That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to express his pleasure. "And remember," he said, "that when we say "novel" we mean "science-fiction novel," not anything else. And when we say "science-fiction novel," we mean "Foundation novel" and not anything else." On February 5, 1981, I signed the contract, and within the week, the Doubleday accounting system cranked out the check for $25,000.
I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said, cheerfully, "That's right, and from now on, we're going to call every other week and say, "Where's the manuscript?" (But they didn't. They left me strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress report.) Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I had to do, but about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The Foundation Trilogy and began reading.
I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details. Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in the style and atmosphere of the series.
I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen, and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No physical suspense.
What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that stuff? To be sure, I couldn't help but notice that I was turning the pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and that I wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness" sake. You couldn't go by me.
I was on the edge of deciding it was all a terrible mistake and of insisting on giving back the money, when (quite by accident, I swear) I came across some sentences by science-fiction writer and critic, James Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy--virtually all the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible--but the stories provide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and reversals of ideas."
Then perhaps those states should mandate that they get the new formula. Any Sudafed I've bought in the UK and Canada no longer contains pseudoephedrine, the offending ingredient. The box of pills in front of me now lists the active ingredient as phenylephrine and the nasal spray is xylometazoline hydrochloride. These are the UK products.
The whole point of non-criminals buying non-illegal pseudoephedrine formulations is that phenylephrine is ineffective. Maybe those states should stop conducting trumped-up sting operations alleging illegal-misuse and let sick people buy the product that actually works.
While this new technique may improve security, it seems to lack one important property of pseudo-random numbers that is required by many applications: reproducibility. Good luck finding the bug in your program with a stream of randoms you'll never be able to reconstruct again.
Oh, come on people. This is a JOKE. It's Funny, not, fercrissakes, Insightful.
If you know what sites every computer visits you could say, for example, that computers that visit Slashdot are unlikely to visit mypinkpony.com
There is, however, a very, very high correlation between Slashdot visits and cuteoverload.com on single-user computers over 3 years old. Not sure what that says about your thesis.
Recent investments will yield a slight profit.
