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6c27e80
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Fraa Jad took the garment from me and discovered how the fly worked. "Topology is destiny," he said, and put the drawers on."
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Neal Stephenson |
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f2ca282
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BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat, emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements--this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f4ddcb5
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Intuition, like a flash of lightning, lasts only for a second. It generally comes when one is tormented by a difficult decipherment and when one reviews in his mind the fruitless experiments already tried. Suddenly the light breaks through and one finds after a few minutes what previous days of labor were unable to reveal.
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Neal Stephenson |
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6eae596
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Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion.
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Neal Stephenson |
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b4cec31
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Judge Fang got to eat this way only when someone really important was trying to taint him, and though he had never knowingly allowed his judicial judgment to be swayed, he did enjoy the chow.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e0ff4f8
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Some of these Marines learned what they know on Guadalcanal, a basically useless island in the Southwest Pacific where the Empire of Nippon and the United States of America are disputing--with rifles--each other's right to build a military airbase. Early returns suggest that the Nipponese Army, during its extended tour of East Asia, has lost its edge. It would appear that raping the entire female population of Nanjing, and bayoneting helple..
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Neal Stephenson |
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7be59a7
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Remember, these things are designed for amateurs." "Tell me about it," Ivy snorted. "The user interface is so easy to use, I can't do anything."
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Neal Stephenson |
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30def8f
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Introducing non-copy-protected software into this kind of an environment may be the single most boneheaded thing that American business has ever done in its long history of stepping on rakes in Asia.
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Neal Stephenson |
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dcd8435
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If you had to give a name to the whole apparatus, what would you call it?" "Hmmm," Waterhouse says. "Well, its basic job is to perform mathematical calculations--like a computer." Comstock snorts. "A computer is a human being." "Well . . . this machine uses binary digits to do its computing. I suppose you could call it a digital computer." Comstock writes it out in block letters on his legal pad: DIGITAL COMPUTER."
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Neal Stephenson |
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a1566e2
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He gave them descriptive names that wouldn't scare people. It wouldn't do to call them Nemesis or Thor or Grond. So instead it was Potatohead, Mr. Spinny, Acorn, Peach Pit, Scoop, Big Boy, and Kidney Bean.
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Neal Stephenson |
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e499114
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The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7230fcd
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What are you doing?" Dengo would ask him. "Observing," father would say. "But how long can you observe the same thing?" "Forever."
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Neal Stephenson |
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33ef10a
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Since most hackers are white males, their companies are disaster areas when it comes to diversity, and it follows that all of the diversity must be concentrated in the one or two employees who are not hackers.
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Neal Stephenson |
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70c6db1
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So far I have felt like a very inept slapstick performer." "Inept slapstick? Isn't that a bit redundant?"
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Neal Stephenson |
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61eb9a5
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Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations--whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes--without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.
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Neal Stephenson |
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fb60554
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To Randy the party is like any other: he shakes hands with a few people, forgets their names, finds a place to sit down, and enjoys the wine and the food in blissful solitude.
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Neal Stephenson |
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5570521
|
His rule of thumb, after a walk, is to drink water until he begins to urinate again. Then he can consider other activities.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c8219f7
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Fighting isn't about knowing how," Ty said. "It's about deciding to."
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Neal Stephenson |
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1f424c7
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Ty got the feeling, from cues in the Teklan's physique and general style of movement, that he was some manner of Snake Eater.
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Neal Stephenson |
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c7f5837
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I don't even know how to describe it. 'Ragtag' makes it sound like more than it is.
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Neal Stephenson |
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aec6fa9
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but it seemed that most of the people of Seattle were still obeying the rules and so he did likewise.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f39db89
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Yur heaved a sigh, then continued in a more moderate tone: "Never mind. I see it now. It's some kind of Purpose thing. Above my pay grade. You should have just told me." He drew himself up and saluted. "What are my orders, sir?"
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Neal Stephenson |
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799ca8e
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People are my books," Ty said. "But I did bring a couple, in case the people all go to sleep."
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Neal Stephenson |
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0072933
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They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.
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Neal Stephenson |
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97a289f
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Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.
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Neal Stephenson |
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6c56ee9
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Then he reminded himself that he was already part of the biggest adventure ever, and that, so far, it had been altogether miserable.
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Neal Stephenson |
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eda9dc5
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The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword.
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Neal Stephenson |
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59abf5a
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What is BFR?" asked Pete Starling. For the graph's vertical scale was labeled thus. "Bolide Fragmentation Rate," Doob said. "The rate at which new rocks are being produced." "Is that a standard term?" Pete wanted to know. His tone was not so much hostile as unnerved. "No," Doob said, "I made it up. Yesterday. On the plane." He was tempted to add something like I am allowed to coin terms but didn't want things to get snarky this early in the..
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Neal Stephenson |
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c5fac63
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As part of Mr. Lee's good neighbor policy, all Rat Things are programmed never to break the sound barrier in a populated area. But Fido's in too much of a hurry to worry about the good neighbor policy. Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
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Neal Stephenson |
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0004f98
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They'd never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. In a way, Amelia had said, this had led to a kind of renaissance in pedagogy. Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning's sake--which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents:
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Neal Stephenson |
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98f6420
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There was a Chinese belief that demons liked to travel only in straight lines. Hence the bridge zigzagged no fewer than nine times as it made its way to the center of the pond. The bridge was a demon filter, in other words, and the teahouse demon-free, which seemed of only limited usefulness if it still hosted people like Dr. X. But for Judge Fang, raised in a city of long straight avenues, full of straight talkers, it was useful to be remi..
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Neal Stephenson |
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3207d2b
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Much depended on how rapidly it would prove feasible to mass-produce inflatable structures; these made it possible to create much more spacious volumes by housing people in what amounted to thick-skinned balloons. But making balloons that could withstand atmospheric pressure indefinitely while also standing up to solar radiation, thermal swings, and micrometeoroids was no small project.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7d80faf
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If Hemn space is the landscape, and one cosmos is a single geometric point in it, then a given consciousness is a spot of light moving, like a searchlight beam, over that landscape--brightly illuminating a set of points--of cosmi--that are close together, with a penumbra that rapidly feathers away to darkness at the edges. In the bright center of the beam, crosstalk occurs among many variants of the brain. Fewer contributions come in from t..
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Neal Stephenson |
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5a54274
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She had grown tired of the pouffy floating hair of zero gravity and, after a few weeks of clamping it down with baseball caps, had figured out how to make this shorter cut work for her. The haircut had spawned terabytes of Internet commentary from men, and a few women, who apparently had nothing else to do with their time.
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Neal Stephenson |
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76e5226
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If Admiral Tourville's invasion-fleet makes it across the Channel without being sunk by the Royal Navy, and if the Papist legion establishes a beachhead on English soil without being destroyed by the Army or torn to bits by an enraged Mobb of English rurals, then I shall personally carry every single one of your coins from the Tower of London to the front in my arse-hole, and Deposit them in some Place where they may be easily Picked Up.
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Neal Stephenson |
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faf45ab
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A speech with magical force. Nowadays, people don't believe in these kinds of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech--the form that computers understand. The Metaverse in its entirety could be considered a single vast nam-shub, enacting itself on L. Bob Rife's fiber-optic network.
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Neal Stephenson |
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1ec0419
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Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical, rosary-toting Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the bitheads didn't like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money.
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Neal Stephenson |
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af5a643
|
There's a little rack along the front of the counter bearing religious tracts, free for the taking, donation requested. Several slots on the rack are occupied by the Reverend Wayne's famous bestseller. How America Was Saved from Communism: ELVIS SHOT JFK.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3d16f6e
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It was a smart cane. When he grabbed the handlebars it would help him stand up. It would then steady his locomotion even on the roughest terrain, adding its six legs to his two.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f8b4609
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I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f1e85fc
|
The number 65,536 is an awkward figure to everyone except a hacker, who recognizes it more readily than his own mother's date of birth: It happens to be a power of 2--216 power to be exact--and even the exponent 16 is equal to 24, and 4 is equal to 22. Along with 256; 32,768; and 2,147,483,648; 65,536 is one of the foundation stones of the hacker universe, in which 2 is the only really important number because that's how many digits a compu..
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Neal Stephenson |
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cefe8b2
|
My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater.
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Neal Stephenson |
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8249856
|
The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. Had to borrow it from the Mafia, in fact. So he's in their database now--retinal patterns, DNA, voice graph, fingerprints, footprints, palm prints, wrist prints, every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it--almost--those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer.
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Neal Stephenson |
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482136c
|
She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong. But at this phase, the all-male society of bitheads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial. It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.
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Neal Stephenson |