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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate November 1996 |
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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate November 1996 |
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THE MONTH IN BRIEF November started out with AOL's announcement that it was changing to a new pricing plan, with no more hourly charges. Fedders rejoiced at the prospect of being able to play Fed as long as they wanted. In order to prepare the game technically for the expected increase in usage, the TechDroid started stress testing - see stories below. Other changes were made, reflecting the fact that people would be spending more time in Fed; the cost of some promotions rose as well as the cost of a spybeam. One of the most often-requested commands was finally put into the game, the C PRICE duchyname The new help system was put into Fed, giving a help entry for every command. This made it a lot easier for people to check the exact usage for commands, without having to ask for help. Federation Greeters were renamed to DataSpace Navigators. Their jobs remained the same; only the name was changed to protect the innocent. After a long wait, someone finally designed a planet worthy of receiving the Walrus of Merit award. Congratulations to RebelPilot with his planet Voyager. The news contained a report of the Halloween celebrations in Fed, when the demi-Goddess Hazed had been accused of being a witch, pursued across the landscape of the planet Pumpkin, and then burnt at the stake! Not to worry, though, she was insured. Announcements were also made about what would be happening at Christmas in Fed, and included a little poem: Christmas is coming, and Hazed is
getting fat, *Obviously we realize that spacemen don't wear hats, they wear helmets, but that would not have rhymed or scanned so we used artistic license. (We had to bribe the official to get our artistic license!)
One of the things we have had to do is make sure the game can cope with a lot more players than it's ever had on before, without slowing down so much it becomes unplayable. This is called stress testing. The way we've been doing this is to have a large number of fake players roaming around on Earth, getting their permits, buying ships, and then congregating in a corner of the spaceport. But where do we get such fake players from? Well, the current batch we are using are called CryptoSpawn, which might give you some idea. That's right, they are Cryptosporidium's children, the result of a frantic few days spent reproducing by cell-division. Identical in every way to their parent, they are just as obnoxious and slimy. Since the spawn are not yet old enough to talk, we don't know whether they consider Crypto to be their mummy or their daddy! Incidentally, if you give one of the CryptoSpawn 200,000 groats exactly, it will use it to pay off its ship loan and promote to Captain.
We've been continuing with stress testing the game to see just how many players we can get into it without it bogging down completely. So there have been many sightings of hordes of CryptoSpawn roaming the spaceport area of Earth looking for a water supply to infect. At one time, over 513 were congregating together outside the Naval Base, making the Imperial Navy very nervous, with fears of rioting and looting by the nasty slimy baby blobs. One Fedder remarked that given the number of offspring it had produced, the Vile Cryptosporidium should be renamed the Virile Cryptosporidium!
The puzzle formerly known as the GM puzzle is still in the game, it just doesn't promote you to GM any more. So it can no longer be referred to as the GM puzzle. It also can't be called simply The Puzzle, because it would get confused with the Duke puzzle. So we hereby officially bestow a new name on the ex-GM Puzzle. It will now be known as the Snark Puzzle. If anyone wants to try their hand (or equivalent) at the Snark Puzzle, the requirements are the same as always: you must be a JP, you must have a dexterity of 75, and you must kill Monty and then will be given further instructions. But why would you bother to waste your time doing a puzzle that doesn't promote you? Well, apart from the fun of trying to solve it, and the satisfaction of doing so, there are a couple of benefits to successful completion of the puzzle. The first is that you get your insurance premiums zeroed. And given the number of times players die while solving the puzzle, that's probably just as well! The other is that you get 15 points added to your lowest stat, and given the new requirements for Explorer that could be very useful indeed!
In olden days, the term 'ton' could mean several different things. Then there was a 'tonne' which was different again. It was all very confusing. Our beloved Emperor Ming decided, early in his glorious reign, that it was time to standardize all measurements. It was he who declared the Galaxy-wide currency should be the Imperial Groat, thus doing away with all the little unimportant regional monetary units like the Rigellian Greenback, the Sirian Bonio and the American Dollar. In order to understand how Ming decided on a standard for the measurement, we have to discuss his bathing habits. You see, Ming is a great hedonist and enjoys bathing in ass's milk in true Cleopatric tradition. However, he keeps having to get out of the bath to deal with the minor irritations of ruling the universe. While he is away his bath attendants empty the bath and ensure that he has a fresh bath to come back to. But Ming is very particular about his baths and likes them almost brim full - and he also hates milk slopping over the floor. Eventually he got tired of executing bath attendants for overfilling or under filling his bath and so ordered a detailed life size statue of himself made that could be placed in the bath so that it could be filled to perfection in his absence. This solved the problem of the bath and he now only executes bath attendants for getting the temperature wrong. When he decided it was time to standardize the ton, he looked at the statue and thought that it would form a good basis for a system of measurements in true dictatorial style. However, as the statute was of insufficient weight to be a ton he decided to multiply the weight by a constant of pi. He had a thing about pi as it was an infinitely long number and he saw this as an appropriate expression of his own infinite power over the mere mortals of the galaxy. A scaled up version of the original statue was made and now resides in the Imperial Academy of Smartarses. The formula was set at Pi x Volume of Ming x Relative Density of Xmetals. I did away with all the old standards like the Earth short, long and metric tons (or tonnes). It also caused the demise of the more esoteric colonial definitions such as Oasisian ton (the weight of pregnant seven year old camel) and the Sin tun (which was defined either as the amount of lubs used in an afternoon at the massage parlor or how much wine is quaffed in Mr Creosote's on a Saturday night depending on how drunk Detros was at the time). The Imperial ton is redefined each year at an Imperial bathing ceremony and traders across the galaxy pray to the deity of their choice that Ming doesn't decide to go on a diet, because any dramatic weight loss would bring about a collapse of the galactic economy. Fortunately, Ming has a sweet tooth and is slowly gaining weight over the decades - which gives a whole new meaning to the term inflation. It is probably best not to inquire too deeply into the method by which the Imperial Pound was arrived at. Suffice it to say that it was an inspiration that came to the Imperial Overlord while he was visiting his Imperial Harem!
The Galactic Administration's top medical staff are reputedly baffled by a strange facial twitch that has been inflicting many Fedders over the past few days. Those suffering from the eye disorder cannot seem to speak without winking repeatedly at everyone in the room. Doctors are calling this strange phenomenon "the Wink Syndrome", but tabloid press have been reporting it as the "Winkies" (presumably because their readers wouldn't understand a word like syndrome). Tests on those suffering from the winkies have proved inconclusive. Doctors cannot find any evidence of disease or infection that might cause the winking epidemic, and have ruled out allergies or reactions to a change in the environment. They are now moving towards the theory that it is some kind of hysterical reaction, and will be consulting with psychiatrists to try to find what triggered the mass outbreak of winkies. More news as we get it!
Your comm unit relays a message
from Aerdire, 'high on synths?'.
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