use Perl

• Well... (Score:1)

  by chaoticset (2105)

  ...if you mean just me, or just you, maybe. If you meant everyone, then no, I don't think life would be easier if a thief could teleport into my car, bedroom, or locked safe deposit box.

  Larry Niven wrote a story about safe, reliable, and crime-encouraging teleportation. When I read it, the title was _The Permanent Floating Riot Club_, I think. (Sometimes his work has been re-released under different titles.)

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  You are what you think.
  • Re:Well... (Score:1)

    by krellis (2720)

    Good point. We'd need security fields, then, I guess. And special rotating codes to let you teleport through them. In fact, maybe it's easier that we don't have teleportation. I'll just have to invent it and keep it to myself! :)
    • Re:Well... (Score:1)

      by jmm (276)

      In the case of Niven's world (there were a number of stories based in the same environment), you couldn't teleport to an arbitrary location. It required a teleport booth at both ends. You enter a booth, pay your fee, and enter the code number for the destination booth. Preventing people from coming into your home meant keeping the booth outside the locked door. The "floating riot club" was separate - they took advantage of what happens when the Slashdot effect is caused by physical people instead of IP
      • Re:Well... (Score:1)

        by chaoticset (2105)

        I brought it up as an example of teleportation tech that caused problems. I realize that it wasn't what was described.

        You're referring to the Known Space universe, right? I almost think he had booths in other, similar universes (he played with some Known Space elements before he actually created the consistent Known Space series.)

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        You are what you think.
        • Re:Well... (Score:1)

          by jmm (276)

          I think it was all the Known Space universe for transport booths. That universe covers a long period of time, the transport booths come in fairly early - long before contact with other species, very long before Ringworld. The transport booths were still present those many centuries later in Ringworld - that starts off with Louis Wu celebrating all 49 hours of his birthday by transporting through timezones (but his trip got got short because the puppeteer hacked the transport protocol and redirected his pa
• Bradbury? I'm Aware of His Work. (Score:1)

  by chromatic (983)

  Sounds like an Alfred Bester novel. The Stars My Destination? (I thought it might also have been The Demolished Man, but checking revealed my first instinct was correct.)