Oops... crap, I'm confusing Banks with another author whose books I love until he ends them.
The book in question, in case anyone still cares, is Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road. I actually really like his writing, the sense of mystery and 'otherness' of his books, but the endings can be rather painful. (For example, in _Ancient Shores_ it's like he says, "Hey, let's bring in a dozen real-life scientists and sci-fi writers to save the day!" It's a novel concept, but... gosh, it just doesn't fit the rest of the story, which is quite marvellous.)
Right now my tastes are running more towards Neil Gaiman (who won a Hugo for a fantasy novel -- the irony of Spider's topic choice doesn't escape me:), although Neal Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ is on my Buy In Hardback list which, given my finances, is a very short list indeed.
I may yet try again on the Mars books. And you're right, they *are* innovating, just not always WRT characterization and plot development. May have to check out some of the later Banks, too...
Hey, I read Star Trek books, once upon a time, and still have a soft spot in my heart for certain favorites. Actually, I think I've read more Trek books than I've seen Trek shows! *winces*
I'm afraid that getting a Real Job and doing a lot of college work have reduced my attention span and free time considerably.
It's interesting you mention Kim Stanley Robinson, Banks, and Brin. I'm actually exactly the kind of person (young) that Spider Robinson would like to draw to the field, although I'll admit to being weaned on Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. I have to say, with *very* few exceptions, that I can't read the three authors you mention.
I've tried to read _Red Mars_ twice, and each time I've put it down -- I don't want to read 600 pages worth of Martian politics. If I wanted to read about politics, I'd be taking a PoliSci course.
Iain Banks's books, or at least those that deal with the Culture, fail to interest me. Whoo, big AI, yadda. There's something missing, and I'm not sure what. And the concept of _Glory Road_ -- post-apocalyptic society's ideas of the past are based off very few data points -- has been done to death.
For David Brin, I save my most annoyed comments. Can the man *finish* a story? _Startide Rising_ was the only good book of either Uplift series, and the deus-ex-machina end to the 2nd trilogy practically made me puke! The *idea* of Uplift, *especially* the way it's presented in _Startide_, is quite interesting, but whole Uplift saga fails to deliver.
Sundiver was a retread of a tired old Star Trekish idea ("they're not attacking! they just want to be friends!~ XD"). Uplift War is deus-ex-machina and yet-another-geurilla-war-story all over. Startide was interesting in part because you were trying to figure out what had happened before it started (I was disappointed to find out that the "prequel" was actually a different storyline), yet Brin didn't resolve the story of those left on the planet and left a lot of unanswered questions.
The *whole* 2nd trilogy was slow and ended without any sort of closure in a grand deus-ex-machina that obliviated the problem almost by accident. Sorry, if that's what he writes I don't feel like reading it. The *ideas* he has are good, the characters are interesting, but Brin can't resolve his plots to save his life.
Hmm... At $800 a crack (or between $500 and $700 for AMD chips, which are really better than their Intel counterparts) I think I'll stick with my old 533MHz Alpha box, currently running Debian... I love Linux.:)
Err... umm... Nice to see the literary Hugos are going to actual SF again.. I have nothing against HP, but it doesn't deserve a Hugo. It's not adult fiction, and it's not even science fiction
So... have you read Coraline? As with much great fantasy (yes, fantasy -- not science fiction), it operates on two levels. For children, it's an adventure story; for adults, a horror story. It is undeniably written for children, however, yet it's definately a great read however old you are.:) It just goes to show that good "children's literature" is good literature, period.
Okay, that's just *nasty*. The software corrects her pitch, yes, but it *doesn't* correct for the fact that she's clenching her airway and forcing the sound through. It's just *bad*, but a good voice coach could correct her intonation *and* her projection in about five minutes.
And, frankly, it offends me as a singer. The craft of singing is, like 60%, the mastery of making pitch and rhythm to nigh-superhuman levels of precision. Sure you could make a machine do it, but that's like having a forklift compete in a weightlifting competition. What's the point?
Here in Iowa the auditions for the All-State Choir are done entirely a capella, and so I've got reasonably decent relative pitch. It's always been a fantasy of mine to put the N'Sync boys through the rigor of All-State auditions out of curiosity to see how they would do. My guess is, they wouldn't make it.
I'm a little surprised that the autotuners can keep up, considering the number of vocal "effects" most pop singers do -- the whole black-Gospel-ripoff kind of runs that seem to be *required* of modern pop musicians.
And it does my heart good to notice that a CD I bought recently by an indie band I enjoy has *several* tracks that are slightly but noticeably out-of-tune.
I have to say I found a *huge* difference in responsiveness. I actually had to turn my mouse speed *down*, because all I had to do was sneeze and my cursor was hiding offscreen.
I'm running -test3 and I've had a few stutters in XMMS and the like... I'll have to try out -test4. I'm by no means running a powerful system, and it feels as responsive as several brand-new systems I've tried.
No, but a blog (even if Dean sadly doesn't write it) provides a level of communication that can't be gotten out of another medium, and one Bush doesn't provide. I'm not saying that having a blog automatically equals Internet-savviness, but using one *effectively* is part of it. "Internet-savviness" is using Web sites as more than just a complement to your TV ads, and not taking clueless positions on Internet-related issues, both of which Dean is *reasonably* good at.
His blog entries do sound too polished, though. I'm waiting for the day when a Presidential candidate (or the President himself!) provides his unvarnished, unfiltered (by his campaign manager), and probably even *unspellchecked* thoughts in a blog. That'll be a *real* populist candidate.
Aha, now I remember. Hatch's mistake wasn't so much the copyright issue, which really wasn't a big deal, probably wasn't his fault (since Hatch probably couldn't tell Java from a cup of coffee), and so on, and you're right that Hatch was no more guilty than Dean. It was more, as another poster mentioned, the "people in glass houses" effect. Since I haven't seen any evidence the campaign *was* aware of the issue, and since they stopped once they were made aware, I'd say they're innocent until proven guilty.
Ehrm... (not connected w/ the Dean campaign or any other in any way, shape, or form -- I'm just an interested observer:)...
Have you looked at deanforamerica.com? I'd say that site is a good indicator of Internet-awareness. The man has a *blog*, for crying out loud! Actually, all the Democratic candidates are trying to capitalize on the Internet, which is IMHO a Good Thing, though it's taking some of them longer than others.
Contrast Dean's site with Bush's (ooh, shiney) for a good illustration of why the former is considered "net-savvy." (yes i know incumbents don't need to mobilize as early as challengers, yes i know Bush's site is a "temporary site," but Dean's campaign is still a masterful example of how to mobilize the internet community. i long for the day when the *president* writes a daily weblog.)
Oh, and if you think Dean is another Democrat who is against everything Slashdotters hold dear, check out some of his posts on Lawrence Lessig's blog. (Kucinich has some interesting things to say here as well. He's even pro-GPL!)
I wondered about this as well, but sadly it appears that Dean did at least pay for the marketing campaign. *However*, it also appears that the campaign was duped into thinking that company they contracted with would only send mails to people who opted-in, so they were actually showing a reasonable amount of acumen, and just neglected to run a Google search on the company in question. Oops.
I'm a little unsure of the submitter's motives in posting a two-week old story to Slashdot, because if anyone bothers to read the rest of the blog, they'll note that the Dean campaign severed its ties to the Spamhaus when it was informed about the actions being taken in its name.
Yes, but the idea here is that instead of having to find the option on the menu that allows me to get the pie-chart report of my expenditures, I can just look on the accounts page and say, oh!, I bought $143.04 worth of books this year! (Actual figure -- I just finished balancing my checkbook with GnuCash last night.)
*And*, if you go to Reports... Income & Expense... Expense Piechart, you can get the piechart for the whole year or whatever, plus all the other reports you could ever want.
Just a nitpick -- as I understand it, it's not so much that chimps and gorillas are our ancestors as humans and chimps split most recently from some common ancestor, which in turn split from gorillas, and so on. It's kind of a branch-like thing, not a line of descent, like we evolved and the chimps didn't.
Is anyone else reminded of Michael Crichton's novel _Congo_?
That's very interesting... earlier this summer I visited several colleges out East, one of which was MIT, and ended up wearing my Linux t-shirt that day. Not one person at MIT commented on it, which rather surprised me -- perhaps they're jaded and *expect* people to understand Linux. So we got onto our plane to go to Philadelphia for *more* visits, sat there on the runway for a while, and then got off because the plane was having hydraulic trouble. As we were headed up the corridor between the cockpit and the terminal, we were passed by a guy -- presumably a mechanic -- going the other way, who noticed my shirt. The entire conversation consisted of
Him: "Hey, you use Linux?" Me: "Yeah."
One of those weird, totally random things that happens occasionally.
Whaddaya mean they're not university classes? I mean, aren't they sponsored by the University of Okoboji or something? (motto: "In God we trust; all others ca$h.")
Doesn't the thicker material make you sweat *more*?
I must say I haven't had a problem with dress shirts wearing out, though I'm sure it depends on how much you use them. There are springed shirt button expanders that work pretty well on tighter shirts. Or you could find someone with sewing skills who would be willing to shorten the sleeves for you -- I shouldn't think they'd be *that* hard to find.
I work at a movie theater (i know, i know, the MPAA and all, but it was either that or McDonalds...) that doesn't believe in sequined uniforms, so I wear ties a fair bit. It's not really a big deal -- the only thing you really need to worry about is having your tie *too* *tight*, and oftentimes the shirt is more of the problem than the tie. Don't wear your dress shirt if the neck is too tight, buy shirts that let you breathe, and don't strangle yourself with your tie when you put it on in the morning!
I'm sticking to my point though - certainly the markets will need some nudging from a few brilliantly placed, enforceable incentives to counteract negative externalities such as air pollution, but ultimately free enterprise is much better at solving resouce allocation problems than government is.
I guess I agree with your point that free enterprise goes about recycling much more efficiently than the government does *when it gets around to it*, but it seems like we need some of those "brilliantly-placed enforceable initiatives" to persuade them to bother.
Case in point: Iowa, my home state, produces a lot of corn.(1) Ethanol made from corn can be added to gasoline in varying concentrations, and it not only improves the life of the engine, it also reduces pollutants in the exhaust, *and* props up the price of corn, helping struggling local farmers. Unfortunately, gas-plus-ethanol used to cost more than gas without, so nobody bought it. Then the government of Iowa got the bright idea to reduce the gas tax on gas-plus-ethanol, so that it is at least the same price, and in some cases *less* expensive, than regular gasoline. There's really no reason to buy gas that doesn't have ethanol added to it anymore -- there's even talk of adding E85 (gas with 85% ethanol instead of the normal 10%) to the pumps, since many newer cars can run on it, the emissions are even less, and more of the $1.419/gal. goes back to local farmers. Without that government incentive, however, only the "tree-huggers" who could afford it would have gone out of their way to purchase gas with ethanol -- the government has to kick private industry a little before they're willing to tackle a problem.
(1) This is perhaps the understatement of the century.:)
Umm... well, I didn't go to Canada *specifically* to read the books, but I came very close to tipping over that not-exceeding-$100-of-merchandise limit.:)
I rarely get a chance to visit used book stores, since the nearest one is an hour away, as is the nearest new book store, so vacations are prime book-buying time for me. I picked up a couple of Heinlein's earlier books, a Vernor Vinge collection, another short story collection, and the O'Reilly vi Pocket Reference in the space of about two weeks earlier this summer. And I picked up a huge stack of withdrawn library books. Yeah, I've got something of a biblio-addiction.:)
AFAICT, this is a perfect example of market-driven recycling - the way it should and will happen ultimately....
Just that there's no need for government mandated recycling
Ummm... where'd you get that idea?
From the article:
The Matsushita Eco-Technology Center, (Metec), came into being after the Japanese Government passed tough recycling measures that came into effect in 2001.
I really like the "free-market forces will ultimately conspire to force companies to recycle" idea, and I'm sure they will -- by, oh, say 2150, assuming we don't start mining asteroids. In the meantime, it takes government regulation to force many companies to do *anything* that even slightly harms short-term profit potential, even if the long-term benefit to the environment is enormous. (In many cases, ecologically-concious design also saves lots of *money* down the road, but the benefit is often too far off for companies to notice.)
Am I the only one who thought of the meeting scene in Cryptonomicon? Randy surreptitiously takes pictures of the faces of everyone in the room by hacking together a little script on his notebook to poll the onboard camera as they file past. Neil Stephenson thinks up cool hacks.
September and Quicksilver are really too far away...:(
I see your point -- warez is one of the reasons Windows lock-in is so strong -- but if everything developed for the Mac got warezed, nobody would develop for the Mac. And then you wouldn't have a platform.
Because, kids, you need to always remember the secret to computing dominance... repeat after me...
It's odd that you mention this, because I happened to spot the Vaio laptop in question playing a part in Johnny English last night, and wondered, since I was certain the Vaio didn't come *that* small. I also seem to recall a glowing Apple logo somewhere in the movie, but I might have been mistaken.
I'd be interested to see a side-by-side comparison of this new Vaio and the 12" Apple PowerBook, because I'm really looking at a subnotebook.../me drools
Slashdot Mirror
Oops... crap, I'm confusing Banks with another author whose books I love until he ends them.
:), although Neal Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ is on my Buy In Hardback list which, given my finances, is a very short list indeed.
The book in question, in case anyone still cares, is Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road. I actually really like his writing, the sense of mystery and 'otherness' of his books, but the endings can be rather painful. (For example, in _Ancient Shores_ it's like he says, "Hey, let's bring in a dozen real-life scientists and sci-fi writers to save the day!" It's a novel concept, but... gosh, it just doesn't fit the rest of the story, which is quite marvellous.)
Right now my tastes are running more towards Neil Gaiman (who won a Hugo for a fantasy novel -- the irony of Spider's topic choice doesn't escape me
I may yet try again on the Mars books. And you're right, they *are* innovating, just not always WRT characterization and plot development. May have to check out some of the later Banks, too...
Hey, I read Star Trek books, once upon a time, and still have a soft spot in my heart for certain favorites. Actually, I think I've read more Trek books than I've seen Trek shows! *winces*
I'm afraid that getting a Real Job and doing a lot of college work have reduced my attention span and free time considerably.
It's interesting you mention Kim Stanley Robinson, Banks, and Brin. I'm actually exactly the kind of person (young) that Spider Robinson would like to draw to the field, although I'll admit to being weaned on Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. I have to say, with *very* few exceptions, that I can't read the three authors you mention.
I've tried to read _Red Mars_ twice, and each time I've put it down -- I don't want to read 600 pages worth of Martian politics. If I wanted to read about politics, I'd be taking a PoliSci course.
Iain Banks's books, or at least those that deal with the Culture, fail to interest me. Whoo, big AI, yadda. There's something missing, and I'm not sure what. And the concept of _Glory Road_ -- post-apocalyptic society's ideas of the past are based off very few data points -- has been done to death.
For David Brin, I save my most annoyed comments. Can the man *finish* a story? _Startide Rising_ was the only good book of either Uplift series, and the deus-ex-machina end to the 2nd trilogy practically made me puke! The *idea* of Uplift, *especially* the way it's presented in _Startide_, is quite interesting, but whole Uplift saga fails to deliver.
Sundiver was a retread of a tired old Star Trekish idea ("they're not attacking! they just want to be friends!~ XD"). Uplift War is deus-ex-machina and yet-another-geurilla-war-story all over. Startide was interesting in part because you were trying to figure out what had happened before it started (I was disappointed to find out that the "prequel" was actually a different storyline), yet Brin didn't resolve the story of those left on the planet and left a lot of unanswered questions.
The *whole* 2nd trilogy was slow and ended without any sort of closure in a grand deus-ex-machina that obliviated the problem almost by accident. Sorry, if that's what he writes I don't feel like reading it. The *ideas* he has are good, the characters are interesting, but Brin can't resolve his plots to save his life.
Hmm... At $800 a crack (or between $500 and $700 for AMD chips, which are really better than their Intel counterparts) I think I'll stick with my old 533MHz Alpha box, currently running Debian... I love Linux. :)
Err... umm...
:) It just goes to show that good "children's literature" is good literature, period.
Nice to see the literary Hugos are going to actual SF again..
I have nothing against HP, but it doesn't deserve a Hugo. It's not adult fiction, and it's not even science fiction
So... have you read Coraline? As with much great fantasy (yes, fantasy -- not science fiction), it operates on two levels. For children, it's an adventure story; for adults, a horror story. It is undeniably written for children, however, yet it's definately a great read however old you are.
Okay, that's just *nasty*. The software corrects her pitch, yes, but it *doesn't* correct for the fact that she's clenching her airway and forcing the sound through. It's just *bad*, but a good voice coach could correct her intonation *and* her projection in about five minutes.
Software isn't a substitute for ability, mmkay?
And, frankly, it offends me as a singer. The craft of singing is, like 60%, the mastery of making pitch and rhythm to nigh-superhuman levels of precision. Sure you could make a machine do it, but that's like having a forklift compete in a weightlifting competition. What's the point?
Here in Iowa the auditions for the All-State Choir are done entirely a capella, and so I've got reasonably decent relative pitch. It's always been a fantasy of mine to put the N'Sync boys through the rigor of All-State auditions out of curiosity to see how they would do. My guess is, they wouldn't make it.
I'm a little surprised that the autotuners can keep up, considering the number of vocal "effects" most pop singers do -- the whole black-Gospel-ripoff kind of runs that seem to be *required* of modern pop musicians.
And it does my heart good to notice that a CD I bought recently by an indie band I enjoy has *several* tracks that are slightly but noticeably out-of-tune.
I have to say I found a *huge* difference in responsiveness. I actually had to turn my mouse speed *down*, because all I had to do was sneeze and my cursor was hiding offscreen.
I'm running -test3 and I've had a few stutters in XMMS and the like... I'll have to try out -test4. I'm by no means running a powerful system, and it feels as responsive as several brand-new systems I've tried.
No, but a blog (even if Dean sadly doesn't write it) provides a level of communication that can't be gotten out of another medium, and one Bush doesn't provide. I'm not saying that having a blog automatically equals Internet-savviness, but using one *effectively* is part of it. "Internet-savviness" is using Web sites as more than just a complement to your TV ads, and not taking clueless positions on Internet-related issues, both of which Dean is *reasonably* good at.
His blog entries do sound too polished, though. I'm waiting for the day when a Presidential candidate (or the President himself!) provides his unvarnished, unfiltered (by his campaign manager), and probably even *unspellchecked* thoughts in a blog. That'll be a *real* populist candidate.
Aha, now I remember. Hatch's mistake wasn't so much the copyright issue, which really wasn't a big deal, probably wasn't his fault (since Hatch probably couldn't tell Java from a cup of coffee), and so on, and you're right that Hatch was no more guilty than Dean. It was more, as another poster mentioned, the "people in glass houses" effect. Since I haven't seen any evidence the campaign *was* aware of the issue, and since they stopped once they were made aware, I'd say they're innocent until proven guilty.
Other groups were also duped by the same "e-mail direct marketers", including companies like British Airways, HP, and New Line Cinema.
Hmm... sources on this, please?
I think it's safe to assume that his political career was probably *not* torpedoed by this, seeing as he's still a member of Congress?
Ehrm... (not connected w/ the Dean campaign or any other in any way, shape, or form -- I'm just an interested observer :)...
Have you looked at deanforamerica.com? I'd say that site is a good indicator of Internet-awareness. The man has a *blog*, for crying out loud! Actually, all the Democratic candidates are trying to capitalize on the Internet, which is IMHO a Good Thing, though it's taking some of them longer than others.
Contrast Dean's site with Bush's (ooh, shiney) for a good illustration of why the former is considered "net-savvy." (yes i know incumbents don't need to mobilize as early as challengers, yes i know Bush's site is a "temporary site," but Dean's campaign is still a masterful example of how to mobilize the internet community. i long for the day when the *president* writes a daily weblog.)
Oh, and if you think Dean is another Democrat who is against everything Slashdotters hold dear, check out some of his posts on Lawrence Lessig's blog. (Kucinich has some interesting things to say here as well. He's even pro-GPL!)
I wondered about this as well, but sadly it appears that Dean did at least pay for the marketing campaign. *However*, it also appears that the campaign was duped into thinking that company they contracted with would only send mails to people who opted-in, so they were actually showing a reasonable amount of acumen, and just neglected to run a Google search on the company in question. Oops.
I'm a little unsure of the submitter's motives in posting a two-week old story to Slashdot, because if anyone bothers to read the rest of the blog, they'll note that the Dean campaign severed its ties to the Spamhaus when it was informed about the actions being taken in its name.
More balanced coverage from Spamvertized.org
It looks like an honest mistake, and its a shame that some people will fixate on this misstep.
Yes, but the idea here is that instead of having to find the option on the menu that allows me to get the pie-chart report of my expenditures, I can just look on the accounts page and say, oh!, I bought $143.04 worth of books this year! (Actual figure -- I just finished balancing my checkbook with GnuCash last night.)
*And*, if you go to Reports... Income & Expense... Expense Piechart, you can get the piechart for the whole year or whatever, plus all the other reports you could ever want.
Just a nitpick -- as I understand it, it's not so much that chimps and gorillas are our ancestors as humans and chimps split most recently from some common ancestor, which in turn split from gorillas, and so on. It's kind of a branch-like thing, not a line of descent, like we evolved and the chimps didn't.
Is anyone else reminded of Michael Crichton's novel _Congo_?
That's very interesting... earlier this summer I visited several colleges out East, one of which was MIT, and ended up wearing my Linux t-shirt that day. Not one person at MIT commented on it, which rather surprised me -- perhaps they're jaded and *expect* people to understand Linux. So we got onto our plane to go to Philadelphia for *more* visits, sat there on the runway for a while, and then got off because the plane was having hydraulic trouble. As we were headed up the corridor between the cockpit and the terminal, we were passed by a guy -- presumably a mechanic -- going the other way, who noticed my shirt. The entire conversation consisted of
Him: "Hey, you use Linux?"
Me: "Yeah."
One of those weird, totally random things that happens occasionally.
Whaddaya mean they're not university classes? I mean, aren't they sponsored by the University of Okoboji or something? (motto: "In God we trust; all others ca$h.")
:)
(rimshot)
Sorry, sorry... local in-joke.
Doesn't the thicker material make you sweat *more*?
I must say I haven't had a problem with dress shirts wearing out, though I'm sure it depends on how much you use them. There are springed shirt button expanders that work pretty well on tighter shirts. Or you could find someone with sewing skills who would be willing to shorten the sleeves for you -- I shouldn't think they'd be *that* hard to find.
I work at a movie theater (i know, i know, the MPAA and all, but it was either that or McDonalds...) that doesn't believe in sequined uniforms, so I wear ties a fair bit. It's not really a big deal -- the only thing you really need to worry about is having your tie *too* *tight*, and oftentimes the shirt is more of the problem than the tie. Don't wear your dress shirt if the neck is too tight, buy shirts that let you breathe, and don't strangle yourself with your tie when you put it on in the morning!
I'm sticking to my point though - certainly the markets will need some nudging from a few brilliantly placed, enforceable incentives to counteract negative externalities such as air pollution, but ultimately free enterprise is much better at solving resouce allocation problems than government is.
:)
I guess I agree with your point that free enterprise goes about recycling much more efficiently than the government does *when it gets around to it*, but it seems like we need some of those "brilliantly-placed enforceable initiatives" to persuade them to bother.
Case in point: Iowa, my home state, produces a lot of corn.(1) Ethanol made from corn can be added to gasoline in varying concentrations, and it not only improves the life of the engine, it also reduces pollutants in the exhaust, *and* props up the price of corn, helping struggling local farmers. Unfortunately, gas-plus-ethanol used to cost more than gas without, so nobody bought it. Then the government of Iowa got the bright idea to reduce the gas tax on gas-plus-ethanol, so that it is at least the same price, and in some cases *less* expensive, than regular gasoline. There's really no reason to buy gas that doesn't have ethanol added to it anymore -- there's even talk of adding E85 (gas with 85% ethanol instead of the normal 10%) to the pumps, since many newer cars can run on it, the emissions are even less, and more of the $1.419/gal. goes back to local farmers. Without that government incentive, however, only the "tree-huggers" who could afford it would have gone out of their way to purchase gas with ethanol -- the government has to kick private industry a little before they're willing to tackle a problem.
(1) This is perhaps the understatement of the century.
Umm... well, I didn't go to Canada *specifically* to read the books, but I came very close to tipping over that not-exceeding-$100-of-merchandise limit. :)
:)
I rarely get a chance to visit used book stores, since the nearest one is an hour away, as is the nearest new book store, so vacations are prime book-buying time for me. I picked up a couple of Heinlein's earlier books, a Vernor Vinge collection, another short story collection, and the O'Reilly vi Pocket Reference in the space of about two weeks earlier this summer. And I picked up a huge stack of withdrawn library books. Yeah, I've got something of a biblio-addiction.
AFAICT, this is a perfect example of market-driven recycling - the way it should and will happen ultimately. ...
Just that there's no need for government mandated recycling
Ummm... where'd you get that idea?
From the article:
The Matsushita Eco-Technology Center, (Metec), came into being after the Japanese Government passed tough recycling measures that came into effect in 2001.
I really like the "free-market forces will ultimately conspire to force companies to recycle" idea, and I'm sure they will -- by, oh, say 2150, assuming we don't start mining asteroids. In the meantime, it takes government regulation to force many companies to do *anything* that even slightly harms short-term profit potential, even if the long-term benefit to the environment is enormous. (In many cases, ecologically-concious design also saves lots of *money* down the road, but the benefit is often too far off for companies to notice.)
Am I the only one who thought of the meeting scene in Cryptonomicon? Randy surreptitiously takes pictures of the faces of everyone in the room by hacking together a little script on his notebook to poll the onboard camera as they file past. Neil Stephenson thinks up cool hacks.
:(
September and Quicksilver are really too far away...
I see your point -- warez is one of the reasons Windows lock-in is so strong -- but if everything developed for the Mac got warezed, nobody would develop for the Mac. And then you wouldn't have a platform.
Because, kids, you need to always remember the secret to computing dominance... repeat after me...
"Developers! Developers! Developers!"
It's odd that you mention this, because I happened to spot the Vaio laptop in question playing a part in Johnny English last night, and wondered, since I was certain the Vaio didn't come *that* small. I also seem to recall a glowing Apple logo somewhere in the movie, but I might have been mistaken.
/me drools
I'd be interested to see a side-by-side comparison of this new Vaio and the 12" Apple PowerBook, because I'm really looking at a subnotebook...