Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Kill

Kill with fire

Ask someone else to kill it

Run

Befriend

Befriend and start a spider silk company

Befriend and sic on enemies

Capture and study, because they shouldn't exist

Use to create a spider army

Offer waffles

Offer Cheerios

[judemorrigan]

I am again curious, why are the spiders themselves a heath hazard?

I imagine it's not the spiders themselves - it's presumably about the food supply that their existance implies.

[bhtooefr]

That many spiders means you've got an insect problem, and the insect problem carries pathogens. Especially when this occurs in an area where food prep is occurring...

[jwhouk]

Proper response to intelligent spider

Kill    7 (6.9%)
Kill with fire    19 (18.6%)
Ask someone else to kill it    3 (2.9%)
Run    4 (3.9%)
Befriend    13 (12.7%)
Befriend and start a spider silk company    15 (14.7%)
Befriend and sic on enemies    12 (11.8%)
Capture and study, because they shouldn't exist    7 (6.9%)
Use to create a spider army    8 (7.8%)
Offer waffles    11 (10.8%)
Offer Cheerios    3 (2.9%)

Total Members Voted: 58

[drewdane]

I had to Google the word "fib." Is that an Eastern US word? It doesn't exist out here...

You clearly don't read enough.

[celticgeek]

This is how you take care of it:


 There was an Old Lady

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and wiggled and tiggled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird.
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a cat;
Fancy that to swallow a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady that swallowed a dog;
What a hog, to swallow a dog;
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a cow,
I don't know how she swallowed a cow;
She swallowed the cow to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse...
She's dead, of course!

There was an Old Lady song
   

[bhtooefr]

And the internet brings new meaning to those last couple lines... 

[Sidhekin]

That's what I was alluding to, except your version has somehow omitted the "just opened her throat and swallowed a goat" line / verse.

[ink slinger]

I appreciate that the answer to the question: "Is your dad a space wizard?" is basically: "Yes."

[Method of Madness]

"Yes. Yes, he is."

[ZoeB]

i think to myself, i'd ask the spider to be out of my sight as large spiders make me uncomfortable, but when i put a person in place of the spider it seems really very rude and quite offensive to say "please move aside, i would like to come upstairs and people like you make me uncomfortable". that feels awful in my mind!

Now you know how Cinruskins like Dr Prilicla feel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_General

As regards intelligent spiders - read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky

But first read A Fire on the Deep.

[Border Reiver]

ILastly, here is what you get when you cross spiders with crabs and press 'supersize.' I love these things.

(click to show/hide)

Do you have enough garlic butter?

[Madmartigan]

Orbital Bombardment App!?!?

I want one.  Kill the spiders!  Kill them with fiery, photonic blasts!

Seriously though.....Just goes to show how real Hanenrs world domination is.

[Is it cold in here?]

I had to Google the word "fib." Is that an Eastern US word? It doesn't exist out here...

You clearly don't read enough.

I've run into it far more often spoken than in print, although it's appeared in QC before.

[Indicible]

Next step: Dora and Faye get Dust 514 dropsuits.
Hannerdad: Minmatar or Caldari? In Rust We Trust or Hybrid Sniping Mangling?

[Is it cold in here?]

Who has command authority over the orbital bombardment system, anyway? It's the sort of thing the USAF would want to control themselves.

[Loki]

This is how you take care of it:


 There was an Old Lady

You know, this would be much shorter if you were to define it recursively.

[pwhodges]

No, silly.  It's a sequence, not recursive; using recursion for that would be needlessly inefficient.  The most efficient would be a loop with an array containing the varying elements; the most understandable a simple routine called for each verse with the varying elements as parameters.

[celticgeek]

Both of these methods are left as an exercise for the student.

[Loki]

But you get quadratic running time on the loop, whereas with recursion you get... uhm. Damn. I forgot how to analyze this.

[Akima]

Who has command authority over the orbital bombardment system, anyway?

I remember that the question of who actually really runs Hannerdad's station has come up before. There are USAF personnel up there, we know, but the station is run by an AI who's in love with Daddy's little princess.

[Method of Madness]

I'm pretty sure Hannerdad allows them there as a courtesy, or at least to avoid a political mess that would cut into his sciencing time.

[Is it cold in here?]

A priori it would make sense for the AI to be far more in charge de facto than anyone else realizes.

[Method of Madness]

I wonder if there are any high ranking AIs in the US military.

[J]

i'm pretty sure there are international treaties against the weaponization of space. one thing the us & ussr managed to agree on was that space-based weapons were a bad idea.

[Method of Madness]

Aren't international treaties only applicable to nations? I wouldn't be surprised if Hannerdad renounced his citizenship and considered himself a citizen of the universe. He does live in space, after all, and there's no indication he's been to Earth in decades.

[J]

hmm, now that's an interesting question then. if he's basically a stateless entity, operating outside of any nation's jurisdiction, is he therefor not bound by any laws at all?

and if that's the case, then presumably he's probably not under the protection of any such laws either. so then is any country with the capability free to just shoot him down at their own discretion?

[Loki]

Aren't international treaties only applicable to nations?

Luckily, I happen to be a visitor of pointless sites, so I am aware of a possible legal precedent.

See why Hannerdad prolly doesn't own Station here.

This, of course, does not take into account the issue of Station having civil rights, for instance.

[Method of Madness]

To Loki - Not being able to own a natural space object like a star or satellite doesn't mean you can't own a space station. That being said, I would say that Hannerdad probably owns the station, but he doesn't own Station.

To J - I'd be very surprised any country did have that capability.

[muon]

This, of course, does not take into account the issue of Station having civil rights, for instance.

And this brings up an interesting question in my mind. Do AIs have citizenship? I would hope they're legally entitled to some sort of citizenship, although with some AIs, such as Station, it's not clear what country they would be a citizen of. Perhaps AIs have their own government that they're citizens of? Or some sort of world AI union?

Warning - while you were typing a new AI gained sentience and posted in the forums. You may with to review your post. Or not, your call.

[Method of Madness]

That's why I made the distinction between Station and the station. Hannerdad probably owns the station, and Station might own anywhere from his main server to all the computing equipment on the station (at least the one he controls directly).

[Kugai]

The only problem with Hannelores idea is that sometimes things can get a little out of hand.

[Emoroffle]

I'm pretty sure the CIA can already do that whole tungsten rod orbital strike thing. I'm sure Hanner's dad would have something much cooler in his toolkit. Say a gravitic implosion device? Seriously if you twist light the right way you can create gravity wells with it. Physics rocks.

[Is it cold in here?]

AIs have equal civil rights to humans under a recent Constitutional amendment.

[J]

but what about international law?

I'm pretty sure the CIA can already do that whole tungsten rod orbital strike thing. I'm sure Hanner's dad would have something much cooler in his toolkit. Say a gravitic implosion device? Seriously if you twist light the right way you can create gravity wells with it. Physics rocks.

while it's a simple enough idea that i wouldn't completely discount the possibility of such a weapon system existing, fiery death from the sky really doesn't seem like the company's style.

That's why I made the distinction between Station and the station. Hannerdad probably owns the station, and Station might own anywhere from his main server to all the computing equipment on the station (at least the one he controls directly).

staaation

[Emoroffle]

Kinetic munitions aren't very fiery, but I get your point. Still I can see the military having something like that at its disposal for bunker and cave clearing. All the power of a nuke with no radiation.

[mustang6172]

How could Dora not have known there were that many spiders in her roasting area?

They mostly come out at night... mostly.

[mtmerrick]

This certainly does explain why there's military up on Station. it was kinda vague reasoning before, IIRC.

[J]

Kinetic munitions aren't very fiery, but I get your point. Still I can see the military having something like that at its disposal for bunker and cave clearing. All the power of a nuke with no radiation.

well, i kind of imagine anything coming down through the atmosphere at mach 10 being fiery, due to friction.

[ankhtahr]

Kinetic munitions aren't very fiery, but I get your point. Still I can see the military having something like that at its disposal for bunker and cave clearing. All the power of a nuke with no radiation.

At such high velocities? I think these tungsten rods are going to be really fiery when impacting. The air they compress in front of them is going to reach very high temperatures relatively quickly (once they reach the atmosphere of course. I guess they build up quite an impressive amount of kinetic energy before their acceleration gets slowed down by the atmosphere). Let's say the rod gets dropped from LEO (lower earth orbit), at approximately 400 km height. Usually atmospheric effects on reentry get noticeable at 120 km, so the rod accelerates for 280 km. That would result in approximately 2342 m/s which is 8431.2 km/h.

Here's a picture of a ballistic projectile of a railgun, made by the US Navy. It was a record shot, reaching a muzzle velocity of 2520 m/s. Comparable to the velocity of a tungsten rod, simply "dropped" from the height of the ISS.



That "fireball" is a cloud of plasma created by the pressure difference between the front and the rear. Near vacuum behind the projectile, incredibly high pressure in front of it.

Edit: More info: The temperature is not caused by friction, but the high pressures, same at reentrance of a space shuttle. And while this power of this rod might look impressive, remember that all the kinetic energy of the projectile needs to be invested as "potential energy" by getting it to that height. Also it's a wrong assumption that the gravitational pull is the same at 400km, but I didn't feel like calculating it more complex. Also due to the high density of tungsten I think these rods are not as much influenced by the atmosphere as, say, a spacecraft.

[JohnTheWysard]

I wonder if there are any high ranking AIs in the US military.

I would recommend against seriously investigating that question. ESPECIALLY online.

I've said too much... signing off!

[J]

i wonder how the rank structure & advancement would work for AIs. in theory at least, a soldier gains rank over time with experience, but a computer can just download the necessary knowledge directly. maybe even copy the relevant 'memory' files from other computers and synch up with their experiences.

i would assume that AIs are basically assigned to whatever their jobs are and uploaded with relevant information and drivers.

[Masterpiece]

I wonder if there are any high ranking AIs in the US military.

The La Li Lu Le Lo?

[Method of Madness]

I wonder if there are any high ranking AIs in the US military.

I would recommend against seriously investigating that question. ESPECIALLY online.

In the QCverse

[celticgeek]

Deep, calming breaths, Sam.

[jon3831]

Next step: Dora and Faye get Dust 514 dropsuits.
Hannerdad: Minmatar or Caldari? In Rust We Trust or Hybrid Sniping Mangling?

AMARR VICTOR

That's all I got. Except an orbital bombardment app would be cool.

[cesium133]

Yesterday's comic makes me want to fire up Kerbal Space Program and build an orbital bombardment launcher...

[mtmerrick]

Bottom left corner. That is all.

[Indicible]

AMARR VICTOR

Hannerdad does not strike me as a religious fanatic. Plus Station's designe is closer to Minmatar or Caldari designs. Unless he uses Jove technology? (That would be a twist...)

[Is it cold in here?]

The tungsten rods would get most of their energy from their former orbital velocity, not from the height difference.

[westrim]

This certainly does explain why there's military up on Station. it was kinda vague reasoning before, IIRC.

I just figured they were funding research into lasers or something and protecting their investment.