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Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5

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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by JohnRoth   » Sat Sep 30, 2017 5:25 pm

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quite possibly a cat wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:
I don't think you understand what the term 'dominant' means in genetics. It applies to single genes only. If you have a function that's scattered over multiple locations on multiple chromosomes (the usual case) and the mod plugs the changes into both copies of each affected gene, the children will have it on only one chromosome of each pair, and many of the grandchildren will inherit only part of it. That is, essential pieces will be missing.



Context clues in the books indicate that "dominant" meant "gene drive for 100% inheritance".

Similar to how "wormhole" means "spooky handwavium".

JohnRoth wrote:Yep. And since a mod like that touches quite a bit of the genome, there are going to be bits and pieces in many places on several chromosomes. There is no way of insuring something like that sticks together without some Really Interesting Mechanism (aka hand-waving.)



Or you put all the new proteins on one chromosome, and silence anything you want to remove. Which would involve some pretty impressive bioengineering, but is totally possible.


The first piece is right: it certainly would be a very impressive piece of bio-engineering. The second piece (is totally possible) is questionable.

I used to think that it could work that way, but then the science got updated. What's new in the last few years is that chromosomes have a very specific 3D structure in each cell type and it's different in different cell types. That structure in large part determines what genes get expressed and not expressed.

If you put the new stuff on a separate (new) chromosome, that chromosome would have to do more contortions than Houdini to function. To work at all, the new chromosome would have to modify the cellular mechanisms underlying the process of sperm meeting egg so there was a new phase where instructions got copied off of it to make changes to the rest of the genome. That's what I've seen called the "genome modification platform" in some fiction, and it has to be there first.

That would light up any DNA analysis like a fireworks show saying: major gene mods present. That would make it difficult to hide, for example, Mesan Alphas.

Oh, and it adds another whole layer of weird to figure out how to handle multiple incompatible mods inherited from different parents.

(PS - please be a bit careful editing posts. I've had to fix two mis-attributions in this thread already.)
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:59 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:




(PS - please be a bit careful editing posts. I've had to fix two mis-attributions in this thread already.)



The problems probably came from me. My issue is that I never learned how to do these things correctly and I semi-experiment.

Is there some way I could actually learn how to do things right?
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by Weird Harold   » Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:15 pm

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ldwechsler wrote:Is there some way I could actually learn how to do things right?


faq.php?mode=bbcode

The one thing to remember is that every [...] begins a command and most require a [/...] to end the command. Almost everything comes in pairs.

In the specific case of attributing quotes, every [quote ] has to be matched to a [/quote ] (extra space added to keep from quoting part of the sentence.)

One trick to keep things straight is to add returns before each BBC tag so everything lines up on the left side of the page. That lets you identify the start and end of each pair.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:13 pm

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MaxxQ wrote:
The mod IS available, for anyone who wants it. It's just that apparently, a lot of people either DON'T want it (at the moment), or possibly can't afford it (yes, the SKM/SEM has a fairly high standard of living, but that doesn't mean everyone can afford everything), or maybe their religion forbids it, or whatever reason you care to imagine.

Sure, it makes sense - to YOU - that everyone on Sphinx (or another high-grav world) ought to have the mods, but people are people, and some will want it/them, and some won't. Just like some people prefer Fords over Chevys (I'm into classic Mopar, myself), and others don't even WANT a car. Are you going to force it on those who don't?

And based on the way the mod works (denser bones, higher efficiency muscles, etc) it's likely something that has to be in place prior to fetal development - so before fertilization.

There's always going to be a certain percentage of a planet like Sphinx that moved there, whether temporarily or permanently, and those people (I assume) can't get the mods. (BTW that group includes Honor's mother) So some percentage won't have mods because they weren't born expecting to move and live on a heavier grav world.

And people there shorter term might well not want to have the mods done for any kids they plan to have because they expect to move back to normal grav worlds in a few years; were the mods don't offer much benefit. Easier to use grav plates or counter grav for those few years to shield their kids from the higher grav rather than permanently change all their descendants DNA.

(And even with virtually perfect contraceptive implants I bet there's still some unplanned pregnancies where "darn I really meant to get the gene mod done before we had kids; but oops. Guess at least the first one will be non-modded")
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by JohnRoth   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 12:29 am

JohnRoth
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ldwechsler wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:




(PS - please be a bit careful editing posts. I've had to fix two mis-attributions in this thread already.)



The problems probably came from me. My issue is that I never learned how to do these things correctly and I semi-experiment.

Is there some way I could actually learn how to do things right?


You were only responsible for one of them.

Weird Harold's comments are exactly correct. Beyond that:

Having an end quote hiding in the middle of a text block is a bit of a bummer - it tends to mess things up unless it's caught.

The start quote absolutely has to have quotes around the operand.

Unfolding the usual embedded quote usually only requires noticing that the beginning has two or three quotes in a row. Cut the first two and past after the first end quote, then cut the first quote from that and paste after the second end quote. Some situations are a bit more intricate.

Check your work with the Preview button. You have no idea how many times I've muttered a few nasty things and had to go back and fix it.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 12:55 am

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JohnRoth wrote:You were only responsible for one of them.

Weird Harold's comments are exactly correct. Beyond that:

Having an end quote hiding in the middle of a text block is a bit of a bummer - it tends to mess things up unless it's caught.

...

Check your work with the Preview button. You have no idea how many times I've muttered a few nasty things and had to go back and fix it.


Especially annoying are orphaned end-quote tags that match up with a newly quoted message. That usually comes from someone corrupting or deleting the open-quote tags because they get a "too many nested quotes" error.

Preview is your friend and should be used extensively to make sure your attributions and quotes are correct.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by ldwechsler   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:36 am

ldwechsler
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Posts: 1235
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Weird Harold wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:You were only responsible for one of them.

Weird Harold's comments are exactly correct. Beyond that:

Having an end quote hiding in the middle of a text block is a bit of a bummer - it tends to mess things up unless it's caught.

...

Check your work with the Preview button. You have no idea how many times I've muttered a few nasty things and had to go back and fix it.


Especially annoying are orphaned end-quote tags that match up with a newly quoted message. That usually comes from someone corrupting or deleting the open-quote tags because they get a "too many nested quotes" error.

Preview is your friend and should be used extensively to make sure your attributions and quotes are correct.


Thank you. I'm not sure I fully understand but I'll try. My problem is that I STILL am not certain of what you actually meant.

I THINK what you're writing is that I should move some of the opening operands to the center...before each quote. But I will experiment.

Thanks.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by JohnRoth   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:53 am

JohnRoth
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I was thinking an example would help. (I'm going to use curly braces {} instead of brackets to avoid confusing the system more than it is already.)

Consider the following:

{quote="toast"}Damn! jam all over my fingers
{quote="eggs"}Cluck!
{quote="spam"}burp!
{/quote}{/quote}{/quote}

This would be rejected because it's three deep. if we unwind it, it becomes:

{quote="spam"}burp!{/quote}

{quote="eggs"}Cluck!{/quote}

{quote="toast"}damn! Jam all over my fingers!{/quote}

And it looks like this:

spam wrote:burp!


eggs wrote:Cluck!


toast wrote:damn! Jam all over my fingers!
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 8:46 am

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JohnRoth wrote:I was thinking an example would help. (I'm going to use curly braces {} instead of brackets to avoid confusing the system more than it is already.)
Yep, the board software just cares about depth not how many quotes there are in a message. So sometimes people will get fancy and split up one person's quote into multiple parts to reply to each, (or, simpler, just trim away parts that they aren't responding to). But that's advanced quote mangling.

At the simple level when you're just trying to get under the 3 depth limit so the board will let you post the key thing is to delete paired [ quote="person" ] and [ /quote ] pairs - otherwise attribution gets mangled.

Here's what a simple example would look like if 2 people said hi and did the board default of bottom posting; and then a 3rd also said hi.

---------------
{quote="Bob"}{quote="Alice"}Hi I'm Alice{/quote}
hi Alice, I'm Bob{/quote}
Hi Bob, I'm Carol

which looks like
Bob wrote:
Alice wrote:Hi I'm Alice

hi Alice, I'm Bob
Hi Bob, I'm Carol
---------------

fine so far but when Doug tries to reply the BBCode looks like this and exceeds the max quote depth.
---------------
{quote="Carol"}{quote="Bob"}{quote="Alice"}Hi I'm Alice{/quote}
hi Alice, I'm Bob{/quote}
Hi Bob, I'm Carol{/quote}
Hi Carol I'm Doug

The simple, but wrong, thing to do is delete one of the [ quote= ] blocks, but that leave a dangling [ /quote ] and can misatribute quotes. For example deleting {quote="Alice"} results in

{quote="Carol"}{quote="Bob"}Hi I'm Alice{/quote}
hi Alice, I'm Bob{/quote}
Hi Bob, I'm Carol{/quote}
Hi Carol I'm Doug

Carol wrote:
Bob wrote:Hi I'm Alice

hi Alice, I'm Bob
Hi Bob, I'm Carol[/quote]Hi Carol I'm Doug
---------------

Deleting Alice's post is fine, it's the oldest, but you need to delete the whole thing; so
---------------
{quote="Carol"}{quote="Bob"}hi Alice, I'm Bob{/quote}
Hi Bob, I'm Carol{/quote}
Hi Carol I'm Doug

Carol wrote:
Bob wrote:hi Alice, I'm Bob
Hi Bob, I'm Carol
Hi Carol I'm Doug
---------------

Hope that helps.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #5
Post by MaxxQ   » Sun Oct 01, 2017 1:22 pm

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Not trying to sort through all that to quote, but...

Isn't it supposed to be Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice?

Where'd Doug come from? :mrgreen:
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