Latest blog post: Redraw of chapter 1 is happening (2024-05-11)

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For psychological reasons you should not do such a conference call while standing, with nothing in front of you and being forced to look up to the opposite side.

Only a bed of red embers is missing to really grill them.

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Senior

Correct as long as the one operating the BBQ is a human, but whether that goes for Raharrs as well is up in the air space for now, I'm afraid. Given their evolutionary history (as tree climbers), the existence of an equivalent of harpies would have thoroughly soured the association of "on higher limb = everyone else's better" ...

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Does not matter for the human side. They decided (subconsciously?) for this setup and feelings by themselfs. Independend of what a Raharr is thinking.

Unless they think that a Raharr is thinking alike, and want to show submission, this is not a good setup.

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Senior

Zane looks exhausted. Between the comic pages, did General Bahin try to bore him into submission with a deck of Powerpoint slides, or does he just have no patience for this $#1+?

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Senior

At last ! The grown-ups has arrived....

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Senior

... and make sure to stand float a Moon's orbital radius away from the mess ...

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Senior

I love Zane's expression in panel 8, I feel the same way every time I need to explain to a customer that yes, VoIP telephony does in fact require an internet connection. And other stupid stuff like that.

Also, is Zane speaking English (Protagonistani?) here or is he speaking Rharran and it's being live translated? They got the Voice Translation Module in 158, but does that just translate the language in their head or make them learn the language?

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Translators in setting work partially by subconsciously teaching the user the language via neural interface, but also partially by filtering the user's nerve commands to the vocal cords to correct pronunciation or speech errors. Though the degree to which this can be adjusted is relatively limited, so it doesn't completely negate accents.

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Senior

I feel the same way every time I need to explain to a customer that yes, VoIP telephony does in fact require an internet connection.

On one hand, I'm tempted to commiserate with you; the phone call where it took our support guys half an hour or so to find out that the power was out in the customer's entire area is still very much a meme ("whole street-a dark!") around our imaginary water cooler.

On the other hand, seeing that VoIP and Internet use separate VLANs (and further remote infrastructure) on my Dual Play DSL uplink ...

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[off topic] ... which is why, for several years, I paid AT&T to maintain my old fashioned copper-wire-back-to-the-CO phone line even though what I really used was my Sonic VOIP. We have power failures once in a while and that's exactly when I want my phone to work! Sadly, AT&T just petitioned California to give up their carrier-of-last-resort status, so no more copper wires in future. :(

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FYI Sonic just informed me that the state has rules that ATT must keep its copper infrastructure and make phone service available on it. No word on how much that is going to cost, though. . . .

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Senior

If road maintenance crews even so much as look at my street, my fiber-optic cable gets cut, I wish I had an option to use the powered phone line for something like even 52k dial-up in these moments. Sadly the copper lines in my street were removed when the fiber was laid down.

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Senior

*sigh* I still have a POTS telephone mounted on the wall and my DSL router is willing to make it operational, but Deutsche Telekom forced everyone to switch to a TCP/IP-based land line a while ago, so no more true 48V-from-remote anymore. Aaaand no more reason to stay with Telekom when a competitor drops FttX (with X > "C") into our suburb later this year .......

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Senior

Most of the support calls/emails are "Phone doesn't work" (usually power outage) or "The screen says 'not registered' " (usually a network change or internet outage), but these are easy to solve, it gets hard when the customer convinces themselves beforehand that *thing* is what's wrong and there can be no other cause, then there's no helping these people.

And while separate VLANs aren't usually a problem, it does become an issue when you want to log into the phone itself, because then the local computer that I'm helping the customer through can't communicate with the phone as the router keeps them separate. This is something I have to explain to customers nearly every single day.

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Senior

Oh yeah, the NOSMOKE.EXE folks ...

(But no, I meant separate VLANs on the DSL side of the router, not the LAN side.)

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Visitor

This is the exact reason I *begged* my dad not to buy a computer.

All these years later people still ask me for help with their Windows systems. And I look over at all these FreeBSD machines and then ...

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Senior

Hmmmm. It seems that both sides have set up their cameras off-center of their screen, which can be irritating (your counterpart seems not to be looking at you as you speak to him), but Zane already did that on page 162, so it should be OK ...

The two humans stand in front of a neutral background, while Zane allows them to see another screen from the cruiser's bridge. I can hear the Protagonistani analysts going wild on that. I wonder whether Quantum's displaying some particularly interesting stuff on that screen for them ...

(... it's probably the same content as on pg 198 panel 5 top right corner, i.e., some overview of the cruiser's status, but with the resolution that the Protagonistani screen seems to get, I wouldn't be surprised if someone'd "recognize" the Southern facade of the White House in the lower half ...)

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Senior

Yes, it really does look like the White House.....Not menacing at all...

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Visitor

Well so much for your grand schemes there friendo...

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Senior

In other words, you aren't going to be special.

I'm honestly surprised Zane is calling them "Negotiations" in return. But it appears the General is hoping to maintain the idea that contact remains exclusive to Protagistan.

Not sure what else the General might hope to bargain for but at this point I feel like Zane might point out their current stance with every other government is relatively neutral while the current stance with Protagistan is that its shot down one of their shuttles, killing 5 crew members, imprisoned the team leader and lost their xenopsychologist... might be a good time for the General to return the surviving crew member unconditionally and hope they're back on a somewhat neutral footing.

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Senior

The one that's hiding-out with those kids will make himself known and the other negotiations will become minor by comparison. He might even become more popular than he ever imagined!

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"Tonight on Jimmy Fallon show, give a hand for......GHARR!!!....Everyone's favorite Alien!"

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"... with his signature finishing move, the 'on the fourth hand ...' interjection!"






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