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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

The Old Hack

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Posts posted by The Old Hack

  1. Posted

    On 7/6/2023 at 11:34 PM, mlooney said:

    Nothing the DoD does WRT plans stops conspiracy theorists.  Remember "Jade Helm"?

    On the other hand it is fairly easy to set them off.

    In England during WW2 some genius had the idea to issue carrot rations to their night fighter pilots, claiming it improved their night vision. This was to distract possible spies from looking into the top secret radar mounted in night fighter planes. This worked so well that to this day there are parents giving their children carrots in the belief that it will improve their vision.

  3. Posted

    On 7/6/2023 at 7:38 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

    The Connection Machine was a theoretical model for a new approach to supercomputing in the early 80s, the first prototypes were being built. One of the scariest things I've seen was at the NSA museum outside Ft. Meade, MD on one of the Baltimore - Washington Expressways in the early 1990s. They had already retired one, ten years after 'can this be done'. "What the devil did you replace that with?" I had similar feelings about the SR-71 being retired.

    The CompSci Department in the University of Copenhagen still uses a PDP-9 for protection of their main server.

    Admittedly they use it to block a window previously employed as an access route for hardware thieves, but it still counts.

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  4. Posted

    Ron de Santis has just outlawed all discussion of the weather on account of this being a potentially woke activity. All posters are requested to not show this thread to citizens of Florida as this might implicate them and possibly get them subjected to the death sentence.

  5. Posted

    4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    May be a moot point if Russia fights its own civil war with the Wagner Group.

    I have to admit that if I were a dictator about to fight a civil war, I'd probably just hire my own mercenary group to fight itself. Winning side gets to be the new Praetorian Guard on the condition that whenever they depose a dictator, they themselves get to clean up the mess left behind. That sort of civil war would be a lot less bloody and destructive, and I bet it wouldn't even exact all that many casualties. If I remember my Italian history correct, if you set mercenaries to fight other mercenaries they typically settle it by either boasting, a war of maneuvers, a drinking contest or a best of three in rocks-paper-scissors.

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  6. Posted

    23 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Ukraine has used the tryzub since the early 20th century.  It is based on the seal-trident of Volodymyr the Great, the first Grand Prince of Kyiv.

    I still fucking love that when Putin declared that Ukraine was not a country, the Ukrainians responded by withdrawing Volodymyr the Great's charter for the founding of Moscow, revoking its right to exist as a city.

    Don Edwards and Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  7. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

     

    Will Ellen be required to run another game at Salty Crackers?  If Edward brought the game, it could be the US Military Zombie Appocolypse plan.

     

    That is so last administration. Today the focus is rightly placed on the US Military Mummy Uprising Plan.

  8. Posted

    23 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    We had only just discovered the concept of humor.  The cultural sophistication to judge if a joke was good or bad was not developed until the Ptolemlooneyic dynasty.

    Oh, that explains the fart jokes on the Rosetta Stone. Thank you.

  11. Posted

    19 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

    I guess I can see Dan's argument that this strip is answering a legitimate question people would have about the story. But on the other hand I think answering that question wasn't entirely necessary, and it does slow down the pacing. On the other other hand, slow pacing has been the norm for EGS for most of it's run, so it would actually seem strange at this point if the stories started only including essential moments.

    In this particular case I feel it somewhat compensates for the slowdown that the explanation is actually funny. :danshiftyeyes:

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this

  12. Posted

    16 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    I agree. He is dicking around with Ellen, trying for a reaction. If they tear up the hieroglyphs, she can't use them later. He's basically derailing a future train.

    Thirded. I will say this, mind you. I feel George is the master of dicking around without actually being a dick.

  14. Posted

    15 hours ago, mlooney said:

    The only not during design phase math formula that classic traveller has is the in system time of flight formula.  It's no so much math as it is accounting for design phase stuff.

    Errr, to clarify, I was not disagreeing about the math being during design phases but about it being heavy. I feel very early Traveler tended to rely on the more accessible forms of math and rarely went above grade school level. At least I never had much trouble with it and I am hardly a math genius.

  15. Posted

    2 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Thinking about it, based on Ellen/Elliot's experience in game mastering, she might not be ready for the "swarm of locust" style of gaming that some players get into.

    I don't think anyone could ever be ready for it without actually having experienced it. I remember playing in groups that would literally spend a whole week covering a dungeon inch by inch to make sure they had not missed something valuable, often smashing every single altar, chest or piece of furniture in the process and sorting through the splinters afterwards. (This practice did taper off somewhat after a DM I knew had had enough of it and the players found they had just smashed an invaluable set of crystal carafes as well as spilled several quarts of extremely powerful potions on the floor. He was nice enough to let the players find a single Potion of Longevity and one surviving crystal decanter worth 1000 gold, leaving them to wonder at the value of the remaining set now lying in a pile of fragmented remains strewn all over the flagstones.)

    Of course, at least this time Ellen might be spared the trauma of watching an entire party erupt into murderous infighting over a ring they had just found. Some people do not manage their greed very well. Especially not if they allow their resentment to gradually build over time. (The ring was not even magical, but I don't think it mattered to the involved players. At that point it was the principle of the thing.)

  16. Posted

    4 minutes ago, mlooney said:

    Traveller has always been math heavy, but not during play.  The math takes place during design phases.

    I am not sure I agree. I played original Traveller as a teen, and while it did employ a good deal of math I would not call it math _heavy_. At the time my math was mostly grade school level and I had no trouble. This... sounds like it is way past that level.

    Of course 'heavy' is relative and others might disagree. YMMV. But at least back then I did not consider the required math burdensome.

  17. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    Granting that he is a shallow-minded pea brain, (Sorry, peas. You are a great part of a healthy diet. Your size just happened to be suitable for illustration.) how is that even a thing he can do? Does he have his thugs remove them?

    Nah, this was while he was POTUS. So he just told the Marines and Secret Service to show them the door, or exit, or whatever.

  18. Posted

    5 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    That sucks. Given the rationale for her disabilities, she could probably take it to (unfortunately, a US) court, if you both were so inclined. You would probably need evidence that her condition is a result of Agent Orange, though. I'm not disagreeing, just saying, if you did go to court, you'd need more than just hearsay. Do you have documentation?

    Plenty of it. This is a well documented condition. Around a hundred thousand children with deformed spines were born in Vietnam post introduction of Agent Orange to the war. Not to mention countless stillborn ones. Unfortunately court action is expensive and a class action suit is difficult to form when more than 99% of those born with Agent Orange-caused prenatal damage are no longer among us.

    9 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    The US military tends toward conservative. I was when I was in. There is peer pressure, of course. But I very much agree with you, the GOP has done few favors for vets nor the active duty service men and women. You'd think that would count for something.

    My wife knows a few surviving Vietnam veterans. Every single one of them utterly despises the draft dodging traitor that spent four years squatting in the Oval Office. Possibly it was not his most tactful idea ever to order disabled veterans to leave ceremonies he attended because he didn't like to look at them.

  21. Posted

    17 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

    He even attended a military school. He will not be missed, not by my cohorts.

    People of my generation blamed the military for their involvement in Vietnam, and treated the troops like dirt when they returned. This is entirely misguided, the military does not get to choose where it is employed. I guy deployed to a war zone who is being shot at is going to shoot back. Blame the damn politicians who created a false narrative and sent them there. Politicians start wars, not the military.

    I would like to thank you on behalf of my wife, whose father went to Vietnam only to suffer from Agent Orange poisoning. He too only served as a convenient scapegoat upon his return home. My wife was born paraplegic due to her father's Agent Orange poisoning, a casualty of war before she was born.

    The Republican Party, of course, just pushed through cuts to her medical support using the reasoning that as a family member she is not a 'real' veteran. I am certain that veterans will feel heartened by the support of having their families hung out to dry should they suffer injuries during their service and be unable to support them themselves.

    Darth Fluffy reacted to this