Results 391 to 420 of 1488
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2017-03-05, 08:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
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2017-03-05, 08:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
"If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-05, 10:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2005
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- Eberron
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The Long Gun is a problem that transcends planning against, because if someone smart enough to be able to use one gets one, your only recourse amounts to 'don't be the one they're aiming at', because the gun can be parked absolutely anywhere, and there is a lot of empty anywhere to park in, so trying to find the thing before it shoots you is infeasible. The absolute best possible scenario would be having the ability to trace the wormhole shot back to the source and lance it with a Gun of your own before it can relocate, at which point it becomes a MAD arms race.
Nannies and DMEs can be meaningfully planned against because it is possible to detect and stop them before the attack hits. Planning against a Long Gun situation is, so far as we are informed as readers, the equivalent to us making a plan for our sun going nova.
"Hope it doesn't"
"Die quickly"Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
Swoop Falcon
I make(made?) avatars! Last updated 12-23-2008. Requests not unwelcome. Last request 01-12-2010.
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2017-03-05, 12:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
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2017-03-05, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
"If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-05, 12:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2005
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- Eberron
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Man this thing was full of outdated stuff.
Swoop Falcon
I make(made?) avatars! Last updated 12-23-2008. Requests not unwelcome. Last request 01-12-2010.
Avatar by me.
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2017-03-05, 01:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
No I don't seem to be doing that. An intelligent reading of what I wrote would certainly not have come to that conclusion.
BTW, I barely started to list the problems with your earlier comment. I'll throw out another one: If DMEs could be planned for much more meaningfully than long guns, why do so many of the characters think that DMEs have been wiping out all civilization in the entire galaxy repeatedly? It's the DMEs that seem to be the threat that's historically been the huge problem, not long guns.
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2017-03-05, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The difference is that you can see the Dark Matter Beasties coming giving you time to react, to plan a response.
Even if doing so is ultimatly somewhat pointless it still gives the illusion of control.
A enemy that you can see coming, that you can hit- however ineffectual that may be -is less scary than a foe that can wipe you out without even giving you the chance to locate them, simply because it looks like you can do something about the former while the latter leaves you utterly helpless.
So yeah, a paniced overreaction to the Oafan Sniper Ships makes absolutely sense because it gives them back their illusion of control."If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-05, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Apparently you can't always spot the DMEs in time. We know that the battleplates have a protocol that involves powering down and hoping the DME goes away. You can't have that much of an illusion of control if the protocol involves powering down and hoping for the best.
Here is a real world analogy: All countries today are very vulnerable to a nuclear attack by ICBMs. Does having radar so they can spot ICBMs coming help all of those who have advance radar capabilities compared to those who don't? Did every military leader just freakout when they learned about nuclear weapons or ICBMs?
Breya didn't freakout. Apparently it's possible to not freakout. The Penultimate Admiralty should have reacted the same way as Breya. The solution would be that the risk needs to be minimized via diplomacy while other approaches are considered: building their own long guns as a deterrent and research into possible ways to block an attack are a couple of possible ideas.
I can't remember, but didn't the current book start with a UNS long gun test? If so, that makes the freakout even more implausible because they would have had to have been thinking about the long guns for a long time, unless the PA somehow didn't know about the plans for the weapon in advance. (Credomar is even older.) How long can this collective freakout last?
I suspect that people will react to this situation differently depending how how much toleration for silliness they have. After all, SM has always been a rather silly space opera. I personally don't think this scene is all that bad. Yes, the way the PA is acting is ridiculous. Breya and Murtaugh pretty obviously think that it's ridiculous, so you can even argue that it's canonical that it's ridiculous. Still there is some reason for the PAs behavior. It's not as bad as some of the stuff in the previous book. It's bad enough to come across as rather artificial to me, and I'll stand by that, but it's not so bad to come across as a huge flaw. I don't mean to come across as if I'm making a huge criticism here.Last edited by eschmenk; 2017-03-05 at 02:25 PM.
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2017-03-05, 04:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Last edited by halfeye; 2017-03-05 at 04:46 PM.
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2017-03-05, 04:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2009
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2017-03-05, 04:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2012
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The note saying the location says they're in Jumpstar Prime, the city in the Can full of Sky the Toughs built from the battleplate they bought with Oafan ship hulls.
Tenzy is the gun turned AI with inbuilt fabrication capabilities he's in some kind of relationship with. She makes his cybernetics.
EDIT: Ninja'd.Last edited by Grim Portent; 2017-03-05 at 04:48 PM.
Sanity is nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
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2017-03-05, 04:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
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- Bristol, UK
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2017-03-12, 03:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Interesting. Maybe we're going to find out that this 4118-6 entity is the actual cause of those regular galactic armageddons that the Archive knows about, not Petey?
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2017-03-12, 11:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
As far as I know, no one thinks it's Petey. He wasn't even around for any of the previous armageddons, so how could he have caused them? The in-story theory seems to be that it's the DMEs that are responsible for the armageddons.
To me, so far there is nothing that suggests that the big computer and data storage device is responsible for the armageddons.
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2017-03-12, 11:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Didn't that Archive-entity say Petey might cause the next end of the world as we know it and that something similar caused the previous ones*?
Entirely possible that the stellar enclosure- or rather something stored in the databanks will be the trigger.
*Or was it the immortality-juice?
All I recall is that it didn't like/trust Petey."If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-12, 11:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The archive entity is merely an idiotic device that completely misunderstood quantum mechanics. Petey completely debunked its logic. What the archive said is a joke. It's a parody of the stupid ideas that people get from misunderstanding quantum mechanics.
Having said that, it's possible that some information in the new system would be dangerous knowledge. There could be information that people could misuse with catastrophic results. Still, it wouldn't have been Petey who would have misused that knowledge and triggered past armageddons simply because he didn't exist yet.Last edited by eschmenk; 2017-03-12 at 11:39 AM.
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2017-03-12, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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2017-03-12, 11:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2007
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- Indianapolis
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
IIRC it stated that every time galactic society rediscovered the wonders of the past/developed something that could make an honest claim to being a god, something happened shortly* thereafter to destroy that society. I don't believe it stated specifically what the actual cause of destruction was; could be civil wars and internal strife, could be outside forces (the DMEs seem like the most probable aggressors) coming around to do a Mass Effect-style culling. Either way, knowing what Petey was fit enough of the Archive's memories to make it think that cycle was about to hit its destruction phase again.
*shortly on a galactic timescale, of course. So could be several hundred or thousand years. And the Archive was probably at least a little bit insane, so while its actual facts about the past are probably true, the conclusions it draws from them are not reliable.
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2017-03-12, 11:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Not Petey, no.
Someone like him.
But Petey or not Petey, I like the idea that there is some knowledge in that there's some knowledge in that databank the galaxy really shouldn't touch.
(I read a series once where something like that happened.
The resident precursor race got into a civil war about their tech.
One side developed a weapon that would destroy anyone who would abuse the knowledge behind the tech.
What happened next should be easy to guess.*)
Not saying that will happen there, but Ennesby’s approach still seems the best for now.
*Right. They were the first targets of their new security system. Because it determined everyone getting to that tech-level would inevitably abuse it and endanger existence.
Making things worse: Simply knowing about the weapon (and the technology behind it) could attract it.Last edited by Kantaki; 2017-03-12 at 12:47 PM.
"If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-12, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Fixed it for you. People won't see what you were trying to hide this way. (Yes, I knew this wouldn't work, either.)
Anyway, I'm glad you clarified that you are thinking what you are thinking because of reasons other than just because something that's both stupid and crazy made the claim. Generally, taking what a stupid and crazy person says too seriously is not a good thing to do. It worries me a little when it looks like people are doing that.Last edited by eschmenk; 2017-03-12 at 12:50 PM.
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2017-03-12, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
I've no idea what you are talking about...
No idea how that happened. Thanks.
Anyway, I'm glad you clarified that you are thinking what you are thinking because of reasons other than just because something that's both stupid and crazy made the claim. Generally, taking what a stupid and crazy person says too seriously is not a good thing to do. It worries me a little when it looks like people are doing that.
Or the only reason? I mean the only way to specul is to use stuff we know as the base.
Either way, I think it makes sense.
The problem there is that the available information seems to indicate that all those previous civilizations developed beyond a certain point, did something and got wiped out.
So you have the choice to either look into their stuff and find out what happened to potentially avoid/prepare for it- risking that the new knowledge pushes you beyond that point -or you stay away from it loose the chance to be prepared when you get to that level of development.
Considering the nature of most sophonts (cough especially humans cough) I think not poking ancient knowledge is the better course.
On the other hand the researchers looking at that knowledge and then deciding „Let's bury this and start to steer our development into a different direction” could be interesting.
On the gripping hand I doubt that will happen.
So I'm with Ennesby: Let's not poke that."If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-12, 03:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Yeah, I think there is a theory that some information exists about how to make and/or enslave DMEs and it would be really tempting, but also a very bad idea, to use that information. If not that, it could be something else.
A few additional random observations:
1) Enesby doesn't seem to be worried about that yet. (Maybe he should be?) He was worried about the computer learning about them, not about them learning from the computer.
2) During the hacking, Enesby was following Tensy's instructions. How did Tensy get to be so much smarter than Enesby?
3) Is the information already out? I don't particularly trust that the Purse's crash was merely what it seemed to be.Last edited by eschmenk; 2017-03-12 at 03:33 PM.
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2017-03-12, 04:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Of course he should.
And I can see why he would be worried about the databank learning about them.
You never know what it does with that knowledge.
Even assumption it isn't an devastatingly clever A.I.
2) During the hacking, Enesby was following Tensy's instructions. How did Tensy get to be so much smarter than Enesby?
Add in the cyberware she makes for her boyfriend (assuming she put some processing units in there) and she gets even smarter.
Plus she came from this place.
Meanwhile Ennesby is still the same old Maraca- and if Kevyn or Tagon caught him even thinking about something like this they would downgrade him to pocket-calculator.
3) Is the information already out? I don't particularly trust that the Purse's crash was merely what it seemed to be.
So obviously that's exactly what will happen."If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2017-03-21, 02:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
OK, what the heck is going on at the moment? Pretty darned sure this can't be the actual afterlife, so best guess is that these are the recorded personalities of the crew, maybe captured by the artifact they were studying. So--why did it do that? So many unanswered questions at the moment.
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2017-03-21, 03:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2009
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
Member of the Giants in the Playground Forum Chapter for the Movement to Reunite Gondwana!
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2017-03-21, 07:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
The ones we see would be the personalities of the crew of the freighter, which was just delivering supplies. It sounds as if the recorded personalities of the Purse's crew were already there under a tree. They were the ones who did the studying. We haven't seen them in this scene quite yet (but may in a few minutes).
I think you're right about it being the artifact that is hosting a simulation that is playing out. It probably learned how to simulate the crew members by hacking their nannies. The artifact may have even used the hacked nannies to make the Purse's crew members attack the freighter and then commit suicide, although I can't give an in-story reason yet for why they wouldn't have blown themselves up in the middle of nowhere or flown into some sun or black hole.
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2017-03-21, 11:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
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- Therinos
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
If I had to hazard a guess, it's one of two things. Door #1: It's a warning to others, and a clear dead end. "Mess with 4118-6 and you'll end up as a patch of gravy." Door #2: There's something the Toughs will find to give them a lead, and then they'll be sucked into the same trap as Jozagle's Purse was. For unclear and possibly nefarious purposes.
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2017-03-22, 12:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2007
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- DE
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Re: Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days
-HaJo
FLW: Oh, no. We're being rescued. How embarrassing!
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2017-03-22, 12:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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