A Ditto is a short term copy of a person. A person will get into a special machine which scans the person, both a physical scan and a detailed mental scan, and uses that information to mold a piece of "clay" into a copy of the person.
I forget exactly where they get the clay from, i believe it is at least in part actual clay with special properties that's dug up in limited areas, but i may be mistaken, but there is certainly other stuff mixed in with it.
There are different qualities of clay you can get, which result in different qualities of dittos. (It may also relate to the type of scanning method used.) Some people will create several dittos of different types depending on what they need to get done during the day.
The Dittos can be colored like a real person, but that goes against the prevailign etiquette. Instead the dittos are color coded to indicate which kind they are, so menials will be solid Red, the highest quality will be Gold, etc.
Most dittos last for about 24 hours, maybe a little longer. If they return home within that time, they and the original can get back into the machine, the ditto will be scanned, and the memories imprinted on the brain of the original.
This is half the method of "controlling," the dittos. Since they have all the knowledge of the original, they obviously know they are going to expire in about a day, so the only way they have of leaving a lasting legacy is to get back home and reimprint. Of course a lot of originals will refuse to do the reimprinting if they suspect the ditto has had a crappy day. The other half is that for all effective purposes the ditto is the same as the original, and having knowingly submitted to the process, the unlucky "self" who ends up as the ditto doesn't usually feel like screwing it's collective self over by not accomplishing it's tasks.
And of course as with any process, there are ocassionaly defects. In this case it leads to "Frankensteins" whose personalities were not copied perfectly and diverge from the original. The results can vary from a ditto that wants to slack off and live what little life it has left (Frankensteins are almost never copied back, and in fact there may be difficulties in doing so) without following it's original goal, to totally psychotic dittos who might go on a rampage.
As for the book itself, i thought it was really good. The ending does tend towards the techno-mystical, but that's not really something i minded. If you were bothered by the end of "Earth" it might bug you though.
Is it posted on nausicaa.net yet? No? Probably BS then.
You're totally right! Given the total consideration that Disney has shown to Miyazaki during every step of this project and the timely manner in which they have conducted themselves, i would _never_ imagine Disney failing to keep everyone fully updated as to what their plans are.
It only requires moving a hand from the steering wheel if you take your hand off the stick-shift in the first place:)
If you're on the freeway, the turns are so smooth you only need one hand. If you're on surface streets and in the process of shifting, you're going so slow you only need one hand.
As for the automatic vs stick-shift, i don't think we're going to get a choice with the fuel cell cars. They'll probably all be the new continual variable transmission or whatever it is.
Um, excuse me? I _like_ using my feet for gas and brakes. I don't really want to be doing that with my hands. If the car is supposed to be so modular, are they going to have an optional pedal package for those of us who prefer it?
I'm not even going to bother asking about getting a stick-shift version:)
but practically looking at the expenses,manpower,resources vs. feasibility angle, it is a pointless endeavour.
Again, how is it a pointless endeavor? If they fail to document all animals within 25 years, then the knowledge from the ones that they _have_ documented won't suddenly dissapear. If you truely think it's a pointless endeavour, then the rate at which they accomplish it is totally irrelevant and they shouldn't bother at all.
Better suited would be to isolate a certain section of the animal kingdom regionally and then solely concentrate there and completely try to catalog it. Maybe that's how they're planning to work this out. In that case, it would make more sense.
Now you're talking about methodology, which is only tangentially related to the discussion. The goal of everyone in the field is to eventually have documented everything, this group is just saying that we should do it a lot quicker than we're currently going.
What you're describing are not challenges to it's "pointedness," but rather a problem with the feasibility. The goal itself isn't pointless, and even if they don't achieve the full goal, the attempt itself isn't pointless. If they only managed to increase the rate of identification by just 1%, that would be an extra 2500 species identified in the 25 year span they're aiming for. If even one of those species is one that would have gone extinct before being catalogued without the extra effort, then how can you claim that effort is pointless? If that was the only positive result, i might grant you that it would have been an inefficient endeavor, but not a pointless one.
There is hardly much point to the _point_ of the endavour. At best, it would be an archive of past splendor of life on Earth.
I'm having trouble dealing with the "what's the point" argument, and am tempted to fall back on the "what use is a baby" defense. Because we want to have samples available for future pharmaceutical research? Because we'd like to be able to restore any more species that go extinct in the future? Because we are human and have the desire for knowledge while it's still possible to know?
I'm not sure how keeping track of future changes would be trivial. How do you keep track of physiological changes in 50000 insect species over the whole globe?
I'm not really sure how they would go about it either, but if they can figure out how to doccument somewhere between 8 million and 98 million new species over the next 25 years (somewhere between 300,000 and 4 million species a year,) keeping track of any new species that pop up would be fairly simple in comparison.
"What about the minor localized species that exist now, but will be extinct in 20 years ? How do they plan to keep track of E V E R Y species and their current status ?"
The whole _point_ of the endeavour is the "minor localized species that exist now, but will be extinct in 20 years." They don't want to keep track of current status, what they _want_ is a snapshot of the way things are now, before humans screw things up anymore than they already have.
Of course, once the snapshot is taken, keeping track of future changes is fairly trivial in comparison.
"Hell, even if we had them all, we'd never know what makes these species special and significant. The most important parts of species discovery could be lost in the mad rush."
Isn't it better to at least have the genome down before a species goes extinct than nothing at all? I don't think the proposal is that this is _all_ that should be done, just that we should get that much done as quickly as possible.
Once we've got all the genomes down, more detailed research will continue. And theoretically even if a species goes extinct, if we've got the genome we'll eventually be able to resurect the species later, at which point scientists can do all the research on it they want. (Not to mention restoring it to the wild.)
As for the reliability, that would be a concern, but not as big a one as you make out. How many people would want to make up fake species? And could do so convincingly? Make sure the database gets backed up regularly to prevent it getting hacked, and as with any scientific endeavor make is subject to peer review.
They are currently discovering 10,000 species a year. Even without speeding that rate up, we would have to see a complete replacement of every species on the planet with a new one every 1000 to 10,000 years (depending on how many species there are total) in order for us not to keep up with the rate of evolution. I think we might have noticed if species were changing that fast.
As for this new Clamshell design, I hope that's a prototype, because rumors have been talking for a while about 4 face buttons, and that one still only has two.
This is just an interim stage for the Gameboy. It's the Gamboy Advance SP, it's not a whole new system. As such, they're not going to add something fundamentally new like extra face buttons.
However they are supposed to be working on a _real_ next generation of gameboy. Since it was announced at the same time that they announced that they're working on a next generation console, i really doubt this is what they were talking about.
_That_ system may be where the rumors about four face buttons came from.
They're not trying to convince the real crackpots. NASA isn't going to convince the crackpots, and the crackpots aren't going to convince NASA (duh.)
However there are a large number of people out there who aren't part of either NASA or the lunatic fringe, who are trying to decide what to think, and at the moment the crackpots are the only ones trying to convince them.
NASA should go ahead with the plans, but make it clear that they are not addressing the crackpots, they are just trying to make all the facts available so that the average person can judge for themselves. As someone else pointed out, it would be easy to do this without even directly adressing the crackpots or their theories. ("Note that in this picture no stars are visible. The reason for this curious phenomenon is...")
Getting into a knockdown brawl with the conspiracy theorists won't convince anyone, but presenting the facts openly and clearly will convince the people who really matter, the ones who haven't made up their minds yet.
"They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."
Since when has the number of children you have equated to your value in the world? The only examples that quickly come to mind are a couple of religions. And since when has love and freedom had to do with the ability to produce children? I'm sure quite a number of homosexuals would disagree with you there. (And although i'm sure there are some number of homosexuals who would like the ability to have children with their partners, there's at least an equal number of hetrosexual couples who don't want children)
What you pointed out is in fact an argument _in favor_ of the meritocracy hypothesis. Even though Jojo's genetics aren't good enough to be passed on, he is still an accepted and valued member of society. In a real feudalism he would be relegated to the lowest tier of society or euthanized.
He didn't say that there was anything wrong with fantasy. If you read the whole article you would have seen at the end where he said that we should continue to enjoy Romantic stories and let ourselves entertain us, as long as we remember that they are fantasies.
What he was criticizing was Tolkein's philosophy, which shone through when writing the stories. Tolkein was anti-industry, and that bias came through in his work in a very obvious way. Tolkein was entitled to his opinion, and that's no reason for the rest of us not to enjoy his books, Brin is just warning us against picking up the same bias as Tolkein through his work.
Brin advises that we should think about the things we read, and it's good advice. If you read things without thinking about your reaction to them there's always a chance that some of the preconceptions will sneak into your mind. That's one of the reasons why racism and prejudice is so hard to eliminate, because constant exposure can affect us without our conscious minds realizing it.
I read both science fiction and fantasy, and i think about what i read. If i was given the choice between being a common Joe in a high-tech 22nd century, or a King or hero in the 13th century or in an alternate magical world, i'd pick the 22nd century with no thought at all. That doesn't mean i can't enjoy the fantasy books though.
I think they would, they know what it would be like to have a patron other than humans. They have a lot more freedom than most client races, and certainly far more than any other client race that's only been around for a few centuries.
It's commented on at several points that the chimps and dolphins are expected to behave differently when other aliens are present, because the humans allow them to do things that would never be tolerated in another races' clients. I'm sure the chimps and dolphins preger the facade of total servitude to the reality that would occur if the aliens decided the humans weren't treating their clients right and took them away.
At first i was disapointed with this prediction about another 10 years of video screens (of various kinds) and keybaord and mouse input. However look at the alternatives he's suggesting, handwiritng and voice recognition.
I really couldn't care less about those modes of input. Can you imagine everyone in the office talking to their computers at once? And it wouldn't really help that much for programming or data entry, the tasks that a lot of computers get used for. As for handwriting, my hand starts to hurt after about five minutes of writing stuff on paper, and i usually give up and open up Notepad. And that's not even considering that my handwriting sucks and would be about ten times as difficult to process as "normal" handwriting.
What this guy really isn't saying much about is direct optical feeds; ie, beaming visual information onto your retina, or inserting false visual signals higher upsteam in your nervous system, and direct mental input; either in the form of reading the synapses in your brain, or recording your motions as you type and guesture in the air.
That's the kind of technology that will cause a major shift in the way we use computers, and is so different from our current modes of interaction that you can't really extrapolate from here to there. I'm sure scientists during the 40s and 50s were predicting great advances in vacuum tubes (the science fiction authors certainly were at least) that never materialized, or at least that were never utilized, because of the development of the microchip.
I have no idea if those kinds of technologies will be fully developed in the next ten years or not, but i don't think this guy has any better of an idea than the rest of us.
Just tell him you were paid to provide his address to the junk mail people. Clearly it's not harrasment if you're getting paid, then it's just sound buisness practice (in his own little twisted amoral world at least)
If he actually succeeded, wouldn't he open himself up to one giant countersuit?
#2. Restrict the length of copyright to lifetime of the creator, plus 25 years, or 75 years for a corporation.
Actually, i think it should be lifetime of creator plus 25 years, or 25 years for a corporation. That way if a corporation takes the rights of a work away from the artist (RIAA anyone?) they lose control of it after just 25 years, whereas if they leave the artist the actual owner and work out some kind of long term lease/rent/whatever, they can make money off of it for much longer.
Never hurts to have a little more incentive for the corporation to actually work _with_ the artists.
after all, this is the same company that bought the American rights to all of Miyazaki's films and then sat on them for _four years_ after releasing just _one_ of the movies on video.
Actually, i'm not really that suprised that they fucked it up, i'm just amazed that they actually got around to releasing it in the first place.
I can understand why the Chinese want to block Taiwanese sites.
I can understand why Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and other "undersirables."
I can understand why Britain wanted to keep the American colonies under their control.
I can understand why Bush ended up president.
I can understand why my ex-girlfriend broke up with me.
I can understand why the police officer doesn't cut me any slack when he pulls me over for speeding on an empty highway at 3 in the morning.
In more than one of those cases that understanding involves realizing and accounting for the fact that the people involved were immoral nutcases (you can try to guess which is which if you wish =) but that doesn't prevent me from understanding why they choose to do the things they did, given their view of the world.
Maybe the battle of Helm's Deep turns out differently, Denethor throws in his lot with the Uruk Hai? This obsession with 'spoilers' can be taken too far. If people really don't want to know what happens in the movie they shouldn't watch it or read about it.
Not watch it? That seems a bit extreme.
Perhaps they should put a new message up at theatres, "Warning, this movie contains spoilers for this movie."
Great science fiction involves taking an idea, and running as far as possible with it. I remember reading an anecdote in the forward for a collection of either Asimov's or Clarke's, that they not only came up with new ideas, but they then explored them so thoroughly that no one else would have anything else to add to the matter. That is certainly an exageration, but really good science fiction should give you that kind of feeling.
A couple names that i haven't seen mentioned often/enough that i feel manage to do this:
Vernor Vinge in his "Zones of Thought" books ("A Fire upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky") and his "Bobble" series ("Marooned in Realtime" and i believe "Peace War" though i haven't managed to find a copy of it yet) The first postulates that the amount of advanced technology and sentience possible varies depending on where you are. (in general, the greater the concentration of stars in the area, the "stupider" everything gets) The second deals in large part with the results of a technology that allows the user to temporarily stop time for everything in a small area.
S. M. Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" trillogy, which handles the idea of a medium sized group of people getting sent back in time far better than any other attempt i've ever read, dealing with both psychological and techological issues in great depth.
Michael Flynn's "In the Country of the Blind" is one of the the best conspiracy books i've ever read, and also one of the best books dealing with psychohistory/cliology.
He also wrote "Mirror of Her Dreams" and "A Man Rides Through," which were both good. I'm not sure what the fuck he was doing with the Thomas Covenant series, but yeah, it was a pile of crap. Since i haven't read the Gap series yet, i'm not sure which is the aberation, the good stuff, or the crap.
I don't know anything about the flat earth vs. round earth debate (other than that there were people who believed both, i ahve no idea what proportion) However along with taking the smallest estimate for the earth's diameter, he also took the biggest estimate he could find for the distance from the Europe to China, further reducing the calculated distance heading west.
Slashdot Mirror
A Ditto is a short term copy of a person. A person will get into a special machine which scans the person, both a physical scan and a detailed mental scan, and uses that information to mold a piece of "clay" into a copy of the person.
I forget exactly where they get the clay from, i believe it is at least in part actual clay with special properties that's dug up in limited areas, but i may be mistaken, but there is certainly other stuff mixed in with it.
There are different qualities of clay you can get, which result in different qualities of dittos. (It may also relate to the type of scanning method used.) Some people will create several dittos of different types depending on what they need to get done during the day.
The Dittos can be colored like a real person, but that goes against the prevailign etiquette. Instead the dittos are color coded to indicate which kind they are, so menials will be solid Red, the highest quality will be Gold, etc.
Most dittos last for about 24 hours, maybe a little longer. If they return home within that time, they and the original can get back into the machine, the ditto will be scanned, and the memories imprinted on the brain of the original.
This is half the method of "controlling," the dittos. Since they have all the knowledge of the original, they obviously know they are going to expire in about a day, so the only way they have of leaving a lasting legacy is to get back home and reimprint. Of course a lot of originals will refuse to do the reimprinting if they suspect the ditto has had a crappy day. The other half is that for all effective purposes the ditto is the same as the original, and having knowingly submitted to the process, the unlucky "self" who ends up as the ditto doesn't usually feel like screwing it's collective self over by not accomplishing it's tasks.
And of course as with any process, there are ocassionaly defects. In this case it leads to "Frankensteins" whose personalities were not copied perfectly and diverge from the original. The results can vary from a ditto that wants to slack off and live what little life it has left (Frankensteins are almost never copied back, and in fact there may be difficulties in doing so) without following it's original goal, to totally psychotic dittos who might go on a rampage.
As for the book itself, i thought it was really good. The ending does tend towards the techno-mystical, but that's not really something i minded. If you were bothered by the end of "Earth" it might bug you though.
You're totally right! Given the total consideration that Disney has shown to Miyazaki during every step of this project and the timely manner in which they have conducted themselves, i would _never_ imagine Disney failing to keep everyone fully updated as to what their plans are.
If you're on the freeway, the turns are so smooth you only need one hand. If you're on surface streets and in the process of shifting, you're going so slow you only need one hand.
As for the automatic vs stick-shift, i don't think we're going to get a choice with the fuel cell cars. They'll probably all be the new continual variable transmission or whatever it is.
I'm not even going to bother asking about getting a stick-shift version :)
Last i heard the Hy-wire was going to have the ability to split normal gassoline to make it's own hydrogen.
Again, how is it a pointless endeavor? If they fail to document all animals within 25 years, then the knowledge from the ones that they _have_ documented won't suddenly dissapear. If you truely think it's a pointless endeavour, then the rate at which they accomplish it is totally irrelevant and they shouldn't bother at all.
Better suited would be to isolate a certain section of the animal kingdom regionally and then solely concentrate there and completely try to catalog it. Maybe that's how they're planning to work this out. In that case, it would make more sense.
Now you're talking about methodology, which is only tangentially related to the discussion. The goal of everyone in the field is to eventually have documented everything, this group is just saying that we should do it a lot quicker than we're currently going.
What you're describing are not challenges to it's "pointedness," but rather a problem with the feasibility. The goal itself isn't pointless, and even if they don't achieve the full goal, the attempt itself isn't pointless. If they only managed to increase the rate of identification by just 1%, that would be an extra 2500 species identified in the 25 year span they're aiming for. If even one of those species is one that would have gone extinct before being catalogued without the extra effort, then how can you claim that effort is pointless? If that was the only positive result, i might grant you that it would have been an inefficient endeavor, but not a pointless one.
I'm having trouble dealing with the "what's the point" argument, and am tempted to fall back on the "what use is a baby" defense. Because we want to have samples available for future pharmaceutical research? Because we'd like to be able to restore any more species that go extinct in the future? Because we are human and have the desire for knowledge while it's still possible to know?
I'm not sure how keeping track of future changes would be trivial. How do you keep track of physiological changes in 50000 insect species over the whole globe?
I'm not really sure how they would go about it either, but if they can figure out how to doccument somewhere between 8 million and 98 million new species over the next 25 years (somewhere between 300,000 and 4 million species a year,) keeping track of any new species that pop up would be fairly simple in comparison.
The whole _point_ of the endeavour is the "minor localized species that exist now, but will be extinct in 20 years." They don't want to keep track of current status, what they _want_ is a snapshot of the way things are now, before humans screw things up anymore than they already have.
Of course, once the snapshot is taken, keeping track of future changes is fairly trivial in comparison.
Isn't it better to at least have the genome down before a species goes extinct than nothing at all? I don't think the proposal is that this is _all_ that should be done, just that we should get that much done as quickly as possible.
Once we've got all the genomes down, more detailed research will continue. And theoretically even if a species goes extinct, if we've got the genome we'll eventually be able to resurect the species later, at which point scientists can do all the research on it they want. (Not to mention restoring it to the wild.)
As for the reliability, that would be a concern, but not as big a one as you make out. How many people would want to make up fake species? And could do so convincingly? Make sure the database gets backed up regularly to prevent it getting hacked, and as with any scientific endeavor make is subject to peer review.
They are currently discovering 10,000 species a year. Even without speeding that rate up, we would have to see a complete replacement of every species on the planet with a new one every 1000 to 10,000 years (depending on how many species there are total) in order for us not to keep up with the rate of evolution. I think we might have noticed if species were changing that fast.
This is just an interim stage for the Gameboy. It's the Gamboy Advance SP, it's not a whole new system. As such, they're not going to add something fundamentally new like extra face buttons.
However they are supposed to be working on a _real_ next generation of gameboy. Since it was announced at the same time that they announced that they're working on a next generation console, i really doubt this is what they were talking about.
_That_ system may be where the rumors about four face buttons came from.
However there are a large number of people out there who aren't part of either NASA or the lunatic fringe, who are trying to decide what to think, and at the moment the crackpots are the only ones trying to convince them.
NASA should go ahead with the plans, but make it clear that they are not addressing the crackpots, they are just trying to make all the facts available so that the average person can judge for themselves. As someone else pointed out, it would be easy to do this without even directly adressing the crackpots or their theories. ("Note that in this picture no stars are visible. The reason for this curious phenomenon is...")
Getting into a knockdown brawl with the conspiracy theorists won't convince anyone, but presenting the facts openly and clearly will convince the people who really matter, the ones who haven't made up their minds yet.
"They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."
What you pointed out is in fact an argument _in favor_ of the meritocracy hypothesis. Even though Jojo's genetics aren't good enough to be passed on, he is still an accepted and valued member of society. In a real feudalism he would be relegated to the lowest tier of society or euthanized.
What he was criticizing was Tolkein's philosophy, which shone through when writing the stories. Tolkein was anti-industry, and that bias came through in his work in a very obvious way. Tolkein was entitled to his opinion, and that's no reason for the rest of us not to enjoy his books, Brin is just warning us against picking up the same bias as Tolkein through his work.
Brin advises that we should think about the things we read, and it's good advice. If you read things without thinking about your reaction to them there's always a chance that some of the preconceptions will sneak into your mind. That's one of the reasons why racism and prejudice is so hard to eliminate, because constant exposure can affect us without our conscious minds realizing it.
I read both science fiction and fantasy, and i think about what i read. If i was given the choice between being a common Joe in a high-tech 22nd century, or a King or hero in the 13th century or in an alternate magical world, i'd pick the 22nd century with no thought at all. That doesn't mean i can't enjoy the fantasy books though.
It's commented on at several points that the chimps and dolphins are expected to behave differently when other aliens are present, because the humans allow them to do things that would never be tolerated in another races' clients. I'm sure the chimps and dolphins preger the facade of total servitude to the reality that would occur if the aliens decided the humans weren't treating their clients right and took them away.
I really couldn't care less about those modes of input. Can you imagine everyone in the office talking to their computers at once? And it wouldn't really help that much for programming or data entry, the tasks that a lot of computers get used for. As for handwriting, my hand starts to hurt after about five minutes of writing stuff on paper, and i usually give up and open up Notepad. And that's not even considering that my handwriting sucks and would be about ten times as difficult to process as "normal" handwriting.
What this guy really isn't saying much about is direct optical feeds; ie, beaming visual information onto your retina, or inserting false visual signals higher upsteam in your nervous system, and direct mental input; either in the form of reading the synapses in your brain, or recording your motions as you type and guesture in the air.
That's the kind of technology that will cause a major shift in the way we use computers, and is so different from our current modes of interaction that you can't really extrapolate from here to there. I'm sure scientists during the 40s and 50s were predicting great advances in vacuum tubes (the science fiction authors certainly were at least) that never materialized, or at least that were never utilized, because of the development of the microchip.
I have no idea if those kinds of technologies will be fully developed in the next ten years or not, but i don't think this guy has any better of an idea than the rest of us.
If he actually succeeded, wouldn't he open himself up to one giant countersuit?
Actually, i think it should be lifetime of creator plus 25 years, or 25 years for a corporation. That way if a corporation takes the rights of a work away from the artist (RIAA anyone?) they lose control of it after just 25 years, whereas if they leave the artist the actual owner and work out some kind of long term lease/rent/whatever, they can make money off of it for much longer.
Never hurts to have a little more incentive for the corporation to actually work _with_ the artists.
Actually, i'm not really that suprised that they fucked it up, i'm just amazed that they actually got around to releasing it in the first place.
I can understand why Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and other "undersirables."
I can understand why Britain wanted to keep the American colonies under their control.
I can understand why Bush ended up president.
I can understand why my ex-girlfriend broke up with me.
I can understand why the police officer doesn't cut me any slack when he pulls me over for speeding on an empty highway at 3 in the morning.
In more than one of those cases that understanding involves realizing and accounting for the fact that the people involved were immoral nutcases (you can try to guess which is which if you wish =) but that doesn't prevent me from understanding why they choose to do the things they did, given their view of the world.
Not watch it? That seems a bit extreme.
Perhaps they should put a new message up at theatres, "Warning, this movie contains spoilers for this movie."
A couple names that i haven't seen mentioned often/enough that i feel manage to do this:
Vernor Vinge in his "Zones of Thought" books ("A Fire upon the Deep" and "A Deepness in the Sky") and his "Bobble" series ("Marooned in Realtime" and i believe "Peace War" though i haven't managed to find a copy of it yet) The first postulates that the amount of advanced technology and sentience possible varies depending on where you are. (in general, the greater the concentration of stars in the area, the "stupider" everything gets) The second deals in large part with the results of a technology that allows the user to temporarily stop time for everything in a small area.
S. M. Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" trillogy, which handles the idea of a medium sized group of people getting sent back in time far better than any other attempt i've ever read, dealing with both psychological and techological issues in great depth.
Michael Flynn's "In the Country of the Blind" is one of the the best conspiracy books i've ever read, and also one of the best books dealing with psychohistory/cliology.
He also wrote "Mirror of Her Dreams" and "A Man Rides Through," which were both good. I'm not sure what the fuck he was doing with the Thomas Covenant series, but yeah, it was a pile of crap. Since i haven't read the Gap series yet, i'm not sure which is the aberation, the good stuff, or the crap.
I don't know anything about the flat earth vs. round earth debate (other than that there were people who believed both, i ahve no idea what proportion) However along with taking the smallest estimate for the earth's diameter, he also took the biggest estimate he could find for the distance from the Europe to China, further reducing the calculated distance heading west.