ndgmtlcd

Recent Actions

• Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
  Well, the horrible devastation of Japan by 19 nuclear bombs followed by another 20 and so on (in tat assembly line) could have been brought about by a misused household object. The proposition for an acceptable surrender documetn could have...
• Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
  Those 19 atomic bombs you are talking about were part of an assembly line. There would have been more coming. Japan would have been nuked back to the stone age. But instead of cave men there would have only been...
• Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
  I was expecting a punch line complete with the horror on the faces of the iipsters, as they discover the charred corpses of their friends. The story is somewhat lacking the grand guignol aspect without something like this....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Hmm, looks like those things will eventually become good enough to fill out component position number 7 in the US Integrated Pest Management system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_pest_management...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Note that France managed to do it in 36 months too, while suffering no wartime restrictions and dining on good wine and great cheese. But they had the advantage of knowing by then (around 1957) what the blind alleys where...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Well yes, nuclear disarmament is good but you have to replace it with something. I propose that countries with international ambitions have more numerous types of new martial arts, like for instance sensha-do which scholgirls practice in Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lyl4UwXxTWc Great...
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  You just gave me an excuse to run "He Mele No Lilo" on a loop, in the background again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dx8PHmAZxI I love that movie, even if I'm not really fond of Elvis. In fact if it weren't for Elvis intruding...
• Commented on The last refuge of scoundrels
  I wonder what the Queen will be doing while the funeral goes on? Having a roaring great party, but with the blinds closed? She was not exactly a great fan of MT, if what I read is correct....
• Commented on What are words worth?
  Well, words aren't worth much to people who have a tin ear. I would suppose that to them class differences are expressed by what you wear. I have a tin ear but I don't notice class differences through clothes because,...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  YES! Hornets and wasps are exactly the same (except for rage issues) so those giant thingies will love Al Hirt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zXx0ReqOOI Or, at least, his Hornet theme....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Well, if you must talk about prior art, then you have to note that The Wasp has a giant form, and Marvel comics had authorized a movie, written by Joss Whedon....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Ah! I knew this was a fake when you didn't mention that it was essential that the video game tie-in should support Oculus VR glasses....
• Commented on Off the Map: Women in Science and Science Fiction
  Here's one thing to do: Praise lady engineers and encourage them when they do comic books about their work. Yes, I'm talking about Angela Melick, and yes, she also does a Webcomic in addition to selling a printed comic book...
• Commented on Off the Map: Women in Science and Science Fiction
  Send the girls off on adventures: http://juliedillon.deviantart.com/art/Ancient-Discovery-362536811 And have them bring back scientific wonders!...
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  Yes! Quite true on all counts! I discovered this when I tried to do a Ph.D. that dealt with user interface issues. It's not easy to set colour boundary perception rules and, also, the way people are often divided in...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Don't know about the UK but the first shipment of frozen meat from Argentina to France was in 1876, aboard a ship made for that purpose, the Frigorifique. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Tellier Another French ship, the Paraguay, (built by a competitor) also entered...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  For a home AR system you don't need the bandwidth. You can leave the bulk of the data of the "world" being projected on a server in the house. The server woul d be more advanced version, beefier of the...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  "... because, let’s face it there are too many people irrespective of “race” or religion in Britain." The place didn't seem overcrowded when I last visited, but if you lack elbow room, then come settle in my ample-size country. Come...
• Commented on "We're going to need book covers. Lots of book covers!"
  Gahhh! Why can't cover designers ever learn that having clear letters on a dark background (instead of dark letters on a clear background) reduces visibility by several degrees. Sure, they made the letters bigger to compensate but it's still not...
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  "WP's big innovation was to be able to edit two files simultaneously and display both of them in a split screen mode. It's function key mapping was, however, a thing of horror." Ah yes, it had very little internal logic....
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  Oh yes, it really was perfect! WordPerfect had perfect telephone support. That was their secret sauce. For extremely visual people like me they had another secret sauce, their "show code" function. You could actually see, understand (by playing around and/or...
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  Your blog might be an ad (for you, the Author of SF novels) for text oriented types such as computer programmers, poets and musicians but for simple visual types like me it sure isn't. The whole thing is in nearly...
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  Here's an inverse answer to your question. A feed reader like Google's is totally useless for people like me who find that the big thing about the Web is its potential for serendipity. We WANT what other people consider "useless"...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  And all that BNR research showed up in Northern Telecom switches! There was nothing better than a NT digital switch by the end of the 80s! Nothing Ericsson made was close to it. Ah, the good old days. Now, everyting...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  "A widespread assumption among Britons is that the British Commonwealth of Nations would continue to trade with the UK and would in fact gradually increase their UK trade, taking up some of the slack. " They are delusional! They...
• Commented on Me, talking
  "And then, why should we use energy storage after all? I once saw a proposal for a two-tier system, IIRC, for short distances, it used a battery or like, while for longer ones, the car hooked up to a railway-like...
• Commented on Me, talking
  "So what happens here in the Good 'ol U. S. of A. (I don't know the situation in other countries) is that all the extra wiring for this expanded capacity will be installed above-ground. Which, given the growing severity of...
• Commented on Me, talking
  You don't need a better battery if (say ten years from now) you have ubiquitous multipurpose sensors in objects all around you. The same ubiquitous sensor tech that would make robot cars possible would also make by-the-fly induction charging possible....
• Commented on Me, talking
  "But I think there is a strong bias at the moment for going bareheaded" In your part of the world, maybe, but not in my part. It has something to do with below-freezing weather, for several months. But in addition...
• Commented on Mo' holding pattern
  This reminds me of a short story by Ted White and Larry McCombs: "The Peacock King". It was first published in 1965 in the Magazine of Fantasy and SF. The "astronauts" went away to the stars meditating. They were give...