Re: Another Misnomer!!!

Eric Schwartz writes:
Have you *seen* 1950? Not much of a present, if you ask me. I'd say
1969 was a much better present, seeing as it marked the landing of the
first man on the Moon.

| "Yes!" said Pham. "That's why we have the programs and the computers."
|
| "That's why we can't survive without them. Over thousands of years,
| the machine memories have been filled with programs that can help.
| But like Bret says, many of those programs are lies, all of them
| are buggy, and only the top-level ones are precisely appropriate
| for our needs." She paused, looking at Pham significantly. "It
| takes a smart and highly trained human being to look at what is
| available, to choose and modify the right programs, and then to
| interpret the results properly."
|
| Pham was silent for a moment, thinking back to all the times the
| machines had not done what he really wanted. It wasn't always Pham's
| fault. The programs that tried to translate Canberran to Nese were
| crap. "So... you want me to learn to program something better."
|
| Sura grinned, and there was a barely suppressed chuckle from Bret.
| "We'll be satisfied if you become a good programmer, and learn to
| use the stuff that already exists."
|
| Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming
| went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden
| out back of his father's castle. Where the creek had worn that
| away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines --
| flying machines, the peasants said -- from the great days of Canberra's
| original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh
| compared to what lay within the Reprise's local net. There were
| programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before
| Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it -- the horror of it,
| Sura said -- was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra's past,
| these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous
| threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in
| the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. 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.

(From the same book quoted below.)
--
Mark Brader | The only trouble was, no despot had the resources to plan
msb@xxxxxxx | every detail in his society's behavior. Not even planet-
Toronto | wrecker bombs had as dire a reputation for eliminating
| civilizations. --Vernor Vinge, "A Deepness in the Sky"
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Another Misnomer!!!
    ... She paused, looking at Pham significantly. ... | machines had not done what he really wanted. ... | the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. ... | first computer operating systems. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Another Misnomer!!!
    ... She paused, looking at Pham significantly. ... | machines had not done what he really wanted. ... | the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. ... | first computer operating systems. ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: long armers? save me!
    ... It's Moon over the Mountain! ... I don't visit local quilt shops often ... long-arm machines and what your machines might not like, ...
    (rec.crafts.textiles.quilting)
  • Re: NASA "LSAM" and wheres sci.space.xx gone?
    ... :>:on the Moon. ... :small robots that can repair/manipulate machines in the moon. ... :Note that any solar flare would toast any humans walking around ... kumbaya international cooperation to accomplish nothing scenes. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: ....Question? Have They Found a Reason to go To the Moon and Mars Yet???
    ... that either we're not doing enough of these on the moon, ... unmanned missions are scouting the wrong destination. ... send both machines *and* people. ... the maximum value for the science dollar is obtained. ...
    (sci.space.history)