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I thought I'd start another thread within this one. "What did you know and when did you know it?"
When did all of you start reading science fiction, at what age and not necessarily the year?
In my case, I broke my lower leg at the beginning of the summer between grade school and high school (1953). I couldn't do any of the normal things, so I walked to the bus stop on my crutches, transferred to another bus to get to the library, and started reading juvenile SF. I would get 6 or 8 books and take them home under my arms (between my arms and the crutches). I started out taking three days to read the books, but later was finishing them by the next day. I soon read the entire lot on the shelves and graduated to the hard core of SF. I read all of that as well. I then took to bringing several books to the librarian at the desk and showed her the lists of "other books by Doubleday" and asked her if she could order these books from some other library. She did. She did this many times. One day (toward the end of the summer), she started quizing me about the plot and characters of several of the books I had just returned, thinking that I was not really reading them. I knew the plots and main characters. She kept ordering more books until the end of the summer and my starting high school. Let me tell you, the ability to read fast and retain the information for extended amount of time sure helped me in my education career. Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time.
Dave.
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Quote: Wish I could read that fast now, or even retain it for half of the old time. Me too. I started reading "real books" when I was 3 1/2, adventure stories mostly, and then graduated to science fiction at 5 - my dad made sure I started with Asimov of course, I skipped all the juvenile stuff, the first book was "I, Robot" which I read around 1964ish. I then rapidly consumed all his robot books and the the Foundation stuff and just about everything he had written by then. Heinlein and deCamp followed. I first met the Stainless steel rat by Harry Harrison around the mid eighties when they came out in paperback - and I've never looked back.
I wrote my first [fiction] book in 1975ish but it was never published, 35 years later I tried to give it another go but haven't got past basic plot planning, and re-planning, and re-planning, and.... ho hum, one day maybe.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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My Dad had shelves full of the original SF pulps - and I started reading them almost as soon as I could read at all.
My problem is that I can never remember which authors wrote what (which is great if I want to re-read a story!)
Best Authors? I loved Asimov's robot series most of all (mainly because Dad was a Cybernetic Engineer I think) I adored Stanislaw Lem's short stories. Iain M Banks probably tops my list - I shed a tear when he died.
these days I go to the library, and just grab SF books I don't recognise off the shelf (they are kind enough to stick a 'planet' sticker on them in my local library) and read 'em.
I also listen to audio books in the car while commuting - but the choice is severely limited (indeed the one I am listening to now has a narrator with a speech impediment (or really bad false teeth))
MVVM # - I did it My Way
___________________________________________
Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011
.\\axxx
(That's an 'M')
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Aged 11. Started with "Dr Who and the Zarbi" and several Andre Norton novels ("Sargasso of Space" is the only one that I recall now), then moved on to "The Infinite Worlds of Maybe" by Lester Del Rey.
After that was introduced to E.E.Doc Smith and the "Lensman" series, and went from there to Asimov.
modified 10-Jan-14 4:47am.
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From Article: An Oklahoma man... ...got into a drunken family fight.. ...the men got into a fight while drinking together when St. Clair made offensive remarks about his wife. Sounds like a normal Friday or Saturday night to me.
The comments are hilarious.
It was broke, so I fixed it.
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The dude is being held without bond in Pottawatomie County
"Pottawatomie" ... peculiar name for a county given the instance of the "atomic wedgie".
None-the-less, condolences to those in their loss.
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Dafuk?
Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
- Mitchell Kapor
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Who has seen this TV show?
I can't stop loving it; main actress is really fascinating.
Women are composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen; men are also composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but in such proportions that force respect.
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Smart and intelligently written, and the main actress is very good.
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Looking forward to new episodes in April on BBC America
Steve
_________________
I C(++) therefore I am
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Yes, Saturday, April 19th.
I wish I have a time-travel machine ^^
Women are composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen; men are also composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but in such proportions that force respect.
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Yes it's good. If anybody hasn't given it a go they should.
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Not Quite a Programming Question, so I'm asking in the forum that has the most eyes. If I should move it elsewhere, please let me know kindly.
I have an article I'd like to write out and post, about a database toolkit. I haven't done so because I still use Visual Studio 2008: our codebase is exclusively in VS 2008, it works well, and my company has seen no need to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade. Worth doing, or is VS 2008 too outdated for such an article to be taken seriously?
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Yes, upgrade to 2010, but don't go so crazy as to convert to 2012 or 2013!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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2012 and 2013 open 2010 solutions without converting
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There is no likelihood of upgrading to a newer version of Visual Studio at this time. My question was about whether or not new articles written with VS 2008 are worth posting.
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Gregory.Gadow wrote: articles written with VS 2008
Which visual studio control are you using?. I can't seem to find an article writing control in the VS 2008 toolbox!
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If i had to upgrade from VS 2008 now, i would go straight to VS 2013. The only upgrade worthy doing is one that skips VS 2012.
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It the article is well done I can't see a reason not to publish it - for sure VS 2008 not a reason.
If you publish code from 2008 will be no problem to open it in any VS - so go for it!
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Personally
There are articles on CP that are written with .net 1.1
I have recently referenced an article that was in dot net 2.0 and applied the techniques to a dot net 4.0 application.
So yes if the technique is still relevant I would write the article.
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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Agreed - I answered a QA question yesterday / today that was .NET 2.0, so there are still developers who are limited to that: VS2005 IIRC.
Never underestimate the power of stupid things in large numbers
--- Serious Sam
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When I went to VS 2005, my code wouldn't compile because it used an outdated delegate mode that worked great in 2004. Of course this was from a class using 500 MH CPUs and I had no clue about VS levels while taking the class. I think this is the kind of thing that might upset some readers and what the original question was about. Of course I say, let the readers squawk. (Well it works on MY machine!)
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Gregory.Gadow wrote: Worth doing, or is VS 2008 too outdated for such an article to be taken seriously?
I've upgraded projects from 2008 to 2012 without issues, and I don't think readers will have issues with that either. I suspect that, as I do, we still have VS2008 lingering on our systems.
So, I think that the VS version of the solution is minor compared to the topic and quality of the code and article. Hope that helps.
Marc
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