Posts by James Butler
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
JEWS WITH SWORDS!:)
A genre of one is still a genre, right?
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And props to Michael Chabon who is adamant that he does write Genre Fiction.
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Muse: Monday Linky Love (With Added Geekery), in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And that's my big fucking bug bear about genre snobbery.
It also doesn't help the whole "no true Scotsman" shenanigans people get into about defining SF - something like "All SF is drivel" - "No it isn't, authors like x, y and z write well respected literature which is SF" - "Oh well that doesn't count as SF because it's proper literature, and all SF is drivel". Ergo.
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to HORansome,
I don’t think my idea works without some dose of future technology; I’m imagining a semi-automous roving camera which sends its data to a set of AIs that monitor the data-streams to ensure nothing gets modified along the way and can then be appealed to by both the prosecution and the defence.
Using AIs in the service of the public good is appealing in all sorts of contexts, but it opens up a whole can of worms: once an AI is smart enough - human enough, even - to do this kind of work, how do we ensure that it doesn't fall prey to other human foibles, corruption etc.? Imagine the conspiracy theories that might breed*. IMHO our only hope is to wait until AIs are so overwhelmingly superior to ourselves that we have no option but to turn the entire running of our lives over to them and hope for the best, Culture-style.
* Oh I get it, you're advocating your own job security. Sneaky.
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Hard News: A Work of Advocacy, in reply to Russell Brown,
I prefer Motorway Patrol, which deals with the less serious and is therefore funnier. But, yes, even there police officers are spectacularly reasonable.
Obviously what we need is for every police patrol to be accompanied by a TV doco crew.
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Any reader who has a problem with an author failing to "properly" resolve a story ought to be sentenced to read only Samuel R. Delaney novels for the rest of their lives.
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Hard News: Friday Visions, in reply to recordari,
Even more passive-aggressive: Let Me Google That For You
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to BenWilson,
Sounds like he pushed it too hard. He could have just dialed back a notch on the persistent enemy he had made, and continued to get away with it. But I expect the rudeness itself was a little intoxicating to him.
Also, not taking so much trouble to explain his business model to The New York Times might have helped...
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I note with interest that cellular internet is exempt for the next couple of years. It’s still too pricey for mass torrenting, but at $150 for 12GB prepaid, it’s getting to be a viable (and anonymous) way to do some light streaming.
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Busytown: A new (old) sensation, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Of course, writers can have "entitlement issues" too...