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Comment Re:Thousands of Great SF Stories... (Score 2, Insightful) 708

You want a round of Heinlein movies? Dude, don't get me wrong, I adore the books -- but the man basically used his plots as jumping-off points for politically bizarre monologues. Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Stranger in a Strange Land? Starship Troopers?

Not that they'd make any of those, of course. They'd start with one of the entirely plot-free books (For Us, the Living springs to mind, as does JOB), since they're basically tabula rasa for a Hollywood screenwriter. Fuckers.

Comment Re:Will Smith (Score 1) 708

100%? 100%?!

Not 100% my ass -- it wasn't even close. Not in the ballpark, or the neighboorhood, or even the same damned continent. If I had to give a percentage number I'd probably rate the correlation between Asimov's I, Robot (a collection of shorts, for christsakes) and the movie as, oh, maybe -12.3%.

And that's being generous.

Comment Re:I can only pick one? (Score 1) 708

I know you're joking here, but seriously -- they did. Do.

Eh.

I think it was the Futurists who tried to popularize the moniker 'sf' as short for 'speculative fiction.' They wanted to get away from the perception of their genre as young adult trash, and doing that required that they drop the 'science' part. Odd, isn't it?

Comment Re:The Lords won't approve this (Score 1) 294

I'm astounded, AC -- you claim to live in England and yet don't realize that Labour has pretty much a free hand to do what they like, since they know they're going to get slaughtered come next election. This isn't the last straw, not by far -- that would be the expense scandal, which not only broke the camel's back but ground the splintered vertebrae into tiny indistinguishable bits of chalk.

You also suggest that it won't get approved because the Lords have been given some very good reasons not to do so, which implies your belief that they're even capable of making rational, non-self-serving decisions. Baffling.

Comment Marvell Plug (Score 3, Insightful) 697

I think you're after a plug computer ( http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp ) and just don't know it yet. Super low power, ARM-based system that can (easily) run debian + an apache stack, along with whatever else (well, within reason) you need. http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx has it for $99; you can get a European or UK version as well.
Games

Submission + - Steam Accused of Exploiting Indie Developers (gamasutra.com)

Doches writes: "While the independent game development community may still be in love with Valve's digital distribution service Steam, Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford declares that the service is actually exploiting indie developers and small studios. In particular, he cautions against trusting Valve to manage Steam impartially, given that they also use the service as the primary distribution network for their own games. "There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid," he says. "It's actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.""

Submission + - Intuit Buys Mint.com for $170 Million (mint.com)

Doches writes: "Intuit (makes of Quicken and the DRM-laden TurboTax) just finalized a deal to acquire web-based personal finance tool Mint.com. The company promises that Mint will remain free, but users are skeptical. Another great web startup about to be wrecked by software giant?"
Privacy

Submission + - BT-Phorm deal officially no more (nytimes.com)

Doches writes: "Good news from the UK (via the NYTimes): looks like British Telecom is officially canceling their partnership with the controversial advertising company Phorm. I'm sure you all remember Phorm, which builds web browsing profiles of ISP subscribers via deep packet inspection; this is great news for BT customers (e.g. most of the UK), since BT's adoption of Phorm would have basically done away with any semblance of privacy in web surfing. Don't rejoice too soon, though — apparently BT called off the deal 'because of budget limitations caused by investments in other technology, not because of privacy concerns.'"

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