But Teela didn't have any children on the Ringworld (or, to my knowledge) anywhere else. I was under the impression that she'd become a Protector in the same vein as Phssthpok, in that she'd adopted the whole species as her progeny in order to give her the appetite to live.
Surely the reason why Teela-Protector wanted to lose to Louis Wu is explained sufficiently in the book ?
If she didn't lose, the whole Ringworld was doomed, and everyone on it would die, since she couldn't bring herself to fire the meteor defense weapon on populated Ringworld areas to restablise the world. Her genes wouldn't allow her to kill 24 trillion people.
If she lost though, Louis *would* be able to do it, since his pitiful human mind couldn't conceive the numbers of deaths properly, and he'd still be saving countless trillions more by fixing the Ring's wobble.
Seemed pretty clear to me.
And as it turned out she was utterly wrong since the Puppeteer was much better able to control the weapon with his ships computers, and didn't kill anything like as many people as she thought we going to die.
I'm not sure they need a reason for why the Puppeteers system is moving through space. Maybe they just felt like it? I don't think it's that crucial to the plot of the TV show - sure it helps if you're reading the whole Known Space series - but I don't think they'd need this in the show. They also don't *really* need to mention the Quantum 2 hyperdrive. As for background on the Kzinti and Puppeteers background ? I think it will become pretty obvious without any background necessary. But the whole Pak Protectors thing would be vital I think...
The setting itself turns out to be kind of shabby: Niven had to add all sorts of kludgy patches to keep the poor Ringworld together and viable. If your aim is to create lots of secure living space, you are far better off building lots of self-contained space habitats.
To be fair, the "kludgy patches" came in in the later books - after he'd had the flaws with the system pointed out to him by his readers. A lot of (IMHO) decent SciFi from the earlier part of this century is later shown to be flawed by scientific discoveries which weren't known at the time - but I don't really think this spoils the stories themselves.
Asimov's early stuff featured all sorts of assumptions based on current knowledge which turned out to be wrong (The Big Sun of Mercury, Oceans Of Venus to name but two), but the stories themselves are still relatively entertaining if you ignore the fact that their wrong.
Surely the whole point of SciFi is that a lot of the stuff it depicts is *fiction*. We all know there's no way to travel faster than light - but it's a staple part of most Sci Fi stories. Why point at the problems Niven didn't realise the Ringworld would have and use it as a reason to criticise the book?
I never get this thing of taking an RPG so seriously. I played in an AD&D campaign for several years while I was at university - and it was fantastic. In fact, I was only reminicsing with our group of players today with some of the hilarious things that used to happen to us. It's got nothing to do with the rule system you use - it's just how you play it.
For example:
One guy's cleric character, jumping into an icy cold underground river, in full plate mail, and with no swimming ability, with about ten minutes worth of cold protection on him, and a water breathing spell. My fighter / mage character having to use Polymorph self into something I knew could swim really well, and then jumping in to save his sorry ass. Both of us ending up about 40 miles away from everyone else where the river exited the caves because the current was too strong to swim against. Me berating him soundly for hours afterwards as we made our way back to the rest of the party.
My Fighter-Mage character coming up with a unique solution to a dead Bhaal avatar which is about to explode with a force something like a small nuke. Teleporting it into the middle of city that an evil cleric character in the party didn't like much. Probably earning a few insanity points, and certainly a small alignment shift for destroying an entire city
My Fighter-Mage being determined that riding a Nightmare would look so much cooler than a Phantom Steed, because *everyone* has one of those - so taking time out in the middle of fight with a bunch of Anti-Paladins in an attempt to break one in. Failing miserably because I wasn't evil enough for it to accept me as a master.
Some guy' psionicist going mad and being chased by pink dinosaurs in the middle of fight because he refused to take the hint that direct communication with your deity is bad for your mental health.
Numerous moments involving the worst "Rules Lawyer player I've ever met". Most of them involving him rolling up a new character shortly afterwards. Like the time he tried to take on a temple of about 100 evil priests all on his own, because "they're not high enough level to hit me".
Coming up with the "cast an enlarge spell on the evil necklace that's strangling our Thief character pretty fucking fast" method of removing amulets of choking. Our DM being amazed at this simple solution - and actually allowing it. Despite the DM's guide clearing stating you can only get them off with a Limited Wish, or Alter reality spell. None of which we could cast, because we were so low level.
Having an entire galley crew of skeletons that can row at ramming speed forever because their undead dammit. Man, we ruled the sea!
If you can find it (it's sadly out of production now) this Gamesworkshop classic from 1987 is one of the best boardgames I've ever played. For 2-4 players, one of whom plays as Dracula, while the others play the vampire hunters, it's just a truly superb game all round. You might be lucky enough to find it on ebay I suppose....
Most phones on sale in Europe this days are now tri-band - so they support 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz. I've personally been able to use my last three phones in both Europe and the USA without any problems...
This is like getting previews and teasers to one of the most anticipated movies of all time. I just want to be able to see what the outcome of this case is. I want to see SCO's ass kicked in court.
This has to be a unique moment for me personally. I normally don't give a rat's ass who wins a litigation in the USA - it seems to happen to damn often - but SCO are really asking for it. They're like the dumb little kid in the playground who's taunting the big fat kid, and you just want the big fat kid to pound him so bad...
So what happens if you ISP doesn't supply an SMTP server, like mine? I have a wires only connection to net. I get an IP address, and a couple of DNS servers. That's it.
My SMTP server is me.
Do all those of us that program really believe that what we turn out is great?
I certainly don't - I think I have enough humility to realise that there's ALWAYS room for improvement with stuff I've written, and I take no offense when such improvements are pointed out to me.
Do others feel differently?
Do you classify the Known Space series as sequels ?
I for one loved reading as many of them as I could find, and I was / am left desperately dissappointed about at least one of them. In the short story were Louis Wu encounters the Trinoc for the first time - I got the distinct impression there was going to be more in some other tale...
I've never found that story if it exists...
Interestingly, I've just read a review of the first system (to my knowledge) that uses the nForce board as it's core. It's from Mesh and was reviewed in the December issue of Personal Computer World in the UK. The review slateted it quite badly, saying that it's 3D performance was down even on Budget versions of the GeForce 2 card on which the gfx engine on the board is based. Mesh also seemed not to have bothered wiring up the cool onboard sound system the nForce carries. My advice : Wait a while folks - the first nForce systems are going to take a while to run really swish!
I thought that the "Microchip" description applied to the size of the piece of silicon - not to the whole package of plastic and ceramics and what not...?
I know the Pentium series isn't exactly small still - but it's still a lot smaller than the whole pacakge of heatsink and fan would lead you to believe...
I work in the financial messaging sector of IT, and I find it difficult to believe that crackers have actually managed to move money from Bank Account A to Bank Account B.
You'd not only need to be a fairly talented cracker to get into the bank's network in the first place - but you'd also have to have an in-depth knowledge of how banking transactions work to actually pass the money around.
I've been working in this industry for five years now - working with a large number of banks - and I still don't think I could get away with it...
Re:Install less, and use firewalls
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
Right on.
I've installed debian more than a few times too. dselect really needs some work. Like maybe a complete re-write...
Re:not necessarily a good idea
on
Linux Lite?
·
· Score: 1
Essentially this is the case with NT. Although Microsoft badge them as different products - the code is still the same, it's just installed differently. In NT 3.51 you could turn Workstation into server just by altering a registry key. You can do the same in NT 4.0, but you need to kill off a magic thread in the OS which modifies this key if it detects you changing it! The install program here oculd install the dumbed down version of linux by default - but if they bothered to the read the manual they could find out that if you did "blah blah blah" you got all the really cool server stuff, and a big shove towards the rest of the manual.
Slashdot Mirror
But Teela didn't have any children on the Ringworld (or, to my knowledge) anywhere else. I was under the impression that she'd become a Protector in the same vein as Phssthpok, in that she'd adopted the whole species as her progeny in order to give her the appetite to live.
I was just thinking that :)
Surely the reason why Teela-Protector wanted to lose to Louis Wu is explained sufficiently in the book ?
If she didn't lose, the whole Ringworld was doomed, and everyone on it would die, since she couldn't bring herself to fire the meteor defense weapon on populated Ringworld areas to restablise the world. Her genes wouldn't allow her to kill 24 trillion people.
If she lost though, Louis *would* be able to do it, since his pitiful human mind couldn't conceive the numbers of deaths properly, and he'd still be saving countless trillions more by fixing the Ring's wobble.
Seemed pretty clear to me.
And as it turned out she was utterly wrong since the Puppeteer was much better able to control the weapon with his ships computers, and didn't kill anything like as many people as she thought we going to die.
I'm not sure they need a reason for why the Puppeteers system is moving through space. Maybe they just felt like it? I don't think it's that crucial to the plot of the TV show - sure it helps if you're reading the whole Known Space series - but I don't think they'd need this in the show. They also don't *really* need to mention the Quantum 2 hyperdrive. As for background on the Kzinti and Puppeteers background ? I think it will become pretty obvious without any background necessary. But the whole Pak Protectors thing would be vital I think...
The setting itself turns out to be kind of shabby: Niven had to add all sorts of kludgy patches to keep the poor Ringworld together and viable. If your aim is to create lots of secure living space, you are far better off building lots of self-contained space habitats.
To be fair, the "kludgy patches" came in in the later books - after he'd had the flaws with the system pointed out to him by his readers. A lot of (IMHO) decent SciFi from the earlier part of this century is later shown to be flawed by scientific discoveries which weren't known at the time - but I don't really think this spoils the stories themselves.
Asimov's early stuff featured all sorts of assumptions based on current knowledge which turned out to be wrong (The Big Sun of Mercury, Oceans Of Venus to name but two), but the stories themselves are still relatively entertaining if you ignore the fact that their wrong.
Surely the whole point of SciFi is that a lot of the stuff it depicts is *fiction*. We all know there's no way to travel faster than light - but it's a staple part of most Sci Fi stories. Why point at the problems Niven didn't realise the Ringworld would have and use it as a reason to criticise the book?
Yes, but Iain Banks admitted that his Orbitals are a rip off of Ringworld :)
If you don't believe me - read this : Notes on the Culture
One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach.
So is Australia not considered a "foreign nation" in the US then ? I'd always assumed they actually had they're own goverment...
I never get this thing of taking an RPG so seriously. I played in an AD&D campaign for several years while I was at university - and it was fantastic. In fact, I was only reminicsing with our group of players today with some of the hilarious things that used to happen to us. It's got nothing to do with the rule system you use - it's just how you play it.
:
For example
One guy's cleric character, jumping into an icy cold underground river, in
full plate mail, and with no swimming ability, with about ten minutes
worth of cold protection on him, and a water breathing spell. My fighter / mage character having to use Polymorph self into something I knew could swim really well, and then jumping in to save his sorry ass. Both of us ending up about 40 miles away from everyone else where the
river exited the caves because the current was too strong to swim against. Me berating him soundly for hours afterwards as we made our way back to the rest of the party.
My Fighter-Mage character coming up with a unique solution to a dead Bhaal avatar which is about to explode with a force something like a small nuke. Teleporting it into the middle of city that an evil cleric character in the party didn't like much. Probably earning a few insanity
points, and certainly a small alignment shift for destroying an entire city
My Fighter-Mage being determined that riding a Nightmare would look so much cooler than a Phantom Steed, because *everyone* has one of those -
so taking time out in the middle of fight with a bunch of Anti-Paladins in an attempt to break one in. Failing miserably because I wasn't evil enough for it to accept me as a master.
Some guy' psionicist going mad and being chased by pink dinosaurs in the middle of fight because he refused to take the hint that direct communication with your deity is bad for your mental health.
Numerous moments involving the worst "Rules Lawyer player I've ever met". Most of them involving him rolling up a new character shortly afterwards. Like the time he tried to take on a temple
of about 100 evil priests all on his own, because "they're not high enough level to hit me".
Coming up with the "cast an enlarge spell on the evil necklace that's strangling our Thief character pretty fucking fast" method of removing
amulets of choking. Our DM being amazed at this simple solution - and actually allowing it. Despite the DM's guide clearing stating you can
only get them off with a Limited Wish, or Alter reality spell. None of which we could cast, because we were so low level.
Having an entire galley crew of skeletons that can row at ramming speed forever because their undead dammit. Man, we ruled the sea!
If you can find it (it's sadly out of production now) this Gamesworkshop classic from 1987 is one of the best boardgames I've ever played. For 2-4 players, one of whom plays as Dracula, while the others play the vampire hunters, it's just a truly superb game all round. You might be lucky enough to find it on ebay I suppose....
Also note that the part Arwen played in the movie Fellowship of the Ring when she takes Frodo to Rivendell was completely made up too.
In the book, the party are met by the Elf Lord Glorfindel outside of Rivendell, and it is he that takes Frodo to Rivendell on horseback.
On a different note, I'm also slightly agrieved that they left out Gandalf's fight with the Nazgul at Weathertop...
I've already seen the adverts over here in the UK - I've seen them in several papers over the last week or so.
Most phones on sale in Europe this days are now tri-band - so they support 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz. I've personally been able to use my last three phones in both Europe and the USA without any problems...
This is like getting previews and teasers to one of the most anticipated movies of all time. I just want to be able to see what the outcome of this case is. I want to see SCO's ass kicked in court.
This has to be a unique moment for me personally. I normally don't give a rat's ass who wins a litigation in the USA - it seems to happen to damn often - but SCO are really asking for it. They're like the dumb little kid in the playground who's taunting the big fat kid, and you just want the big fat kid to pound him so bad...
This was not a spur of the moment event. There was more than enough time to ensure the gunpowder was correctly placed and packed.
I'd just like to point out that clearly there *wasn't* enough time - since he got caught, hung, drawn, and quartered.
Ah - now there you have me :)
Most people on dial up don't have static IPs though.
So what happens if you ISP doesn't supply an SMTP server, like mine? I have a wires only connection to net. I get an IP address, and a couple of DNS servers. That's it. My SMTP server is me.
Do all those of us that program really believe that what we turn out is great? I certainly don't - I think I have enough humility to realise that there's ALWAYS room for improvement with stuff I've written, and I take no offense when such improvements are pointed out to me. Do others feel differently?
Do you classify the Known Space series as sequels ? I for one loved reading as many of them as I could find, and I was / am left desperately dissappointed about at least one of them. In the short story were Louis Wu encounters the Trinoc for the first time - I got the distinct impression there was going to be more in some other tale... I've never found that story if it exists...
...posting links to a story which encourages you sourcing stuff from a warez site ?
Interestingly, I've just read a review of the first system (to my knowledge) that uses the nForce board as it's core. It's from Mesh and was reviewed in the December issue of Personal Computer World in the UK. The review slateted it quite badly, saying that it's 3D performance was down even on Budget versions of the GeForce 2 card on which the gfx engine on the board is based. Mesh also seemed not to have bothered wiring up the cool onboard sound system the nForce carries. My advice : Wait a while folks - the first nForce systems are going to take a while to run really swish!
I thought that the "Microchip" description applied to the size of the piece of silicon - not to the whole package of plastic and ceramics and what not...?
I know the Pentium series isn't exactly small still - but it's still a lot smaller than the whole pacakge of heatsink and fan would lead you to believe...
I work in the financial messaging sector of IT, and I find it difficult to believe that crackers have actually managed to move money from Bank Account A to Bank Account B.
You'd not only need to be a fairly talented cracker to get into the bank's network in the first place - but you'd also have to have an in-depth knowledge of how banking transactions work to actually pass the money around.
I've been working in this industry for five years now - working with a large number of banks - and I still don't think I could get away with it...
Right on.
I've installed debian more than a few times too. dselect really needs some work. Like maybe a complete re-write...
Essentially this is the case with NT.
Although Microsoft badge them as different products - the code is still the same, it's just installed differently. In NT 3.51 you could turn Workstation into server just by altering a registry key. You can do the same in NT 4.0, but you need to kill off a magic thread in the OS which modifies this key if it detects you changing it!
The install program here oculd install the dumbed down version of linux by default - but if they bothered to the read the manual they could find out that if you did "blah blah blah" you got all the really cool server stuff, and a big shove towards the rest of the manual.