But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale."
At what point does this copy Neuromancer? I've read both of these books several times and I can't see your point. Neuromancer was dark and brooding. Snow Crash was actually rather upbeat. There stories weren't even really similar except for them both falling into the Quest theme of stories (if that's your point then Neuromancer is ripping off the Lord of the Rings triology). In respects to Shadowrun, it is itself a mix of several different styles and is meant to be, it's a game. As for lumpy and stale? This was the book that many critics give credit for breathing life into what was seen as a dying genre. And it flowed quite well, except for the ending but I'm willing to forgive it due to the rest of the book. And I hardly see how it was generic. The Shadowrun books... that's generic tripe.
As for the rest of his work, go read Cryptonomicon (it's finally in paperback) or Zodiac (really good and one of his first if a bit hard to find). Read Diamond Age but be prepared to be confused. It's pretty dense with the language at points and the plot jerk a little every now and then.
To sum up, I must say that I've never read a Stephenson book that I disliked. And Diamond Age is worth it just for the line near the end about the barbarian princess... I still get shivery reading it.
I have heard that the easiest way to acutally have a legal copyright is to put the documents in an envelope and mail them to yourself. Go figure.
Actually I remember reading somewhere (and I wish I could remember where it was) that this doesn't really hold up in court. Too easy to fake. You could just send a non-sealed envelope through the mail and then seal a document in it later and then try and claim copyright over something that might not be yours. It's not that hard to copyright something anyway, and as someone else here pointed out, not that expensive.
You forget. You are generally making music available off of your machine too so you are offering something in return. Unless you have it set where others can't get at it then you're a bad member of the black and white market.
Also, some information *does* want to be freely available like the whois database, or the song lyrics servers, and these are freely contributed, and unlawfully (in my opinion) restrained. Run little ones and zeros! Run and frolic in the wild!
If I might steal a line from a movie to explain this... "It doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it just runs programs."
Unless the whois database and the lyric servers have gained sentience (in which case please let us know) then they can't want anything. They do simply what they are programmed to do and nothing else. They are not self aware and therefore can not have wants, needs, or emotions.
Napster functions exactly like a black market, except that the price is solely your time spent finding a good copy of what you want. Napster functions like the black market... because it is the black market.
People have this huge grandiose idea of what the "black market" is. They have these imagines of a back alley rendezvous with some shady character and some hired muscle or maybe a non-descript warehouse filled with stolen merchandise. In fact just about everyone has delt with the black market. Ever drink alcohol underage? How about smoked underage? Looked at nudie magazines when you weren't legal? Bought a car stereo from your buddies older brother who swore "Yeah, it's cool." (alright, that's more grey market) Congratulations, you're part of the black market. All it is people buying and selling (or giving away) things that the powers that be don't want them to have or want to restrict access to or want to charge high prices to sell. Nothing mysterious or mystical about it. So yes, Napster is the black market no matter how it's presented.
Actually nuclear power isn't as bad as people make it out to be. The Navy has been using nuclear powered craft for decades now and has never had a bad problem. Why? Because they hold the boats and ships that have them to a really high standard of quality and maintence. Now if they can just get that kind of mindset for the civilian run plants.
Run cables from the space station to ground. It's only a few thousand miles from geo-sync to the ground. Well, ~22,000 miles, but it is still something to think about. We run cable for ~3000 miles under the Atlantic, why not into orbit? The power generated by the solar station could be transmitted down the cables, for us to use. No frying of major population centers by evil geniuses.
Right up to the point of where the cable breaks or some terror group blows it and the thing wraps around the earth at meteoric speeds and brings about the next Ice Age as well as wasting everything in it's path and bringing a end to humanity as we know it. Give me the microwave power beams any day.
Or the government can (I know you yanks will hate this) legislate that, if you want to run a fuel provision station, you will be taxed exorbitantly (pollution tax) unless you also provide alternative fueling
Why should I hate that? I hope they do something like this. I would love to have a car running off of hydrogen. For those of you who might not know it is possible to make hydrogen in your back yard (yes clean enough to run vehicles and such on). And it's not un-Godly expensive to do.
I doubt many people will argue that Ford is better than Audi or Volvo. Retarded indeed. Actually depends on the vehicle. The Crown Victoria is a good car and tough. The only drawback being it's huge engine that sucks gas. But I digress...
Not true. Patrick Stewart has done many stage productions after Star Trek but you don't here about them much because he has been dismissed as just "that Star Trek guy."
Or how about buying a house, insuring it for more then it's worth and then having some body come and burn it to the ground?
Insurance fraud has been around for a long time. In the US, the states have offices to handle this kind of thing and when it starts getting offered in that state then the Fraud division will hire on some computer admins to help them. They might be slow but they are rarely stupid.
D) How to pay me in order to get anything productive done on a computer. Isn't that just the truth? I ended up being a copy editor on my eight grade newspaper because I was one of the very few people who had the knowledge to run our Mac's word processing program well enough to edit with it. I ended up making money from the other student reporters to type up their work for them that I had to edit anyway.
Re:Why shouldn't I be able to have designer kids?
on
Frankenstein Time
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· Score: 1
Boy, I wasn't clear on that one. Let me try again. What I'm saying is even if you can do it then you are still going to be in pretty much the same boat with a few differences.
Re:Why shouldn't I be able to have designer kids?
on
Frankenstein Time
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· Score: 2
When it comes right down to it genetics play a small role in who we become. The biggest player in the mix is of course your enviroment. It's what's taught you and that you teach yourself. It's what you see in others that you like and dislike and decide to change in yourself. It's the little random events that seem so small but change your life forever. Genetics might play a part, say, in making you retarded but even then you play a role for others, perhaps by showing others that compassion is a good trait.
And the question remains. If you take a gene and make your child a great artist/sports star/scientist what happens when all the other parents do the same? What happens when everyone is one of the "Beautiful People"?
The question concerning science has always been "Can we do it?" The question is becoming more and more "Should we do it?"
In this case I say screw the FAA and any other groups. Launch it. It's not like this thing is that big (from the description). Load it in the back of a U-Haul truck or something and take it to a launch site.
Why can't this man risk blowing himself to kingdom come as long as he doesn't risk anyone else (that doesn't consent to it at least)? If he succeeds then he's a pioneer. If he doesn't then he's a fine rain of ash over the desert. More power to him.
Yep. It's Turner's (the mercenary) brother, Rudy (I've read that book way too many times). I don't remember it saying specifically that he played with genetic engineering but it was strongly hinted at that's for sure.
What I don't get is why someone would be storing white noise on their server. I mean come on. The argument that it's not encrypted data and just white noise is kind of a flimsy one to use against inspectors or what not. Why in the world would you be wasting storage space with white noise unless it's something important? Maybe I just don't get it.
How? Are you saying that four people dead is the same as, say eight million people dead? Any loss of life is bad. But to be brutally honest with ourselves we have to admit that just a few dead people does not equate to the same as hundreds or thousands dead.
Actually I don't let something that happened almost forty years before I was born keep me up at night. As for being a bastard... yep that's me. Naive? Doubt it.
Actually one of those people who were in those camps went on to be in Congress. Others went on to be successful. If we were as bad as the Chinesse then I doubt we would have allowed one of these people to be elected to one of the higher offices in our government.
Yes we are. McCarthy is widely recognized as a paranoid fool. The Asian concentration camps were bad but no were close to the Nazi camps. At least you can speak your mind in America and publish just about anything you can think of. You can own weapons (to a extent) and gather peacefully. We are much better then China.
Slashdot Mirror
But what a derivative piece of generic "cyberpunk" tripe! I couldn't figure out why anyone got excited over that piece of crap. "Lets see: two parts Neuromancer; one part Shadowrun; mix until lumpy and stale."
At what point does this copy Neuromancer? I've read both of these books several times and I can't see your point. Neuromancer was dark and brooding. Snow Crash was actually rather upbeat. There stories weren't even really similar except for them both falling into the Quest theme of stories (if that's your point then Neuromancer is ripping off the Lord of the Rings triology). In respects to Shadowrun, it is itself a mix of several different styles and is meant to be, it's a game. As for lumpy and stale? This was the book that many critics give credit for breathing life into what was seen as a dying genre. And it flowed quite well, except for the ending but I'm willing to forgive it due to the rest of the book. And I hardly see how it was generic. The Shadowrun books... that's generic tripe.
As for the rest of his work, go read Cryptonomicon (it's finally in paperback) or Zodiac (really good and one of his first if a bit hard to find). Read Diamond Age but be prepared to be confused. It's pretty dense with the language at points and the plot jerk a little every now and then.
To sum up, I must say that I've never read a Stephenson book that I disliked. And Diamond Age is worth it just for the line near the end about the barbarian princess... I still get shivery reading it.
I think it would be a good think to copyright Moses's work.
Hate to point this out, but Moses never wrote anything in the Bible. Some anonymous scribe did (A.C., a long tradition).
I have heard that the easiest way to acutally have a legal copyright is to put the documents in an envelope and mail them to yourself. Go figure.
Actually I remember reading somewhere (and I wish I could remember where it was) that this doesn't really hold up in court. Too easy to fake. You could just send a non-sealed envelope through the mail and then seal a document in it later and then try and claim copyright over something that might not be yours. It's not that hard to copyright something anyway, and as someone else here pointed out, not that expensive.
You forget. You are generally making music available off of your machine too so you are offering something in return. Unless you have it set where others can't get at it then you're a bad member of the black and white market.
Also, some information *does* want to be freely available like the whois database, or the song lyrics servers, and these are freely contributed, and unlawfully (in my opinion) restrained.
Run little ones and zeros! Run and frolic in the wild!
If I might steal a line from a movie to explain this... "It doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it just runs programs."
Unless the whois database and the lyric servers have gained sentience (in which case please let us know) then they can't want anything. They do simply what they are programmed to do and nothing else. They are not self aware and therefore can not have wants, needs, or emotions.
Napster functions exactly like a black market, except that the price is solely your time spent finding a good copy of what you want.
Napster functions like the black market... because it is the black market.
People have this huge grandiose idea of what the "black market" is. They have these imagines of a back alley rendezvous with some shady character and some hired muscle or maybe a non-descript warehouse filled with stolen merchandise. In fact just about everyone has delt with the black market. Ever drink alcohol underage? How about smoked underage? Looked at nudie magazines when you weren't legal? Bought a car stereo from your buddies older brother who swore "Yeah, it's cool." (alright, that's more grey market) Congratulations, you're part of the black market. All it is people buying and selling (or giving away) things that the powers that be don't want them to have or want to restrict access to or want to charge high prices to sell. Nothing mysterious or mystical about it. So yes, Napster is the black market no matter how it's presented.
Actually nuclear power isn't as bad as people make it out to be. The Navy has been using nuclear powered craft for decades now and has never had a bad problem. Why? Because they hold the boats and ships that have them to a really high standard of quality and maintence. Now if they can just get that kind of mindset for the civilian run plants.
Run cables from the space station to ground. It's only a few thousand miles from geo-sync to the ground. Well, ~22,000 miles, but it is still something to think about. We run cable for ~3000 miles under the Atlantic, why not into orbit? The power generated by the solar station could be transmitted down the cables, for us to use. No frying of major population centers by evil geniuses.
Right up to the point of where the cable breaks or some terror group blows it and the thing wraps around the earth at meteoric speeds and brings about the next Ice Age as well as wasting everything in it's path and bringing a end to humanity as we know it. Give me the microwave power beams any day.
Or the government can (I know you yanks will hate this) legislate that, if you want to run a fuel provision station, you will be taxed exorbitantly (pollution tax) unless you also provide alternative fueling
Why should I hate that? I hope they do something like this. I would love to have a car running off of hydrogen. For those of you who might not know it is possible to make hydrogen in your back yard (yes clean enough to run vehicles and such on). And it's not un-Godly expensive to do.
I doubt many people will argue that Ford is better than Audi or Volvo. Retarded indeed.
Actually depends on the vehicle. The Crown Victoria is a good car and tough. The only drawback being it's huge engine that sucks gas. But I digress...
Not true. Patrick Stewart has done many stage productions after Star Trek but you don't here about them much because he has been dismissed as just "that Star Trek guy."
Or how about buying a house, insuring it for more then it's worth and then having some body come and burn it to the ground?
Insurance fraud has been around for a long time. In the US, the states have offices to handle this kind of thing and when it starts getting offered in that state then the Fraud division will hire on some computer admins to help them. They might be slow but they are rarely stupid.
D) How to pay me in order to get anything productive done on a computer.
Isn't that just the truth? I ended up being a copy editor on my eight grade newspaper because I was one of the very few people who had the knowledge to run our Mac's word processing program well enough to edit with it. I ended up making money from the other student reporters to type up their work for them that I had to edit anyway.
Boy, I wasn't clear on that one. Let me try again. What I'm saying is even if you can do it then you are still going to be in pretty much the same boat with a few differences.
When it comes right down to it genetics play a small role in who we become. The biggest player in the mix is of course your enviroment. It's what's taught you and that you teach yourself. It's what you see in others that you like and dislike and decide to change in yourself. It's the little random events that seem so small but change your life forever. Genetics might play a part, say, in making you retarded but even then you play a role for others, perhaps by showing others that compassion is a good trait.
And the question remains. If you take a gene and make your child a great artist/sports star/scientist what happens when all the other parents do the same? What happens when everyone is one of the "Beautiful People"?
The question concerning science has always been "Can we do it?" The question is becoming more and more "Should we do it?"
In this case I say screw the FAA and any other groups. Launch it. It's not like this thing is that big (from the description). Load it in the back of a U-Haul truck or something and take it to a launch site.
Why can't this man risk blowing himself to kingdom come as long as he doesn't risk anyone else (that doesn't consent to it at least)? If he succeeds then he's a pioneer. If he doesn't then he's a fine rain of ash over the desert. More power to him.
Easy. They'll change their minds.
Yep. It's Turner's (the mercenary) brother, Rudy (I've read that book way too many times). I don't remember it saying specifically that he played with genetic engineering but it was strongly hinted at that's for sure.
What I don't get is why someone would be storing white noise on their server. I mean come on. The argument that it's not encrypted data and just white noise is kind of a flimsy one to use against inspectors or what not. Why in the world would you be wasting storage space with white noise unless it's something important? Maybe I just don't get it.
How? Are you saying that four people dead is the same as, say eight million people dead? Any loss of life is bad. But to be brutally honest with ourselves we have to admit that just a few dead people does not equate to the same as hundreds or thousands dead.
Actually I don't let something that happened almost forty years before I was born keep me up at night. As for being a bastard... yep that's me. Naive? Doubt it.
Actually one of those people who were in those camps went on to be in Congress. Others went on to be successful. If we were as bad as the Chinesse then I doubt we would have allowed one of these people to be elected to one of the higher offices in our government.
Never said they were expendable. Simply said that this is no where near as bad as what happened in China. Read again, This was a horrible thing...
Yes we are. McCarthy is widely recognized as a paranoid fool. The Asian concentration camps were bad but no were close to the Nazi camps. At least you can speak your mind in America and publish just about anything you can think of. You can own weapons (to a extent) and gather peacefully. We are much better then China.
The person who said that is Neal Stephenson. It was a interview with him on Salon.