JB0

I'm sure she'd be willing to bleach and die her hair for a chance to come to the land of opportunity.

Riiiiight...

! !! !!! GAOGAIGAR! IN THE US! LEGALLY! HOORAY!

I dunno... tank cannon seems a tad big for that purpose... They simulate all the immediatly desirable anatomical functions(and even the undesirable ones), so it's only like a tank psychologically. Physically, it's like "farting"(dont you love word filters?) a very fit woman. Though physical interaction isn't needed for intercourse in GitS anyways. The previously-mentioned lesbian scene showed you can do it with just a futuristic stereo and some jumper cables, provided you have a cyberbrain(which is a given in their world). Tachikomas also have aesthetic redesigns. But they do fill the role. Can't hurt that Shirow was actually involved in the TV series production, either. He had no hand in the movies, and it showed. It's going to be a gradual adoption, not all at once(and yes, I do believe it will happen eventually). First, we get prosthetics that are good enough to be actual replacement limbs, instead of the "better than nothing" we have now. Full range of motion, reasonable sensitivity and responsiveness, aesthetically appealing. We're close to that now with hands(sensitivity is the big issue, aside from reliability). Now from there, we make BETTER parts. A part that does everything your original one can do, but is stronger, faster, and doesn't get tired. Now the "cripples" actually come out ahead. If the part-swapping can be done quickly and easily, it's like modern plastic surgery, only there's a benefit beyond aesthetics. Got a quarterback that wants to throw the ball a little farther? Get him a new arm(and hope he gets in before the NFL bans cybernetics, or that they don't notice it anymore than they do steroid usage). Here's a hypothetical adoption scenario for society-wide cybernetic upgrades. A company invents a replacement eyeball, with enhancements. First, people that were blinded or had uncorrectable vision problems get new eyes that are better than 20/20, have a zoom function, can see IR and UV, and come in the color they want instead of the one genetics gave them. Once it becomes an easier surgery to do, the people that were considering surgery to correct their vision get a similar upgrade(they were already planning on surgery, they just changed what kind). Further down the line, the people that were getting contacts and glasses upgrade, because there's advantages to the surgery beyond removing the need for corrective lenses. Finally, the people born with 20/20 vision upgrade their eyes because 20/20 is the new nearsighted and just seeing the visible spectrum is the new colorblind. I can't see a viable adoption path for the cyberbrain, though. And that's really the centerpiece of Ghost's personal technology.

There was one functional Cannon. That was the Alaska Base one. There were 4 other cannons being built around Earth and on the Moon. http://macross.anime.net/story/atlas/index.html Search for Grand Cannon to find the specific locations of each one.

But get this Rocket Punch, that would be a good thing for a women to not have periods because they won't be able to deficate with all those germs bacteria and virus' they have in their urine, blood or stools. Can anyone make sense of this? 'Sides, like RP said... the body's a machine. Literally. No pathogens, no piss, no poop, not even real blood(more like dyed oil and antifreeze). Well, maybe piss and poop analogs. They did work out an infrastructure for eating, and I doubt they have 100% "fuel efficiency," especially with concessions made to appearance and texture(flavor can be faked). May as well make use of existing disposal facilities(though it'll wreak havoc on the sewage treatment plants). Beautiful. That was REALLY beautiful. You're the guy writing the valentine's cards for Hallmark, aren't you?

As you've seen, they're 1:72. But your question is phrased in such a way that it sounds like that needs a bit of clarification. The scale is a ratio. It's saying the toy is 55/60/72 times smaller than the "real thing"(in this case, the official sizes of the mechs). Just because 2 toys are the same scale doesn't mean they're the same size. Best example is the QRau toys. They're 1/60 scale, but similar in size to the 1/48 VF-1 toys. As for quality... that's a variable target. The MacPlus toys are a LOT newer design than the Bandai VF-1s. And targetted more at collectors than children. They're far more accurate, but far less durable too. The 1/60 Yamato VF-1s are a newer design than the Mac+ toys, but with the same target market. Yamato applied everything they learned from the Plus toys to the 1/60 designs. They're more durable, and probably more accurate.

I ran through the manga repeatedly. It's a pretty interesting view of a relatively realistic future. And I hated the movie version of Motoko. Took all the good parts out and left a steaming pile of angst. The movie also lacked Fuchikomas and Seburos, but that's another thread. Haven't actually seen movie 2 or the TV series yet(and have no plans TO see the second movie). There's a lot of simulation of the human body going on within the artificial body's interface to the brain. Emotions also tend to land primarily within the brain itself(regardless of whose brain it was originally). But all the various chemicals and their effects on the brain are a large part of "being human" so it's not really in anyone's interests to remove them. The commercial manufacturers would lose sales to people that don't want to give up that much of their humanity, and the special forces would lose recruits for the same reason. I understand why they're emulating the hormones and such(actually, they probably have to include artificial glands in the brain case to release REAL chemicals, because many of them react with the central nervous system, so you can't just emulate their effect at the computer/nervous system interface), I just don't get why they're emulating a cycle that most people don't like to start with. I would think "no more periods!" would be a selling point. *shrugs* Ah well.

I cna answer hte why.It's marketing, basically. MacPlus came out about halfway through Mac7's run. Planting M+ songs in 7 and featuring their mecha(production models and customized variants, anyways) was free advertising. Extending that theme of cross-promotion, the Macross 7 short movie was attached to the MacPlus movie in theaters, so Mac7 fans would buy MacPlus tickets just for "The Galaxy is Calling Me." It also helps create the appearance of a cohesive universe, so there was some artistic merit to the move. There's also some Minmay in there for that reason, as well as production of a movie based on Space War 1(rather loosely based, given Basara and Mylene were playing Hikaru and Minmay, and they replaced Hikaru's VF-1 with Basara's VF-19).

So an idiotic crossover? I think that tops my idea of a series revolving around a fighter squadron headed by Gubaba.

Nope. Might wind up with a kid if she has eggs stored somewhere, but no pregnancy. 391624[/snapback] Uhhm, Page 18 first GITS manga: "There's alot of noise in your brain Major" "..hey I'm on my period!" 391864[/snapback] And I don't get why they emulated that. Remember, her body had no original equipment beyond the brain and brain stem. Possibly not even that(they show that even the brain is swappable in the end chapter). She wouldn't have any eggs to inseminate. I also can't see a way to DO pregnancy in an artificial body. So put your zygotes in a freezer, and rent an artificial womb when you want offspring. Besides which... battle body. That's the sort of thing that would be dropped, like the ability to swim. They kept the ability to have intercourse(presumably because giving up sex will drive away recruits), but pregnancy takes up a lot more everything, and removes your agent from operation for an extended period of time. She's also going out with a guy at one point. *flips around the colored sections* Chapter 8 by my book. Batou says the relationship's been going for 7 months("a new record!") She's bisexual. And it wasn't "really" an orgy. It was all in their heads. Not that it really matters much.

I think they're all part of the Spacey.

he would have voice commands to turn the thing off. Just like how guld says "stealth" in macross plus and activates stealth feature. If I recall, Guld doesn't actually SAY "stealth" though. He thinks it. I'd bet he doesn't actually think the word "stealth" anyways or anything we'd actually recognize, so much as move an imaginary muscle that has no representation in real anatomy. Mac+ had to make compromises to depict the interface for the viewing audience. Imagery of hands mapping to wing control surfaces and feet mapping to the throttle and thrust vectoring controls were convenient ways to give people a rough idea of what was going on, but fell far short of what you'd actualy experience. In fact, if a neural interface was limited to mental analogies like that, it wouldn't be a lot of use. Among other things, a 1:1 mapping restricts your mech to human actions in battroid mode, and they're no fun without thrusters and integrated weaponry. What actually goes on is the brain creates new commands just for the hardware interfaced to it(and the hardware learns what the brain is saying at the same time, so you don't have to match your thought patterns to an arbitrary hardware design). Upshot is that rather than thinking about moving your hand to adjust the wings, you'd think about moving the wings. Interestingly, Real-world research shows that, at least in other primates, the brain will actually develop sections devoted to the operation of the equipment hooked in through a neural interface. Hook a robot arm to an orangutang's head, and it develops a brain segment to control a third arm. So essentially, once the learning curve was over, every control of the YF-21 would be like an actual part of Guld's body, in addition to his original flesh+blood body. Next best thing to actually becoming a bird. </tech-fetish> A very sanitary solution. Also saves them the effort of reaching around back. Better yet... just stick a couple of fingers of telekinetic force into the crack. Why rough your butt up with a rock when you can hit the itch directly with nothing but willpower?

Yah. We're off in the middle of nowhere from the empire's point of view, and thus from the SA and zentradi POVs as well. 391824[/snapback] "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." 391837[/snapback] Does that mean the PC died out because they never realized 42?

Apparently, since the people selling cheap CD players don't make any money off the media. Remember, games are a diffrent issue. There you have one hardware supplier, and all software sold for that hardware puts cash in the hardware manufacturer's pocket. With CD and DVD, the hardware manufacturers don't see a cent of the media sales. They HAVE to turn a profit on the hardware. And if that profit comes at the cost of quality engineering, then so be it.

I got the impression he was more of a regional general. DYRL mentions there's thousands more fleets like his, and the Compendium says there's 1 or 2 thousand of his flagship vessel in existence. While it's not impossible that the head zentran was running around with everyone else, typical entertainment logic says he'd have an even bigger ship. I's also possible there IS NO head zentran. If all the regional general zentran reported to the protoculture, then the zentradi fleet would have been fractured into several subfleets when the PC empire collapsed. Yah. We're off in the middle of nowhere from the empire's point of view, and thus from the SA and zentradi POVs as well.

*whacks Ladic in the head* You were SUPPOSED to say "NO WAI"

It says gore and PROFANITY man, profanity. 390560[/snapback] O RLY? YA RLY

A lot of times they only lock some controls. Fast-forward, track forward, and menu are rarely ALL blocked. And when they are, it's usually only the first logo or 2, then you can jab menu.

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.