Noobai on deck! *bo'sun's pipes*

Fans of Sabrina Online: Identity Crisis: Noobai on deck! *bo'sun's pipes*
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Daetrin

Tuesday, March 26, 2002 - 02:22 pm
Hello, all. I just found IC yesterday, and finished the last uploaded chapter just a few minutes ago (mmm...spring break...).

Suffice to say, it is really, really good. I just finished the Fionavar tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay and this story holds my interest just as much. Unfortunately, I don't think that I'll be able to write much in the way of a coherent story for the next few days until I come off the reading high. *growls in annoyance*

I wish I could write like that, but alas, my style is cut from a different mold. I guess I'll simply have to lurk until the next bit comes out =(

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Anthony Lion

Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 12:20 am
I didn't think I could write either.

But with a little help from my friends....
(Give James R. Lane a big round of applause)

Now to REALLY spoil your sleep...
www.zzstudios.com
www.chrisfoxx.com
www.planetfurry.com/~rava/
www.anthrofiction.com

oh yeah, and while you're out there, my site too:
www.planetfurry.com/~anthony/

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Daetrin

Wednesday, April 10, 2002 - 09:13 am
mmmm....linkage...

I didn't say I couldn't write, I just can't write this stuff. http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/libr/f/i/fierro2/fierro2.html

See? =)

Regards,

Daetrin@readinggoodnessahoy

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Anthony Lion

Wednesday, April 10, 2002 - 11:53 pm
Ah...

A link to reading stuff :-)

The Lion saunters over and takes a quick peek...

Dragons...

Cool...

you're certain that you don't write furry?

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Daetrin

Saturday, April 13, 2002 - 10:22 am
Nope. Not certain at all =)

Care to mail me so we can discuss without taking up public forum space?

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Hikaru Katayamma (Hikaru)

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 05:27 am
Go ahead and take up public forum space.

It's not like it get's much usage.

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Anthony Lion

Monday, April 15, 2002 - 12:09 pm
You said it....

Daetrin, I love your angle on the Dragon stories...
(Hikaru: Take note! :-)

And I can't wait to see what happens next with the sentinent ships...
I'm a bit confused about the sequence of events, though, but I assume that will become clearer as you publish more.
(Assuming that the stories belong together)

You might take a closer look at Hikaru's story, not 'just' read it, and pay particular attention to how Arden changes mentally as he changes physically (from Human to Bear, to Female Foxmorph, to LARGE Dragon)

I kind of think that you need a little bit more work on Daetrin the living ship as concerns his psyche.

I spotted one or two typing errors, besides the missing spaces here and there, but nothing major...
(A big thank you goes out to James R. Lane, a great chump and a greater editor :-)

Oh yeah, did you read MY stuff?
http://www.planetfurry.com/~anthony/
Please stop by, I could use the hits...

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Anthony Lion

Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 12:38 am
Ooops...

That was supposed to be 'chum', NOT 'chump'...

*chuckles*

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Daetrin

Thursday, April 18, 2002 - 08:07 am
Riiiight. Of course it was supposed to be "chum"...

For the sentient ships....It's 400 years, give or take, between "For the night is dark and I am alone" and "Pure-tech." Daetrin has been in several wars, caused the extinction of a species, but has also seen wonders beyond imagining. He is no longer human, but not quite an AI. I'm not sure what flaws you see in his phyche...but...*shrug*

I -have- paid attention to the changes, actually. Arden-as-Dragon is quite close to Dae, in fact. Arden-as-Bear is my favorite personality so far. Arden-as-Foxmorph is different, but quite good.

And I needed those stories...I'm not quite as glacially emotional as I have been for the past day or so (bleah, I think I broke my Id and Superego).

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Anthony Lion

Monday, April 22, 2002 - 12:16 am
I wouldn't call it a flaw in Detrin's psyche, but...
He sounded a bit 'unemotional' when he picked up that alien and showed her how he used to look.

As for the timeline...

I was more concerned about the damaged ship inching its way towards the asteroid belt.
When is this compared to Daetrin's little 'bodywork' experience?

Oh well, I assume all will be clear later...

BTW: You ever read any of Anne McCaffrey's books?
The lady who taught dragons to fly and spacecraft to sing...

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Daetrin

Monday, April 22, 2002 - 09:22 am
Ah, I see.
The lack of emotion has to do with attitude. He doesn't really want to do this.

The two parts of the story are taking place cocurrently.

I've read the Brainship books, and most of the Pern books, of course! But, oddly enough, that was not my inspiration here...

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Anthony Lion

Monday, April 22, 2002 - 11:55 pm
Ah, but did you know that she wrote a few short stories about brainships?

They're in the book 'The girl who heard dragons'
Also, some of them contains the same 'cats' as you find in the Doona series.

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Daetrin

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 - 05:53 pm
Ah, good, chapter 19.

*reads*

Hrm. Interesting. Darn my fast reading speed, that took under a minute =(

Yea, I've read "Girl who heard dragons." Long time ago though. Ages and ages past...

*Wheel of Time beginning pops into head*

*Shakes off nostalgia* Anyway, I've spent time editing someone's SF novel for publishing, so now I'm actually writing more on mine. Also writing a short. Provide me with an email addy and I'll send 'em to you...

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Daetrin

Tuesday, April 23, 2002 - 05:54 pm
Bah, nevermind, it just occured to me to visit your page for your addy *smacks head*

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Anthony Lion

Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 08:25 am
Stop that smacking!

I want to do it....
(You still haven't commented on MY writing )

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Daetrin

Thursday, April 25, 2002 - 03:52 pm
Well then.
Fang was good, although I don't understand why present tense was necessary (past would work just as well, and perhaps better for stylistic purposes). I liked using the nukes for EMP purposes...but if the Wolves had less efficient computers than we did, they would have less infrastructure based on comps. If they got their act together, they'd restart fabrication pretty quickly. They wouldn't be a threat any longer, but civilization wouldn't fall.
Ours, on the other hand, might. Our computers are so good that we have them in EVERYTHING.

My question is why, if the wolves had battleships and such, they didn't just throw asteroids at us...*shrug*


Heh, as Niven points out, humans are very, very good at war.

I haven't read any others but those three, but...*shrug*

And your email has bounced twice for me...
*shrug again*

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Anthony Lion

Friday, April 26, 2002 - 12:10 am
There's a VERY GOOD reason that the wolves haven't got fabrication back up again...

Their society is VERY hierarcial, with a small upper class, and most of the common people can't even read or write.
With a very small group of techno savvy people, they NEED a high level of automation in their factories.

There's more, too, but I can't tell right now since part of it will be revealed in Chapter 3 which is named 'Dara'...

Now, if I can just make myself sit down and actually WORK on the edits...

As for throwing rocks...
Exactly WHAT do you think they used during the initial bombardment, polka-dot candy?

The reason I write in Present tense is that I CAN'T write in past tense... I've tried...

The emails bounce?
I sent a mail, and that didn't bounce...

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Stig Hemmer

Tuesday, April 30, 2002 - 11:50 am
I would like to thank all the people who have spoiled my sleep by giving all those links. :)

And a big thank you to Hikaru and his editors for the stories on this site.

Stig Hemmer

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Anthony Lion

Tuesday, April 30, 2002 - 01:14 pm
Our pleasure!

We certainly don't do it for the money...

NTNU?
(Norwegian Technical High School)

Student or faculty?

Hikaru's editor is at www.lane-books.com
(Buy his book, it's good! :-)

BTW: You don't happen to write you too?

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Daetrin

Tuesday, April 30, 2002 - 07:08 pm
Egh. Caste systems are bad for purposes of advancement.
Of course IMO caste systems break down after a while...because non-caste systems are so ruthlessly efficient. Just like pictoral alphabets become displaced by letter alphabets.
Granted, castes are -sometimes- more efficient. But overall, having only dedicated people for science/fighting/etc. sacrifices so much flexibility. Oh, well. Personal preference.

And of course, it wasn't stated what the wolves used in the initial bombardment, which was why I asked. Overall though, I'd think they would use fighters for purposes of fighting space-based warfare. I mean, you can throw rocks at -everything-. I was thinking along the lines of "Footfall."

And I haven't gotten to what you've sent me yet...stupid Calculus finals =/
You can't write in past tense? Weird. Hmmm...I think I see how that's possible...still odd though.

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Anthony Lion

Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 08:02 am
Yes, caste systems are bad for advancement, but they ARE good for cowing a lot of subordinates...

Remember that knowledge is power, and keeping the masses in the dark, means that you got power over them.

There is another 'good' think about caste systems. They translate very easily into military structure...
A classic example was the medieval knights. How many of them do you think were NOT high-born?
Interestingly, when the crossbow was introduced in europe, they would kill or mutilate anyone found using one after the battle. (The crossbows were powerful enough to penetrate their armour :-)

Using fighters in space based battles?
Maybe...
Just remember, an energy beam have very little dispersion in vacuum, so can reach far...
Now, would you build a lot of small, poorly armed (and armoured) ships, with small computers, or a big battleship with VERY powerful energy weapons, a REALLY big and powerful computer, and finally encase it in lots of armour?

Remember, in space, you can't fly 'below' radar or behind mountains...
(Ducking in and out of asteroid fields sounds like a good idea, NOT! )

For these reasons, space battles are 'best avoided'. It's much better to try to use surprise and knock out the fleet on the ground or in orbit.

Therefore, use capital ships with linear accelerators...
Of course, an accelerators accuracy is limited by several factors; the lenght of the 'cannon', the accuracy of the targeting computer, thickness of atmosphere, and finally, the quality of the projectiles.

The 'wolves' don't have too powerful computers(haven't managed to steal better), so need to adjust for it. Moving closer to the planet so that they can get a better radar scan of the atmosphere and correct for turbulence is one option...

Of course, that means rendering energy weapons next to useless if a missile is fired at them from the ground...

What isn't mentioned anywhere is that there are 'conventions' about interstellar war, like 'no indiscriminate' bombardment; you have to have a decent chance of actually hitting a target.
(You want the rest of the planet for spoils, right :-)
Also, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are 'frowned upon' because they tend to ruin the planet...
(Do you want to conquer a wasteland?)

I'm working on a new three chapter story, set a few years later. That will give a bit more info about the caste system and how it fares...
(Yes, I'm a tease :-)

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Daetrin

Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 08:53 am
I guess it all depends on how much you can afford to lose.

You'd have to assign infrastructure some insintric worth, and say, "ok, we can afford to lose x number of units to capture this."

X will go down as the war progresses, as they lose more people it becomes harder to take stuff, etc.

Trying to take over a planet and keep infrastructure is hard, because all that stuff that is still there can be used against you. I suppose you could use neutron bombs (kills organics, no lasting radiation, leaves buildings standing) and throw a big asteroid in the Gulf of Mexico...sure you'd flood all of the Mississippi river valley, but when the floodwaters recede it's nice and fertile and free of pesky humans. And meanwhile you could take over big cities...

It's actually probably cheaper to find an uninhabited habitable or reducing-atmosphere terraformable planet and use that then to take over another planet.

After all, what if you lose...?

For space-based, I was thinking to take out what little space-based defenses/infrastructure the given planet has. Unless you're really afraid of people attacking you, there is no POINT to having space fighters, unless you have REALLY good FTL. Defending in space is so frigging hard, especially with non-FTL sensors.

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Anthony Lion

Friday, May 03, 2002 - 06:48 am
Exactly how many 'good', uninhabited planets are there out there?

And if you have competition for them from several other races, it can get very difficult...

Why not invent a reason, like some sort of insult/atrocity, and bomb the opponent into submission, then take over their planet as you pretend to 'guide them and teach them proper behaviour'...
At the same time, you of course have access to any remaining infrastructure and technology.

The only problem is that if you don't win very soon, you can't really back off either because that gives the opponents the chance to tell their side of the story. (as long at the war is going on, you can be reasonably certain that the neutrals stay out of the area because they don't want to be involved)

And as we all know, history is written by the winners...

Yes, that's pretty much the background of the 'Fang' story...

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Daetrin

Tuesday, June 18, 2002 - 07:29 pm
*Stretches arms, pops knuckles*

Well, it's been a looong time since I was here.

I was rooting through my books the other day and realized "Identity Crisis" reminds me quite a bit of Jack Chalker's "Wellworld."

Transformations and all.


Anyway, looking back on this minidebate, I was wondering...how come we have developed soft infrastructure (computers, Internet), as opposed to hard infrastructure (space stations, space industries)...?

*shrug* Oh, well

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Hikaru Katayamma (Hikaru)

Friday, June 21, 2002 - 09:01 pm
You should look in my links page. I'm a _VERY_ big fan of Jack Chalker. Considering the fact that the story's currently taking place in his River of the Dancing Gods setting, that should also be a good indicator. ;)

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Daetrin

Saturday, June 22, 2002 - 07:38 pm
..........oh

Not sure to be embarassed I didn't read the links page or proud that I tagged it with so little knowledge. Bah.

I only read one Wellworld book...I liked "Four Lords of the Diamond" better, and it seems I'll have to go back and try to find the first Wellworld.

At least on Monday I'll have Office installed so I can write in a decent (i.e., non-Wordpad) wordprocessing program. I'm starting to feel writing-deprivation. *urge to kill...rising...*

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Hikaru Katayamma (Hikaru)

Tuesday, June 25, 2002 - 09:21 am
The well world series have just been republished. I think that there's about 5 or 6 books total in the series now. Give it a look over. I think you might like it.

Cheers

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Stig Hemmer

Sunday, June 30, 2002 - 08:39 am

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Stig Hemmer

Sunday, June 30, 2002 - 08:39 am
Anyway, looking back on this minidebate, I was wondering...how come we have developed soft infrastructure (computers, Internet), as opposed to hard infrastructure (space stations, space industries)...?

Space industries require very large investments and takes a long long time to pay off. Most of the capital in todays world is controlled by American business, and they tend to think time frames of quarters rather decades. Space doesn't appeal to that mind-set.

The computer industry has a much much faster return on investment, and also opportunities for making smaller investments in some sectors.

I find it much harder to understand how the rest of Anthonys universe hasn't discovered fast computers. With hyperspace speed determined by the speed of your computers I would think everybody has an immense research effort on this.

Once you discover semiconductors, the rest is fairly straight-forward engineering which shouldn't be a problem for anybody with a big budget.

I suppose nobody has discovered semiconductors, or at least haven't thought about using them in electronics. I could have accepted this if we were talking about one alien race, but you have a whole bunch of them with the same problem. It doesn't make sense. At all.

However, I liked the stories, both from the human and the lioness points of view. Having a main character who is so very Norwegian is also a big plus. :-)

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Anthony Lion

Sunday, June 30, 2002 - 11:54 am
Greetings!

What I've 'assumed' is that Moore's law isn't universal, that computer technology isn't rocketing skywards like it is here on Earth...

After all, we have a lot of home and entertainment computers. Without them to drive the market, what would a 'top line' computer be today?

Remember, after making a chip, you REALLY want to earn back the development costs, and if you have a large market that goes faster...

Another thing that drives todays computer craze is BLOATWARE!
What would have happened if todays most used OS was still 'Plain DOS'?

See?

also, have you seen what they're working on in the research laboratories these days?

Other factors but transistor counts that influences the speed of a computer is things like compactness(short pathways means low distortion), speed of off-line storage(Here I also mean HDD's and similar.), the speed of the memory banks, the effectiveness of the OS...

One example, the MC400 computer(from 1989) that I write the stuff on has a NEC V30(i8086 compatible with powersave functions) 256KB RAM, 640x400 B/W LCD(no backlit, but the screen is very good) and runs a FULLY PRE-EMPTIVE MULTITASKING OS with a GUI...
This is something M$ needs a Pentium or better with 64MB RAM to do, and then only halfheartedly...
And yes, both the Word processor and the Spreadsheet is WYSIWYG...

The final straw?
It gives 20Hours active use on the rechargeable, and 60 - 80hours on a set of 8 AA cells...

Now, imagine that todays computers were based on that platform. Would we then be speaking of 2.x GHz PC's?

What I don't mention in the story is that the processing power needed is exponential to the speed...
There are hints that some areas can be travelled faster than others, like when Rrsh'Dhana is using a simulator.
The reason the ship has capacity then is that the sensors on that ship isn't as good as on other vessels, so can't go any faster without loosing resolution.

As for the main character being so very norwegian...
well...
Why not?

You might also check out Won-Tolla's stuff:
http://won-tolla.future.easyspace.com

He's also Norwegian, and also uses a Psion computer when writing.
The main difference is that he has two stars on his uniform, while I only had 3 chevrons(for two weeks :-)

For those who doesn't know Norwegian military distinctions, two stars means a Lieutenant, not a General... (Then you need a lot of gold trim and stuff)

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Daetrin

Sunday, July 07, 2002 - 03:57 pm
>>Now, imagine that todays computers were based on that platform. Would we then be speaking of 2.x GHz PC's? <<

Of course we would. We would've found something that requires that amount of processing power. I don't think (until the advent of quantum computers) that we will ever NOT need to increase the power of our comps.

P.S.; You should have gotten an email from me fairly recently...

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Anthony Lion

Tuesday, July 09, 2002 - 11:07 am
I got your mail today...
I'm on vacation, so isn't in the office every day.

I liked that 'Innocence' story.
Haven't read the others yet...


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