For those of you who haven't been reading the status line at the top of the main page, we're almost done with the chapter.
If all goes well, you might expect to see it sometime early in August.

-- Bob
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The Internet Is For Norns.

I thought this up waaaaay back, as a way of having asteroid racing doable within the bounds of human reactions. OGJ-period, it'd likely be going open source.
Basic problem is that stuff happens too fast for people, and some manuvers are likely going to be too tight to maintain consciousness (depending on ships and inertial compensators and whatnot) so something needs doing.
The solution I had in mind is essentially a high-resolution autopilot combined with sensors and computer systems sufficient to (reasonably accurately) predict the motions of stuff in one's flightpath based on velocity vectors.
So how this works is that, say, coming to a stationary assortment of rocks, you program the course through them as far ahead of time as you feel comfortable; computer's going to know how sharply your ship can turn and accelerate and thus what you can and can't do. Then, as you get closer, you continually fine-tune things; maybe some of the rocks are moving and your prior course would take you into them, or from long range your sensors didn't see some of them.
In stereotypical dogfighting, you probably can't do things as far ahead, but with practice and skill one could probably figure things out a few seconds ahead of time. In traditional, non-inertial-compensated craft, the basic idea is that the pilot could sketch out controlled manuvers that have them blacking out but leaving periods in between to adjust tactics and figure out what's next.
Or yeah, we could just leave all of it solely to the AIs, but what fun is that?
(why yes, I am procrastinating working on schoolwork!)

Submitted for approval.
There was much debate and study on the methods and materials to be used in the segregation of 'untainted hardtech' instruments and materials in the Miranda starship.
Many methods were tried, many materials. Most of these were a failure, with 'Wavium gleefully soaking into the material and upgrading it or changing it, until one lab assistant stumbled upon the currently-used method.
While the processing core and computer operations practice a physical and electronic segregation, the primary method of protecting the unWaved gear is the method discovered on April 1st of 2009, and it's a very simple method.
Ask.
The current procedure involves a list kept in the ship's AI, and every morning, the senior officers of the Miranda go to main engineering, stand in front of the intermix chamber, and ask, simply and politely, that the 'Wave leave these pieces of equipment alone, thank you.
And it works. Perfectly. Due care is still taken to prevent any of the listed items from being 'dunked' in a 'wavetank, but by and large, a little politeness is all that is needed.. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Considering how many cyberpunk fans (or, at least, Bubblegum Crisis fans) there are around here, I thought this Register story might be of interest.
Who'd've thought that chrome limbs would be more popular than realistic limbs? I guess that point break for obviously-artificial limbs in GURPS Cyberpunk doesn't pass the reality check...

-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Please note that everything I am about to write is just the result of my idle thoughts on the current arc, and very much more intended as an invitation to debate than a final proposal.
That said... I kind of get the impression that the storyline is floundering a bit, even with the Huruhi thing resolved at the meta level. Perhaps even more so, in fact - her nature and position is now only cause for in-character mystery/conflict, and the Boskone... uh, yeah, we're...fighting them, or something.
But! Is it heating up to a break point? Is it time to start bringing in a/the major villian? Where are we, in the plot arc - SOScon was the clear Beginning, now we need a Middle so we can have an End. Is this the middle, a grinding piecemeal war and rapidly eroding faith in the leadership? Put that way, it could be... Or was it the Crystal Osaka attack, that doesn't seem to have happened on screen. Was that the station where the Reavers tore through the side with a giant robot? if so, the throwaway lines in SWtA1 and the Cybers faction summary are tied for the most information on camera about it, as far as I can tell. When did it even happen?
Victory condition also need to be specified - even as simple as "find the main ba e (the Hellhole In Space? Something groundside, where the criminal organizations are based?) and bust it up, kill or capture personnel" - something that can be achieved in dramatic fashion and close most of the arc plot threads. We need to know these things, and when they will happen in-'verse, so that the story can be paced appropriately, and character arcs fit into and around it.
Or, maybe it's just me that needs this kind of planning, in which case feel free to tell me "Quitcherbitchin & Wright will work it out," and I'll go back to detailing the Miranda mission up to That Day When and Wave Convoy's crew pre-SauceCon, and mainly fit them in after the fact in the Operation For Great Justice.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

WRT the aliens who left the bouy that the Miranda found/will find Dec 12 2012, I've had a few thoughts:
A: Two years of travel time back is a long, long way for story purposes, but the Miranda has been following a loose spiral out - it's entirely possible, even probablethat they have in fact circled around behind the aliens' home system, and will pass near/through it on the way back. I personally vote that they don't actually make first contact, or at most do so with some barely-established colonial group rather than any central body, but I'm very open to suggestions on this - my main plot involving them is the ship's holographic navigation and recreation computer AI, actually.
B: How alien are they? Judging by the audio clip played in the 12/12/2012 thread spamfic/scene, they're at least mentally similar enough to be comprehensible once the language barrier is overcome, and use speech and/or song to communicate, but that leaves a LOT of territory. My concept to start discussion is along the lines of cephalopodian/arthropodian, a squid with a hard "helmet" and (2-4) exoskeletal legs plus two more arms, ending in cartilage-skeleton "tentacle" fingers (though technically an appendage is only a tentacle if it's around the creature's mouth) and an elephantish snout that is its food/drink orifice and a separate mouth for breathing and speaking. Their atmo mix is roughly compatible with humans but has about 3x the oxygen, and they like it at heat-stroke-inducing temperatures and near 100% humidity - Like the... Cretacius, was it? ... period when plant life ran wild on earth and there were dragonflies with six foot wingspans... Only around a bluer star as well. This nicely shorts out the clich invasion plot, as they consider Earth a frozen, twilight, desert hell where they'd need an oxygen mask and humidifier just to syrvive, while humans can't take the temperatures in the areas they consider habitable planetary zones and sunburn in minutes under their preferred lighting. (The Senshi would undoubtedly love to get their hands on some of the Squidleigh plants for their terraforming, though - relatively high temperature, high oxy-output, and liking the extra solar energy from a closer orbit!) Close enough to visit, similar enough to get each other's dirty jokes, not really interested in setting up shop on each other's real estate.
That's not to say that militant factions can't find a reason to fight over if it's wanted, but "I claim this land for Spain!" is not an issue, or at least not an immediate one.

C: How long have they had the 'wave, what can they do with it? I say, 20-30 years, and not much more than we can, just on a production basis for the more basic applications rather than having to one-off handcraft everything. Maybe their drive technology is faster, if they are two years away at best human speeds, so that can be shortened. Still no lambent beams of energy to be seen except possibly short-reach, directed gravity manipulation for cargo handling, more's the pity.
D: Goodies! What kind of standard gear do they have!? I'm really not going to comment on this one, I'm a RABID gearhead and want them in meksuits too much. Just... Consider the possibility, as second or third generation Squidliegh-fen (or whatever, bird-men or cat-men or ameobaoid slime creatures, or just guys with a funny skin color and ridged foreheads, though I'm rather opposed to the last), that they've standardized on a van/station wagon with arms and legs rather than wheels as the typical model of small craft. When I get around to writing it, the first scratch-built fencar made aboard Gnarlycurl on camera has no wheels - who needs them when you have a speedrive for hover and flight?

Pi: Timeframe - none of this is urgent, per se - there's a couple years in-'verse and only the beginnings of plots in my head, but for a shared world something as mojar as first contact CANNOT be laid out by one person alone.
- CD
PS: the subject line comes from a trailer I once saw for a Disney-talking-animals version of ... Oliver Twist, I think? ... where they'd edited two lines from the same character together like that - it's just something that amused me and stuck in my head. SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

The Internet Has Crashed!

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

...And the Secret of Life. Read and be enlightened.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

boards.cityofheroes.com/s...ost8721960

Quote:

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Starting on Tuesday, July 17th, the Training Room Test Server will have two new game features enabled for testing: Character Transfer and Character Rename.
* Character Transfer will allow customers to move characters from one server to another.
* Character Rename will allow customers to rename a selected character.

Both of these features are not part of Issue 10: Invasion. Although we are beginning to test them now, we anticipate that they will not be enabled on the live service until after the launch of Issue 10.
We estimate that both features, Character Transfer and Character Rename, will carry a transaction fee of $9.99 each per use (there will be no fee for transfers to or renames on the Training Room). Should a Character Transfer have a name conflict on the destination server, a free Character Rename will be made available to resolve the conflict and rename the moving character.
These new features exemplify our commitment to improve the quality of the City of Heroes experience. We feel the price of these features is enough to prevent potential abuse, but also reasonable enough to not be prohibitive for those who want to improve their gaming experience by moving servers or changing a character name.
IMPORTANT! Customers who are interested in taking advantage of the Character Transfer service should know that it is possible in the future that we may make changes to the game that would remove the need to Transfer servers. One example of such a change would be a server-less game configuration where all players can group with anyone, without the restriction of which server they play on. We are not committing to this server-less configuration, and in fact there are no plans to implement a server-less environment this calendar year, but because we are charging a fee for these services, it is important that our players understand that the possibility exists. We want to be very clear in this regard so that those who do decide to make use of a Server Transfer, when it becomes available, understand that they may not need it in the future.
For those interested in assisting with the testing efforts of Character Transfer and Character Rename, keep your eye on the Official City of Heroes Announcement Forum for further details. Thank you for your continued support!
The City of Heroes Development Team

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Okay, so I've got some video files (avi) that I want playable on a DVD player. Ideally, I want to burn a DVD-Video disc complete with a menu.
I know Apple has a nifty program that does this free with MacOSX, is there a *good* freebie program for Windows anyone knows of?--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel
"Camaraderie, adventure, and steel on steel. The stuff of legend! Right, Boo?"