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Traveller-digest     Friday, September 17 1999     Volume 1999 : Number 1100



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

The following topics are covered in this digest:

Re: GIF's & copyright
Re: MT Deckplan Queries
Re: Megacredit lemon
Re: Emergency life support (was: MT Deckplan Queries)
Re: wiring plans
Re: A Vargr question
Test
subscribe
boing?
Inequalities due to demographics and geography (OT?)
Re: World Builder Deluxe
Message for Andrew Akins
Re: World Builder Deluxe
Re: Space Maps and Traveller
Re: Subsidized Merchants and Fighters
Re: boing?
RE: A Vargr question...
Travel Fromulae
Milieu 0 questions

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 08:38:17 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: GIF's & copyright

In mail you write:

> If you're ideological opposed to a company getting its proper due for
> developing a standard format that has proven itself amazingly useful for the
> storage and transfer of indexed color images, well go right ahead.

They didn't develop the format. CIS developed the format, and
essentially made a gift of it to the computer community.

What Unisys did was develop a compression technique, ans then *publish*
it WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE THEY WERE FILING A PATENT ON IT.

That's like going to a party with big buffet spread and they getting
handed a bill for what you've eaten when you are getting ready to go
home. 

It may be *legal* to charge for LZW compression, but it sure as hell
wasn't *ethical* to let people *think* it was another "open standard"
and then turn around and charge for it after it'd gotten embedded in
all sorts of products. 

It's hard to get much sleazier than that. 

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

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 08:43:00 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: MT Deckplan Queries

In mail you write:

>         Is this the high tech garbage disposal system. Don't need it anymore,
> shove it into the fusion reactor and reduce it to component ions. Very
> energy intensive, but who care, it's all free energy that going to waste
> any ways. 

Just use "fusion torch" recycling *very* sparingly. If Traveller's
fusion reactors *really* lent themselves to this, the background falls
apart. 

The trick is, that if this works, then it costs so little to process
trash, seawater (or "country rock") that anything short of *really*
high grade ore isn't worth mining and shipping. 

Sure, you don't get as much X out as you would with a good ore. But you
are also getting Y, Z and all the rest of the elements out.

What this does to the raw materials situation is almost as bad as what
nanotech does. Or "fabers" (basicly a gizmo that has an effect similar
to a Star Trek "replicator", but with more believable tech - if we don't
have them in less than 100 years, it'll be because we didn't try).

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

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 08:51:26 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Megacredit lemon

In mail you write:

>     When I got on the local transit bus to go school today, I
> almost didn't take it because it had the wrong route number. I
> changed my mind only when I saw it signalling to make the turn 
> the bus I wanted would make. I mentioned the wrong number to the 
> driver who looked up at some electronic display and said, "Really?
> according to this, it should be right". I noticed that the bus was
> obviously quite new, with something of a high-tech look.

The automated displays have been around for years. They use a lookup
table burned into an EPROM. Which is down by underpaid techs at the bus
company. Getting it wrong happens occasionally.

More often though, what happens it that the driver punches in his route
number instead of the number of the display he wants. You see, since
there are often multiple variants on a basic route, all of which need
different messages, the message number *doesn't* match the sign number.
They give drivers a char, and the control panel even shows the message.
Buut some drivers just don't "get it" with regards to having to punch
in the number from the chart. After a year or so, they'll quit screwing
it up.

>    At the next stop, the driver had to ask a passenger to close
> the rear door after someone went that way instead. Well, it looked 
> closed to me, but "It has to be all the way closed, the bus won't 
> move if it isn't!"

That's *required*. It's a safety interlock. If the sensor doesn't show
the door as closes, the bus won't moving. So if it slips a bit in the
mounting, the door has to be closed *really* tight.

No idea what the deal is with the "auto close" on the doors. *That* is
a stupid feature. 

> Ob Traveller: Your PC's brand spanking new starship, marketed as
> operator and passenger friendly with the latest word in computer assistance
> and safety features, is a little too close to the 
> bleeding edge of technology...

Soome bleeding edge, more operator error/bad interface, and a bit of
"oops, we didn't think about wear"
  
- -- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com        <--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com     <--last resort

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 09:01:40 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: Emergency life support (was: MT Deckplan Queries)

In mail you write:

>> Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 23:44:20 PST
>> From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
>> 
>> Actually, if you are running CO2 up to fusion temps to "crack" it,
>> it'll be by converting it to a plasma and using EM fields to seperate
>> the different mass ions. So the CO problem won't exist (at the temps
>> involved there are no radicals, just free ions. 
>
> Cracking to a plasma then doing mass-spectroscopy style sorting is exactly
> what I had in mind.  In a lab setting, with good controls, you could make
> it work as you describe.  To do it on jury-rigged equipment, with an
> imperfectly calibrated magnet, guess-and-hope collector paths, poorly
> constrained exit velocities, probable gas backflow due to the volumes you
> need to process to do any good -- I'm sticking by my model.

The thing is, at the plasma temps, the C & O will be seperate. In the
"mass spectrometer", the masses of the ions are *very* different (C-12
vs O-16). The other isotopes aren't plentiful enough to risk. So the
only mixing danger is after you've run them thru the mag field and
started "cooling" them. It's not like trying to seperate N-15 and O-15,
were the difference is a fraction f a percent.

BTW, I expect that the reactor *already* has something like this, for
seperating out the He-4. And it may be part of the fuel purifier. 

> By the way, for anyone interested in a harrowing depiction of the
> "overloaded refugee ship" problem we've been discussing, see Cherryh's
> _Downbelow Station_. 

Also check out some old stories by Brunner(?). He had a whole series
involving the discovery of planets that had been settled by ships
carrying refugees from a planet whose star was about to go nova.

The basic idea was that the last few hundred took off from the
nightside of the planet and tried to stay in the planet's shadow as
long as possible while making the equivalent of a "run to jump". In his
universe that set the direction of the jump, and in this case, it was
towards unexplored space. 

The more overcrowded ships had various problems and dropped out in
unexplored systems and didn't have to option of making another jump,
the life support couldn't handle it. And for some, the ship itself was
damaged by exposure to the heat from the star before jump. So where
they came out was where they stayed. 

But at least a couple of the stories have descriptions of the sort of
conditions that prevailed on board. 

Generations later, such colonies were *still* being discovered. There
was an entire "branch" of the IISS equivalent dedicated to the problems
involved in recontacting them. 

There'd have to be changes for the Traveller universe. Instead of a
Nova, make it an "irregular variable" or a "flare star" that got
*really* active after being quiet for millenia.

Use some sort of "distortions in space time", "strange radiations from
the star"  or even "too hastily set jump co-ordinates" to explain the
misjumps (at least with Traveller we've got misjump to *help* scatter
them!). 

That could even be a sub-plot. Researchers have noticed that the "lost"
colonies seem to concentrate in an area well beyond J-6. They want any
ships records that may still survive from the known colonies and
especially from any newly discovered ones in hopes that a pattern will
emerge that will allow controllable "mis-jumps". Of course, they'll
never figure it out. But nobody in the game world knows that, just us
folks outside. :-)

It also give a nice excuse for at least *one* sector or subsector with
a lot of populated "hell-holes". They didn't have the option of going
elsewhere.

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

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 10:18:59 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: wiring plans

In mail you write:

> Ob-Trav: Lot's of Gearhead fun when installing units not only made by 
> different companies, but at different tech levels.  "Hey Chief.  Y'all got 
> any of those f-o to coax converters left over?"

You've just reminded me of an incident at a former jpb. They had these
furnaces for growing monocrystalline silicon. They all hooked to a
central computer over serial links. An old Data General system with a
75 port serial box that was as big as the computer. 

They had been using "short haul modems" which converted the RS-232
signals into a 2-wire signal and back. That allowed for the
multi-hundred foot cable runs involved. The "modems" were quite small,
theye weren't a lot larger than a normal DB-25 "hood" on a cable. DB-25
on one end, screw terminals for the wire pair on the other. They cost
something like $50-100 apiece at the time. 

Later, they upgraded to units that used fibier optics. this was both
more immune to noise, and a lot *safer* around the voltages and
magnetic fields of the furnaces.

One of the engineers wandered by and saw the maintenance tech toss one
of the short haul modems in the trash. When he jumped on him the tech
looked blank and said "It's just an adapter, isn't it?".

Alas, this was the last unit to be converted and  only a couple other
modems were in the trash can. The rest (multiple *thousands* of dollars
worth) were long gone. 

The engineer told me about this when I mentioned wishing I could afford
a couple of short haul modems. As he put it. "If it hadn't been for
those idiots, we'd have had enough that I could just *give* you a
couple. As it is, I'm saving that last pait in case I ever need some
for an official project." :-(

*Never* underestimate the stupidity of people doing an
upgrade/overhaul. Unless *explicitly* instructed to save items being
replaced, they will treat them as "worthless junk" no matter *how* much
they are actually worth.

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

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 10:33:16 PST
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Subject: Re: A Vargr question

In mail you write:

> At 11:54 PM 9/13/99 PST, you wrote:
>>> separate branch of primates. So while we are related to the apes,
> we
>>> are not their direct evolutionary descendants.
>>
>>To be exact, humans, chimps, and gorillas share a common ancestor
> 2-3
>>million years back. And we share a *lot* of DNA. So much so that
>>cross-fertilization between humans and chimps may be possible,
> though
>>not likely.
>
>         Not likely is bloody right. Ain't that much drug drug in the
> Imperium ...

We were refferring to "in vitro" fertilization. Attempting "in vivo"
could get the human badly injured (the average chimp can tie a human in
a knot). 

And while I don't know about chimps, I know that with gorillas there'd
be a *major* problem with size mimatch. Apparently the average gorrilla
is only 3 inches...

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

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 20:14:58 -0400
From: "Thomas Schoene" <TomSchoene@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Test

Just checking: I've gotten only 2 TML posts today, and none since 1100 EST.

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 22:46:40 -0700
From: --M <mitch@sirius.com>
Subject: subscribe

subscribe

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 00:47:25 EDT
From: GypsyComet@aol.com
Subject: boing?

Nothing in more than a day?

GC

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 15:38:40 -0400
From: Walter Smith <SmithW@HARTWICK.EDU>
Subject: Inequalities due to demographics and geography (OT?)

An essay I stumbled across. A little off-topic, but the author details his
theories on causes of economic and technological inequalities that
have nothing to do with exploitation or discrimination.

Create astrographic paralells to his geographic examples, and you 
could have something for subsector and sector descriptions.

Thomas Sowell's "Race, Culture and Equality"
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/he/23/23a.html

Walt Smith

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 21:55:41 -0600
From: "David J. Golden" <goldendj@pcisys.net>
Subject: Re: World Builder Deluxe

At 11:40 PM 9/14/99 -0700, you wrote:
>    Maybe someone coud help me out I have ben running a PBE campaign
with group whose job it is to take a census at worlds in the marches.
I have having them gather very detailed system info as they go along.
I have been generating this info with the World Builder software. I
don't understand some of the information.
>
>    First what is PBG: 323?

	P=population multiplier
	B=belts in the system
	G=gas giants in the system

>    Second what is the number preceding planetary Satellite. For
example I created the following system listing, the numbers I am
reffering to are 5 (jenghe), 7 (Satellite 2), 35 (Satellite 3) etc.

	Orbit number

>    Third when I look at the listing for the first gas giant it
listed as size C, does this correspond to diameter? Is there a table
for gas giant diameters?

	Size. Don't remember off-hand what the codes are, and I'm not sure
where my book is.

- -- Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in
   large groups.

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 22:36:20 +0200 (METDST)
From: Hans Rancke-Madsen <rancke@diku.dk>
Subject: Message for Andrew Akins

I have some information for Andrew Akins, but I must have copied his
address down wrong, because it bounces with a 'user unknown' message.
Could you contact me directly, Andrew?


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     rancke@diku.dk
- ------------
"Look! Smoke signals! Can you read them, Chief?"

"Of course. Ah... 'Puff, puff puff, puff; puff, puff puff, puff,
apostrophe puff, puff, puff puff, exclamation puff'.

"What does it mean?"

"'Help, my blanket's caught fire!'"

                                --- _Round the Horne_ radio sketch

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

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 10:12:32 -0700
From: "Shawn Campbell" <shawn@electricstitch.com>
Subject: Re: World Builder Deluxe

I think your right on. I believe the number indicates the number of
diameters away from the planet the body orbits. 5 diameters... 7
diameters... 35 diameters....wasn't this covered in MT ref's manual?

Shawn Campbell
shawn@electricstitch.com
IMTU tc+ tm+(++) !tn t4 ru+ ge>+ !3i+ c+ jt au+ st+ ls(+) pi+ ta he+(++)

> >     Second what is the number preceding planetary Satellite. For example
I created the following system listing, the numbers I am reffering to are 5
(jenghe), 7 (Satellite 2), 35 (Satellite 3) etc.
>
> Durned if I know.  It seems to refer to the satellite's orbit, as it
> relates to the system's habitable zone, but don't quote me on that....
>
> The rest of your questions seem to deal with information not covered in
> Book 6, nor in any T4 materials, so I won't address them.

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

Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:50:02 -0500 (CDT)
From: Cynthia Higginbotham <cyhiggin@pipeline.com>
Subject: Re: Space Maps and Traveller

> Gentlebeings,
> 
> Would one of you be so kind as to point this innocent towards the
> forty-bazillion maps such as he seeks that I am sure exist?
> 
> THank you...

Try the 3-D Starmaps page at:
http://www.rmharris.com/pub/nyrath/starmap.html#contents

which has pointers to about 20 bazillion of those maps
and viewing programs.  Personally, I think loading the Gliese
near star catalog into Jo Grant's CHVIEW.EXE program produces
one of the best renditions of a "real space map" you'll get
this side of the Z9M9Z..

			--Cynthia

> 
> >Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 21:25:59 -0400
> >From: Mary Wood <wood.243@osu.edu>
> 
> >I'm curios about what a real 'space map' showing the sun and
> >other nearby stars would look like. Have you thought about
> >this before?  Done anything?  Can you point me to any
> >sources?
> >
> >I'm curious about what space maps look like; I make my
> >living as a software developer, so computer-aided
> >visualization is within reach.  Are you aware of anything?
> >How good is the Traveller map of the Solomani Rim?  (aside
> >from being flat...)
> >
> >Thanks for reading this far,
> >
> >Chris
> >
> >--
> >Chris Wood
> >cats@cfanet.com
> >
> 
> 

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 00:53:17 -0700
From: shudson@lightspeed.bc.ca (Steven Hudson)
Subject: Re: Subsidized Merchants and Fighters

>From: Michel Vaillancourt <misha@empire.atlantic-online.ns.ca>
>Subject: Re: Subsidized Merchants and Fighters
...
>        Given what I have seen for fighter-pilot life expectancy in CT
>sessions I have played, no.  Fighters get mission-killed *very* quickly by
>critical hits due to size vs wpn USP.  One Patrol cruiser can mission kill
>four fighters per round, quite easily.

  Oh, sure, if you buy the crap put out by piddly little pocket empires
like Esperanza and Joyeuse ("Non-Charismatic Leader" - at least they got
_that_ right). Now, if you get _quality_ TL C product, you get coverage 
by p. 41 of HG2, reducing your criticals by up to 6, or none from weapons
below USP 7 - and how expensive is your "Patrol Cruiser"?

And no, we don't insure against fuel tankage mission kills from surface damage.

        The Serendip Combine, etc.

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 08:51:53 -0500 ()
From: "Joseph R. Dietrich" <yikes@evansville.net>
Subject: Re: boing?

>Nothing in more than a day?
>
>GC


We have all decided to quit playing Traveller.

Didn't you get the memo?

Ciao,

Joseph R. Dietrich
yikes@evansville.net

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 12:37:55 -0700
From: "David P. Summers" <summers@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: RE: A Vargr question...

>the only difference I could see, is during estruses.  The scent markers are
>close enough across most modern canines that a bitch in heat of one variety
>will drive most mail canines wild regardless of if dingo, wolf, etc.
>
>It could be rather unsettling for a Human crew with a pet dog in heat
>running into a party of Vargr.

IIRC, Vargr do not go into heat.
______________________________
summers@alum.mit.edu
(This is the net.  My e-mail address may be in Boston, but I'm in California.)

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 12:53:58 -0700
From: "Thing" <gduke@orca.esd114.wednet.edu>
Subject: Travel Fromulae

The formula's presented in T4 & CT for travel time are set for a given
distance assuming that you are starting from a point that is stationary
relative to your destination.

Has anyone worked out the intercept equations for catching up to moving
target?

I'm trying to work out some simple ones assuming that the target doesn't
change it's vector, or at most accelerates/decelerates at a given consistent
rate, but if anyone has already done this or knows where such equations can
be found and is willing to share, I would be happy to stop trying to
remember my math.

G.D.D.

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

Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 15:18:01 -0700
From: "Chad Osborne" <strategos@nctimes.net>
Subject: Milieu 0 questions

I am trying to set up a campaign based on the Long Way Home/Gateway
adventure, to introduce some friends to Traveller, but am missing a few
details (like what year it should be set in.  I'm guessing near 0.)

Can anyone tell me if Gaar. (Core 2729) was actually part of the Sylean
Federation (as indicated by First Survey and Milieu 0 Campaign)?  It seems
out of place (13 parsecs away, all by itself.)

Also, is their any detailed (and preferable canonical) data regarding which
(specific) planets were in actual contact/alliance/trade with the early 3I?
Does "Full Data" automatically imply contact?  I need to have a solid
background in my own head before I open myself up the the (inevitable)
questions.

Any help in these directions would be greatly appreciated.

Chad

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

End of Traveller-digest V1999 #1100
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