This in10did device might actually ship, which beats vaporware hands down.
That's a pity, because a far better design was announced on Slashdot over a decade ago (http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/02/08/12/1413250/build-a-custom-fit-one-hand-keyboard) which still looks much more comfortable for heavy use (http://www.chordite.com/).
You need to change your basic premise: There is no possible way to prove that software is bug free. The best you can do is to test a piece of software and then fix the problems that you find. Software verification and validation are tough problems.
> In OS X, I can [...] use a variety of Finder replacements. The Finder still has horrid usability problems, but I guess that I'm the only Mac user who needs to manipulate files on his disk drives, so no one else notices. Care to list all the non-sucky Finder replacements out there? I've yet to find one.
If "Splice" is an indication of the type of movie treatment we can expect for Neuromancer, then we should all be very very afraid.
Apparently, movie ratings are currently suffering from score inflation. I see lots of healthy B-grade scores hovering with an average of 7/10 for Splice.
Based solely on this thread, I just watched Splice. It wasn't worth it. I am sure there are worse movies on earth, but this one has nothing redeeming to it. It's a 1/10 at best. The only thing that impressed me about it is that someone bothered to finish and release it to the public.
Max Headroom (the TV show on ABC in America) proves that cyberpunk can be done well on the screen. There's no reason why Neuromancer is necessarily doomed. Personally, I'd be delighted if it was a huge flop for general audiences but a huge hit for those plugged into the book.
Then again, I'm a huge fan. I disliked the BBC radio play for Neuromancer because even if the same things happened that were in the book, they happened for different reasons in the play. That alone ruined it for me, and the BBC was attempting a faithful copy.
Agreed. Neuromancer really rewards the reader on the third reading. Then you know the lingo, you know the pacing, you know the plot, and you can enjoy it all.
I used to learn new languages by buying the local translation of Neuromancer. Since I already knew the text inside out and backwards in English, I could focus on the words and structures of the foreign language that I was learning. Of course, you end up speaking like Case or Molly. That may not work to your advantage.
The movie will bear no resemblance to my mind's rendition of Neuromancer, and I will be profoundly disappointed. I will probably watch and rewatch this movie a few times, regardless.
So will videos on Google Video need to be re-encoded to play on YouTube?
A lot of the content on Google Video is already postage-stamp sized and blurry. A further encoding could make them unviewable but all but the most dedicated fans.
We've created an "Upload Videos to YouTube" option on the Google Video status page [...] Before doing this you should read YouTube's Terms of Use and Copyright Policies.
So if it is against YouTube's policies, then it's out.
If you are curious, TED.com has a brief but interesting video that explains how YouTube automates their search for copyright infringement, and how effective it is regardless of the quality of the submission. These automated systems can tag shaky video recorded onto mobile phones, for instance.
The true shame of the 24/7 news media is that it moves from story to story without any sense of scale or importance. Because there has not been any continuing visible signs of the continuing catastrophe since the gas ventings, they have moved on to other stories.
Having listened to Dr. Kaku, I'm just glad I don't work as an engineer for TEPCO.
While it's nice to see Google doing the right thing, I question their change of heart. My own guess would be that far more people began leeching ungodly amounts of Google Video content, putting a strain on Google itself.
Rather than continue the pain, Google simply decided to allow people to transfer video from Google Video to YouTube.
I'd just like to add my voice to the chorus here. Google's whole raison d'être is search, and I often can't find anything of value anymore. I'm not entirely certain what has happened, but it definitely sees as if something has gone wrong at the heart of Google. Instead of being an unstoppable force, I can now foresee a better search engine that can beat Google at its own game (and not from Microsoft or Yahoo! but rather from someone completely unexpected).
Doron Swade who wrote "The Difference Engine" (the non-fiction book, not the steampunk fiction by Gibson and Sterling) can tell you this: It's not possible to create The Analytical Engine. Why? Because Babbage never stopped creating the designs. There is no one clean, complete set of designs for the Analytical Engine.
If someone were to build it, they would first have to pick and choose from among Babbage's numerous sketches, then fill in any of the missing bits. It's not a true, 100% authentic, Babbage design, unlike the simpler Difference Engine, which had a clean set of engineering drawings for its creation.
There was an even older, better, simpler version of Trade Wars that used a 1000-sector universe where everyone had the same type of ship (with the same number of holds) and there was one planet called The Wanderer.
Can anyone remember the version number? Is it available to play over the Internet today? (If I had to guess, I'd say it was called Trade Wars 9.014 and came out long before Trade Wars 2002.)
The Québécois already voted 60% in favour of separation in 1995, but they lost the overall referendum because of "money and the ethnic vote" as Parizeau explained. I know he was vilified for that comment, but he was merely stating the facts.
Surely I am not the only person living in the EU that sees Google Street Maps as a liberating technology. I have searched for countless things from my office and my home, and each time came away favourable with Street Maps. I think the EU is wrong on this one. What exactly are the dangers that they foresee with this technology?
The patent application makes for interesting reading, and they have certainly developed a clever system for monitoring their customers and the relationships they have with other callers. The application states the obvious: It is easier to retain customers than to search for new ones, and with church rates of possibly 50% to 70% of subscribers per year, this is something that mobile providers have to worry about.
But I think this misses the point completely. Why are people churning? Could it be that mobile telephone service has become a commodity, and that mobile users are unable to discern any difference in call quality or service level between mobile providers? That is also a possibility.
Not to mention the multitude of different calling packages that mobile operators offer. There are so many different plans with different features and options that consumers are unable to make a rational, meaningful decision on which plan is best for them. And so maybe the carriers have caused churn in the first place: If I can't tell I'm getting the best value for the money, my best option is to keep switching plans and carriers, as the odds of me ever discovering the One True Plan are vanishingly small.
Unlike something like Google Mail, offering a single user access to the Google Wave experimental servers just doesn't make sense at all. This is a collaborative tool. The magic is in working on waves with others.
The people at Google are pretty smart. I've been following Wave progress in the news and on blogs, but so far no one has answered this question.
Now I see the problem: The Dutch translation is the only one I know of that doesn't use a word very similar in spelling to the original "Neuromancer" in the title. Is the Dutch title a combination of Xanadu and magician?
Wherever it is, post a picture. Some of us would like that very much.
Incidentally, it seems very appropriate that the Google Street View van is visible along much of the street as a shadow cast by the setting sun. Capturing the artifacts in the story is something that William Gibson would appreciate.
Slashdot Mirror
This in10did device might actually ship, which beats vaporware hands down.
That's a pity, because a far better design was announced on Slashdot over a decade ago (http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/02/08/12/1413250/build-a-custom-fit-one-hand-keyboard) which still looks much more comfortable for heavy use (http://www.chordite.com/).
You need to change your basic premise: There is no possible way to prove that software is bug free. The best you can do is to test a piece of software and then fix the problems that you find. Software verification and validation are tough problems.
> In OS X, I can [...] use a variety of Finder replacements.
The Finder still has horrid usability problems, but I guess that I'm the only Mac user who needs to manipulate files on his disk drives, so no one else notices.
Care to list all the non-sucky Finder replacements out there? I've yet to find one.
If "Splice" is an indication of the type of movie treatment we can expect for Neuromancer, then we should all be very very afraid.
Apparently, movie ratings are currently suffering from score inflation. I see lots of healthy B-grade scores hovering with an average of 7/10 for Splice.
Based solely on this thread, I just watched Splice. It wasn't worth it. I am sure there are worse movies on earth, but this one has nothing redeeming to it. It's a 1/10 at best. The only thing that impressed me about it is that someone bothered to finish and release it to the public.
William Gibson continues to write fantastic novels. I'm not sure they can be called Science Fiction anymore, but they are wonderful nonetheless.
Max Headroom (the TV show on ABC in America) proves that cyberpunk can be done well on the screen. There's no reason why Neuromancer is necessarily doomed.
Personally, I'd be delighted if it was a huge flop for general audiences but a huge hit for those plugged into the book.
Then again, I'm a huge fan. I disliked the BBC radio play for Neuromancer because even if the same things happened that were in the book, they happened for different reasons in the play. That alone ruined it for me, and the BBC was attempting a faithful copy.
Agreed. Neuromancer really rewards the reader on the third reading. Then you know the lingo, you know the pacing, you know the plot, and you can enjoy it all.
I used to learn new languages by buying the local translation of Neuromancer. Since I already knew the text inside out and backwards in English, I could focus on the words and structures of the foreign language that I was learning. Of course, you end up speaking like Case or Molly. That may not work to your advantage.
The movie will bear no resemblance to my mind's rendition of Neuromancer, and I will be profoundly disappointed. I will probably watch and rewatch this movie a few times, regardless.
So will videos on Google Video need to be re-encoded to play on YouTube?
A lot of the content on Google Video is already postage-stamp sized and blurry. A further encoding could make them unviewable but all but the most dedicated fans.
The second URL explains it quite clearly:
We've created an "Upload Videos to YouTube" option on the Google Video status page [...] Before doing this you should read YouTube's Terms of Use and Copyright Policies.
So if it is against YouTube's policies, then it's out.
If you are curious, TED.com has a brief but interesting video that explains how YouTube automates their search for copyright infringement, and how effective it is regardless of the quality of the submission. These automated systems can tag shaky video recorded onto mobile phones, for instance.
The true shame of the 24/7 news media is that it moves from story to story without any sense of scale or importance. Because there has not been any continuing visible signs of the continuing catastrophe since the gas ventings, they have moved on to other stories.
Having listened to Dr. Kaku, I'm just glad I don't work as an engineer for TEPCO.
While it's nice to see Google doing the right thing, I question their change of heart. My own guess would be that far more people began leeching ungodly amounts of Google Video content, putting a strain on Google itself.
Rather than continue the pain, Google simply decided to allow people to transfer video from Google Video to YouTube.
I'd just like to add my voice to the chorus here.
Google's whole raison d'être is search, and I often can't find anything of value anymore.
I'm not entirely certain what has happened, but it definitely sees as if something has gone wrong at the heart of Google. Instead of being an unstoppable force, I can now foresee a better search engine that can beat Google at its own game (and not from Microsoft or Yahoo! but rather from someone completely unexpected).
Doron Swade who wrote "The Difference Engine" (the non-fiction book, not the steampunk fiction by Gibson and Sterling) can tell you this:
It's not possible to create The Analytical Engine. Why? Because Babbage never stopped creating the designs. There is no one clean, complete set of designs for the Analytical Engine.
If someone were to build it, they would first have to pick and choose from among Babbage's numerous sketches, then fill in any of the missing bits. It's not a true, 100% authentic, Babbage design, unlike the simpler Difference Engine, which had a clean set of engineering drawings for its creation.
I always thought that learning the constellations was a waste of time. Now I have proof.
There was an even older, better, simpler version of Trade Wars that used a 1000-sector universe where everyone had the same type of ship (with the same number of holds) and there was one planet called The Wanderer.
Can anyone remember the version number? Is it available to play over the Internet today?
(If I had to guess, I'd say it was called Trade Wars 9.014 and came out long before Trade Wars 2002.)
On behalf of Europeans everywhere, let me be the first to say WOO HOO!
The Québécois already voted 60% in favour of separation in 1995, but they lost the overall referendum because of "money and the ethnic vote" as Parizeau explained. I know he was vilified for that comment, but he was merely stating the facts.
Surely I am not the only person living in the EU that sees Google Street Maps as a liberating technology. I have searched for countless things from my office and my home, and each time came away favourable with Street Maps. I think the EU is wrong on this one. What exactly are the dangers that they foresee with this technology?
If anyone is truly interested in this, then they should google "Billion Dollar Charlie" who is the MIT Professor running the show here.
Also, there's a good interview on the Podcast "Search Engine" with Charles. You're clever enough. I'll let you find it.
The patent application makes for interesting reading, and they have certainly developed a clever system for monitoring their customers and the relationships they have with other callers. The application states the obvious: It is easier to retain customers than to search for new ones, and with church rates of possibly 50% to 70% of subscribers per year, this is something that mobile providers have to worry about.
But I think this misses the point completely. Why are people churning? Could it be that mobile telephone service has become a commodity, and that mobile users are unable to discern any difference in call quality or service level between mobile providers? That is also a possibility.
Not to mention the multitude of different calling packages that mobile operators offer. There are so many different plans with different features and options that consumers are unable to make a rational, meaningful decision on which plan is best for them. And so maybe the carriers have caused churn in the first place: If I can't tell I'm getting the best value for the money, my best option is to keep switching plans and carriers, as the odds of me ever discovering the One True Plan are vanishingly small.
Unlike something like Google Mail, offering a single user access to the Google Wave experimental servers just doesn't make sense at all. This is a collaborative tool. The magic is in working on waves with others.
The people at Google are pretty smart. I've been following Wave progress in the news and on blogs, but so far no one has answered this question.
Wintermute is just the Turing code for an AI in Berne, although the entity you wish to write to is really just some sort of sub-program.
Now I see the problem: The Dutch translation is the only one I know of that doesn't use a word very similar in spelling to the original "Neuromancer" in the title.
Is the Dutch title a combination of Xanadu and magician?
Would that happen to be Wintermute Ave, Newark, Licking, Ohio 43055?
Your post got me curious and Google Maps reports that there is only one place with that name. There's even a streetview of it http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Wintermute+Ave,+Newark,+Licking,+Ohio+43055&sll=40.046655,-82.442586&sspn=0.009034,0.027466&ie=UTF8&ll=40.046655,-82.439282&spn=0.009034,0.01929&z=16&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=40.046692,-82.443081&panoid=BMYfmgDPuflnGagk4td1fg&cbp=13,0,,0,5.
Wherever it is, post a picture. Some of us would like that very much.
Incidentally, it seems very appropriate that the Google Street View van is visible along much of the street as a shadow cast by the setting sun. Capturing the artifacts in the story is something that William Gibson would appreciate.