* The plot does not focus on the strange events.
* The characters don't much care about the strange events, but don't expect them either.
That would exclude "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," previously cited as an exemplar of magic realism.
Please verify my sketchy understanding of the word "blogburst," Tim. They posted boilerplate spam about how the ACLU was going to post boilerplate spam?
Do these guys do anything but project?
Oh, and I don't appreciate the snide remark about my nom de plume, Paula. Both online handles and fannish nicknames have a long and honorable history. My legal name is Seth L. Blumberg, but I see no reason why you should care.
Paula: OK, I'm wrong about current practice in military computing, but you've hardly disproven my point.
Randolph: Ever had your cell phone crash because you pushed the wrong buttons? I have. They used to be appliances; then they got complicated. Likewise, my father hates his PDA/cellphone combo and would gladly get rid of it if his employer allowed him, because its features are unnecessary for his needs and its user interface (for the phone functions) is wretched.
As for web browsers, don't make me laugh. First of all, that's like saying that the interior of a refrigerator is an appliance separate from the chassis, refrigerant tubes, mullion heater and condenser. Second of all, there's a small but non-negligible chance every time you open the refrigerator of finding a burglar in it. Not my idea of appliance design.
Military technology keeps coming up, so let's talk about military computers. They have a very limited set of functions, a very simple user interface (and generally no mice or windows), software that goes through an incredibly arduous review process, and hardware that's unbelievably overspecified. They're as close to an appliance as they can possibly be. And they still crash and kill people from time to time.
Don't hold your breath waiting for general-purpose PCs to do better than that.
The problem with "computer as appliance" design, the reason why it hasn't happened so far (despite legions agitating for it since the early 1980s) and may in fact never happen, is that the microcomputer is a multi-purpose device on a scale never previously imagined. Indeed, new purposes are found for it every day. An appliance, on the other hand, generally does one thing; the more functions it serves, the less reliable it is, and the less like an appliance it becomes.
Microcomputers were originally designed for techies, and techies want features and flexibility (and are willing to sacrifice reliability and ease of use to get them). Companies like Microsoft grew up in an environment where the way to get market share was to add new features every five minutes. Now they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising designed to convince users that the new version will solve problems they didn't know they had. It works well enough to keep the companies afloat, even if most users would really rather have something simpler and less flexible but more reliable.
My current best guess is that the market will not change substantially in that regard over the long term. As today's upper-middle-class teenagers, the vast majority of whom are entirely comfortable with mucking around inside their computers, mature and become business users and then business decision-makers, the desire for featurefulness and flexibility will become stronger than the desire for reliability and ease-of-use. The current model of marketing and product development is ideally suited for that mindset.
I couldn't even read all the way through the Taibbi article; I became physically ill after the first few screenfuls.
Gods help us all.
Which is highly ironic
...as Randy acknowledges on the referenced website.
It looks to me like the Revolution of the 12th Century, turned backwards and inside-out. Knight and his ilk seem distressed at the idea of something being real within an imagined world that is not also real within ours, which could be taken as a sort of inverted Platonism: "I've never seen a shadow that shape, so there cannot possibly exist an object that would cast such a shadow; don't waste my time telling stories about it." Meanwhile, we Aristotelians stand around scratching our heads and wondering why Those People can't follow a simple statement in the language of modal logic.
Not to mention that I have an "Auntie Mary" and an "Aunt Mary," and woe betide he who confuses them.
Did a batch of old threads just get reopened or something?
Bob One: My given name is Seth. At college, I had a work-study job under a supervisor named Seth; we also moved in the same social groups. For purposes of disambiguation, he became "Seth Classic," and I, "New Seth." (And anyone noticeably younger than me will not get that joke.)
Several years later, I joined a local fannish organization (the Stilyagi Air Corps) which contained a Cathy and a Kathy. Sometimes they were designated "Cathy-with-a-C" and "Kathy-with-a-K," but more often "Cathy-who-is-short" and "Kathy-who-is-tall." Another Cathy arrived later and was duly designated "Cathy-who-is-of-moderate-height."
Caroline: NATO uses "Victor"; if you find that aesthetically unsatisfying, I have no particular alternative recommendation.
What, no entry for "rugose"?
Or "glabrous."
Michelle K:
Gung zrnaf gurer ner bayl guerr, orpnhfr bar ovg bs fbhy vf fgvyy va Ibyqrezbg.
V qba'g guvax fb. Nf V ernq vg, rnpu zheqre fcyvgf bss n cvrpr bs fbhy naq fgberf vg va n Ubepehk. Guhf, gurer jbhyq bevtvanyyl unir orra rvtug fbhy-sentzragf. Bar qvrq jura Uneel xvyyrq Ibyqrzbeg, yrnivat frira, abar bs juvpu ner va Ibyqrzbeg'f obql.
Creuncf gur rvtugu sentzrag npghnyyl genafsreerq vgfrys gb Uneel, nf Clifton Royston fcrphyngrf nobir.
Hey ajay, may I quote you?
Re: rending of ontological veil—can anyone recommend some good zeppelin-punk? (Already read The Difference Engine, thought it was adequate but uninspired.)
David Bilek's assertion re: "sleazy, lurid, fetishy sex fests" almost makes me want to get a WoW account.
Almost.
While chasing old threads, I discovered that none of the links to Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing worked any more. I herewith offer this substitute.
Sorry if this has already been reported....
Greg:
Sensible people often provide contradictory eye-witness evidence. That doesn't make them any less sensible or otherwise worthy, but you really have to take that sort of thing with a grain of salt. Prove to me incontrovertibly that it exists and I'll accept that it exists. Until then, it goes into the same mental category as the Loch Ness Monster, ufos, and such. It would be neat if they were proven to exist, but until they are they are folklore. Prove to me that is exists and wants me to act in specific ways, and probably I'll do so. Until then, I'm a content atheist.
I see no continuum here, no probabilistic evaluation. I see two explicit bins, "proven" and "folklore," with the existence of a third bin, "disproven," strongly implied.
JvP: That's a remarkably self-defeating prayer, since embedded in it is the affirmation "I do not believe in God." A different phrasing might be preferred for the purpose.
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