mcoletti

Comment Threads

• bellinghman commented on Utopia
  "Not that that actually matters to my point, which was that the length and episodic nature of Dickens' works was motivated by money rather than by the need to have a tale of that length to tell the story" Ah. In which case, I'm not sure what the point of your point was....
• Charlie Stross commented on Utopia
  I think that's the first time in history that a private company has launched something into orbit Um, no. Firstly, it's SpaceX's second launch of a Falcon 9 -- on top of their earlier successful Falcon I launch -- and secondly, ArianeSpace has been a commercial launch vendor since 1980; while CNES is a shareholder, and some other European governments own shares, ArianeSpace is a profit-making public company. You're also missing Boeing and a bunch of other American companies who launch stuff, although many of them are heavily reliant on recycled ex-military tech....
• Charlie Stross commented on Utopia
  It's a lousy ICBM by 1970s standards, though -- not accurate enough, but more importantly, it runs on LOX/Kerosene and has to be fueled up and pressurized on an exposed pad. It's broadly comparable to the mid-1950s Soviet SS-6 missile, which was so successful they were withdrawn as soon as a successor that could be prepped for launch on less than 6 hours was available (but which is still flying to this day as the R7 or Soyuz launch vehicle)....
• Charlie Stross commented on Utopia
  Accelerando is a utopia only for the roughly 1% of humanity who don't get exterminated by the ab-human products of the singularity. Do pay attention, please?...
• Charlie Stross commented on Utopia
  You missed the bit with the Vile Offspring in the last third of the novel, did you? They're dismantled and recycled as computronium. And the upload minds the Vile Offspring are firing at the survivors on Saturn are actually a denial-of-service attack using fakes (literally: false consciousness). And Aineko is not a cat. (The back story once you begin peeling away the facade is incredibly grim ...)...