{"id":366,"date":"2009-02-16T07:06:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-15T22:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/16\/review-of-charles-stross-halting-state\/"},"modified":"2009-02-16T07:06:47","modified_gmt":"2009-02-15T22:06:47","slug":"review-of-charles-stross-halting-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/16\/review-of-charles-stross-halting-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Charles Stross&#8217; Halting State"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"floatleft\">\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=daveva-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0441016073&#038;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>A while back I read my first <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antipope.org\/charlie\/\">Charlie Stross<\/a> book, <a href=\"http:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/?postid=323\">Accelerando<\/a>.  I really liked it, so much so that I bought a few more Charlie Stross books.  This is the second one that I read. <\/p>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<p>I was hopeful, because the title refers to a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Halting_problem\">classic decision problem<\/a> that basically asks you to determine whether a given program will complete when given a certain input.  In the general case, this is a very hard problem, and leads to all sorts of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach\"> Goedel, Escher, and Bach<\/a> type questions about how much you can infer about a system from inside the system. <\/p>\n<p><P><\/p>\n<p>The book has a very EU feel, and in fact it was hard for me to get into the first chapter because of the strong colloquial language.  It actually turned me off a bit, and I had a lot of difficulty relating with the (near future, modern-day) world and characters.  So it took me a lot longer than usual to make my way through this book, but about halfway through it really picked up.<\/p>\n<p><P><br \/>\nI have talked about this before, but this book is basically about a theft that occurs in a virtual world (an alternate reality) and the investigators in the real world.  I&#8217;m not really a big fan of these kinds of things, and even less when it is a virtual alternate reality.  I ended up enjoying this book though because there was a lot in there that a programmer can enjoy and Charlie really knows what he is talking about when it comes down to bits, bytes, pointers and databases. <\/p>\n<p><P><br \/>\nI was a bit disappointed in the ending, which didn&#8217;t give much closure, and didn&#8217;t let the reader feel like there was a real victory.  The story just kind of wraps up (in a logical way) but there wasn&#8217;t any sort of comeuppance for the &#8220;bad guys&#8221; (who were very ill-defined &#8211; intentionally &#8211; in the first place.)  I did enjoy the book, but not nearly as much as Accelerando.  I have a few more Charlie Stross books on the file though, and I&#8217;m looking forward to them. <\/p>\n<p><P><br \/>\nInteresting quote: &#8220;Nobody ever imagined a band of Orcs would steal a database table&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back I read my first Charlie Stross book, Accelerando. I really liked it, so much so that I bought a few more Charlie Stross books. This is the second one that I read. I was hopeful, because the title refers to a classic decision problem that basically asks you to determine whether a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}