4 ms·
Ringworld
by tass 3y ago
Ringworld
- skywal_l 3y agoFire upon the deep, where space ships runs on a future version of unix and only one guy knows what the unix epoch means.
- larperdoodle 3y agoI don't recall that in that book. Maybe you're thinking of A Deepness in the Sky? I haven't read that one yet.
- twoodfin 3y agoI think the reference is in Fire: It’s an offhand line about an ancient timekeeping system which the modern engineers mistakenly believe is calibrated to humanity’s first steps onto another celestial body.
- r2_pilot 3y agoAs A Fire Upon the Deep is one of my favorite books (it's been a while since I've read it- my copy is currently on tour), I'd like to chime in and say I remember this reference, but I believe it's in A Deepness In the Sky, which goes more into Pham's backstory. It's definitely one of these two books though.
- Freaky 3y ago> 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 some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. - Chapter 17, A Deepness in the Sky
- dekhn 3y agoAt a conference I met Vernor Vinge and told him my entire career was basically because I read his books in high school. He was very happy.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoI loved that aspect of it - it's becoming more and more true as we build more and more frameworks/abstractions. Once we got to Kubernetes and some of the modern web frameworks, the notion of "Programmer-at-Arms", the one-in-thousands master developer who'd actually dig into the depths of these abstractions, made perfect sense!
- marssaxman 3y agoYes, that bit is in "Deepness".
- joshstrange 3y agoI really love that series. It's been a little bit since I last re-read them but there are certain concepts/ideas in them that I still think of from time to time.
- dekhn 3y agoI think the first half of the first book is the best. Much less interested in Tine's world
- joshstrange 3y agoLoved this series when I first read it and it will always hold a special place in my heart but I did reread a few months ago and the way Teela Brown (and some other women) is talked about/to left me feeling very uneasy.
- winrid 3y agoKeep in mind if you start the Ringworld series there's also a tie in series that starts 200 years before Ringworld (Fleet of Worlds) and both end with the same last book. Niven and M. Learner wrote so many books...