Re: [FT] Alarishi Sovereignity Report

My subconscious and I had a couple of conversations about this, after
reading Tom Anderson's responses:

>>	The Planet of the Geeks!
>
>one question here: given that geeks tend to be male (why bother with
the
>excess weight of a second full X chromosome?) how do they breed? i
suppose
>they might have a treaty with that lesbian commune you have ...

The Radical Lesbian Collective is recently defunct, but in any event
wouldn't have considered the offer at all (and would have shot the
messenger, if there'd been a messenger).
I suspect that breeding is a perk for the upper social levels of
geekdom,
but my subconscious discouraged speculation on this area.

>> In fact, the sovereignty's charter is not in English,
>> Russian, or French, but in Molniya machine code
>
>i'm not familiar with the Molniya's architecture myself, but i wouldn't
>have thought that an imperative language, as any von neumann machine's
>language has to be (i think), cannot be used to frame charters,
>constitutions, laws, etc. plus, the page size is too small (ouch!).

 I just wrote what my subconscious told me.  It muttered something about
"Klingon" and "twelve bit trinary logic characters" when I went back and
asked.	I have no idea what it meant.  I think "Molniya" is Russian for
"Lightning."

>anyway, predicate logic would be your language of choice.

Who said I had any choice in the matter?  I only score about 35% Geek.

>i assume the identity cards (which are digital, of course) carry a Geek
>Code Block.

And you're expected to understand it without notes.

>although the Planet does prefer to barter, provided you have cool
stuff.
>after all, they'd just use the money to buy cool stuff anyway, so why
not
>cut out the middleman and get the client to do the buying?
>
>i'd add that geeks aren't just computer folk;

They seem to be trying to market their software skills at the moment.

>the Geek Code defines 21
>types of geek, plus four nonspecific types. it doesn't mention military
>geeks either, and they are bound to exist. remember, a planet full of
>wargamers with that much computer power is going to be damn good at
>tactics ...

Except for a regrettable tendency to forget about "friction", and to get
excessively subtle.  In the annual tournament in the Hall of the
Mountain
King (laser tag teams of 200 on a side, in zero gee, grav bike cavalry,
wings, and so forth), the Geeks divided their team into 48 squads with
different assignments and a seventy minute multimedia briefing.  The
Imperial Express team, their first match, crushed them.  The ImpEx
briefing
is here quoted verbatim:
"You know how your lasers work?  Okay.	Break through the middle and
then
finish them off.  Go get'em, have fun, and hey !  I'm buying if you
win!"