hugo.fisher

hugo.fisher

  • Commented on Hiatus
    Getting back to the original alien infiltration question by krousedp, what's the alien motivation for taking over humanity, rather than just, say, sterilizing the earth and then taking our stuff? The only one I remember from science fiction that seems...
  • Commented on Hiatus
    Heteromeles wrote: "Basically (so far as I can tell), no one was paying much attention to the Persian Gulf before Churchill decided to upgrade the British Navy to oil in the 1920s, using Iranian oil. If some strange people showed...
  • Commented on Down tools
    Greg Tingey wrote : Again a big ship could carry enough small drones to defend itself against any credible attack. Let's imagine what this big ship might look like ... Drones are small airplanes, because using wings to provide lift...
  • Commented on Down tools
    The F-35B may not be very good as an airframe, but the electronics and missiles count for more in a low intensity conflict. There's a nice book "Your New Stealth Fighter is Really, Really Awful" by David Axe and co....
  • Commented on Some rambling thoughts on region restrictions
    We don't have a portable micropayment solution, but Apple iTunes is racking up billions of dollars in sales each year from selling individual songs and game tokens. (Do payments just under $1 count as micro, or is that maybe a...
  • Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
    Bruce Sterling in his novel Heavy Weather had a similar sounding future for computing. Thanks to open source and plain theft, the expensive corporate systems of today can be bought dirt cheap by anybody. One of the characters is the...
  • Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
    Greg Tingey wrote "I'm very surprised that the general level of comprehension is so low, or is that because of the techie types I always seem to mix with, I wonder?" I'd guess you mix with techie types. A couple...
  • Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
    scentofviolets asked "Dumb question, but is 64-bit architecture more or less locked-in? When would say, 128-bit machines be a better investment?" Not a dumb question at all, it was and is very interesting to CPU designers and the firms that...
  • Commented on Competition Time!
    Use of the occult semiotics video filter is restricted to enhancing material prepared for Her Majesty's government, not "Souping up an X-Factor audition tape for a mate." Even if the performers are wearing Union Jacks....
  • Commented on The myth of heroism
    Going back to heroism and where it comes from, I'm going to recommend reading the first essay in On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche. Seriously. I do not agree with Nietzsche's philosophy or endorse his values, OK? But...
  • Commented on The myth of heroism
    Here's an article about the ethics or values being shown in the latest crop of superhero movies: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-ugly-lessons-hiding-in-every-superhero-movie/ Yeah, it's an online magazine called Cracked. Yeah David Wong uses more harsh language than most. He's still an interesting writer....
  • Commented on The Snowden leaks; a meta-narrative
    There is one organisation / cultural group that might have both the resources and motivation to create a more secure Internet: the militaries of the European Union. NATO and other western-associated militaries have been moving to IP in place of...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    I still like Ken MacLeod's "Big Deal" in his new book Descent. (Since it's a background event in the book, doesn't count as a spoiler.) It would be the G20 governments nationalising ALL their banks. Offshore tax havens get shut...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    Charlie, any thoughts on the "Big Deal" in Descent, the latest by Ken MacLeod? It's a background event in the book so hardly a spoiler to reveal here: in the near future, all the banks are nationalised, right across the...
  • Commented on A hypothesis
    El wrote: I guess the thing that surprises me - bearing in mind I have 0 experience in the field - is that regardless of the country involved it seems to take about 4 days from satellites taking pictures to...
  • Commented on What's The Future For Virtual Reality Movies?
    I tend to think that VR won't succeed in the home market for anything but games unless - big unless - we get some kind of technological breakthrough in holograms or direct laser projection onto the retina. 3D movies work...
  • Commented on Commercial announcement
    Charlie @46, very happy to agree that heroin is harmless in a modern society. Or even a late 19th C one. I did qualify that I thought it would be bad in a medieval society like the Gruinmark. "High grade"...
  • Commented on Commercial announcement
    pml540114 @ 39 asked why not gold and silver? One reason would be the relative differential between dimensions. Opium grows well in medieval conditions, but concentrated high grade heroin doesn't have much value (even if the medieval growers could manufacture...
  • Commented on Over-Extended Metaphor for the day
    I will shamelessly steal from the Unix-Haters Handbook to add that networks and distributed operating systems have further complicated the theology of operating systems. In for example NFS, one can decide that all gods are manifestations of the one divine...
  • Commented on Trotskyite singularitarians for Monarchism! A political speculation.
    David Brin had a more narrowly targeted rant against the neo-reactionaries a couple of days ago. Well worth reading. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/neo-reactionaries-drop-all-pretense-end.html...
  • Commented on The revolution will not be hand-stitched
    Not just for clothing? In the same room I currently have a camera case, backpack, and cricket bat case all made from stitched together cloth like material. Cloth wrapping instead of plastic on food and goods is currently used as...
  • Commented on The regular holy war ...
    scentofviolets @ 106, the GUI transition away from keyboards and mice is already underway. Phones with touch screens are almost everywhere in the world, with tablets spreading fast. I've seen a semi-joking suggestion that Linux will end up winning the...
  • Commented on Why Microsoft Word must Die
    Charlie @209, if I'm making a category error, that's because software is far more flexible than helicopters and airliners. When I worked with FrameMaker (some time ago now though) we used it for revision tracking and planning, not just page...
  • Commented on Why Microsoft Word must Die
    Charlie, I think you would have hated whatever word processor rose to dominate publishing, regardless of who wrote it. Microcomputer software has always succeeded by being cheap, easy to use, and just good enough for small jobs. People start to...
  • Commented on Do Zimboes dream of Electric Sheep?
    We have computer programs that do a reasonable theory of mind and simulation of interior mental states, the most famous being Eliza. In RFC 439, "PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR" two of these artificial theories of mind collide with entertaining result....
  • Commented on A deceptively simple question
    Not sure this would have geopolitical consequences, but in Western style cities it could have quite an impact on real estate values for "upper class" suburbs. Where to buy your house is one of the most important decisions in starting...
  • Commented on Time tourism
    To those people thinking about reading Connie Willis for the first time, I strongly recommend "To Say Nothing of the Dog" to start with. It's time travel, but lighter in tone and much shorter than the others. Or look for...
  • Commented on Time tourism
    There seem to be a lot of books written about women time travelling, but they're on the romance shelves of the bookshop, not science fiction. Typing "time travel romance" into the Amazon book search just reported 4,399 hits, not bad...
  • Commented on The latest news
    Scott @ 132, Charlie @134 It's certainly possible to smuggle data around without the Internet. But my question is what happens if the regular business and personal traffic we now take for granted is no longer easy? I don't see...
  • Commented on The latest news
    Could these revelations, and presumably more to come, be enough to break up the Internet? A single world-wide computer network was pure sci-fi as recently as the 1970s. (And usually dystopian "used to subjugate humanity" sci-fi at that - hmmm.)...
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