Ginger @ 133
Serge @ 131: I swear to tell the trope, the whole trope and nothing but the trope. But I'm knot running away this time.
Well, just so long as we're square on that....
And oh, yeah, Patrick, what Abi said.
Please?
C Wingate @ 42 (which is apparently not always the answer).
While I'm denouncing: Abrams' first comment is also nonsense. He's eliding over such problems as:
* The media get bigger, but the format of the message gets bigger too. And in 2020, you won't have an iPod, because it'll be made obsolete.
Crap.
The first Powerbook (as Powerbook) was made in 1991 (and Apple's first note... err, luggable... was made a couple of years earlier). Although they aren't called "Powerbooks" anymore, Apple still produces notebooks, in largely the same format, sixteen years later. Given that - and the astonishing namebrand recognition - I would not at all be surprised to see things named "iPods" (2001) and "iPhones" (2007) around in 2020 (which is only 12 years away.*
As for "format of the message" - yes, and no. Video files are getting larger - but also smaller, depending on exact formatting and compression ratios. Much of the "zomg hueg" factor is HD video - which will get smaller again as people figure out effective compression algorithms for them (compare downloaded video from ten years ago, in terms of resolution vs. size per minute, with today's downloads). Music has actually stayed pretty standard (about a megabyte a minute), but the quality has gotten better for that megabyte.
However, while PDFs are larger than plain text file, they are only necessary if you're looking to maintain formatting (for things like manuals, picture books, and the like). Scanned comics wrapped into CBR format - at higher resolutions than a handheld device is likely to need - end up being about the same size as a well laid out game manual PDF - 10 - 20mb, depending on size. An unformatted/barely formatted ebook ends up being about half a meg at most - and many are quite smaller.
Meanwhile, and iPod Touch has up to 32gb of static "flash" memory - and will likely have 64gb available before the end of the year, for the same price. By 2020? When I was writing for Cyberpunk, we deliberately avoided any kind of extrapolation as to exactly how much space was in an MU (the standard currency of data exchange) except that it was LARGE.
* Did he ever read McLuhan? Not that I agree with everything McLuhan says, but it's obvious that media direct human social "needs"-- not just through content, but through form.
McLuhan is not the be-all, end-all of media investigation - especially since he lived pretty much entirely in the pre-Digital era (ARPAnet was running during his later life, but was pretty much exclusively military and some universities at the time - even the heights of the BBS culture came into play only very shortly before his death and afterwards).
* There's going to come a time when machine bandwidth is going to exceed human bandwidth to such a degree as to transform the way accessible-- internet-- media work.
And then the Singularity will come, and we will all have magic ponies to ride.
Increased machine bandwidth simply allows multitasking for the device - downloading multiple things in the background, streaming of higher resolution files without the Youtube stutter, etc. The machine does not, in the end, control the user - it may restrict us (because of a lack of capability), and it may enable us (because of a surplus of capacity), but it does not rule us (except for those of us who are pasty-faced and need to get out and exercise more).
* Format conversion is a huge problem, and one which has only been really solved for purely mechanical A-V media. Books are going to be a huge problem for a very long time. Yeah, in 2020 you'll be able to hold the contents of all the world's libraries on your iPod, but you won't be able to read them because all you'll really have is pictures of pages which may or may not be legible and which in any case won't be indexed or otherwise be usefully searchable. The problem of information loss due to format advance is likely to remain a hard problem forever; it certainly won't be solved by 2020.
I have files created in 1991 that I can still read on my current system - some with more difficulty than others. I have books (from the Gutenberg library) that have been scanned in, OCRed, then spell- and reality-checked by humans. Twenty years from now, there might not be a human involved in the process - OCR gets better every year.
And high-resolution scans work admirably well for some purposes, including basic reading - as anyone who has read a scanned .cbr file will attest to.
* Permanence is going to be a bigger and bigger problem. It's already a huge problem on the internet, where you have to steal material in order to make sure you'll have it when you want it. URLs are the equivalent of chaining books to their cases.
This is no different than stealing, photocopying, or buying copies of books, magazines, articles, or newspaper clippings that you want to make sure you'll have access to later, really, and has been a problem since, well, forever. It is also more of an argument for copyright law reform, making the LoC publicly accessible online, and revamping how internet archiving works than throwing one's hands up and saying "zomg too difficult".
Need any more rants?
Please, no, thanks. I think I've had enough. Pancake?
*"Cyberpunk 2020: Every day, in every way, closer and closer."
mds @ 38 -
Hey, The Grey King was my introduction to Welsh, too! What are the odds that we'd all pick up some Welsh from the same young-adult fantasy novel? Especially at this blog?
I'd say probably pretty good - it certainly was my first exposure to Welsh.
(A friend of mine describes the Welsh as "the people the Polynesians conned out of most of their vowels, so they had to make up their own with what they had left").
Rochester has Peregrines!
There are actually a a fair number of them in the city - I'm not sure anyone has actually done a count - and it's not at all uncommon to see one perching on a lamp pole overlooking the highways when you're driving, or coasting over the various fields looking for lunch.
Since I grew up before Mariah and Sirocco moved into the area (the presumed progenitors of most of the Peregrines in the area, afaict), it still makes me smile when I see one sitting up on a lamp pole, or perched on a building ledge, or the like, watching the silly humans hustling and bustling around on the floors of the concrete valleys they now live in and around....
Marilee - condolences.
Burying our fuzzy friends is never easy. It never seems to get any easier, either.
But the times we get to spend with them make it worth it.
Star Trek -
Paramount has a bigger version of the trailer, as well as links to the HD versions of it. Somewhat (not much) brighter, and more detail visible in higher resolution.
Me? I'm actually looking forward to* only a handful of movies next year - "Iron Man" (Yay! Tony Stark as something other than Iron Dick, Super-Fascist), The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, maybe the new Bond film... and Star Trek.
Because, well, damn.
*as opposed to "might buy the DVD if I see it used on the racks somewhere" - I don't like giving the MPAA money.
Serge @ 878 -
I remember when the sky tuned to a dead television channel did not, in fact mean "a blue not found in nature other than on some bird's plumages and certain species of flowers", but only vaguely, and more from the other direction (getting up before Saturday morning cartoons had started, or even the farm market reports), but generally didn't get to stay up to any time I wanted to until we were a cable family (we got Group W when they started carrying WSBK - and the only reason then was so mom could watch the Boston games).
Steve C @ 879 -
Yup. We didn't get a color TV until I was 10 or so, when the parental units got a used set. (folks were late adopters in this respect, and had put much of their bankroll into the house, so certain things went by the wayside - I was a teenager before we had a microwave).
Imagine my surprise and shock when I found that Spock really did have a greenish cast to him (not really - the TV's green gun was a little overly aggressive, which interacted with Nimoy's skin tone in a convenient way - but explain that to a 10 year old who has been watching Star Trek in B&W all his life).
Rob Rusick @ 874 -
In my case, it was WXXI here in Rochester.
Yup.
Saturday late-evenings were Dave Allen at Large at 10pm (which my mom would watch with the kids), followed by Monty Python's Flying Circus (where she would disappear off to the sewing room, as she liked Monty Python about as much as The Beatles - which is to say, not at all), followed by an entire story of Doctor Who (instead of a half-hour ep as originally shown), which mom would usually watch part of before heading off to bed.
(Later on, when we had cable, I would sometimes stay up after that and watch late-night cable, before it got to be one long arc of re-runs from earlier in the day and infomercials for things only really stupid or sleep-deprived people would buy. USA's Night Flight was a favorite, as was early MTV).
1st-gen cable baby, that's me... :-)
Anonymous is on NPR...
Anonymous is on NPR...
(starts singing "It's the End of the World as We Know It..." softly to himself, while wondering how much food - and ammo - is in the pantry. Because if Anonymous has gotten to the point of widespread media attention - surely the days of zombies are close behind. :-)
Someringsthings you shouldn't develop a fondness for...
Warwick Davis is a Bad Hobbit
Mary Aileen @ 127 -
Again, those are close (although mine don't have the top shelf) -
This is one of the three-shelf units, with the CD storage rack on top of it, filled with paperbacks. (and, wow, it's a little disturbing how easy it is to tell what some of those titles are, even from a cellphone camera - albeit a high-resolution one - the EnV's little pic-grabber isn't too shabby)
This is the far wall of the living room. That's one cd-shelf and a 3-shelf, two stacked 3-shelves, a 5-shelf, and then two more sets of stacked three-shelf units - the last one will be another cd-shelf and a three-shelf, if I can ever find another one.
(That wall is all fiction, graphic novels, DVDs and music CDs. Oh, and tchotchkes* of various sorts. My non-fiction is on bookshelves to the right of where I'm standing, and the role-playing and boardgame stuff is in my office).
*In this particular case, tchotchke definitely does not carry a connotation of ticky-tack tat or worthlessness. Toys, yes. But every thing on those shelves either was given to me for one reason or another, or is a toy I bought because I thought it was cool. And some of them are quite precious... to me, anyways.
Todd Larson -
The Wegman's shelves sound like these; I'm up to 18 of them, plus another 14 or so from Barnes & Noble's mail order catalog 15ish years ago; they're nearly identical, but their stacking mechanisms aren't compatible.>/em>
They are very close (I've got 9 of the 3-shelf units, 6 of the 5-shelf ones, 1 CD rack, and a small 3-shelf unit), but a lighter wood (or lighter stain, in any case), and Wegmans sells them for about $30 dollars cheaper for the 3-shelf units. (and the 3-shelf units not only stack easily, when folded I can fit half-a-dozen in the back seat of my Taurus).
And, as Nancy says, they are incredibly durable - I've yet to see any of them warp, break, bend, bow, no matter the strain I put on it (one of the 5-shelf units is a four-shelf unit, because the top one cracked in transit, apparently - but that's fine, I keep my oversize game boxes on the top shelf of that one).
Bruce Cohen -
As noted, special needs/purposes dictate exceptions/exemptions. For general purposes, a laser is pretty much always more cost-effective - and more durable - than an inkjet. But there are areas where they do better, and color reproduction is one of them (until you get to comparing high-end color lasers to crappy consumer inkjets).
(At work, we buy non-laser devices for three basic purposes - plotter/large format devices, high-resolution/quality desktop photo printers for the publicity, publishing, and training departments, and a singular HP Officejet that we've started purchasing for some sales reps because one of the business units demanded an all-in-one be available for their remote reps, and we found one that will install without barfing four hundred megabytes of semi-crappy scanning, faxing and photo-manipulation software onto our nice, clean, relatively stable laptop image...).
miriam beetle -
what this brings us to, is "ending is better than mending" all over again. i can't find any listings for printer repair in my town. even with as fancy (well, i thought it was fancy when i bought it) printer as mine, i'm supposed to junk it & get a new one??
Epson Service centers for Postal Code V5Y 1V4
Gotten from the service center referral link on the Epson support website. (Guessing at the Postal Code, since your LJ says "Vancouver" - but that's sort of like saying "Rochester" - it's a big area, if not exactly a big city, and a lot of people say "Rochester" when they mean "Brockport" or "Orleans" or something).
Unfortunately, depending on what's wrong, it might, actually be cheaper to get a new one, than to get the old one fixed. But those are the folks you would want to talk to.
(Obscure computer repair fu. This is what I do).
Really, Xopher?
I tend to marble at them.
Zopher = Xopher. Sorry, brainfart - I have an acquaintance in other places who goes by Zopher, and crossed circuits.
:-(
Zopher - as Fidelio said, but expanded.
The Culture is (very) post-Singularity and post-scarcity. The primary (but not sole) actors are Minds, which are (very powerful) AIs that are normally housed on Ships. (There are humans and members of other species - and lots and lots of them - in the Culture, but while some are very important, most are not, and few are directly involved in any day-to-day decision making - what there is of it - in the Culture), Minds/Ships get to choose their own names, and are broadly classed into three basic groups -
(X) System Vehicles are the spine of the Culture - each one is a reflection of the Culture as a whole, with millions/billions of inhabitants (Minds, Drones, and human(oids)), and the ability to, in a crisis beyond any comprehension or understanding, recreate the Culture completely so long as it survives - each one is, essentially, a VonNeumann machine with the purpose "The Culture Lives, so long as I do" among its other purposes/goals/drives.
(X) Contact Units are the Culture's "troublesome meddlers" - they go out and seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly stick their nose in places where nobody thinks they belong except the Culture (and not even all of them). Think of them as being Starfleet, only with more "poking about looking at interesting stuff", a lot more "huh, so what are you all up to, then?" and no Prime Directive.
(X) Offensive Units are a relatively new development in the Culture - they had a Big War a couple of thousand years ago that Contact couldn't take care of, and started building real, dedicated warships - mostly disposables (Minds can be backed up, see...). They are not at all apologetic or euphemistic about their purpose - the classes have names like Torturer, Thug, Assassin, etc.
Each type of Unit is broken into three basic categories -
General - these are the big ones. A GSV can be a hundred kilometers long or more, and have a population of over a billion. The other types are (much) smaller, but if something has a G in the front of its name, it does its purpose Very Well, Thank You.
Medium - mostly found in the System Vehicles - these were originally GSVs that were downgraded as the type evolved.
Limited - means that its capability is lower than expected for a Ship of this general type - it could be smaller than normal (usual), or otherwise restricted.
Rapid is essentially reserved for Offensive Units - ROUs trade firepower for speed, basically, and are little more than drives, guns, and a Mind. Generally considered pretty disposable, always considered dangerous.
dROUs are a special case - the d stands for "Demilitarized". Most ROUs (and other military vessels) were mothballed after the last war - handfuls are kept around for pure military purposes, and a larger number were demilitarized (this does not just mean physically, AIR, there is suggestion that the Minds were at least partially repurposed as well). "Demilitarized" is a relative term - even a demilled ROU is still very fast, and all Culture Ships are capable of exerting pretty severe amounts of force against a target, should they feel the need. dROUs are used as couriers and fast response craft, and the like.
Ship/Mind names tend to be somewhat whimsical, and are often vaguely related to the Ship's outlook, etc. There are a handful of other Ship classes, or variations on existing ones, but most Ships fall under GSV, MSV, GCU, LCU, ROU, GOU, and LOU.
And now you know more than you needed/wanted to know about the Culture's Ship classification system.
ROU Unnatural Selector
ROU ... I'm Sure Someone Can Fix It
LOU ... Hope They Don't Have Blasters
GOU Not Very Reassuring, I'm Sure
GCU Nothing to See Here
GCU By Any Means Necessary
GSV Sufficiently Long Lever
GSV I'm Going to Say This One More Time...
(TLA) It Was Like That When I Got (Here/There) seems to be the most commonly thought of Mind name that has not, in fact, ever been used as a book, afaict - there's a whole spew of a thread back in Usenet on RASFF and that's far from the only place I've seen it mentioned.
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