From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Thu Jan 1 12:04:52 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Thu Jan 1 15:04:43 2004 Subject: [CT] New story at QueenOfAngels: Strings Message-ID: <00a701c3d0a2$873e43f0$6601a8c0@sva> Skipped content of type multipart/alternative-------------- next part -------------- ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Fri Jan 2 19:56:32 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Fri Jan 2 22:56:35 2004 Subject: [CT] Re: New story at QueenOfAngels: Strings In-Reply-To: <91FE29619E24D311A26C00805F851D7A0166836B@ftlexch.jfa.local> Message-ID: <000401c3d1ad$a5d6efe0$6601a8c0@sva> I thoroughly disagree with this. (Obviously, or I wouldn't have written a story with this as an essential element.) The render doesn't need to be as real as reality; it just needs to be real enough to fool _you_. That is, a fairly narrow auditory channel, a video channel with maybe 8000x4500 pixels resolution. Smell is dead simple; you record a library of smells and replay as necessary. Taste is a lot more complex (maybe the most complex) ... duplicating the texture and taste and scent of food would require a lot of bandwidth and processor power. Feel, kinesthesia -- duplicating the various pains and pleasures of a real body -- probably simpler than taste since you can record & replay most of it. Duplicate reality? I don't need to duplicate reality; I just need to convince you that I have. Sitting on the beach watching the waves? Fine; I'm not even going to render the beach behind you, or Pacific Coast Highway or the cars traveling it -- not until you turn your head, anyway. The fact that I think this is possible is one of the reasons I think that strings are a doomed species in the long term. Who really wants to be fooled on an ongoing basis, even if it's possible? Ints have a richer, realer experience of the world than strings -- and look at confirmed strings the way I look at drug addicts. If you really need that drink/drug to function, I won't take it away from you, but I feel some contempt for you just the same. -----Original Message----- From: continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org [mailto:continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org] On Behalf Of William Case Sent: Friday, January 02, 2004 2:52 PM To: 'Discussion of works/books of Daniel Keys Moran' Subject: RE: [CT] Re: New story at QueenOfAngels: Strings -----Original Message----- I have problems with the premise of modelling the world, anyway. My suspicion is that in order to get anywhere near the fidelity of reality would require a computer as huge and complex as reality. -----Original Message----- ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Sat Jan 3 21:18:54 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Sun Jan 4 00:18:57 2004 Subject: [CT] "Strings, " critiqued, commented upon & pointlessly nitpicked In-Reply-To: <200401040439.i044dt500129@panix3.panix.com> Message-ID: <000301c3d282$52ba5330$6601a8c0@sva> wds wrote: >1. The Steinman-McCarthy Bill... the first name keeps reminding me of >Meat Loaf -- Jim Steinman wrote the lyrics and music for everything, Some days I feel naked and transparent in front of you folks. Yeah, Steinman was a reference to Jim Steinman, who I quoted in Emerald Eyes. (And who I was listening to while I wrote this story the album "Bad for Good," which is actually sung by Steinman.) McCarthy wasn't an intentional reference to Senator McCarthy, however. I'll change that before sending it out, since it does give you that vibe and I didn't intend it. >Isn't the name "the World" incredibly simple and generic? "The chick in the tub thinks she's a mermaid. It's OK with us." >3. Since I didn't know what was coming I didn't realize it the first >time through, but upon rereading the story I find myself wondering >why exactly Fagan bothered spending so much time in interview >discussing matters which were destined to be utterly irrelevant and >forgotten once he dropped all the bombshells at the end. Irrelevant for the people who don't upload; critical for those who choose to. >5. "Michael wore a body and drove up Pacific Coast Highway in a Jeep >to come see him." I'm okay with the first part of that, but as to >the second... how would Joe _know_ whether Michael really drove up, >as opposed to just appearing (poof!) in a moving Jeep on the highway >at the extreme range of Joe's simulated human perception (assuming >that Joe happened to be looking in that direction at the time)? Or >is that what you meant, Dan? Yeah, that's what I meant. If Joe had looked out the window (he didn't) he'd have seen the Jeep approaching on PCH before coming up to the house. Michael's not "in" the Jeep -- the Jeep is a low-resolution model that doesn't improve in resolution until it gets closer to the house. (Standard render practice even today.) >Dan, did you _plan_ that echoing of the words "the end" like that? >It's quite a nice effect, either way. Yep. In an earlier draft Michael had a comment about "sometime before the end" ... it nagged at me until I gave it to Joe and put it at the end of the story. Then I liked it a lot. Earlier in this thread someone pointed out that I liked strongly typed languages -- you have no idea. There's not a language out there that's as strongly typed as I'd like (that I'm familiar with, anyway) -- I do think that strong typing immensely improves your chances of writing robust code. I know people who disagree with me (and who I even respect) ... but they're wrong. ;-) ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Mon Jan 5 19:55:01 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Mon Jan 5 22:55:15 2004 Subject: [CT] Started a sequel to "Strings" tonight. Message-ID: <000001c3d408$f652e340$6601a8c0@sva> Skipped content of type multipart/alternative-------------- next part -------------- ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Mon Feb 23 20:16:30 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Mon Feb 23 20:17:03 2004 Subject: [CT] New story at QueenOfAngels: Strings In-Reply-To: <91FE29619E24D311A26C00805F851D7A016685A7@ftlexch.jfa.local> Message-ID: <000001c3fa73$d66ac390$6701a8c0@sva> Skipped content of type multipart/alternative-------------- next part -------------- ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Tue Feb 24 01:23:34 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Tue Feb 24 01:24:05 2004 Subject: [CT] Just curious In-Reply-To: <005001c3fa9c$efe06a90$86f52b44@hometoy> Message-ID: <000501c3fa9e$bbdee670$6701a8c0@sva> I haven't lost interest; I got married & got 3 and then 4 and then 5 kids. I don't make a living writing and never have and my nut is huge. Do I still hope to write for a living some day? Yes, I do -- but I don't know when, where, how, if. Sorry if that's blunt, but that's what it is right now. -----Original Message----- From: continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org [mailto:continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org] On Behalf Of Pran Mukherjee Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 10:11 PM To: Discussion of works/books of Daniel Keys Moran Subject: [CT] Just curious This is going to sound like a rant, but it's not. I'm curious. I've been on this list for something like 5-6 years, hoping that something new would come out that we could talk about. I get that AI War is caught up in copyright problems, but aren't there something like 28-29 other books in the CT that haven't been published yet? Man-spacething war, the Ola Blue stories, and so on. I'm not sure if Dan is still on this list, but if so, "Dan, what happened? Aren't you writing any more?" Nothing has come out for the CT since tLD, and that was in 1993! Have I missed a book or two? Something I read a while back said "After tLD I'll be able to do this for a living," (paraphrased since I don't have it in front of me), and then a lot of problems arose, but so far as I understand those problems were resolved years ago. Have you just lost interest in writing CT stories? Sorry if this sounds like an attack, because it's not; I just want more CT! ;) Pran ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Tue Feb 24 21:18:55 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Tue Feb 24 21:18:51 2004 Subject: [CT] www.queenofangels.com nameservice working In-Reply-To: <20040224225731.85D8110B50@maniac.deathstar.org> Message-ID: <000001c3fb45$b8add0e0$6701a8c0@sva> And my sincere thanks to Charles Clark. Except for the nameservers (which I don't know how to do), everything about QOA is now under my control. My pizza box, my mail server, my web server, my database ... all areas where I am at least minimally competent. Thanks, Charles. -----Original Message----- From: continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org [mailto:continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org] On Behalf Of Charles Clark Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 2:57 PM To: continuing-time@ralf.org Subject: [CT] www.queenofangels.com nameservice working Dan changed the nameservers listed with the registrar, and the change has propagated thru to the .com name servers. If that didn't make sense to you, ignore this paragraph, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that nameservice for queenofangels.com is once again functional. You may use http://www.queenofangels.com/ instead of any URL with the IP address. -- Charles Clark | cmc@stegosaur.us My hatred for you . . . is delicious. -- Lokar [spoken to Birdman] ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time From Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com Thu May 27 01:46:14 2004 From: Jimbo at QueenOfAngels.com (Dan Moran) Date: Thu May 27 01:46:09 2004 Subject: [CT] Re: What happened to QoA? In-Reply-To: <6.1.1.1.0.20040526154353.08811370@mail.xtalwind.net> Message-ID: <000001c443ad$ecafe490$6600a8c0@sva> Sorry about that, guys. The site got hacked last week and I reset all the passwords after locking the hackers out. I reset everthing on LakersTalk correctly (same server) ... because it's the playoffs and LakersTalk is very, very busy right now. QOA's not so busy and is more complex (it needs to be a separate COM+ package since it runs both ASP & PHP, which IIS doesn't like to do) -- so I didn't fix it the night I spent at the colo getting LakersTalk back up. I probably won't fix it until this weekend. There is a nice picture of the WTC up there now, if you want to go look at it. :-) Amy just joined the Lori Perkins agency as an agent -- the site will be coming back up again, since she wants to use it for some of her agenting work. Also we're going to be doing "A Freeway in my Back Yard" soon -- possibly as an HC, but not as a limited edition -- the site'll be back up for that, too. I saw the thread last week about what the hell was going on with me and was I dead. I'm not, though I feel like it some days. I changed jobs and we're moving to Santa Barbara -- a new job with a great company and a great place to live -- I'm talking heaven-on-earth-caliber great place to live -- but we're not moving until the kids are out of school. So I'm commuting about 3 hours a day -- falling into bed when I get home, dragging my weary ass up every morning. Once we move things will get better. I did send "Old Man," the Ola Blue story, and "Strings" to Asimov's. After I sent it I learned Sheila Williams was taking over from Gardner -- so God knows when I'll hear about those stories. "Old Man" got the best rejection letter I've ever received, bar none -- editor at Esquire wrote back that it was brilliant, wrenching, remarkable ... too long. I knew that when I sent it to them, of course, but I was hoping that the brilliance and wrenchingness and remarkableness of it would wear 'em down. No such luck. -----Original Message----- From: continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org [mailto:continuing-time-bounces@ralf.org] On Behalf Of Earl Green Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 12:47 PM To: continuing-time@ralf.org Subject: Re: [CT] Re: What happened to QoA? At 06:24 PM 5/25/04, Matthew Hunter wrote: >On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 12:58:34PM -0700, David Silberstein > wrote: > > Oh, it's down alright. A useful diagnostic tool is to > use wget > > with -S (server response), which gives us: > > > > $ wget -S http://www.queenofangels.com/ > > --12:50:32-- http://www.queenofangels.com/ > > => `index.html' > > Resolving www.queenofangels.com... 38.118.133.185 > > Connecting to > www.queenofangels.com[38.118.133.185]:80... connected. > > HTTP request sent, awaiting response... > > 1 HTTP/1.1 500 Server Error > > 2 Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 > > 3 Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 20:50:21 GMT > > 4 Content-Type: text/html > > 5 Content-Length: 332 > > 12:50:33 ERROR 500: Server Error. > > > > As you can see, there's no problem this time with > resolving the > > domain name. It's just that the host is running IIS, > which is now > > badly horked. > > > > ObNanosquishySnark: Gee, who could have seen *that* coming? > >Gee, any time Dan needs free hosting on a UNIX server, I'd be >glad to make the offer... ;) > >-- >Matthew Hunter (matthew@infodancer.org) >Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt >Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp >Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp QoA used to reside on Unix a long time ago. However, Dan does programming using Windows tools that he wanted to employ for the site, so a Windows host was a better choice for his particular needs. Earl ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Earl Green, Crystal Wind Communications, Inc. (voice) 352-746-9696 "All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." ~~~~~~~~~~~~ T.E. Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time ____________________________ continuing-time mailing list continuing-time@ralf.org http://www.ralf.org/mailman/listinfo/continuing-time