Markdoc

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library Yes, of course - but since it wasn't catalogued, you don't need to worry about cataloguing it cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist That's it! Yeah, I probably did misremember - I read the book more than 30 years ago... cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist Actually the smaller railguns do this now with a simple steel slug - it (plus part of the armature:)) turns into plasma. However the effective range is only a few centimetres - the plasma cloud is much larger, but diffuses rapidly, losing any effectiveness as a weapon: the terrifying melty-ness of plasma is a bit (read, a lot!) over-rated in science fiction. You can see an example here http://www.powerlabs.org/movies/plasmashot.mpg cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist I knew about that guy. Also, there have been several (hypothetical) projects looking at so-called "hypersonic bullets" based on scramjet principles, made of material that would ignite (magnesium derivatives, mostly) so as to provide their own fuel. None of them have made it past the basic obstacles that 1) your slug ablates as it flies and to get decent range you need to make the slug heavier, which cuts your range, so you need to make the slug even heavier ... It's the argument that you can get a ramjet-like effect, without an engine of some sort, which has me puzzled: I've never heard of such a thing, nor can I see any way it can be made to work. cheers, Mark cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist Heh - given Nyrath's post, (which came in while I was checking up for mine) maybe I'm wrong! Nyrath, can you explain how such a bullet would work? cheers, Mark

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist To be fair, I'm siding with the skeptics here. Ramjets still require fuel, so the bullet analogy is pretty dubious to start with, and the explanation "Once the engine reaches sonic speed it will continue to accelerate the flow due to the math of the jet equation" is either really, really badly written (so that his meaning is entirely obscured), or there's some epic science fail in there. Jets that reach supersonic (I assume that's what he means by "sonic" speed do not in fact accelerate, nor does the airflow through them magically accelerate just inside the jet. Basic physics does not allow the air to pass through the jet faster than the jet passes through the air without energy input - that's why jets have engines. Before you protest that he's a NASA Scientist, I have to admit my BS detector is starting to ping pretty loudly at this point. I checked his website (http://www.doctravis.com/) - and I also checked NASA's. Despite what it implies on his website, it doesn't appear that he's ever been a NASA scientist. He's published a grand total of one technical report which is listed on NASA's servers and it identifies him as working for a small engineering company in the town where he lives (Huntsville, AL). You check out his wiki page and his home page, and there's no CV, no publications, nada - just the unsupported statements you list above. That's pretty odd. Even if he was working on highly classified projects, that's pretty unusual - and I know people who worked on classified bioterrorism projects for DARPA/DoD (indeed, I almost joined them back in 1999). But they still have publicly available CVs and they're not shy about listing them. There doesn't seem to be any doubt about his PhD in optics, and maybe I'm overanalysing, but to me it looks like he's "ahem" inflating his CV to help his writing career (no big crime, considering) - and that "ramjet bullets" are powered with pure handwavium. cheers, Mark

Re: Library Cataloging System for a Multidimensional Library I'm with Ghostangel on this one - the 10 digit ISBN identified a book by author/title/edition. The 13-digit ISBN can seperate the same title by publisher/language group/country (and there's a 14 digit GTIN (Global Trade Identification Number) on the way, which will refine regional issues). Amazon has had to deal with this problem already where a single book might exist in a dozen or more different editions, all slightly different. All that happens, as noted above is that you end up with a (say) 20 digit number cataloguing author/title/edition/publisher/language/region/alternate world/timeline. cheers, Mark

Re: Designing a Magic System - semi-wild elemental magic

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... We already know the answer from history: when faced off against archers (or indeed, any troops in the open field) - epic fail. They are a niche weapon - inaccurate, slow to maneuver and reload, expensive and prone to accidents. But a lot of that applied to early artillery as well. Used carefully in the right place (ie; a siege) where they can't easily be avoided, and at close range where accuracy doesn't matter much, they could be very, very useful indeed. cheers, Mark

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Not only eat it, but like it. No, I don't understand it either - but then I don't like any of the "cheese with mold" variants like Roquefort, either. This is just a more extreme version of the same thing. cheers, Mark

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore Technically speaking, it only sounds like gamalost - it's Gammel Ost (literally, "Old Cheese".) I've tried it. It smells like stinky old cheese (with an extra side of old gym bag), and has a stinky old cheese taste plus a sort of chemical after taste, that's both very distinctive and also hard to describe. The stink takes quite a while to get off your fingers if you touch the stuff. I hate it, but it hardly moves the needle on my "disgusting food meter". It's just nasty cheese. The maggot cheese, on the other hand ... cheers, Mark

Re: Balls of Steel Hmm. To me the answer seems perfectly straightforward. The issue of "partial utility" is a red herring. Yes, STR already gives you the ability to throw things. An EB gives you the ability to damage things, but that partial utility gives you no price break if you want to buy STR. If the powers really are related, use a framework. If not, buy them straight up. "closing the utility gap" has never - with good reason: a utility gap is not a quantifiable power or skill - been a part of Hero system. That issue disposed of, you have two choices: buy it as seperate power or allow it "free" as part of the general environment. Since the objects as described are highly unusual and have to be specifically produced for the task at hand, they're clearly no more part of the general environment than a bazooka, so "free" is not an option either. That leaves option 1. Buy it as a separate power. Of course, this being Hero, there are multiple ways to do that, as discussed in this thread - using transform to make the objects, using Aid to harden the objects, buying a limited EB - these are all acceptable options to me. They all have pros and cons which serve to differentiate them and balance them off against each other. And there are probably others we haven't thought of yet Nonetheless, to me, this seems one of Sean's simpler and easy to answer questions! cheers, Mark

Re: Character: Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter (SPOILERS!!!) The Broken Sword. It's a heavily Norse inspired fantasy about a human child brought up by Elves amid their war with the trolls. Much darker than 3 hearts and 3 lions and it's both more original and much truer in feel to the source material than much of his other norse-inspired writing. Like Rex, it was a major inspiration to me and the feel of it shaped parts of my game. I strongly recommend it. Interestingly though, years ago I read an interview with Poul Anderson where he said he really didn't like the book now and that if he had written it when older, he would have changed it dramatically. I'm glad he didn't! cheers, Mark

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... Maybe - the rockets are actually pretty inaccurate and don't fly the same way every time. Odds are good that given a lot of practice, they might hit one or two - or none. As I noted, they only worked for the Koreans in real life when used to defend walls (and en masse - Hængju had 40). Yeah. That seems like a smart idea, but as far as I know, there's no record of that being done historically - probably because of the difficulty of transporting and mounting the "magazine" (or maybe because they just didn't think of it: lots of things look obvious in hindsight). cheers, M ark

Re: The Singularity? Who knows? The whole point about the singularity is that it's indescribable to ordinary meatbrains like us cheers, Mark

Re: The Singularity? I wouldn't call it dystopian: for the vast majority of people it's utopian. If I could swap my current life - which is pretty good, by Earth standards - for citizenship in the Culture, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Never grow old (unless you want to) never get sick (unless you want to), change your body, if you want to, an almost infinite variety of things to explore and do? The ability to spend a lifetime being an artist, then start again and be a business man, or a scientist, or an extreme sports instructor or a librarian? Sounds pretty good to me.... However, it's both clearly related to our current society and also alien enough that it seems kind of creepy: a sort of uncanny valley effect. cheers, Mark

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority

Re: The Singularity? Ayup. Although the AIs in that world never seemed terribly smart, despite their gigantic computing power. In Ian Bank's Culture novels, the most advanced society is run entirely by AIs (called minds) and people don't actually worry about it too much since they mostly assume they couldn't work out what was going on anyway. One of the nasty background elements to the Culture novels is that it's very clear that human society (actually all of the societies described) only continue to exist because the minds want them to. cheers, Mark

Re: Character: Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter (SPOILERS!!!) That's my favourite of all his books! cheers, Mark

Re: A couple of brain cells connected... And done again. That was pretty cool - but also makes the point that they didn't score a single hit on their non-moving targets. Where the Koreans had success with their rockets was when they were defending fortified points. like Haengju. Think about that video, with all the rockets shooting out and then imagine firing 3 or 4 of them at a bunch of samurai charging through a narrow area like a breach in a wall - at a range of say 10 metres. That seems to have been how they were most effective. Not just all those missiles, but also the sound and the smoke - it'd be pretty intimidating. cheers, Mark

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear

Re: What's in a Name? My german's not very good at all, but Soldaterzerschlagen? Vertilgen? Or kaputtmachen? Maybe some german speakers can help out here. cheers, Mark

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear That doesn't sound much like a city to me though! Any place that anarchic is going to require being armed at all times, obviously. cheers, Mark

Re: battle Wear vs. Town Wear