Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

Is that what happened to Winter Tide? The containment mechanism failed?

Something like that.

[NOMAD]

Is that what happened to Winter Tide? The containment mechanism failed?

Something like that.

As well, it was the starboard engine pod that was effected, a nice little Homeworld 2 Easter egg place into the comic ( IE from when the some of the ship die, their last word were starboard fusion cell breached . .. .. BOOOM).

i think Wintermute or Riess get the credit for that one.

[Username]

As well, it was the starboard engine pod that was effected, a nice little Homeworld 2 Easter egg place into the comic ( IE from when the some of the ship die, their last word were starboard fusion cell breached . .. .. BOOOM).

i think Wintermute or Riess get the credit for that one.

I thought it was breach in starboard fusion chamber ?

I may just have to boot up my copy of Homeworld 2 to confirm.

[NOMAD]

As well, it was the starboard engine pod that was effected, a nice little Homeworld 2 Easter egg place into the comic ( IE from when the some of the ship die, their last word were starboard fusion cell breached . .. .. BOOOM).

i think Wintermute or Riess get the credit for that one.

I thought it was breach in starboard fusion chamber ?

I may just have to boot up my copy of Homeworld 2 to confirm.

yes that was the right line and the basis of Winter Tides end

[NOMAD]

just a question, in human militaries, their are characters that seems larger than life ( IE A rookie Canadian navigator on a maritime patrol plane gave three 90 turns to the pilot because of a coffee stain on a paper based weather radar, who went on to become one of the best navigators in his class ). For the Loroi warrior society, are their such characters or not ?

[Philly]

I have always wondered, though I am not sure if you have place any thought into it, what kind of computers would the Loroi or for that matter anyone would even use? I suppose its a pretty far in-technical lore question to ask, but I am puzzled over it.

The amount of calculations needed to do what those ships do, even to move it let alone fire a weapon must be enormous. I can't imagine conventional processors and the like would even be capable of handling such a task.

My mind wants to jump straight to quantum computers, but if I remember correctly they are hard to make and are extremely delicate to outside forces. Aside from that what could possibly be almost as good as quantum computations, but able to handle some rough housing?

[Arioch]

just a question, in human militaries, their are characters that seems larger than life ( IE A rookie Canadian navigator on a maritime patrol plane gave three 90 turns to the pilot because of a coffee stain on a paper based weather radar, who went on to become one of the best navigators in his class ). For the Loroi warrior society, are their such characters or not ?

I'm not sure what's larger than life about an incompetent navigator who later became competent, but there are certainly some colorful Loroi characters.

I have always wondered, though I am not sure if you have place any thought into it, what kind of computers would the Loroi or for that matter anyone would even use? I suppose its a pretty far in-technical lore question to ask, but I am puzzled over it.

The amount of calculations needed to do what those ships do, even to move it let alone fire a weapon must be enormous. I can't imagine conventional processors and the like would even be capable of handling such a task.

My mind wants to jump straight to quantum computers, but if I remember correctly they are hard to make and are extremely delicate to outside forces. Aside from that what could possibly be almost as good as quantum computations, but able to handle some rough housing?

I think one of the things that science fiction has consistently underestimated over the last 50 years is the rate of advance of computer technology. Which I suppose should be surprising, given that Moore's Law itself is nearly 50 years old. I feel pretty confident about the ability of TL11 computer systems to handle whatever might be needed for starship operations.

That said, I wouldn't want to even speculate on the details of what makes them go.

I recall that a writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980's speculated that the main computer for the Enterprise-D (c.2364) probably had a terabyte of memory, thinking that was some impossibly large number. Today in 2014, that's a joke; terabyte drives are less than a hundred dollars, and I have one in my computer right now. I think the moral of the story there is that there are some things in science fiction that you don't want to be any more specific about than you have to, and computer technology is probably one of them.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I've got the Star Trek The Next Generation Technical Manual sitting on my shelf, circa 1991. In the manual and beyond, they took your advice, and measure data with a made up unit of measurement, the kiloquad. Of course, the main computers are still 7 decks tall.

[discord]

philly: no, you do in fact not need huge amounts of processing power to control a spacecraft, take the lauded space shuttle, probably the most advanced spacecraft ever to be put into use in human history(probably not the best, but the most complicated), the flight computer had about as much computing power as a 286(yes, we are talking stone age tech here) which is silly slow by modern standards, the one that put people on the moon was so pathetic that the space shuttle computers seem blindingly fast in comparison.

or to compare with a modern cellphone, even a non smartphone cheap ass burner phone has a few thousand times as much CPU power as the FIVE flight computers in the space shuttle put together.
and the tablet computers the astronauts brought.....i really hope i do not need to continue doing this.

the computations needed for spaceflight are really simple, awesome UI with simple controls and expert system integrated automation a tad bit more demanding.

[Alexandr Koori]

If one loroi is blind, does can another loroi to be her eyes?

[Arioch]

If one loroi is blind, does can another loroi to be her eyes?

Not literally, but pretty close, especially if they were touching.

[Karst45]

or to compare with a modern cellphone, even a non smartphone cheap ass burner phone has a few thousand times as much CPU power as the FIVE flight computers in the space shuttle put together.
.

[Hālian]

I recall that a writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980's speculated that the main computer for the Enterprise-D (c.2364) probably had a terabyte of memory, thinking that was some impossibly large number. Today in 2014, that's a joke; terabyte drives are less than a hundred dollars, and I have one in my computer right now. I think the moral of the story there is that there are some things in science fiction that you don't want to be any more specific about than you have to, and computer technology is probably one of them.

There's a difference between a terabyte of RAM and a 1TB hard drive; "a terabyte of memory" pretty unambiguously refers to the former.

[RedDwarfIV]

I recall that a writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980's speculated that the main computer for the Enterprise-D (c.2364) probably had a terabyte of memory, thinking that was some impossibly large number. Today in 2014, that's a joke; terabyte drives are less than a hundred dollars, and I have one in my computer right now. I think the moral of the story there is that there are some things in science fiction that you don't want to be any more specific about than you have to, and computer technology is probably one of them.

There's a difference between a terabyte of RAM and a 1TB hard drive; "a terabyte of memory" pretty unambiguously refers to the former.

No it doesn't?

I doubt most computer illiterate people know about Random Access Memory. All most of them would know about is that their files get stored somewhere when they turn it off, and it has a limit to that.

I do know what RAM is, and I'd still say that 'memory' was referring to hard drive space, since if I'm talking about RAM then I'll specify that. "My desktop has 8 gigs of RAM." "My desktop has 10 gigs of memory, not counting external drives."

[Hālian]

Not once in our collective lives have I or anyone with whom I have ever conversed used, or heard someone use, the term "memory" to refer to hard drive space.

[RedDwarfIV]

Not once in our collective lives have I or anyone with whom I have ever conversed used, or heard someone use, the term "memory" to refer to hard drive space.

Equally, I have never in my life heard someone refer to RAM as 'memory'.

This may be a cultural thing then.

[NuclearIceCream]

Not once in our collective lives have I or anyone with whom I have ever conversed used, or heard someone use, the term "memory" to refer to hard drive space.

Equally, I have never in my life heard someone refer to RAM as 'memory'.

This may be a cultural thing then.

Im with Red, I assumed hard drive. I dont know a single person who refers to RAM as anything other than RAM. But I hear many references to hard drive without the speaker explicitly saying hard drive.

Probably is cultural.

[Arioch]

There's a difference between a terabyte of RAM and a 1TB hard drive; "a terabyte of memory" pretty unambiguously refers to the former.

That distinction makes sense today, but I'm not sure that it does in Star Trek's 2364. As far as I'm aware, Star Trek has never really made a clear distinction between temporary and permanent storage (in TNG and beyond, at least), only referring generically to "memory banks." The few times they've gone digging into the computer's innards, I recall them dealing with "isolinear chips" and not with disks or magnetic media of any kind. With permanent storage increasingly moving away from disk drives toward static RAM devices today, I don't think it's hard to imagine that trend continuing into the future. One can suppose that there is slower long-term memory and faster short-term memory, but you're talking the difference between RAM and processor cache; it's all still memory.

Regardless, my point was that in 1989, a terabyte seemed like an impossibly large amount of data, and today just 25 years later, we consider that amount trivial.

[Senanthes]

Elaborating a little on Arioch's Trek-tech mention; There isn't a distinction that I've ever found. The isolinear and bio-neural systems memory serves both functions.

*Net descends, captures, drags off*

Sorry, my Inner Geek got out.

[Mr Bojangles]

Not once in our collective lives have I or anyone with whom I have ever conversed used, or heard someone use, the term "memory" to refer to hard drive space.

Equally, I have never in my life heard someone refer to RAM as 'memory'.

This may be a cultural thing then.

Interesting; it could very well be. In my academic and industry experience, RAM and HDD are quite specific things, but I've never heard anyone refer directly to an HDD as memory. Generally, the context I hear (and use) the term "memory" in is "highly active storage space that is close to the processor(s)." That would apply to both cache and RAM, though cache is usually specifically referred to, whereas RAM isn't.

Different strokes.