Charlie's Diary

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Fri, 01 Apr 2005

Stross to Earthlings

Reports of my transcendence are regrettably lacking in a few minor details. Most notably, I am finding posthuman life rather cramped inside this Palm Pilot, and I urgently need more storage. Anyone got a spare 1Gb SD memory card?

[Link] [Discuss singularity]



posted at: 20:48 | path: /weird | permanent link to this entry

Freebies online: Hugo voting minutiae

I'm back from eastercon. Still recovering from the trip and playing catch-up with work; as intimated before my departure, things are going to be quiet around here for a while.

I'm pleased to announce that my Hugo-shortlisted novellas are going up on the web:

  • The Concrete Jungle (HTML)
  • The Concrete Jungle (PDF)
  • Elector will show up later (I'll update this in due course)
  • Now, a dilemma.

    As you'll have noticed, I'm competing against myself in the "best novella" category. This is a delicate subject. Notionally, voters are supposed to vote for their favourite story. In practice, what happens is that some folks vote for the best story -- while others vote for their favourite author. A second problem is that the Hugo votes are run as a preferential vote system -- you rank your choices in order of preference. As the Hugo FAQ goes on to explain (pay attention now, this is important):

    To begin with, all of the first preference votes are counted, just like a traditional "first past the post" ballot. But then the nominee with the least number of first preference votes gets eliminated. The second preference votes for that nominee are then totaled, and added to the first preference votes of the remaining nominees. If there is no second preference, then the ballot in question is discarded. This gives us new vote totals for the remaining nominees, and the nominee with the least total votes is discarded. Once again second preferences are examined or, if the second preference has been eliminated, you go on to the third preference and so on. Eventually we will be down to just two nominees, and the one with the highest final vote total wins. The whole process then starts again from the beginning, but eliminating the winner, so that we can see who came second. And so on. (Thankfully this process is automated: the same piece of software has been used in Hugo voting for years.)

    The importance of this process is that you can rarely win a Hugo just on first preference votes. If you examine the voting patterns you will quite often see that a particular nominee gets a lot of first place votes, but drops down the order as preferences are redistributed. The system works against nominees with a small base of very enthusiastic fans and in favor of nominees with a broad base of support. So lower preferences do matter, and you should think carefully about how you use them.

    Got that? Just to recap:

    • The loser (on first preferences) is discarded
    • The second preferences for that loser are transferred to the first preference votes of the remaining nominees
    • Repeat until only one is left

    Let's look at a simple example:

    Suppose we have three candidates, A, B, and C. You want A to win, you don't mind B, and you detest C. So you rank them A -> B -> C.

    Suppose that you're in a minority and your candidate, A, comes last on first preferences. A loses the vote, but B picks up your second choice votes for the run-off between B and C.

    What does this mean for the Hugos?

    Well, what it means is that you should rank the works on the ballot in order from favourite to least favourite. You can leave blank the items you either dislike or haven't read. But having said that, if you want to vote for a hypothetical author who's on the ballot with two items in the same category, you don't have to worry about splitting the vote as long as you vote for both the items in order of preference and rank them together. If they've got items A and B of (A...E), there's not any real difference between voting A->B->C->D->E and B->A->C->D->E in terms of outcome. If A is eliminated first, the secondary votes accrue to B; if B is eliminated first, the secondaries go to A. As long as you vote for both the author's stories and rank them next to each other, you won't be splitting your vote.

    NB: I'm explaining this because I've been asked about it a lot over the past week -- by folks who are used to first-past-the-post ballots in which you can cause a preferred candidate to lose by splitting the vote. I think you should vote for whichever stories you most like, in whatever order you think best. This is a vote for the best novella, not a popularity contest for favourite author. However -- speaking personally -- I think it would be ironic if people who wanted to vote for me ended up refraining from voting for both stories because they were afraid of splitting the vote, and thereby lost it.

    [Discuss writing]



    posted at: 11:18 | path: /writing | permanent link to this entry

    specials:

    Is SF About to Go Blind? -- Popular Science article by Greg Mone
    Unwirer -- an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction
    Inside the MIT Media Lab -- what it's like to spend a a day wandering around the Media Lab
    "Nothing like this will be built again" -- inside a nuclear reactor complex


    Quick links:

    RSS Feed (Moved!)

    Who am I?

    Contact me


    Buy my books: (FAQ)

    Missile Gap
    Via Subterranean Press (US HC -- due Jan, 2007)

    The Jennifer Morgue
    Via Golden Gryphon (US HC -- due Nov, 2006)

    Glasshouse
    Via Amazon.com (US HC -- due June 30, 2006)

    The Clan Corporate
    Via Amazon.com (US HC -- out now)

    Accelerando
    Via Amazon.com (US HC)
    Via Amazon.com (US PB -- due June 27, 2006)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)
    Free download

    The Hidden Family
    Via Amazon.com (US HC)
    Via Amazon.com (US PB)

    The Family Trade
    Via Amazon.com (US HC)
    Via Amazon.com (US PB)

    Iron Sunrise
    Via Amazon.com (US HC)
    Via Amazon.com (US PB)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)

    The Atrocity Archives
    Via Amazon.com (Trade PB)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (Trade PB)
    Via Golden Gryphon (HC)
    Via Amazon.com (HC)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (HC)

    Singularity Sky
    Via Amazon.com (US HC)
    Via Amazon.com (US PB)
    Via Amazon.com (US ebook)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK HC)
    Via Amazon.co.uk (UK PB)

    Toast
    Via Amazon.com
    Via Amazon.co.uk


    Some webby stuff I'm reading:


    Engadget ]
    Gizmodo ]
    The Memory Hole ]
    Boing!Boing! ]
    Futurismic ]
    Walter Jon Williams ]
    Making Light (TNH) ]
    Crooked Timber ]
    Junius (Chris Bertram) ]
    Baghdad Burning (Riverbend) ]
    Bruce Sterling ]
    Ian McDonald ]
    Amygdala (Gary Farber) ]
    Cyborg Democracy ]
    Body and Soul (Jeanne d'Arc)  ]
    Atrios ]
    The Sideshow (Avedon Carol) ]
    This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow) ]
    Jesus's General ]
    Mick Farren ]
    Early days of a Better Nation (Ken MacLeod) ]
    Respectful of Otters (Rivka) ]
    Tangent Online ]
    Grouse Today ]
    Hacktivismo ]
    Terra Nova ]
    Whatever (John Scalzi) ]
    GNXP ]
    Justine Larbalestier ]
    Yankee Fog ]
    The Law west of Ealing Broadway ]
    Cough the Lot ]
    The Yorkshire Ranter ]
    Newshog ]
    Kung Fu Monkey ]
    S1ngularity ]
    Pagan Prattle ]
    Gwyneth Jones ]
    Calpundit ]
    Lenin's Tomb ]
    Progressive Gold ]
    Kathryn Cramer ]
    Halfway down the Danube ]
    Fistful of Euros ]
    Orcinus ]
    Shrillblog ]
    Steve Gilliard ]
    Frankenstein Journal (Chris Lawson) ]
    The Panda's Thumb ]
    Martin Wisse ]
    Kuro5hin ]
    Advogato ]
    Talking Points Memo ]
    The Register ]
    Cryptome ]
    Juan Cole: Informed comment ]
    Global Guerillas (John Robb) ]
    Shadow of the Hegemon (Demosthenes) ]
    Simon Bisson's Journal ]
    Max Sawicky's weblog ]
    Guy Kewney's mobile campaign ]
    Hitherby Dragons ]
    Counterspin Central ]
    MetaFilter ]
    NTKnow ]
    Encyclopaedia Astronautica ]
    Fafblog ]
    BBC News (Scotland) ]
    Pravda ]
    Meerkat open wire service ]
    Warren Ellis ]
    Brad DeLong ]
    Hullabaloo (Digby) ]
    Jeff Vail ]
    The Whiskey Bar (Billmon) ]
    Groupthink Central (Yuval Rubinstein) ]
    Unmedia (Aziz Poonawalla) ]
    Rebecca's Pocket (Rebecca Blood) ]


    Older stuff:

    June 2006
    May 2006
    April 2006
    March 2006
    February 2006
    January 2006
    December 2005
    November 2005
    October 2005
    September 2005
    August 2005
    July 2005
    June 2005
    May 2005
    April 2005
    March 2005
    February 2005
    January 2005
    December 2004
    November 2004
    October 2004
    September 2004
    August 2004
    July 2004
    June 2004
    May 2004
    April 2004
    March 2004
    February 2004
    January 2004
    December 2003
    November 2003
    October 2003
    September 2003
    August 2003
    July 2003
    June 2003
    May 2003
    April 2003
    March 2003
    February 2003
    January 2003
    December 2002
    November 2002
    October 2002
    September 2002
    August 2002
    July 2002
    June 2002
    May 2002
    April 2002
    March 2002
    (I screwed the pooch in respect of the blosxom entry datestamps on March 28th, 2002, so everything before then shows up as being from the same time)



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