As the Welsh farmer said, "What are a few sheep between friends."
You have your sheep mixed up. Blade Runner is based upon the Phillip K. Dick story, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep."
Re:Implicit logic? Iain M Banks
on
Snow Crash
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· Score: 1
Check out Iain M. Banks. A truly original sci-fi writer. A recent classic is "Excession." But "The Player of Games," and "Consider Phlebas," are both excellent. These novels are set in Bank's "Culture" universe. There are some great web dialogs written on the Culture and four or five of his books take place there. Everyone I know who has read Banks (and his popularity spread around the New York ISP where I work like Marburg virus) wishes they live in the Culture universe.
His work is hard space sci-fi. But his books are really amusing, with great characters, especially the "minds." He writes non sci-fi as Iain Banks.
Concerning Arthur C. Clarke. Check out the "The City and the Stars," "Earthlight," (a great space battle) and "A Fall of Moondust." These books are all out of print but can normally be found in second hand bookstores and rummage sales for just a few cents.
I have just finished reading Phillip K. Dicks "The Man in the High Castle," pretty weird and disturbing but it shows off his genius imagination.
Axis breaking Allied codes
on
The Code Book
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· Score: 1
First I want to say how much I enjoyed this book. Simon, if you read Slashdot (and I hope you do) thanks. The book explained to me many things. I found the explanation of Enigma particularly easy to follow, which was great because I have read a few other books on the subject and never could quite get my mind to grasp it all. My one reservation, however, is the minimal amount of information regarding the Allied code effort. Apart from briefly stating that the Allies used a more sophisticated code system and didn't make the same human errors that the Germans made, there is no more detail. Did the Allies use a similar technology? Were there different navel, airforce and army codes? Did the US and the Commonwealth share "trade secrets?" What attempts did the Germans make to decipher the Allies communications? In Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson has a German genius, Rudy, working against A Turing a crew, at least for a while. Is he based upon a real person? I guess the real question is, "is all this information still classified and unavailable for scholarly research?" Thanks.
I signed up for Qwest internet a while ago (I was using a win 95 machine). The service was OK, except I could never get more than 33K (normally I can l log in at around 53K). But the most annoying thing about them was there use of cache. Even going to a sight like Yahoo! was a nightmare, it would take forever. Trying to go to Slashdot was almost impossible. I managed to get some relief by editing my Netscape preferences, but even now I still have annoying messages popping up on my computer every time I close Netscape but am still online. Now I am with DNAI and they are so much better! I wonder how well these free ISP's really work. Saving a couple of dollars is all well and good, but if that means my web browsing experience is miserable, then what's the point.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't realize that the time difference between here and the UK was so great. It must be April 1st there already!
As the Welsh farmer said, "What are a few sheep between friends."
You have your sheep mixed up. Blade Runner is based upon the Phillip K. Dick story, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep."
Check out Iain M. Banks. A truly original sci-fi writer. A recent classic is "Excession." But "The Player of Games," and "Consider Phlebas," are both excellent. These novels are set in Bank's "Culture" universe. There are some great web dialogs written on the Culture and four or five of his books take place there. Everyone I know who has read Banks (and his popularity spread around the New York ISP where I work like Marburg virus) wishes they live in the Culture universe.
His work is hard space sci-fi. But his books are really amusing, with great characters, especially the "minds." He writes non sci-fi as Iain Banks.
Concerning Arthur C. Clarke. Check out the "The City and the Stars," "Earthlight," (a great space battle) and "A Fall of Moondust." These books are all out of print but can normally be found in second hand bookstores and rummage sales for just a few cents.
I have just finished reading Phillip K. Dicks "The Man in the High Castle," pretty weird and disturbing but it shows off his genius imagination.
First I want to say how much I enjoyed this book. Simon, if you read Slashdot (and I hope you do) thanks. The book explained to me many things. I found the explanation of Enigma particularly easy to follow, which was great because I have read a few other books on the subject and never could quite get my mind to grasp it all. My one reservation, however, is the minimal amount of information regarding the Allied code effort. Apart from briefly stating that the Allies used a more sophisticated code system and didn't make the same human errors that the Germans made, there is no more detail. Did the Allies use a similar technology? Were there different navel, airforce and army codes? Did the US and the Commonwealth share "trade secrets?" What attempts did the Germans make to decipher the Allies communications? In Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson has a German genius, Rudy, working against A Turing a crew, at least for a while. Is he based upon a real person? I guess the real question is, "is all this information still classified and unavailable for scholarly research?" Thanks.
I signed up for Qwest internet a while ago (I was using a win 95 machine). The service was OK, except I could never get more than 33K (normally I can l log in at around 53K). But the most annoying thing about them was there use of cache. Even going to a sight like Yahoo! was a nightmare, it would take forever. Trying to go to Slashdot was almost impossible. I managed to get some relief by editing my Netscape preferences, but even now I still have annoying messages popping up on my computer every time I close Netscape but am still online. Now I am with DNAI and they are so much better! I wonder how well these free ISP's really work. Saving a couple of dollars is all well and good, but if that means my web browsing experience is miserable, then what's the point.