hkmaly

Sadly, if there is one skill such creatures possess in abundance, it is sending others into harm's way while never themselves risking as much as a bruise. Yes. Unfortunately, they learnt that very well in last two thousand years. I suspect only reason they are even thinking about stuff like paperless office is they are afraid of papercuts.

Meanwhile, energize was not mentioned at all and pony just in comments. I guessed poorly. Unless she will choose energize next page Once they found out that was what turned her on, I suspect Catalina and Rhoda would be quite happy to put on a show for Susan, without insisting on her participation beyond long direct looks and a whole lot of blushing on all sides.... Them putting on a show may be HOW they find out it's turning her on. I don't think they would wait for approval. In fact, it's probably them outside second panel. Might depend whether anyone else was there, or potentially could find out.... Definitely more. She might decide not to anyway, but Elliot being there would definitely make it more likely.

Good for him. That stuff is lethal. My great-uncle died from it. Granted, that was because the ship he was aboard sank after hitting a mine, but you could with some justice call it an overdose. Actually, he most likely died on withdrawal symptoms of another nasty stuff, oxygen. You think dihydrogen monoxide with several hours until you notice is bad? With oxygen it can be even less than minute! On the other hand, there are organisms not addicted to oxygen. Single-cell, but still. Everything is addicted to water. It's so universal scientists are not even bothering to search for life unless there is water it can be addicted to around.

This is true. But call me old-fashioned, when I am part of a manned expedition headed into space, I would like the calculations to be just a little more exact than that. Especially that bit at the end where you probably want to head back to the Earth without either burning to a cinder or becoming a huge impact crater somewhere. (Admittedly the odds are against that -- a huge splash is more likely by far. But even though the odds of the crater outcome are low, I am sure that those who potentially might live where the crater-to-be is about to form would appreciate more exact calculations, too.) Sure. I was thinking unmanned expedition. Or expedition manned by some politicians which would be offtopic to name.

Yes, the dysphoria would probably be manageable if you could change to your preferred sex immediately after work, and it DOES make sense to limit some kinds of work to specific sex, but that's not what I though about based on original description. Also, I think the percentage of jobs with sex requirements wouldn't be THAT big ... or, at least, not the percentage where it actually makes sense. The percentage of jobs on our earth which insist on specific dress code is also bigger than what makes sense, luckily my job is not included. Most likely, compromise of having different underwear but keep same top layer of clothes would be more practical, considering you can't really change with clothes on anyway (unlike your lycanthrope example which may not be visible without reload). Of course, it would mean no form-fitting clothes on women, as they would likely get bigger when they turn into men, so ...

I suspect the mathematicians that spent decades working out the necessary formulae for actually getting your payload to where you want it to go while navigating a system with several bodies moving at different speeds and in different directions while gravitationally affecting one another might slightly disagree with that. You don't need much of THAT if you want just to the orbit and don't care what orbit would that be. Of course, if you want to hit some specific target, like moon ... well, you might think that moon is big, but it's not THAT big. And of course, if you plan to almost hit five different planets ... or single comet ... My first job out of college was doing assembly programming on a 186. Burning my code onto an EEPROM and plugging it into a chip socket on an industrial computer. Debugging that code was awful. Could be worse. At least it had socket. Imagine soldering it on, finding typo, unsoldering ... (Not that I had any experience with that. Anything I was programming was capable to being reprogrammed over wire.)

If they hit the minimums given, and the maximum for sweeteners, there is still 7.5% not accounted for. ... I suspect that you need some water in that mix if you want it to keep shape and not turn into heap of powder.

Yes. So there won't be another Ellen just to make the title work. It's only making fun of all the speculations we were making about how another Ellen will appear. ...I'm not sure. On one hand, I hope that he learned his lesson to adhere to the spirit of his vows instead of the letter of them. On the other hand, Abraham has shown himself to not be that good at thinking through his actions. He MIGHT also learned the lesson about not attacking someone just because he's created by diamond. He might be gender fluid, or perhaps he's outright transgender. In fact, if he needed magic to change his original body from biologically female to biologically male, that might tie in to his having the right magic to alter Ellen's FV5 beam to give him a male form. I would consider more likely he's gender-meh like main universe Elliot. However, note that he had good opportunity to became female now and decided for male instead. ... sounds like you came up with something even worse than how our world deals with sex changes.

Well 640k would definitely have been enough for anybody who was using any desktop machine that was on the market in 1981. By the PC-AT era (286-based), it was definitely limiting. ... you mean, year later? 80286 appeared in February 1982. There is also quote lot of work related to fact that most materials don't work for space rocket. You need materials capable of withstanding extreme temperatures - both high AND low. And the rocket needs to be airtight WITHOUT using rubber, as rubber is not elastic in vacuum. ... but, yes, even the proverbial rocket science is not THAT hard if you focus just on basic principles.

I'd always heard that "quote" was apocryphal? It's less important if he said it and more important that MS-DOS was coded in way which made hard to overcome this limit when 80286 appeared (on 1 February 1982) and made that possible (it was HW limit on 8086).

He has simple way to save himself in situations like that: switch to party form. My guess is she's thinking about mind-bending transformation. Energize ... or pony.

Anyway, to summarize: Magus's note about how Sirleck can't explain how the car works is WEIRD. We can argue about why that might be true about magic, but it's definitely not true about technology - Sirleck may be unable to rebuild the car from scratch, but his answer that he does know how car works in NORMAL for technology in technology-based civilization. After all, it's not rocket science nor brain surgery. 640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates (1981) I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20 years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!" Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors. There was a computer in every doorknob. -- Danny Hillis, cca 1999

There is lot of calculation in word processing, especially if you use variable-width font. There is even more calculation in drawing computer graphics, which modern computers spend lot of time doing - although mostly it's GPU doing that, not CPU. Of course that doesn't change that the symbol manipulation is important. Measuring importance by processor cycles would be weird anyway. I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ... -- F. H. Wales (1936)

You need a precisely controlled voltage for any solid-state device,. For creating sparks however, not so much. And chemical bateries have voltage in quite narrow range depending only on structure/technology. For example, one cell of lead-acid battery is 2.1V (although I DID needed to look up this one). That doesn't depend on how big it is ; it's always 2.1V. As far as we know ... the "recorded human history" is not detailed enough to be sure about that.

That would obviously take more than weeks, yes. And I suppose there would be some steps which are harder than they seem. Still, in lot of cases just knowing something can be done helps a lot in re-researching that. Digital computer uses only two states on wire, zero and one, while analog is using multiple voltage levels. Chips are done by painting silicon wafer with several layers of semiconductive material, putting some mask on them and then flashing them with UV light to remove the parts the mask was not covering ... ok, this part would take some time to recreate. Semiconductor is material which can make one-way junctions (borders between two semiconductors). Is usually silicon with some additive of element with 5 or 3 electrons in last layer, one example would be germanium. Valence is how many electrons are in outside layer of atom ... well, not really, but good enough for practical purposes where you don't care for anything heavier than uranium anyway. Boole no idea ... wait, does he has something to do with boolean algebra? Not really important who he was, just that algebra. Ada Adelaide, countess of Lovelace. She got the idea of conditional jump. The first computer she programmed was the one Babbage was building, although never finished it. (Yes, that was from head.) I could also explain von Neumann computer architecture - or Turing machine, if we want theory, although Turing machine is otherwise very impractical ... would take more than few minutes, so I'm not going to be proving it, but I can. While obsolete now, for hand-made car lead-based battery would be good enough. That's like sulfuric acid and two lead electrodes isn't it? And I suppose I would be able to make dynamo, although it would take me long time to actually reel that wire ... Thing is, single individual WOULD be able to start Industrial Revolution in middle ages, or, say, in King Arthur's Court. It would take years, but the amount of information necessary for that is lower than how much you need to know for final exams for master title (and is actually part of those information on several schools). Information revolution would be harder. You need quantum physic for some inventions there.

Hmmmmmmmm ... On the other hand, she was hugging with Grace despite just meeting her. She might actually be more shy around Diane and Lucy, because she's afraid she makes some mistake and lose them. Doesn't seem the reporter was chasing Rhoda or anything ...

Maybe not this changed, but she definitely shown signs of changing in canon already. Remember that the escape from the mall story is several months ago, and while we did technically saw her in so a date in the mall we didn't saw her interacting in anyone so much. And I'm not sure why, but I suspected this is actually happening in "future". I would say that while she doesn't actually know Ashley and Susan, due to this being non-cannon she is acting around them as around Catalina.

Basically everyone who looked at one of these images for minute would have the basics. It may take you few weeks to make it really running even with team preparing all the parts, but you simply can't say that the principle of car is hard to explain. It's not. Even principle of computer is easy to explain. You can explain how to go from transistor to logic gates and simple calculator in less than hour (well, I could). Sure, this explanation won't help you make computer, because the hard part is how to get billions of transistors into space small enough ... but still, the principle is easy. His world may have cars, but they might run on magic instead of fossil fuels. Maybe not. You can get far with just railroads. Dragons might be as intelligent or more than humans, but they don't have to co-operated with them, or maybe dragons were used as weapons. Dragons have bigger range than lions. Even without intelligence, there may be area with so many dragons even army is unable to clear it, and from time to time some of those dragons goes to "visit". What I meant was cooperating with other dragons. Magus said "tornado sirens" instead of "air raid sirens" so the dragons of his world don't form air forces, at least yet. Or maybe they don't want to admit it. Or he might not have experience with air raids - they may not have any aircraft. Or maybe there are intelligent cooperating dragons who are protecting their territory from humans AND there are less intelligent wild dragons in that territory who do the attacks. I think the fairies were the oppressive government. That would really be evil. However, I think even before his explanation to Ashley we could saw he's not that kind of person.

I was going to say that Ashley might've not now how background characters are handled in NP as she never was in that position, but you're right, she should've read the handbook. She's being sassy and playful, which is a hot combo. Agree.

Technology being principally easy to understand is how it differs from magic ; I would say that where he comes from they DONT have much technology. Magus could try his Calm spell again, but I suspect Elliot's magic resistance would be far too strong for that, and trying to use it on him would end up having the opposite effect of pissing him off. I think Elliot's resistance is NOT so big ... however, calming him with spell would still likely backfire by making him more pissed after the enchantment would end. Yes. ... yes. And surprisingly, she didn't lied. I mean, her convincingly explaining how Ellen would be cared for and generally ok would match what I was implying with the "misguided henchman", except given how it turns out she didn't even needed to lie about it. Ellen REALLY ended up in extremely good position given the circumstances, and Pandora was almost clairvoyant and could see most of it. I can even imagine her SHOWING Magus something - like, Mrs. Dunkel saying something about how would she like another child, Edward Verres taking care of someone else (actually, how he took care of Grace could be enough) or even point out how Elliot would be totally ideal partner for Nanase if only he was she. It's quite possible that Magus couldn't be killed at all in the form he found himself on, he didn't require food or sleep after all. I don't see him just accepting his fate working out well in the long run because he could very well have been driven insane by the constant torment from either being alone or harassed by Immortals and that could have made things a lot worse had he decided to make his return to the physical realm after 10-15 years of it. ... that IS a good point. Aaand a point Pandora could easily make. Magus: "Your plan is crazy!" Pandora: "Ok, I'll wait till you will be crazy enough to try anyway." Magus: " ... wait." Note that Elliot is afraid of "loosing his cool", aka. give in to the anger, and Magus could have similar issues. He could be afraid of what he will do when more torture erodes his self-control.

All too much sense. It does strange things to the human mind to spend your time in complete isolation. Escape from that, no matter how strange the company, fills an essential need. It is difficult to see how he could have reacted otherwise. I suspect it would be related to Stockholm syndrome ... That is the key. The lesser of two evils is still an evil. It's rather like Grace and Adrian versus the boar -- killing the boar was evil, but it had to be done. A good, emotionally healthy person will try to find some other way, and when there is none, they'll di what needs to be done, but feel bad about it. Yes. Very good example. My assumption would be that he had tried everything he could think of, had tried more and more desperately, and had simply failed. Sometime, like with the boar, you wind up with there not being a better way. Note that the whole dewitchery diamond plan was Pandora's, and contained LOT of informations about our world. Magus's options to learn anything else were limited, which includes stuff like how machines work ; just using his "foul up machines" ability might easily get dangerous, remember that even simple lighbulb can explode - and hurt someone unlucky. It took him months do get desperate enough to actually go with plan like this. What makes you think Magus didn't tried? Voltaire was apparently torturing him, but Helena and Demetrius could simply try to KILL him. And it probably wouldn't take them long to find out how. As far as we know, Magus only had three options: Pandora's plan, running and hiding forever or to die. Even Elliot might choose Pandora's plan in such case, especially if Pandora convinced him enough. Remember he's a misguided henchman for a charismatic super villain waiting to happen. Despite Elliot's face, I don't think he's the type who would attack Magus now. He is ready to defend if Magus would do something, yes, but attacking him while monologuing? I think there could easily be plenty of time for either Magus or Ashley saying something to calm Elliot down. Of course, another question is if Elliot would let Magus go or attempt to capture him and turn to DGB. ... what about Abraham? Captain, the Chekhov's reading on the plot value of these artifacts are going off the scale. The plot canna take any more, Captain, she's gonna blow! I dunno, I think at one might reveal itself before we're done with the warehouse scene. Though perhaps only reveal itself to the readers... I also expect something will happen with those artefacts in this scene. Also, probably involving Ashley. But it make take a while ... like, Magus seem in mood to talk for several pages ... Ellen is already unconscious ... and the fragments are unlikely to have so strong effect, even if they are not completely inner. However, what about the core of the diamond? Or, yes, the other artifacts.

That first part was reply to Tom Sewell, sorry for confusion.

The thing about how the Gryphons were able to get to this half of the world was that the point of entry was a specific location. Nioi however, could create a portal back to her universe anywhere she threw a portal pearl down. I think that might be a key difference between another side of one universe and a completely alternate universe. It is possible that the Griffins KNOWS how to create portal to different universe but are not able to actually do it, while Magus can. However, Nioi would certainly be better if someone had means to contact her I can believe that Magus is older than Elliot, considering he's spent nearly 3 years stuck in the main universe and it didn't seem like Magus and Terra were 9th graders when they were having their training match. It's also apparent that Lord Tedd is older than our Tedd so it can be safe to assume that Lord Tedd's universe as well as Magus' and SL Ellen's are roughly 2 years ahead of the main universe. No dragons AND no magic came up in Ellen's dreams and no Uryuoms came up in what Magus was speaking about. I don't think those were same universes. Also, we saw Tedd in Ellen's dreams and he didn't looked as Terra, although in Tedd's case that may not be so important clue ... I agree with the time difference though. Both Magus and Lord Tedd seem to be adult in their first appearance, while our heroes become adults just recently.

I wouldn't count on anyone else except another esoteric scholar gryphon being precise about the distinction between a different dimensional plane and a different side of the same one. Edward Verres totally would. And Magus himself is studying magic university ... If Magus have no idea how to get back, it's either Griffins or someone needs to visit Heka.

Pandora redeemed herself. Aberrations are unable to ever return to normal state. I think the likehood of that happening to major EGS character is lower than one of them dying. However, that doesn't completely rule out we will see it - I can imagine it as NP story, with some not-major character as POV character ... possibly even Sirleck.