubt an Apple 7" tablet is going to really do much, depending on price of course. A big tablet is a luxury item, a small tablet is a commodity item. At that size, people will buy based on price, as evident by Amazon's tablet trouncing everyone, only based on price and marketing. Again, depending on price, Google's tablet will trounce Apple's. Apple will make more money though, and will be covered more (as usual).
The Surface, sadly, will probably flop. Which is sad, since it really is one of the only Microsoft products that have made me the slightest bit interested. If they released an x86 version that was cross-operative with the desktop, and kept the price low, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. MS, obviously will screw it up somehow, though. Hell, it might be doomed just because its MS branded, among Apple and Google, MS is plain unsexy. They conjure up images of the crappy, locked down, boring, PC you are forced to use at work.
I found a couple places around the web, but being that I'm not sure of their legality I'm not going to share, sorry. But there is a place out there which has almost his complete works in.epub and.mobi formats. Another poster said that Amazon has free Kindle editions of his books, if your a Kindle type person.
If you're a bit diligent with your Google-fu, I'm sure you can find them all without too much fuss.
Hardly any ACTION. It was all a thought experiment, TALKING about the development of the world. Of course, I'm a fan of the way cyberpunk explains hardly NOTHING, and just throws you into the action.
I don't find that a fault really. There are times when some nice thought experiments are nice, and there are times when action are nice. I generally prefer the former, most of the time. I suppose it boils down to taste, and what you want to get out of reading. I like finishing a book, and spending another hour or so sitting on the patio contemplating what I just read.
City wasn't really a novel, though. It was a collection of short stories, with a narrator.
It was originally published as a series of short stories, with "bridge" bits. I'm okay with that format, one of my other favorites books is Jeff Noon's (author of Vurt) Pixel Juice, which is a collection of very loosely related short stories (in his surrealistic sci-fi bent) that only really relate when you sit around and contemplate them. The more you do so, the more the collection gels into a (semi)cohesive whole.
I've poked around a couple of those torrents, and generally found them to be of terrible quality on the whole. Most of them are really bad OCR jobs, completely lacking formatting, and systematically replacing letters with similar looking numbers, or visa versa.
Don't get me wrong, this is a flavor of piracy I'm completely unopposed to (no one is profiting from unpublished books), but I really wish someone would just purchase up all the rights to classic sci-fi novels (and classic mystery as well, another genre with a short memory), and make them into affordable, high quality, ebooks, and/or print on demand copies.
Actually that would make for an awesome nonprofit. Sell the books for a variable price, or for donations, use the money to buy more rights. I'm sure plenty of vintage sci-fi buffs would fork over decent amounts of cash to keep it running. That is always something that bugged me, how our culture sort of fades away unless someone decides it worth it to keep running. The amount of fall-off is kind of frightening, the things I loved I might not be able to share with my kids someday.
If I was king for a day, I'd make copyright lapse if a work is unpublished for a certain period of time. You have ten years, lets say, and if you don't do anything with it, it is magically public domain.
People in the Upper Midwest in the 50's you mean. We've got robots, we've got a spaceport in our backyard, we've got talking dogs and mutants... want to go fishin', or just sit on the porch sipping a tasty beverage?
I suppose that is what I loved about him, his complete lack of pretension. All of his protagonists (except the mysterious space mutants) reminded me of my father, or my relatives in Wisconsin. Most of the books of the time's protagonists were very much Zap Brannigan/Flash Gordon types, which works, but doesn't feel quite as real.
I've been meaning to read that for years. When I was a kid it was perpetually stolen or missing from my local library, so I never got the chance.
I was about to purchase the ebook version, and realized that its $7.62, and decided to write it on my book list instead. Almost eight dollars for a book from 1956?! I'm guessing this book is suffering from the same problem as many other old sci-fi authors, limited reprints in small editions. I've been trying to find James P. Blaylock's (his pre-steampunk fetish stuff is also underappreciated) Homunculus for years, but for some reason no one has ever decided to republish it.
Apparently they are, in February of next year. And now its on Kindle... One of the few times I've kicked myself for siding with Amazon's competition.
I had a differing experience. I pretty much thought I outgrew all of classic science fiction I read as a kid, and completely ignored it for more "serious" books. Awhile ago I realized that I was stupid, and decided to go back and reread a lot of the old books I remember. I reread City, and loved it for very different reasons than I remember liking it for.
I can see your point though, and I'm guessing the reasons that I found it still enjoyable and the reasons that you find it dated are the same. I find the simple, innocent, world he created to be fantastically refreshing. Its the future, blah blah, and yet we sit around on the porch enjoying tea with an old dog and some strangers. Its grand, but everyone acts like a rural midwesterner in the 50s. I find that charming now, when everything has to be dark, potentially cataclysmic, and fast. It has all the naive conventions of the time, sentient robots, habitable inhabitable planets (colonizing Jupiter is dumb.), most of the science in book is pretty much fantasy.
But there is something nice about it, to me at least. Its a nice throw back. All of Simak sort of falls into this, where its all very folksy and nostalgic, while talking about the "future" at the same time. At the very least it is completely unlike anything we have being written today.
I might be off the mark a bit for your feelings, though. I don't mean to stick words in your mouth, so excuse me if I did.
In the same binge, I reread a fair share of old cyberpunk, and that is a genre that aged relatively badly. The future is now, more banal than ever.
By the way, speaking of throwbacks, this is the first topic in a long long time where I felt as if I was actually on Slashdot, and not some strange rabid political and current events blog. I really hope we also get a nice case mod discussion going as well.
Admittedly I'm biased, since the first actual novel discovered on my own and read was one of his. City is also one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written. Sadly no one I know, even vintage sci-fi buffs, have ever read anything he ever wrote. This could be because its getting harder and harder to actually find his books anymore.
Like Lem, he suffers from the absolute lack of reprints. I own a translation of all of his novels, and it took over 8 years to accrue them all. Simak is in the same boat, I have some of his novels that I got in the late 80's used, and have never seen since. And I looked, since many of them were presumed lost (actually hidden in an attic somewhere for over 10 years).
Though I did get some people to go read him when I told them that Stephen King's Under the Dome was a badly written, never ending (with hackneyed unattributed T.S. Eliot references/quotes) , version of Simak's All Flesh is Grass.
Lem, though, at least, got two movies (one shallow and exciting, the other deep and boring). Simak probably will never be remembered after another generation. This somewhat depresses me.
I feel the need to go find a used bookstore and browse the old sci-fi section.
We're arguing at cross purposes here. My point is merely that sexual mores are transitory and arbitrary, and were vastly different for a very long period of time (longer than the period of time that has passed since the birth of Christ). There also is a slight flavor of mocking involved, hence pointing out their influence on modern thought, and their direct influence on the handful of zealots who dislike pretty much anything that anyone who isn't them do.
It also highlights the terrible harmfulness of deviant sex acts.
Evolution is a process of changing. Our diets can change too.
Evolution is the process of adaptation to the environment, so you can have more children.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I get annoyed because many vegans/vegetarians are almost evangelical in their fervor, and have to tell everyone that they are vegetarians, and how everyone in the universe should also be. If you don't want to eat meat, fine, I don't care. If you keep telling me not to, then I'll get a bit pissy at you. Also, the fact that many of the veggies in this discussion are idiots, and don't know much about human history ("we never ate meat!"), or saying that a diet with meat in it is somehow detrimental.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I'm sure they are perfectly sufficient (I went to school with several vegetarians and pescetarians who were fine), and they do require a fair bit of planning... But it is possible. Sadly in the west it is not a diet for poor people, though. It is doable other places, but here it isn't. Or at least it isn't enough variety to keep it nice. I had a girlfriend who quit a 10 year vegitarian binge because she moved down in income a bit and got sick of the monotony (and being forced to order pilaf at restaurants). She also got sick of me eating better looking food with meat in it. She did wind up at the hospital after trying meat though, since he system stopped being able to break it down as well as an omnivore like me.
Some vegetarians (not the majority, but the loud idiotic ones, who really think anyone should give two shits about what they like eating) do think it should be obligatory. Or think that dietary choices somehow make them superior.. I think its probably just cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again.. You made a major life-style choice, and sacrificed a lot of dietary variety, so obviously it must be the best possible choice, and everyone else who chose different is inferior.
Again, some, not all. A smart omnivorous diet is just as healthy as a smart vegetarian diet. A stupid one is just as bad, no matter what dietary road you want to take.
Perhaps... But I'd probably always pick quality of life over quantity of life. Sure, I'd shave a couple years off to have a nice monthly steak, with a decent red, washed down with a tasty bit of aged port. Or lamb... wonderful lamb... Damn, now I'm hungry... Perhaps tomorrow I'll be having some nice simple Irish stew.
I also doubt we're much sicker. Or at least I haven't seen any credible evidence of it. I further doubt that if we have, its attributable to meat in general. We have a lot of nasty chemicals floating around, we eat pretty much garbage food. I'd more attribute this, if, again, true, to McDonalds and Cheetos, than to meat in general. Also Americans completely lack portion control...
Well, statistically speaking, since approx. 50% of Americans are opposed to same-sex marriage, you can no longer ever buy anything at all, because at least _someone_ whose salary is paid by the business probably opposes same sex marriage.
I'm sure my purchases fund all sorts of people I disagree with. As long as they keep their mouths shut, and don't make it an issue, then I really don't care. But now its an issue, and things are different.
I personally don't even get it... People, for some reason, seem to find it objectionable that I would choose to, or choose not to give money to someone based on personal criteria, but don't really find it odd that people are doing the same to support the same criteria. Can we also poke at the people who are doing the "Support this Chicken place based on their CEO making himself superior to vast swaths of the population based on an old book"?
I also don't give money to Sony (or at least directly, I'm sure their products are inside many things I own), or Walmart... Is this also odd?
I'm not saying all people who oppose it are all hate mongerers, or bigots. There are some valid reasons not to, not based on religion. And I do think that the "rights" community goes a bit far, demanding marriage or nothing at all (even when often the legal differences between a "union" and a "marriage" are purely semantic). But I've gotten sick of the debate, and it has started to piss me off. Let the gay community have their damn cake, so we can just move on as a society. This issue is also a big Religion and Government issue to me, when people forget that their religious beliefs are only valid to them, and try to force them on others, I get mad.
Is it your view that when someone disagrees with your position he is a hate monger?
It depends on the position. If you disagree with my taste in ice cream, prefered economic practices, political preferences, or pretty much anything else... No. Thats fine. If you disagree about the equality of man, and the worth of individuals, then yes, you might be a hatemonger. I view that the current stance of many Americans towards people with different sexual preferences are more akin to racism than valid differences of opinion. Restricting people's rights based on what they do behind closed doors is not the same as liking Ron Paul (I disagree with both), but I can respect the latter, and not the former.
Restricting rights and freedoms, and forcing your views on others is very different than mere politics or disimular ethics.
Similarly, I respect the Muslim religion, and their choice to follow it, but disagree (strongly) with the treatment of women in many of their communities. I respect Christians, until they start trying to force their values on others.
So, the more you bitch and moan about Chick-Fil-A and the worse the things are you say about them and accuse them of being, the more you show that this is nothing more than feigned outrage bullshit. You don't hate Chick-Fil-A because of the CEO's views. You pretend to hate Chick-Fil-A because you think it's cool and hating Chick-Fil-A is in fashion. You are the worst kind of bigot.
So, I'm a bigot because I'm speaking with my wallet, and not supporting views I can't stand, and find generally destructive to society? Am I also a bigot because I don't buy Sony products, or vote for the majority of Republicans? As a customer, or voter, I can decide who I give money or votes too, and I can have any criteria I want for deciding.
I also wouldn't eat at a restaurant owned by a Klansman, or Neo-Nazi. Am I still a bigot?
Did you vote for Obama in 2008? Remember, he said the EXACT same thing...
I, sadly, did. But the thing with politics is that there are other metrics and issues to consider. People who vote on one issue are morons ("He hates abortion, but want to kill everyone in the world? SOLD!"). I voted for Obama because I was hoping he'd stop the civil abuses of Bush, I voted for him because he might actually change our fiscal policy towards something that benefits Americans. I voted for him because I hoped he'd stop killing our young people for no reason. I voted for him because I wanted to stop being somewhat embarrassed for being an American, and having to apologize to all my European and Middle Eastern friends. I also voted for him because I had suspicions that he was actually an undercover atheist. I didn't agree with him on his stance on Gay marriage. But I didn't agree with McCain/Palin either. There was no one with a chance of winning that stood anywhere close to having what I view as an acceptable solution, meaning that it wasn't really a consideration at the time.
Also, Obama didn't say, basically, that "God hates fags". Sure, it wasn't as Phelpsian, but the gist was basically that. How is it bigoted to decide not to give them money?
I also don't buy Sony products (as much as possible), or shop at Walmart, am I bigot for that too?
And no, I don't agree with the mayors saying they'll block Chickfila from opening business in their town. That is a very different issue than me, and individual, choosing not to buy their overpriced (but admittedly tasty) food.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Wikimedia_.28April_2009_to_present.29
Perhaps people don't use the default browser as much? I use Chrome and Dolphin on both my phone and tablet. I used Opera on my previous Android phone. On my tablet I generally don't visit Wikipedia, or any other Wikimedia site since I have a widget that does it for me. TFA says "browser" not OS, so who really knows.
So, where is the evidence of Android raining down destruction upon iOS?
Who cares? I don't want either to "win", as that wouldn't be good for me, the customer. Sales figures say Android has a greater market share, I'll take them over Wikipedia-based, and anecdotal, inference. Also maybe there isn't a big market for your SDK on Android, it is a different ecosystem after all. Maybe there is something similar that does a better job, or is more popular. Perhaps no one perceives a need. Perhaps you didn't market it right to a different audience... There is a plethora of factors that can contribute to discrepancies between platforms. Imagine the differences between products on Linux, Windows, and OS X... Different markets.
Why does everyone get to hot and bothered about whose "winning"? Why should I care. I like my Android devices, my friends like their iOS gidgets... Oh no, people prefer different things than me! Heathens.
No, Reagan wasn't all bad, but he started the end of American industry, and the whole "help the rich, fuck the poor, everyone magically benefits" train that we've followed since (Democrat or Republican), he increased military pork, decided we need more religion forced down our throat, started a fair share of unethical (if not illegal) actions in South America. Lets not forget the Iran Contra fiasco, and the continuation of Soviet paranoia. Oh, or the "war on drugs" and all the nice things that came from that. Or the fact that the economy wasn't really a bed of roses, either. Hell, I'm not saying he's the worst we've had, he was just pretty bad. Perhaps no worse than anyone since.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Odd synchronicity there... I just watched a video about that phrase this morning... Odd.
True, but it's going to have to compete with free, or more convenient alternatives that people are getting used to. I don't see Apple winning here, their prices are rather insane, and their rentals are overly restrictive. The networks will also fight anyone who manages to find a cheap easy way to compete with torrents and streaming sites.
If someone could clear those hurdles, though, there would be some nice money. Hell, if someone could do it, I would buy it.
For awhile I thought Hulu had the magic sauce... they managed to cut my... alternate ways of acquiring media, to basically zero. I also started watching more television (i.e. ads) than I had in almost a decade. Then they killed it. We need someone to go be iTunes or Amazon (between them I haven't torrented a song in a long time), convenient, fairly priced, and nonrestrictive.
I could use a car analogy, but they've become trite.
NCA;DR (no car analogy).
Seriously though... I pretty much agree with you. I really don't understand the partisan nature of Apple/Android discussions (well, I do, cognitive dissonance, and good old fashioned trolling). But then again I've been railing against the OS wars for decades now.
Apple TV isn't going to do much. I don't know a single person, even among my Apple loyal friends, who care. TV isn't exciting. And Apple TV is just copying many other solutions. The whole idea feels dead. The internet is going to win. Torrents are going to win. Something open is the only hope for re-monetizing TV, the door is already open, and the cows are long gone. The mythical 7" iPad isn't going to do it either, since the 7" market is one of commodity, not luxury (Apple's forte). Amazon, Google, and (to a much lesser extent) Barnes and Noble have carved out that niche, and made the discussion more about cost than functionality. 7" isn't status, its a toy.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Apple had something new up their sleeves though. They have some smart people there, and if some slobs on /. can see it, they saw it a year or two ago.
Though right now I'm pretty happy with the market, and for the first time I hope that Microsoft can compete in it. Having three equally large, and equally powerful players, with different strategies and strengths, excites me, as a customer. Competition breeds innovation. As a customer, you'd have to be insane or stupid to actually hope that one team wins, since you, inevitably, lose.
They make some nice cases for tablets these days. My tablet can have a nice bottom dock that pretty much turns it into a 10" netbook, and protects the whole thing. The default soft-cover for iPads is very nice, and protects them well. Microsoft's surface has a very nice screen protector, which doubles as a keyboard. This is pretty much a solved problem. When I do go places with my tablet, rarely since I generally have better things to do, or am carrying a book in a more convenient form-factor, I stick in my old leather laptop case, that I used with my long gone iBook (bought for $40 on a vacation to Milwaukee).
[1] - I don't believe there actually is a tablet market. Just an iPad market. No one wants tablets, just something that makes them look cool and hip. Like everyone else.
I doubt this. I own a tablet, and I have very rarely actually taken it outside of my house. It replaced my laptop for my "morning coffee on the patio" computer. I was very much in the market for a tablet, meaning there is a tablet market. I would have bought an iPad, but for the price it had less stats (i.e. future-proofing), and didn't really fit my sense of values or aesthetics.
Though amusingly earlier this weekend I drove a friend to get an Android tablet (he had an iPad, but sold it since it wasn't really as useful as he wanted, or not as useful to justify the price) just by leaving it in the living room and having him pick it up and play with it.
I really doubt an Apple 7" tablet is going to really do much, depending on price of course. A big tablet is a luxury item, a small tablet is a commodity item. At that size, people will buy based on price, as evident by Amazon's tablet trouncing everyone, only based on price and marketing. Again, depending on price, Google's tablet will trounce Apple's. Apple will make more money though, and will be covered more (as usual).
The Surface, sadly, will probably flop. Which is sad, since it really is one of the only Microsoft products that have made me the slightest bit interested. If they released an x86 version that was cross-operative with the desktop, and kept the price low, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat. MS, obviously will screw it up somehow, though. Hell, it might be doomed just because its MS branded, among Apple and Google, MS is plain unsexy. They conjure up images of the crappy, locked down, boring, PC you are forced to use at work.
vapor ware
I doubt that means what you think it means.
A product with a definite release date, and working existent models is not vaporware. It is unreleased hardware.
There is always further to fall (I didn't think we could get worse than Reagan... And yet we continually managed).
I found a couple places around the web, but being that I'm not sure of their legality I'm not going to share, sorry. But there is a place out there which has almost his complete works in .epub and .mobi formats. Another poster said that Amazon has free Kindle editions of his books, if your a Kindle type person.
If you're a bit diligent with your Google-fu, I'm sure you can find them all without too much fuss.
Hardly any ACTION. It was all a thought experiment, TALKING about the development of the world. Of course, I'm a fan of the way cyberpunk explains hardly NOTHING, and just throws you into the action.
I don't find that a fault really. There are times when some nice thought experiments are nice, and there are times when action are nice. I generally prefer the former, most of the time. I suppose it boils down to taste, and what you want to get out of reading. I like finishing a book, and spending another hour or so sitting on the patio contemplating what I just read.
City wasn't really a novel, though. It was a collection of short stories, with a narrator.
It was originally published as a series of short stories, with "bridge" bits. I'm okay with that format, one of my other favorites books is Jeff Noon's (author of Vurt) Pixel Juice, which is a collection of very loosely related short stories (in his surrealistic sci-fi bent) that only really relate when you sit around and contemplate them. The more you do so, the more the collection gels into a (semi)cohesive whole.
I've poked around a couple of those torrents, and generally found them to be of terrible quality on the whole. Most of them are really bad OCR jobs, completely lacking formatting, and systematically replacing letters with similar looking numbers, or visa versa.
Don't get me wrong, this is a flavor of piracy I'm completely unopposed to (no one is profiting from unpublished books), but I really wish someone would just purchase up all the rights to classic sci-fi novels (and classic mystery as well, another genre with a short memory), and make them into affordable, high quality, ebooks, and/or print on demand copies.
Actually that would make for an awesome nonprofit. Sell the books for a variable price, or for donations, use the money to buy more rights. I'm sure plenty of vintage sci-fi buffs would fork over decent amounts of cash to keep it running. That is always something that bugged me, how our culture sort of fades away unless someone decides it worth it to keep running. The amount of fall-off is kind of frightening, the things I loved I might not be able to share with my kids someday.
If I was king for a day, I'd make copyright lapse if a work is unpublished for a certain period of time. You have ten years, lets say, and if you don't do anything with it, it is magically public domain.
People in the Upper Midwest in the 50's you mean. We've got robots, we've got a spaceport in our backyard, we've got talking dogs and mutants... want to go fishin', or just sit on the porch sipping a tasty beverage?
I suppose that is what I loved about him, his complete lack of pretension. All of his protagonists (except the mysterious space mutants) reminded me of my father, or my relatives in Wisconsin. Most of the books of the time's protagonists were very much Zap Brannigan/Flash Gordon types, which works, but doesn't feel quite as real.
I've been meaning to read that for years. When I was a kid it was perpetually stolen or missing from my local library, so I never got the chance.
I was about to purchase the ebook version, and realized that its $7.62, and decided to write it on my book list instead. Almost eight dollars for a book from 1956?! I'm guessing this book is suffering from the same problem as many other old sci-fi authors, limited reprints in small editions. I've been trying to find James P. Blaylock's (his pre-steampunk fetish stuff is also underappreciated) Homunculus for years, but for some reason no one has ever decided to republish it.
Apparently they are, in February of next year. And now its on Kindle... One of the few times I've kicked myself for siding with Amazon's competition.
I had a differing experience. I pretty much thought I outgrew all of classic science fiction I read as a kid, and completely ignored it for more "serious" books. Awhile ago I realized that I was stupid, and decided to go back and reread a lot of the old books I remember. I reread City, and loved it for very different reasons than I remember liking it for.
I can see your point though, and I'm guessing the reasons that I found it still enjoyable and the reasons that you find it dated are the same. I find the simple, innocent, world he created to be fantastically refreshing. Its the future, blah blah, and yet we sit around on the porch enjoying tea with an old dog and some strangers. Its grand, but everyone acts like a rural midwesterner in the 50s. I find that charming now, when everything has to be dark, potentially cataclysmic, and fast. It has all the naive conventions of the time, sentient robots, habitable inhabitable planets (colonizing Jupiter is dumb.), most of the science in book is pretty much fantasy.
But there is something nice about it, to me at least. Its a nice throw back. All of Simak sort of falls into this, where its all very folksy and nostalgic, while talking about the "future" at the same time. At the very least it is completely unlike anything we have being written today.
I might be off the mark a bit for your feelings, though. I don't mean to stick words in your mouth, so excuse me if I did.
In the same binge, I reread a fair share of old cyberpunk, and that is a genre that aged relatively badly. The future is now, more banal than ever.
By the way, speaking of throwbacks, this is the first topic in a long long time where I felt as if I was actually on Slashdot, and not some strange rabid political and current events blog. I really hope we also get a nice case mod discussion going as well.
Clifford Simak.
Admittedly I'm biased, since the first actual novel discovered on my own and read was one of his. City is also one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written. Sadly no one I know, even vintage sci-fi buffs, have ever read anything he ever wrote. This could be because its getting harder and harder to actually find his books anymore.
Like Lem, he suffers from the absolute lack of reprints. I own a translation of all of his novels, and it took over 8 years to accrue them all. Simak is in the same boat, I have some of his novels that I got in the late 80's used, and have never seen since. And I looked, since many of them were presumed lost (actually hidden in an attic somewhere for over 10 years).
Though I did get some people to go read him when I told them that Stephen King's Under the Dome was a badly written, never ending (with hackneyed unattributed T.S. Eliot references/quotes) , version of Simak's All Flesh is Grass.
Lem, though, at least, got two movies (one shallow and exciting, the other deep and boring). Simak probably will never be remembered after another generation. This somewhat depresses me.
I feel the need to go find a used bookstore and browse the old sci-fi section.
And people point to the period of time after, and talk about them in the same way. Which supports my point; there is no rule.
We're arguing at cross purposes here. My point is merely that sexual mores are transitory and arbitrary, and were vastly different for a very long period of time (longer than the period of time that has passed since the birth of Christ). There also is a slight flavor of mocking involved, hence pointing out their influence on modern thought, and their direct influence on the handful of zealots who dislike pretty much anything that anyone who isn't them do.
It also highlights the terrible harmfulness of deviant sex acts.
democrat party... republican party
You mean "Republic party", right?
Evolution is a process of changing. Our diets can change too.
Evolution is the process of adaptation to the environment, so you can have more children.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I get annoyed because many vegans/vegetarians are almost evangelical in their fervor, and have to tell everyone that they are vegetarians, and how everyone in the universe should also be. If you don't want to eat meat, fine, I don't care. If you keep telling me not to, then I'll get a bit pissy at you. Also, the fact that many of the veggies in this discussion are idiots, and don't know much about human history ("we never ate meat!"), or saying that a diet with meat in it is somehow detrimental.
I am amused by the vehemence with which people insist that vegetarian diets are insufficient, or require so much planning as to be impractical. This just is not true. That doesn't make vegetarianism obligatory or anything. Jeez.
I'm sure they are perfectly sufficient (I went to school with several vegetarians and pescetarians who were fine), and they do require a fair bit of planning... But it is possible. Sadly in the west it is not a diet for poor people, though. It is doable other places, but here it isn't. Or at least it isn't enough variety to keep it nice. I had a girlfriend who quit a 10 year vegitarian binge because she moved down in income a bit and got sick of the monotony (and being forced to order pilaf at restaurants). She also got sick of me eating better looking food with meat in it. She did wind up at the hospital after trying meat though, since he system stopped being able to break it down as well as an omnivore like me.
Some vegetarians (not the majority, but the loud idiotic ones, who really think anyone should give two shits about what they like eating) do think it should be obligatory. Or think that dietary choices somehow make them superior.. I think its probably just cognitive dissonance rearing its ugly head again.. You made a major life-style choice, and sacrificed a lot of dietary variety, so obviously it must be the best possible choice, and everyone else who chose different is inferior.
Again, some, not all. A smart omnivorous diet is just as healthy as a smart vegetarian diet. A stupid one is just as bad, no matter what dietary road you want to take.
Perhaps... But I'd probably always pick quality of life over quantity of life. Sure, I'd shave a couple years off to have a nice monthly steak, with a decent red, washed down with a tasty bit of aged port. Or lamb... wonderful lamb... Damn, now I'm hungry... Perhaps tomorrow I'll be having some nice simple Irish stew.
I also doubt we're much sicker. Or at least I haven't seen any credible evidence of it. I further doubt that if we have, its attributable to meat in general. We have a lot of nasty chemicals floating around, we eat pretty much garbage food. I'd more attribute this, if, again, true, to McDonalds and Cheetos, than to meat in general. Also Americans completely lack portion control...
We haven't gotten smarter- just sicker.
And yet we live much, much, longer....
We have canine teeth. Our first tools were for killing and skinning animals.
Q.E.D.
Well, statistically speaking, since approx. 50% of Americans are opposed to same-sex marriage, you can no longer ever buy anything at all, because at least _someone_ whose salary is paid by the business probably opposes same sex marriage.
I'm sure my purchases fund all sorts of people I disagree with. As long as they keep their mouths shut, and don't make it an issue, then I really don't care. But now its an issue, and things are different.
I personally don't even get it... People, for some reason, seem to find it objectionable that I would choose to, or choose not to give money to someone based on personal criteria, but don't really find it odd that people are doing the same to support the same criteria. Can we also poke at the people who are doing the "Support this Chicken place based on their CEO making himself superior to vast swaths of the population based on an old book"?
I also don't give money to Sony (or at least directly, I'm sure their products are inside many things I own), or Walmart... Is this also odd?
I'm not saying all people who oppose it are all hate mongerers, or bigots. There are some valid reasons not to, not based on religion. And I do think that the "rights" community goes a bit far, demanding marriage or nothing at all (even when often the legal differences between a "union" and a "marriage" are purely semantic). But I've gotten sick of the debate, and it has started to piss me off. Let the gay community have their damn cake, so we can just move on as a society. This issue is also a big Religion and Government issue to me, when people forget that their religious beliefs are only valid to them, and try to force them on others, I get mad.
Is it your view that when someone disagrees with your position he is a hate monger?
It depends on the position. If you disagree with my taste in ice cream, prefered economic practices, political preferences, or pretty much anything else... No. Thats fine. If you disagree about the equality of man, and the worth of individuals, then yes, you might be a hatemonger. I view that the current stance of many Americans towards people with different sexual preferences are more akin to racism than valid differences of opinion. Restricting people's rights based on what they do behind closed doors is not the same as liking Ron Paul (I disagree with both), but I can respect the latter, and not the former.
Restricting rights and freedoms, and forcing your views on others is very different than mere politics or disimular ethics.
Similarly, I respect the Muslim religion, and their choice to follow it, but disagree (strongly) with the treatment of women in many of their communities. I respect Christians, until they start trying to force their values on others.
So, the more you bitch and moan about Chick-Fil-A and the worse the things are you say about them and accuse them of being, the more you show that this is nothing more than feigned outrage bullshit. You don't hate Chick-Fil-A because of the CEO's views. You pretend to hate Chick-Fil-A because you think it's cool and hating Chick-Fil-A is in fashion. You are the worst kind of bigot.
So, I'm a bigot because I'm speaking with my wallet, and not supporting views I can't stand, and find generally destructive to society? Am I also a bigot because I don't buy Sony products, or vote for the majority of Republicans? As a customer, or voter, I can decide who I give money or votes too, and I can have any criteria I want for deciding.
I also wouldn't eat at a restaurant owned by a Klansman, or Neo-Nazi. Am I still a bigot?
Did you vote for Obama in 2008? Remember, he said the EXACT same thing...
I, sadly, did. But the thing with politics is that there are other metrics and issues to consider. People who vote on one issue are morons ("He hates abortion, but want to kill everyone in the world? SOLD!"). I voted for Obama because I was hoping he'd stop the civil abuses of Bush, I voted for him because he might actually change our fiscal policy towards something that benefits Americans. I voted for him because I hoped he'd stop killing our young people for no reason. I voted for him because I wanted to stop being somewhat embarrassed for being an American, and having to apologize to all my European and Middle Eastern friends. I also voted for him because I had suspicions that he was actually an undercover atheist. I didn't agree with him on his stance on Gay marriage. But I didn't agree with McCain/Palin either. There was no one with a chance of winning that stood anywhere close to having what I view as an acceptable solution, meaning that it wasn't really a consideration at the time.
Also, Obama didn't say, basically, that "God hates fags". Sure, it wasn't as Phelpsian, but the gist was basically that. How is it bigoted to decide not to give them money?
I also don't buy Sony products (as much as possible), or shop at Walmart, am I bigot for that too?
And no, I don't agree with the mayors saying they'll block Chickfila from opening business in their town. That is a very different issue than me, and individual, choosing not to buy their overpriced (but admittedly tasty) food.