“You are a professional person .Therefore, we have a patent pending method that will help you be more professional and have happier worshippers. First, this is NOT some get rich quick scheme!! Ready-For-You allows you to communicate with your flock by text message. For example it would allow you to notify a parent in a worship service to return to the nursery to pick up a child. It is similar to the vibrating devices used in restaurants but the range is the range of the person’s smart phone…In other words almost everywhere! Perhaps you would like to inexpensively develop your own data base.Ready-For-You automatically builds a data base for the place of worship that can be used over and over to notify the congregation of significant upcoming developments ….”
example of spam from Seeking North. See what we save you from?
Some aren’t readily printable. I think I should do dramatic readings from them at the next con.
I’m pretty sure they had a table this afternoon when I went to pick up my stuff for a half marathon tomorrow! There was a ton of junk there, and they organized it so you had to go past most of it on your way out. Of course.
There’s got to be a short story in there somewhere about spam in the Cyteen network.
Hahahaha… Worshippers… Flock…. Wait, vibrating…? I guess one could be abuzz with anticipation, but *really*.
Oh dear, they *are* a bit confused. Their bot saw a couple of words with religious significance and… Haha, this is why kerin Py and Hilfy do not rely on com-comp alone.
Fortunately, it has been awhile since I last got an offer to enlarge body parts I do not have. Though oddly, I was also getting offers to meet eager young ladies who were astonishingly, uh, “friendly.” One did not mention they did not think that perhaps some might prefer young men. However, one is convinced that there is friendly and then there is perhaps too friendly….
Hmm, go for the dramatic readings. A pause or emphasis at key spots might give some great ironically funny results.
Some months back, I had to laugh when my grandmother, quite innocently and saintly, assured me she’d taken those pills before. They were Cialis. I did not try to explain….
I’m new to the site so I’m just going put this out there…..when oh when will there be a sequel to Exile’s Gate?
😆 The vibrating congregation just got to me.
Laura, welcome!
When I get some spare time and am not under deadline pressure—and most of all when Closed Circle affords me the living it takes to take that—I definitely want to continue Morgaine, and Chanur, and, and, and— It’s the publishers that have the say, and I have to go with the one that will pay the bills, and just keep swimming.
When I read the above I had to check to see that it was not dated April 1. Are we seeing the beginnings of a career in spoken word?
Calloo! Callay! My copy of Betrayer has arrived. 🙂 😀 😆 Mum’s the word until the end of April!
What I love is the very official looking e-mail informing me that I have been awarded money as part of a class-action suit due to being a target of a Nigerian scam, and all they need is my bank information so they can deposit the money, minus some legal fees, of course!
And I will say, I have never read a science fiction story where people are complaining about spam, or networks being down, or slow e-mail, even in stories where the entire communication system seems to be done on the net. That strikes me as being very unrealistic, but maybe it’s just better planning on the part of people who designed a system knowing roughly how many people there were going to be at any time. After all, when you go start a colony, you aren’t trying to extend the network to an existing population, so maybe it’s possible that the capacity is keeping up with the population.
I think if Ari Emory caught a spammer, very bad things would happen.
Hmmm. How about Fortress? More of that? (I’ve already pleaded with Eos, and maybe they “own” that series – I don’t know how that works.)
But then, I recall this wonderful Neil Gaiman post in which he retorts to a reader’s comment along those lines: “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch”.
Which applies here, too. 🙂
lol, but I’d like to write more in that universe.
I now have the Monty Python “Spam, spam, spam, spam, spamity spam, wonderful spam…” ringing in my head. Thanks for the earworm 😛 🙂
Yeah, somehow, in most science fiction, hardly anything breaks down, has a glitch, etc. I think the writers are focused on other plot complications, or are generally fans of high tech, or are expecting that surely by the 24th-and-a-half century, Duck Dodgers and his space cadet sidekick Porky Pig will have nigh-perfect tech. It’s the same sort of thing whereby we arrive at the mysterious alien artifact ship/site, which is running just fine after millenia unattended, except by the occasional janitor droid.
I’m poking a little fun thered intentionally. Not to fault the writers, because they wrote some exciting classic science fiction, and were many of them very smart cookies, but because, well, it’s something so commonplace that neither the writers nor the readers tend to think of.
There’s really no reason the hardware of a few centuries from now would be any less prone to occasional wear or malfunction than our own or than the low tech we had hundreds of years ago. The difference might be designing for durability, “green,” instead of planned obsolescence. Plus, one assumes that spaceworthy tech, especially software, would not be so prone to errors as our current software and hardware are. …Then again, that’s a supposition, not a tested hypothesis.
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Hey, it all ties together. Just dice up some spam and toss some crushed pineapple on that pizza, add a few more tropical ingredients, and you have a Hawaiian pizza. Wow, we could even tie in Porky Pig. Or roast Duck. Though I’m not too sure about toasted Martian….
Hah, I’d be all in favor of Ari running tape on a spammer. Or you could try Mal’s Firefly airlock incentive….
I read an excellent short story many years ago, most likely in Analog or Asimov’s, about an android (who was an independent citizen) having problems saving up for upgrades and replacement parts, and staring ‘death’ in the face. I think he was about 7 years old. Seemed far more plausible to me than the assumption that an artificial life form is going to live far longer than a human. I regret I have no clue as to title or author…