Miss Violet Bee: Hyper Technological Remote Sensing Drone?- $12.5 Million
Cell Phone: $199.99
Look on Violet’s Face when Dr. Lee smacks her arguement down?: PRICELESS!
$55 Billion was the amount quoted. An organization that can spend $9600 for an Allen wrench is not going to build Violet for a mere $12.5 Million, but I agree that her price tag didn’t come close to Nick’s.
That’s irrelevant, isn’t it? The trick works with any cheapo human being far from GODOT who has a cellphone. Unless GODOT can also mess with hearing, and I don’t believe he’s ever done that. On the contrary, he’s always communicated visually.
Supernatural? Ha, this is a realm of Science! I scoff at your supernatural explanations for obviously (mad) scientifically obvious phenomena.
Don’t let this crowd get near that show. If it doesn’t give them ideas for future experiments, it would be like taking a physicist to a Star Wars marathon and asking them to point out the the errors.
(TUNE: “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn)
Watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
While saving St. Charlie tonight!
While the fruit I’m dissecting,
Zerhakker’s detecting
Illusions that fool our sight!
Fear is lessened somewhat
When you’re slicing a kumquat …
So watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
While saving St. Charlie, (How clever you are, Lee!)
While saving St. Charlie tonight!
Pretty sure she’s currently got a different operator than in previous missions, unless the operator suddenly became bored with roleplaying “14-year-old perky anime girl who can kill you with one finger and won’t hesitate to threaten you with it”.
We don’t know about Violet’s, but Nick’s brain is definitely still biological. Is he out of GODOT’s range? Or does whatever conduit GODOT uses require some other body part? Because as the situation has been explained, it looks like using Nick could backfire on them.
Nick’s brain is biological, but his inputs are all mechanical. Plus, if you factor in the remote viewing through the cell camera, he’d be operating on the same basic parameters as Violet.
My guess is it’s similar to a video camera picking up scan lines on a recording of a TV. Your brain automatically matches your eyes to the frame rate of the TV to block out what it sees as an unimportant underlying pattern. However, even if they’re operating on the same frame rate and wavelength, a video camera cannot automatically do that the way your brain can, so the scan lines become visible on the recording. I think GODOT is exploiting animals’ naturally evolved perception bias and Violet (and likely Nick), who’s not directly experiencing the deception, can see through it.
Agreed. There are a TON of little tricks the brain has evolved to filter what you see for humans to survive. Also, it fills in a lot of information for you, that you don’t actually see. Magicians have learned to trick you from the end source. GODOT seems to bypass that and go straight to your brain.
So, as long as GODOT can’t get to Nick’s brain, it should work…if this theory is correct. We ARE dealing with Mads here.
Oh, and whoever is controlling Violet doesn’t seem to be from one of the younger generations. My parents would say something like what she did in the last panel.
[re-reads cast page] …oh! That’d certainly make sense of the tone of Artie’s file, and the bit about Dr Lee being “useful to have around.” And the lack of a Violet Bee file too. Clever!
Don’t feel bad, Violet. You’re not alone. People in fiction are always forgetting about those things. Otherwise you’d never pull off a good closed-circle plot nowadays.
I know that, as most wecomics artists you are pretty rich AND think you are poor rebellious totally non-PC and Co, but using a 200$ “cheese-watcher” phone as the low thing in a “priceless joke” is, well, a suprinzing choice.
And honestly, you really think too high of the capabilities of these stuff. You don’t want the autonomous drone ? Well, I takin’ it over every phone “with app” on the planet. Send it to me, please.
Yes, I know it’s a PC webcomic about crazyness, but sometimes, you know, “suspension of disbelief” and all that…
And with a perfectly executed smack-down, Ginny earns her black belt in verbal aikido.
Miss Violet Bee: Hyper Technological Remote Sensing Drone?- $12.5 Million
Cell Phone: $199.99
Look on Violet’s Face when Dr. Lee smacks her arguement down?: PRICELESS!
To be fair, Nick may well have cost a lot more than Violet.
$55 Billion was the amount quoted. An organization that can spend $9600 for an Allen wrench is not going to build Violet for a mere $12.5 Million, but I agree that her price tag didn’t come close to Nick’s.
That’s irrelevant, isn’t it? The trick works with any cheapo human being far from GODOT who has a cellphone. Unless GODOT can also mess with hearing, and I don’t believe he’s ever done that. On the contrary, he’s always communicated visually.
Yes. Yes he has. Remember when he “spoke” to Unity by masking the tour guide narration?
I don’t know about that. Nick is off the shelf technology, at least the Osprey body. Violet is all custom.
Is that an actual app, Fruit Ninjas? And why am I reminded of Burger Time?
Yeap! I have it on my nokia and my ipod.. 🙂
One of the bestselling games in the iPhone App store.
Variations exist for other touch-screen-type devices (I remember playing one on a borrowed NDS) but the iPhone one is the most successful
I’m just glad Nick is back in the game. I wonder if she has the same “see the invisible demon using the cell camera” thing they use on Supernatural….
Supernatural? Ha, this is a realm of Science! I scoff at your supernatural explanations for obviously (mad) scientifically obvious phenomena.
Don’t let this crowd get near that show. If it doesn’t give them ideas for future experiments, it would be like taking a physicist to a Star Wars marathon and asking them to point out the the errors.
(TUNE: “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn)
Watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
While saving St. Charlie tonight!
While the fruit I’m dissecting,
Zerhakker’s detecting
Illusions that fool our sight!
Fear is lessened somewhat
When you’re slicing a kumquat …
So watch! I’m playing “Fruit Ninja”
While saving St. Charlie,
(How clever you are, Lee!)
While saving St. Charlie tonight!
Is it just me, or do Violet’s mannerisms seem more decidedly military (and perhaps male) of late?
Well it’s not just you. She’s not trying to flirt with Tip, which was a big part of her femininity, I think.
Pretty sure she’s currently got a different operator than in previous missions, unless the operator suddenly became bored with roleplaying “14-year-old perky anime girl who can kill you with one finger and won’t hesitate to threaten you with it”.
Those things can have an incredibly distorting effect on tabletop roleplaying games, too.
Hmmm.
We don’t know about Violet’s, but Nick’s brain is definitely still biological. Is he out of GODOT’s range? Or does whatever conduit GODOT uses require some other body part? Because as the situation has been explained, it looks like using Nick could backfire on them.
Nick’s brain is biological, but his inputs are all mechanical. Plus, if you factor in the remote viewing through the cell camera, he’d be operating on the same basic parameters as Violet.
My guess is it’s similar to a video camera picking up scan lines on a recording of a TV. Your brain automatically matches your eyes to the frame rate of the TV to block out what it sees as an unimportant underlying pattern. However, even if they’re operating on the same frame rate and wavelength, a video camera cannot automatically do that the way your brain can, so the scan lines become visible on the recording. I think GODOT is exploiting animals’ naturally evolved perception bias and Violet (and likely Nick), who’s not directly experiencing the deception, can see through it.
Agreed. There are a TON of little tricks the brain has evolved to filter what you see for humans to survive. Also, it fills in a lot of information for you, that you don’t actually see. Magicians have learned to trick you from the end source. GODOT seems to bypass that and go straight to your brain.
So, as long as GODOT can’t get to Nick’s brain, it should work…if this theory is correct. We ARE dealing with Mads here.
Remember St. Charlie is on rails and moving fast. Nick is parked somewhere in Boston.
Oh, and whoever is controlling Violet doesn’t seem to be from one of the younger generations. My parents would say something like what she did in the last panel.
Violet’s language tends to be that of a middle aged person, at least in this storyline (and, if my suspicions are correct, in the Cast page)
I still think Mr. Green is the man behind the curtain to whom we are supposed to pay no attention.
[re-reads cast page] …oh! That’d certainly make sense of the tone of Artie’s file, and the bit about Dr Lee being “useful to have around.” And the lack of a Violet Bee file too. Clever!
But how much use is Nick going to be when they can’t hear half of the sock-darning things he says anyway?
Don’t feel bad, Violet. You’re not alone. People in fiction are always forgetting about those things. Otherwise you’d never pull off a good closed-circle plot nowadays.
Mmh… Sorry but :
I know that, as most wecomics artists you are pretty rich AND think you are poor rebellious totally non-PC and Co, but using a 200$ “cheese-watcher” phone as the low thing in a “priceless joke” is, well, a suprinzing choice.
And honestly, you really think too high of the capabilities of these stuff. You don’t want the autonomous drone ? Well, I takin’ it over every phone “with app” on the planet. Send it to me, please.
Yes, I know it’s a PC webcomic about crazyness, but sometimes, you know, “suspension of disbelief” and all that…
You are a funny little man.
So was there a point to this crap?
Can I just say I love the body language in the last panel? For highly spoilery reasons.