Spacebattles' Forum is evidently locked.With whats either one of the most asinine notifications ever, or they have been hacked.
Anyone have any hard info?

The first item in this week's internal newsletter at work: "On January 28, Canada celebrates http://www.staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-day/]Data Privacy Day."

But at no point did the article say anything about how to celebrate it... But, hey, it's data privacy.
--
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

Hello
Some of you may remember me posting a topic last January(2013) about convincing my  Niece's 6 year old boy that I'd hacked Santa's Naughty list and Nice list and switched his name from the nice list with my name on the Naughty list.
This year my Niece didn't come in until about a week after new years, a few days before they were to visit us I received a phone call and dire threats not to mention the words "Santa", "naughty", "nice", "list" and most certainly not "ONE WORD ABOUT HACKING". It had taken her months to convince her son that I hadn't actually hacked Santa's computers and it was the last of May before he quit mentioning getting her to go to Santa's site and using her "Parent password" to check and make sure his name was still on the nice list. 
A day or two after her phone call "threat session" the news about Target being hacked and millions of credit card numbers being stolen over the holidays was plastered on every news channel. I must say until my Niece's visit I had never realized how easy it is to work the word "target" or couple of it's derivatives into so many "normal" conversations. I spent a very fun couple of hours of my Niece's first visit randomly working the words "TARGET", "Targeted" and "Targetting" into our conversations within earshot of her and her son. It took about five "targeted" uses of the above three variations before my Niece realized what I was doing and the glaring started followed almost immediately by the silent behind her boy's back mouthed death threats.
Much to my Nieces relief her boy didn't mention hacking or Santa's list, but she doesn't know that the very next visit he asked me to build him several paper airplanes, "tube swords" and some new "gear tops" and as soon as we were out of earshot of his mother he whispered in a knowing voice "You didn't hack santa's computers, I got presents."
It wasn't quite what I was expecting and he almost caught me by surprise, but the furtive nature of his walk gave me enough warning so that I was almost prepared and almost as soon as he finished asking I had managed to put my most smug and knowing EVIL! smile on my face and then followed that up by a knowing smirk as I said "None of your presents were from Santa were they?"
Watching his face as he mentally run through all the gift tags from his Christmas presents had me biting my lip and mentally calculating cube roots  to keep from falling out of the chair laughing, finally with a very worried look he asked "What presents did you get from Santa?"
I started to name off several things, but I couldn't take it any more and started laughing.until I was getting hit by a irritated and partially relieved little boy. After I recovered we spent the rest of the evening building and testing our home made toys made out of old printer parts, microwave oven gearing and the center tubes from wrapping paper. The reason I said "partially relieved" is at the start of the next visit by my Niece and her family I was told I was going to be responsible for teaching her son how to program a computer and by the end of the next visit she had added electricity and general science to what I was going to be teaching her son.
I think her son finally realized I never actually admitted to pulling a prank and the fact remained that this year was the first year he can remember that he didn't get a present with a tag that said it was from Santa. (His family has never actually given him a Christmas gift that had a "from Santa" tag and he is about at the age where my brother's family stops telling the children that any gifts were from Santa. Also I don't think he has connected the fact that until fairly recently he wasn't all that good at reading. )
The reason science and electricity were added to the list is because my dad has a favorite chair that is responsible for the static shock death of at least 3 calculators and a cord less phone.
In low humidity cold conditions the material of his favorite chair when slid across by blue jean material can build up painful static charges that can easily "pull" a 3/4's of an inch spark on a pocket knife, assuming you have on the right type of insulating shoes. My dad has the right kind of shoes and most of the year his favorite chair is harmless to small electronic devices, him and us, but given the right winter conditions handing him a remote or him touching you or something else is accompanied by a loud, bright and painful spark.
My Niece's boy came running in and my dad had stood and stepped forward to great him, there was a loud noise and bright spark between the two and the poor boy was staggering around giving his great grandfather a confused and betrayed look for what ever it was he had done to him.(He's spent most of his life down in Texas near the coast so static charge was a new experience.)    
I was ordered to explain the "Science" behind the painful spark and soon he was happily squirming in the chair with different types of materials and trying to be shocking to members of the family, first he tried me, but after I "Reversed" the charge he had accumulated by tapping the tip of his nose and next after staggering around cross eyed for a minute or so making sure he still had a nose he tried his great grandfather and ended up holding the ear my dad had "reversed" the charge on so next he focused on his mom for his Static charge "experiments".
He aggravated his mother off and on for the rest of that visit and then at his local home wanting to research static charge and sparks. He didn't think that his mother had also grown up around us and had taken the simple step of setting a tea kettle on the heating stove to slightly raise the humidity in their home as well as putting up several rugs that she knew could be prime charge building resources.   
The next visit by my Niece and  her son had him making a dive for "great grandfather's electric chair" and starting to squirm as only a 7 year old boy on a mission can squirm giving me and his mom an ever growing evil grin.
His great grandfather walked in and the boy focused his attention on him, while he was looking away from me and his mom I stepped forward and jerked the slide on tennis shoes off his feet by the insulated soles and dropped them by the door several yards out of reach.
I'm rather proud of the look of worry that instantly appeared on his face as he apparently remember my explanation of how my shoes soles were more conductive and his weren't so he could "carry" a charge  across the room to his mom from the "electric chair" and I couldn't.
The look of horror that appeared when his great grandfather laughed and said "Well (Name withheld to protect the not so innocent) what are you going to do now?" followed by his mom laughing and saying "YESSSS! one touch to the floor or anything around that chair and ZAP!" would have made us at least $10,000 dollars if we could have had a camera going..
We were merciless to the poor boy his mom wanted pay back for all the shocking "experiments" and I was the heartless uncle that would only tell him that he knew what was going on and that while there was another safe way to discharge himself without having to sit for an hour or so without squirming I wasn't going to tell him.
We put "Despicable Me II" on to play and he stayed very very still for the first half of the movie giving me and his mother the evil eye every 10 minutes. His determination to be still was helped considerably by the unnerving way the fringes of the nearby coffee table and radio table  would track any outstretched body part and how one of his smaller paper airplanes or a crumpled up paper towel would start to tremble trying to lift toward the foot or hand that was approaching the floor near it. 
After about 45 minutes he had worked up enough nerve and was sure he had lost enough charge that he started to slowly let both his sock covered feet down toward the floor, but his mom glanced over and said"(Name withheld) don't touch with both feet, just use one foot that way you will still be able to limp home."
This remark "stilled" the poor boy for another 30 minutes and his desperate attempt at "puppy dog eyed pleading" only met the back of his mother's head and my evil smile.(I have told him before his mother "wrote the book" on pleading with puppy dog eyes when she was his age and after facing her skill he doesn't stand a chance with anyone that kept her.)
Finally unable to take it any more and looking like he was going to explode if he couldn't move and encouraged by the fact that the fringes and paper aircraft were no longer "tracking" him he shut his eyes and took what looked like he thought might possibly be last breath and carefully touched the nearby coffee table followed by carefully touching the big toe of a single foot to the floor.  By his next breath he was bouncing off of us watching the movie and playing with his paper aircraft, tube daggers and home made tops on the floor well away from "great grandfathers electric chair".
I guess I should note that his mom kept him in his sock feet for the rest of the visit and he was very careful to avoid Great Grandfathers electric chair, she also has mentioned that while his experiments with static electricity are on going project he isn't using her or anyone else nearly as much and he is being very careful. 
HMelton
God Bless

I got two fan fic's in the works right now, that I think Drunkardswalk is going to like.
One is a Kingdom heart's story, the other a Final Fantasy 7 story. I have finished two chapters for both, and just waiting though the Beta process, trying to type out another chapter.
I don't think that Final Fantasy 7 is all that popular here on Drunkard's walk, but that fanfic is the only one my Beta, Black Aeronaut, will allow me to discuss.
I call it, Adventures in Babysitting.
When Cloud and Tifa almost die as children (Still need to find a youtube video of when that happens...) Originally, Tifa headed off to Mt. Nibel and Cloud followed to protect her, but both fell from a rickety bridge. Tifa's father found her severely injured, and blamed Cloud for leading her to Mt. Nibel. This time, Yuffie shows up and saves them!
After Dr. Hojo get's shot, Vincent annoyed, and Nibelheim burnt down (many years early), they leave Nibelheim with Tifa's newly hired Sensei, Zangan, the world's best Martial Art's instructor.
_____________
Veni, vidi, vici. [I came, I saw, I conquered
Quote from Julius Caesar

Okay, so here's the thing...

In my latest project one of the worlds my SI visits is going to be Infinite Stratos. It will be somewhere midway through the story, and he'll be bringing a VF-4 Lightning to the party. Basic premise is that Chinese IS pilots react poorly, kick off a knock-down drag-out fight that goes like a gauntlet of prolonged duels that lasts until someone realizes he's been trying to establish communications. Oops.

Skipping the political shenanigans, he eventually winds up teaching a special class for National Representative Candidates at the IS Academy: Outside Context Problems - Recognizing and Adapting to the Unknowable.

Now, I have watched the two season of Infinite Stratos that are available, and I have just started reading the light novels (I think Baka Tsuki's translation could use a little work - it might be fine for subtitling an anime, but it does not flow well for prose)... but I could use some insights all the same.

Fist of all is Phantom Task. No ideology and no allegiance to anyone. They seem to serve no one but themselves. If this is the case, then what is their goal? Money? It can't be as simple as "We does it for teh EVUUULLLZZ!" Or could it be that this is just the IS equivalent to a Japanese biker gang?

And then there's Madoka Orimura - Ichika's twin sister. (!?) What the hell is this girl's beef? Why was she separated from her family? Does it have to do with why they were abandoned by their parents?

And finally, my biggest sticking point... Freakin' Tabane Shinonono. Super-human feats of strength, speed, agility, and durability. Utterly immune to poisons. Processes data like a computer. And, most importantly, she controls every single IS core on the planet. She rubs me wrong because when I see her all I see is a cutsey and female version of Quincy Rosenkreutz. (The only difference seems to be that she's got a soft spot in her heart for Ichika and Chifuyu... but then, she goes ahead and gives Madoka an advanced IS knowing full well that she's out to commit fratricide, so yeah...)

_How hard could it be?_ is one of those "Hold my beer and watch this!" type gadgeteer shows, like Mythbusters (especially in the logo for that one) Junkyard Wars or the occasional "let's build something mad" episode of Top Gear, but kind of cool despite being an obvious attempt to jump on the gravy train. It does make me wonder how the host trio came up with the idea to try something like these projects, but at least explains why a studio would agree to film and air it and probably give them budget assistance on the project as well.
--
"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

http://www.humblebundle.com/
They have my $10.00

Well... maybe not threw, but a rock suddenly appeared where one wasn't before, in the space of 12 days, and the scientists are going crazy over it:  http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/tech/inno ... ?hpt=hp_t3]story here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

Timote: Your sig has just made my night.
My younger brother, Tsojat, looked over my shoulder and read it... and had a complete and total moment of BSOD.  Literally.
He did a double take and the sudden intensity of focus brought about a dyslexia attack so strong that he physically suffered for a few minutes.  It was epic.  I LMAOd so much.  He says a Redbox logo looked like Rebdox and an Orbitz logo looked like Orditz.
Bob: this oughta go into the All The Tropes wiki under Real Life Examples.
Thanks much! 

Here's an image. Anybody want to tell me a story about it?


--
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