dfjdejulio

Recent Actions

• Commented on App store annoyances
  (Also: many of the problems existed on game consoles before mobile. My XBox Live purchase history is more of a mess than my Google Play one.)...
• Commented on App store annoyances
  I seem to be able to "un-buy" an app by going into the iTunes Store, going into "Purchases", going into "Apps", hovering over the offender, and clicking the little "x" in the corner. This doesn't really un-buy it, but it...
• Commented on The myth of heroism
  You know... I think you could make a superhero story work in the Saturn's Children world. The people there are hackable enough....
• Commented on "Write me something fresh and new, but make it just like the last one"
  You are making me wonder if this might perhaps be how Jerry Cornelius was born. My personal experience of having read Jerry Cornelius books (admittedly a looong time ago, so I may be misremembering) was, reading one of them did...
• Commented on Yet another bad idea
  All I know for sure is, the wedding reception would have to take place at the hotel at 1150 22nd Street NW in Washington DC....
• Commented on April Fools Day is Cancelled this Year.
  As long as Cheese Weasel Day is proceeding as normal, it's all good....
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  Yeup, it sounds like what you wrote is very similar to what I wrote, in terms of what it did, except mine was in (very portable) C, was modular in terms of protocol and comm channel support (serial, X.25, TCP/IP),...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  Charlie, I'm delighted to find out that you used to work on real-world grown-up financial transaction processing software. Me too! Mine was this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCVS The one time I've been to the UK, it was to meet with Royal Bank...
• Commented on Over-Extended Metaphor for the day
  That's more than a metaphor -- it's a metaphive at least, maybe even a metasix....
• Commented on A likely tale
  Thank you for the "go read the story first, before you continue below" advice -- following those instructions made the whole experience more enjoyable. And, I home someone animates that short story some day....
• Commented on Making history personal
  Oldest building I ever slept in... probably dates no earlier than about 1905, and almost certainly dates no earlier than 1720. Here in the US, it's hard to find very old buildings, though it's possible that as a boy scout...
• Commented on The regular holy war ...
  If I had to summarize the "DEC versus Unix" basic philosophy, hm... I'd probably say that Unix under-engineers stuff and then gets out of your way, and the DEC OSes over-engineer stuff and provide more infrastructure that you'll then suffer...
• Commented on The regular holy war ...
  Charlie, you mention the retina MBP having a second graphics chipset alongside the Intel one. This causes me to ask: are you familiar with gfxCardStatus? I use it on my non-retina MBP, to disable the Nvidia chipset, forcing everything to...
• Commented on The regular holy war ...
  I've been going through the same thing. I'm currently an Apple user, but they've given me hints that I might not be able to count on them in the future, so I'm exploring my options -- and Microsoft stuff is...
• Commented on Blatant Advertising
  Did you have to jump through hoops (eg. "fight with publisher") to keep Word out of the loop on this one? If so, is there anything useful you can share about that process?...
• Commented on Polemic: how readers will discover books in future
  To my mind, the difference between an ebook of this sort and a random web page is that the ebook includes a self-contained discrete "bundle" with contents. I kind-of think of the ebook wrapper as a cell membrane, containing a...
• Commented on Polemic: how readers will discover books in future
  I do not think you're exaggerating. I already take extreme measures to block advertising -- not just my being tracked, but having the advertising enter my mind. I take it to the point where when I encounter a video ad...
• Commented on Another deceptively simple question
  You say "I think the paperback book will be long dead." If you mean as a product being sold, sure, maybe. But if the manufacturing costs are low enough... I myself do not like reading hardcover books. They are too...
• Commented on Another deceptively simple question
  Hm... at some point, and I'm not sure if 2033 is far enough off, I expect it to become possible to transfer memories or experiences from one mind to another. If I acquire the experience of having read a book...
• Commented on Parasites
  Some days, I think I'm my favorite parasite. I look at what I could achieve all by myself "in a state of nature", and then I look at the lifestyle I have, and I am struck by the mismatch. (Other...
• Commented on Time tourism: some reaction shots
  Your comment about a woman time traveler getting impregnated by someone from the past made me think of Brin's "Existence". While it was not done by time travel, a woman deliberately gave birth to a neanderthal child. Not the same...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  I find myself in the somewhat strange position of feeling like I almost need to apologize for liking a couple of your books so much. "Iron Sunrise" was the first of your books that I ever read, and I loved...
• Commented on Incidentally ...
  Ah, the "Voynich Receipt"......
• Commented on Fang Fuckers: some reflections (in a mirror)
  So, I'm continuing to brainstorm (because I just can't help it) about how these vampires might work, given that "calories, proteins, shits and giggles" is not the point, and the universe in question has infovores. This led me off on...
• Commented on Fang Fuckers: some reflections (in a mirror)
  And now I am reminded of how a certain society of mind flayers was presented in the "Spelljammer" D&D campaign setting (in at least one case I recall reading, anyhow). They told the universe they had figured out how to...
• Commented on Fang Fuckers: some reflections (in a mirror)
  In your universe, can vampires thrive on zeta-globin-based hemoglobin from a living, nonsentient, but essentially human source? (See, one of my idle kick-around-the-idea thoughts for solving blood shortages, ever since I started idly thinking about genetic engineering solutions to medical...
• Commented on The Algebraic Properties of Equality in SF
  I gotta go with Paksenarrion. Best rendition of a paladin I've ever seen in fiction, and she just happens to be female....
• Commented on The ticking clock, stopped
  Well, one thing I'd do (or try to do) is: finally learn to play a musical instrument decently. Why? Because if my dad were going to (essentially) get younger over the coming years, at some point he'd no doubt want...