I think Unity has a distributed intelligence where detached members are autonomous until reintegrated (when she would absorb the memories of the sub-unit).
In “The Hundred Dresses”, her detached head described what her collarbone eye was seeing in real time. So distributed intelligence with autonomous members, but also wi-fi.
Why? Right now he’s got the best of both worlds: integration with the Osprey AND he can bang Ginny, if he ever gets up the nerve to ask (and if not, there’s still Cheetos).
Oh, he’s more than okay. He’s starting to feel like himself again. It’s more or less just like when his brain was in the chopper and he was running the Violet drone.
Tip or Ginnie would say that his “consciousness” (probably the result of the thalamus bouncing signals off of the cerebral cortex) is, as always, still housed in his human brain; he’s just gained additional sensory and motor connections to a second (Osprey) body.
Looks like the Cuss Filter reactivates when Nick plugs in. ‘Melonfarmer’ now sounds in my head to be WAY more of a pejorative than the original profanity! Nice!
Its interesting that its not in the font. I wonder if that’s because the words are coming out of his mouth instead of a speaker? Ginny seems a bit concerned though.
Use html markup. For example, to italicize, put immediately before the italic text, and immediately after, with no spaces between those elements, when you actually use them. See http://www.simplehtmlguide.com/examplesheet.php.
To show the tags literally, you need to replace the opening less-than symbol with the four characters (ampersand, “l”, “t”, “;”) and the closing greater-than symbol with (ampersand, “g”, “t”, “;”).
Trying to use entity names such as < and > but keep getting an error when I try to post, so it’s possible that Shaenon has disabled them somehow for comments.
Weird… when I put the entity name in caps (which should also display the relevant symbol), it just shows the entity name as I typed it. If I type it in lowercase, I get an error when I try to post.
Jay, Jay! Don’t you remember, he shot the Shat out of foofoo faux
Ben Franklin? Chopped him into salad per .50s, right? Besides, you haven’t
considered the parameters of the rather strict space requirements for
him to fire down-range….I mean, ONE panel! Now, that’s some shootin’!
I mean, look at the purple lines. He basically distributed the shots in a grid covering the entire surface area of the gun and nowhere else. Then continued to track with the gun while it spiraled out of the guy’s hands.
Though if he was going for maximum accuracy, he probably should have used the laser.
Wait. They’re -purple- lines. He -did- use the laser.
The “budda budda budda” machine gun noise is from a soundboard or something, isn’t it.
Computers don’t need practice. He isn’t gripping the gun. Stance, form, etc dont matter. Wither the reticule is over the target or not is all that matters when you arent relying on muscle strength, hand -eye coordination, or timing your breathing etc. Depending on the features of the osprey he may even be able to do the calculations for crosswind, bullet drop, and the rotation of the earth at longer distances automaticly. Of course at this distance none of that matters. He’s basically an aim-bot.
There’d probably still be some variance caused by inconsistencies in how the powder burns when the bullets are firing, etc. Not to mention, the wind over there may not be the same as the wind over here, and it’s invisible, so you can only really measure the wind over here where you are.
But the biggest source of error I can think of is the breathing, stance, form, sway, involuntary reflex actions, and deliberate choices of the guy holding the gun he was aiming at.
I think I’m going to assume Nick’s rig has a “1950’s Lone Ranger/Cisco Kid targeting mode” for shooting guns out of hands. Cuz, yeah – hitting a guys rifle while his arms are wrapped around it with a mini-gun from a hovering aircraft and not injuring the person – that’s some real Saturday Morning Grade shooting.
Try the western parody movie “Rustler’s Rhapsody” for a nice take on that trope of shooting guns out of the hands of villians, not to mention clever takes on most of the other western movie tropes. Plus, it’s just generally fun to watch!
The swear-filter may be gone, but he still has the engrained habit of speaking that way when in his Osprey body. His pseudo-cussing is telling Virginia, “Honey, I’m home!”
Be right back, playing Airwolf theme…
Wow! Precision targeting during bilocation! Nick is beside himself with glee!
I’m not sure even Unity could handle being in two places at once…
Unity has handled being in two places at once. That’s why she has the collar-bone eye.
I think Unity has a distributed intelligence where detached members are autonomous until reintegrated (when she would absorb the memories of the sub-unit).
In “The Hundred Dresses”, her detached head described what her collarbone eye was seeing in real time. So distributed intelligence with autonomous members, but also wi-fi.
I stand corrected. Thank you both. 🙂
In the words of the Firesign Theater…
Don’t crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers?
Of COURSE Nick is besides himself.
Didn’t you see him wave?
He’s a gamer, he’ll be fine.
He’s grounded and way up in the middle of the air.
Maybe time to bring out the melon scooper and rehouse Nick’s brain where it belongs.
Why? Right now he’s got the best of both worlds: integration with the Osprey AND he can bang Ginny, if he ever gets up the nerve to ask (and if not, there’s still Cheetos).
Plus, he can always log out of the osprey if he feels the need to swear.
Look at the font. It’s not the swear filter. It’s just him not swearing.
I’d argue that if he’s using ‘melonfarmer’ like a swearword, he actually is swearing.
The distinction is whether he’s using it like a swear word, or using it instead of a swear word.
There’s also precedent for Nick using a non-swear word like a swear word before the software catches on to what he’s doing and intervenes.
Remember the pork-porking mukluks?
He used “pork-porking mukluks” specifically because the Whimsy characters took offense to it when the swear filter used it.
I get the idea that he uses “melonfarmer” just because he likes the sound of it, and he tries to not swear in front of Virginia.
Oh, wait… it was Sweetheart who said “pork-porking mukluks”. Nick just said “pork” until the filter figured it out and replaced it with “mukluk”.
So his bipedal body would just be a meat avatar?
That also houses his brain, yes.
So this is Nick’s chance to become a Mad Computer Scientist? ^_^
“Howling Mad” Zerhakker, ace pilot and programmer, team wild card.
This.^
Oh, he’s more than okay. He’s starting to feel like himself again. It’s more or less just like when his brain was in the chopper and he was running the Violet drone.
But now his consciousness is in two places simultaneously, which I don’t recall being the case earlier.
Tip or Ginnie would say that his “consciousness” (probably the result of the thalamus bouncing signals off of the cerebral cortex) is, as always, still housed in his human brain; he’s just gained additional sensory and motor connections to a second (Osprey) body.
I think Rimwolf means the “seat of consciousness”. That’s where he perceives himself as being.
Looks like the Cuss Filter reactivates when Nick plugs in. ‘Melonfarmer’ now sounds in my head to be WAY more of a pejorative than the original profanity! Nice!
Naah, he just started using it ironically
Tough to say, at this point. Both readings work.
He used it a couple of months back when he was preaching to the robots.
Its interesting that its not in the font. I wonder if that’s because the words are coming out of his mouth instead of a speaker? Ginny seems a bit concerned though.
In 2019-06-17 (http://skin-horse.com/comic/within-moustachios/), Ginny says that she took out the language filter when she retrieved his brain, along with other modifications.
(PS: The WordPress markup language seems to be a closely held secret — how do I embed a link, or even do italics?)
Use html markup. For example, to italicize, put immediately before the italic text, and immediately after, with no spaces between those elements, when you actually use them. See http://www.simplehtmlguide.com/examplesheet.php.
sorry, I couldn’t put the symbols in without actually causing italics. just look at the linked page.
Maybe put it in code tags?
this will be italicNope, code tags around it didn’t work. I’m sure there’s a way to do it, but can’t figure it out.
Thanks!, I know HTML markup
To show the tags literally, you need to replace the opening less-than symbol with the four characters (ampersand, “l”, “t”, “;”) and the closing greater-than symbol with (ampersand, “g”, “t”, “;”).
Trying to use entity names such as < and > but keep getting an error when I try to post, so it’s possible that Shaenon has disabled them somehow for comments.
Weird… when I put the entity name in caps (which should also display the relevant symbol), it just shows the entity name as I typed it. If I type it in lowercase, I get an error when I try to post.
Input might be sanitized against double-unescaping. You run across the occasional bug when dealing with things like “& amp; lt;” (minus the spaces).
It’s lucky those guns are so accurate.
It’s not luck. He’s just that good. He would never have done it if there was any risk of hurting Virginia.
“Good” doesn’t begin to cover being that accurate with a gun you’ve never fired before.
And given Nick’s body has never had guns on it before, it’s like he’s shooting with a *limb* he’s never had before either!
Nah – computerized aiming system, works just like a video game. He has hundreds of hours of experience.
Jay, Jay! Don’t you remember, he shot the Shat out of foofoo faux
Ben Franklin? Chopped him into salad per .50s, right? Besides, you haven’t
considered the parameters of the rather strict space requirements for
him to fire down-range….I mean, ONE panel! Now, that’s some shootin’!
That wasn’t Nick. That was Mirror-universe!Nick.
I mean, look at the purple lines. He basically distributed the shots in a grid covering the entire surface area of the gun and nowhere else. Then continued to track with the gun while it spiraled out of the guy’s hands.
Though if he was going for maximum accuracy, he probably should have used the laser.
Wait. They’re -purple- lines. He -did- use the laser.
The “budda budda budda” machine gun noise is from a soundboard or something, isn’t it.
Computers don’t need practice. He isn’t gripping the gun. Stance, form, etc dont matter. Wither the reticule is over the target or not is all that matters when you arent relying on muscle strength, hand -eye coordination, or timing your breathing etc. Depending on the features of the osprey he may even be able to do the calculations for crosswind, bullet drop, and the rotation of the earth at longer distances automaticly. Of course at this distance none of that matters. He’s basically an aim-bot.
There’d probably still be some variance caused by inconsistencies in how the powder burns when the bullets are firing, etc. Not to mention, the wind over there may not be the same as the wind over here, and it’s invisible, so you can only really measure the wind over here where you are.
But the biggest source of error I can think of is the breathing, stance, form, sway, involuntary reflex actions, and deliberate choices of the guy holding the gun he was aiming at.
I think I’m going to assume Nick’s rig has a “1950’s Lone Ranger/Cisco Kid targeting mode” for shooting guns out of hands. Cuz, yeah – hitting a guys rifle while his arms are wrapped around it with a mini-gun from a hovering aircraft and not injuring the person – that’s some real Saturday Morning Grade shooting.
Try the western parody movie “Rustler’s Rhapsody” for a nice take on that trope of shooting guns out of the hands of villians, not to mention clever takes on most of the other western movie tropes. Plus, it’s just generally fun to watch!
His cannons must be a LOT smaller than normal aircraft cannons. The bullet holes are practically pistol sized.
The gun on the nose of an Osprey is a .50 cal. Attack helicopters typically have 30mm cannons. So yes, it’s a lot smaller.
The swear filter is back!
Nope. Look at the font. That’s just him being a monkey-farting gentleman in front of Virginia.
Yep. I was looking forward to seeing him self-censor willingly, and so now I have been fully satisfied by this arc.
The funny thing about that is my wife swears tons more than I do.
The swear-filter may be gone, but he still has the engrained habit of speaking that way when in his Osprey body. His pseudo-cussing is telling Virginia, “Honey, I’m home!”
He’s being a melonfarming gentleman!
I love this so much!
“And it’s goodbye to me, and it’s goodbye to him.”
Heh. Nice use of the Two Ronnies signoff there!
Sanity is overrated. A little practice, and he can be a whole airfleet.
OK, now I want to see this happen!
“We aren’t contractually tied down to rationality! There is no sanity clause! “
C.f. the Marx Brothers
Oh, heck. Supposed to be a reply to an earlier comment.
Seeing Nick this happy brings a tear to my eyes.