The early stories did have some computers; Heinlein just fell into the same trap as most writers then and thought they would always be huge. "Slipstick" Libby was a special case.
Don't forget Deija Thoris Carter. But by then he was making the point (repeated in Friday) that a computer, no matter how fast, may not be able to beat human intuition.
Then there is Lazarus's clone sisters Laz and Lor who IIRC had similar talent with numbers. I won't include Dora Long because she started as a computer in the first place.
Heinlein was very intolerant of anyone who challenged certain of his political views, even driving away life-long friends over very minor issues. He didn't suffer those he saw as fools gladly, and I'm sure he used that check-box often. You can read Spider Robinson's biography and literary reviews of Heinleins work for the sordid details, if you care about that sort of thing. Don't mistake the author for his protagonists.
He must have had a lot of hangers-on though. Politics is a good excuse to use if you are just bored with somebody.
In space cadet (~1950) a character takes a call on his mobile while standing in a queue for something. He tells the caller he will call back later when he is not in a crowd. Heinlein got the technology of the cellphone absolutely right but it didn't occur to him that in the future people would just keep chatting away, annoying people around them.
...that RAH is a lot more polite in that letter than I would have expected from his books. A letter bomb wouldn't have surprised me but maybe I am confusing Jubal Harshaw with the Author.
I'm not sure that is an excuse; I'm fairly confident that Robert & Virginia Heinlein were fully capable of producing a computer from parts from a TV, washing machine, and whatever was laying around in the basement, anytime from about 1946 on.
I bet it was the printer that was the sticking point.
If he had a beautiful daughter he would have had a time machine in his basement as well.
When the Alpha came out there were these guys trying to write an open source port of RSTS to it. They reckoned that it would absolutely fly as a single process system on that chip. I doubt anything came of it.
For me, our operational stuff was on RSX11M and we only used RSTS for diagnostic software.
I worked at a site in the 1990's which used OS/2 as the main corporate desktop. It was disliked by most of the users for various reasons:
Being attached to big a tokin ring LAN it was slow to start up
The desktop background had this really sickening dark green color
It had a tendency to stack icons in folders at the same x,y coordinate, requiring the user to manually position them
Now none of the above is really the fault of the OS. The UI issues are fairly typical of environments where more effort is given to the internals and where desktop support is a long way away. I think the big problem was that it was the OS favoured by BIG IT and had to be killed because of that association.
One thing I can say for sure: absolutely nobody who had to use it during the day would choose to use it at home, perhaps excluding a few technical people.
I know but tell that to my Sister in law. I got this call from her this morning because google had disappeared from her laptop. It turned out that she had at some point installed Safari, possibly because she runs iTunes. Then something happened and the home page of safari got set to apple or something and she lost her only ability to find things on the internet. I said okay lets start firefox and she said firefox? is that the same as google?
I owed OzEmail $250 AUD at one point. It was all legitimate. The problem was they didn't have a clue about how to process bills. I sent them a cheque and cancelled it after it hadn't been processed for two months. Then they sent a debt collector. I sent another cheque and the same thing happened. We went around on this a few times with debt collectors then they forgot about me.
The real answer is that the entire flood story is impossible in about a dozen different ways
Actually the flood story is one part of the bible which fits well with the world as we know it. Consider the 2004 Tsunami around the Indian Ocean. A person in the middle of that could easily be convinced they were seeing a global flood.
Indeed all I could think was how entertaining it would be to try to explain to the hockey guy how slashdot DOES mean something and makes a lot more sense in the context of what it actually is, than it would for hockey.
He is probably that Levi Johnson guy. I wouldn't bother.
I heard about a terminal set up in a science museum environment so that kids could play with it. Of course it got covered with dirty words so some bright spark wrote a program to filter them. Unfortunately it needed a way to display the full list of banned words...and there is no way to keep that facility away from a bunch of young hackers.
A few years back a/.er told of recovering from a seizure like their brain rebooting, senses coming online one-by-one. I wish I could find the link now.
That might be a good way to describe it, but it is probably not close to what actually happens. Long term memory is one of the most vulnerable brain functions. It is the first to be lost when anything goes wrong and the last to come back.
My recollection of recovering from a grand mal seizure is that of vague memories early on and better memories later. That is consistent with long term memory starting to come back. But the spotty early memories include myself apparently behaving normally: talking to people, etc. So simple functions may come back quote quickly.
That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?
Possibly. When I was a teenager I would sometimes be terrified of small things. I don't have a fear of heights except a small height like standing on a curb could generate strange fears.
I took medication for my condition between the ages of 19 and 25. It is mostly under control now, possibly because of the medication but also possibly because I have learnt what states to avoid.
I am very much aware that the brain is not a stored program computer. Memory, behaviour and (to some extent illness) are all hard wired. If an anomoly is caused by a particular state in my brean then I can avoid the problem by avoiding that state.
Over time I have become much more relaxed. I avoid the stressful conditions which I associated with having seizures. Maybe I have learnt around the problem. Maybe the drugs changed my brain. Maybe this is a natural change which everybody experiences.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is reasonable for google news to ignore articles without dates.
Exactly.
She's fictional but you can't have everything.
(I know, crossing the streams there, sorry about that).
Agreed. Please mod the GP up. many people would agree with him. Personally I think RAH just became more experimental in his later years.
The early stories did have some computers; Heinlein just fell into the same trap as most writers then and thought they would always be huge. "Slipstick" Libby was a special case.
Don't forget Deija Thoris Carter. But by then he was making the point (repeated in Friday) that a computer, no matter how fast, may not be able to beat human intuition.
Then there is Lazarus's clone sisters Laz and Lor who IIRC had similar talent with numbers. I won't include Dora Long because she started as a computer in the first place.
Come to think of it The Sentinal had a few things in common with Rocketship Galileo.
If the mods are not polite they may find themselves suddenly somewhere else.
Heinlein was very intolerant of anyone who challenged certain of his political views, even driving away life-long friends over very minor issues. He didn't suffer those he saw as fools gladly, and I'm sure he used that check-box often. You can read Spider Robinson's biography and literary reviews of Heinleins work for the sordid details, if you care about that sort of thing. Don't mistake the author for his protagonists.
He must have had a lot of hangers-on though. Politics is a good excuse to use if you are just bored with somebody.
In space cadet (~1950) a character takes a call on his mobile while standing in a queue for something. He tells the caller he will call back later when he is not in a crowd. Heinlein got the technology of the cellphone absolutely right but it didn't occur to him that in the future people would just keep chatting away, annoying people around them.
...that RAH is a lot more polite in that letter than I would have expected from his books. A letter bomb wouldn't have surprised me but maybe I am confusing Jubal Harshaw with the Author.
What question in a fan's mail will receive the answer: "Please do not write to me again" ?
Writing to say you loved his foundation series.
I'm not sure that is an excuse; I'm fairly confident that Robert & Virginia Heinlein were fully capable of producing a computer from parts from a TV, washing machine, and whatever was laying around in the basement, anytime from about 1946 on. I bet it was the printer that was the sticking point.
If he had a beautiful daughter he would have had a time machine in his basement as well.
lay awake in bed at night wondering the same thing, cold sweat running down my face as I count down the seconds until the release of Ubuntu 17.10
In English, there are more than 17 letters.
They could start using a different character set. It would take thousands of years to run out of names in Chinese.
When the Alpha came out there were these guys trying to write an open source port of RSTS to it. They reckoned that it would absolutely fly as a single process system on that chip. I doubt anything came of it.
For me, our operational stuff was on RSX11M and we only used RSTS for diagnostic software.
I worked at a site in the 1990's which used OS/2 as the main corporate desktop. It was disliked by most of the users for various reasons:
It had a tendency to stack icons in folders at the same x,y coordinate, requiring the user to manually position them
Now none of the above is really the fault of the OS. The UI issues are fairly typical of environments where more effort is given to the internals and where desktop support is a long way away. I think the big problem was that it was the OS favoured by BIG IT and had to be killed because of that association.
One thing I can say for sure: absolutely nobody who had to use it during the day would choose to use it at home, perhaps excluding a few technical people.
Sounds great for the openmoko.
Seriously, not everything has to do with Google
I know but tell that to my Sister in law. I got this call from her this morning because google had disappeared from her laptop. It turned out that she had at some point installed Safari, possibly because she runs iTunes. Then something happened and the home page of safari got set to apple or something and she lost her only ability to find things on the internet. I said okay lets start firefox and she said firefox? is that the same as google?
Is there more than just being eco-friendly to this? I can see this being used to avoid taxes, censorship laws, etc.
Theyd have to be located 12nm from any shore to be in international waters.
Twelve nanometres? Thats not too bad.
I owed OzEmail $250 AUD at one point. It was all legitimate. The problem was they didn't have a clue about how to process bills. I sent them a cheque and cancelled it after it hadn't been processed for two months. Then they sent a debt collector. I sent another cheque and the same thing happened. We went around on this a few times with debt collectors then they forgot about me.
The real answer is that the entire flood story is impossible in about a dozen different ways
Actually the flood story is one part of the bible which fits well with the world as we know it. Consider the 2004 Tsunami around the Indian Ocean. A person in the middle of that could easily be convinced they were seeing a global flood.
Umm Hello?
Can you come over to look after Bobby-Jo we have to go out
Oh hi Bristol listen...
Levi got a couple of tabs of e and we don't want to miss the party
...I was up to two talking to the joint chiefs about this Ukraine thing...
Can't John do that? Isn't it his job?
John has to sleep darling. Right after American Idol and he told me we have to make sure those damn um Russians I think get into NATO...
Oh Come On its still early...
Well okay but I want you back before nine because thats when we make the big decisions you know, as soon a John gets up.
He is probably that Levi Johnson guy. I wouldn't bother.
I heard about a terminal set up in a science museum environment so that kids could play with it. Of course it got covered with dirty words so some bright spark wrote a program to filter them. Unfortunately it needed a way to display the full list of banned words...and there is no way to keep that facility away from a bunch of young hackers.
A few years back a /.er told of recovering from a seizure like their brain rebooting, senses coming online one-by-one. I wish I could find the link now.
That might be a good way to describe it, but it is probably not close to what actually happens. Long term memory is one of the most vulnerable brain functions. It is the first to be lost when anything goes wrong and the last to come back.
My recollection of recovering from a grand mal seizure is that of vague memories early on and better memories later. That is consistent with long term memory starting to come back. But the spotty early memories include myself apparently behaving normally: talking to people, etc. So simple functions may come back quote quickly.
That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?
Possibly. When I was a teenager I would sometimes be terrified of small things. I don't have a fear of heights except a small height like standing on a curb could generate strange fears.
I took medication for my condition between the ages of 19 and 25. It is mostly under control now, possibly because of the medication but also possibly because I have learnt what states to avoid.
I am very much aware that the brain is not a stored program computer. Memory, behaviour and (to some extent illness) are all hard wired. If an anomoly is caused by a particular state in my brean then I can avoid the problem by avoiding that state.
Over time I have become much more relaxed. I avoid the stressful conditions which I associated with having seizures. Maybe I have learnt around the problem. Maybe the drugs changed my brain. Maybe this is a natural change which everybody experiences.