Other people are complaining that Wikipedia isn't really "literature" because it's non-fiction, so how about Cracked.com instead? It does have a passing acquaintance with facts but its primary intent is clearly to entertain.
In fact, according to wikipedia "Texts based on factual rather than original or imaginative content, such as informative and polemical works and autobiography, are often denied literary status, but reflective essays or belles-lettres are accepted." So wikipedia says wikipedia may not be literature, but Cracked.com is.
(Note that i'm not going to argue about the quality of Cracked.com, but the question wasn't if any _good_ hypertext literature was being written;)
It's certainly possible there could be universes where they have even simpler laws and figure it out even quicker than we do. However it took us a couple thousand years to figure out gravity and the laws of motion, and that's just with the "simple" laws we have. Cro-magnon men also saw and experienced gravity and motion their whole lives, so why didn't they figure out F=ma? And why do you feel that with more complex laws it wouldn't take even longer to figure out? And do you disagree that if the more complex the math involved the longer it takes to figure out, there could not be some point at which the math required just for the first step was so complex that no one would every make it past that point?
Simply put, i knew plenty of people in high school who knew what happened when you dropped something or tripped but couldn't understand F=ma. I don't have faith in your claim that just because you've seen something happen and know what to expect from the effect in general terms means that you can also describe it and understand it mathematically.
North Korea has an estimated $20 billion debt. That's debt, as in money _they_ owe to other people, mainly Russia. And that's after Russia forgave them for about another $8 billion. I don't think anybody owes North Korea any money, and even if they do it is far exceeded by the amount they owe everyone else.
So now that everyone has got all the dumb jokes out of the way, this has me wondering. If this applies to both classical and quantum physics does that mean that figuring out F=ma was NP-hard? Is that in the sense that it _could_ have been a crazy equation with dozens of components? Are we lucky that nature seems to "prefer" the simple solutions? Or do the solutions appear simple because the simple things we compare them to are based on those laws? Could there be a universe in which if you chart the motion of a falling body instead of a parabolic curve you get some kind of roller coaster ride, and all the Galileos and Newtons of that universe say "what the fuck is up with that?" and then go back to farming or alchemy or whatever?
Of course if you consider relativity it does get pretty complicated. If the speed of light was 5 m/s, so that we had to deal with relativity in our daily lives, would we ever have been able to get a start at physics as a mathematical endeavour? Or is it a "requirement" in the formation of universes or life itself that there be a range of physics in which everything behaves in a "simple" and "consistent" manner?
In elementary school we learn the Civil War was about freeing the slaves.
In high school we learn the Civil War was more complicated and was fundamentally about states' rights.
In college we learn that the right to own slaves was the only right the south cared enough about to fight a war over.
In a way it kind of follows the same way we handle physics going from Newton to Einstein to quantum. The earlier explanations aren't exactly wrong, they're just incomplete.
The IRS will at least occasionally give back when it has taken more than it should. The TSA has yet to do that.
The TSA's job is to virtually strip you naked and then pat you down, often in a manner that has been compared to groping or fondling by some people and likened to rape by other people. (People who are possibly a little too excitable. Or maybe not, your call.)
After all that that, if the TSA agent opens a sentence with "I'm going to give you something" my inclination would be to run away as quickly as possible
Wait, wait, they actually say or even just imply that? They force this ugly ribbon infested piece of crap that they call Office 2010 on me (at least when i'm at the office and don't have a choice about it) and then try to scare me by saying Google Docs _might_ look different at some point in the future?
There's a reason why Nintendo is my favorite of the big three video game companies, and it's not just nostalgia. Nintendo isn't interested in crippling their own hardware in order to "protect" their own movie studio or their own music publishing business. They don't have a giant monopoly whose profits they're using to muscle their way into other areas of business. (Back in the day if you did something similar with gas stations it was definitely illegal.)
Nintendo may have done some pretty questionable things back when they were on top in the video game industry, but even then they were still restricted to the video game industry. Maybe if they'd expanded into other areas and became just as big as Sony and Microsoft then they'd be pulling the same kind of crap, but they didn't so they aren't.
Nintendo certainly has their own problems, but currently those problems stem from trying to force the game industry towards areas i don't especially care for and failing to butter up third party developers sufficiently. I'm "forced" to invest in Sony's console if i want new "old-fashioned" games like Disgaea, however in the portable arena the DS and 3DS have plenty of content spanning all genres, including the "classic" ones, so as long as i'm willing to accept alternative games in the same genre i can avoid Sony for this particular case.
But as usual these are my own opinions, i'm sure others think Sony is a great company and love the Vita.
Really? I can see the frames for my current glasses pretty much all the time and that doesn't seem to bother me. Even if i focus on the frames while moving my head around i don't have any problem. Of course 3D movies and the 3DS don't bother me at all either. (I don't think the technology is what it's hyped up to be, but i see the 3D effect just fine and it causes neither nausea or headaches for me.) Maybe i just have a cast iron inner ear?
Of course that can't be completely true, i used to get motion sick while reading in a car, but that was usually when i was focusing entirely on the book, seeing only something that wasn't moving in front of me, while my inner ear said things were moving around. I eventually learned to kind of... mentally back up a bit and be aware of the outside world as well instead of focusing totally on the book, and that helped quiet a bit. And i would often stare out the window while focusing on whatever was on the window (especially when it was raining, but dust and dirt and fingerprints worked as well) and seeing those elements unmoving in front of me while the world went by behind them didn't cause me any problems at all, which seems a lot more like the HUD experience than reading a book while not looking out the windows at all.
It's called thermal depolymerization and you can do it to just about anything organic. So unlike what some other posters are saying, you don't have to devote huge agricultural areas to producing stock just for this process, you can use preexisting waste for the job. There was a company running prototype plant in Carthage, Missouri. They situated themselves right next to a turkey processing plant with the hope they could "process about 200 tons of turkey waste into 500 barrels (79 m3) of oil per day". The plant ran for a number of years, and was supposedly able to produce oil for about 10% less than the price of crude ("supposedly" as in the oil was definitely produced, the question was exactly how much it cost them and how much of a profit they were making.) However they suffered from a number of lawsuits and eventually had to declare bankruptcy.
It seems like they jumped into the game a little too early, or just weren't able to find enough venture capital to perfect the system. Certainly as the price of oil continues to rise and the technology improves this is a process that could certainly be brought back. And note that since they're using organic waste the process is carbon neutral.
I think you're pretty massively missing the point? It's not RDBs that are the problem, it's Oracle specifically. Try developing complex software using a SQL back end that supports both MS SQL and Oracle. Getting everything working on Oracle takes longer. And when there are problems it takes longer to debug on Oracle. Just getting Oracle installed properly was a huge pain in the ass compared to MS SQL.
_Oracle_ is making it harder than it has to be. If i had the choice i'd simplify just by dropping support for Oracle and only work with MS SQL, but that's not my choice to make.
Uh, if it was something i could ignore then i wouldn't be cringing, i would be just shrugging and ignoring the problem. As long as some of our (big) customers insist on using Oracle we have to work with Oracle to support them. And they're not going to accept "we didn't implement/debug that feature in Oracle because working with Oracle is a pain" very well.
It was actually a gesture of sympathy to Whitney Houston's dependents. Since copyright lasts forever now, long after the death of the artist, they raised the price of the music so her estate will receive larger royalty checks for awhile.
... i kid of course. We all know Sony and the other RIAA members never _actually_ pay out royalties to artists.
It might even have been intentional, did they specify what the bug was? In an online game i play (which is _not_ one by Zynga btw) there is a slot-machine type game you can play once a day to get extra prizes. There was a "bug" that you could exit the game screen and reenter it and get a new selection of items. This didn't let you choose what you won, it just let you choose which prizes you had a chance of winning. And there were a _lot_ of complaints from the players when they finally got around to fixing that "bug."
I expect with a company the size of Wikipedia, particularly one with Wikipedia's web presence, switching your hosting around isn't really something you can do on the turn of a dime.
On the other side of the coin though (er, so to speak) i wonder if this is really the best tactic. I mean, i couldn't wish for the fallout to land on a more deserving company, but will this affect Wikipedia's bargaining position for similar situations in the future? Threatening to punish people for actions you don't like is just fine (well, assuming you stick to legal methods of course) but if they recant and you follow through on your threats regardless, would the next company you deal with have any reason to recant?
We postulate evil corporation-states that is willing to "gun down people" but restrained by finding "humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them".
That only doesn't make sense if you completely ignore the rest of what i said in that context. Corporations today will kill people who get in their way either directly or by colluding with local governments, but only as long as it's in an area that won't be noticed by most of their customers and where they don't feel threatened by the local government. The oil companies do not shoot people in first world countries because that's who they sell to and if they tried the US government would do something about it (well, eventually, after enough people were killed, probably.) Likewise in "Falling Free" the corporation was restrained from performing the medical experiments they wanted because of laws and cultural customs in the populated areas in which they regularly do business and in which they would be liable to legal actions. So instead they found a relatively unpopulated area in which they could control the legal situation. The parallel is pretty obvious.
We postulate characters with a variety of reactions to the quaddies, when we know of the uncanny valley phenomenon and of the instincitive human revulsion deformity, a tectonic shift without a lick of explanation or exploration behind it.
Really? You're postulating that real life people with deformities never have any friends or anyone who cares about them? And yes, many people were disquieted by the Quaddies to varying degrees when they first saw them, but many of them got over it (just as happens with real deformities in real life.) This of course was helped along by the fact that in their natural environment the Quaddies were perfectly functional and appeared graceful rather than deformed.
We postulate quaddies with "conditioning...to a cult like level" but that unrealistically flip worldviews in an instant to make an all out escape attempt, instead of exploring the shock of finding out everything they knew was wrong.
As i said, they were conditioned to a collectivist and pacifist view, and that's something that never changed. That viewpoint was key to their escape and became an integral part of their culture as can be seen when it impinges on other books in the series that take place a few centuries down the line. And quite a lot of the book dealt with their gradual realization that the corporation really didn't have their best interests at heart.
I see no predictive extrapolation here; the facts presented as backstory don't even a coherent whole to be used as a basis for extrapolation. It's just *scenery*, for heaven's sake.
The objection as presented in that sentence doesn't even a coherent argument? It seems like you're trying to change the goalposts. I believe this pretty clearly falls under the speculation about how future societies might react to future technology, the second of the four categories discussed way back at the beginning of this thread. It's certainly not the third or fourth category of predicting unexpected technology, although the use to which she posits that technology being put is certainly creative. You've already made the claim that the technology is just scenery. I've already told you if the technology had been different, or if the Quaddies had been aliens instead of engineered humans, the story would be completely different. You asked some questions and i provided answers. You nitpicked those answers mainly by misinterpreting what i said or making assumptions about details that i didn't even mention. If you were to keep that up i would effectively have to retell the entire story before you were satisfied. Perhaps you should try, i dunno, actually reading the book?
In summation is seems like you feel the Bible could have
Obviously, this involves MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't read the relevant book yet. And since you're basically asking an essay question the answer is going to be LONG.
REPEAT! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Starting in chronological order rather than the somewhat arbitrary order you posed them in...
There were three aspects that made the creation of Quaddies possible from a socio-economic perspective. First, artificial gravity had not been discovered yet. That meant that all space habitats had to be constructed in free fall before being spun up to produce centrifugal force. This meant, going by the best guess of current medical science, that the humans doing that construction could only spend a few months in free fall before having to return to a gravity well or spinning station for a certain length of time or suffer from permanent medical issues due to adapting to zero gravity. Having to shuttle construction workers back and forth was thus one of the biggest expenses of new space construction.
Second most human societies were very concerned about the risks of making genetic changes to humans, a fear extrapolated from current concerns about the subject, especially in regards to cloning, chimera and stem cells. This meant that even given the possibility of genetic modifications to adapt humans to free fall, finding a group of humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them or their children was practically impossible.
However the time involved in traveling between planets, even with warp drive, has led to a kind of Libertarian/Seasteading paradise, dozens or hundreds of worlds, each a separate polity with different legal setups. This included planets and systems in which a corporation _was_ the legal government. And how do you think the corporations of today which mistreat factory workers and gun down people who oppose them, as long as it happens out of sight of their first world customers, would behave in a perfect legal limbo? This allowed them to kill several birds with one stone. First they can define the Quaddies as non-human (more specifically and somewhat macabrely as "post-fetal experimental tissue cultures.") Second, since they're not human and have no parents to require permission from, the scientists can make whatever changes they want, which leads to a "kitchen sink" type approach. Along with having a second set of arms instead of legs, they also have improved bones that don't leach calcium in free fall and increased radiation tolerance. From an economic standpoint this means a moderate increase in productivity per worker, and a huge savings in transport since they never have to be given downside leave to recover from free fall. From a legal standpoint that means that the corporation can argue that the Quaddies are clearly not human when transporting them through other polities for construction contracts.
So the project was originally proposed by moral, though possibly shortsighted, scientists who were frustrated by the strictures on their work. The funding was provided by a corporation that expected a return on its investment. Other humans had a spectrum of views ranging from "I helped raise them, they're my friends and family", to "they seem nice enough, i guess this is okay as long as they're being treated decently," to "they're a bunch of freaks, but they're going to make us a lot of money," to "they are abominations, and they should be destroyed in order to preserve the purity of human genetic stock."
The Quaddies were raised creche style with a strong emphasis on "the corp is mother, the corp is father" type conditioning, almost to a cult-like level. In particular their education was tailored to emphasize a pacifist and collectivist view of history. I believe as one character put it, instead of a paragraph on the great engineering works and a chapter on the great battles, the ratio was reversed. As a result the Quaddies developed an almost communist society, viewing the
Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.
No, space opera is fanciful weapons supporting an adventure in a particular setting. If you had fanciful weapons supporting adventure in some other setting it might be cyberpunk or urban fantasy or something else instead. Second, i think you may be missing the point. The Vorkosigan Saga is that stuff _and_ other things as well, which is why it is more than just space opera.
Name one thing about the gene and reproductive technology in the Vorkosigan universe that couldn't have been replaced by some other bit of technobabble or just plain magic without affecting the core plot
That's... kind of a bizarre question to ask. Yes, she could have replaced the technology she did use with entirely different technology, and if she held true to her writing style she would have a story that was just as good but was asking meaningful questions about entirely different technology.
The point of the quaddies wasn't that they looked funny. The point was that they were genetically engineered by a corporation as cheap and effective labor, and that corporation viewed them as property rather than people with rights. The point of cloning in the stories wasn't just the production of Mark, it was the production of the mostly unseen children who were cloned for the purpose of life extension by rich and unscrupulous people willing to treat them as nothing more than spare parts. The point of cryonics in the story isn't just bringing people back from the dead, it's about what happens if you allow wealth and power to continuously accumulate in just a few set of hands, especially when the hands are those of a corporation. The point of uterine replicators isn't just a way to let the bad guys kidnap unborn children, it's commentary on reproductive rights, gender selection, the role of women in society, the role of childbearing in society, and how exactly those two roles are related.
And that's just the high points. If you read the books and all you got was "they've got whiz bang tech that supports the adventure and not much else" then you weren't really reading the books.
And, if all that technology had just been replaced with magic, if the quaddies had been chimera and Mark and the children had been homunculi and priests were raising the dead instead of cryo-revivalists and the uterine replicators were, well, whatever kind of magic you want to make up, then it would have been a well written fantasy story that was also thinly veiled commentary on biotechnology, instead of a well written science fiction story that is totally unveiled commentary on biotechnology.
So in summation you seem to be saying that _all_ literature doesn't matter because every author _could_ have written about something else instead?
You're right that science fiction is often about the idea rather than the engineering concepts, however that doesn't mean that it can't also be predictive some of the time, and part of that is for exactly the reason you state.
Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's awesome!" and some geeks said "i wonder if i could build that?"
So some science fiction is about adventure, some science fiction is about exploring ideas ("if we develop this kind of tech/if this goes on,") some is about postulating future technological development ("we will develop this particular device,") and some is about "forcing" future technological through self-fulfilling prophecy ("this kind of device would be awesome!") And of course a lot of science fiction is about more than one of the above.
I'll bring up one of my favorite examples, Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga," which many people consider to be of the space opera genre you dislike. It's definitely got lots of adventure, and the warp technology and all the various fanciful weapons are just there to support the adventure and not predictive at all, and she totally missed the boat on how important computers are going to be. (Though to be fair most science fiction authors writing at that time made the same "mistake.") However her other focus is biotechnology, and she raises interesting and important questions about gene selection, cloning, "test tube babies," and cryonics, so her books are also exploring ideas in the manner you seem to approve of.
And it's entirely possible that her books are inspiring/have inspired a generation of biotech students in the same way Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, and perhaps twenty years from now people will be putting forth her books as an early example of modern day tech.
Past consoles that had upgrades didn't do too well. In particular changing aspects that the programmers depend on (the amount of memory being the particular given example.) The "counter-example" is that adding entirely new optional features or additional file storage that the programmers can choose to use or not, and which do not change _anything_ about the regular architecture if they choose not to use them, doesn't seem to have any adverse problems. (Which says nothing about how well new games using the optional features sell, just that it doesn't break old games.)
Using that "counter-example" to argue that perhaps they should allow upgrades to the components the programmers depend on is just weird. Certainly you'd have to include a disclaimer in the docs right from the start about which components might be upgraded in the future. Even so, a large number of programmers would either not notice the disclaimers and fail to account for the possibility in their programming, or decide that dealing with it would be too difficult and thus fail to account for the possibility in their programming.
First, in response to your post, they're really not at all similar. Oryx and Crake is a _real_ apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic novel. At the end almost everyone is dead and there's not much hope for the survivors. (The second part of that could certainly be debated, but doing so would definitely involve somewhat spoilery stuff.)
In Windup Girl the world has gone through a cataclysm, and you could call the "present" world a post-apocalyptic one if you really wanted, but it's not a nearly dead world. At the point we join the story there are a number of civilizations in the world. They're all worried about further calamities, but most of them are doing pretty well. They're growing and expanding, world trade is starting to come back (despite somewhat justified opposition) a lot of progress is being made in genetics and the harvesting of kinetic energy, and they're able to produce high tech items like computers in at least limited quantities.
Which is why the grand-parent comment is so telling. They can make computers, so why can't they make solar panels? And why is there no nuclear power? And dear gods why no hydro power? They've definitely got the tech to build turbines and water wheels are about the oldest tech out there, and windmills ought to be just about as easy to build.
Slashdot Mirror
Other people are complaining that Wikipedia isn't really "literature" because it's non-fiction, so how about Cracked.com instead? It does have a passing acquaintance with facts but its primary intent is clearly to entertain.
;)
In fact, according to wikipedia "Texts based on factual rather than original or imaginative content, such as informative and polemical works and autobiography, are often denied literary status, but reflective essays or belles-lettres are accepted." So wikipedia says wikipedia may not be literature, but Cracked.com is.
(Note that i'm not going to argue about the quality of Cracked.com, but the question wasn't if any _good_ hypertext literature was being written
It's certainly possible there could be universes where they have even simpler laws and figure it out even quicker than we do. However it took us a couple thousand years to figure out gravity and the laws of motion, and that's just with the "simple" laws we have. Cro-magnon men also saw and experienced gravity and motion their whole lives, so why didn't they figure out F=ma? And why do you feel that with more complex laws it wouldn't take even longer to figure out? And do you disagree that if the more complex the math involved the longer it takes to figure out, there could not be some point at which the math required just for the first step was so complex that no one would every make it past that point?
Simply put, i knew plenty of people in high school who knew what happened when you dropped something or tripped but couldn't understand F=ma. I don't have faith in your claim that just because you've seen something happen and know what to expect from the effect in general terms means that you can also describe it and understand it mathematically.
Uh, wrong, wrong and wrong?
North Korea has an estimated $20 billion debt. That's debt, as in money _they_ owe to other people, mainly Russia. And that's after Russia forgave them for about another $8 billion. I don't think anybody owes North Korea any money, and even if they do it is far exceeded by the amount they owe everyone else.
So now that everyone has got all the dumb jokes out of the way, this has me wondering. If this applies to both classical and quantum physics does that mean that figuring out F=ma was NP-hard? Is that in the sense that it _could_ have been a crazy equation with dozens of components? Are we lucky that nature seems to "prefer" the simple solutions? Or do the solutions appear simple because the simple things we compare them to are based on those laws? Could there be a universe in which if you chart the motion of a falling body instead of a parabolic curve you get some kind of roller coaster ride, and all the Galileos and Newtons of that universe say "what the fuck is up with that?" and then go back to farming or alchemy or whatever?
Of course if you consider relativity it does get pretty complicated. If the speed of light was 5 m/s, so that we had to deal with relativity in our daily lives, would we ever have been able to get a start at physics as a mathematical endeavour? Or is it a "requirement" in the formation of universes or life itself that there be a range of physics in which everything behaves in a "simple" and "consistent" manner?
I can't remember who said it, but:
In elementary school we learn the Civil War was about freeing the slaves.
In high school we learn the Civil War was more complicated and was fundamentally about states' rights.
In college we learn that the right to own slaves was the only right the south cared enough about to fight a war over.
In a way it kind of follows the same way we handle physics going from Newton to Einstein to quantum. The earlier explanations aren't exactly wrong, they're just incomplete.
The IRS will at least occasionally give back when it has taken more than it should. The TSA has yet to do that.
The TSA's job is to virtually strip you naked and then pat you down, often in a manner that has been compared to groping or fondling by some people and likened to rape by other people. (People who are possibly a little too excitable. Or maybe not, your call.)
After all that that, if the TSA agent opens a sentence with "I'm going to give you something" my inclination would be to run away as quickly as possible
Wait, wait, they actually say or even just imply that? They force this ugly ribbon infested piece of crap that they call Office 2010 on me (at least when i'm at the office and don't have a choice about it) and then try to scare me by saying Google Docs _might_ look different at some point in the future?
There's a reason why Nintendo is my favorite of the big three video game companies, and it's not just nostalgia. Nintendo isn't interested in crippling their own hardware in order to "protect" their own movie studio or their own music publishing business. They don't have a giant monopoly whose profits they're using to muscle their way into other areas of business. (Back in the day if you did something similar with gas stations it was definitely illegal.)
Nintendo may have done some pretty questionable things back when they were on top in the video game industry, but even then they were still restricted to the video game industry. Maybe if they'd expanded into other areas and became just as big as Sony and Microsoft then they'd be pulling the same kind of crap, but they didn't so they aren't.
Nintendo certainly has their own problems, but currently those problems stem from trying to force the game industry towards areas i don't especially care for and failing to butter up third party developers sufficiently. I'm "forced" to invest in Sony's console if i want new "old-fashioned" games like Disgaea, however in the portable arena the DS and 3DS have plenty of content spanning all genres, including the "classic" ones, so as long as i'm willing to accept alternative games in the same genre i can avoid Sony for this particular case.
But as usual these are my own opinions, i'm sure others think Sony is a great company and love the Vita.
Really? I can see the frames for my current glasses pretty much all the time and that doesn't seem to bother me. Even if i focus on the frames while moving my head around i don't have any problem. Of course 3D movies and the 3DS don't bother me at all either. (I don't think the technology is what it's hyped up to be, but i see the 3D effect just fine and it causes neither nausea or headaches for me.) Maybe i just have a cast iron inner ear?
Of course that can't be completely true, i used to get motion sick while reading in a car, but that was usually when i was focusing entirely on the book, seeing only something that wasn't moving in front of me, while my inner ear said things were moving around. I eventually learned to kind of... mentally back up a bit and be aware of the outside world as well instead of focusing totally on the book, and that helped quiet a bit. And i would often stare out the window while focusing on whatever was on the window (especially when it was raining, but dust and dirt and fingerprints worked as well) and seeing those elements unmoving in front of me while the world went by behind them didn't cause me any problems at all, which seems a lot more like the HUD experience than reading a book while not looking out the windows at all.
It's called thermal depolymerization and you can do it to just about anything organic. So unlike what some other posters are saying, you don't have to devote huge agricultural areas to producing stock just for this process, you can use preexisting waste for the job. There was a company running prototype plant in Carthage, Missouri. They situated themselves right next to a turkey processing plant with the hope they could "process about 200 tons of turkey waste into 500 barrels (79 m3) of oil per day". The plant ran for a number of years, and was supposedly able to produce oil for about 10% less than the price of crude ("supposedly" as in the oil was definitely produced, the question was exactly how much it cost them and how much of a profit they were making.) However they suffered from a number of lawsuits and eventually had to declare bankruptcy.
It seems like they jumped into the game a little too early, or just weren't able to find enough venture capital to perfect the system. Certainly as the price of oil continues to rise and the technology improves this is a process that could certainly be brought back. And note that since they're using organic waste the process is carbon neutral.
I think you're pretty massively missing the point? It's not RDBs that are the problem, it's Oracle specifically. Try developing complex software using a SQL back end that supports both MS SQL and Oracle. Getting everything working on Oracle takes longer. And when there are problems it takes longer to debug on Oracle. Just getting Oracle installed properly was a huge pain in the ass compared to MS SQL.
_Oracle_ is making it harder than it has to be. If i had the choice i'd simplify just by dropping support for Oracle and only work with MS SQL, but that's not my choice to make.
No, that's only a problem if someone also creates a cure for the common cold at the same time. You can cure one or the other, but not both, not unless you want a zombie apocalypse.
Uh, if it was something i could ignore then i wouldn't be cringing, i would be just shrugging and ignoring the problem. As long as some of our (big) customers insist on using Oracle we have to work with Oracle to support them. And they're not going to accept "we didn't implement/debug that feature in Oracle because working with Oracle is a pain" very well.
Now can they please work on some dramatic usability improvements so i don't have to cringe every time an Oracle support question comes up at work?
It was actually a gesture of sympathy to Whitney Houston's dependents. Since copyright lasts forever now, long after the death of the artist, they raised the price of the music so her estate will receive larger royalty checks for awhile.
... i kid of course. We all know Sony and the other RIAA members never _actually_ pay out royalties to artists.
It might even have been intentional, did they specify what the bug was? In an online game i play (which is _not_ one by Zynga btw) there is a slot-machine type game you can play once a day to get extra prizes. There was a "bug" that you could exit the game screen and reenter it and get a new selection of items. This didn't let you choose what you won, it just let you choose which prizes you had a chance of winning. And there were a _lot_ of complaints from the players when they finally got around to fixing that "bug."
Brought to you be the people who think maybe the geeks are getting out of the basement a little TOO often.
I expect with a company the size of Wikipedia, particularly one with Wikipedia's web presence, switching your hosting around isn't really something you can do on the turn of a dime.
On the other side of the coin though (er, so to speak) i wonder if this is really the best tactic. I mean, i couldn't wish for the fallout to land on a more deserving company, but will this affect Wikipedia's bargaining position for similar situations in the future? Threatening to punish people for actions you don't like is just fine (well, assuming you stick to legal methods of course) but if they recant and you follow through on your threats regardless, would the next company you deal with have any reason to recant?
We postulate evil corporation-states that is willing to "gun down people" but restrained by finding "humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them".
That only doesn't make sense if you completely ignore the rest of what i said in that context. Corporations today will kill people who get in their way either directly or by colluding with local governments, but only as long as it's in an area that won't be noticed by most of their customers and where they don't feel threatened by the local government. The oil companies do not shoot people in first world countries because that's who they sell to and if they tried the US government would do something about it (well, eventually, after enough people were killed, probably.) Likewise in "Falling Free" the corporation was restrained from performing the medical experiments they wanted because of laws and cultural customs in the populated areas in which they regularly do business and in which they would be liable to legal actions. So instead they found a relatively unpopulated area in which they could control the legal situation. The parallel is pretty obvious.
We postulate characters with a variety of reactions to the quaddies, when we know of the uncanny valley phenomenon and of the instincitive human revulsion deformity, a tectonic shift without a lick of explanation or exploration behind it.
Really? You're postulating that real life people with deformities never have any friends or anyone who cares about them? And yes, many people were disquieted by the Quaddies to varying degrees when they first saw them, but many of them got over it (just as happens with real deformities in real life.) This of course was helped along by the fact that in their natural environment the Quaddies were perfectly functional and appeared graceful rather than deformed.
We postulate quaddies with "conditioning...to a cult like level" but that unrealistically flip worldviews in an instant to make an all out escape attempt, instead of exploring the shock of finding out everything they knew was wrong.
As i said, they were conditioned to a collectivist and pacifist view, and that's something that never changed. That viewpoint was key to their escape and became an integral part of their culture as can be seen when it impinges on other books in the series that take place a few centuries down the line. And quite a lot of the book dealt with their gradual realization that the corporation really didn't have their best interests at heart.
I see no predictive extrapolation here; the facts presented as backstory don't even a coherent whole to be used as a basis for extrapolation. It's just *scenery*, for heaven's sake.
The objection as presented in that sentence doesn't even a coherent argument? It seems like you're trying to change the goalposts. I believe this pretty clearly falls under the speculation about how future societies might react to future technology, the second of the four categories discussed way back at the beginning of this thread. It's certainly not the third or fourth category of predicting unexpected technology, although the use to which she posits that technology being put is certainly creative. You've already made the claim that the technology is just scenery. I've already told you if the technology had been different, or if the Quaddies had been aliens instead of engineered humans, the story would be completely different. You asked some questions and i provided answers. You nitpicked those answers mainly by misinterpreting what i said or making assumptions about details that i didn't even mention. If you were to keep that up i would effectively have to retell the entire story before you were satisfied. Perhaps you should try, i dunno, actually reading the book?
In summation is seems like you feel the Bible could have
What will we do with super-intelligent mice?
Give them flowers?
Okay, fine, i accept your challenge.
Obviously, this involves MAJOR SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't read the relevant book yet. And since you're basically asking an essay question the answer is going to be LONG.
REPEAT! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!
Starting in chronological order rather than the somewhat arbitrary order you posed them in...
There were three aspects that made the creation of Quaddies possible from a socio-economic perspective. First, artificial gravity had not been discovered yet. That meant that all space habitats had to be constructed in free fall before being spun up to produce centrifugal force. This meant, going by the best guess of current medical science, that the humans doing that construction could only spend a few months in free fall before having to return to a gravity well or spinning station for a certain length of time or suffer from permanent medical issues due to adapting to zero gravity. Having to shuttle construction workers back and forth was thus one of the biggest expenses of new space construction.
Second most human societies were very concerned about the risks of making genetic changes to humans, a fear extrapolated from current concerns about the subject, especially in regards to cloning, chimera and stem cells. This meant that even given the possibility of genetic modifications to adapt humans to free fall, finding a group of humans willing and legally able to let such an experiment be performed on them or their children was practically impossible.
However the time involved in traveling between planets, even with warp drive, has led to a kind of Libertarian/Seasteading paradise, dozens or hundreds of worlds, each a separate polity with different legal setups. This included planets and systems in which a corporation _was_ the legal government. And how do you think the corporations of today which mistreat factory workers and gun down people who oppose them, as long as it happens out of sight of their first world customers, would behave in a perfect legal limbo? This allowed them to kill several birds with one stone. First they can define the Quaddies as non-human (more specifically and somewhat macabrely as "post-fetal experimental tissue cultures.") Second, since they're not human and have no parents to require permission from, the scientists can make whatever changes they want, which leads to a "kitchen sink" type approach. Along with having a second set of arms instead of legs, they also have improved bones that don't leach calcium in free fall and increased radiation tolerance. From an economic standpoint this means a moderate increase in productivity per worker, and a huge savings in transport since they never have to be given downside leave to recover from free fall. From a legal standpoint that means that the corporation can argue that the Quaddies are clearly not human when transporting them through other polities for construction contracts.
So the project was originally proposed by moral, though possibly shortsighted, scientists who were frustrated by the strictures on their work. The funding was provided by a corporation that expected a return on its investment. Other humans had a spectrum of views ranging from "I helped raise them, they're my friends and family", to "they seem nice enough, i guess this is okay as long as they're being treated decently," to "they're a bunch of freaks, but they're going to make us a lot of money," to "they are abominations, and they should be destroyed in order to preserve the purity of human genetic stock."
The Quaddies were raised creche style with a strong emphasis on "the corp is mother, the corp is father" type conditioning, almost to a cult-like level. In particular their education was tailored to emphasize a pacifist and collectivist view of history. I believe as one character put it, instead of a paragraph on the great engineering works and a chapter on the great battles, the ratio was reversed. As a result the Quaddies developed an almost communist society, viewing the
Lad, that's the definition of what space opera *is*.
No, space opera is fanciful weapons supporting an adventure in a particular setting. If you had fanciful weapons supporting adventure in some other setting it might be cyberpunk or urban fantasy or something else instead. Second, i think you may be missing the point. The Vorkosigan Saga is that stuff _and_ other things as well, which is why it is more than just space opera.
Name one thing about the gene and reproductive technology in the Vorkosigan universe that couldn't have been replaced by some other bit of technobabble or just plain magic without affecting the core plot
That's... kind of a bizarre question to ask. Yes, she could have replaced the technology she did use with entirely different technology, and if she held true to her writing style she would have a story that was just as good but was asking meaningful questions about entirely different technology.
The point of the quaddies wasn't that they looked funny. The point was that they were genetically engineered by a corporation as cheap and effective labor, and that corporation viewed them as property rather than people with rights. The point of cloning in the stories wasn't just the production of Mark, it was the production of the mostly unseen children who were cloned for the purpose of life extension by rich and unscrupulous people willing to treat them as nothing more than spare parts. The point of cryonics in the story isn't just bringing people back from the dead, it's about what happens if you allow wealth and power to continuously accumulate in just a few set of hands, especially when the hands are those of a corporation. The point of uterine replicators isn't just a way to let the bad guys kidnap unborn children, it's commentary on reproductive rights, gender selection, the role of women in society, the role of childbearing in society, and how exactly those two roles are related.
And that's just the high points. If you read the books and all you got was "they've got whiz bang tech that supports the adventure and not much else" then you weren't really reading the books.
And, if all that technology had just been replaced with magic, if the quaddies had been chimera and Mark and the children had been homunculi and priests were raising the dead instead of cryo-revivalists and the uterine replicators were, well, whatever kind of magic you want to make up, then it would have been a well written fantasy story that was also thinly veiled commentary on biotechnology, instead of a well written science fiction story that is totally unveiled commentary on biotechnology.
So in summation you seem to be saying that _all_ literature doesn't matter because every author _could_ have written about something else instead?
You're right that science fiction is often about the idea rather than the engineering concepts, however that doesn't mean that it can't also be predictive some of the time, and part of that is for exactly the reason you state.
Despite what some geeks who obsess over the "technical manuals" might think, Star Trek isn't really about the technical details of how their devices work. Roddenberry and co didn't have exact ideas on how replicators or phasers or tricorders or PADDs would work, but one way or another all those devices are becoming a reality. Part of that is _because_ they focused on the general concept rather than the exact technology, and part of it is because they thought up cool devices and some geeks said "that's awesome!" and some geeks said "i wonder if i could build that?"
So some science fiction is about adventure, some science fiction is about exploring ideas ("if we develop this kind of tech/if this goes on,") some is about postulating future technological development ("we will develop this particular device,") and some is about "forcing" future technological through self-fulfilling prophecy ("this kind of device would be awesome!") And of course a lot of science fiction is about more than one of the above.
I'll bring up one of my favorite examples, Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga," which many people consider to be of the space opera genre you dislike. It's definitely got lots of adventure, and the warp technology and all the various fanciful weapons are just there to support the adventure and not predictive at all, and she totally missed the boat on how important computers are going to be. (Though to be fair most science fiction authors writing at that time made the same "mistake.") However her other focus is biotechnology, and she raises interesting and important questions about gene selection, cloning, "test tube babies," and cryonics, so her books are also exploring ideas in the manner you seem to approve of.
And it's entirely possible that her books are inspiring/have inspired a generation of biotech students in the same way Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, and perhaps twenty years from now people will be putting forth her books as an early example of modern day tech.
Past consoles that had upgrades didn't do too well. In particular changing aspects that the programmers depend on (the amount of memory being the particular given example.) The "counter-example" is that adding entirely new optional features or additional file storage that the programmers can choose to use or not, and which do not change _anything_ about the regular architecture if they choose not to use them, doesn't seem to have any adverse problems. (Which says nothing about how well new games using the optional features sell, just that it doesn't break old games.)
Using that "counter-example" to argue that perhaps they should allow upgrades to the components the programmers depend on is just weird. Certainly you'd have to include a disclaimer in the docs right from the start about which components might be upgraded in the future. Even so, a large number of programmers would either not notice the disclaimers and fail to account for the possibility in their programming, or decide that dealing with it would be too difficult and thus fail to account for the possibility in their programming.
First, in response to your post, they're really not at all similar. Oryx and Crake is a _real_ apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic novel. At the end almost everyone is dead and there's not much hope for the survivors. (The second part of that could certainly be debated, but doing so would definitely involve somewhat spoilery stuff.)
In Windup Girl the world has gone through a cataclysm, and you could call the "present" world a post-apocalyptic one if you really wanted, but it's not a nearly dead world. At the point we join the story there are a number of civilizations in the world. They're all worried about further calamities, but most of them are doing pretty well. They're growing and expanding, world trade is starting to come back (despite somewhat justified opposition) a lot of progress is being made in genetics and the harvesting of kinetic energy, and they're able to produce high tech items like computers in at least limited quantities.
Which is why the grand-parent comment is so telling. They can make computers, so why can't they make solar panels? And why is there no nuclear power? And dear gods why no hydro power? They've definitely got the tech to build turbines and water wheels are about the oldest tech out there, and windmills ought to be just about as easy to build.