Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Wow, I don't think I ever noticed this before, but while most characters talk in allcaps, some, like Schlock himself, consistently don't. It hasn't been going on since the very first strip, but definitely since book 2.

I blame my recent graphic design project that included paying attention to fonts for noticing it. Now I need something to blame for not noticing it during those previous 17 or so years.

[Onyavar]

it is the AI font, yes

[Lvl 2 Expert]

it is the AI font, yes

I hadn't considered that. Although to be fair, it does get a bit muddled in this strip. Schlock counts as an AI, but the space fairies don't. Putzho at some point becomes one, but the characters who introduce him into the all-star and have lived there for presumably millions of years speak in allcaps etc. (Edit: Petey doesn't use it consistently, not even on those easy to draw cyberspace backgrounds.)

Edit some more a day later: It's funny how these things become a story all of their own ones you notice them. A bit like the story of that gnome and that giraffe in the background on a refugee ship.

[satorian]

Anyone know what "spike the Captain's wheels" means? Is that military jargon, like Howard often uses?

[halfeye]

Anyone know what "spike the Captain's wheels" means? Is that military jargon, like Howard often uses?

I believe the reference is to putting something thin but strong through the spokes of a bicycle wheel (or any sort of wheel with spokes), which stops the wheel dead, resulting in a crash.

[PhantomFox]

While technically correct, I don't think Niantic would be the first one to have a crack at a C&D order...
Meanwhile that's not a ... bad looking Umbreon. Not great, but not bad.

[Onyavar]

I am glad, I don't need to do anything with pa'anuri physics.

"the two dark-nucleons are called umbrions and umbrons. Obviously, the umbron has a neutral charge while the umbrion has a positive charge. dark-carbon consists of six umbrions, six umbrons and six umbratrons... (...) There are six dark-leptons, which are the umbratron, the umbralino, the ambratron and the ambralino, and finally the ombratron and the ombralino. To simplify dark matters, anti-dark matter gets the prefix contr-, which would include the contrumbron and the contrumbrion..."

No, Tayler, I don't see anything wrong with these names. Carry on, umbratron.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

While technically correct, I don't think Niantic would be the first one to have a crack at a C&D order...

I think Howard may have never seen a Pokémon before Go. (Or maybe he assumes the ones he's never seen before are Go originals?)

Shame on you Howard, shame.

I'm curious how this will turn out. The original reason for the Pa'anuri to be so huge was that dark matter was much less complex than normal matter, made of wimps. Let's see if he has a trick up his sleeve to work this into the new theory.

[Onyavar]

well, i for one was glad that there was a white-red capsule on the floor, so i could realize what the joke was about without having to google what a "niantic" is.

[Rockphed]

Thread title watch: Schlock Mercenary IX: I'm not prepared to say no

[Lizard Lord]

While technically correct, I don't think Niantic would be the first one to have a crack at a C&D order...
Meanwhile that's not a ... bad looking Umbreon. Not great, but not bad.

Is it even technically correct? Niantic has licensing rights to create A Pokemon game and continuously update it, but I don't think they have ANY claim over the property rights of any of the Pokemon (except MAYBE Melton and Melmetal).

[HouseRules]

Schlock Mercenary IX:

"Aliens saved the dinosaurs because a mutant frogozoid tried to eat the stars."

Can we save that for the next incarnation of the thread?

Finish the joke?

[HorizonWalker]

Schlock Mercenary IX:



Finish the joke?

It's a direct quote from this comic.

[HouseRules]

I'm saying we have two suggestions for the next thread's Schlock Mercenary IX: Title.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm a little confused whether this worldship has a "real"/physical or a virtual population.

On the one hand these control room guys are running ten thousand times as fast as their guests, plus we know Tagon and crew didn't bring any real bodies. But if it's all virtual, why did they need to warm up a continent sized patch of hull to open a park? Plus it would mean that when the dinosaurs were teraported over they used the minds only method. Given how horrible everyone else in this comic thinks that is I would have expected them to say something about that.

Or are we looking at some sort of hybrid world? Hard light holograms for the visitors, real bodies with modyfied computirized minds for the locals, real plants for the environment?

[Radar]

I'm a little confused whether this worldship has a "real"/physical or a virtual population.

On the one hand these control room guys are running ten thousand times as fast as their guests, plus we know Tagon and crew didn't bring any real bodies. But if it's all virtual, why did they need to warm up a continent sized patch of hull to open a park? Plus it would mean that when the dinosaurs were teraported over they used the minds only method. Given how horrible everyone else in this comic thinks that is I would have expected them to say something about that.

Or are we looking at some sort of hybrid world? Hard light holograms for the visitors, real bodies with modyfied computirized minds for the locals, real plants for the environment?

The method itself is not horrible: it was always the fact that Petey could do it so easily to anyone anywhere. And that small detail that he did not have to keep your personality anywhere, if he chosen so.

[Grim Portent]

I'm a little confused whether this worldship has a "real"/physical or a virtual population.

On the one hand these control room guys are running ten thousand times as fast as their guests, plus we know Tagon and crew didn't bring any real bodies. But if it's all virtual, why did they need to warm up a continent sized patch of hull to open a park? Plus it would mean that when the dinosaurs were teraported over they used the minds only method. Given how horrible everyone else in this comic thinks that is I would have expected them to say something about that.

Or are we looking at some sort of hybrid world? Hard light holograms for the visitors, real bodies with modyfied computirized minds for the locals, real plants for the environment?

They said they were putting their guests into a 'meatspace quarantine', so I assume they somehow rapidly created physical bodies for the delegation and transferred them into them and put them into the park. The park sounds like it's a meatspace area intended for recreation, so maybe they have the resources to spare on having meatspace holidays into a recreated terrestrial biosphere?

Why they wouldn't just simulate them is beyond me, perhaps some of the population have a psychological attachment to meat.

[Radar]

They said they were putting their guests into a 'meatspace quarantine', so I assume they somehow rapidly created physical bodies for the delegation and transferred them into them and put them into the park. The park sounds like it's a meatspace area intended for recreation, so maybe they have the resources to spare on having meatspace holidays into a recreated terrestrial biosphere?

Why they wouldn't just simulate them is beyond me, perhaps some of the population have a psychological attachment to meat.

For themselves the reason might be as trivial as wanting to have an option of going back to real world open, or a backup option of doing repairs on the ship, when something critical breaks in the informatic network, but for that usually inhabiting some robotic drones should be more then enough.

For Tagon and company the reason is security - simulating a world for them would mean they have a direct contact with the infospace, giving them real bodies in a real park adds a few more layers of separation.

[factotum]

They said they were putting their guests into a 'meatspace quarantine'...
Why they wouldn't just simulate them is beyond me, perhaps some of the population have a psychological attachment to meat.

Latest strips answer both questions: they're definitely meat now, and they don't simulate them partly so they can out-think them. Presumably this way also means there's no risk at all of the humans "infecting" the rest of the computer, because they're in meatspace and not cyberspace.

[Grim Portent]

Latest strips answer both questions: they're definitely meat now, and they don't simulate them partly so they can out-think them. Presumably this way also means there's no risk at all of the humans "infecting" the rest of the computer, because they're in meatspace and not cyberspace.

The questioning part of that statement was actually about why they have a real park in the first place, the virtual world can simulate any experience the locals want, but they still recreated a physical space based on earth during the period the dinosaurs lived there.

[factotum]

The questioning part of that statement was actually about why they have a real park in the first place, the virtual world can simulate any experience the locals want, but they still recreated a physical space based on earth during the period the dinosaurs lived there.

Given the size of the place I have no problem with them having multiple meat-space reserves. Heck, it might be that the simulated people in the AI core do occasionally like to feel what it's like to walk around in a real body. Furthermore, some of those spaces might perform the same function as a zoo on Earth--a place where the animals they've encountered on their journey can be preserved for future generations.

[Narkis]

The questioning part of that statement was actually about why they have a real park in the first place, the virtual world can simulate any experience the locals want, but they still recreated a physical space based on earth during the period the dinosaurs lived there.

It's possible they only just now made that park for their guests. It would explain the delay and the australia-sized heat signature.

[lord_khaine]

It's possible they only just now made that park for their guests. It would explain the delay and the australia-sized heat signature.

This is certainly very possible.
Or that alternatively, its a place they have for visitors.

[The Glyphstone]

They're insanely hyper-paranoid about destruction or contamination from outside, would they bother keeping a special place set aside for visitors they're terrified of and don't want to begin with? Their first response was to try and ignore them until they went away, after all.

[Max_Killjoy]

The name of the place is "Featherell Nostalgia Park Three", that should tell us some things.

[Mechalich]

It's possible they only just now made that park for their guests. It would explain the delay and the australia-sized heat signature.

When announcing the 'meatspace quarantine' plan the Featherell representative specifically said the location had been 'repopulated' which implies it was probably empty prior to that and the heat signature represented the production of all the relevant lifeforms.

The worldship clearly contains an amphibian faction and a Featherell faction and the Featherell appear to be much more sympathetic to contact with humans, and with aliens in general as shown during the bit where they made contact with the Hrathi. The Featherell are also presumably much less numerous than the amphibians (an industrial-revolution level society of intelligent dromaeosaurs probably tops out at around 1 billion 65 mya) and junior partners in the worldship's governance.

[Willie the Duck]

The questioning part of that statement was actually about why they have a real park in the first place, the virtual world can simulate any experience the locals want, but they still recreated a physical space based on earth during the period the dinosaurs lived there.

Given the size of the place I have no problem with them having multiple meat-space reserves. Heck, it might be that the simulated people in the AI core do occasionally like to feel what it's like to walk around in a real body. Furthermore, some of those spaces might perform the same function as a zoo on Earth--a place where the animals they've encountered on their journey can be preserved for future generations.

They're insanely hyper-paranoid about destruction or contamination from outside, would they bother keeping a special place set aside for visitors they're terrified of and don't want to begin with? Their first response was to try and ignore them until they went away, after all.

I think, on some level (a Doylist one, I pre-acknowledge) is to give some basic purpose to having physical bodies ever again, anywhere in the SM universe. It's been a stretch for a while that this universe needed flesh-and-blood gun-toters, but with people being able to be backed up, run in sim, and so forth, there is fast becoming little actual reason for there to be flesh and blood. Mind you, there are some really good sci fi stories told in that setup. However, converting Schlock Mercenary over to that seems to rob it of its' own unique character.

[HandofShadows]

The name of the place is "Featherell Nostalgia Park Three", that should tell us some things.

That there are at least two other parks at the very least.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think, on some level (a Doylist one, I pre-acknowledge) is to give some basic purpose to having physical bodies every again, anywhere in the SM universe. It's been a stretch for a while that this universe needed flesh-and-blood gun-toters, but with people being able to be backed up, run in sim, and so forth, there is fast becoming little actual reason for there to be flesh and blood. Mind you, there are some really good sci fi stories told in that setup. However, converting Schlock Mercenary over to that seems to rob it of its' own unique character.

Given that we've had a character who is an AI controlling a flesh-and-blood body... and an AI in an artificial body that seems very "human like"... and human minds uploaded into computers and running while their bodies are restored... and a mindripped biological mind controlling multiple mechanical entities... and the "meaty Peteys"...

...I think the line is so blurred at this point that a person's backup could be restored into a vastly "superior" body.

[HandofShadows]

...I think the line is so blurred at this point that a person's backup could be restored into a vastly "superior" body.

No doubt they could. But none of the characters we have seen want to do that. Sometimes having limitations makes you much more inventive. Also the backups probably want to be the person they remember being.