Word: commanders
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...early days of the digital computer, this was extremely difficult. The machine reduces all the information it receives, whether it arrives as letters, numbers or graphic symbols, into the simplest possible electronic statements: either a yes or a no, represented by pulses of high or low voltage. To command the machine in its own internal language meant writing out endless strings of ones or zeros, called bits and bytes, symbolizing those yes or no statements. But scientists soon began creating alternate languages for communicating with the machines that vaguely resemble everyday speech...
...being overtaken seems both more urgent and more complex. Science-fiction writers from Capek to Asimov have built much of their genre around robots, androids, computers and their kin-each fairly boring and predictable as characters, but all presenting the same basic paradox: that they will eventually take command of the world, and that a man can beat them every time...
According to the Administration scenario, the President and key advisers would prepare to be whisked aboard the "doomsday plane," a 747 specially fitted to serve as the nation's Emergency Airborne Command Post. Meanwhile, citizens would pack their cars with food, water, clothes, tools and important papers (Social Security card, credit cards and a will), city dwellers would head out into the countryside to take shelter in predesignated buildings. Those unable to leave would be herded into public fallout shelters. Two weeks later, survivors would come out and begin to rebuild society, guided by plans for food rationing, banking...
...added that the Cabinet had made "no decision" about an invasion. The U.S. chose to put the best possible interpretation on that carefully hedged assurance. Said one U.S. official: "We take Prime Minister Begin at his word." In Lebanon, P.L.O. Chairman Arafat, meeting with his organization's high command around a conference table in a subbasement deep beneath a Beirut apartment building, argued that it is to the P.L.O.'s advantage to let the Israelis strike first, both because he believes they would sustain heavy casualties and because they would be branded as the aggressors. Arafat has told his restless...
...Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow at $150, and invest intelligently at the remainder table. After all, many of the novels published in the '60s became important emotional furniture to a generation now competitively collecting books. Authors like Kurt Vonnegut, Walker Percy and Joyce Carol Gates now command rare-volume respect...