Why has Snowcrash not been made into a movie? Not because of any conspiracy, but because it's in creative purgatory somewhere.
I recommend seeing The Player for an insight into the process. The protagonist, a studio executive, spends all day listening to movie pitches, dozens every day. Of these, a handful are greenlighted in a year. It's like guessing which sperm cell will make it to fertilize the egg.
I just can't understand how we got three (poor) Dune and no Mars Trilogy, miniseries or film.
Mars was in the air a few years ago: Red Planet, Mission to Mars, Ghosts of Mars all came out in quick succession. All had pretty dumb plots, but I still enjoyed seeing what looked like a real Martin landscape. (Mars itself was the protagonist of the books rather than the rather boring people.) I think elements of RGB Mars inspired at least some of these, KSR may even have got paid something, but obviously little recognisable of his plots was in these. Nevertheless, you can enjoy them as illustrations to the books, like the Dune movie, and ignore the stories.
Have you seen Verhoeven's Starship Troopers? Imagine that film without all the political bullshit that nobody involved understood anyway. WHAT?
The political bullshit was the whole damn novel!
But Heinlein's political bullshit was 180 degrees from Verhoeven's. He got away with ironic fascism in Robocop, but failed in almost every way in Troopers.
THAT'S why I never finished Cryptonomicon. No editing.
It's worth the effort. Though I was startled at the typos that made many of the code examples wrong; how could a major publisher not bother to have these checked? Stephenson has a section on his web page saying he doesn't need anyone to tell him about that any more. I don't know if it really was fixed in later editions.
The real REH Conan wasn't the dumb as a board Ahnold
Tarzan has suffered the same fate in most of his screen versions, especially the Johnny Weismuller series that became the definitive version for many. Though Greystoke came close. In one of the later novels Tarzan goes to Hollywood and auditions for the Tarzan role; he's told he has no chance.
I would love to see some of Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan riffs filmed: action, humour, sex, ancient conspiracies, pulp heroes.
how awfully clever the screenwriter must think he is. i'm not sure if i'd like the book, but after the movie i don't think i'll bother finding out.
Little of Douglas Adams's writing survived into the movie, so you really don't have any basis for judging his abilities. Personally, I found the original radio series the best, and funniest, version.
thats what Taiwan did, if I remember, they were the original govt of China, but the "Cultural Revolutionaries" kicked em out. Now they rule the democratic Taiwan, which the UN recognizes as a sovereign nation
Wrong; wrong.
I could explain the facts, but why not look it up for yourself and learn something before posting about things you have no knowledge of.
ironically, this sort of media image manipulation actually is China simply following other countries' leads.
Credit where it's due -- it was the communists who were early masters at media manipulation -- they make sure to have complete control of it for a start. Our "Orwellian" vocabualry is based on George Orwell's work, and he was mostly writing metaphorically about Stalinist Russia. As for China, just read any memoir of the Cultural Revolution. But in both cases it seems Orwell's vision of "a boot stamping on a human face--for ever" was thankfully not fulfilled. No matter how robotic the populaces seemed, underneath they knew quite well what their rulers were and after a few decades put them in their places. China's government is much less powerful now than it was in Mao's era; though still powerful enough to be feared.
What indication do you have that Word Perfect used a very rich set of API calls ?iirc it is just a canvas and some menus.
WYSIWYG word processors aren't quite DTP apps, but they have to interact closely with the GDI, both screen and printer drivers. I know that the Windows DTP apps I use are unstable with specific video drivers, for instance. DOS Wordperfect, OOTH, does work quite well in a DOS emulation on Linux, using a VGA display and its own printer drivers.
Is that the truth? Can you go to Google Images and get the same pictures that everyone else gets when they search for "Tiananmen Square"?
More precisely, Hong Kong, which isn't censored as in the Mainland. There though you can use Google.com, but often it's very slow and naughty queries usually time out.
Is this a law that has a very clear loophole prior to even getting going?
The whole idea is to create a loophole so that the Chinese government cannot order data to be divulged; as it always could if the servers are physically in China. And so this would be revealed quickly the next time China wanted to track down someone who posted politically incorrect thinking. (And in China, "politically incorrect" is not a joke, it'll earn you prison for 10 years.)
Bill Clinton, who helped extend them "most favored nation" trading status
And what about that pinko Nixon -- he kowtowed to Mao in 1972.
And that fellow-traveller Reagan: "...a few countries must obtain an annual presidential waiver or extension of a waiver to continue their NTR status. China is the most important country in this group which must obtain an annual waiver to maintain NTR. The waiver for China has been in effect since 1980."
Even USA Today has it right in their headline "Bill would keep servers out of China". Slashdot appears even more tabloid with this headline implying the companies wouldn't be able to operate there. Guess what; I'm in China, I use US servers most of the time.
Yahoo has surrendered personal data on two dissidents at least that have lead to their arrests. Yahoo claims they had no choice. Well, if the data wasn't in China, they wouldn't have had that excuse, though they probably would have folded anyway.
His point basically was that MS will bulldoze its version of an Internet desktop to become standard, with their famous attention to security. Maybe overstated a tad, but nowhere in the current FA were the issues of data security, from accident, malice, government, hackers, big companies... addressed.
You would hand-write out the things you needed to do. Then you'd carefully type those into the keyboard.
Luxury. When I were a lad, we had to write our programs on mark-sense cards with a pencil, then queue up to feed them into a card reader, which would randomly chew them up and send you back to the end of the line while you made new cards several times till you lucked out and it got through the entoer stack. Then you went to find your printout from a huge noisy line printer which spewed paper into a large canvas bag, when it didn't jam. Two years later we were allowed to use vi, and we were grateful for t'privilege.
OK, I understand what you mean now. Basically, marking a "specific" individual as a security feature is pretty stupid, as any applied marker (tattoo, brand, etc) can be more or less easily forged, as TFA points out in this case. More secure is to use biometrics, retina or fingerprint scans, voice, etc. Though these can be defeated too. RF chips are just a cheapskate way to try to implement biometrics. Good for keeping track of livestock and pets, less so for people.
The reason that google is being targetted is because they claim that their motto is "don't do evil."
Yahoo is criticised for handing over the identities of users, leading to their arrests and imprisonment. Microsoft for deleting blogs mentioning democracy. Cisco for developing censoring technology. None of these claim not to be evil (avoiding obvious MS-related jibes.)
This is essentially the basis of the novel Tau Zero by Robert Silverberg. Mildly entertaining.
Tau Zero was by Poul Anderson. The ship never impacted anything, so I don't see the connection myself; most SF ships are relativistic if not FTL. More relevant perhaps Kzanol's ship in Niven's World of Ptaavs which crashed into Pluto at close to lightspeed, knocking it out of orbit around Neptune into its current orbit, a billion or so years ago.
An instant attack would essentially nullify this, as they would not be able to respond.
Assuming you know where all their weapons are. That's why they built missile subs. Also, it's claimed that both sides planted bombs close to enemy capitals during the Cold War as an ultimate deterrent.
Any such technology would just lead to a massive dispersal of weapons, including probably biological ones, to survive such an "instant" attack. Doomsday would be closer.
. If enough people simply refuse to put up with this, no employers will use RFIDs on their employees because no one will be willing to work for them.
Seeing as this is a video surveillance company, it'd be hard for staff to claim a moral objection to the practice. (Though they might still not want to have needles stuck into them.)
I can think of plenty of "mode of dress" and uniform enforcements, but no other examples of permanent body modifications that mark specific individuals.
There are any number of military units where specific tattoos are virtually mandatory -- i.e. not in the regulations, but you are made to know you should get it. And of course, street gangs, possibly university fraternities (Yale's "Skull & Bones" requires a brand if one can believe the movie The Skulls, though probably you can't). Of course, one might mention circumcision, both male and female; African tribes that insert plates to distend the lips, the Burmese tribe that puts more and more rings on their women's necks to stretch them. Anyway, the chip can be easily removed, not that I advocate the idea, just to point out it's not permanent.
It seems to be strong evidence that parasites can control the behavior of a host in fairly complex ways
"Influence" rather than "control". TFA originates in a site that looks for SF in the news, sometimes they look rather too hard. But consider how you act when you have a cold -- sneezing, for instance, creating a nice aerosol spray to spread the virus. Many skin infections casue itchiness, making you scratch and distribute flakes, containing spores; etc. (If this is Intelligent Design, I'd like to ask who is the Chosen Race -- us or the parasites?)
Slashdot Mirror
I recommend seeing The Player for an insight into the process. The protagonist, a studio executive, spends all day listening to movie pitches, dozens every day. Of these, a handful are greenlighted in a year. It's like guessing which sperm cell will make it to fertilize the egg.
Mars was in the air a few years ago: Red Planet, Mission to Mars, Ghosts of Mars all came out in quick succession. All had pretty dumb plots, but I still enjoyed seeing what looked like a real Martin landscape. (Mars itself was the protagonist of the books rather than the rather boring people.) I think elements of RGB Mars inspired at least some of these, KSR may even have got paid something, but obviously little recognisable of his plots was in these. Nevertheless, you can enjoy them as illustrations to the books, like the Dune movie, and ignore the stories.
WHAT? The political bullshit was the whole damn novel!
But Heinlein's political bullshit was 180 degrees from Verhoeven's. He got away with ironic fascism in Robocop, but failed in almost every way in Troopers.
It's worth the effort. Though I was startled at the typos that made many of the code examples wrong; how could a major publisher not bother to have these checked? Stephenson has a section on his web page saying he doesn't need anyone to tell him about that any more. I don't know if it really was fixed in later editions.
Tarzan has suffered the same fate in most of his screen versions, especially the Johnny Weismuller series that became the definitive version for many. Though Greystoke came close. In one of the later novels Tarzan goes to Hollywood and auditions for the Tarzan role; he's told he has no chance.
I would love to see some of Phillip Jose Farmer's Tarzan riffs filmed: action, humour, sex, ancient conspiracies, pulp heroes.
Little of Douglas Adams's writing survived into the movie, so you really don't have any basis for judging his abilities. Personally, I found the original radio series the best, and funniest, version.
Except that both statements I quoted are wrong.
No government tolerates such an attitude. Governments enforce international treaties by enacting laws, companies just have to follow the laws.
Wrong; wrong.
I could explain the facts, but why not look it up for yourself and learn something before posting about things you have no knowledge of.
Credit where it's due -- it was the communists who were early masters at media manipulation -- they make sure to have complete control of it for a start. Our "Orwellian" vocabualry is based on George Orwell's work, and he was mostly writing metaphorically about Stalinist Russia. As for China, just read any memoir of the Cultural Revolution. But in both cases it seems Orwell's vision of "a boot stamping on a human face--for ever" was thankfully not fulfilled. No matter how robotic the populaces seemed, underneath they knew quite well what their rulers were and after a few decades put them in their places. China's government is much less powerful now than it was in Mao's era; though still powerful enough to be feared.
WYSIWYG word processors aren't quite DTP apps, but they have to interact closely with the GDI, both screen and printer drivers. I know that the Windows DTP apps I use are unstable with specific video drivers, for instance. DOS Wordperfect, OOTH, does work quite well in a DOS emulation on Linux, using a VGA display and its own printer drivers.
More precisely, Hong Kong, which isn't censored as in the Mainland. There though you can use Google.com, but often it's very slow and naughty queries usually time out.
The whole idea is to create a loophole so that the Chinese government cannot order data to be divulged; as it always could if the servers are physically in China. And so this would be revealed quickly the next time China wanted to track down someone who posted politically incorrect thinking. (And in China, "politically incorrect" is not a joke, it'll earn you prison for 10 years.)
And what about that pinko Nixon -- he kowtowed to Mao in 1972.
And that fellow-traveller Reagan: "...a few countries must obtain an annual presidential waiver or extension of a waiver to continue their NTR status. China is the most important country in this group which must obtain an annual waiver to maintain NTR. The waiver for China has been in effect since 1980."
Yahoo has surrendered personal data on two dissidents at least that have lead to their arrests. Yahoo claims they had no choice. Well, if the data wasn't in China, they wouldn't have had that excuse, though they probably would have folded anyway.
His point basically was that MS will bulldoze its version of an Internet desktop to become standard, with their famous attention to security. Maybe overstated a tad, but nowhere in the current FA were the issues of data security, from accident, malice, government, hackers, big companies... addressed.
It was a joke ... and I've read The Selfish Gene too.
Luxury. When I were a lad, we had to write our programs on mark-sense cards with a pencil, then queue up to feed them into a card reader, which would randomly chew them up and send you back to the end of the line while you made new cards several times till you lucked out and it got through the entoer stack. Then you went to find your printout from a huge noisy line printer which spewed paper into a large canvas bag, when it didn't jam. Two years later we were allowed to use vi, and we were grateful for t'privilege.
OK, I understand what you mean now. Basically, marking a "specific" individual as a security feature is pretty stupid, as any applied marker (tattoo, brand, etc) can be more or less easily forged, as TFA points out in this case. More secure is to use biometrics, retina or fingerprint scans, voice, etc. Though these can be defeated too. RF chips are just a cheapskate way to try to implement biometrics. Good for keeping track of livestock and pets, less so for people.
Yahoo is criticised for handing over the identities of users, leading to their arrests and imprisonment. Microsoft for deleting blogs mentioning democracy. Cisco for developing censoring technology. None of these claim not to be evil (avoiding obvious MS-related jibes.)
Tau Zero was by Poul Anderson. The ship never impacted anything, so I don't see the connection myself; most SF ships are relativistic if not FTL. More relevant perhaps Kzanol's ship in Niven's World of Ptaavs which crashed into Pluto at close to lightspeed, knocking it out of orbit around Neptune into its current orbit, a billion or so years ago.
Assuming you know where all their weapons are. That's why they built missile subs. Also, it's claimed that both sides planted bombs close to enemy capitals during the Cold War as an ultimate deterrent.
Any such technology would just lead to a massive dispersal of weapons, including probably biological ones, to survive such an "instant" attack. Doomsday would be closer.
Seeing as this is a video surveillance company, it'd be hard for staff to claim a moral objection to the practice. (Though they might still not want to have needles stuck into them.)
There are any number of military units where specific tattoos are virtually mandatory -- i.e. not in the regulations, but you are made to know you should get it. And of course, street gangs, possibly university fraternities (Yale's "Skull & Bones" requires a brand if one can believe the movie The Skulls, though probably you can't). Of course, one might mention circumcision, both male and female; African tribes that insert plates to distend the lips, the Burmese tribe that puts more and more rings on their women's necks to stretch them. Anyway, the chip can be easily removed, not that I advocate the idea, just to point out it's not permanent.
"Influence" rather than "control". TFA originates in a site that looks for SF in the news, sometimes they look rather too hard. But consider how you act when you have a cold -- sneezing, for instance, creating a nice aerosol spray to spread the virus. Many skin infections casue itchiness, making you scratch and distribute flakes, containing spores; etc. (If this is Intelligent Design, I'd like to ask who is the Chosen Race -- us or the parasites?)