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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 4, 2024 8:12:37 GMT
Looking at Omega as a machine that causes problems..? Well, that'll get Kat to an overall solution eventually. Also: It'd be hilarious if some part of Omega still ran on punchcards or used music-box style metal tines for ROM. |
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Post by csj on Nov 4, 2024 8:17:04 GMT
Looking at Omega as a machine that causes problems..? Well, that'll get Kat to an overall solution eventually. Also: It'd be hilarious if some part of Omega still ran on punchcards or used music-box style metal tines for ROM. don't touch the vacuum tubes |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 4, 2024 9:13:26 GMT
Considering that Omega is really important and the Court has infinite resources and really smart tech people I am sure that all patches (esp refactoring) have been documented, correctly dated, titled and summarized in an easy-to-find manner.
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Post by Corvo on Nov 4, 2024 15:57:38 GMT
Omega, from right behind Kat: Yeah, for that she'd have to be some kind of omniscient being or whatever.
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Post by ctso74 on Nov 4, 2024 16:02:28 GMT
Considering that Omega is really important and the Court has infinite resources and really smart tech people I am sure that all patches (esp refactoring) have been documented, correctly dated, titled and summarized in an easy-to-find manner. I imagine you're right. Then again, I've seen a telco closet with rack switches in a wooden chest of drawers. The drawers were discarded, and the switches slid out on the drawer rollers. When the disbelief faded, I was left saying "But why?..", as a part of me died. |
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Post by Gemminie on Nov 4, 2024 16:15:11 GMT
Kat is done with her aside with Robot and returns to Annie and Renard. She tells Robot to hang in there and that she's going to continue to help him.
Annie asks the question we've been wondering about (or at least I have), which is whether they now have a way to talk without Omega eavesdropping. Kat's theory is that Omega could see the signals in her computer and "the interpreter it uses for the Ether" (which sounds like a separate device or at least some kind of software), but getting information out of that is a different matter entirely. She basically says what I've been saying: she can't read that anymore than you or I could listen in on a wi-fi connection (with our senses, not with a computer) and understand the data in real time. She likens it to reading a printout of an encrypted message: yes, you can see that there's data there, but without a means of decrypting it, you don't know what its meaning is. "I'm guessing she's not that kind of computer," says Kat (Tom's comment: "The kind that's good at decrypting, that is"), but I mean, technically Omega's never been a computer. She's a person, or what's left of one, inhabiting a machine that allows her to communicate and stay anchored in the physical world without becoming fully dead and going into the Ether.
And yet the chapter isn't over. Hmm.
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Post by Gemini Jim on Nov 4, 2024 17:26:36 GMT
Annie: "She's an enigma"
Kat: "I just got through saying she's NOT!"
=
Anyhoo, I'm more curious about the "how I can help you next" part. Hopefully it will involve thwarting Meg.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 4, 2024 19:18:28 GMT
Considering that Omega is really important and the Court has infinite resources and really smart tech people I am sure that all patches (esp refactoring) have been documented, correctly dated, titled and summarized in an easy-to-find manner. I imagine you're right. Then again, I've seen a telco closet with rack switches in a wooden chest of drawers. The drawers were discarded, and the switches slid out on the drawer rollers. When the disbelief faded, I was left saying "But why?..", as a part of me died. That's clearly an inexpensive insulation alternative. They just wanted to take advantage of thermal expansion to increase the size of their pipe by retaining extra heat Slightly more seriously: I am imagining an employee being handed the dimensions of the drawers and being told to order a cabinet for them, and then the employee going online to Ikea or some other furniture store and doing exactly that. |
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Post by silicondream on Nov 4, 2024 20:09:33 GMT
I dunno why Omega wouldn't be "that kind of computer;" if she can decrypt animal brains to predict/influence their behavior, and infer someone's entire life history from their current state, she could well have the processing power to decrypt Kat's tech. I would imagine her problem is more that she has no direct observations of the ether to use as training data.
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Post by Hatredman on Nov 4, 2024 22:35:01 GMT
Also, I'm sorry, but encryption is a rather cheap explanation.
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 5, 2024 2:23:42 GMT
I dunno why Omega wouldn't be "that kind of computer;" if she can decrypt animal brains to predict/influence their behavior, and infer someone's entire life history from their current state, she could well have the processing power to decrypt Kat's tech. I would imagine her problem is more that she has no direct observations of the ether to use as training data. I think that because her power is etheric she can't have observations of the ether, at least not in anything close to the same way she observes and orders the material. Like a camera can't take pictures of itself (unless you've got a massive fish-eye lens and then you've only got a distorted picture of one side) Are you familiar with Orch OR theory? I've been saving it for a mega-post in the wildspec thread but since you brought it up, I think the last few chapters have helped me pinpoint the fantasy element that makes Gunnerphysics work and in short it's a sort of quantum hyper-entanglement, related to locality but transcending time and reaching all the way down into subspace, with some strong parallels to simulation theory. Animal brains may depend on quantum effects too but they just don't have the complexity humans have so humans have way more going on in the etheric department that shields more of what they're doing, so Omega has a lot more trouble figuring out what people are thinking, though I'd argue she can draw enough to be manipulative (just not nearly as well as she can be with animals). |
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Post by blahzor on Nov 5, 2024 5:48:33 GMT
I dunno why Omega wouldn't be "that kind of computer;" if she can decrypt animal brains to predict/influence their behavior, and infer someone's entire life history from their current state, she could well have the processing power to decrypt Kat's tech. I would imagine her problem is more that she has no direct observations of the ether to use as training data. She could only do simple minds so humans seem too complex for her |
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aggadahGothic
Junior Member
The foremost Zimmy fan in the world.
Posts: 63 
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Post by aggadahGothic on Nov 5, 2024 6:50:48 GMT
I dunno why Omega wouldn't be "that kind of computer;" if she can decrypt animal brains to predict/influence their behavior, and infer someone's entire life history from their current state, she could well have the processing power to decrypt Kat's tech. I would imagine her problem is more that she has no direct observations of the ether to use as training data. Does Omega infer things only from someone's present state? She says, " I know you carry a cigar in your reticule at all times. Not because I read your mind, but because I saw you put it in there this morning," which implies that she does not merely derive this knowledge in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, but is somehow a firsthand witness to the event. |
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Post by yellowb on Nov 5, 2024 8:40:47 GMT
I dunno why Omega wouldn't be "that kind of computer;" if she can decrypt animal brains to predict/influence their behavior, and infer someone's entire life history from their current state, she could well have the processing power to decrypt Kat's tech. I would imagine her problem is more that she has no direct observations of the ether to use as training data. She could only do simple minds so humans seem too complex for her And manipulating animals was just a side effect, anyway. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Nov 5, 2024 10:29:35 GMT
She could only do simple minds so humans seem too complex for her And manipulating animals was just a side effect, anyway. It may be the case that Omega's ability to manipulate animals is a side-effect of her connection to the ether and has nothing to do with her limited omniscience. Omega looked and acted witch-ish back in the day, people thought she was a witch, people think witches control animals to spy on people and stuff, thus Omega can have a (weak) ability to control animals. |
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Post by Hatredman on Nov 5, 2024 16:54:28 GMT
And manipulating animals was just a side effect, anyway. It may be the case that Omega's ability to manipulate animals is a side-effect of her connection to the ether and has nothing to do with her limited omniscience. Omega looked and acted witch-ish back in the day, people thought she was a witch, people think witches control animals to spy on people and stuff, thus Omega can have a (weak) ability to control animals. Oh! The people thought she was a witch, so the people gave witch powers to her through the Ether. Neat! I like it. But I still think using encryption to deterr Omega's knowledge of Kat's system is utterly bs. |
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