Interesting Links for 28-05-2012

[andrewducker]

• I had no idea that Heinlein invented screensavers
  (tags: technology scifi )
• Scratchcard withdrawn because people couldn't understand negative numbers
  (tags: uk numbers lottery maths )
• Errors vs. Bugs - how to get better at things, and stop thinking of people as being "lazy" or "stupid"
  (tags: mistakes stupidity learning )
• Neil Gaiman's brain is broken by a question about fanfic
  (tags: DrWho neilgaiman fanfic )
• Ukraine is about to make it illegaly to be gay/lesbian in public. Please sign a petition to put pressure on them.
  (tags: ukraine LGBT )
• Results from the Heinlein Score poll
  (tags: heinlein )
• A collection of author's policies on fanfic
  (tags: writing fanfic )
• Eight Emotions Every User Enjoys
  (tags: design emotion )
• What's it like to have had Nazi grandparents?
  (tags: family nazi )
• SSD price war in full swing
  (tags: technology storage ssd )
• How the coming wave of ultra-cheaping computing devices will change everyone's lives.
  (tags: computers technology thefuture )

Comments

[teresafloyd]

Here's a more complete list of the inventions Heinlein described or anticipated: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/authortotalalphalist.asp?aunum=2

Microwaves and microwave dinners (1948); cell phones and the problem of never being out of touch (1953); news feeds (1941); computer aided design (1956); a better e-reader(1961); Powered exoskeletons like in Alien and Mechwarrior (1951).

[cheekbones3]

I found a used scratchcard on the ground recently (not that type, that's quite an old story), and it was a £2 winner. It was a similar concept - comparing one number with another to see if it was a winner. I can't remember if there was an addition in there too, and obviously can't confirm that it wasn't just a mistake.

How long has the concept of the number line been taught I wonder? I certainly did that at primary school in the 80s.

[steer.livejournal.com]

From "Eerily accurate predictions"

Somehow, Verne predicted that the astronauts would become weightless in space. There was no way he could have known that at the time

Unless he had an even moderate grounding in Newtonian physics which was at that point nearly 200 years old. Newton had already given the mechanism to calculate the force acting on someone within a spaceship. The Lagrange points had been known about for 100 years by then.

in... 1904, that Twain dreamed up an invention called the "telelectroscope," which used the phone system to create a world wide network of information-sharing

Sadly post-dating by some way the telegraph which was already a world-wide network of information sharing. Check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet

It's a great read... those guys had a global information network with encoding, checksumming, compression, .signatures, network etiquette...

in 1911... Gernsback wrote a serial novel called Ralph 124C 41+ (read it as "one to foresee for one other"), which, according to Sir Arthur C. Clarke, contained "the first accurate description of radar, complete with diagram."

However, that was 7 years after the first demonstration of radio waves to detect ships in 1904. Not to mention Tesla's 1900 description "For instance, by their [standing electromagnetic waves] use we may produce at will, from a sending station, an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; [with which] we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed"
By contrast Gernsback's description
"A pulsating polarized ether wave, if directed on a metal object can be reflected in the same manner as a light-ray is reflected from a bright surface or from a mirror..."
seems pretty vague apart from the part where it's wrong (ether wave? This is 24 years after Michelson-Moreley).

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

:-) it's lovely when someone else finds all the links.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Good put-down!

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Another link answers Heinlein's list: Specialization isn't for insects; it's for people with bugs. Which we all are.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

"Looking at faces" is an emotion? I always knew I wasn't very in touch with my emotions, but apparently I've completely misunderstood what they even *are*!

[andrewducker]

True. Should have been "Eight things that inspire positive emotions in users".

[andrewducker]

(English clearly isn't his first language)

[supergee.livejournal.com]

A professional writer should know that copyright law doesn't work like trademark law and doesn't require being a pain in the ass.

[andrewducker]

I don't know many writers that are also legal experts. I can understand their worry that allowing people to do things to their work would open the door to doing so in an unlimited manner.

It's not like CC produces a license for "You can create new works based on this one, reusing my characters, providing you do not make money from it, but you cannot reproduce the actual text."

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Copyright is merely a statement that you produced the work in question. And your statement might have actually been true (save that there is no actual licence and you are granted copyright, in Europe at least, if you can prove that you have written the work. (Letters and e-mails written by you are your copyright. Ones written to you cannot, technically, be reproduced without the writer's permission.)

The real protection used to lie in the 'passing off' laws, where large fines were levied for passing off someone else's work as your own.

Under these circumstances, so long as no-one was deprived of any income, fan fiction was probably legal in the UK. However, European law has changed. I'm no lawyer, and having read the Regulations, I think fan fiction may have slipped over into illegality but suspect any fine would be negligible.

[andrewducker]

Using characters from something in your own work is a derivative work, I believe, which would mean that copyright law forbids it.

IANAL, of course.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

This certainly did not used to be true under British law, but I wouldn't venture an opinion on the current law.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it."

I would be lenient and say not all people are great with numbers, and that negative numbers are a lot more difficult to grasp than natural numbers, but... this isn't some sort of abstract concept they're putting across here.

The scratch cards are about being cold, they show pictures of penguins and ice, so there's a direct correlation between the numbers and the real world concept. Surely these people have seen cold weather and grasped that -8 is colder than -6 by now (the girl in question is 23, so hanging on to Fahrenheit can't be an excuse).

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It's odd that on that list of people who hate fanfic are two writers both of whom have written series of books where a major character is recognisably based on a TV characters, and one of those is a writer who I know personally through fan fiction.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

More people say they can comfort the dying than change a diaper? I've done both more than once, and the former has always been harder than the latter, if not always more unpleasant.

[chess]

It's easier to notice when you've failed to change a diaper...