Actually, I’ve been running Linux since 1995, with one of the early Slackware distributions. I’m pretty well-versed in it, although these days I have more Macs around the house.

I probably should make clear here that I don’t actually own a machine running Windows Vista. That little piece came out of my attempts to explain to someone else what I thought was objectionable about Vista’s security and DRM policies. A security feature loses its security when it annoys or impedes legitimate users so much that they start looking for ways around it.

Also, as a quick response to Wiz’s comment about Vista UAC: Yes, some versions of linux do the same thing, however, Linux uses a password, which makes the prompting have a point, (Preventing people who don’t know your administrator password from changing your computer) and you can go into superuser mode, using a variety of methods, entirely bypassing the confirmation screens altogether. In short, yes Linux does have a UAC, but it’s more flexible and more functional than Windows’.

I’ll stop beating the horse now. Have a nice day : )

1) The pycoseconds [sic] drove me crazy, as well as the fact that Nessie had been trapped for 1 full second, and the chute had been blocked for 1/1000 of a second. Otherwise, I liked the reading, as well as the story.

2) Matt Key: it IS pronounced nitch in English. It’s pronounced neesh in French. See, e.g., Dictionary.com

3) Steve, while I agree that the Vista prompting (UAC) can get annoying, especially in the beginning when you’re installing and configuring programs, none of y’all Mac afficionadoes ever mentions that MacOS has been doing the same thing for years, as does Linux, and that it’s actually the way Windows should have been doing it all along. The thing that worries me about all the Windows bashers griping about this feature is that they will end up encouraging other users to turn UAC off, which I think would be a bad end-result.

The man knows how to pronounce niche and that’s all that matters to me this week.

Plus, it is pronounced “peeko” and not “pyko”. That drove me crazy, and I haven’t even finished listening to the story yet!

(Please, could you make sure that the guest readers check unusual words with you for correct pronunciation? This isn’t the first time someone has mispronounced words in otherwise good readings. It really can distract from great stories and performances!)

As for the story itself, it is one of the many here that I love. Like in her previous story, Kay Kenyon takes one of those myths that everyone hears and no-one believes and makes it painfully and vividly real. The truth is never as simple as it seems, but the character building here is perfect. The idea that people grow to love their monsters makes a powerful statement about modern sci-fi. There is a strong trend, bought on by changing times I suppose, toward making our scary creatures real, giving them lives which we can identify with. This story shows us why.

It’s actually not American as such, there’re plenty of people in the UK that pronounce it as ‘Nitch’ as well (the late Jon Pertwee is the only example I can think of off the top of my head. It’s technically incorrect (being a French word in origin) but accents being accents…

Simon Painter
Shropshire (Nearly Wales), UK