3 ms·

My favorite instance of the epoch showing up in sci-fi is A Deepness in the Sky. > Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredib

by shagie 4y ago

My favorite instance of the epoch showing up in sci-fi is A Deepness in the Sky. > Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely…the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems.

aaron_m04 4y ago
Good stuff. I also like this author for coining the term software-archaeologist.
- buildbot 4y ago
  One if my favorite terms as well - extremely evocative
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I'm immediately imagining the steam punk style devices that future software archaeologists will use to read things like CD-ROMs
    - shagie 4y ago
      Consider more of: here is a BSLOC 'application' find a routine that does X and make it do X'. Continuing from the quoted passage above... > So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. > “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. > “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. > “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” > “Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” > “Almost precisely.” Bret was grinning again. “With some minor revisions.”
      - dylan604 4y ago
        Sure, but...how did they get this old software to be able to view it? At some point, that software is not going to be in whatever the equivalent of GitHub is, and the only version of it is on this ancient storage format that the silly people of 2000s used called a "d'elle tea".
    - thaeli 4y ago
      Probably more like the floppy disk imagers we use today in preservation, that preserve far more information than the nominal disk size. (This is particularly important because the golden age of floppy-based copy protection used all manner of weird tricks, so the analog state of the media is important - not just the "official" binary data.)
block_dagger 4y ago
Vinge's ideas about galactic organization (Powers, breakdown of automation near center) are very original and make enjoyable scifi.
- pyinstallwoes 4y ago
  Can you expand in summary?
  - PicassoCTs 4y ago
    His slow zone traders are the only constant in civilization. Meaning, planets are unreliable destinations. You set out to trade and arrive at a medieval kingdom 500 years after a nuclear apocalypse. You set out for a meh-destination and find upon arrival a high tech civilization, that is so integrated its even eaten up the error margins, due to thinking itself infallible. The only constant is the traders, reviving and stabilizing societies, which its why information exchange without a known listener (basically a Wikipedia radio edition) is most important for keeping a slower then light traveling galactic civilization alive. He also has some quibs about how society is basically a attempt to overcome the flaws of the individuals psyche comprising it. That and murder AI. He tried to explore AR in Rainbows end, but it was insubstantial. Another great man ruined by california.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
    - e40 4y ago
      I followed everything you said until the California comment. Please explain.
      - Shorel 4y ago
        I think that's just the setting of the novel, but not the plot. The plot of Rainbows end is more about... this would be a spoiler.
      - 867-5309 4y ago
        I think it refers to the curse of celebritydom
dmd 4y ago
As long as we're discussing Vinge, here is Vinge's annotated version of A Fire Upon the Deep, with all his thoughts, alternate plot ideas, and discussions with reviewers and early readers: https://3e.org/vvannot/ https://3e.org/vvannot/ There are very few copies of this out there and it would probably be good if it were more widely mirrored.

by shagie 4y ago

aaron_m04 4y ago

Good stuff. I also like this author for coining the term software-archaeologist.

buildbot 4y ago
One if my favorite terms as well - extremely evocative
- dylan604 4y ago
  I'm immediately imagining the steam punk style devices that future software archaeologists will use to read things like CD-ROMs
  - shagie 4y ago
    Consider more of: here is a BSLOC 'application' find a routine that does X and make it do X'. Continuing from the quoted passage above... > So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. > “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. > “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. > “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” > “Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” > “Almost precisely.” Bret was grinning again. “With some minor revisions.”
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Sure, but...how did they get this old software to be able to view it? At some point, that software is not going to be in whatever the equivalent of GitHub is, and the only version of it is on this ancient storage format that the silly people of 2000s used called a "d'elle tea".
  - thaeli 4y ago
    Probably more like the floppy disk imagers we use today in preservation, that preserve far more information than the nominal disk size. (This is particularly important because the golden age of floppy-based copy protection used all manner of weird tricks, so the analog state of the media is important - not just the "official" binary data.)

block_dagger 4y ago

Vinge's ideas about galactic organization (Powers, breakdown of automation near center) are very original and make enjoyable scifi.

pyinstallwoes 4y ago
Can you expand in summary?
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  His slow zone traders are the only constant in civilization. Meaning, planets are unreliable destinations. You set out to trade and arrive at a medieval kingdom 500 years after a nuclear apocalypse. You set out for a meh-destination and find upon arrival a high tech civilization, that is so integrated its even eaten up the error margins, due to thinking itself infallible. The only constant is the traders, reviving and stabilizing societies, which its why information exchange without a known listener (basically a Wikipedia radio edition) is most important for keeping a slower then light traveling galactic civilization alive. He also has some quibs about how society is basically a attempt to overcome the flaws of the individuals psyche comprising it. That and murder AI. He tried to explore AR in Rainbows end, but it was insubstantial. Another great man ruined by california.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge
  - e40 4y ago
    I followed everything you said until the California comment. Please explain.
    - Shorel 4y ago
      I think that's just the setting of the novel, but not the plot. The plot of Rainbows end is more about... this would be a spoiler.
    - 867-5309 4y ago
      I think it refers to the curse of celebritydom

dmd 4y ago

As long as we're discussing Vinge, here is Vinge's annotated version of A Fire Upon the Deep, with all his thoughts, alternate plot ideas, and discussions with reviewers and early readers: https://3e.org/vvannot/ https://3e.org/vvannot/ There are very few copies of this out there and it would probably be good if it were more widely mirrored.