Martin Rodgers

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• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  334 by Thomas Disch may be another book to add to "regular Joes" list....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  I remember watching and enjoying Keystone Kops when I was a preteen. I may have preferred Buster Keaton. Anyway, thanks for the reminder. Very apt....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  The Register has the best coverage of that story. The very best! The IT angle. https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/15/georgia_trump_indictment_data_theft/...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  All this talk of fonts, screens etc is fascinating (or amusing, depending on my mood), so here's my own small contribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Source I've been wrestling with this problem since the paper was published. I may someday need to decide on...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Dude, you're the one arguing that violence can never be justified, I said I can't support it. I also acknowledge that other people make strong arguments to for justifying some violence. I've even suggested how they make those arguments. However,...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Well, I've been struggling with this kind of question for most of my life. The root seems to be zero-sum thinking. I even find it in discussions like these. (This discussion isn't a zero-sum game either.) I may have mentioned...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I assume Martin is not thinking of those as the sort of cause that can't be supported if it relies on violence. But it's hard to know where they draw the line (less charitably they may not draw it at...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Turns out I was confused and used the wrong Haitian revolutionary/leader Don't worry, I think I understand your point well enough. ;)...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave earlier. ;)...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  If your cause demands violence, you've lost my support. I'm sure the ghost of Jean-Jacques Dessalines is devastated, but understands. Slavery is a form of violence, sometimes leading to death. Could resisting violence be just a basic act of...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  This all reminds me of a short story, “Roadside Rescue” by Pat Cadigan I read in Omni magazine back in 1985. And just so happens to be collected in an anthology called Alien Sex: 19 Tales by the Masters of...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  They later changed into terrorists (killing innocent civilians being easier and getting more headlines), and later expanded into organised crime. A small quibble: They were more extreme than that. Their car bomb campaign eventually targeted children. A bomb would go...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Narnia never interested me. The only CS Lewis I ever read was The Screwtape Letters. Not nearly as entertaining as Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth You and me both, on both counts. I don't recall reading the Narnia books....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  I politely suggest we postpone any further discussion on this topic until we've passed #300. Otherwise you'll be talking to yourself - I'm done with this subject for now....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Definitely a reference count based garbage collector. It turns out that any interpreter/compiler that implements Old Enochian requires one: it's part of the language spec. This makes perfect sense to me as being part of the natural order of things,...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I recognise that experience. I'm often reminded of the trilogy, and John Shirley's dedication in the first book, Eclipse, to his children. I don't recall the exact words, and no longer have those books, but the words were something like,...
• Commented on Place your bets
  You're still speaking to a UK citizen, and mainland resident, on a UK-hosted blog. Everything else you say is irrelevent to my point, which was about UK law....
• Commented on Place your bets
  I don't consider anything in current US politics to be remotely "normal". Please recall that some of us live in countries where regular politics discourse is severely frowned on, and described as "unparliamentary". In fact, I've been hearing such language...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Not just you. I haven't seen the movie, but I did briefly think of it when I first read the title of OGH's novel. Very briefly. ;)...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Your argument presumes that only violence can solve this problem. Why talk so much about killing people when that's not the end goal? At least, I hope it's not your end goal. It's hard to tell when you're using the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Thank you. I also find this violent line of discussion disturbing....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Thank you, that made me laugh out loud. Also, I would've loved playing that game 3 decades ago....
• Commented on Place your bets
  I used to be able to solo 5 hours and have a few soft drinks on the way. My prostrate has decided that now it is about 3 hours and fewer drinks please. My wife is hourly. I could handle...
• Commented on Place your bets
  There's also the tourist/heritage angle. In the UK, we have a demographic that enjoys long coach trips to national heritage sites - and we have enough of those to justify various special interest organisations - and a retired population with...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Going with what you know vs. new and different is hard for all kinds of people. In so many areas of life. I keep thinking about people who shold know better talking about how EVs will never work as who...
• Commented on Place your bets
  So how did it gain the common perception it has today of being a person who trusts no one? Ambrose Bierce? ;)...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Machine learning isn't magic. You need some data to train your model on. That's where the problem arises for AGI. What data? What intelligence? I'm not saying it can't be done - for all I know it could happen someday....
• Commented on Place your bets
  Yes, I am nailing my colours to the fence - we simply don't know! I read Penrose's book in the late 80s, and my position is the same as your statement. BTW, the argument I was refering to didn't sound...
• Commented on Place your bets
  You can't create AGI until you understand what 'intelligence' actually is. Some have suggest that humans have a blind spot, so we can't actually understand the thing we use to understand anything. One of those arguments is that our ancestors...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Yeah, I'm just saying some of us are aware of these things too....