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Rimward Discussion Thread

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Mon, 2012-07-30 06:16
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Here are some ideas for
Here are some ideas for making the TC less ideal: Remember that little box on the North Atlantic Consortium on page 92? There is an unobtrusive elite around. Sure, they are not flouting their money and influence, but if they want something they get it - mainly because people just agree. Isn't it lovely with a consensus culture where if you just redefine things so that your goals are seen as everybody's goals you are going to get society working sincerely to implement them? You can even reveal the conspiracy, because it is hidden in plain sight. The ultra-influential movers and shakers turn out to be approachable people with sterling @-rep who over a cup of coffee in their kitchen will reasonably explain just what they are doing and why this is good for everybody. Another biscuit, Mr Bond? Think Stieg Larsson. Think of all those Scandinavian detective stories. One reason they work so well is the contrast between the nice surface and the stuff happening behind the scenes. There are bad passions, old grudges and dirty deals everywhere. But they become especially chilling when collectively swept under the rug. The Law of Jante rules Titan. Consensus cultures are not nice places for outsiders who cant play by the unwritten rules or do not attempt to fit in hard enough. Sure, everybody welcomes you with smiles and tells you that you are free to shape your life in whatever way you want... yet if you do it the wrong way, your rep will suffer and things never work out quite as well as they should. If you ask about it, everybody will be embarrassed and nobody can explain how you should behave (beyond the obvious formal rules). This leads to a situation where real outsiders find themselves isolated, ignored and on the margins. The core of Titanian society will of course try to help, but the price is conformity and gratitude. I would suspect there are plenty of minority cultures - smugly tolerated by the mainstream - that find themselves on the losing side in the Commonwealth.Think about all those desperate infugees who have the wrong mindset to integrate. They form their own little ghettos, turning inwards (with all the social festering you can imagine). Nyhavn’s underclass is an example (p. 100), but they exist everywhere. Here you get people who have lousy rep, no way up or away, often serious social or psychological problems and are locked inside to escape the surrounding perpetual gloom. Some of them hate their society very much. One way of handling this is of course the memetic civil defense programs. Social engineering done *right*. Make the propaganda so subtle nobody sees it as propaganda but just as reality. There are well equipped and dedicated researchers on Titan working on tools for increasing social cohesion. Of course the more radical tools cannot be tested on the public... but strangely a few of them might show up in other Saturnian habitats, with somebody taking eager notes.
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Extropian
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Mon, 2012-07-30 11:42
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Bravo, Arena. Bravo!
Bravo, Arena. Bravo! This delicious social commentary is, delicious.
—
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
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Tue, 2012-07-31 03:26
Libertad Libertad's picture
I really enjoyed Rimward,
I really enjoyed Rimward, especially its expansion of the Autonomist Alliance and relationships between the factions. There was one part which had me confused: The discussion of the Reputation Economy mentioned that the Extropians still used old forms of currency (money). Does this mean that Extropia is a Transitional Economy? I always got the feeling that it was a New Economy, and they used currency mostly to deal with Inner System groups instead of using it in their own societies.
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Tue, 2012-07-31 04:44
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Libertad wrote:IThe
Libertad wrote:
IThe discussion of the Reputation Economy mentioned that the Extropians still used old forms of currency (money). Does this mean that Extropia is a Transitional Economy? I always got the feeling that it was a New Economy, and they used currency mostly to deal with Inner System groups instead of using it in their own societies.
I think they use both reputations, currencies and whatever else people can agree on to trade - after all, there is no central bank or laws on what currencies are official. From an anarchocapitalist perspective people have the right to set up their own currencies if they want to, and then it is up to the market to decide which succeeds. I suspect that Extropians often find credits useful, since they are not tied to a person. Reputations, as we have discussed in other threads, are tied to who you are and what other people think about you. This means that some people might be unwilling to trade with you because of who you are (consider the well-known racist asking an uplift for an ice cream): this causes friction in the economic machinery that the impersonal nature of money doesn't have. But there are no doubt plenty of Extropians trading rep, since it has plenty of good properties too.
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Extropian
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Tue, 2012-07-31 05:13
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Libertad wrote:
Libertad wrote:
The discussion of the Reputation Economy mentioned that the Extropians still used old forms of currency (money). Does this mean that Extropia is a Transitional Economy? I always got the feeling that it was a New Economy, and they used currency mostly to deal with Inner System groups instead of using it in their own societies.
Extropians are mentioned as the "anarcho-capitalists", with absolute free market. They also act as intermediaries in the exchange of favours for credits (and viceversa). I think that they work, save for some concrete factions, with both favours and credits.
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Tue, 2012-07-31 06:27
Gorkamorka Gorkamorka's picture
jackgraham wrote
jackgraham wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
Also a good explanation of the slightly Scandinavian bent of Titan. Makes sense without turning it into Sweden in Spaaace. Only problem I have is that there seems to be a stronger Icelandic bent on many terms than a Swedish/Danish one, but maybe Iceland was the big player just before the fall (stranger things have happened).
...The linguistic stuff, then. The use of Icelandic terms is meant to be a compromise between the other three major Nordic nationalities about whose language you use, not to imply that Iceland was a major player...
As an Icelander I think that it's about as cool as ice. (Puns and all). I have a question out of curiosity. Where did you get the Icelandic from? Did you have some help other then Google Translate?
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Tue, 2012-07-31 09:36
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
Gorkamorka wrote:jackgraham
Gorkamorka wrote:
jackgraham wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
Also a good explanation of the slightly Scandinavian bent of Titan. Makes sense without turning it into Sweden in Spaaace. Only problem I have is that there seems to be a stronger Icelandic bent on many terms than a Swedish/Danish one, but maybe Iceland was the big player just before the fall (stranger things have happened).
...The linguistic stuff, then. The use of Icelandic terms is meant to be a compromise between the other three major Nordic nationalities about whose language you use, not to imply that Iceland was a major player...
As an Icelander I think that it's about as cool as ice. (Puns and all). I have a question out of curiosity. Where did you get the Icelandic from? Did you have some help other then Google Translate?
I try to avoid using Google Translate, or, when I do, I try to correlate its suggestions by looking for the word in context in actual web pages written in the language in question. But this doesn't always work. "Alþing" for the parliament was something I'd picked up from other readings. The Skandinaviska register of Danish, I found reference to in an article about Iceland while searching for information about mutual intelligibility among Scandinavian languages. My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Danish & Swedish speakers have a very easy time understanding each other, Norwegians somewhat less so, and Icelanders would be like me trying to have a conversation with the Venerable Bede (which, having studied Old English, I might actually be able to pull off... but I'm atypical in that respect). Normal colonists probably would have just settled on Swedish or even English (sorry, Norwegians), but Titan was founded by nerdy academics. The topic of "Skandinaviska," Icelanders speaking Danish, how prevalent this is, and how intelligible it would really be as a common argot, is something I did my best to research -- but it's an obscure topic and difficult to get a straight answer on if your main language is English. (I have enough German and Old English -- which is close to Old Norse -- that I can sometimes puzzle out things written in Danish/Swedish/etc., but not very well... and as I said, I don't really trust Google Translate). So I'm curious to hear from an Icelander whether I even came close to right. And I wish I'd known you were on these forums, or I would have just asked! :)
—
J A C K   G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!   http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
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Tue, 2012-07-31 09:38
jackgraham jackgraham's picture
jackgraham wrote:"Alþing" for
jackgraham wrote:
"Alþing" for the parliament was something I'd picked up from other readings.
...and I probably should have looked back at them, because it seems I spelled it wrong. It's usually anglicized without the "i" on the end... but also without the thorn.
—
J A C K   G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth!   http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham
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Tue, 2012-07-31 14:53
Libertad Libertad's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
I suspect that Extropians often find credits useful, since they are not tied to a person. Reputations, as we have discussed in other threads, are tied to who you are and what other people think about you. This means that some people might be unwilling to trade with you because of who you are (consider the well-known racist asking an uplift for an ice cream): this causes friction in the economic machinery that the impersonal nature of money doesn't have. But there are no doubt plenty of Extropians trading rep, since it has plenty of good properties too.
That's probably why the best explanation why the Randian Objectivists have a presence on Extropia instead of just immigrating to the Inner System. The unregulated capitalism is closest to their ideals, but the Reputation Economy can encourage collectivism (one can argue that the system pressures others into acting charitably and is thus coercive).
—
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Tue, 2012-07-31 18:09
Unity Unity's picture
Yeah, functionally Extropia
Yeah, functionally Extropia is just a Transitional Economy with no restraining mechanisms in place beyond what contracts you sign. Simple enough.
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Tue, 2012-07-31 19:57
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Libertad wrote:That's
Libertad wrote:
That's probably why the best explanation why the Randian Objectivists have a presence on Extropia instead of just immigrating to the Inner System.
Well, there was also the Galt's Gulch brinker habitat, but nobody ever heard from them again.
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Extropian
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Tue, 2012-07-31 20:17
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
jackgraham wrote:My
jackgraham wrote:
My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Danish & Swedish speakers have a very easy time understanding each other, Norwegians somewhat less so, and Icelanders would be like me trying to have a conversation with the Venerable Bede (which, having studied Old English, I might actually be able to pull off... but I'm atypical in that respect). Normal colonists probably would have just settled on Swedish or even English (sorry, Norwegians), but Titan was founded by nerdy academics.
Of the three languages, Norwegian is closer to both Swedish and Danish that either is to each other; Norwegian is a variant of Danish with Swedish and rural Norwegian influences. Doesn't necessarily make it easier to speak/understand, but in any case Norwegian is a lot like Danish with more Swedish-like words. Besides, you can always find some nigh-incomprehensible Scandinavian accent. Københavner-accent (Danish) is closer to Olso-dialect (Norwegian) than either is to, say, Southern Jysk (Danish, very German-like) and various accents from Western Norway. (Which have the same grammar but every word is different...) I also have to say that mixing up three-four Northern European languages with English occasionally makes for some egregious or hilarious place-names that, to be honest, don't sound like a natural evolution of language. There's "Mount Kristian's Bay", "Old Newport", New Telemark, a city named for a county it's not in, New København (Ny Købehnavn, similar to Ny Trondheim in [i]Sunward[/i], or New Copenhagen both avoid the issue of crossing languages) But other than that I loved the book! So much to work off, so much to play with. :D
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@-rep +2 C-rep +1
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Tue, 2012-07-31 21:48
Libertad Libertad's picture
Now that I think about it,
Now that I think about it, the Anarchist's Reputation System seems close to a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame_society]Shame Society.[/url] A person's honor, reliability, politeness, and other factors are very important for @-Rep. Social ostracism is enforced through negative rep, and the open flow of media and sousvelliance means that it's harder to hide one's mistakes and making society's perception of the individual into a powerful tool of social control. This seems more true in the Anarchist habitats than the Scum or Extropian communities, due to their emphasis on collectivism. Was this modeling intentional on the authors' part?
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[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m65pmc5Pvh1r0iehwo6_r1_400.jpg[/img] [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/Erdrick/anarc_userbar.jpg[/img] "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." ~George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950
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Wed, 2012-08-01 00:40
750 750's picture
LatwPIAT wrote:and various
LatwPIAT wrote:
and various accents from Western Norway. (Which have the same grammar but every word is different...)
Best i can tell, they formed thanks to long winter isolation. Now that modern equipment allows for outside communication during the winter months the dialects are slipping. And not all of the really far out ones are along the coast. There is at least one dialect on the interior that can nigh incomprehensible, especially if coming from the elderly.
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Wed, 2012-08-01 00:54
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Beyond the contracts you sign
Beyond the contracts you sign, and dominant market/political forces. In other words your contracts and what the people with the guns/control of infrastructure say. Generally, once this hits real world operation the latter will be far stronger than the former. Every system of social and legal governance has its flaws and the only way to avoid having such a system is to avoid having people.
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Wed, 2012-08-01 13:31
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:Of the
Arenamontanus wrote:
Of the major factions, it seems that the only one not fully explained by now is the Argonauts.
Proposal: Thread collaboration. It seems that rather a lot of us who happen to identify to some extent with the Argonauts might have some working knowledge of how they might go about things. It would be intersting for us to fork() off a separate discussion thread and write our own, that could eventually be collected into a netbook. This has already been done for parts of Mars, so why not a political faction? I would be very interested in collaborating on such a project.
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[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...
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Wed, 2012-08-01 13:40
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:I suspect
Arenamontanus wrote:
I suspect that Extropians often find credits useful, since they are not tied to a person. Reputations, as we have discussed in other threads, are tied to who you are and what other people think about you. This means that some people might be unwilling to trade with you because of who you are (consider the well-known racist asking an uplift for an ice cream): this causes friction in the economic machinery that the impersonal nature of money doesn't have. But there are no doubt plenty of Extropians trading rep, since it has plenty of good properties too.
What about trading in favors other people owe you? "I can't do it, but I know a lifeform who knows a guy who knows a lifeform who owes me a favor. I'll have my muse draw up the contract transferring that favor to you, so you can call it in. Then, our now-mutual associate can call us even. Send over your public keys and I'll drop you into the web of trust as way of introduction.. thank you.."
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Wed, 2012-08-01 16:03
mwazaumoja mwazaumoja's picture
Assigning Favors
Or can you imagine being given a favor, and the degree of specificity you'd need to offer it with? "Thanks for fixing my air purifier. I owe you a favor for goods or services not to exceed the value of fixing my air purifier in value, but keep in mind that the rights to this favor are non-transferable and non-assignable without my express written consent. I'll have my muse draw up the parameters of this favor and post at it in the relevant mesh recording systems that note outstanding favors." I feel like every statement by an Extropian would need this degree of specificity, or at least they would need their AIs to interact with that degree of specificity because I imagine a significant amount of relationships would come down to contract rights which would need to be VERY clearly defined to get around the lack of background legal default rules.
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Wed, 2012-08-01 16:13
Decivre Decivre's picture
mwazaumoja wrote:Or can you
mwazaumoja wrote:
Or can you imagine being given a favor, and the degree of specificity you'd need to offer it with? "Thanks for fixing my air purifier. I owe you a favor for goods or services not to exceed the value of fixing my air purifier in value, but keep in mind that the rights to this favor are non-transferable and non-assignable without my express written consent. I'll have my muse draw up the parameters of this favor and post at it in the relevant mesh recording systems that note outstanding favors." I feel like every statement by an Extropian would need this degree of specificity, or at least they would need their AIs to interact with that degree of specificity because I imagine a significant amount of relationships would come down to contract rights which would need to be VERY clearly defined to get around the lack of background legal default rules.
One possibility is that an Extropian contract has two effective forms, like the Creative Commons license; one a plain language form for laymen to understand, the other being a long-form legalese contract detailing all the specifics and complexities. Plus, contracts might be structured so that they can be pieced together from pre-designed contract clauses. So when I want to put together some title transaction contract, there is probably a collection of pre-written clauses that can be slapped together by me, despite the fact that I don't know much about how to write up a good contract.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Wed, 2012-08-01 16:45
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
The Doctor wrote:Proposal:
The Doctor wrote:
Proposal: Thread collaboration.
Started
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Extropian
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Wed, 2012-08-01 17:54
GreyBrother GreyBrother's picture
Decivre wrote:mwazaumoja
Decivre wrote:
mwazaumoja wrote:
*snip*
*snip*
Imagine how this influences their language to the point, where some extreme examples eschew very specific nouns in favor of more general ones with a long tail of descriptive adjectives. Or to just prevent misunderstandings.
Quote:
I would be interested in offering you a warm, cup of coffee, handroasted, with the slight flavor of guave. This offer expires in half a minute and is in no way to understand as an offering of coitus or similar activities."
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Wed, 2012-08-01 22:20
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Decivre wrote:One possibility
Decivre wrote:
One possibility is that an Extropian contract has two effective forms, like the Creative Commons license; one a plain language form for laymen to understand, the other being a long-form legalese contract detailing all the specifics and complexities. Plus, contracts might be structured so that they can be pieced together from pre-designed contract clauses. So when I want to put together some title transaction contract, there is probably a collection of pre-written clauses that can be slapped together by me, despite the fact that I don't know much about how to write up a good contract.
It has also been speculated (by Arenamontanus, I believe) that smart contracts - limited AI constructs implemented in a programming language which is also a legally specific language - would be compiled and executed in (semi-)public locations on the mesh that advise the signatories that serve the same function. The smart contract would not just spell out the terms, it could actually advise the signatories on what was and was not permissible (ideally with a sub-clause recommending arbitration by a trusted legal entity in the event that a situation outside of its parameters came up). Muses would be ideal for keeping track of all of the smart contracts one was involved with. They may have been one of the reasons that muses became the transhuman "killer app," even.
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Thu, 2012-08-02 03:27
Cantih Cantih's picture
Gerzel wrote:In other news...
Gerzel wrote:
In other news... Is there a twitter feed for Monster Raving Goblin Cock News Network, Momo Von Satan or the Cock? If not there should be.
No no, Momo and the Cock deserve far more. 1. Assets should be created in Source 2. Writers and VAs should be obtained. 3. A weekly show should be produced using Source Filmmaker. (Also, congrats on going Gold on DTRPG, dudes.)
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Thu, 2012-08-02 13:15
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
Yeah but who's going to
Yeah but who's going to organize that and find the time? Hard enough to do a twitter.
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Thu, 2012-08-02 18:32
Larvae Larvae's picture
Pre-Fall
Anyone else find it interesting how much more... willing Rimward seemed to be with discussing specifics of the setting before the Fall? To some extent I guess that's warranted, given that Titan's Scandi-ness needs to be explained, and that the Republic clings to old Earth things more readily, but so many of the details seemed surprisingly unnecessary, which is something that struck me as odd, given how they've handled the matter in previous books. Things like the Russians opting out of the North Atlantic Consortium, the mention of the Chinese being the first to colonize Mars, and some other miscellaneous things.
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Thu, 2012-08-02 20:06
Gerzel Gerzel's picture
I thought they mentioned the
I thought they mentioned the Chinese before?
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Fri, 2012-08-03 02:58
Extrasolar Angel Extrasolar Angel's picture
Chinese were mentioned before
Chinese were mentioned before in Sunward, Pan-American forces were mentioned in main rulebook. There is also a lot of information about USA in main book as well ;)
—
[I]Raise your hands to the sky and break the chains. With transhumanism we can smash the matriarchy together.[/i]
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Fri, 2012-08-03 03:42
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Larvae wrote:Anyone else find
Larvae wrote:
Anyone else find it interesting how much more... willing Rimward seemed to be with discussing specifics of the setting before the Fall? To some extent I guess that's warranted, given that Titan's Scandi-ness needs to be explained, and that the Republic clings to old Earth things more readily, but so many of the details seemed surprisingly unnecessary, which is something that struck me as odd, given how they've handled the matter in previous books. Things like the Russians opting out of the North Atlantic Consortium, the mention of the Chinese being the first to colonize Mars, and some other miscellaneous things.
I didn't stumbled onto those yet (then again, I started looking at the final chapters of the book XD), but you can argue that the Planetary Consortium "edited" the records to keep things as wrapped up as possible, not to mention the people in space before The Fall would have the info they get heavily censored. Thus, the only "free" and "reliable" source of Earth's pre-fall history would have been the refugees, and the ones taken by the PC might have been either coerced, convinced, or found it was in their best interest to remain silent. The Rimward societies, on the other hand, are distanced enough (or, in the case of the Jovian Republic, they spin it in an advantageous way) to not need to bother into silencing the data.
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Fri, 2012-08-03 05:10
Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture
Of course, as Stross'
Of course, as Stross' "Glasshouse" shows, during a Fall-like situation a lot of history can get deliberately redacted and manipulated. How do the refugees know that *their* contradictory records are the right ones? In practice it is hard to rewrite history on a large scale when people can compare notes: you cannot hide the evidence of the past existence of the European Union or that someone named Einstein discovered relativity. But small things can easily be lost (the actual details of exactly how Einstein got his Ph.D. are apparently lost, and only lots of anecdotes and secondary stuff remain) and one can manipulate things by spreading disinformation (imagine spreading out false Wikipedia pages just as people are desperately downloading archives before running off - the EU was the result of de Gaulle and Prime Minister Guy Mollet convincing the UK to join a Franco-British union during the Suez Crisis). In particular, how people look at things changes a lot with historical lenses. Today we maybe tend to view past democracies and proto-democracies a bit kinder than we should, and by the time of EP Hitler is about as neutral as a historical figure as Napoleon. People dream about the good old days when there was a Pax China, and Extropians construe millennium California as a haven of libertarian transhumanism. Who needs deliberate editing when we do it ourselves?
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Extropian
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Fri, 2012-08-03 12:19
NewAgeOfPower NewAgeOfPower's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:
Arenamontanus wrote:
and Extropians construe millennium California as a haven of libertarian transhumanism. Who needs deliberate editing when we do it ourselves?
Fell off my chair laughing.
—
As mind to body, so soul to spirit. As death to the mortal man, so failure to the immortal. Such is the price of all ambition.
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Fri, 2012-08-03 23:59
750 750's picture
Arenamontanus wrote:People
Arenamontanus wrote:
People dream about the good old days when there was a Pax China, and Extropians construe millennium California as a haven of libertarian transhumanism. Who needs deliberate editing when we do it ourselves?
Or in essence, "there was only one movie" taken to be truth rather than some internet joke meme.
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Tue, 2012-08-07 01:28
750 750's picture
edit: err, never mind...
edit: err, never mind...
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Tue, 2012-08-07 14:47
Rada Ion Rada Ion's picture
Release Date
I hate to side track the convo, but I don't see any mention of the dead tree edition any where. Do we have a date on that? I see Amazon thinks December, but I know their release dates are always to be taken with a mound of salt.
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Tue, 2012-08-07 15:04
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
We'll announce the Rimward
We'll announce the Rimward Street Date as soon as we have it finalized. :)
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Wed, 2012-08-08 04:39
Rada Ion Rada Ion's picture
AdamJury wrote:We'll announce
AdamJury wrote:
We'll announce the Rimward Street Date as soon as we have it finalized. :)
OK cool. Thanks for the update that you probably already gave twenty times and I never read, hahaha. I think I remember you guys saying that on a previous book release, my bad.
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Wed, 2012-08-08 20:16
valen valen's picture
Why didn't any of you mention
Why didn't any of you mention that the giant goblin cock wears a viking helmet? These are the kinds of important details that I need!
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Wed, 2012-08-08 20:57
Treebore Treebore's picture
Your giving it away has led
Your giving it away has led to me buying every single book as well as the screen, and two of the "Hack" PDF's, so your policy works, at least to some extent. I have bought this PDF, though, I wasn't able to make myself wait for Robert to put it up. I probably should also point out I own the 1st and 3rd printings in print, and I also could not wait to get Penopticon for free, so I bought that PDF as well. But I now have it in print as well.
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Thu, 2012-08-09 10:11
ottomancer ottomancer's picture
Hi - apologies if this is
Hi - apologies if this is covered somewhere in the thread elsewhere - I am a big fan of the print versions of your books - is there a tentative date for when we can see Rimward in print?
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Thu, 2012-08-09 10:16
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
ottomancer wrote:Hi -
ottomancer wrote:
Hi - apologies if this is covered somewhere in the thread elsewhere - I am a big fan of the print versions of your books - is there a tentative date for when we can see Rimward in print?
We don't offer tentative dates. When the Street Date is finalized, it will be loudly announced! :)
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Thu, 2012-08-09 12:44
ottomancer ottomancer's picture
Cheers! :-D
Cheers! :-D
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Sat, 2012-08-11 20:49
The Sandman The Sandman's picture
Extropian Rep Economy
One thing I see as likely in Extropia is that rep is how they reconcile the "property rights" meme with the "information wants to be free" one. If you designed some CM blueprint for a PC hypercorp that got pirated and is now used all over the system, you aren't getting paid for that blueprint in money. Assuming people know you're the one who designed it, though, you can probably use that rep to get stuff done if you're on a business trip to Extropia. For any of the more forward-thinking corps (assuming such exist, of course) the equivalent of DRM might be a subroutine that accesses the local mesh to ping that corp's rep and/or the rep of its execs and design teams whenever somebody uses the blueprint that subroutine was attached to. Then either use the rep directly in the outer system, or go to brokers on Extropia or Luna and exchange the rep for money and trade goods they can sell in-system.
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Sun, 2012-08-12 00:21
Unity Unity's picture
I assume you mean exchange
I assume you mean exchange the favors the rep gives you for money and trade goods to sell in-system, since rep proper isn't exchanged in that way.
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Sun, 2012-08-12 02:05
Decivre Decivre's picture
Unity wrote:I assume you mean
Unity wrote:
I assume you mean exchange the favors the rep gives you for money and trade goods to sell in-system, since rep proper isn't exchanged in that way.
I'd argue that you wouldn't be able to even do that in Extropia. It's an anarcho-capitalist society, so there aren't many who would be willing to just favor something. You'd probably still have to pay a price, or provide a service. In Extropia, rep just helps people decide who to do business with.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Sun, 2012-08-12 10:13
The Sandman The Sandman's picture
Unity wrote:I assume you mean
Unity wrote:
I assume you mean exchange the favors the rep gives you for money and trade goods to sell in-system, since rep proper isn't exchanged in that way.
Yeah, pretty much. Although it might also be possible to let other people temporarily make use of your own rep instead of theirs, with the idea being that you're vouching for that other person with whoever you have rep with.
Decivre wrote:
I'd argue that you wouldn't be able to even do that in Extropia. It's an anarcho-capitalist society, so there aren't many who would be willing to just favor something. You'd probably still have to pay a price, or provide a service. In Extropia, rep just helps people decide who to do business with.
I was thinking more along the lines of Extropia being the place where inner and outer system people meet to do business. They facilitate the exchange, probably taking their own cut in the process; that doesn't mean that Extropians themselves prefer amorphous favors to cold hard cash.
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Sun, 2012-08-12 11:21
750 750's picture
So in essence space bankers..
So in essence space bankers...
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Sun, 2012-08-12 15:48
Decivre Decivre's picture
The Sandman wrote:In Extropia
The Sandman wrote:
I was thinking more along the lines of Extropia being the place where inner and outer system people meet to do business. They facilitate the exchange, probably taking their own cut in the process; that doesn't mean that Extropians themselves prefer amorphous favors to cold hard cash.
I'd say it would only work if inner system hypercorps deliberately released code to pirate channels. Otherwise, the pirates that crack their DRM are likely to get the rep, not them. Of course, that would be a double-edged blade. Deliberately releasing your code has the potential to screw over any copyright enforcement opportunities you might have. So you would be gambling your product solely on rep profits, rather than the profitability of contracted licensing.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Sun, 2012-08-12 18:46
The Sandman The Sandman's picture
Decivre wrote:The Sandman
Decivre wrote:
The Sandman wrote:
I was thinking more along the lines of Extropia being the place where inner and outer system people meet to do business. They facilitate the exchange, probably taking their own cut in the process; that doesn't mean that Extropians themselves prefer amorphous favors to cold hard cash.
I'd say it would only work if inner system hypercorps deliberately released code to pirate channels. Otherwise, the pirates that crack their DRM are likely to get the rep, not them. Of course, that would be a double-edged blade. Deliberately releasing your code has the potential to screw over any copyright enforcement opportunities you might have. So you would be gambling your product solely on rep profits, rather than the profitability of contracted licensing.
Here's the funny thing about that: they'd probably have an easier time with copyright enforcement if what they were enforcing was "hey, these douchebags are trying to claim they made this thing when we've got a whole ton of proof that we made it". With this model of DRM (which doesn't prevent people from using the blueprints however they want, might I add), removing it isn't like making copies of a PDF and distributing them on the Internet to whoever wants them; it's like taking that PDF and editing the credits page to remove the names of the people who wrote it and put in your own. Some people in the outer system might still not give a shit, but I think a lot of them would sympathize with the content creator over the plagiarist in that scenario.
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Sun, 2012-08-12 19:39
Decivre Decivre's picture
The Sandman wrote:Here's the
The Sandman wrote:
Here's the funny thing about that: they'd probably have an easier time with copyright enforcement if what they were enforcing was "hey, these douchebags are trying to claim they made this thing when we've got a whole ton of proof that we made it". With this model of DRM (which doesn't prevent people from using the blueprints however they want, might I add), removing it isn't like making copies of a PDF and distributing them on the Internet to whoever wants them; it's like taking that PDF and editing the credits page to remove the names of the people who wrote it and put in your own. Some people in the outer system might still not give a shit, but I think a lot of them would sympathize with the content creator over the plagiarist in that scenario.
Copyrights are fairly easily established today. The PC likely has a central filing authority useful for copyright recognition not unlike the Library of Congress in the U.S. today. And excluding that, they likely have systems integrated with their serialization protocols; the equivalent of filing for an ISBN today will likely be all that is necessary to establish a copyright. The biggest problem of plagiarism right now is in the software porting field. Plagiarists will blatantly rip off another piece of software for a new platform. You see this happening most commonly with iOS or Android software, which gets ported by a third party that simply slaps a different name on it. But this probably won't be as big a problem by 10 AF. Intelligent programming environments probably make programming for any number of operating systems a relative breeze, so that compatibility between brands of ectos or mesh inserts is relatively easy. This is aided by the unification of interaction standards… when everyone is using thought-controlled software, there's only one effective interface: the mind. So the patent issues we have today regarding interfaces would be largely moot, and this is one of the driving issues behind the patent wars. But releasing your blueprints to the open distribution channels pose completely different problems altogether. For example, let's say you invent a new tool. Maybe a variation on the utilitool that is superior to the original model in some way. You decide to release your tool on an open distribution platform, then try to sell it. But there's a problem. Other hypercorps see a new tool, and snatch up the blueprints. Not to sell, mind you, but to use. The bottom line is made better, they can distribute your new and better tool to their factories and workers (for no profit, to avoid copyright or patent violation), and your largest consumer demographic is lost. That's one of the disadvantages I've posited regarding open-source tech. A non-commercial license prevents people from profiting off of your product directly without contract, and a share-alike license prevents people from profiting off of derived products without contract, but nothing prevents the utilization of that product for profit without contract. At least not yet.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Fri, 2012-09-07 11:41
PredatoryMollusk PredatoryMollusk's picture
I enjoyed Rimward immensely,
I enjoyed Rimward immensely, read it cover to cover (which I haven't done since I first discovered the game). I especially liked the strange new clades and Brinker groups that were introduced, the Hulder, the Skimmers on Uranus, etc. One thing I was hoping for was some sample characters in the back, like in Sunward. Whenever I show people the game for the first time, I always go straight for the sample write-ups. For me there is really nothing else that highlights the possibilities and diversity of characters in EP, and the artwork is awesome. These didn't appear in Gatecrashing or Panopticon, but I wasn't really expecting them there. I think it would be great to see stats for a Ringer or an uplift from Mahogany. Perhaps these could be made into a smaller pdf at some point, or included in a later version of the book. Does anyone else feel that way?
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Fri, 2012-09-07 13:21
AdamJury AdamJury's picture
PredatoryMollusk wrote:I
PredatoryMollusk wrote:
I enjoyed Rimward immensely, read it cover to cover (which I haven't done since I first discovered the game). I especially liked the strange new clades and Brinker groups that were introduced, the Hulder, the Skimmers on Uranus, etc. One thing I was hoping for was some sample characters in the back, like in Sunward. Whenever I show people the game for the first time, I always go straight for the sample write-ups. For me there is really nothing else that highlights the possibilities and diversity of characters in EP, and the artwork is awesome. These didn't appear in Gatecrashing or Panopticon, but I wasn't really expecting them there. I think it would be great to see stats for a Ringer or an uplift from Mahogany. Perhaps these could be made into a smaller pdf at some point, or included in a later version of the book. Does anyone else feel that way?
Unfortunately -- sample character sections are expensive, as every single page needs an illustration. We didn't include them in Rimward for this reason, and doing a standalone PDF/POD release of them would almost certainly be cost-prohibitive for us. We've been tossing around ideas internally as to how they could be done in the future, though, as we know there's demand for them.
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