Traveller-digest     Tuesday, September 7 1999     Volume 1999 : Number 1069



(R)1996. Traveller is a registered trademark of FarFuture Enterprises.
All rights reserved.

The following topics are covered in this digest:

Re: K'Kree barbeque methods.
Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures
Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures
Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures
Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1051
Re: The Big Button (was Re: Testing the Waters)
Re: Some From The Vaults
Re: Jump Horizons of stars
Re: Vacuum tube computers
Re: Vacuum tube computers
Re: Vacuum tube computers
Re: Imperial military and PR
Re: Comparitive Sexualities
Re: Nuking with Lighter Fluid
Re: Vacuum tube computers
Re: Re High Pressure Areas
Re: Imperial military and PR

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 01:56:19 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: K'Kree barbeque methods.

In mail you write:

> Ok. Number one. Evil things for fighting K'Kree.
>
> On the great plains planet. Pop a 100 meg or so on one
> side, then dust the other with plutonium dust. This was
> Jim's Idea.

> Mine was SatNuc clusters from the inner limit. Each
> individual bomblet has a optical herd recognition
> guidance system.

*much* simpler. Just hit the upper atmosophere with a *lot* of the
right kind of "dirty snowball". Instant "nuclear winter". K'kree don't
do so well if *all* the vegetation on the planet is dead/dying. Even
they can't afford to raise enough in greenhouses. 

Or use biowarfare agents that attack whatever passes for chlorophyll. 

You see, herbivores, especially *grazing* ones like the K'kree have a
*major* disadvantage. Their digestive systems *have* to have lots of
"bulk". "food concentrates" aren't *possible* for them. 

Omnivores and carnivores can exist for extended periods on "low bulk"
diets. We still need a certain amount of "fiber" to keep things in
order, but it's easily supplied. A K'kree will suffer major digestive
disorders without *kilos* of bulk every day. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 02:03:40 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures

In mail you write:

>> I'll be happy to send the
>> .jpg to those who want a copy; its resolution is
>> 1028x800.
>
> It doesn't sound like anything I've seen, and that is a nice size. Go ahead
> and send me a copy please. If I recognize it, I'll get back to you.
>
> I was wondering; it seems that some folks are concerned with size on Web
> sites, and yet many images are quite large. I would have thought that of all
> gaming genres, Traveller would have the highest percentage of "high end"
> computer owners. Large monitors and all. Does anyone know the demographics
> on this?

Keep in mind that *resolution* (width & height) depend on the
*monitor*. Color "depth" (# of colors) depends on the *card*. Monitors
tend to be far more expensive. 

Anyway, these are pretty much the "standard" sizes (as taken from the
VESA specs).

 640 x  400
 640 x  480
 800 x  600
1024 x  768
1280 x 1024
1600 x 1200

And colors run pretty much like this:

2	1 bit/pixel 
4	2 bit/pixel
16	4 bit/pixel (RGBI)
256	8 bit/pixel 		 (1 byte/pixel)
32k	15 bits/pixel (5R/5G/5B) (2 bytes/pixel, one wasted bit)
64k	16 bits/pixel (5R/6G/5B) (2 bytes/pixel)
16m	24 bits/pixel (8R/8G/8B) (3 bytes/pixel)

It's unlikely that we are going to go beyond 16 million colors, as
*nobody* can perceive the differences between many of the colors, and
the monitors can't reproduce them accurately enough anyway.

But when HDTV becomes relatively common, expect monitors to shift from
the current 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio to HDTV's 16:9. Some likely
resolutions:

 640 x  360
 800 x  450
 960 x  540
1024 x  576
1120 x  630
1280 x  720
1440 x  810
1600 x  900
1760 x  990
1920 x 1080
2000 x 1125
2080 x 1170
2400 x 1350
2560 x 1440
3200 x 1800

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 02:32:37 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures

In mail you write:

>         Actually, if I had a choice, I'd like to see artwork even bigger
> than 1024x800: my desktop is 1152x864 ...

I run mine at 1280x1024.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 02:34:22 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: request for URLs with Traveller pictures

In mail you write:

> Sorry to push your limits :)  Anyway, the future will see versions of the
> pics at approx 800x600, 1024x768, and 1152x864.  Don't see much call for
> beyond that.

Please do 1280x1024. It's my "preferred" resolution. Partly because
when I get back to writing software, I'll have a 1kx1k graphics window,
with a 256x1k window next to it for text, legend, whatever. :-)

Using an 8x8 font, the 256x1k window is a *mere* 64 chars by 128 lines.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 02:44:08 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Traveller-digest V1999 #1051

In mail you write:

> On 09/05/99 at 07:56 PM,  shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) said:
>
>>"Merely" seeding the clouds wilkl at the very least mean that you are
>>depriving areas downwind of you of the rain they'd have otherwise
>>gotten. There *will* be lawsuits from farmers. And possibly from
>>other folks who depend on the water from the rain. 
>
>>Check out the sort of fights that occur over water usage along a
>>river, such as the Colorado. Figure that weather control will start
>>even *worse* fights. And likely have even worse effects ecologically.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas on how to produce a localized and persistant high 
> pressure ridge? Idea being to eventually change the course of a jet stream, 
> creating an El Nino type effect in some part of a world.

*Big* honking laser in orbit. You'll need a way to diffuse the beam
too. Or maybe a maser would be better.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 02:50:54 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: The Big Button (was Re: Testing the Waters)

In mail you write:

> Leonard Erickson wrote:
>> 
>> Well, you *can* eliminate Virus. You just have to have tech that's too
>> *dumb* to infect, and use that to examine every single bit of "higher"
>> tech that is found in an infected area. Anything other than information
>> storage is considered raw materials, and recycled via smelting or worse.
>
> An interesting solution.  Now here's the KCr 64 question:
>
> Given _really_ good air conditioning, quite a bit of room, and enough
> time (both for construction, and for down-time while changing burned-out
> tubes),

Please note that it's been possible to build tubes that *never* burn
out for over 30 years. You just eliminate the filament (aka "heater"). 

Likewise, it's possible to build *functional* tubes smaller than a
dime. 

These and other techologies were exploited for a while in the late 50s
early 60s to build computers and other electronic units that were
immune to EMP. Look up "TIMMs" (Thermally Integrated Micro Modules?) in
a *good* reference. Basicly a large block of high temp ceramic, with
tubes, capacitors, inductors and resistors all built into the block.
You heat the block to dull red heat in a well insulated oven. It's not
as small as IC based gear, but it's at least as small as discrete
component TTL and RTL logic cards. 

> could one build vacuum-tube/mechanical relay computers
> sophisticated enough to:

Vacuum tube/transistor/IC/whatever isn't the question. It's whether or
not the hardware is capable of running anything as complex as the
virus, and whether or not it is *possible* for the virus to infect it. 

For example, unless active virus can get close enough to use its
limited "TK" on the equipment, there's no way Virus can "corrupt" a
*dedicated* piece of equipment. That is, somehing that is *not*
programmable, but rather hardwired to only carry out certain limited
processes. 

> 1.  Detect Virus?

Depends on what it takes to "detect" Virus.

> 2.  Provide the data-processing needed to run a high-tech society?

Data processing, buy it's nature is going to be somewhat vulnerable to
Virus. Basicly, if it is both *programmable*, and capable of running
"sufficiently complex" programs, then by the "official" rules, Virus
can infect it. Personally, I think a *real "virus" type entity would be
quite a bit more limited.

But a lot of searching and sorting type stuff requires *very* limited
programmability. 

> If so, would vacuum-tubes and mechanical relays be sufficiently
> resistant to Virus to make the effort worthwhile, at least for dirtside
> needs?

Again, given the characteristics that TNE gave the Virus, the *type* of
computer is irrelevant. Merely the "capacity" (in terms of complexity
and size of programs that it can handle) matters.

The "decontamination" stuff I partially described is very carefully
designed to *not* be "computers". It isn't programmable to any
useful-to-virus extent. Mostly it consists of the equivalent of "hard
wired" pattern recognition gear set up to identify certain types of
data. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:08:41 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Some From The Vaults

In mail you write:

> On 09/03/99 at 11:50 PM,  shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) said:
>
>>In mail you write:
>
>>>> Just another reason I hate AOL.
>>>
>>>>I love AOL, they send me free drink coasters every week. ;)
>>>
>>>
>>> I'd like them even more if you could actually re-burn those 'coasters'.  
> :)
>
>>What, you don't use them for laser rifle targets? :-)
>
> Hum, I must be about  TL 1. I string them up on poles in the garden to scare 
> off the birds.

Well, I have to confess that we haven't gotten a laser rifle yet. We
are using stuff like SKS rifles on them. Though we've discussed trying
to build a rifle sized "rail gun".

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:11:22 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Jump Horizons of stars

In mail you write:

> On 09/06/99 at 08:45 AM,  Robert Prior <robert_prior@sympatico.ca> said:
>
>>> I ran that set of numbers using Book 6 (for the Stellar Radii table) and
>>>found *in general* that K and M stars' jump horizon is beyond the habitable
>>>orbit, G stars are a tossup, and the younger stars (O,B,A & F) rarely if 
> ever
>>>reach the habitable orbit. This generalization applies best to Type V 
> stars,
>>>but can be used for nearly any of them in a pinch...
>
>>That sounds about right. And the habitable zone for a red giant is
>>several _weeks_ from jumppoint, even with high-G ships!
>
> Which means you pass through Red Giant systems, but hardly ever have traffic 
> going to a world in the habitable zone.  This makes any such world a good 
> candidate for a *serious* backwater or unexplored world even in a fairly 
> well settled region. 

Just keep in mind that there are no *naturally* habitable worlds in the
habitable zone of a red giants, simply because the zone only exists for
a few thousand years. What, 50k years tops? 

Prior to the red giant stage, the world would have been frozen solid in
the outer reaches of the system. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:21:34 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Vacuum tube computers

In mail you write:

> This brings up a question I have had for along time, is the vacuum of space
> as hard a vacuum as in a vacuum tube?

*Much* harder. But being near a ship or habitat means that you quickly
wind up with a "softer" vacuum due to leaks, outgassing, steering jets,
etc. 

> If it is than wouldn't that whole
> technology merit rethought for use as in cheap "low tech" applications on
> air less rocks and constant vacuum situations in general?  The guts of the
> "tubes" would need to be shielded from dust of course but the heat
> dissipation issue would be largely solved in short order, indeed a source of
> heat would probably need to be supplied.  What does everyone think?

It would have its place. I recall a couple of 50s SF stories where ham
radio operators on Luna built tubes outdoors in a shed open to vacuum
(the shed was for protection from micrometeorites and sunlight). 

Since tubes are *still* used (and likely will be for a *long* time) for
the final amp and output stages of powerful (more than, say, 500 watt)
radio transmitters, it's very likely that on airless worlds and in
orbital habs, the "tubes" would be built into large chambers that can
be entered for repairs. They'd normally be sealed after pumping out any
new contaminants from the repairman's space suit. And to avoid failures
due to leaks in the station of ships nearby. 

In essence, a lot of tubes might be big cylinders with a gasketed lid.
Since in space you no longer need a "roughing" pump (the pump used to
get the pressures down to a fraction of an atmosphere), you can have
just the last couple of stages of pump. Or even just us "getter" charges.

Got a problem with the tube? Disconnect the leads, attach a spare, drag
it off to a work area and open it up. Fix it, reseal it, and flush it. 

Opening it up would consist of loosening the fasteners and lifting off
the "can" leaving the grids and filament easily accessible. Once fixed,
you check the gasket, remount the "can" and hook it up to the "pump"
(to get it from .0001 atm to .0000001 atm, or less).

So you can't just leave them exposed, but it *is* still easier than a
lot of the alternatives. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:35:46 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Vacuum tube computers

In mail you write:

>>This brings up a question I have had for along time, is the vacuum of space
>>as hard a vacuum as in a vacuum tube?  If it is than wouldn't that whole
>>technology merit rethought for use as in cheap "low tech" applications on
>>air less rocks and constant vacuum situations in general?  The guts of the
>>"tubes" would need to be shielded from dust of course but the heat
>>dissipation issue would be largely solved in short order, indeed a source
> of
>>heat would probably need to be supplied.  What does everyone think?
>
> Couldn't a small "static" field be generated to keep dust away?

Nope. "Static" fields are *how* tubes work. And the dust is as apt to
be attracted as repelled. Also, anyplace with people around is going to
aquire an "atmosphere" that may be really, really thin, but is still
too thick for tubes. So you'd need to seal them. But it's still much
better than on Earth.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:37:53 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Vacuum tube computers

In mail you write:

>>Vacuum tubes could be make significantly smaller with advanced manufactu=
> ring
>>techniques. Supposedly, quite sophisticated Soviet technology relied on
>>miniaturized vacuum tubes computers.
>
> GURPS Lensman comes to mind -- the worldbook / sourcebook for roleplaying
> in the universe of the Lensman series by E.E. "Doc" Smith. In keeping with
> the fact that the stories themselves were written in the 1930s, and that
> Smith himself never foresaw the transistor or the silicon chip (and I am
> NOT faulting him for that), the tech in the GURPS book had machines using
> vacuum tubes. These futuristic vacuum tubes were about the size of a small
> indoor Christmas light, about an inch long and the thickness of a pencil
> (if that).

Actually, *real* super-miniaturizing tubes tend to be much *shorter*
than they are wide. Almost 2-dimensional. The smallest ones know were
about the size and shape of a dime. 

You see, you need a certain amount of space between the grids and
plates. But you don't need a lot of *area* unless they are handling
large amounts of power. 

So you wind up with a tube where the cathode is a dot of metal sticking
up from a ceramic substrate. The grid(s) are a series of posts around
the cathode:

            * *
          *  *  *
            * *

And the anode is a solid ring farther out. None of this needs to be
very *tall*. Thus the "dime sized" tube. No filament, you heat the
entire package.

You build layer after layer of this sort of thing, using high temp
metals like tantalum for resistors, inductors and capacitors. And you
wind up with a solid block of metal and ceramics where the only voids
are the *tiny* bits of vacuum or gas in the "tubes". 

These TIMM circuits are *incredibly* rugged. Nothing to burn out.
Lightning strikes just arc across the gaps and the circuits resume
normal operations. They *do* need to be heated to a dull red heat, but
they dissipate just about enough power to maintain that temp if in a
well insulated box. 

Figure that they pack stuff *tighter* than things such as an IBM 360.
Which means that a 360 equivalent would fit in a box about half a meter
on a side. Extra memory, i/o devices, etc will take up more space. 

These will likely be found in high temp environments like some areas of
the engineering section of a ship, and on high temp planets.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 04:16:52 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Imperial military and PR

In mail you write:

> we are us.  Furthermore, they know more about what an empire means, and know
> that they are both, at some level, politically binded to a similar source.
> Janet 1 might have a thing or two to say about Janet 2s kids being
> slaughtered wholesale, if only because the same might happen to her own, but
> there's no way she'll find out about it, because the Imperium will be
> working damage control and just not tell Janet 1, right?
> What I am proposing is the existance of the Y-Boat network, say two trader
> types who came together at one point or another and discovered that the
> Imperium was doing this, and they thought it wholly wrong that some Intel
> guy was manipulating the truth.  And each got another trader-type
> interested, and so on, and sooner or later there was a group of people
> distributeing the "real facts" to people who wanted to hear them.  Sure,
> it's slower than X-Boat, but it gets the job done as various indiviuals
> trade the latest reports and pass them down the line.  And if you got some
> real investigative journalist-types on it the stuff could be pretty classy.
> It works because once you actually get to a world, or at least a signifigant
> one, you have this massive media infrastructure for distributing it, even
> better if it's salacious pictures of unspeakable acts.  It would be an
> alternative press, and rather underground for it with not many followers
> essecially, but if the reports were ever wild enough you might see some
> public attention.  What form pubic action is another tale.

Actually, there's nothing at all odd about this. The X-boat netywork is
the fastest way to move news arouns. But *anything* that is "public"
knowledge on World A *will* get to World B, and do so a lot faster than
you might think, simply in the normal course of things.

Short of an active (and painfully obvious!) information suppression
campaign, this will always happen. News takes the fastest *avialable*
route. If the X-boats don't carry the info, people travelling between
systems on business *will*. So it'll get there, just a bit later, and a
bit distorted.

Real world example. In the US in the 50s, Disney aired a "Davey
Crockett" (or was it Daniel Boone?) series on TV. Kids quickly came up
with a parody of the theme song.

That song was common mong kids in *Australia* within weeks. Even though
the *program* wasn't shown there until *years* latter. 

How? Sociologists investigated, because it was obviously a once ion
lifetime opportunity to trace cultural spread. Turns out that *one*
kid moved to Australia when his father's company tranferred the father
to an office there. He spread the song to his new friends and it took
mere *days* to spread across the country from there.

> It's a theory.  Too off Cannon, or is there something else wrong with it?
> What I am specifically looking for is how the Imperium would react to these
> people if it existed, or if it was getting started.

The Imperium would have to do a lot of tracking just to find out that
the spread was *deliberate* rather than natural. 

Short of censoring all mail (very obvious) and taking steps to prevent
people from talking about what they'd seen/heard on the last planet
they were on, you *can't* stop info from spreading. 

Heck, consider the fact that the Nazi Concentarttion camps were well
known long before they were discovered. It was just that nobody
*believed* that they could *really* be that bad. 

There's no *need* for a "Y-boat" network when *gossip* can spread info
just as fast, if a trifle less reliably.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 04:39:30 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Comparitive Sexualities

In mail you write:

> Octopi and Squids often have copulation outside of estrus, but they store
> the sperm, for fertilization during their fertile period.

Calling what passes for "sexual intercourse" among octopi and squids
"copulation" is stretching the term *way* out of shape.

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 04:43:02 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Nuking with Lighter Fluid

In mail you write:

> Having been piqued by the memory I finally managed to find the lighter fluid
> quote.  It comes from the designer's notes of the SPI (God bless 'em) game
> NATO.
> Game Design: James F Dunnigan
> Graphics: Redmond A Simonsen
>
> "NATO (this game not the real org) has rules covering the use of tactical
> nuclear weapons.  To simulate the use of strategic nuclear weapons simple
> soak the map with lighter fluid and apply a flame.  For that reason,
> strategic airpower has not been included."
>
> This is the most memorable description of the effect of nuclear war I have
> ever read.

It dates a *lot* farther back in SPI games. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 03:51:07 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Vacuum tube computers

In mail you write:

>>I'm not sure if these tubes were used to run computers, though. But I don't
>>see why not. (How big would a room have to be using these tubes to equal
>>the function of a standard desktop PC? Say, my 200MMX with 32 megs of RAM?)
>
> As I recall in Smith's stories 'computers' were math wizzes who calculated
> orbital and astrogation vectors in their heads in real time to allow the
> pilots to fly their spacecraft. Electronic brains need not apply.

Look up "computer" in a pre-WWII dictionary. A "computer" was a person
who computed things. Smith was using *normal* usage of the term. It
wasn't anything he invented.  

These "computers" did *not* do things in real time the way you are
thinking. Most of the time they had lots and lots of folks with adding
machines to do the "simple arithmetic" parts of the job. But they had
to do all the fun stuff like figure derivatives and integrals. 

The guy in Spacehounds of IPC, for example, was *not* doing the course
stuff in his head. He was using tables and a slide rule. Which quickly
gave high answers good to 4, maybe 5 decimal places (given that he had
a *good* slide rule).

It just *seems* like he's doing it in his head to folks not familiar
with the way things were done back when mechanical computers were only
good for producing some types of math tables, and electronic computers
didn't exist. 

He knew all the shortcuts, probably either had the relevant
integrals/differentials precalculated, or at least the constants. So he
just had to do some relatively *simple* calculations to determine the
difference bettwen the "ideal" course and the "real" course.

Ever use an *electric* calculator? (not electronic!) I have. My Big
Brother was an accountant, and when his office got rid of the old ones
to replace them with the first generation of desktop electronic
calculators (late 60s/early 70s) he got one of the old electrics cheap.

It looked like a cross between a typewriter and an adding machine. 10
rows of buttons numbered 0 to 9. You punched in numbers (up to 10
digits, obviously) on these buttons and hit a key (the equivalent of
enter). This transferered the number to a set of numbered wheels (like
in a car's odometer).

You then selected an operation (add, subtract, multiply or divide).
And entered the other operand. Then the machine would proceed to
perform the calculation. wheels would spin as the the operand was
applied to the other operand with the result slowy appearing on the
answer section. Which was *20* digits worth of those numbered wheels.

Addition and subtraction were straight forward. Each digit was added or
subtracted in turn, with borrows or carries being applie to tthe
appropriate digits to the left of the current place. 

Multiplication was done as multiple addition. That is, 5 times 4 would
add 5 to the result register 4 times. With big numbers, you could
*watch* as the operand decremented and the result incremented.

And division was (naturally) multiple subtraction. When working with
large numbers, you had to take care to position the divisor at the
*left* end of the number being divided into. Otherwise it would start
at the *right* end, and burn out the machine by making to perform
*thousands (or even millions) of subtractions. 

And this miracle of modern science only weighed about 50 pounds. 

Also, it's *not* that hard to do things like multiply 10 digit numbers
in your head It just takes *practice*. I used to do that sort of
calculation in junior high when I couldn't sleep (I was calculating
sizes of things for what amount to "ship designs" :-).

The hard part is retainining all the intermediate results. But our
distant ancestors had no trouble memorizing sagas that fill *volumes*.
We've just gotten lazy. 

- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 08:20:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Houghton <herveus@Radix.Net>
Subject: Re: Re High Pressure Areas

Howdy!

Antony wrote:
> 
> Well on one of the worlds in MTU the cooling fins for an antimatter reactor
> were buried beneath the surface, they were quite large and operated below
> red heat, but the heating of the ground produced a persistant updraft above
> them hence a high pressure area.
> 
Actually, that would be a Low. Rising air is found in low pressure areas
(leading to cloud formation as the air rises and subsequent precipitation).

yours,
Michael

- -- 
Michael and MJ Houghton   | Herveus d'Ormonde and Megan O'Donnelly
herveus@radix.net         | White Wolf and the Phoenix
Bowie, MD, USA            | Tablet and Inkle bands, and other stuff
                          | http://www.radix.net/~herveus/

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 07:33:18 -0500
From: "John Majer" <jsmage@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: Imperial military and PR

> >> Potentially there is no other Imperium wide communication system. >>I
can
> >> conceive of a local system of couriers that might serve a >>subsector.
> >> MegaCorps almost certainly use a message transport system of their
>>own to
> >> carry vital company traffic. Only the X-Boats go to every Sector >>in
the
> >> Imperium. Any magazine, news vid, or editorials not sent by this
>>method
> >>will
> >> be of local distribution only and not likely to effect Imperium
>>policy.
> >Okay, so it is a fact that under an empire the local populace >doesn't
care
> >who is in charge, or what they do because it has little relavance >on
their
> >lives.  Second, in TU, the Imperium controls the only means of mass
> >communication, and even so, it's not all too effectivly mass.  All >true.
>
>      Not necessarily.  Trade routes and shipping lines span the Imperium,
and there's no reason a private news organization (like TNS) can't ship news
where ever they choose aboard them.  There isn't a ton of canonical
information about regular shipping routes in the OTU, but in researching Far
Trader we found in the Traveller Adventure maps of Aramis subsector that
showed that every non-Amber Zoned world in the subsector was served by a
shipping line and that Naasirka maintained regular shipping to and from
Aramis to Vland.  Given that Aramis is a pretty lightly inhabited subsector
way out on the edge of the Imperium, I think it's safe to say that their is
private, regularly scheduled shipping service available just about anywhere
in the Imperium.
>
> Jim MacLean
> Co-Author GT:Far Trader
You should have read the rest of the posting more carefully, for I agree
with you.  It only seems logical that there should be a way to eventually
connect anywhere from anywhere.  My question is, in reference to the
"private news orginizations" that you make refrence to, how many are they
out there that have a sector+ audience, of what caliber are they and how
strongly do they flout or suppliement the imperal line?  All that other
stuff in there was just an attempt to work my way through other means to the
point you were able to provide rather nicely.
- -J.S.

------------------------------

End of Traveller-digest V1999 #1069
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