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Joel Schultz

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Everything posted by Joel Schultz

  1. Have you tried taking the fighter out of the ship with your AE, exit it and then board your CC again? That ought to leave it safe for scuttling without endangering crew.
  2. Heh, what was it that Master Yoda said? "Size matters not?" I want this guy on my team!
  3. It's been a while since I posted something silly and I kinda had the urge. As far as RP goes, if anyone cares to finish this over in an RP thread be my guest. P.S. Holy cow, when it rains it pours; this forum has come back to life!
  4. (A bass voiceover announces "This...is GNN". The "GNN Headline News" desk appears with an anchorman seated behind it.) Anchorman: Welcome back to "GNN Headline News", I'm Charles Walbert. We are now into the third day of what is being called one of the most mysterious disappearances in GALCOM history. By the evening of 7/25, there were no postings on the GALCOM HQ "3000AD UBB" message system. While comm lulls have occurred in the past, EarthCom engineers felt something wasn't right and left a message with HQ engineers to run diagnostics. In the meantime, they began their own remote diagnostic procedures. They started these at 2300 hours. By 2312 the remote diagnostics had determined that the "3000AD UBB" message system in HQ was functioning normally. They tried once again to contact HQ engineering, but again their calls went unanswered and were directed into the messaging service. At 2330 another routine inquiry to HQ engineering went unanswered. At that time EarthCom engineers discovered that not just HQ engineering, but all hailing attempts of GALCOM HQ were being ignored. Now suspecting a general comm system failure, they tried backup comms but these attempts also failed. At 2358 attempts to communicate with the various battlecruisers and other vessels docked at GALCOM HQ also met with failure. It was becoming clear that they were dealing with no ordinary system failure or unannounced maintenance work. At 0030 hours an engineering team with a Marine escort transported aboard GALCOM HQ to try to reestablish contact in person. And what they found was shocking! GALCOM HQ along with all vessels in port seemed to have been completely abandoned! We are now taking you live to GALCOM HQ where our field correspondent, Condoleezza Chung, has been covering this disappearance since last evening. (Cut to what looks like a cafeteria.) Condi Chung: Thank you, Charles. I'm standing in the main mess hall for the crew now and as you can see, everything looks like it was abandoned in haste. Meals and drinks are sitting cold and uneaten on their tables. The only people around in fact are a few engineers from Earth and Marines that came aboard to secure the station and search for the crew or possible intruders. Efforts to interview the senior Engineer, Dirk Martin, from EarthCom leading up the technical investigation proved fruitless. (Cue footage of an attempted interview.) Chung: Chief Engineer Martin! Have you found any logs or evidence in the station computer as to what may have happened? Chief Engineer Dirk Martin: My men are still examining the systems. When a report is ready we'll let you know. Chung: Do you know when we can expect that update? Martin: The report will be ready when it's ready and right now it ain't ready. Pvt. Rhode, would you please? ... Pvt. Rhode: I'm sorry but you'll have to move on. This area is closed. Move along! Chung (voiceover): Of course we're eagerly anticipating when that report is ready. I was however able catch up with the Marine's team leader, Sgt. Simmons., just before they were due to be relieved by another Marine search party. (Cue footage of the interview.) Sgt. Omar Simmons: Mmmmm.... donuts. Care for one? Chung: Thank you; I haven't eaten since I came aboard six hours ago, but... Simmons: Well, pull up a chair and dig in! My men and I have been searching this for the past twelve hours; we're actually due to stand down and be relieved in a few minutes. I'm sure they won't mind a little bit of female company. Chung: What I was about to say was that I'm working right now and can't join you. Simmons: Doh! Chung: If you have a moment, I'd like to ask how the search is going. Simmons: Wait a minute, are you live right now? Chung: Yes... Simmons: Woohoo! I'm on vid-comm! Chung: About the search... ? Simmons: Oh, that! Well, the good news of course is that we have encountered no hostiles or evidence of hostile activity in GALCOM HQ, so my men are starting to relax just a bit. We've also just begun searches of the docked vessels about a half hour ago. Chung: Any signs of the crew? Simmons: Not yet. We haven't given up hope yet; the search is still ongoing. The engineers are doing all they can to... (Cut back to GNN news desk.) Walbert: I'm sorry Condi, but we have some breaking news in this story. Just minutes ago, a Marine team searching one of the docked vessels encountered an officer asleep in the ship's rec facility. We take you now live to Jorge Lucius aboard the GCV Adm. Jay DiMasters. Jorge, we're fortunate to have you with us today. As our star war correspondent I would have thought you would be posted somewhere like Wraith station. (Cut to GCV Adm. Jay DiMasters transporter room.) Jorge Lucius: Well, normally I would be but I've been vacationing back home at my ranch. I was supposed to head out to the front but was told to cover this for the moment. Walbert (voice): I hope that doesn't mean the war has come home to Earth. Lucius: Fortunately there's no sign of that yet. Walbert (voice): That's good news. What can you tell us, Jorge? Lucius: I'm standing here in the transporter room with what appears to be the sole person left aboard GALCOM HQ or any of the docked vessels. EarthCom obviously wants to debrief him, but the Marine escort has graciously allowed me to speak with him while they finalize transport coordinates with the surface. Sir, could you state your name please for our viewers? Paul Resnig: Paul Resnig, Combat Officer of the Adm. Jay DiMasters. Lucius: Paul, we are so glad to find somebody on board. Tell me, did you know that you seem to be the only person left on GALCOM HQ? Resnig: Well, no, no I didn't. Things did seem to get quiet around here, though. Lucius: Do you know what happened to everyone? Resnig: No, I was asleep! Why do I always get blamed when everything goes wrong? It's bad enough that my commander does, and now the press?! I didn't have anything to do with this! Lucius: Uh, sir, I wasn't implying... Resnig: Look, all I'm saying is that I'm a highly trained professional: I'm a GALCOM officer! Just because I was the last person to use something, like the transporter, doesn't mean that I broke it! Lucius: Is the transporter broken? Unnamed Marine at the transporter controls: I'm sorry, sir, but we've just locked in the transport coordinates. You'll have to end your interview. Resnig: Well, yeah, it sure didn't beam my Marines on HQ back here, did it? Lucius: Wait a minute, sir, Resnig here says the transporter is broken! Should you be using it? Marine (controls): No Mr. Lucius, all parameters are in the green and good to go... Resnig: Yeah well make sure... Marine (controls): ... Please stand clear of the transport chamber. Prepare for transport! Resnig: ...because they were in the green too after I reprogrammed it to do distributed team retrieval. Unnamed Marine on the pad next to Resnig: Wait, you reprogrammed it? I thought only system engineers could do that! Resnig: Are you calling me stupid, Private? Are you saying I don't know how to operate a simple transporter?! Lucius: I have a bad feeling about this... Marine (controls): Engage transport! (Blank screen) (Cut back to GNN news desk.) Walbert: Jorge, are you there? Jorge? Hmm. We seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. Let's go back to Condi for now. Condi? Condi, back to you. Condi? Huh, how odd. Wait! This just in from our correspondent in EarthCom HQ, Resnig and his Marine escort failed to materialize in their transporter room just as contact with the EarthCom teams at GALCOM HQ was cut off. Unfortunately, we have to go to a commercial break now. We'll check in on EarthCom's progress in reestablishing contact with GALCOM HQ when we return. . . . Things sure have gotten slow around here... Drat it, had the wrong name from a prior draft of this...
  5. N00bs take note! See what you learn by reading the manual? We got ourselves a smart one here. No visitors to the airlock for now, it seems.
  6. Picture Heh. At least, that thing looks like a TIE Fighter to me... If you want to know what it really is, click and drag over the black box below. >>>International Space Station
  7. So, what webcomics (if any) are the guests of 3000AD reading? Inverloch The Dreamland Chronicles Spiky-Haired Dragon, Worthless Knight Alpha Shade
  8. Jack Thompson takes on Microsoft?
  9. I like AMD. I switched to them a long time ago. Back then, it seemed you got more bang for your buck. I've stuck with them ever since. Check my specs too. I'm running AMD 64, with 32-bit XP on it. The only 64-bit OS's I trust at the moment are Linux right now (I can dual-boot to SUSE). And Vista's scaring me about their "old games" support.
  10. Not to kick you when you're down, but you might ***REALLY*** want to consider keeping the antivirus program you get installed and running permanently, or installing one if you reinstall Windows. It will save you much hassle next time. And while you're at it, check out Lavasoft AdAware which is also free and which takes care of rooting out malware and spyware.
  11. With government you never know. Maybe that wasn't a mistake.
  12. This stinks. One of my favorite game series is "Thief" and the good stuff of the game is all in the EAX audio. Grumble grumble... Hmm. Given that DirectSound (like the rest of DirectX) is a set of COM interfaces backed up by coclasses providing the interface-to-whatever implementation, wouldn't it be possible for someone to develop their own DirectSound implementation that delegated to OpenAL, including hardware access? People have already done something similar with 3dFX GLIDE (which wasn't COM); I use such a program (Glidos) on my PC now to play Redguard. I suppose the nasty problem (as if the preceding weren't complex enough) would be getting the DirectX device enumerators to "discover" the DS coclasses in such a way that games out there would "see" them without code changes. Somehow, I don't think that would work, but if Vista is like XP (boy I wish I had access to it) and the DS coclasses are listed in the usual place in registry, maybe one could hijack the InprocServer32 value and redirect it to a DS-to-OpenAL audio implementation. It's not like that's unheard of either; I wrote a simple utility for spying on all calls on select COM interfaces that uses that hijack and I'm sure I'm not the first to have done so. I'm sure some intrepid audio programmer will come up with a "fix". Or try
  13. I don't watch a lot of TV. Hardly any, because TV violates my "90% of everything is crap" rule -- it's probably up around 95%. Heroes is the first continuing series I've seen in a long time worth watching. It reminds me of comics I used to read. Sort of what I always imagined the "dawn of the X-Men" would be like, the very first humans with unusual powers...
  14. Most gaming rigs tend to have honkin' huge fans, cooling systems etc. in them. That makes for a noisy and/or bulky system (water cooling is silent, but external cooling apparatus is aesthetically unpleasing). So -- let's go dead opposite. Say I want a silent (or almost-silent) rig that also is inobtrusively benign in appearance. I don't care about gaming power either, I'm looking for something that can be a glorified TiVo, but that could also theoretically be jacked into a home LAN and distribute captured video and/or music elsewhere. Graphically, the most it needs to do would be show full-screen video without choppiness in full color, making 3D rendering capabilities of no importance. What sort of hardware should one be looking for that? Like motherboard, CPU, CPU cooling system, memory, graphics card & cooling system, case, etc? I suppose that something with really good heatsinks and/or heatpipes would be in order, but I lack sufficient knowledge on what is "good". Anyone have any tips?
  15. quote: Originally posted by Grizzle: Not sure why I'm responding... but some time ago I was cruising the net and found a similar product you stick in your pants!. It was a pad with adhesive on one side and fart filter material sewn into it. The site was pretty hilarious (diagrams and all) because it was so serious. I think that would have been http://www.flat-d.com. Their product list is here. And a diagram of the product you describe is here. If you zoom in on the picture in my original link, and look at the packaging, you will see the above web site referenced on the packaging itself. Which is how I stumbled across it.
  16. About time too. Win 9x series was a dog of an OS. I could put NT 4 on the same machine as Win 9x and watch our apps run better than 5 times faster. Not to mention more stable.
  17. quote: Originally posted by Tac: I wonder if they will do a Robotech movie. Now THAT would be awesome. Ask and ye shall receive. A sequel (not Sentinels) is currently being screened.
  18. Lord knows there's someone in every office that needs one of these. And yes, it is a real, serious product. Which kind of makes it all the funnier, IMO.
  19. My wife and I watch it, when we're not watching Law & Order. It's good. I really like her coworkers -- sometimes her department's social and professional dynamics are borderline dysfunctional.
  20. Bad: Giving us that mental image of SC. Worse: Doctoring up an picture like that in Photoshop and posting a faked image of SC. Worst: SC posing like that for a digital camera and posting a real image. Run away! Run away!
  21. It looks like there's some discussion on whether Huffman's history with SC is worth documenting, the chief problem being finding credible media references meeting Wikipedia standards.
  22. Wow, SC, you're famous! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Smart Please note that the linked article does not conform to Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" standard and has been nominated for editing to fix this. I point this out now because there does seem to be a slight negative bias in my opinion. I still thought this post-worthy nonetheless -- how many people do you think get a Wikipedia entry for themselves, after all? Heh, maybe someone around here is a Wikipedia member author who might want to assist on bringing it to NPOV.
  23. If IBM (or someone else) can mass-produce this kind of transistor for a production CPU one day, transistors operating at 30THz should be possible. That ought to translate into CPU a wee bit faster than what we have today... (Edit) Link to IBM press release for the original topic of this thread, for your viewing pleasure.
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