Prologue: We know where you live, we know where your dog goes to school
Hello. We're Round Peg/Round Hole Recruitment. We want to offer you a job on behalf of one of our clients ...
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Hello. We're Round Peg/Round Hole Recruitment. We want to offer you a job on behalf of one of our clients ...
Nice. I'm sold.
On the book, I mean.
I want the spam filter and summarization filter.
FYI it doesn't seem to display under Safari. But the excerpt's great. I'm incredibly annoyed that I now have another author I'll buy in hardback. That's my beer money.
For what it's worth, you [Charlie] have yet another admirer among the Great and the Good: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2007_10_01_archive.asp#4671591685612268455
I always wonder if knowing too much about how corporate minions misuse English isn't dangerous to one's mental health. On that basis, your prognosis is not good.
Wow. Blank page. Exciting stuff.
All attempts at humor aside, I'm getting a blank piece of html. I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254 on Windows XP Professional Version 2002 SP 2.
I assume no one else is having the problem and I'll try from home in a few.
Hmm...
Blank Pages (eg #6).
I get a blank page with Internet Explorer (or whatever sarky variation you prefer), but it displays fine in Firefox, on the same system.
I suspect it's IE that's broken.
JHomes.
I thought this story was set in 2016 not 2010..
and it looks like this link is an intelligence test..
if you're dumb enough to use IE, you won't be able to understand charlie's writing??
----
back to Absolution Gap until this arrives..
The problem is the dir="ltr" in the body tag. This seems to cause IE and Safari to choke... To read you can either do a view source, or save the page and remove the dir attribute and read load the saved page. Or use Firefox...
Sorry, incorrect fix... using two browsers. If I save the page from Firefox it will display in Safari. (You can still see the text in Safari by doing a view source)
The problem is the <title /> tag. Safari does not like this - though it is valid... Save, edit and either remove or replace with %lt;title></title> and you will be able to read the page.
Sorry for the multiple posts.
btw - I was looking to see if the book was available in the stores here in Canada... not in stock as yet in the places I have looked so far.
Henry @13: I've fixed the Title tag. Works for me in Konqueror. (Trouble is, it worked for me in Konqueror before, too.) I've also hacked the <body> tags.
Fscking XHTML exporter in OpenOffice ...
Don't start it if you have to do something that will interrupt your reading ... like actually working.
Hi, Charlie! I cleaned out _Halting State_ at my local bookstore last night, all one copy of it.
The reactions to 'It's about a bank robbery. The bank's in a RPG.' are interesting. (Book to be loaned to friends, one of whom has been a game programmer himself. That should be even more interesting.)
Waah. It's not at Forbidden Planet in London yet... my misery was somewhat assuaged by picking up Pratchett's _Making Money_ and the sequel to _Spin_, but it's not the same.
Can't see beyond the prologue in Firefox under Linux on an old rebuilt custom box.
But good extrapolation. I've been headhunted based on publically available data, and my own web domain (which, by the way, is inactive for 24-48 more hours as I'd forgotten a monthly payment on the 12-year-old domain). I've gotten an editor to phone me (this never happens otherwise) and arrange payment for reprinting a short story from my domain.
To look 5 minutes into the future, you may be explaining why Google's been hiring so many smart people, and hiring them away from IBM and other firms. Scroogled.
And what makes us think that this is not actually going on for covert hiring right now, by mercenaries and governments?
You may be describing the killer app of the near future, if indeed knowledge is power and human resources are more valuable than capital assets.