Good, but not the best Culture book
on
Matter
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· Score: 1
I just finished this book today, and I agree with the review in that it wasn't Banks' best work. I still quite enjoyed it and thought it was well written, but I agree with some of the other comments that it was a bit too similar to some of his previous work - in a way it felt like a mix-and-match of elements of "Excession", "Use of Weapons" and "Inversions". There was also a large amount of background material that wasn't strictly necessary for the plot, though I wouldn't really call this a flaw since the setting and background was fairly interesting in itself.
Once issue affecting this book and most of Banks' other SF novels is his tendency to include too many long travel sequences and other unnecessary (or unnecessarily long-winded) scenes in the first 3/4 of the book, then to start rushing everything in the last 1/4 to bring things to a conclusion.
Overall I liked it but I think by the end I liked it a little less than I did at the half-way point, with the plot preceding a little too straight-forwardly (at least by Banksian standards). The ending was decent and there was one horrific image in particular that really stuck in my head but compared to someone like George R. R. Martin, Banks doesn't isn't a good enough writer of compelling characters to have the full impact he may have intended. His strengths lie more in fascinating, detailed settings and an enjoyable general writing style. I feel like the actual writing here was better than ever, but the "seen it all before" nature of the plot (and to some extent the setting) reduced my enjoyment a bit.
This movie has been in development about as long as Duke Nukem Forever, and I expect them to come out at about the same time. There's also a very low likelihood that it will be good if it ever does come out, thanks to the difficulties of translating a novel staring children and with a lot of focus on the main character's thoughts to the screen.
I am the only one sick of trite/simplistic criticisms of scientific studies based on mainstream news articles? Maybe try to read between the lines rather than attack something based on what is most likely a simplification or omission for the sake of a mainstream audience.
If this initiative goes how this kind of thing normally goes, most of the third world recipients won't be taught how to use it properly and the people in charge will come back in 6 months to see it propping up a wobbly table leg or something.
I think I must be the only person willing to admit that my lack of creativity and mild OCD caused me to just want to make the model on the box. No brick out of place!
(I did make some of my own (mostly crappy) creations with some random unboxed bricks we got from a garage sale, though).
"the failure of real-time on-line video gaming (too much latency)"
Er, what? There are currently 254814 players (and 55392 games) on Battle.net (and World of Warcraft doesn't even use b.net), and that's just one company's online service (albeit one of the biggest ones). Of course traditionally most online play has been for the PC, but Xbox Live has been pretty popular, and latency is not a major issue for anyone with broadband (which is most heavy gamers these days).
"Many of today's debaters prefer "Fisking" - line-by-line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff - to rational debate or building a coherent argument."
I don't know if I agree with this - if modern internet debate means that rhetoric and speechifying is increasingly being replaced with checkable facts, then I don't see that as a bad thing, even if it's less entertaining.
People who bought this game expecting some kind of gameplay revolution were rather foolish. I was actually slightly disappointed at first myself, but the more I played, the more I realized how well everything was put together. Doom 3 is easily the most atmospheric intense FPS I have ever played (except for perhaps System Shock 2), and the gameplay is very tightly designed. I don't care one whit that it's not wildly innovative, as I never expected it to be. The graphics are also the best I've seen, far better than Far Cry (what was so great about that games graphics anyway? It had good water and vegetation, but anything man-made looked pretty mediocre from what I've played).
I suspect that years from now, I will be listing this near the top of my "most underrated games" list.
I actually found the "boring banking parts", the scenes at the Royal Society, etc, more interesting than the sometimes-overblown "adventure" parts of Quicksilver
I think some of you people need to take this article a little less seriously/literally. It was a hyperbolic rant intended mainly for the amusment of newspaper readers and the venting of a minor annoyance, not some sort of manifesto on How Things Should Be.
If Sun is planning to *never* pay a dividend, doesn't that mean that their stock has zero inherent value?
Basically, a stock that never pays dividends only has value through the shared delusion of the investors. Kind of shows how dodgy the modern stock market is.
Yes, it's true that the "spheres" will overlap, but that doesn't prevent the article's hypothesis regarding this (of a 100ly sphere identical to our own existing somewhere) from being true in an infinite, non-simplisticly repetitive universe with vaguely even matter distribution.
Actually, it's known that reducing infant mortality can also reduce population growth, because if their children are less likely to die, they won't feel the need to have as many to compensate for that, and because reducing infant mortality generally involves building up medical and other infrastructure in ways which help reduce deprivation and poverty, and more prosperous people generally have fewer children (outside of cultural/religous reasons).
If this is true, then it probably provides final proof that faster-than-light travel is impossible, or someone/something in the infinite universe would have used it to come here by now (and actually talk to us, not just fly around and cause UFO-watchers to get excited).
Either that, or it is possible but is limited to a certain maximum speed not great enough for the nearest lucky inventors who decided to come our way to have reached us yet.
Phew, infinities are confusing.
Not breakable for a billion years?
Assuming that a typical modern computer could check at least 1000 keys per second, and that Moore's law continues and computing power keeps doubling every 18 months, then it would "only" take 3057 years until a typical computer was capable of checking all possible 2048 bit keys in 1 second.
Sure, that's a long time, but hardly a billion years:).
12 pens is a lifetime supply? Maybe if you don't do much writing by hand, but with school work I would use more than that in a year even if I didn't lose any.
Slashdot Mirror
I just finished this book today, and I agree with the review in that it wasn't Banks' best work. I still quite enjoyed it and thought it was well written, but I agree with some of the other comments that it was a bit too similar to some of his previous work - in a way it felt like a mix-and-match of elements of "Excession", "Use of Weapons" and "Inversions". There was also a large amount of background material that wasn't strictly necessary for the plot, though I wouldn't really call this a flaw since the setting and background was fairly interesting in itself.
Once issue affecting this book and most of Banks' other SF novels is his tendency to include too many long travel sequences and other unnecessary (or unnecessarily long-winded) scenes in the first 3/4 of the book, then to start rushing everything in the last 1/4 to bring things to a conclusion.
Overall I liked it but I think by the end I liked it a little less than I did at the half-way point, with the plot preceding a little too straight-forwardly (at least by Banksian standards). The ending was decent and there was one horrific image in particular that really stuck in my head but compared to someone like George R. R. Martin, Banks doesn't isn't a good enough writer of compelling characters to have the full impact he may have intended. His strengths lie more in fascinating, detailed settings and an enjoyable general writing style. I feel like the actual writing here was better than ever, but the "seen it all before" nature of the plot (and to some extent the setting) reduced my enjoyment a bit.
But after 50 milliseconds I decided I didn't like the page.
This movie has been in development about as long as Duke Nukem Forever, and I expect them to come out at about the same time. There's also a very low likelihood that it will be good if it ever does come out, thanks to the difficulties of translating a novel staring children and with a lot of focus on the main character's thoughts to the screen.
Ah yes, the dollar-second, one of the most useful compound units known to man.
I am the only one sick of trite/simplistic criticisms of scientific studies based on mainstream news articles? Maybe try to read between the lines rather than attack something based on what is most likely a simplification or omission for the sake of a mainstream audience.
If this initiative goes how this kind of thing normally goes, most of the third world recipients won't be taught how to use it properly and the people in charge will come back in 6 months to see it propping up a wobbly table leg or something.
I think I must be the only person willing to admit that my lack of creativity and mild OCD caused me to just want to make the model on the box. No brick out of place! (I did make some of my own (mostly crappy) creations with some random unboxed bricks we got from a garage sale, though).
I'm not an IP! I'm a free man!
"the failure of real-time on-line video gaming (too much latency)"
Er, what? There are currently 254814 players (and 55392 games) on Battle.net (and World of Warcraft doesn't even use b.net), and that's just one company's online service (albeit one of the biggest ones). Of course traditionally most online play has been for the PC, but Xbox Live has been pretty popular, and latency is not a major issue for anyone with broadband (which is most heavy gamers these days).
I've never done any banging at one :(
"Many of today's debaters prefer "Fisking" - line-by-line rebuttals where facts are dropped like radar chaff - to rational debate or building a coherent argument." I don't know if I agree with this - if modern internet debate means that rhetoric and speechifying is increasingly being replaced with checkable facts, then I don't see that as a bad thing, even if it's less entertaining.
The Internet Makes You Stupid.
People who bought this game expecting some kind of gameplay revolution were rather foolish. I was actually slightly disappointed at first myself, but the more I played, the more I realized how well everything was put together. Doom 3 is easily the most atmospheric intense FPS I have ever played (except for perhaps System Shock 2), and the gameplay is very tightly designed. I don't care one whit that it's not wildly innovative, as I never expected it to be.
The graphics are also the best I've seen, far better than Far Cry (what was so great about that games graphics anyway? It had good water and vegetation, but anything man-made looked pretty mediocre from what I've played).
I suspect that years from now, I will be listing this near the top of my "most underrated games" list.
IIRC that was a faked-up engine demo, not an actual running copy of the game.
I actually found the "boring banking parts", the scenes at the Royal Society, etc, more interesting than the sometimes-overblown "adventure" parts of Quicksilver
I think some of you people need to take this article a little less seriously/literally. It was a hyperbolic rant intended mainly for the amusment of newspaper readers and the venting of a minor annoyance, not some sort of manifesto on How Things Should Be.
If Sun is planning to *never* pay a dividend, doesn't that mean that their stock has zero inherent value? Basically, a stock that never pays dividends only has value through the shared delusion of the investors. Kind of shows how dodgy the modern stock market is.
Yes, it's true that the "spheres" will overlap, but that doesn't prevent the article's hypothesis regarding this (of a 100ly sphere identical to our own existing somewhere) from being true in an infinite, non-simplisticly repetitive universe with vaguely even matter distribution.
Actually, it's known that reducing infant mortality can also reduce population growth, because if their children are less likely to die, they won't feel the need to have as many to compensate for that, and because reducing infant mortality generally involves building up medical and other infrastructure in ways which help reduce deprivation and poverty, and more prosperous people generally have fewer children (outside of cultural/religous reasons).
If this is true, then it probably provides final proof that faster-than-light travel is impossible, or someone/something in the infinite universe would have used it to come here by now (and actually talk to us, not just fly around and cause UFO-watchers to get excited).
Either that, or it is possible but is limited to a certain maximum speed not great enough for the nearest lucky inventors who decided to come our way to have reached us yet. Phew, infinities are confusing.
I think he means 10^90 particles in our observable space. This would be (approximately) replicated in each other sphere using his assumptions.
Not breakable for a billion years? Assuming that a typical modern computer could check at least 1000 keys per second, and that Moore's law continues and computing power keeps doubling every 18 months, then it would "only" take 3057 years until a typical computer was capable of checking all possible 2048 bit keys in 1 second. Sure, that's a long time, but hardly a billion years :).
12 pens is a lifetime supply? Maybe if you don't do much writing by hand, but with school work I would use more than that in a year even if I didn't lose any.