SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

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Homeland This chapter is dedicated to the incomparable Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, California, and Redondo Beach, CC. The Mysterious Galaxy folks have had me in to sign books every time I've been in San Diego for a conference or to teach (the Clarion Writers' Workshop is based at UC San Diego in nearby La Jolla, CA), and when I've stopped in LA on tour. Every time I show up, they pack the house. This is a store with a loyal following of die-hard fans who know that they'll always be able to get great recommendations and great ideas at the store. In summer 2007, I took my writing class from Clarion down to the store for the midnight launch of the final Harry Potter book and I've never seen such a rollicking, awesomely fun party at a store. ‹Mysterious Galaxy› 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302 San Diego, CA, USA 92111 +1 858 268 4747 2810 Artesia Blvd., Redondo Beach, CA 90278 +1 310 542 6000 SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 108
Chapter 9. Homeland If you ever want to blow your own mind, sit down and think hard about what “randomness” means. I mean, take pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Everyone who's passed sixth-grade math knows that pi is an “irrational” number. It has no end, and it never repeats (as far as we know): 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899 7245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213 And so on. With a short computer program, you can compute pi all day long. Hell, you can compute it to the heat-death of the universe. You can grab any thousand digits of pi and about a hundred of them will be 1s, a hundred will be 2s, and so on. But there's no pattern within those digits. pick any digit of pi -- digit 2,670, which happens to be 0. The next digit happens to be 4, then 7, then 7, then two 5s. If you were rolling a ten-sided die and you got these outcomes, you'd call it random. But if you know that 047755 are the values for the 2,670th - 2,675th digits of pi, then you'd know that the next “dice roll” would be 5 (again!). Then 1. Then 3. Then 2. This isn't “random.” It's predictable. You may not know exactly what “random” means (I certainly don't!), but whatever “random” means, it doesn't mean “predictable,” right? So it would be crazy to call pi a “random number,” even though it has a bunch of random-like characteristics. So what about some other number? What if you asked your computer to use some kind of pseudorandom algorithm to spit up some grotendous number like this: 271828182845904523536028747 Is that random? Well, not really. That also happens to be a number called “e,” which is sometimes called “Napier's constant.” Never mind what “e” means, it's complicated. The point is that e is a number like Pi. Every digit in it can be predicted. How about if your random-number generator gave you this number: 2222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222 Is that random? Well, duh. No. Why isn't it random? Because if I said, “What's the one hundredth digit of a number that consists of a thousand twos?” you'd know the answer. You wouldn't be surprised. It turns out a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to come up with a decent definition of “random.” One of the best definitions anyone's ever come up with is “A number is random if the simplest way to express it is by writing it down.” SiSU www.sisudoc.org/ 109
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Homeland Cory Doctorow copy @ www.s
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Homeland, Cory Doctorow SiSU www.si
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USA: Homeland ‹Amazon Kindle› (
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Homeland full of oversized hardcove
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Homeland isn't dead yet, and has su
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Homeland So I want to be able to ha
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Dedication For Alice and Poesy, who
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Chapter 1. Homeland Attending Burni
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Homeland “Where to start?” I sa
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And almost all of it was about dead
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And reality sucked. Homeland So I w
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Homeland She closed her eyes and st
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Homeland She'd smiled sadly and sai
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on meeting me. Homeland “That's w
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Homeland Ange giggled. “Someone's
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Homeland “Word gets around. Lots
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Homeland to all the people who risk
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Chapter 3. Homeland All day long, p
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“Come on and meet the rest.” Ho
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Homeland didn't surprise me, but cl
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Homeland their line and we all rush
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Homeland A closed-door military tri
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Homeland person I shared it with ha
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USA: Homeland ‹Amazon Kindle› (
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Homeland its thinnest wall on the o
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Homeland I closed my eyes. I couldn
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Homeland “Groagh,” I said, and
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Homeland else (for some extremely s
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Chapter 5. Homeland We hardly spoke
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Page 63 and 64: “Yes,” I said. Homeland “The
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Page 67 and 68: Homeland myself growing excited. Mo
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Page 71 and 72: Homeland I could see why she was th
Page 73 and 74: Chapter 6. Homeland I spent the res
Page 75 and 76: Homeland And that's when I remember
Page 77 and 78: Homeland I didn't have an answer fo
Page 79 and 80: Homeland the entire yak pen at the
Page 81 and 82: Homeland She crossed her eyes. “I
Page 83 and 84: Homeland “So all these ones, they
Page 85 and 86: Homeland “Jolu wouldn't turn me d
Page 87 and 88: Homeland I heard him snort, and I c
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Page 95 and 96: Homeland bunch of captured emails a
Page 97 and 98: Chapter 8. Homeland Once upon a tim
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Page 103 and 104: Homeland “One. Two. Ten. Eleven.
Page 105 and 106: Homeland The IT manager had looked
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Page 113 and 114: Homeland As far as anyone knows, he
Page 115 and 116: Homeland “What do you mean? Like
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Page 119 and 120: Homeland middle of the operating sy
Page 121 and 122: Homeland Unseen hands had dragged m
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Page 125 and 126: Homeland “Or what? I make one cal
Page 127 and 128: Homeland I've been snatched twice.
Page 129 and 130: Homeland No. You know what I felt l
Page 131 and 132: Homeland “That's very true. But i
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Page 135 and 136: Homeland “I've got a lot of backu
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Page 139 and 140: Homeland “Nope,” said Knothead.
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Page 149 and 150: Homeland The first words he said we
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Page 155 and 156: Homeland traffic in SoMa, and Darry
Page 157 and 158: Homeland “Good point,” Ange sai
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Homeland Now Jolu was shaking his h
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Homeland research and messaging, wh
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Homeland He looked a little embarra
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Homeland our software and keep our
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Homeland “I just felt like a good
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Homeland Zyz had its fingers in a l
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Homeland Not being able to sleep su
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Homeland “Cool,” he said, crest
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Homeland “And we know that any po
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“A darknet site is a normal websi
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Homeland this morning about Hearts
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“It's cool,” he said. “Don't
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Homeland didn't go back. Just befor
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Homeland Of course, once my laptop
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Homeland it's manufactured. You cho
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Homeland “Holy crap,” I breathe
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Homeland that had to happen. No mor
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“Hello there,” he said. “I'm
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Homeland I shrugged. “Probably. I
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Homeland My phone rang then -- it w
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Homeland He had the rolling tones o
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Homeland that the Bay Bridge was an
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Homeland dish and use it to kill a
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Homeland The silhouetted stalks of
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Homeland I was agog. Somehow, this
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Homeland “You can go now.” It b
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Homeland were like brainless, drift
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Chapter 13. Homeland He was only a
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Homeland foggy, steamed-up goggles.
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Homeland dictators, spilled their b
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I moved it. “Three, right?” “
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Homeland He lifted it up like bug s
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Homeland No one asked me why I was
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Homeland Within a few hours, the ce
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Chapter 14. Homeland Mom and Dad we
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Homeland As one, the whole office t
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-..- But first, I had to harden our
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Homeland “Now, about these docume
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Homeland But this was here. This wa
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Homeland My new phone rang at 2 A.M
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Homeland her research into antidepr
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Homeland “Marcus,” Jolu said,
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Homeland “Argh. Okay, well, for w
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Homeland first fallback cloud provi
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Homeland He shook his head once, mi
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Homeland And then, well, the good a
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“Yeah?” Homeland “You're some
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Homeland I shrugged again. “Proba
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Homeland After all, wasn't the syst
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Homeland clean up my mess. And I sa
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Homeland out, you need to work it o
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Homeland ‹Politics and Prose: 501
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Homeland “Hi, Ange,” I said, le
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Homeland eyes, three brains, three
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Homeland Afterword by Jacob Appelba
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Homeland need to be preserved in th
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Homeland donated to the president's
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Bibliography Homeland When I was a
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Homeland There's plenty more -- mor
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Homeland ‹Apple iBooks› (DRM-fr
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Homeland can be identified, the pub
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Homeland monetary compensation, pro
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Homeland v. Each time You Distribut
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SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

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