Funny, I have the same opinion of Steven King. Well, maybe not "terrible", but there have been some pretty bad moments.
Well, I never cared for his genre (horror), but I don't see how anyone could say The Green Mile isn't some great writing. I only read it because I'd seen the movie and a friend had a copy I could borrow (six very skinny volumes). It really sucked me in. Patterson? I write better than him, King kicks my ass..
Of course, since I wasn't a literature or English major, my opinion of Patterson and King are pretty worthless, unlike King's (and maybe yours) since he was, in fact, an English major.
I've seen people who've just come out of lengthy and complex surgery, for example, who will thank God for living with nary a thought for who gave them the boo-boo in the first place* or who it was who actually worked to save them.
Assume for a moment that God does, in fact, exist and did create everything, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe. You are just a program, a story, designed to be temporary (or at least your physical form is). You can let a heart patient (your program) live or you can make him die. Why should that program NOT thank you for not deleting it?
The people who thank God for their recovery see the surgeons as being used by God.
http://bit.ly/1dgDo7d . Come on slashdot editors, do the legwork and link the article directly!
Come on, martin, do the legwork and link it directly. This isn't twitter and most folks are wary of shortened links; trolls love hiding their goatse and tubgirl links. I only clicked it because your UID is relatively low and you hadn't (yet) been modded down.
No fancy computer program is going to replace actual talent.
I don't think there's any correlation between talent and success whatever. Wikipedia quotes Stephen King as saying that James Patterson "is a terrible writer, but very successful." I read Patterson's "When the Wind Blows" and wasn't very impressed with his writing, either, especially the switching back and forth between 1st and 3rd person. But almost every time I see a woman with a book it's one of his.
Asimov's Hugo-winning Foundation trilogy didn't earn him a dime for ten years, until Doubleday bought the rights from the original publisher.
Meanwhile I know a lot of incredibly talented musicians who play in bars because the labels offered them ridiculous contracts.
The only difference between physics and religion...
There is nothing whatever that physics and religion have in common. Physics is the study of the physical universe, religion is not about the physical universe at all.
Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995
They didn't happen because people took measures to mitigate them. The ozone layer was disappearing because of CFCs. Now that we don't use them in spray cans and air conditioners any more the hole is shrinking and should be gone in another 100 years.
You're like the people who scoff at the Y2K Armageddon that didn't happen. It didn't happen because a lot of folks did a lot of hard work to keep it from happening.
Had everyone shrugged and done nothing like you propose with global warming the ozone would still be disappearing and the Y2K meltdown would have been serious.
Did you not even read TFS? Electronics weren't being imported, rare-earth magnets were. We're still capable of building our own electronics, we just can't do it as cheaply as the Chinese.
I've been trying unsucessfully for over four decades, was 19 then. I'll surely succeed in the next 40 years. 2049 news item: "mcgrew, age 97, was found dead today of an apparent marijuana overdose..."
It's easy to get away with murdering a drug user. Even if the guy's a speed freak and he dies of a barbiturate overdose, it's automatically an accident.
How implausible is it to imagine that a system could be set up to suck all data off every device (especially solid state storage) as it passes through airport security?
Very. You have no idea how those things work, do you?
Let's see, wikipedia says it's as hot as an oven, seven times Earth's mass but far less dense; it isn't clear what gravity would be at its surface or even if it has a surface, if it does but it's possible you could put a bucket of corn oil with potatoes sliced into strips in it on the surface and get some pretty good french fries.
Of course, 42 light years is a little farther away than Jupiter.
Forty two light years... hmm... Could it be Magrathea?
Yea, by fucking J.D. Salinger himself (or did mentioning that little tidbit weaken your argument too much to make it worthy of a mention?)
Yes, Sallinger sued, I thought that was too obvious to mention.
So sad that this is where you've invested your moral outrage, that one of the century's most noted author's sued because he didn't want some talentless ass hat publishing fan fiction (a.k.a. unoriginal self-indulgent feculence) to muddy his genuine, original and critically acclaimed novel.
I should not have the right to sue someone for writing fan fiction, nor would I want it. As long as Sallinger's name isn't on the sequel except maybe in a disclaimer it isn't going to diminish what Sallinger did at all. And if is unoriginal self-indulgent feculence it isn't going to sell anyway.
How would this in any way diminish Terry Pratchett? The first draft of that chapter was posted at slashdot and someone asked "Is this some sort of disturbed pratchett fanfic?" rk said "Other authors in SF works is a time-honored tradition. In Pournelle/Niven's Footfall, there is a character who is never named but if you know anything at all about him, is obviously Robert A. Heinlein."
If it isn't unoriginal self-indulgent feculence the world may have been deprived of some good literature thanks to Sallinger's selfish narcissism.
In one of Lessig's books he kicks himself for the way he handled the Supreme Court case. He argued reason, the opposition argued finance. Money won out over the constitution. Lessig wishes he would have stressed the opposite side of the money argument.
We need a new Supreme Court, one not appointed by politicians who are owned by corporations. I have no idea how to accomplish that, though.
You don't own copyright, you hold copyright. Ownership doesn't expire and isn't limited. For most of US history copyright lasted a couple decades at most.
It's no different than leasing a car. You get its exclusive use, but you don't own it and have to return it when the lease is up. That's copyright; the Constitution says "for limited times".
You watch me. I wore glasses for half a century, paid a shitload of money for eye surgery, and there's no way in HELL I'm wearing any kind of glasses at all except maybe sunglasses when it's really bright or protective eyewear if necessary for some task.
Cell phones? Of course, who wouldn't want a phone in their pocket? Quite handy. Smart phone? Of course, who wouldn't want the internet, email, a movie camera, a calculator, a phone, all in a pocket sized device?
Google glass? I see no point whatever. I've been reading about Google Glass for a long time but have yet to see any reason to have them except "ooh! New! Shiny!"
I have to agree with the AC, it's this decade's Segway. The future will be under my butt: Google's self-driving car.
$2.99 to rent a film for 3 days is a fucking rip off?
Yes, it is. You can outright buy DVDs for five bucks. Family Video rents DVDs and blu-rays for a buck and you can keep them for a week. I think the RedBox kiosks are the same.
The $3.32 per gallon at Shell is also a ripoff, it was $3.02 at a gas station across town the day before yesterday. Fucking thieves everywhere and you people gladly let them defraud you.
As someone who lived through the '80s and '90s, and paid $4 to rent a VHS tape at Blockbuster
That was back when the minimum purchase price for a movie was a hundred bucks. They're between $5 and $20 now, 3/5ths of the purchase price for a three day rental is fraud.
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Funny, I have the same opinion of Steven King. Well, maybe not "terrible", but there have been some pretty bad moments.
Well, I never cared for his genre (horror), but I don't see how anyone could say The Green Mile isn't some great writing. I only read it because I'd seen the movie and a friend had a copy I could borrow (six very skinny volumes). It really sucked me in. Patterson? I write better than him, King kicks my ass..
Of course, since I wasn't a literature or English major, my opinion of Patterson and King are pretty worthless, unlike King's (and maybe yours) since he was, in fact, an English major.
I've seen people who've just come out of lengthy and complex surgery, for example, who will thank God for living with nary a thought for who gave them the boo-boo in the first place* or who it was who actually worked to save them.
Assume for a moment that God does, in fact, exist and did create everything, as Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe. You are just a program, a story, designed to be temporary (or at least your physical form is). You can let a heart patient (your program) live or you can make him die. Why should that program NOT thank you for not deleting it?
The people who thank God for their recovery see the surgeons as being used by God.
http://bit.ly/1dgDo7d . Come on slashdot editors, do the legwork and link the article directly!
Come on, martin, do the legwork and link it directly. This isn't twitter and most folks are wary of shortened links; trolls love hiding their goatse and tubgirl links. I only clicked it because your UID is relatively low and you hadn't (yet) been modded down.
No fancy computer program is going to replace actual talent.
I don't think there's any correlation between talent and success whatever. Wikipedia quotes Stephen King as saying that James Patterson "is a terrible writer, but very successful." I read Patterson's "When the Wind Blows" and wasn't very impressed with his writing, either, especially the switching back and forth between 1st and 3rd person. But almost every time I see a woman with a book it's one of his.
Asimov's Hugo-winning Foundation trilogy didn't earn him a dime for ten years, until Doubleday bought the rights from the original publisher.
Meanwhile I know a lot of incredibly talented musicians who play in bars because the labels offered them ridiculous contracts.
Anyone remember Milli Vanilli?
Marketing is king, talent is a dime a dozen.
Damn, so that's why Nobots is selling so poorly... I forgot to put rock and roll in it! Damn... didn't you tell me before I wrote it?
Obviously this closed source software wasn't, in fact, the best tool for the job. If it were it wouldn't have been hacked.
Honestly, there's so much good comparable open source software out there I'm flabbergasted that Suse uses closed source for it.
Nice troll, son, but how about staying ontopic? I'd like to know what supervolcano is likeliest to erupt (I'm guessing Yellowstone).
The only difference between physics and religion...
There is nothing whatever that physics and religion have in common. Physics is the study of the physical universe, religion is not about the physical universe at all.
Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995
They didn't happen because people took measures to mitigate them. The ozone layer was disappearing because of CFCs. Now that we don't use them in spray cans and air conditioners any more the hole is shrinking and should be gone in another 100 years.
You're like the people who scoff at the Y2K Armageddon that didn't happen. It didn't happen because a lot of folks did a lot of hard work to keep it from happening.
Had everyone shrugged and done nothing like you propose with global warming the ozone would still be disappearing and the Y2K meltdown would have been serious.
It's early summer, it will get warmer. It's supposed to be colder here in Illinois tonight than it is in Antarctica right now.
Read the article, they are indeed following the law.
Did you not even read TFS? Electronics weren't being imported, rare-earth magnets were. We're still capable of building our own electronics, we just can't do it as cheaply as the Chinese.
I've been trying unsucessfully for over four decades, was 19 then. I'll surely succeed in the next 40 years. 2049 news item: "mcgrew, age 97, was found dead today of an apparent marijuana overdose..."
It's easy to get away with murdering a drug user. Even if the guy's a speed freak and he dies of a barbiturate overdose, it's automatically an accident.
The science and technology are amazingly accurate, the social and cultural changes are not even close
You make me think of Murray Leinster's A Logic Named Joe. Leinster predicted the internet in 1946 but got society wrong; times change.
Nobody can predict people.
I just looked it up and it appears you're correct.
Of course it's a police state. Any country with Secret Police is a police state, whether you call them "secret police" or "undercover agents".
It's one of the most basic tenants of national sovereignty.
So, it only rents?
How implausible is it to imagine that a system could be set up to suck all data off every device (especially solid state storage) as it passes through airport security?
Very. You have no idea how those things work, do you?
Let's see, wikipedia says it's as hot as an oven, seven times Earth's mass but far less dense; it isn't clear what gravity would be at its surface or even if it has a surface, if it does but it's possible you could put a bucket of corn oil with potatoes sliced into strips in it on the surface and get some pretty good french fries.
Of course, 42 light years is a little farther away than Jupiter.
Forty two light years... hmm... Could it be Magrathea?
Yea, by fucking J.D. Salinger himself (or did mentioning that little tidbit weaken your argument too much to make it worthy of a mention?)
Yes, Sallinger sued, I thought that was too obvious to mention.
So sad that this is where you've invested your moral outrage, that one of the century's most noted author's sued because he didn't want some talentless ass hat publishing fan fiction (a.k.a. unoriginal self-indulgent feculence) to muddy his genuine, original and critically acclaimed novel.
I should not have the right to sue someone for writing fan fiction, nor would I want it. As long as Sallinger's name isn't on the sequel except maybe in a disclaimer it isn't going to diminish what Sallinger did at all. And if is unoriginal self-indulgent feculence it isn't going to sell anyway.
How would this in any way diminish Terry Pratchett? The first draft of that chapter was posted at slashdot and someone asked "Is this some sort of disturbed pratchett fanfic?" rk said "Other authors in SF works is a time-honored tradition. In Pournelle/Niven's Footfall, there is a character who is never named but if you know anything at all about him, is obviously Robert A. Heinlein."
If it isn't unoriginal self-indulgent feculence the world may have been deprived of some good literature thanks to Sallinger's selfish narcissism.
In one of Lessig's books he kicks himself for the way he handled the Supreme Court case. He argued reason, the opposition argued finance. Money won out over the constitution. Lessig wishes he would have stressed the opposite side of the money argument.
We need a new Supreme Court, one not appointed by politicians who are owned by corporations. I have no idea how to accomplish that, though.
You don't own copyright, you hold copyright. Ownership doesn't expire and isn't limited. For most of US history copyright lasted a couple decades at most.
It's no different than leasing a car. You get its exclusive use, but you don't own it and have to return it when the lease is up. That's copyright; the Constitution says "for limited times".
You can't fight time.
You watch me. I wore glasses for half a century, paid a shitload of money for eye surgery, and there's no way in HELL I'm wearing any kind of glasses at all except maybe sunglasses when it's really bright or protective eyewear if necessary for some task.
Cell phones? Of course, who wouldn't want a phone in their pocket? Quite handy. Smart phone? Of course, who wouldn't want the internet, email, a movie camera, a calculator, a phone, all in a pocket sized device?
Google glass? I see no point whatever. I've been reading about Google Glass for a long time but have yet to see any reason to have them except "ooh! New! Shiny!"
I have to agree with the AC, it's this decade's Segway. The future will be under my butt: Google's self-driving car.
$2.99 to rent a film for 3 days is a fucking rip off?
Yes, it is. You can outright buy DVDs for five bucks. Family Video rents DVDs and blu-rays for a buck and you can keep them for a week. I think the RedBox kiosks are the same.
The $3.32 per gallon at Shell is also a ripoff, it was $3.02 at a gas station across town the day before yesterday. Fucking thieves everywhere and you people gladly let them defraud you.
As someone who lived through the '80s and '90s, and paid $4 to rent a VHS tape at Blockbuster
That was back when the minimum purchase price for a movie was a hundred bucks. They're between $5 and $20 now, 3/5ths of the purchase price for a three day rental is fraud.