Ansible (software)

Ansible, a free-software platform for configuring and managing computers, combines multi-node software deployment, ad hoc task execution, and configuration management. It manages nodes (which must have Python 2.4 or later installed on them) over SSH or over PowerShell. Modules work over JSON and standard output and can be written in any programming language. The system uses YAML to express reusable descriptions of systems.

Michael DeHaan, the author of the provisioning server application Cobbler and co-author of the Func framework for remote administration, developed the platform. It is included as part of the Fedora distribution of Linux, owned by Red Hat Inc., and is also available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Scientific Linux via Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) as well as for other operating systems. Ansible, Inc commercially supports and sponsors Ansible On 16 October, 2015, Red Hat Inc. announced that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ansible, Inc.

Ansible

An ansible is a fictional machine capable of instantaneous or superluminal communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance whatsoever with no delay. Ansibles occur as plot devices in science fiction literature.

Origin

Ursula K. Le Guin coined the word ansible in her 1966 novel Rocannon's World. Le Guin states that she derived the name from the word "answerable", as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances. Her award-winning 1974 novel The Dispossessed, a book in the Hainish Cycle, tells of the invention of the ansible.

In reality

Current technology cannot construct an ansible. The theory of special relativity (and equally well the theory of general relativity) predicts that some proposed methods of creating such device would cause communication from the future to the past – a form of time travel which in general raises problems of causality (but not ones that couldn't be overcome based on other methods).

David Langford

David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible.

Personal background

David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he first became involved in science fiction fandom. Langford is married to Hazel and is the brother of the musician and artist Jon Langford.

His first job was as a weapons physicist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire. In 1985 he set up a "tiny and informally run software company" with science fiction writer Christopher Priest, called Ansible Information after Langford's news-sheet. Langford is now the sole active partner.

Increasing hearing difficulties have reduced Langford's participation in some fan activities. His own jocular attitude towards the matter has led to such nicknames as "that deaf twit Langford"; and a chapbook anthology of his work was titled Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man.

Software

Computer software also called a program or simply software is any set of instructions that directs a computer to perform specific tasks or operations. Computer software consists of computer programs, libraries and related non-executable data (such as online documentation or digital media). Computer software is non-tangible, contrasted with computer hardware, which is the physical component of computers. Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be realistically used without the other.

At the lowest level, executable code consists of machine language instructions specific to an individual processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU). A machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also (indirectly) cause something to appear on a display of the computer system—a state change which should be visible to the user. The processor carries out the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed to "jump" to a different instruction, or interrupted.

Software (novel)

Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983. The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988.

Plot summary

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

Software (development cooperation)

See also

Further reading