pkzip

"A dog on the run may safely be kicked." "The beard of the guest is in the hands of the owner of the tent." "'I have lost the morning dew' cries the flower to the sky who has lost her stars." The first two I believe are Berber proverbs, the final is from the Indian poet Rabindrinath Tagore.

I use Coolboard (free) on a Homestead site (also free), with great results for both. Just enough bells and whistles for a non-coder like me. They seem to have fast and reliable servers. Twice down in a year, but they emailed me a few days ahead each time to warn me about the scheduled maintenance; rather thoughtful if you ask me. No serious observed posting lag. Nice color schemes to choose from. Depending on how much search and thread-nesting capabilities you need, it might suit. http://coolboard.homestead.com .

Y'all help yourselves to some of those oblong patties on the back of the grill. I swapped some apparently useless minerals for a case of 'em from a trader who said they come fresh from Gammulan space. They look like tofu and taste like chicken, or is it the other way around. Ah, and please don't operate heavy machinery or pencil sharpeners after consuming.

sorry, Zeke, my 'folded space' reference was way too obtuse. This is the way they taught it to me at Drake U in the seventies, somebody (hopefully the good doctor) will let me know if it's no longer a relevant analogy: Take a very thin sheet of paper. Put two dots on it near opposite edges (Travel-From, Travel-To). How far away from each other are the dots? Now softly fold the paper over until the dots touch. Now how far away are the dots? Flatten out that sheet, and start making little accordion folds in it. After a bunch of folds, Now how far away are the dots? Here's the rub: there is no stress to the object taking the short cut between the dots, either way... but there's a mother of stress on the sheet (Relativistic "Normal" Space) that it bends in order to bypass. You either slightly warp a whole bunch of space all at once (one single curvy fold with mininmal distortion at each point), or you 'tunnel' through it (countless tiny sharp localized folds). It's that Particle Versus Wave thing. Bigred gave me a solid reality check, Zeke... it's your story, and we're glad to hear you tell it. Ponder this: would Rattler (as an example) go to the trouble of trying to bend space (either way mentioned above), or to travel 2,628,000,000 km/s, to get a crack at Fill-In-The-Blank ? You betcha. Why? It's a Long Story. And a good one at that. Keep at it bro, it's a good thing you're building. I want to see character/culture bios and a story arc timeline soon (sorry, old tutor habits resurfacing).

Einstein's Relativity starts kicking Newtonian butt at around .84c, or darn close to the speed of light. Three things happen: 1. The object increases in Mass. Imagine that bicycle getting heavier and heavier. 2. The object gets smaller and smaller. Stress and Navigational issues. 3. The object's clock slows down (remember, relative to the "ground"). 4.(Honorary) What's left of the laws of thermodynamics at that speed says you get a mite bit toasty too. So as you approach 'c', you weigh a bizillion tons, you're tiny as hell (they don't call it "singularity" for nothing), and it takes forever, Really, to cook dinner. This are the limits, somebody gouge me if I've misinterpreted our ol dude Al E. Who's up for 'folding' space instead? [This message has been edited by pkzip (edited 09-08-2000).]

I stand very corrected. The Brits did indeed hire the Hessians. Several hundred of which the British general "Playboy Johnny" Burgoyne surrendered to the colonialists after he stalled crossing the Hudson towards Saratoga (ya get what ya pay for). The French were Friendly Arms Traders (a modern-day Israel), which is not the same thing as Mercenary. Thanks, eclipse, for making me RTFM, whether it be history or otherwise. I knew there was one gathering dust over there on the shelf. [This message has been edited by pkzip (edited 07-27-2000).]

quote:Originally posted by Tac: No, but today's "pirates" are usually given a media circus, making them the underdog rebels of some sort...quite different from what it used to be a couple of hundred years ago. Sir, correct me if I'm wrong, but about two hundred years ago, our colonial Founding Fathers were first engaged in terrorist acts, and then later, hiring mercenaries (Prussian? Hessian? help me folks). When we were done with the mercenaries, they went to some other border clash and earned their pay there. I wonder who a hired gun would least like to meet in close quarters combat: a zealous patriot, or another hired gun working for the enemy?

dl'd it, played it, liked it. Good high-end-capable graphics, high excitement factor, zero learning curve, but definitely a work-in-progress (I hope, only for Red Storm's sake): miserable multiplayer connectivity issues over the touted Zone. Yeah, I know, As If... imho, why it succeeds is also why it fails. I don't know why, but I expected another Human-Cooperative-Capable issue from Red Storm, a la Rogue Spear. Multiplayer implicitly means Many Other Human People, and why go to the trouble of going online to get only yourself pounded by various 13-year-old loner kids with Serious Issues To Resolve? Impressive eye-candy, but "Bang! Gunship Elite" inevitably gets a Thumbs-Down from me because there is no human team, Insurgent, Galcom, or otherwise, no caste even, that is there to back me up. Nobody for me to cover the six for. My take on it anyway.

Wow, I bow respectfully to my ambitious, focused brothers (and cisterns) here. My professional cash-money resum├® includes such items as Programmer (C-Basic small business turnkeys on IBM System 23's, anybody remember those?), English Tutor, Armed Guard, Jazz Pianist and Arranger, Coffee Merchant, Tobacconist, IT Helpdesk Lackey, Major Motion Picture Pre-Production Lackey, Tourguide in Budapest, Winemaking Instructor; currently playing the role of Mr. Windows/Office Helper Guy at a well-known US insurance company. (Every few years it's time to reinvent. This behavior prevents that nasty disease called Wealth.) So, yeah, of course, childless and always single. Never-Never Land has its ups and downs just like any place. I'm mighty proud of the caliber of people I have the pleasure of meeting here. Great to learn just a bit more about y'all.

heck, why NOT have it take 200 years to build? Why not even 500 years or more? I think it's a fresh idea, I like it. There's a name for getting unruly humans to cooperate over many many generations in a huge project based on faith. It's called Religion, and it wears many faces: Fear of Strangers, Desire for Utopia, Order by Rule, etc. In other words, give your characters a compelling enough reason to keep at it that long, and they will. This helps to breathe more life into the ship itself: it becomes a living, changing representation of the characters' belief in the Knowability of the Uncertain.. it is a church, if you will. And churches change like hardware and technology; ya tear the old ones down and build new ones with their pieces. Yesterday's 'bridge sound-reduction plates' become tomorrow's 'aft corridor bathroom carpet.' But like churches, sometimes the original motivation (Writing 101: no motivation, no story) gets muddled over time. It never hurts to juxtapose your characters' ancient faiths against their current realities. Just an outlook from a former English tutor. Zeke, I applaud you for thinking Big. (DISCLAIMER: This is meant as neither a plug for, nor diss against, Organized Religion, nor as an attempt to veer off thread, or to open up a dangerous new one. Anyone offended by these ideas is kindly requested to go seek a broader education. "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" would be a good place to start.) [This message has been edited by pkzip (edited 07-08-2000).] [This message has been edited by pkzip (edited 07-08-2000).]