Oolite Bulletins

and RockDoctor might like to know that Brave New World is included under "Literary Classics". I've had a PDF for ages (which I now realise is from a rather wobbly OCR exercise), which I can go through faster. The idea of only downloading on demand - and having to re-download to re-read - just isn't...

seeing as there is really no money in STNG that eliminates one reason to play poker. Data did play with other characters but it would have been for "fun","enjoyment" (...) i mean the ultimate card counter...lol Indeed. The mathematics weren't a challenge (I remember an evening spent playing cards w...

Transformers - at least one instance of them gambling. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Gambler I've seen more Star Trek Whichever than ... is Transformers a kid's comic, or series of films, or series of cartoons, or all the above in one universe. So that's two sub-waterline holes in my boat. No longer ...

cbr wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 24, 2020 1:24 pm

Didn't Data play Poker ?

Only having seen a couple of episodes of Star Trek Whichever, I bow to your superior knowledge.
Was he playing poker for the applied probability, or the examination of human psychology?

No new ideas? OK, the third idea I had in mind, which I've never heard of an SF(-ish) robot(-ish) doing was .. I've never heard of a robot gambling. Plenty of robots being used for gambling - one armed bandit and upwards. But a robot using it's volition(-ish) to risk an affordable loss for a small f...

IIRC, Baen Books and Tor have made part of their oeuvre available for free for ... years pushing decades.
Baen : https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012
Tor : actually, they seem to have cut back on it a deal, but try https://www.tor.com/category/excerpts/

On the closure of Stonehenge at the equinox, due to COVID-19: Stuart Hannington, a druid, also stayed behind the fence, accepting it was fair to restrict access. “They’re closing the churches so it seems OK that they are not allowing us to get to the stones. It’s disappointing but we have to make s...

So, current status is two propositions, both with sufficient prior art to rule them out. We're looking for things which no (fictional) robot has been tasked with. Someone was concerned with whether the robots were mobile or not : not an issue, nor whether they're anthropoid. For example, the "City B...

on the robot writing thing does the "robot"have to be mobile? i remember Jubal using a device to flesh out and publish his writings , robert Heinlein character. Define "mobile"? Taking the "Heart of Gold" and it's drive as being essentially a computer (+/- GPP), when it first appears in episode 2 A...

Hmm … have any SF writers ever written about robot writers? Didn't Aldous Huxley have "porn writing machines" in "Brave New World"? Or was it ... I've got an image of monochrome suit-&-tie dudes standing around a chattering printer in some 1950s film production. Anyone help me on that? "Brave New W...

Stupid over-reaction - can't see robots deciding to hoard toilet paper etc... Counter example : the Berserkers (various authors, but originally woke up Fred Sauberhagen, screaming. But on the gripping hand, the Berserkers were originally designed by lifeforms, weren't they? I'd have to re-read to c...

OK, let's try this. Preamble : last night, I was listening to an audiobook of Niven's "Protector", where comment is made on the absence of an autopilot in the "Outsider's" ship (not delivering spoilers here, I hope). Elsewhere comments were made about the use of automated kitchens, and autodocs are ...

OK, thinking.

Nobody? OK, two to go, One from Known Space (do I need to add, "Larry Niven"?) : several times he refers to a habit of the Belters to buy material (ships, supplies, whatever) in the name of the "Seventh Church of Rodney", which everyone (including the tax man) took to mean "I'm not saying, and you'...

Some good news at last... Can you envisage the Eurovision Nostalgia shows that are being composed to re-fill the holes in the schedules this will cause. (In voice Commissioning Editor, in a working-from home conference call.) "We've got to fill 16 hours of prime time. Ideas?" (small voice) "I've go...