gmuir77

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• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Here's what I do when there's a disaster like this. 1. Load wikipedia entry on disaster. Ususally will have a shell page within minutes. 2. Refresh every few hours to see updates. 3. Try and avoid other news sources. The...
• Commented on The last refuge of scoundrels
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher A really good retrospective on her. "Barack Obama, interestingly, said in his statement that she had "broken the glass ceiling for other women". Only in the sense that all the women beneath her were blinded by falling shards. She...
• Commented on A message from our UK sponsors
  PS -- on-topic, things available for sale in the Kindle store in Europe aren't available in the US yet, right? At least without some tomfoolery? I'm curious to take a crack at the revised Merchant Princes....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  I wasn't going to clutter the blog with a long and off-topic rant. But I think this is hardly going to be the venue to argue that being out of step with mainstream tastes means we're missing something....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Actually, I'm kind of sad this is just an April Fool joke. What constantly amazes me is how much money is thrown at Hollywood productions that are crap. And the reviews! There were many who loved the recent Hobbit. I...
• Commented on Why I don't self-publish
  The kicker that keeps getting missed here: 1) Being a working, full-time, self-supporting novelist is really, really tough. Not everyone can do it. 2) Charlie is succeeding in the traditional system, has found a way that works. 3) He's not...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  Ignorance is a powerful, dangerous thing. Before reading the FAQ's here, I had a highly simplified understanding of the publishing process and the labor involved in preparing a manuscript for print. Having read the FAQ's, I can appreciate a great...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  It astounds me that an order of fried wings from a standard restaurant can cost as much as the lunch price at a buffet, plus everything else is available. Even the supermarket cost on things like seafood is much, much...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  One other thought, there's just too much consolidation across the board: the natural trend towards all human economic activities tends towards concentration of capital and ownership. Romans were complaining about the latifundias, tipplers complain about how four gigabrewers control over...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  I never really understood how the numbers worked for the all-you-can-eat models myself. Gym memberships I understand: oversubscribe, count on most people not showing up every day. Same model dial-up ISP's followed. I suppose buffets work on a similar hope...
• Commented on "We're going to need book covers. Lots of book covers!"
  Does it need to say "a space opera" on it? Of course it does. While nobody really seems to agree with me on this, covers are how most books are judged. You have a split second to reach the browser...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Have you considered that he might be suppressing discussion of the basilisk while counting on the Streisand Effect to spread it and thus curry the basilisk's eventual favor?...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Well, opinions about advancement and civility are subjective so people will of course disagree. I know Marx considered Germany, the UK or France as good prospects for the proletarian revolution, certainly not backwards Russia. And there is something to be...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Well, I'm stumped as to how those triggers work. Tried reposting after removing single link, it's still blocked. Oh, well....
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  When a post says it's held for moderation, is that really the case or does it disappear? Several earlier posts appeared after I made them but my last one was held. Curious if there's anything specific that might trigger a...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  mods: error screen? reposting to see if it clears. Delete if I dupe, please. The scary thing is it doesn't even need to be possible, just have people willing to act on it. Scientology is wrong. Reverend Jones of Jonestown...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  The scary thing is it doesn't even need to be possible, just have people willing to act on it. Scientology is wrong. Reverend Jones of Jonestown was wrong. None of Hitler's beliefs would stand up to peer review. Lysenkoism was...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Just one more thought -- the seductive powers this woo has for rational minds is terrifying. I can get a gibbering madman laying in the gutter believing crazy things, I can get a cynical preacher making up crap he doesn't...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  There is a novel in here somewhere about a kind of arms race with different factions racing to create _their_ kind of AI, assuming that the first one created will block the emergence of any others. I assume this is...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Reading that is like having a little peak into a higher dimension of crazy. Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of. OGH explained how the series got written into a hole and would be impossible to finish but I still really liked the idea of the Big E, the Remastered, and all that...
• Commented on Wow
  I can't find the name of the short story but it was in Robert L. Forward's book Indistinguishable from Magic, last chapter. Starting from the true fact of the natural fission reactor, he worked out a novel way an alien...
• Commented on The jet lag game
  http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-airlines-us-airways-merge-to-form-worlds,31302/ American Airlines, US Airways Merge To Form World's Largest Inconvenience...
• Commented on The jet lag game
  Only flown overseas once and that was back in '95. All recent air travel has been basically thousand-mile trips, Texas or northern states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts. Usually I'm stuck making a connecting flight so the total travel time is doubled....
• Commented on If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died
  http://www.nature.com/news/2002/021121/full/news021118-7.html Spy sats have been detecting bolide explosions for decades. I think something like this would have certainly increased the pucker factor in a crisis but we've seen bigger and not gone nuclear. Just as glad we're out of the...
• Commented on Press release
  Never caught the Merchant Princes the first time around. Looking forward to reading the doorstop editions....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  @jamespad I was thinking of that very Obama quote when I was typing. His phrasing in that exact moment was inartful but was saying nothing different from what republicans themselves have admitted to when they were accidentally being honest. Elizabeth...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  That's a good point about the seductive power of faulty reasoning. I had a high school debate with a friend who was a general misanthrope but disliked black people just a little more than he disliked white people. The Africa...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Can't seem to reply in-line from phone. Concerning aquatic apes, there's not much mainstream acceptance. Last place I heard it mentioned was on Monster Talk which is a skeptic's look at monster hunting, cryptids and the like. General theme of...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Typos due to thumbs on phone -_-;...