JB0

Because elephants have flat feet.

No one's perfect. 'Sides, comptuer hacker = nerd. By default. Nope. Might wind up with a kid if she has eggs stored somewhere, but no pregnancy. *thinks about it* Why would they emulate that aspect of the female anatomy, anyways? As far as I know, no one really considers it a positive thing, may as well not emulate the cycle. I know it's in there, so clearly they do, but ... why?

Sounds like they're taking a page out of the video game industry's playbook. 391586[/snapback] The game industry sells new hardwre to add power. HD-DVD/BluRay would be a more apt game analogy. They aren't selling new players for security. Nothing has been added to teh DVD spec, and thus nothing has been added to the players. They're adding new features to teh disk that aren't a part of the standard. No player actually supports them, and the design goal of breaking DVD copier software that reads spec disks ensures that some hardware won't play them(including some new hardware). Same issue we had with CD copy protection(Philips won't let publishers use the compact disk logo on their disks if certain forms of copy protection are present for that reason). Publishers are also using more of the features that ARE standard. Player support for the DVD programming language varies quite wildly, and if you get fancy, odds are good that it won't work in all players, especially older ones. And the final nail is... hardware just isn't built as good anymore, so it fails faster. Sure they could use metal tracking rails, high-quality motors, decent power supplies, and so on. But it'd drive the player cost up and more people will go for the 50$ chinese crap. If they want to remain competitive in the mass market, they have to use the chinese build quality. Good parts only wind up in the videophile stuff, which is obscenely expensive. If you WANT to pay a grand for a DVD player, you'll get something that'll last. Otherwise... disposability is the name of the game. And until the hardware failed, my Apexes from 99 and... I think 01 were pretty decent. The Sonys that replaced them have more software issues.

What, you don't have a thing for odd hair colors? Maybe you could talk her into bleaching it. I can cook, though. And I'm a fairly picky eater, so it's better for both of us(I'm not picking stuff out of her food, so she's happy, and I'm getting a meal I like, so I'm happy). ... Of course, she was willing to learn, and new to human cuisine. Shouldn't be too hard to indoctrinate her to my tastes. I'm blunt too. It just saves me the trouble of saying it. I really am glad I'm not anywhere near as cynical as you are.

Why would we be expecting that? If the zentradi know we're here, it means Bodol told his superiors about us, and they know he tried and failed to exterminate us. They may not know HOW we annihilated an entire fleet, but they darn sure aren't going to muck about with the retaliatory strike. We'll see a rerun of the final battle, only instead of one fleet there'll be 2, 3, 4, or however many more they've deemed appropriate. If they're mad enough, we may see the entire SOLAR SYSTEM packed end to end with flying pickles of death. Defold, open fire, and instead of a nearly dead Earth, we'll have a totally dead Earth, or perhaps even an asteroid belt for an Earth. The same counterattack strategy won't work twice because A. we don't have a grand cannon to clear an assault corridor, and B. there's multiple flagships. Once they see what's happening, they'll tighten defenses around the other ships, and a second kamikaze strike will be shot down. Minmay's song didn't render them completely helpless the first time, and they gunned down a lot of our fighters. If the zentradi know we're here, we're dead. Period. Mac2 is exactly what you WOULDN'T expect to have happen. Hence the colony missions. Global recognized that we survived through sheer luck the first time, and that if Bodol was keeping the bosses informed or another fleet happened upon us through chance, we were screwed. So he started a project to get humanity spread among as many solar systems as possible, as soon as possible. That's why Megaroad 1 was sent clear to the other side of the galaxy, even though it was humanity's second interstellar mission, first home-made interstellar vessel, and we still had a VERY low population. It was risky, but it spread us as far as possible as fast as possible. And there we are. Anything's fair game if it lets us take a dig at Mac7.

Macross Mecha Designs isn't any sort of place to be pulling stats and story info from, for the record. His data is what he needed to implement those vehicles in RPGs. He made a lot of it up, either because the existing data didn't fit his purposes or because there wasn't any real data(as is the case with the X9). It's not really relevant to anything.

I thought the point was to be more specific than "BOOBS!1111"

Ooh yeah, she's a hottie too--but there's something that's just not quite right. Those *ahem* combat uniforms are definitely alluring. But the whole "complete synthetic body" thing is a bit creepy. You gotta wonder: would she feel all cold and plasticy? The tech level in GitS is high enough that they simulate the feel of a real body. At least in the "normal" ones. There's all sorts of specialized and non-humanoid bodies with diffrent design goals than social interaction(pretty sure the cube-bot made it into SAC, for a quick example of one such body). Motoko can't swim, though. Her body's too heavy, due to the design goals of strength and durability(there ARE swimmable bodies, including ones explicitly designed for it). I'd be more worried about her crushing me accidentally. Meh, just get my own mecha body. I'm not a big fan of my current one anyways. ... But then, her's is mil-spec. Can probably tear right through anything I can buy.

Like I said, it's a required suspension of reality for the genre. Maybe a delay would work. A knee button prevents using the system for leg motions.

We spent all our testosterone on mecha. We don't have any left over for women. 'Sides, Belldandy looks pretty darn good too.

Knowing how they work isn't the same as being capable of using them. I'm pretty sure you weren't an immediate automobile master when you first sat behind the wheel. I know I wasn't. And a steering wheel and gas pedal is a LOT simpler than the mess of switches, joysticks, and pedals in a VF-1. Even assuming perfect mastery of motion by description alone, gauging the proper pressure to apply would be VERY difficult. (That's one of the major problems they've had with artificial hands, actually. They need a way for the user to tell how hard he's grabbing an object so he can not crush an egg while still having enough power to get a firm grasp on a heavy object. ) How do you hit the switch to turn it off?

I think you might have to beat Mai into submission. And I dunno about you, but I'm not up to it.

Sorry about that. Forgot a tag while trimming it down. Fixed now. Perhaps. It reads as a simple action. Actually doing it is a tad harder. Hikaru's never operated a VF before in his life. His sum total of experience consists of being shot down in a dog fight and crashing a battroid through a city block before walking it into an apartment. He's only just found out the sticks move the hands at all. Picking Minmay up on the first try without missing totally, slapping her in the face, or crushing her to death should be a rather difficult task, especially without any tactile feedback. Hmmm... Might work. Not as well as it sounds, but possibly good enough. It's really a somewhat limited control scheme for a war machine, though. Head-tracking and eye-tracking are rational additions. It's the most intuitive method of rapidly designating targets using real-world technology. Full-body tracking is much less useful, as there aren't intuitive motions to activate a lot of features, and you'll do something unintended while reaching for the controls to do them.

well how about this.... prehaps there are certain preset motions trigured by gestures that the pilot inputs, if the valk has any desplay screen modes like modern fighter jets im sure there would be a way to start mapping out a new motion, but it might be a little time consuming to do in the middle of a battle 391293[/snapback] It still requires training. Remember a completely untrained Hikaru picking Minmay up with a damaged GERWALK? "Beginner's skill" is a common staple of the genre. And I doubt Max could program a "put on a uniform that doesn't quite fit" routine in a reasonable amount of time. Then the touch where he reached up and pulled the hat down low as a soldier came down the hall... pure improv. It would've worked better if he'd been staying hidden the whole time. Would've been harder to rescue 3 people with a 1-man fighter, but it blew up anyways, so no great loss.

Better yet... WHILE doing her.

But Mountain Dew looks like urine(at least in the bottle). Coke has no urine-colored products. And makes Cherry Coke. 391261[/snapback] *ahem* Mello Yello 391264[/snapback] Coke has no urine-colored products in my area, then.

Millia. She's hot, she's a gamer, she has green hair. Ami from Sailor Moon. Smart, shy, into computers... Aww heck... she's me with boobs.

But Mountain Dew looks like urine(at least in the bottle). Coke has no urine-colored products. And makes Cherry Coke.

Compendium says Zenmtradi are about 5 times the average human. That's more along the lines of 25-30 feet than 35-40. The 2 zentradi characters with heights listed are Millia and Britai. She's about 28, and he's 44 and a half. He's also notably bigger than the men under his command. VF-1's height in battroid mode is 12.68 meters, which works out to 41.6 feet. One of Robotech's major statistical deviations is that the average zentradi is 40-ish. This comes from assuming Britai is of average height. This makes Max's costuming stunt a lot more workable in Robotech, though the clothes would still hang quite wrong on the battroid's body. I hope you meant depending on the zentradi's height, as all VF-1s are built to the exact same specification. Legs and torso too.But it's a common theme for mech anime, and one of the more common suspensions of reality that come with the genre. A couple of joysticks and foot pedals is enough to create any motion you may need, and to do it intuitively as well. Roboetch's novelizations excuse this with a neural interface(much like MacPlus's YF21 does), but this doesn't fit the animation(and in the Macross universe Plus makes it chronologically impossible).

I've been seeing them around here, too. MS seems to have finally gotten their production up. I haven't really kept score. Partially because I've got a heap of used games. 'S just not worth tracking which ones were mint originally. I prefer top-loaders just because the mechanism is simpler. All other things being equal, a toploader will last longer than a tray or slot mech. ... Of course, the tracking assembly(Sony's machines) and hub motors(Dreamcast) have proven the weak links in recent years, so it doesn't much matter. Pity they can't/won't spend the cash for a high-quality drive mech. At least MS is using standard drives, so it should easy to fix when the optical drive dies(if my assumptions about the drive using standard firmware are correct). Hard drive'll take a bit more work. Yes, I expect an uncommon amount of longevity.

You could actually do a lot to it. And since we're worried about drive noise, you could put the panels directly on the drive. Might cause thermal issues, though.

Blunt is my natural state. I get right to the point and skip the paragraph of fluff surrounding the important sentence. You incorrectly assume it's meant to offend. I did. Waste of words. "Wrong thread" is so much shorter. I'm not offended in the least.

They have... err, ARE... bioweapons!

And he never should've passed for one. Really... wouldn't you guys notice if you walked by someone with his collar pulled up real high, his hat pulled down low, and a big green glass plate where his face should be?

Are you joking? No one's ever really sure. Sidenote: I HAVE gotten injured while picking stuff off of a carpeted floor. Was at school, and somehow a staple had gotten caught in teh carpet, point up.