sinanju

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Curious about your view on the current state of CO. (Anybody still play regularly

Re: Curious about your view on the current state of CO. (Anybody still play regularly I played religiously, every night, for a couple of months. I haven't logged on for a while, though. I was just getting the hang of the old device system when they introduced the new one, and I still don't fully understand it, or understand what gadgetry I should be trying to acquire and/or upgrade. I haven't done any of the alerts, I'm just not interested. What is this "region blocking" of which you speak? Is that why I can't get to Vibora Bay anymore? It's no longer an option when I approach the jet in MC. I was happily grinding away at the various adventures, but I started getting bored by it. There's been no real role-playing except the casual conversations I've had in Club Caprice. I'd been hoping for more, but it hasn't panned out.

Re: [For Fun] The Rouge Gallery Name Game. Doctor Otaku (overweight shut-in manga/anime fan...and robotic genius, a recurring nemesis for Iron Maiden)

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster I'm Sinanju, and I approve this message. Plus, why do ninjas wear masks? Because thieves wear masks; ninjitsu was created by someone who hired a Master of Sinanju, watched him do his thing, and then created "ninjitsu" from what small crumbs of the art he learned. Then the ninjas started selling their services as assassins...and the Master of Sinanju had a stern talk with them. They reached an agreement: the ninjas would wear masks like the thieves they were, and the Masters of Sinanju wouldn't slaughter them and all their families. (Or so Chiun tells it.)

Re: Without fusion power, why go back to the moon? Yeah, I like Robert Heinlein's suggestion: mix the nuclear waste into glass. Make blocks. Stack them in some inhabitable piece of useless desert. Build a fence around it. Put lots of signs around it saying (in multiple languages), "If you cross this line, you will die." Let nature take its course. When, eventually, we discover a use for all that nuclear waste, retrieve it and put it to good use.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster Because as near as I can tell, the need for the local politicians to pander to their various constituencies (and not just the light rail mafia or the bicycle brigade), means that rather than just let the engineers do their job and work out the problem, they all had to put an oar in.* The bridge's location and/or height were affected in part by the need to make sure the access/onramps for all these various forms of transportation woudl satisfy their proponents.** The end result is that they've spent many millions on this project without a single shovelful of dirt being turned AND ended up with a plan that has to be scrapped or drastically revamped, no doubt at a cost of millions more. *Steve Barnes, the SF writer, talks about working in Hollywood sometimes, where nobody is happy until they've piddled in the ice cream sufficiently. Same thing here, I suspect. **Though to be fair the light rail and bicycle proponents, no doubt satisfying the desires needs of the local developers cabal (who pretty much own the City of Portland government lock, stock, and barrel) probably had at least as much to do with it.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster

Re: Without fusion power, why go back to the moon? Practice. If you can establish a lunar colony that can extract raw materials and produce its own air, water, and food from the environment, it becomes a far cheaper operation--and proves the technology for other bases elsewhere in the system. A staging ground. Once you're on the moon (or in earth orbit, really), you're halfway to anywhere in the system. All the heavy lifting (har har) has been done. The more resources you can extract and make use of (see my first point), the less we have to lift from earth, whether for the lunar colony itself or to supply more distant outposts.

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works? "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is." --Yogi Berra (I think) I'm sure that, in theory, this form of fusion is head and shoulders above all its rivals. But has anyone made it work yet? And by "work" I mean, have they managed a sustained reaction that produced more power than it consumed? 'Cause if so, I haven't heard about it, and I think I would have. As for viable--if someone invents a fusion process (Cold Fusion, for instance) that can demonstrably provide sustained reactions generating more power than they consume, it will be a viable source of energy EVEN IF nobody knows how the heck it works. There was a period when scientists knew we didn't know something important about the sun. We knew how much energy it was producing, and we knew its mass. We also knew that no form of conventional energy generation could possibly power the sun at that level for as long as we knew it had been burning. It wasn't until nuclear theory came along that we figured out how the sun worked. If one of those "lesser" forms of fusion proves capable of generating useful energy, all the theory in the world won't matter. It will trump theory every time.

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works? He-3 fusion sounds great. Alas, as far as I know, nobody's managed to do that in a sustained, energy-producing fashion any more than they've managed to break even on any other sort of fusion. A better fuel is pointless if none of the engines (fusion systems) we've invented so far can use any of them.

Re: "Neat" Pictures From Iron Maiden's Blog: Title Fight!

Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games? One of my favorite characters, Iron Maiden, wears a costume. But it's a costume I created keeping in mind that she was a) not wealthy, not connected to anyone who could provide her with rubber science superfabric, and c) refused to wear spandex or similar materials (even if she could get it), and d) had to assemble it herself. It consists of an ordinary tank top, tights/leggings, leather miniskirt, leather boots, gloves, coachman's cloak, and a mask of the "cloth tied around the eyes with eyeholes in it" sort. All in black. All of it, except the cloak (and the mask, but she can make that herself) are articles of clothing owned by millions of women all over America. If/when her costume gets trashed, or when simply buying backup articles, buying these things piecemeal will raise no eyebrows. The cloak is a little harder to come by, but still obtainable without compromising her identity with a little thought. It's the sort of costume a real person with powers could assemble without too much difficulty.

Re: Fictional Bad Guys Become Real Iron Maiden wouldn't recognize most of them if they punched her in the face. Mumm-Ra, Khan and Darth Vader would be the exceptions. She'd deal with most of them the way she deals with most bad guys. Attack them, try to take the fight away from any bystanders, pound them until they fall down or give up. Black Knight wouldn't recognize any of them except Vader. He'd happily brawl with them, trying to pound them into submission. For that matter, most of my characters wouldn't recognize most of them.

Re: Does anyone ekse like People with Powers style games? I like that kind of game. Of course, one of my earliest gaming experiences was spending years playing what was nominally "Traveller"--but with powers (mutant powers, psionics, etc.) kitbashed in from Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, and every SF/F story, novel, movie, tv show or comic we found entertaining. The game had a horrific death toll, but we had more fun than humans should be allowed. And many, if not most, characters had superpowers (as did a great many NPCs, as well as countless critters from "random encounters" we, uh, encountered in our travels). There was also endless super-tech, also cribbed from every conceivable source. It was a superhero game without costumes or codenames in all but name. Steamteck remembers all this, I imagine. It was his game, after all. For that matter, I think most Urban Fantasy novels would qualify too. Okay, a lot of them are really heavy on werewolves and vampires, but there are plenty of other sorts of weres, as well as wizards, sorcerors, witches, demons, gargoyles, ghosts and spirits, the fey, etc. They all have powers and regularly engage in conflicts with other powered creatures. Again, superheroes (and villains) without names or costumes, mostly. The Wild Cards books skirt this concept too. Most characters have a name--but most of them don't have secret identities (a few keep their identities hidden, but in conventional fashion), and very few have actual costumes or call themselves superheroes. It doesn't HAVE to be a rehash of The Fugitive. That's got more to do with Hollywood's tendency to rehash anything that was ever successful than the nature of the stories.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Well, it helps when you can use the Jedi Mind Trick on the weak-willed. Girl One gloms onto Vader. Girl Two goes for the guy in uniform. Vader (waves his hand): "He is not the pimp daddy you're looking for." Girl Two: "He...is not the pimp daddy I'm looking for." Vader: "You've always wanted to try a threesome." Girl Two: "I've...always wanted to try a threesome." Girl One: "Hey, wait just a minute--" Vader (To Girl One): "That goes double for you." Girl One: "That...goes double for me." Vader (to Stormtrooper): "Move along."

Re: "Neat" Pictures

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works? It's a good thing, then, that we recently determined that there's more water on Europa (I think it's Europa) than on Earth. Even if we "burn through" too much water, we can always go get more. If cold fusion pans out, we'll have all the power we need for ion drives. Highly efficient, but low thrust. But hey--we can afford to take time making the Europa runs.

Re: Need a name for a windy character Tempest

Re: building 6th edition power suits

Re: A brain the size of the universe... I don't believe that's possible. I think you'd have to intentionally design for artificial intelligence. From what we know of the human brain, it didn't just get complex enough in some generic fashion to achieve self-awareness. It's a collection of "modules" doing specific jobs, the sum total of which results in human intelligence. There's some degree of self-awareness in other creatures, too, but their self-awareness is also not just a result of "enough processing power". It's the end result of evolutionary pressures that made such a trait advantageous. Computers don't evolve. They're designed to fulfill specific objectives. If we want AI, we're going to have to design it.

Re: Like Cold Fusion... Except It Works?

Re: "Realistic" gun damage *Edited to add: Oh yeah, he also has a theory as to why cops who are killed are often found lying where they were shot, but criminals more often than not are found blocks away, where they collapsed while trying to run or climb a fence. Guys who tend to become cops are (for the most part) "play by the rules" sorts; when they played Cops N' Robbers as kids, if they were "killed" they fell down. Criminals tend to be the sort of kids who cheated. When they're badly injured, they both tend to revert to type. The criminals cheat; the cops lie down and play dead. (As a result, he emphasized in training that you do not, by God, stop when you're shot. You KEEP FIGHTING, **** your eyes!)

Re: "Realistic" gun damage