IRSWalker

I always use TimeAndDate.com.

LOL!!!!!! Think Rimmer with a gun!

I have just read, that sadly, after many fantastic adventures, NASA's Deep Space 1 probe has been finally turned off. When we are constantly seeing images of how awful human beings can be to each other, it is wise to take the effort to find the things that show us how fantastic the human race can be. Deep Space 1 represented the frontiers of human achievement, and has brought space exploration forward by at least ten years through the advanced technologies that it tested. If you don't know about this wonderful little probe, take some time now to read about its exploits, so that next time the media reports a bomb exploding, or people starving, you will be able to close your eyes and think of this tiny little spacecraft, and remind yourself that there are good things in the world as well. Regards, Smiley

'tis an almighty and ancient hoax. Smiley

Hope no-one minds me being the "expert" on this How to retrieve drones with 1.0.0.2 patch: 1. Get and install the 1.0.0.2 patch. You know you want to! 2. Deploy your drones in the usual way. 3. Go blow up GalCom 4. Your drones should now be full. They now need retrieving with a shuttle. 5. Using TacOps, "Observe" the planet where you left the drones. 6. Left-click the map to zoom in one level. You need to do this for Zoom To... to work. 7. Click the Zoom To... icon, expand Support Units, and select one of your drones. They are not numbered, but I think they are listed in numerical order. 8. The display should now be centered on a drone, zipping about the planet's surface. Click the Waypoints tab at the bottom of the screen (click Transporter or OTS if you can't see Waypoints) 9. Change the craft that you are setting waypoints for to one of the SC assets. Delete any existing waypoints by clicking the DEL tab until it turns red. 10. Click the ADD tab to add a new waypoint. Click the TARGET tab, and then click the spot in the centre of the drone. 11. Change the orders for the waypoint to EXTRACT DRONE X (try and get the number right or your shuttles gonna be flying aroud the planet a lot!) 12. Leave TacOps, and launch the shuttle. It should make planetfall right above the drone, extract it, and head back to your CC. 13. Sell the drone's contents and be rich and happy! Hope this helps. Smiley

Looking forward to that VTOL landing ability. I've been trying to land by switching my engines off......

Hope this is OK to ask, but will us registered non-Terrans need to register again, or will we be ported across to the new DB at some point?

[story Mode On] Commander Card groaned. The message had come through from HQ that he was to pose for some promotional pictures for a Droidan Military recruitment campaign. "Why me?", he thought as he strapped himself into his EVA suit. He stepped through the airlock and rotated his jetpack to face himself towards the flight deck. What he saw was the Royal Cheriton speeding away from him at cruising speed, cheerfully heading for an impact with the planet. Instantly, he realised what he had done. He had forgotten to give his crew any instructions on what to do while he was away. His AI brain calmly switched into problem solving mode, and he brought up his wrist-sized TACOPS computer, then ordered the Royal Cheriton to fly towards himself. In the far distance, he saw the kilometre long craft turn in space like a darting salmon and start the short cruise back towards himself. "Excellent!", he thought, as the distance between himself and the carrier shortened, then shortened some more, then got very short. Unfortunately, instead of the enormous craft slowing down to allow him to enter back through the airlock, it did not slow down. Instead, it simply smacked him in the face in a rather terminal way. The Droidan military was now slightly more intelligent collectively. [story Mode Off] All you guys who like to run down space marines in your carriers - I recommend trying it from the other side of the equation! You might not be so heartless in future!

How's this for an objective for an explorer... Someone posts (on the web) pictures of a few locations (scrub the details off the bottom, obviously!) and then the people playing explorer castes could race to identify them. You could even give out prizes! The first annual planetspotting contest! Actually, reading back over this, it's a s*** idea! Still, tonight I shall post a screenshot from each quadrant on my website, and the first person to correctly identify all four locations gets a prize (TDB)

...picks up gauntlet... [ 12-13-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

While the inclusion of an in-game random mission generator is definitely "wishlist", I can't see a reason why someone (ie one of us) with decent coding skills could not write an out-of-game script generator. So you would run the script generator, start up the game and select campaign, and your randomly generated campaign would be there for you. Once I get my hands on GBS II I certainly intend to do some scripting, and I've done some pattern-based script generation before (admittedly for something entirely different!) so I'll have a go at the random generator. Might do it on SourceForge so it could be a group effort. Cheers, Smiley

Here's a few - will do dome more some time: Screen Shots

The title of the book is at the top of the quote. I got the quote while looking for another quote on The Quotations Page Cheers, Smiley

Not sure about playing the game, but it's a sure sign that you've been on the forums too much when you go to the Active Topic's page and you have four out of the top five entries!

quote:Originally posted by Schmendrick: much of the AI will be handled by the server. The rest will be handled by psychotic players all over the world bent on your destruction. Thus feeing up resources on your system for rendering. Hmmm, once people online start playing Droidans, you'll have the possibly unique experience of playing against human beings pretending to be AI lifeforms.......

Excuse the horrific off-topic, but I found a quotation today that I thought Gallion might like. Enjoy...... quote:Gerald Weinberg, "The Psychology of Computer Programming" We have come through a strange cycle in programming, starting with the creation of programming itself as a human activity. Executives with the tiniest smattering of knowledge assume that anyone can write a program, and only now are programmers beginning to win their battle for recognition as true professionals. Not just anyone, with any background, or any training, can do a fine job of programming. Programmers know this, but then why is it that they think that anyone picked off the street can do documentation? One has only to spend an hour looking at papers written by graduate students to realize the extent to which the ability to communicate is not universally held. And so, when we speak about computer program documentation, we are not speaking about the psychology of computer programming at all - except insofar as programmers have the illusion that anyone can do a good job of documentation, provided he is not smart enough to be a programmer.

quote:Originally posted by aramike: So you're saying the child has greater well-being by being dead than alive? I'm not that what I wrote said that, but here goes... You are drawing the line of well-being at "being alive". A similar argument is used to oppose euthaniasia, so please forgive a little analogy. Now, we can't ask unborn foeti whether they want to live as a badly handicapped person, or in a slum ghetto with a drug-addict prostitute for a mother. But we can ask grown adults whether, in the event that some circumstances left them in a permanent vegatitive state, or with a illness so debilitating that their life would be a constant burden on their loved ones, whether they believe they would rather be killed in a humane manner. Personally, I would never want to be in the state where I am nothing but a useless lump of meat being kept alive for no reason. Turn me off, please. But that's my choice. You might feel differently. Now, drawing my rather wonky parallel with the topic, imagine we were able to talk to an unborn foetus and ask "When you are born, you are going to be unable to control movement, unable to express yourself in any meaningful way, depend entirely on other people that you love for your existence. You have the option of carrying this through, or you can die now. Which is it to be?" Now the foetus might answer one way or the other, but the point is that it would be their choice, not ours. The unborn baby has no facility to make that choice. We have no right to. The only other person with a stake in the whole thing is the mother, so why not let it be solely her decision? Given that she would be the largest influence in the childs life, so its sense of social responsiblity would be largely modelled on her own, it is not unreasonable to assume that the child, when fully grown, would have the same response as its mother does now. So let her make the decision on behalf of the baby, free from the imposition of our own personal views. My definition of "well-being" is rather fuzzily around the point where someone wants to live more than they want to stop living. Which is subjective and inidividual, strengthening my argument above. quote:So, then after birth a parent should be allowed to "abort" her child for well-being purposes as well... Murder? No. Put up for adoption? If it is in the best interests of the mother and child, why not? quote:No dice. Read the thread on paper/board vs. computer games then! Smiley [ 12-11-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: Smiley, I don't think he's saying to make her keep the child, but to actually have it and give it up to those hundreds of thousands of couples who are unable but willing to have a child of their own. Before we carry on, I ought to point out that I am very pro adoption personally, but I am also very liberal with a small "l" and think that adults should be treated as such, and allowed to make choices in matters where, frankly, it's nobody elses business. And in case you doubt my (admittedly out-of-the-blue!) statement that I am pro-adoption, my wife is an adoptee, and when I was younger, my girlfriend became pregnant, carried the child (a little girl) and put her up for adoption, throughout which I supported her. So somehere out there is an 11-year old girl who is half me, and the fact that she might come and find me one day totally freaks me out. Also, and this especially applies to teenage pregnancies, many are carried to term with the intent of adoption, but the girl sees a little baby in their arms that has been part of them for nine months, and suddenly doesn't want to give them up. [ 12-11-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

quote:Originally posted by aramike: You mean, you DON'T see the difference in someone getting pregnant as a result of their OWN actions as opposed to being a result of something they could not control? ... I can see the difference, I just don't think that the conditions of the conception are relevant to the future wellbeing of the mother and child quote:... Please, that is the most absurd thing I've ever read. Hyperbole - gotta love it! Examining your argument from another viewpoint, this hypothetical woman has proved to be irresponsible. Therefore make her keep the child because what society needs is a large number of irresponsible parents who don't want their children. Making her have the child will not make her love it. We have laws to protect against that? Well, yes and no - we have laws that might get around to protecting the child if the lovelessness becomes extreme. This hypothetical woman is so depressed at having this child that she did not want, that one night she gets roaring drunk and kills herself and the child in a fit of depression. Who did you help? Smiley [ 12-11-2001: Message edited by: SmileyMan ]

Some Paper/board games have one fantastic advantage over "computer games" convert them to a PBEM form and you can play them at work unless your mail admin is very sharp. I play email Diplomacy and email Chess regularly in my lunchbreak. I would love to see some of my favourite games converted to PBEM. Car Wars, Warhammer 40K and AD&D (now that would be hard!) over email would be a fantastic complement to the real-time full resource games that, realistically, can't be played at work. In my last days of DMing, I wrote a computer program (on my MSX! ) that kept track of game time, remembered all the rule tables for me (this was pre second edition) and allowed me to make dice rolls against those tables. By keeping track of the time, it also implemented the weather system from the Wilderness Survival Guide, rules which fell into the "beautiful but never used" category of so many of them. Unimplemented plans for it included keeping track of the NPCs, which would have been cool. Hmmmmmm, now I am thinking PBEM AD&D......could it be done? Smiley

Had to get there first...... 37. Build a real fully operational Battlecruiser Mk III Smiley

quote:Originally posted by aramike: Now, I do believe that abortion should be an option for victims of rape or if there is danger to the mother. So you believe that she can have an abortion if her pregnancy meets your criteria for an unacceptable pregnancy, yet she is incapable of having her own opinion on what those criteria are? In my country, elective abortions are available up to a certain point in the pregnancy, and I doubt that anyone casually thinks "Whoops, pregnant again! Better schedule another abortion." So if the choice is already a moral nightmare that is really only one person's to make, why bother introducing laws to make it more complicated? Back on topic, the French ruling is interesting. If the doctor did not offer the mother abortion when it was a legal option open to her, then was he negligent? If so, was he negligent in his care of the child or the mother? This ruling says that he was negligent in the care of the child, which implies that an unborn child is legally a person, which further implies that abortion is possibly murder, which questions that legality of the abortion law in France, which then cyclicly affects this case all over again. To quote my physics professor "Whenever you reach a paradox, you've proved something. All you need to then is find out which element of the paradox is fundamentaly wrong." Note that this is intended to be ironically understated. I think, from a legal standpoint, the judgement is wrong, because if an abortion law exists, then the doctor has no duty of care towards the unborn child. But then the law in most western countries has degenerated into "how good a lawyer can you afford?" anyway. It's minus five here tonight, so keep the anti-abortion flames coming - they're most welcome! Smiley

quote:Originally posted by $iLk: It would be just like that book about the Jew who wanted to cut off a pound of flesh as payment from a guy... the something merchant... The book/play is "The Merchant Of Venice" by one William Shakespeare, and the Jew's name is Shylock. A woman recently jumped off a bridge with her Down's Syndrome child, because she couldn't cope any more. I think that women should be given the choice, and that they shouldn't be pilloried for whichever choice they make. If the choice is made to brind a disabled child into the world, then of course as much support should be given to that mother and child as possible. There are four reasons a woman might want to terminate the pregnancy of a disabled foetus: 1) The woman may not want a child, whether disabled or not. Abortions happen for the sake of careers or lifestyle choices all the time. The issue here is the standard "pro life/pro choice" argument. 2) The woman may feel unable to bring up a disabled child due to socioeconomic reasons. Such a child is highly unlikely to be adopted, and if unwanted by the mother, well, what's the point? 3) The woman may wish to terminate the pregnancy because they fell it is morally irresponsible to bring a disabled child into the world. For every diabled person who is able to say "I was born disabled and my life is OK" there is probably at least one child born who is so severely disabled that they live a few days, weeks or months in utter agony and despair. If it could be guaranteed that the disabled child would live a long and fulfilling life, then doubtless many of the people having these abortions would make a different choice, but it can't be. 4) Pregnancy may be potentially very dangerous for the mother. Should she be forced to risk her life for the sake of an unborn baby, whether the child is disabled or not? To insist that pregnancies are carried to term is also, by definition, insisiting that pregnant women become mothers. This is the main argument behind the Pro Choice movement. To allow women to have abortions is, if you accept that unborn children are alive, allowing murder. This is the main argument of the Pro Life movement. I would guess that most people would have a different Pro Choice/Life view on each of the four "reasons" given above, probably with the easiest to "sanction" being the fourth (danger to the mother), moving to the hardest to "sanction" being the first (not wanting a baby by personal choice). For what it's worth, I'm Pro Choice in all four cases. My reasoning behind this view is that no-one should be forced to be a parent, because a parent who doesn't want to be one is probably not going to be a very good one, and at the end of the day, this is a very important point for the unborn child - the quality of the parenting they will recieve. Regards, Smiley

quote:Originally posted by EAGLE: ...it would be nice if internal systems would talke damage after armor falls below 50 or so this way some one could argue that armor on one part of the ship was comletly destryed. but when u take 7% armor damage and 4 of your subsystems are gone to 5% just doesnt seem right. If it helps, why not try thinking of your favourite submarine movie. The depth charge explodes, not close enough to destroy the sub. Inside the ship, steam comes out of pipes, engineers turn valves, pilots bang noses on conn, sonar operators rip their headsets off etc. Yet the hull/armour of the submarine is still relatively intact, since if it wasn't, then there'd be a whole load of extra problems. Another way to think of it is that while the human/robot operators were being thrown about, stunned, etc., or running to fix other stuff, the systems might take some damamge from the lack of care being paid to them. I dunno exactly what level of supervision a radine reactor requires, but I'd take a wild guess at "constant" Off to go home and play...... Smiley

quote:Originally posted by StarShadow: Would be nice to have a SHORE LEAVE button when docked. This would release everyone from duty instead of going done one by one to do the same thing. Shore leave wouldn't be the same as off duty, though, would it? Some of your marines would come back with an Infection