PARANOIA

Comrades! Now to be viewink glorious Photoshopped photos, circulatink through endless forvarded emails, altered from actual genuine 1933 Soviet bomber aircraft Kalinin K-7, with actual genuine history familiar to all Troubleshooters visitink R&D:

The bomber was 91 feet long and had seven 750HP engines, six on the leading edge of the wing and one at the rear of the fuselage. The K-7 had a wingspan of nearly 174 feet and could fly at a maximum speed of 145 miles per hour. The aircraft was also designed for other functions such as transporting VIP, paratrooper and heavy cargo such as tanks. [...]

[T]he prototype was plagued by vibrations and instability problems caused by the massive propeller engines. Kalinin and his team of engineers tried to overcome flaws by reducing the size of the tail boom. The eleventh test flight proved to be fatal when the plane's elevator jammed, causing it plough into the ground below. The entire crew of 15 perished. The Soviet government under the command of Joseph Stalin terminated the project and in 1938 arrested and executed Kalinin for espionage and sabotage.

Few photos exist of this plane, and the ones included in the email appear to be computer-created or enhanced.

Now to be also seeink glorious Wikipedia entry on Kalinin K-7.

Labels: glorious comrades

On the Planet Mongoose blog, Mongoose Publishing CEO Matthew Sprange posted this gnomic utterance:

Today, Charlotte [Law, PARANOIA line editor] and I travelled to [Mongoose owner] Rebellion's HQ, to make use of their sound recording studio.

You will hear the results on the Black Missions edition of PARANOIA's 25th Anniversary rulebook!

From Christopher Null's The Working Guy tech blog for April 6, 2009:

In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally went into effect Monday [April 5].

The data retention rules require the archival of all email traffic (the identities of the sender and receiver, but not the contents of the messages), records of VOIP telephone calls (traditional phone calls are already monitored), and information about every website visited by any computer user in the country. [...] That data will then be accessible -- to fight "crime and terrorism," of course -- by "hundreds of public bodies" to investigate whatever crimes they see fit. [...]

Privacy concerns aside, another issue becomes one of how exactly to manage all this data. A report dating back to 2004 estimated that a single, large ISP in the UK would need up to 40 million gigabytes of storage capacity to store the traffic data from a year of user activity. Even in 2009, that kind of storage doesn't come cheap, nor does the challenge of managing it all come easy.

Springing forward with devious ingenuity from this, loyal citizen Saul Resnikoff speculates on how this might work in Alpha Complex:

"Since Computer use is out of the question, someone in CPU decides to print out all the data and file it. The Troubleshooters are responsible for securing the destination file storage location and making sure it's free from any dangers, and of course large enough to hold all the printouts. The expected size of the accumulation is, of course, beyond their security clearance. The Troubleshooters must also gather the printouts from all the various printers that are churning them out, and then alphabetize them all, without of course looking at them as the vast majority are beyond their security clearance.

"What could go wrong?"

An April 20, 2009 New York Times story (free registration required) by Sharon LaFraniere, "Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says":

Seeking to modernize its vast database on China's 1.3 billion citizens, the government's Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority.

The bureau's computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma [Cheng] and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards — unless they change their names to something more common.

Moreover, the situation is about to get worse or, in the government's view, better. Since at least 2003, China has been working on a standardized list of characters for people to use in everyday life, including when naming children. [...] A government linguistics official told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the list would include more than 8,000 characters. Although that is far fewer than the database now supposedly includes, the official said it was more than enough "to convey any concept in any field." About 3,500 characters are in everyday use. [...]

By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China's citizens. Laobaixing, or "old hundred names," is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.

The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China's population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time. At last count, China's Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of "just anybody" in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: "some Zhang, some Li." The potential for mix-ups is vast. There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh. [...]

Miss Ma said that while her given name was unusual, bank employees, passport control clerks and ticket agents had always managed to deal with it, usually by writing it by hand. But when she tried to renew her identity card last August, she said, Beijing public security officials turned her down flat. "Your name is so troublesome and problematic," she recalled an official telling her. "Just change it."

On the Aaron Allston info LiveJournal blog, Aaron's friends have posted information about a new PayPal account for his Donation Fund (see "Aaron Allston recovering from heart surgery" and "Aaron Allston Donation Fund"):

For anyone who would like to contribute to Aaron's medical fund via PayPal, we now have that working. The PayPal account is gifts (at) aaronallston (dot) info.

Help spread the word!

Labels: aaronallston

Game designer Aaron Allston continues to recover well following his March 29th heart attack and April 2nd quadruple-bypass heart surgery (see "Aaron Allston recovering from heart surgery" on this blog, as well as wide coverage elsewhere). Today, on the LiveJournal blog his friends have set up to report his progress, they announced a fund to help with Aaron's medical bills:

Many of you have been asking what you can do to help beyond sending cards or donating blood. As you can surmise, the medical expenses for this will be tremendous. Today we were able to get a donation account set up to help Aaron with the medical bills. We are working out several options for those that are able to help. This account will only be used for Aaron's medical bills. This may include hospital and doctors bills, rehabilitation therapy, prescribed treatments and medications.

You can make a check out whenever you wish to Aaron Allston Donation Fund and mail it to his post office box. Please do not make checks out to Aaron directly. Checks made to the fund will not affect Aaron's income.

Aaron Allston
Attn: AADF
PO Box 564
Round Rock, TX 78680-0564

In about a week Wells Fargo should have all the paperwork entered into their system. At that point, if you wish, you should be able to go to any Wells Fargo location and tell them you wish to make a deposit to the Aaron Allston Donation Fund that was started in Texas, and they should be able to look up the account information and process it.

We are still in the process of getting a PayPal account set up and will let you know when that is available.

Please spread the word.

Labels: aaronallston

Loyal citizen and member of the Traitor Recycling Studio WJ MacGuffin spotted this Spanish-language Facebook page for PARANOIA fans. Punto de encomio, WJ!

Comrades! Now to be lookink at glorious Flickr set of Soviet nuclear test site equipment photographed by capitalist running dog Mark Pitcher.

Equipment built during the 1940's to 1970's for use in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (the "Polygon"). All are hand-made and most are one-offs. Photos from a museum in Kurchatov Kazakhstan.

(Via Make magazine.)

Labels: glorious comrades

After a long struggle with cancer, Dave Arneson, co-designer with the late Gary Gygax of Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1970s, and hence co-founder of the entire roleplaying hobby, passed away Tuesday, April 7, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the company of his family. He was 61.

A memorial service will be held at the Bradshaw Highland funeral home in St. Paul on April 20th. Flowers may be sent to the funeral home at the address on its website.

I didn't know Dave well, but I agree with all who did that he was a kind and genial man. When I profiled him for Dragon magazine in the mid-1990s, I concluded he was "a nice guy who caught lightning in a bottle." We are all better off for his originality and creative insight.

(Updates: Matt Forbeck has a good obituary, as does Dave's longtime friend Michael A. Stackpole.)

(Update 4/13/2009: Dave Arneson funeral information.)

On the leading PARANOIA fan site, Paranoia-Live.net, loyal and untiring citizen No. 5127 has compiled another of his handy indices to valuable forum posts. His lengthy list of PARANOIA Briefing Center posts spans the entire history of the current edition on the P-L.net forums, from the early design process to publication and through to the present.

Aaron Allston, contributor to the PARANOIA rulebook and Gamemaster Screen, and author of many supplements for Champions, D&D/AD&D, Car Wars, and other games as well as nearly two dozen novels, suffered a serious heart attack this past Sunday, March 29th, while on a flight home to Round Rock, Texas from a book promotion in Phoenix. He had quadruple-bypass heart surgery at a hospital in Dallas, Texas, on Thursday, April 2nd, and is now recovering in intensive care. Aaron is 48. His friends have set up a LiveJournal blog to provide updates on his recovery.

Via an announcement on Suvudu.com: Aaron’s family has set up a blood donation sponsorship. Anyone in the Dallas, Texas area who would like to donate blood can go to the National Blood Exchange or Carter BloodCare. Say you are donating blood for Aaron Allston, patient of Carter Blood Care in Bedford, Texas, and give his sponsor number: SPON 047786. You can donate anywhere in the Carter system throughout Texas, and they will give you a coupon to put towards Aaron's account. Mail it to his publisher, and they'll get it to his family:

Aaron Allston
c/o Del Rey Books
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Please spread the word as widely as possible. Feel free to quote from or paraphrase this post, and especially include the link to the LiveJournal with current info:

http://community.livejournal.com/allston_info/

Aaron's friends and fans on RPG.net may wish to post wishes for his recovery on this RPG.net forum thread. You can also send Aaron private messages at allston (at) AaronAllston (dot) com, on the obvious understanding he may not see them for several weeks.

Labels: aaronallston

Gareth Hanrahan, Mongoose Publishing's go-to PARANOIA guy and designer of the upcoming 25th Anniversary rulebooks, has also written scads of roleplaying scenarios for game conventions. On his blog, Figures of Text, Gareth has started a valuable series of posts full of chunky advice. So far he's posted an overview of writing convention scenarios and a long treatise on player character design for con scenarios.

Good work, Gareth, and keep going! In your spare time, of course; in no way should "keep going" be construed as advising interference with your imminent PARANOIA deadline, about which I must certainly add, "Keep going!"

On the Mongoose Publishing forum, Gamemaster Eric Phillips posted a valuable Actual Play account of his recent PARANOIA game:

Compared to other games, PARANOIA is EXHAUSTING to run. I was on my feet, yelling mission alerts, having NPCs mess with players, dealing with their own attempts to get their secret society and service duties done. It was supposed to be Classic [play style], but the players made it kinda Zap, ending up everyone died at least once (one guy three times).

After three hours I needed to collapse. It was like I ran a marathon or something. Or more like I channeled Robin Williams on speed, jumping from this to that to character to event, making combat go fast and improvising to many many weird things the players say or do. I intended to keep the pacing faster than other games I run.

In the end it was a load of fun. Everyone seemed to enjoy stepping out from normal roleplay, where team killing is looked down on and team bickering slows play. They were able to indulge in the anti-normal roleplay and they dug it.

I have felt similar exhaustion running TOON, The Cartoon Roleplaying Game, but I've traditionally found PARANOIA a much more relaxing game to GM; the players are strongly motivated to provide the entertainment themselves, inasmuch as the usual ground rule is "Entertain or die." Thoughts?

Labels: actualplay