the Mars Trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson)
on
Top 20 Geek Novels
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· Score: 1
can't believe there's not something by KSR in there. the Mars Trilogy is (imho) the most geeky, covering any number of sciences. maybe too political, though?
another great one is "The Years of Rice and Salt", wel worth a read (an alternative history based on Europe being hard hit by the black death, and science as we know it being developed elsewhere... neal stephenson's baroque cycle reminded me of it at times.
would like to have you to spell it out a bit better so that people don't get the wrong impression from your post:
Saudi Arabia is a more extremely Islamic country than Iraq ever was during Hussain's rule. the Wahhabi sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia is related far more closely to the Taliban and Al Qaida's Islamic ideas than the Sunni (of Hussain) or Shi'ite (of the Iraq majority).
do a little research on the nationalities of the WTC suicide bombers and count the Saudis and Iraqis...
the rootstrap package, available for debian, does exactly this. a configuration file allows a UML instance to download and install packages (using apt) creating a debian root image for use with UML.
looks to me like vast tracts of this patent talk about CDROMs (Compact Disk Read Only Memory). i wasn't aware that CDROMs could be written to, although i've certainly written to CDR and CDRW disks in the past...
does slashdot have a style guide for the editors? if so, can you either (a) make sure the editors read it, or (b) add a section about `insure' vs `ensure' (and `assure', while you're at it...)
so, this TV works by decoding radio waves sent from a base station, which works by decoding waves sent from the TV station. and to change the channel you have to walk back to the room with the base station?
my brother had something like this about 15 years ago, but he could change the channel right on the TV itself...
The pumped-storage power station at Cruachan (Scotland) is worth a visit - a huge cave hollwed out of solid rock with a hydroelectric power station inside. It's a net consumer of electricity, but still turns a profit by selling and buying electricity at the right times.
The catacombs in Paris are good, if a little macabre (lined with bones of disinterred corpses from the 19th century).
Around Denmark there are some impresive sea crossings by tunnel/bridge/ship. Denmark to Sweden is half-bridge half-tunnel, via an aritifical island (best seen from the air near Copenhagen airport). There is (I think) still a train route from Germany to Denmark which goes via a ferry - the train gets split into three pieces, goes onto the ferry, and then continues at the other side.
There are a lot of good bridge crossings around, but my favourite are the rail and road bridges over the forth near Edinburgh. A really nice pair of bridges in completely different styles right next to each other.
I'm interested in an early film you were in, called Incubus, in which all the dialogue was in Esperanto.
Did you have to learn any Esperanto for this? If so, how much did you learn and do you still remember any? If not, were any of the actors speakers of language, or was most of it receited by heart from the sounds?
so we've all read comments about buffer overflows and all the errors the OpenBSD folk find in code - how about a book telling us how to write code that avoids these kinds of problems?
ok - i take that back - a third check reveals the source code for the client is further up the page... sadly, having already wasted so much time getting it to work without the source over the previous months, i no longer have time to hack on it with the source:-(
having been working on getting a web-based commercial product converted over to linux/interbase for the last 3 months, i have this to say:
the database is nice, but the JDBC client for linux has given us nothing but problems. first it wouldn't talk to the database, second it still wouldn't, and now it finally does, but doesn't support what JDBC says it should (rs=st.getResultSet() after st.exec() returns a null?)
we have finally given up and are paying big money for Oracle and Oracle people...
and as far as I can see, there's no source code for the client (yet).
surprising, since one would expect that esperanto, with its more regular and simplified grammar, would give them an extra language on their list with less effort than the others there...
a previous project, the Distributed Language Translation (DLT) project, based in the netherlands if i remember right, used a similar idea, using a de-ambiguised esperanto as the bridge language. as i remember, as a text was typed in a source language, it was translated into and stored as this bridge language. when ambiguities arose in the interpretation of the source, a query was sent to the typer as to which meaning was meant (eg: "i love her more than you"), and this distinction was preserved in the bridge language. when the text was required in a different language, this bridge language was translated into the destination language. since the bridge language was intentionally chosen and further designed to be more easily machine parseable and less ambiguous than the original, the translation work was made easier. searches for DLT and esperanto should turn up some references to the project, although a brief summary may clarify further. as far as i remember this was in the mid/late eighties. -duncan
Slashdot Mirror
can't believe there's not something by KSR in there. the Mars Trilogy is (imho) the most geeky, covering any number of sciences. maybe too political, though?
another great one is "The Years of Rice and Salt", wel worth a read (an alternative history based on Europe being hard hit by the black death, and science as we know it being developed elsewhere... neal stephenson's baroque cycle reminded me of it at times.
both highly recommended.
-duncan
in case any non-americans are wondering why the size of the apartments is "only 244 square meters", 800 square feet is in fact about 75 square meters.
converting areas is different from converting lengths... tsk tsk.
-duncan
would like to have you to spell it out a bit better so that people don't get the wrong impression from your post:
Saudi Arabia is a more extremely Islamic country than Iraq ever was during Hussain's rule. the Wahhabi sect prevalent in Saudi Arabia is related far more closely to the Taliban and Al Qaida's Islamic ideas than the Sunni (of Hussain) or Shi'ite (of the Iraq majority).
do a little research on the nationalities of the WTC suicide bombers and count the Saudis and Iraqis...
-duncan
... i'd say the main thing that lets down students is lack of maths knowledge.
i teach mainly in computer networking, and maths is used all over the place:
there are a lot of other fields of maths which are useful too - these are only the ones i use in my teaching
the more maths you know, the more you'll get out of computing science
-d
the rootstrap package, available for debian, does exactly this. a configuration file allows a UML instance to download and install packages (using apt) creating a debian root image for use with UML.
-duncan
looks to me like vast tracts of this patent talk about CDROMs (Compact Disk Read Only Memory). i wasn't aware that CDROMs could be written to, although i've certainly written to CDR and CDRW disks in the past...
-duncan
does slashdot have a style guide for the editors? if so, can you either (a) make sure the editors read it, or (b) add a section about `insure' vs `ensure' (and `assure', while you're at it...)
the pedantic...
a previous slashdot article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/12/144220 6, studied just this topic: what kinds of activity lead to the most spam to an email account.
-duncan
They have postponed the flight until tomorrow (3rd) since there was to much cloud cover. The weather forecast for Wednesday is perfect, though...
-duncan
... and SVG still isn't in it. That itch is getting worse...
-dunc
there are still a lot of problems to be solved with hydrogen:
in the meantime, let's improve battery technology, fuel cells, and develop pebble bed nuclear reactor technology...
so, this TV works by decoding radio waves sent from a base station, which works by decoding waves sent from the TV station. and to change the channel you have to walk back to the room with the base station?
my brother had something like this about 15 years ago, but he could change the channel right on the TV itself...
What exactly is the point of this??
-duncan
The pumped-storage power station at Cruachan (Scotland) is worth a visit - a huge cave hollwed out of solid rock with a hydroelectric power station inside. It's a net consumer of electricity, but still turns a profit by selling and buying electricity at the right times.
The catacombs in Paris are good, if a little macabre (lined with bones of disinterred corpses from the 19th century).
Around Denmark there are some impresive sea crossings by tunnel/bridge/ship. Denmark to Sweden is half-bridge half-tunnel, via an aritifical island (best seen from the air near Copenhagen airport). There is (I think) still a train route from Germany to Denmark which goes via a ferry - the train gets split into three pieces, goes onto the ferry, and then continues at the other side.
There are a lot of good bridge crossings around, but my favourite are the rail and road bridges over the forth near Edinburgh. A really nice pair of bridges in completely different styles right next to each other.
Hi:
I'm interested in an early film you were in, called Incubus, in which all the dialogue was in Esperanto.
Did you have to learn any Esperanto for this? If so, how much did you learn and do you still remember any? If not, were any of the actors speakers of language, or was most of it receited by heart from the sounds?
so we've all read comments about buffer overflows and all the errors the OpenBSD folk find in code - how about a book telling us how to write code that avoids these kinds of problems?
-sciuro
they say the compression software should be available sometime in 2003. however, there doesn't seem to be any mention of the decompression software...
or am i just too cynical...?
-duncan
I also send back the prepaid envelopes on junk mail, but with as much of the junk stuffed into it as possible too.
-Duncan
as someone who hung on (and on and on) waiting for the promised opensource Interbase, i hope they make a better job of this "open-sourcing" project
disappointed,
-duncan
ok - i take that back - a third check reveals the source code for the client is further up the page... sadly, having already wasted so much time getting it to work without the source over the previous months, i no longer have time to hack on it with the source :-(
-sciuro
having been working on getting a web-based commercial product converted over to linux/interbase for the last 3 months, i have this to say:
the database is nice, but the JDBC client for linux has given us nothing but problems. first it wouldn't talk to the database, second it still wouldn't, and now it finally does, but doesn't support what JDBC says it should (rs=st.getResultSet() after st.exec() returns a null?)
we have finally given up and are paying big money for Oracle and Oracle people...
and as far as I can see, there's no source code for the client (yet).
-sciuro
How is the other half of debian, Ian?
all four are definitely available from www.johnsmith.co.uk... can't wait for his next one.
rumour has it that he and iain (m) banks are drinking buddies.
iain m banks, though, is lighter sf... far less political.
-duncan
A CNAME record in the DNS should keep them happy...:
boringname CNAME cyclops
and they need never know...
-duncansurprising, since one would expect that esperanto, with its more regular and simplified grammar, would give them an extra language on their list with less effort than the others there...
-duncan
a previous project, the Distributed Language Translation (DLT) project, based in the netherlands if i remember right, used a similar idea, using a de-ambiguised esperanto as the bridge language. as i remember, as a text was typed in a source language, it was translated into and stored as this bridge language. when ambiguities arose in the interpretation of the source, a query was sent to the typer as to which meaning was meant (eg: "i love her more than you"), and this distinction was preserved in the bridge language. when the text was required in a different language, this bridge language was translated into the destination language. since the bridge language was intentionally chosen and further designed to be more easily machine parseable and less ambiguous than the original, the translation work was made easier. searches for DLT and esperanto should turn up some references to the project, although a brief summary may clarify further. as far as i remember this was in the mid/late eighties. -duncan