I read an interview today that implied that this movie will address who Book really is as well.
As far as I know, the entire cast is back, even if they did leave a few of them out of the trailer.
SPOILERS
Also, reavers.
One thing I haven't seen discussed but would like to, is to what stage could life have evolved in the period that it was particularly ripe for life? In that time frame, could there have been significant multicellular life? Significant enough to leave interesting fossils?
It has been a lifelong dream of mine to go fossil hunting in an old river or lakebed on Mars. I'm young, so I might still realize it (even though highly, highly unlikely), unless the period of wetness on mars didn't last long enough to have any hope for such things.
I'd settle for piloting a probe equipped with a little pick and brush. Fingers crossed.
I've really enjoyed Neal's previous books, but I find the Baroque Cycle books to be a little too long-winded and exposition-heavy. It's almost like he suffered through all this research to write the books, so now he's going to make the reader suffer through it too. I just didn't find the first one to move very well under the weight of all that explaining.
I still consider Snow Crash to be a classic, though, precisely for how light on it's proverbial feet it is.
This is really good. I like how they (you?) have encorporated reviews into this site. The thing I would be most worried about determination of quality.
Excellent! Hopefully this link is being disseminated among academic circles. I think that site could be a little more user friendly though, for it to really catch on. The density of text links is kind of staggering.
We had this at my school, but they tended to only have 2-3 copies and that just wouldn't cut it for a whole class. It was useful to me on a couple of occasions, and I can understand why it isn't cost effective to have enough text books to outfit an entire classroom of students. Do other countries' libraries have enough for everyone in the class?
I don't think the solution to the "text book problem" is violating copyrights. I think the solution in the long run will be to do more open source text books. I understand some professors make money writing text books, but I think others would be very interested in using open source text books, perhaps developed wiki style.
You could use processes like Cafe Press's publishing to get deadwood versions, but otherwise, having an annotatable, searchable text book that you can load onto a PDA or a laptop would be really useful, in my opinion.
I think my teachers would have definitely been open to the idea of open source text books, provided the content was as good as anything you have to pay $100+. But as some posters pointed out, certain fields don't exactly change a lot over the years. And heck, even the ones that do are perfectly suited to the idea of an open source e-text.
All it's going to take is some willing people and a decent grant.
Wow, that's a great idea. Having google running queries based on each part of the conversation, so when something comes up that you would want to search for, the data would already be there. That's proactive!
It would add some interesting hypertextuality to a conversation too. It'd be interesting to see how you could end up incorporating the images into the conversation, for instance. Maybe they could auto-link addresses to mapquest, that sort of thing too, for those ocassional directions conversations.
A search-engine-integrated instant messenger by Google could be pretty damn powerful.
I'd really like this if it meant I could search my IMs the way Google allows the searching of GMail (as I understand it). With AOL instant messenger, which I use due to all my friends using it, there's no archive at all, so a good chunk of my daily correspondence is lost forever. If there was some privacy-friendly way that I could store all my IMs and search them for important links and discussions I've had, using Google's powerful tools, I would definitely jump ship and try to bring as many people with me as possible.
I own a Sony Vaio laptop, and it shocks me regularly if I lift it up off my lap to move it, say to the couchside table or whatever. Not a tremendous jolt, but I began to have a pavlovian-like fear of moving it.
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I read an interview today that implied that this movie will address who Book really is as well. As far as I know, the entire cast is back, even if they did leave a few of them out of the trailer. SPOILERS Also, reavers.
One thing I haven't seen discussed but would like to, is to what stage could life have evolved in the period that it was particularly ripe for life? In that time frame, could there have been significant multicellular life? Significant enough to leave interesting fossils? It has been a lifelong dream of mine to go fossil hunting in an old river or lakebed on Mars. I'm young, so I might still realize it (even though highly, highly unlikely), unless the period of wetness on mars didn't last long enough to have any hope for such things. I'd settle for piloting a probe equipped with a little pick and brush. Fingers crossed.
There is a wonderful Howard Waldrop story that addresses this called "Ugly Chickens". The story can be found here on the SCIFICTION Website.
I've really enjoyed Neal's previous books, but I find the Baroque Cycle books to be a little too long-winded and exposition-heavy. It's almost like he suffered through all this research to write the books, so now he's going to make the reader suffer through it too. I just didn't find the first one to move very well under the weight of all that explaining.
I still consider Snow Crash to be a classic, though, precisely for how light on it's proverbial feet it is.
This is really good. I like how they (you?) have encorporated reviews into this site. The thing I would be most worried about determination of quality.
Excellent! Hopefully this link is being disseminated among academic circles. I think that site could be a little more user friendly though, for it to really catch on. The density of text links is kind of staggering.
We had this at my school, but they tended to only have 2-3 copies and that just wouldn't cut it for a whole class. It was useful to me on a couple of occasions, and I can understand why it isn't cost effective to have enough text books to outfit an entire classroom of students. Do other countries' libraries have enough for everyone in the class?
I don't think the solution to the "text book problem" is violating copyrights. I think the solution in the long run will be to do more open source text books. I understand some professors make money writing text books, but I think others would be very interested in using open source text books, perhaps developed wiki style. You could use processes like Cafe Press's publishing to get deadwood versions, but otherwise, having an annotatable, searchable text book that you can load onto a PDA or a laptop would be really useful, in my opinion. I think my teachers would have definitely been open to the idea of open source text books, provided the content was as good as anything you have to pay $100+. But as some posters pointed out, certain fields don't exactly change a lot over the years. And heck, even the ones that do are perfectly suited to the idea of an open source e-text. All it's going to take is some willing people and a decent grant.
Wow, that's a great idea. Having google running queries based on each part of the conversation, so when something comes up that you would want to search for, the data would already be there. That's proactive! It would add some interesting hypertextuality to a conversation too. It'd be interesting to see how you could end up incorporating the images into the conversation, for instance. Maybe they could auto-link addresses to mapquest, that sort of thing too, for those ocassional directions conversations. A search-engine-integrated instant messenger by Google could be pretty damn powerful.
I'd really like this if it meant I could search my IMs the way Google allows the searching of GMail (as I understand it). With AOL instant messenger, which I use due to all my friends using it, there's no archive at all, so a good chunk of my daily correspondence is lost forever. If there was some privacy-friendly way that I could store all my IMs and search them for important links and discussions I've had, using Google's powerful tools, I would definitely jump ship and try to bring as many people with me as possible.
Unless he's a zombie! A lipsynching zombie. Turn off the playback and all he's really singing is "Brains brains brains brains..."
I own a Sony Vaio laptop, and it shocks me regularly if I lift it up off my lap to move it, say to the couchside table or whatever. Not a tremendous jolt, but I began to have a pavlovian-like fear of moving it.