h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Krans, I plainly informed Njan and I am surprised they didn't inform you. Axe is quite profcient in engineering, hacking, and weaponry, and would make quite the addition to the team. Besides, we need membership...

Nono, I wasn't objecting to Axe at all, or the existence of the room... but you could have at least posted a url to our ops planning thread...

Nah worries.

The Testpit? I did. And if you're letting Axe in, I'll need a terminal pill. I could replicate it, but Njan wouldn't be too happy, and I'm sure you wouldn't either.

*wonders what a terminal pill is*

Right.

*Hands over something that looks like a medication capsule*

Axe, here's your terminal pill. Swallow it, and the nano-bots will implant circuits into you that allow you to easily communicate wih other team members (including the various Minds).

You probably know the t&cs: If you turn out to be a traitor we'll shoot you, &c, &c, &c...

Look at the forums off the h2g2 Space Farers' Cantina.

*swallows the pill*

I'll subscribe to the cantina threads l8r, I've only got 10 mins ATM.

Well then, Axe, welcome aboard! Now please clear the thread for the paying customers.

Ah, yes, welcome. *smiles*

Can't remember having been asked for you to join, but I'm sure I'd have said yes anyway. Good to have another member of the team.

*hands Axe a gelsuit and leaves him to figure out what to do with it*

*slips Axe's palm out of his pocket and attaches a small green blob of gel to it. The blob sinks seamlessly through the case, and the palm looks unchanged*

There. Now you can use it to connect to the GSV's mind as well. I do so like palms.

*looks at the Palm very closely*

Hmm...

*boots it up to check that all his stuff still works. A conduit promptly explodes somewhere on the Tripwire*

Amazing. I'm not even going to ask how you did that. What's this?

*opens up the new menu that's appeared on his palm*

Ohh, I'll have to have a play around with this someday !

*wonders about the gelsuit and also scratches his head about the GSV bit*

*smiles*

The gelsuit is a freeform, non-centralised device made out of some very clever materials. Simply, it's a suit made of gel.. (Actually, it's bio-neural circuitry integrated into a more ductile version of what they make GSV hulls out of) .. it has a mind of its own (which is at human or slightly sub-human intelligence level), so it pretty much runs itself. It stores nicely as a tennisball-sized-sphere, but will fold around you completely enclosing your body. Being non-centralised, every part of the suit - to simplify - does everything. So the portion which ends up over your mouth will filter air and food (it projects some fields into your mouth so that even after the stuff's passed through the suit, it can't pose any threat to you). It's designed for foreign environments (for example, some species live in very human-unfriendly climates, with high temperatures and high airpressures, which a gelsuit'll cope with).

These ones'll sustain projectile weaponfire and light energy weapons, but try not to think of them as armour, because they're not designed for it. Still. Having said that, anything which'll sustain you if you happen to fall into a volcano's relatively useful.

In addition to the protective capability, the 'filtering' system, and the mind, the gelsuit'll store about a week's worth of nutrients and an air supply, if it comes to it. The air tastes a bit stuffy, and the nutrients are positively cardboard-like, but they'll keep you alive. In an even direr emergency, the suit's fitted with transceivers which normally make a quite happy communications terminal (the suit can project images onto the retina for data acquisition) which you can use to broadcast distress signals, but the capability stops there. If you want anything to do space acrobatics, throw you around in the air, or save you if you're intending on entering the atmosphere of a planet, then this isn't your baby.

"(the suit can project images onto the retina for data acquisition)"

Hmm... interesting. You mind if I make a few modifications to mine?

The best thing to do would be to tell one of the GSV's avatars what you want and get it to do it for you... altering technology like that, from experience, is hard. .. what sort of thing've you got in mind?

Nothing much, some OS adjustments (i.e. deleting anything with Windows written on it ) and modifying the imaging system to let me interface with a few of the programs that I've made during my time on the Starpilot.

Oh, goodness, windows is absolutely out of the question.

The interface is provided by the mind which is present in the suit. Basically, in addition to interfacing via neural lace, the suit interfaces via retinal projection and audibly: quite simply, it's as if there's someone else in your head. The gelsuit can talk to you (and only you) and input information into your neural lace waiting buffer (having ideas put into the neural lace buffer is one of the strangest sensations).

In addition, the retinal projection provides two and three-dimensional projections which overlay your existing vision. This usually isn't used, due to the distraction which it entails, so normal communication is via the audible / mental connections with the suit. The form of audiovisual and mental communication is entirely down to the suit: It's designed to ergonomically adjust to whatever's most comfortable and productive for the user in question. If your programmes use a standard culture terminal interface, they should be able to interface with the suit via the terminal on your palm, and either have their functions transferred to the suit, take output from it, and input into it.

Or, you can interface with the palm yourself using your neural lace.

"Oh, goodness, windows is absolutely out of the question."

See Venom, another person who doesn't prefer Windows

*goes off to his office on the Tripwire to play around a bit, and to try and fix that conduit*

I use windows for the user-friendlyness and mass-terminal capability. Did you know every room in the entire hotel has a computer terminal, and most people can't run a linux PC, and Macs just suck? The suit doesn't even use an OS, just a neural patch-in.

I wasn't asking for your opinion, I was merely pointing out what has been said .

Therefore, I'm not going to argue.

Not. Firstly, I don't find Blue Screen Of Deaths very "user-friendly". Secondly, Linux can run a network way better than a Windows server ever could. Thirdly, Linux will run on a 486DX out of the box, which I don't see any recent versions of Windows doing any time soon. Forthly (), I take a "neural patch-in" to mean the same as "contemporary OS" based on current postings.

For the record, Njan (who works as a web designer, internet security & computer forensics consultant, and general techie) uses Win2k. (and, since njan started using win2k, it's crashed twice. That's less times than the distributions of redhat and mandrake he uses have crashed). Having said that, win2k's the only distribution of windows I use, and - other than my mouse and word- is the only microsoft product I use, period.

Damn, guess you aren't going to join any Linux User Groups ATM then . But I understand the keyboard and mouse bit ('cause I use a MS Internet Pro keyboard and Optical mouse).

And I use some Microsoft applications as well, but only through Wine

prefer vmware myself.