OT: Books and such

frightlever · #1 December 19th, 2006, 05:01 AM

Armor by John Steakley if you haven't already. It's kind of the other side of Starship Troopers by Heinlein. One of the best books I've ever read.

I tried Gormenghast when I was youngers and gave up early but a decade later I read through all but the last book (got halfway and gave up. Dude was too raddled with drugs by then to be coherent.)

For military SF in general and Eric Flint in particular you can always go to http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm which is the Baen (the actual publisher - this is legit) Free Library where they give away free ebooks so you can get a feel and hopefully buy more real books. Includes Eric Flint's 1632 and 1633 which is about a whole town and a big chunk of Minnesota (IIRC) which gets transported to Europe during the Thirty Years War. Loved it. Only really practical if you've got a PDA or similar ebook reader I spose.

narf poit chez BOOM · #2 December 19th, 2006, 10:35 PM

The books are available in html. No reader needed.

frightlever · #3 December 20th, 2006, 04:51 AM

You can read html while on the move? Cool. I had a friend who could use the internet in the early 90s without a computer or modem just by whistling down the phoneline. Is it like that?

And of course these days most mp3 players and handheld games machines can read text ebooks, with a bit of tinkering.

narf poit chez BOOM · #4 December 20th, 2006, 05:16 AM

Er, I dunno. I just meant you could read it on a computer without a reader.

Fyron · #5 December 20th, 2006, 05:30 AM

frightlever said:
I had a friend who could use the internet in the early 90s without a computer or modem just by whistling down the phoneline. Is it like that?

Uhh... yeah...

Randallw · #6 December 20th, 2006, 06:54 AM

I saw that in a documentary once. Before the internet proto-hackers could get free long distance phone calls by ringing up the exchange and then play a toy whistle down the line to get connected.

frightlever · #7 December 20th, 2006, 01:45 PM

He was in that documentary. Honest.

Fyron · #8 December 20th, 2006, 05:21 PM

Randallw said:
Before the internet proto-hackers could get free long distance phone calls by ringing up the exchange and then play a toy whistle down the line to get connected.

There is a world of difference between mimicking a ringtone signal and "using the Internet by whistling."

Randallw · #9 December 20th, 2006, 11:21 PM

granted. It's so impossible, unless you're the Terminatrix, that I thought it was pretty obvious frightlever had gotten his context wrong.