He was and I have read all his Discworld novels. However I remain somewhat ambivalent since I noticed his abuse of copyright law to gain what I view as an illegal extension to his copyright terms.
What you ask, well some time ago and before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's he started making all his books "co-authored" with his wife. So instead of the 70 year clock starting to tick today, it could easily be another 20 years before Lyn dies.
Oh no, instead of having to wait 70 years to legally acquire a free poorly scanned ebook copy, I'm going to have to wait 90.
If only there was a way of getting a properly formatted version now. It's no wonder people are so illiterate nowadays, it's literally impossible to get books to read nowadays unless you are like a software billionaire and can afford private planes, yachts and finely bound signed first editions.
The problem is that there is always some f'tard left wing MS patient (pick whatever chronic debilitating disease you want... MS was just the first one to come to mind) that insists this will lead to their extermination. They insist that their right to life is somehow put at risk by permitting others the right to die.
I'd have thought it would be the selfish Randroid who would use this argument.
...containing more water than all the oceans on Earth......because the Greens tell us that we'll soon have used up all the water on the Earth, and then there'll be no more and humanity will die out. SURELY there can't be resources elsewhere?
Not a "Green" idea I've ever heard before, but even if was genuine, I really don't think that finding water 300km below the surface of a moon round Jupiter is going to be much of a solution except possibly in the very long term.
Hunting animals and protecting yourself against rabid wolves or whatever in the woods is an entirely separate issue from walking around armed in a city and shooting someone because you thought they looked like they might hit you.
all having your own gun does is increase the chance of you being shot by the criminal who is similarly looking to protect himself
Quite. I doubt there are many criminals in the US who aren't armed, and they're not going to be any calmer or more professional about shooting than the cops are, and we know how that works out.
Women have little dicks and are cowards because they don't want to be raped. I learned that from a liberal, and hold it to be a universal truth.
Also, granny doesn't have a right to keep her stuff or her life when a 250 pound "youth" breaks into her home to take the things she spent a lifetime acquiring through legitimate means.
If you're a rapist or murderous burglar, I doubt you're going to approach your would-be victims openly and give them a chance to draw their weapon and shoot you.
The only criminals that get shot by heroic citizens exercising their right to bear arms must be pretty fucking useless and ineffective ones.
Doesn't the 1st Amendment allow him to post those blueprints?
Not according to the BATF and federal prosecutors.
One of the things F-troop has been doing is sending people into gun shows to ask gun-smithly people what the internal differences are between a semi- and full-auto models of various gun designs, such as the M-16 (select-fire) and AR-15 (semi-auto only).
If they reply with information, they are then busted for conspiracy to convert a gun to full auto in violation of federal laws and regulations.
Lots of people are in jail for that, now.
I can't help thinking that being a gun-smith doesn't require much in the way of common sense if they're caught that easily.
Mind you, I also can't believe that someone could be convicted on federal conspiracy charges with such flimsy evidence. Are you sure that the Feds didn't subsequently find something like a cache of actually converted weapons?
Of course the British now enjoy rights roughly on par with our own and without the need for wide spread gun ownership.
They do? Last I checked, they had those crazy libel laws where truth is not a defense, and refusing a demand of the law enforcement to disclose the key for anything encrypted you might have in your possession is punishable by several years in prison.
Truth is most certainly a defence in libel, it's just that you have to prove it (the assumption is that a defamatory statement is false).
As for the encryption thing, what's the difference between the police getting a warrant to seize your computer inside your locked house and the courts forcing you to reveal encrypted potential evidence?
They are started with a capital letter and end with a period.
Your assumptions are incorrect because the US Constitution predates modern spelling reforms.
Sentences in English have started with a capital letter and ended with a period since at least Chaucer's time. Also, spelling is not the same as grammar.
But, apart from that, an interesting and informative post.
Interesting. And how, exactly, do you plan to stop him? Remember, you don't have a gun, but he does.
"Who said I don't have a gun?"
The fact that you are opposing firearm ownership by the general public proves it. Otherwise, you're a hypocrite.
Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, it's like reading a post from a seven year old school bully.
The key to a successful uprising, insurgency, revolution or whatever you want to call it is in the level of mass support, not the number or type of weapons you have.
If half the country supports you, and most of the rest don't really oppose you, it doesn't really matter whether you just have sticks and stones, the army can't kill everybody.
Here in the UK, Blair's main lie about Iraq's WMD was that (even assuming they did exist) they were (a) somehow capable of hitting us and causing mass death and (b) were basically on the verge of being launched by Sadaam Hussein at any minute.
I read every sci-fi short story I could get my hands on, usually in collections or anthologies. Once I ran out of short stories, I stopped reading science fiction. It just doesn't make it in novel form, with many great exceptions.
So you claim to have read every single science fiction short story ever written?
Just because a novel was published as a series of short stories doesn't mean that it was written as a series of stories then lashed to gether later. The author may have intended it to be a single novel all along.
We're not going to get off this rock until people start doing shit...
Yeah, but it will be a lot easier once we have replaced ourselves with robots. We might as well just wait and explore the universe after that happens.
But by then we'll have discovered the secret of infinite power generation, instantaneous matter transfer, eternal life and time travel, so we won't need to physically travel from one place to another anyway.
Actually, reading through all that I was thinking of "why do you need a faster internet connection?" The answer is "I'll know when I get it".
No, the answer is "you don't, not really, and certainly not unless it's affordable."
Same thing with the moon. Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
If it all leads to some genuine scientific breakthrough, fair enough. But there's a danger of using the argument that, because wars generally spur on technological innovation, therefore it's a good idea to be permanently at war in order to maximise technological improvements.
Slashdot Mirror
He didn't receive a knighthood. He became an officer, not a knight. This also means he wasn't Sr Terence, but Mr Terry Pratchett, OBE.
He received a knighthood in 2009 for services to literature.
Alternatively, the BBC and everyone else is lying.
He was and I have read all his Discworld novels. However I remain somewhat ambivalent since I noticed his abuse of copyright law to gain what I view as an illegal extension to his copyright terms.
What you ask, well some time ago and before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's he started making all his books "co-authored" with his wife. So instead of the 70 year clock starting to tick today, it could easily be another 20 years before Lyn dies.
Oh no, instead of having to wait 70 years to legally acquire a free poorly scanned ebook copy, I'm going to have to wait 90.
If only there was a way of getting a properly formatted version now. It's no wonder people are so illiterate nowadays, it's literally impossible to get books to read nowadays unless you are like a software billionaire and can afford private planes, yachts and finely bound signed first editions.
I was just getting over loosing Douglas Adams
He died in 2001. That seems an awfully long time to be grieving over someone, even if you were a close friend or relative.
So why do we call some people "suicide bombers" rather than "self-sacrifice bombers"? It seems to me that they do pretty much what Sampson did.
It's for the exact same reason that some people are terrorists, while others are freedom fighters. It depends who's on the winning side.
Nobody can read the whole Bible, it exists in a multitude of forms from included material to translation.
So nothing anyone says about the bible can be taken as definitive? There's a surprise.
The second amendment has nothing to do with artillery
Yes it does. I have a friend that lives in rural Nevada. He owns a howitzer. It is perfectly legal. Why shouldn't it be?
In the rest of the world, we would say "why should it be?"
By this logic, you would allow ordinary people to own tanks, attack helicopters and nuclear weapons too. I cannot see that this is a good idea.
The problem is that there is always some f'tard left wing MS patient (pick whatever chronic debilitating disease you want... MS was just the first one to come to mind) that insists this will lead to their extermination. They insist that their right to life is somehow put at risk by permitting others the right to die.
I'd have thought it would be the selfish Randroid who would use this argument.
Not a "Green" idea I've ever heard before, but even if was genuine, I really don't think that finding water 300km below the surface of a moon round Jupiter is going to be much of a solution except possibly in the very long term.
Hunting animals and protecting yourself against rabid wolves or whatever in the woods is an entirely separate issue from walking around armed in a city and shooting someone because you thought they looked like they might hit you.
all having your own gun does is increase the chance of you being shot by the criminal who is similarly looking to protect himself
Quite. I doubt there are many criminals in the US who aren't armed, and they're not going to be any calmer or more professional about shooting than the cops are, and we know how that works out.
Women have little dicks and are cowards because they don't want to be raped. I learned that from a liberal, and hold it to be a universal truth. Also, granny doesn't have a right to keep her stuff or her life when a 250 pound "youth" breaks into her home to take the things she spent a lifetime acquiring through legitimate means.
If you're a rapist or murderous burglar, I doubt you're going to approach your would-be victims openly and give them a chance to draw their weapon and shoot you.
The only criminals that get shot by heroic citizens exercising their right to bear arms must be pretty fucking useless and ineffective ones.
Doesn't the 1st Amendment allow him to post those blueprints?
Not according to the BATF and federal prosecutors.
One of the things F-troop has been doing is sending people into gun shows to ask gun-smithly people what the internal differences are between a semi- and full-auto models of various gun designs, such as the M-16 (select-fire) and AR-15 (semi-auto only).
If they reply with information, they are then busted for conspiracy to convert a gun to full auto in violation of federal laws and regulations.
Lots of people are in jail for that, now.
I can't help thinking that being a gun-smith doesn't require much in the way of common sense if they're caught that easily.
Mind you, I also can't believe that someone could be convicted on federal conspiracy charges with such flimsy evidence. Are you sure that the Feds didn't subsequently find something like a cache of actually converted weapons?
Of course the British now enjoy rights roughly on par with our own and without the need for wide spread gun ownership.
They do? Last I checked, they had those crazy libel laws where truth is not a defense, and refusing a demand of the law enforcement to disclose the key for anything encrypted you might have in your possession is punishable by several years in prison.
Truth is most certainly a defence in libel, it's just that you have to prove it (the assumption is that a defamatory statement is false).
As for the encryption thing, what's the difference between the police getting a warrant to seize your computer inside your locked house and the courts forcing you to reveal encrypted potential evidence?
They are started with a capital letter and end with a period.
Your assumptions are incorrect because the US Constitution predates modern spelling reforms.
Sentences in English have started with a capital letter and ended with a period since at least Chaucer's time. Also, spelling is not the same as grammar.
But, apart from that, an interesting and informative post.
And as a Canadian, I won't let him.
Interesting. And how, exactly, do you plan to stop him? Remember, you don't have a gun, but he does. "Who said I don't have a gun?" The fact that you are opposing firearm ownership by the general public proves it. Otherwise, you're a hypocrite.
Jesus Tittyfucking Christ, it's like reading a post from a seven year old school bully.
First poster should be shot on sight, fuck him. I'd deliver his shit for free if I had the means. Fuck fedex too.
Always good to get an official quote from the NRA.
If half the country supports you, and most of the rest don't really oppose you, it doesn't really matter whether you just have sticks and stones, the army can't kill everybody.
Here in the UK, Blair's main lie about Iraq's WMD was that (even assuming they did exist) they were (a) somehow capable of hitting us and causing mass death and (b) were basically on the verge of being launched by Sadaam Hussein at any minute.
Yes, it's only Turkish men who show their penises on the internet and are rude to women.
Whassat sonny? can't hear you over the clack of the beads in my abacus.
You flash git.
We had to use our fingers, only the rich kids could afford abacuses. Or food.
I read every sci-fi short story I could get my hands on, usually in collections or anthologies. Once I ran out of short stories, I stopped reading science fiction. It just doesn't make it in novel form, with many great exceptions.
So you claim to have read every single science fiction short story ever written?
Just because a novel was published as a series of short stories doesn't mean that it was written as a series of stories then lashed to gether later. The author may have intended it to be a single novel all along.
A Canticle for Leibowitz was originally three novellas as well.
That probably explains why it reads like three loosely connected stories then.
Yeah, but it will be a lot easier once we have replaced ourselves with robots. We might as well just wait and explore the universe after that happens.
But by then we'll have discovered the secret of infinite power generation, instantaneous matter transfer, eternal life and time travel, so we won't need to physically travel from one place to another anyway.
Actually, reading through all that I was thinking of "why do you need a faster internet connection?" The answer is "I'll know when I get it".
No, the answer is "you don't, not really, and certainly not unless it's affordable."
Same thing with the moon. Maybe all their reasons are BS right now, but with people putting a lot of $ into it someone will figure something out.
If it all leads to some genuine scientific breakthrough, fair enough. But there's a danger of using the argument that, because wars generally spur on technological innovation, therefore it's a good idea to be permanently at war in order to maximise technological improvements.