Mary Gentle. ("Grunts" kept me laughing and laughing. Only early stuff.)
C J Cherry, Tanith Lee. (Only early stuff)
(I've only read one book by Jordan and thought he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. But that was a long time ago and my memory might be rusty.)
So you can evaluate my taste:
I tend to like science fiction quite hard (Benford, Forward, etc), but enjoy e.g. Walter Jon Williams and others, too. (I placed Simmons in fantasy since it's space opera, really.) I prefer fantasy dark and nitty-gritty realistic (yes, realistic fantasy/i> is a contradiction in term).
How much heavier could you build such a train and track system? I e, would it be economical as the first stage in a launch system?
The tracks would have to go up an incline at a mountain close to the equator. (Kilimanjaro?) The release system for the second stage would be the hard problem, I guess?
Interesting -- but in French. I quite liked the language, but has sadly oublie tout since high school. Could you please add an English abstract or write one here?
I'm writing a client/server implementation. I'm not planning on doing anything but a trivial proof-of-concept client since I don't have any aesthetical talents at all...
(-: I'm a bit shocked that my blatant karma whoring was modded down to 0?! Hope some Meta mod gives me revenge!:-)
I love one of GW's games (Blood Bowl) and it seemed quite hard to implement, so I had to try it.
My beta of a hobby (free) implementation should be on SourceForge in a couple of months (or something). It might even be half as good as the existing best free implementation.:-)
Before getting too far, I sent an email to GW and asked them about their opinion on free implementations. This is their answer. Excuse my formatting. E.g. point 2 is a bit scary, since they seem to be able to go into deals with game publishers later that disallows my game. But they don't exactly look as evil as Microsoft, really.
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your email.
We want people to express their enjoyment of our games with as little interference from us as possible, as long as they behave reasonably
with our IP and follow any reasonable requests that we may make. We are not inherently opposed to hobbyists creating games or mods using our IP, in fact we are flattered that people want to spend so much time creating games and mods in the GW universes. We all love the hobby and are pleased that others do too, we simply need to protect our intellectual property and reserve the right to take action if necessary. As long as you pay the appropriate respect to our IP by placing the appropriate disclaimers and agreeing to remove any work from the public domain if reasonably requested, there should be no problems.
So, whilst Games Workshop appreciates online fan and hobby community support, we are also obliged to protect our intellectual property rights
and I would refer you to, and request compliance with, our IP policy which you will find posted at:
http://games-workshop.com/Legal/ippolicy.htm.
Be aware that this policy can change at any time without notice, so I recommend that you check it regularly.
In addition to the general guidelines in that policy, please note the following:
1. Any game or mod must be a "total conversion". In other words you must not use our intellectual
property (logos, images, names etc) in relation to the worlds, names, logos or images of any other company. For example, you cannot place our Space
Marines in a Disney total conversion using the Unreal engine, but you could make a TC solely using Space Marines with the Unreal engine. (Assuming that you have permission to use the Unreal engine)
2. Please bear in mind that we may require you to remove the game or mod from any public forum at any time so that we can comply with any licenses that we may have with computer game publishers/developers. Be aware
that we may even have to insist that the Mod be destroyed for legal reasons.
3. The game or mod must be strictly non-profit making, this includes any website that the mod or game is hosted on.
4. Any distribution (zipped or otherwise) of the whole, or any part, of the mod or game must be accompanied with the appropriate disclaimers.
5. It must be made clear that the game or mod is unofficial and the origins of the intellectual property must be made obvious.
6. The functionality, atmosphere and parameters of any mod or game must be consistent with the Warhammer universe as created and owned by Games
Workshop
7. The game or mod must not devalue any Games Workshop product in any way.
8. Please place the following disclaimer on your site:
This website is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited
USA seems to have criminal subcultures that most countries in Europe don't have.
I don't know if it's because of poor people not having many alternatives to crime, historical reasons, more open borders (criminals probably move more often) or because it's such a damn big place (hard to control and plan). (-: Go check some criminologist researchers, or something, don't discuss it with computer nerds like us...:-)
Don't worry about USA being "special" in this way -- that kind of problems are probably coming to Europe, too...:-(
"What's a nice nerd like you doing in a place ..."
on
Review: Cowboy Bebop
·
· Score: 1
What's a nice nerd like you doing in a place like this?:-)
Only joking. I'm laid off -- for a Perl/C++ job I'd move to country (shudder) Mecca, too.
(On the other hand, this autumn I'm going back to university to study nerdy interests I always wanted to learn about. I'm lucky this happened before I got too old to do more math (-: I hope!:-).)
Your argument seems to rest upon the idea that all technological change is good, which it plainly is not.
We are obviously discussing different subjects; at least you have a very different position than "blahlemon" which I commented on first. My fault. I should have checked that it was the same person writing!
Regarding what you discussed, I have a thesis:
You would have a different opinion if you lived in Sweden.
As I understand it, doctors often do a "last aid" informally here in Sweden, but it isn't talked about -- and is officially illegal. A man got a one (1) year sentence recently for helping his suffering mother beyond the pale (N B, visits from girl friends are allowed. There are no rapes in Swedish prisons. He will probably be released after half a year, but won't get emotional scars (and aids) for life.)
This official attitude might have to do with hospital budgets being financed by taxes... (Would you trust the state with your health after retirement, when you obviously will only use up common resources and not add to them? 1/2:-) )
I do agree that you own your life. Suicide is, IMHO, frowned upon in this post-religious world because most people doing that are mentally ill and/or in a depression.
Again, sorry for raising you blood pressure. If you come by Stockholm/Uppsala, I'll buy you a beer.:-)
That is just a repeat of the argument, not an answer to the counterargument (mine and others):
What is considered reasonable has changed time and time again -- when the technical possibilities change.
A luddite -- like you -- would at one point in time refuse blood transfusions. (Hell, some of you still do!)
Before fast travel became common, society became whatever it wanted in various parts of the world. Headhunters, cannibalism, polygamy, female circumcision [...]
The physical parameters and how people work decide the stable ways that society might be organized. That is both quite trivial and irrelevant. (I doubt it was just travel that was the deciding factor -- this is one point I think Marx got right.)
I align myself with Henry D. Thoreau who taught that, "That government which governs least, governs best."
Not relevant, but having lived in Sweden for all my life I'm starting to agree, at least partly. Another discussion.
Therefore, there is no direct correlation between religion and OCD.
There is yet no direct proof if this kind of brain damage that makes people devout is environmental or inherited. It will be found (unless some churches manage to squash the research!) So make a hypothetical argument out of it and answer my question.
Only since then have I developed religous feelings, regardless of parental influence.
Your argument would probably be that there exists a true religion and that you saw the truth your family didn't see. This happens in the best of families (excuse the joke!) all over the world.
There are a few people like you here in Sweden, finding religion late. Strange that more than 95% of you guys that "see the light" go to the big religions they were influenced with as children -- and that those religions you guys find contradict each others, given that your standpoint must be that the contradicting religions are false...
Let me tell you about when I first went to Ireland in the beginning of the 90ies. I knew that people there where devout. They had recently voted 51/49% on abortion. So I expected to meet a lot of religious nuts. But I didn't meet any, despite knowing that half the population voted to not allow abortions?!
The people that are religious in Sweden are... let's call them "seekers". They feel a need for something and looks around until they find it. Be it alcohol, the cross or something else. The religious people in Ireland was not like that. They had just grown up in the religion with all people around them believers -- they say fish aren't aware of the water. So the religious people of Ireland weren't at all like the nuts at home. They were normal people that had never thought about the problem.
Not relevant, really, but it was an experience that changed my world view.
I read the reference by Bernard D. Davis much earlier when finding out if I wanted to read "Mismeasure of man" and just searched for the title of the paper (it wasn't where I read it a few years ago). The reference seems to be to some anti-semitist site!?
Bernard D Davis is, as far as I know, a serious researcher. The reason he is listed is probably because of
this
book.
(I could have choosen other references that attacked the "intelligence is only the ability to write tests" viewpoint.)
(This is extra embarassing since I'm a big fan of Woody Allen, Seinfeld, etc. I have said quite often that I should convert; Jewish atheists seems to have more fun than we xian atheists! For Sweden, my opinions are extremely pro-Israel -- which sadly isn't hard.)
If we use your arguments, the idea of society and social norms (like rape, murder, etc.) comes from induced mental programming by parents, teachers, peers, etc.
You took a trivial point and mixed it with the point coming after; they are more separate. (I think the evidence support that certain things are builtin -- such as a distaste for being raped bad enough that many victims commit suicide.)
My argument was an answer to your doubts on official limitations on what is legal to do to children. To e.g. give children extreme physical or mental disabilities should be illegal. And there are some parents that does (and will do) that.
Children have human rights, too. If they are violated, the police (through the state) should step in and protect them -- since they don't have any rights themselves. (I hope you still accept the existence of a police? If not, read up on clan societies before moving to Afghanistan; no fun to live in.)
We're done with that misunderstanding, I hope?
To each his own, but you cannot enforce your views on other people, just like I cannot make you believe in God.
If you check the article, you'll see that it was about a mild mental disease that made people more religious. (I argued, with Sweden and USA as examples, that if you don't indoctrinate children into a religion -- they don't become religious. That was behaviour, this is (probably) genetically influenced.)
Again:
My argument was that many religious people would inflict that on their children so they won't go to hell (and parents with that exact problem would not look happy at having it removed from their children!)
So we have a mental problem that tend to make people more religious. You're religious and the doctor says that your child will get that problem. Will you ask the disease to be fixed?
(To be complete, I am not arguing that Sweden is better or worse than USA. That is a completely different issue on which I'm quite ambivalent.)
I am someone who dislikes governmental control in any form, so to embrace this technology with the caveat of regulation is a very scary proposition.
There must be some limit for parents' rights to fsck the lives of their children!! Children are people; it is illegal to rape them, too.
I would rather see the technology only used to cure existing people as in the linked story, rather than to design people. But then again, I am a card carrying religous freak so I am not to be trusted...
Cure what!?!? The point of my example was that it is hard to decide what should be cured. Let's take a real example, based on you being religious and me being a hard line atheist.
I consider religion to be insane ideas that you can inflict on children if you indoctrinate them early enough. (I am from Sweden -- most people doesn't indoctrinate children and have something like less than 10% of the population going to a church more than once in a given year...)
I would be against Xian, muslim, etc "freaks" inducing
this kind of mental instability into their children... Something some religious people would do.
And, further, I would bet money that religious people with that kind of mental problems would be angry if someone tried to hinder their children from inheriting them...
Those religious freaks would not consider the mental problem giving them faith a mental problem.
Yeah, features like being able to dig ditches and operate heavy machinery.
I was thinking more like this hypothetical case that might show up in ten years:
Some common combinations of genes might give a high chance of some mental disease. But also a high chance of artistic talent. Would it be worth losing those artists to save some people from mental disease?
The answer to that depends on lots of factors. (Will there probably be an easy treatment for the disease when the child is grown? How high chance for artistic talent or mental disease? How valuable are those artists to society? Etc, etc.)
Genes and inheritance is a very complex subject -- and then environmental influences complicates it much more...
You probably should think twice when taking decisions in this area -- but I am of the opinion that control of our genes is necessary and will be a very good thing for humanity (given democracy and some regulatory sanity-checks on modifications).
It is a
controversial subject because of social discussions (separate from marxists seeing red when discussing innate mental characteristics).
(Your point is valid for another reason. It is not trivially a good thing to remove "unpopular" features like low intelligence from the gene pool since those features probably have other genetic effects that we might be poorer as humans if they are not in our societies. But if it was my child and I could select for higher intelligence, I would.)
Swedish eco-nazis has literally replaced a very good and safe nuclear reactor with coal. (Burned in coal plants in other countries and imported.) The exhausts from the coal plant kills people every year and then we have the greenhouse effects.
Background:
The Swedish' electricity saving programs has worked quite well during the last 20 years, but the use is still rising (people get computers, etc.) So any lowering of production capacity has to be replaced with fossile fuel.
The environment can't afford Swedish' environmentalists. They are... words fail me.
(The decision of coal/nuclear was done by social democrats and environmental political parties. The report is about a report written by experts...)
I have no problem with Forward's books being worth reading -- as I wrote, I happily buy them in hardcover.
But to call Forward a good story teller (as the original comment) is showing a bad grasp of reality. (-: I think the US idiom is "What are you on, what does it cost and where can I buy it?".:-)
(-: And if you're smaller than 100kg muscles, don't call me "high brow lit type", or similar grave insults! Besides, they would be obviously be wrong since I read/.:-)
Dungeon Master was the first and only game to give me homicidal tendencies
Carmageddon...:-)
I was tired one evening and started a fast session to get some adrenaline. The other guys in my room came up behind me to see why I was laughing and laughing. I was driving back and forth in the shallow water on the beach... (those pesky pedestrians run so slow in the water, he he!)
They looked strangely at me for a while. Could have something to do with me being their boss right then.
After I fell asleep in my chair once, I joked that they probably kept hair gel in their bags waiting for the next time -- so they could make me into a PHB for real! They looked guilty, probably thinking "He looks through our bags when we're out -- he is evil!":-)
Slashdot Mirror
- Steven Brust. (Jhereg, Yendi, etc)
- Zelazny. (The earlier the better)
- Jack Vance. (Almost everything.)
- Glen Cook. (Black company series only)
- Dan Simmons. ("Carrion comfort", Hyperion series)
- H P Lovecraft. (Horror, not fantasy)
- Michael Shea. (Too little written. Pity.)
- Michael Marshall Smith.
- Neil Gaiman.
- Mary Gentle. ("Grunts" kept me laughing and laughing. Only early stuff.)
- C J Cherry, Tanith Lee. (Only early stuff)
(I've only read one book by Jordan and thought he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper bag. But that was a long time ago and my memory might be rusty.)So you can evaluate my taste:
I tend to like science fiction quite hard (Benford, Forward, etc), but enjoy e.g. Walter Jon Williams and others, too. (I placed Simmons in fantasy since it's space opera, really.) I prefer fantasy dark and nitty-gritty realistic (yes, realistic fantasy/i> is a contradiction in term).
(-: It will probably be possible to emulate the old computers at a gate level before NASA even reaches a decision on a new computer... :-)
The tracks would have to go up an incline at a mountain close to the equator. (Kilimanjaro?) The release system for the second stage would be the hard problem, I guess?
Damn pity the fools we have are more religious than the pope!
I'm writing a client/server implementation. I'm not planning on doing anything but a trivial proof-of-concept client since I don't have any aesthetical talents at all...
(-: I'm a bit shocked that my blatant karma whoring was modded down to 0?! Hope some Meta mod gives me revenge! :-)
My beta of a hobby (free) implementation should be on SourceForge in a couple of months (or something). It might even be half as good as the existing best free implementation. :-)
Before getting too far, I sent an email to GW and asked them about their opinion on free implementations. This is their answer. Excuse my formatting. E.g. point 2 is a bit scary, since they seem to be able to go into deals with game publishers later that disallows my game. But they don't exactly look as evil as Microsoft, really.
So at that price, they might earn money on this research that results in a few less needed pounds per launch...
(And yes, that is a sad, sad joke -- I know the shuttle computers are from the 80's, or something.)
And as a bonus it's in a Science story on slashdot :-(
Ah well, time to do some work instead.
I don't know if it's because of poor people not having many alternatives to crime, historical reasons, more open borders (criminals probably move more often) or because it's such a damn big place (hard to control and plan). (-: Go check some criminologist researchers, or something, don't discuss it with computer nerds like us... :-)
Don't worry about USA being "special" in this way -- that kind of problems are probably coming to Europe, too... :-(
Only joking. I'm laid off -- for a Perl/C++ job I'd move to country (shudder) Mecca, too.
(On the other hand, this autumn I'm going back to university to study nerdy interests I always wanted to learn about. I'm lucky this happened before I got too old to do more math (-: I hope! :-).)
But my company just went belly up and I should save money and not travel. :-(
Do you need Perl/C/C++ *ix nerds in Warsaw -- and what is the pay? :-)
Regarding what you discussed, I have a thesis:
You would have a different opinion if you lived in Sweden.
As I understand it, doctors often do a "last aid" informally here in Sweden, but it isn't talked about -- and is officially illegal. A man got a one (1) year sentence recently for helping his suffering mother beyond the pale (N B, visits from girl friends are allowed. There are no rapes in Swedish prisons. He will probably be released after half a year, but won't get emotional scars (and aids) for life.)
This official attitude might have to do with hospital budgets being financed by taxes... (Would you trust the state with your health after retirement, when you obviously will only use up common resources and not add to them? 1/2 :-) )
I do agree that you own your life. Suicide is, IMHO, frowned upon in this post-religious world because most people doing that are mentally ill and/or in a depression.
Again, sorry for raising you blood pressure. If you come by Stockholm/Uppsala, I'll buy you a beer. :-)
What is considered reasonable has changed time and time again -- when the technical possibilities change.
A luddite -- like you -- would at one point in time refuse blood transfusions. (Hell, some of you still do!)
And in a hundred years children might laugh at me when I describe your opinions... hope this is saved so I can proof you exist. (Or, existed.)
There are a few people like you here in Sweden, finding religion late. Strange that more than 95% of you guys that "see the light" go to the big religions they were influenced with as children -- and that those religions you guys find contradict each others, given that your standpoint must be that the contradicting religions are false...
Let me tell you about when I first went to Ireland in the beginning of the 90ies. I knew that people there where devout. They had recently voted 51/49% on abortion. So I expected to meet a lot of religious nuts. But I didn't meet any, despite knowing that half the population voted to not allow abortions?!
The people that are religious in Sweden are... let's call them "seekers". They feel a need for something and looks around until they find it. Be it alcohol, the cross or something else. The religious people in Ireland was not like that. They had just grown up in the religion with all people around them believers -- they say fish aren't aware of the water. So the religious people of Ireland weren't at all like the nuts at home. They were normal people that had never thought about the problem.
Not relevant, really, but it was an experience that changed my world view.
Bernard D Davis is, as far as I know, a serious researcher. The reason he is listed is probably because of this book.
(I could have choosen other references that attacked the "intelligence is only the ability to write tests" viewpoint.)
(This is extra embarassing since I'm a big fan of Woody Allen, Seinfeld, etc. I have said quite often that I should convert; Jewish atheists seems to have more fun than we xian atheists! For Sweden, my opinions are extremely pro-Israel -- which sadly isn't hard.)
My argument was an answer to your doubts on official limitations on what is legal to do to children. To e.g. give children extreme physical or mental disabilities should be illegal. And there are some parents that does (and will do) that.
Children have human rights, too. If they are violated, the police (through the state) should step in and protect them -- since they don't have any rights themselves. (I hope you still accept the existence of a police? If not, read up on clan societies before moving to Afghanistan; no fun to live in.)
We're done with that misunderstanding, I hope?
If you check the article, you'll see that it was about a mild mental disease that made people more religious. (I argued, with Sweden and USA as examples, that if you don't indoctrinate children into a religion -- they don't become religious. That was behaviour, this is (probably) genetically influenced.)Again:
My argument was that many religious people would inflict that on their children so they won't go to hell (and parents with that exact problem would not look happy at having it removed from their children!)
So we have a mental problem that tend to make people more religious. You're religious and the doctor says that your child will get that problem. Will you ask the disease to be fixed?
(To be complete, I am not arguing that Sweden is better or worse than USA. That is a completely different issue on which I'm quite ambivalent.)
I consider religion to be insane ideas that you can inflict on children if you indoctrinate them early enough. (I am from Sweden -- most people doesn't indoctrinate children and have something like less than 10% of the population going to a church more than once in a given year...)
I would be against Xian, muslim, etc "freaks" inducing this kind of mental instability into their children... Something some religious people would do.
And, further, I would bet money that religious people with that kind of mental problems would be angry if someone tried to hinder their children from inheriting them...
Those religious freaks would not consider the mental problem giving them faith a mental problem.
Some common combinations of genes might give a high chance of some mental disease. But also a high chance of artistic talent. Would it be worth losing those artists to save some people from mental disease?
The answer to that depends on lots of factors. (Will there probably be an easy treatment for the disease when the child is grown? How high chance for artistic talent or mental disease? How valuable are those artists to society? Etc, etc.)
Genes and inheritance is a very complex subject -- and then environmental influences complicates it much more...
You probably should think twice when taking decisions in this area -- but I am of the opinion that control of our genes is necessary and will be a very good thing for humanity (given democracy and some regulatory sanity-checks on modifications).
Disclaimer: IANAG (I am not a geneticist.)
See e.g. the part on general intelligence here.
It is a controversial subject because of social discussions (separate from marxists seeing red when discussing innate mental characteristics).
(Your point is valid for another reason. It is not trivially a good thing to remove "unpopular" features like low intelligence from the gene pool since those features probably have other genetic effects that we might be poorer as humans if they are not in our societies. But if it was my child and I could select for higher intelligence, I would.)
Background:
The Swedish' electricity saving programs has worked quite well during the last 20 years, but the use is still rising (people get computers, etc.) So any lowering of production capacity has to be replaced with fossile fuel.
The environment can't afford Swedish' environmentalists. They are ... words fail me.
(The decision of coal/nuclear was done by social democrats and environmental political parties. The report is about a report written by experts...)
But to call Forward a good story teller (as the original comment) is showing a bad grasp of reality. (-: I think the US idiom is "What are you on, what does it cost and where can I buy it?". :-)
(-: And if you're smaller than 100kg muscles, don't call me "high brow lit type", or similar grave insults! Besides, they would be obviously be wrong since I read /. :-)
Forward couldn't write literature or write up a believable portrait of anyone to save his life!
I usually describe Forward as the worst author I buy books in hard cover from...
Plz.
I was tired one evening and started a fast session to get some adrenaline. The other guys in my room came up behind me to see why I was laughing and laughing. I was driving back and forth in the shallow water on the beach... (those pesky pedestrians run so slow in the water, he he!)
They looked strangely at me for a while. Could have something to do with me being their boss right then.
After I fell asleep in my chair once, I joked that they probably kept hair gel in their bags waiting for the next time -- so they could make me into a PHB for real! They looked guilty, probably thinking "He looks through our bags when we're out -- he is evil!" :-)