Apteris

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Commented on An exercise in futility
Two thoughts: Authors may need to start digitally signing their eBooks soon to certify an original version as being the original. (Please to not hand out your signing keys to third parties.) A FOSS app that reverts the effects of...
Commented on Ask the Author
Mr. Stross, You've incorporated and expanded upon Lovecraft's mythos to great effect in your works. What other works of fiction would you (have) like(d) to splice, dice and recombine into your work, if they were unencumbered by copyright?...
Commented on CMAP: "Why do you use Microsoft Word?"
Mr. Stross, Re: Word bug compatibility (though I think you already know): Scott Hanselman: I've got two Microsoft Word documents that I wrote in Word that I can no longer open in Word as Word says "Those aren't Word documents."...
Commented on CMAP: "Why do you use Microsoft Word?"
the risk if a hitherto-unsuspected bug surfaced and rendered my change-tracked files indigestible by Microsoft Word was that I'd have to throw out three months' hard work and re-do from scratch. It's precisely this sort of thing that makes me...
Commented on Rinse, Drain, Spin ... more Laundry!
Mr Stross, I've read CMAP. I know you're not the one who draws the cover. Even so: would you care to comment on why the cover on the right features a horse's head with hoof-ended woman's legs bending in an...

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NotABotNet commented on An exercise in futility
I am reminded of a fair amount of Larry Niven's oeuvre, here, Charlie, where censored and bleep stand in as new swear words,thanks to their prevalent use in censoring a previous generation of swear words. Or the reverse -- "idiot" became disfavored because it started getting applied to dumb people instead of just to mentally retarded people. More recently, advocates for the disabled have tried to get people to stop using "retarded" because they feel it's pejorative of their clients. "Special" got used for a while until it fell to the same fate. Last I heard, we're now supposed to...
Gregory Muir commented on An exercise in futility
I'm right there with you on advertising. I'd love to see your take on it in the other conversation. One of the most influential novels from my youth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants...
paws4thot commented on An exercise in futility
Thanks; been AFK (At Eastercon; hi to everyone I met there) since 1/4 ~22:00. As a Scot. I'm well aware of Calum Cille and of the fact of his exile from Ireland (to Iona, Western Isles, Scotland) but wasn't aware of the reasoning....
elward commented on An exercise in futility
Re Clean Reader: What a pinnacle of cockstaggering fuckwittery. Welcome to the tenth circle of Heck. What I really want to know is what are the child-friendly versions of the words being discussed here? When the first Harry Potter book was sold in the US, the title was changed (leading to much confusion in Canada where we saw both British and American editions). I just assumed that the reason was to keep children from asking their parents what a philosopher was, because the parents themselves wouldn't be able to answer the question. As noted above: "The app is the brainchild...
Damian the surprised commented on An exercise in futility
I submit that those critics don't know what they're talking about and are idiots. I agree. However this was at one time a popular view and spread by University English Departments. See specifically Whimsatt and Beardsley 'The intentional fallacy', which argues the author's intention in any text might be interesting but is neither available nor relevant to a critical reading. The text was supposed to stand for itself as a discrete artefact. This was more or less the defining position of the New Critics, or the T.S.Eliot through to F.R. Leavis intergenerational gang. Like many of their positions, it may...

Responses to Comments from Apteris

Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
“Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)

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