And don't forget the iPad.

It's true, I -- and Eclipse Phase -- make for pretty pretty princesses.

Hmmm...

You might have a board problem...
...I received your post 4 times as an update.

Well, wait. If cars were like computers ...

You mean cars that for no apparent reason suddenly accelerate or refuse to stop? (Full Disclosure: I own a Toyota)

Nobody likes a nay sayer though so I am going to offer up some hope. Doctor Bussard's polywell fusion reactor for cheap/clean electricity and hydrogen to run our vehicles.

So do I. I also know how to declutch. Or, if you're preferring automatics, turn the engine of and switch to N. I honestly fail to get how this can kill you. It's not like the engine isn't extinguisghable. At worst, you ruin the engine, but you can then bill the company for that? And even if the normal brakes for soe reason do not work, there is a maniual brake that must be included with a car, so once your engine is dead or turned off, use that to brake.

Also, free market says hushing up is cheaper and more efficient than recall. It's state regulations that force automakers to abide by safety standards, not free market.

The difference between a Blue Screen and a motor-lockup is that your desk chair won't kill you. Ever. Well, mostly ever. At least without some twit at the company playing with your billion knobs and levers.

Also I've had engines sputter for 30 secs or so (admittedly, older cars) after I turned them off as they cleared their carbs or whatever their personal issue was. Now, attach this to an automatic in gear that forces the engine to keep turning (you mention clutching, so you're familiar with the push start) and you've got a mechanical failure of significant issue. Add this to panic of the driver and you've got a significant issue on your hands until their brain is no longer de-clutched.

Trains are superior to cars. Not only should we use trains more,

Had that too with my first car, but since I pulled the gears out, it could sputter all it liked, that would not affect whereever the car moved. Then again, that car wasn't an automatic, so there it might be more of an issue. There sill is the ignition you can just pull, though. If the car doesn't react to that, you have the manual and normal brake. if THAT fails, you can try to crash controlledly, decelerating by scratching the car over a wall, rock, or crash barriers. If you're in open land, you can just hop off the road. That will destroy the car, break the suspension and such, but it will not kill you. If all these mishaps happen to you in a forest, you're doomed, but being struck by lightning is much more probable.

In the case of the run away toyotas, the people said they DID try to turn it off and stood on the breaks as if the lives depended on it. They didn't just ride along complacent. They tried to stop the car, guys.

Does anyone have an estimate on how much the Shadowrun/BT licenses cost CGL last time? Assuming, of course, that Topps will even sell it to them again this time.

I personally am as curious as Cain is (as I'm sure a number of people are) but there's probably a minor issue with actually getting this information unless it's public somewhere... CGL doesn't want to end up in a bidding war with anyone and Topps probably doesn't want to release it in case future negotiations provide a lot more capital and don't want a baseline for the competitor to work from.

Nevermind discussions on base cost of license vs. royalty payments with expected sales and advertising reimbursal for promoting the IP of another company... etc. I'm not entirely sure a simple number of $xxx,xxx(,xxx?) would actually be useful outside of the entire contractual document.

Of course, my curiousity hopes Jason Hardy proves me wrong...

I imagine that, if I knew this information, I'd likely not be at liberty to share it. However, it's moot--I simply don't know it! Please extend my apologies to your curiosity!

Jason H.

I imagine that, if I knew this information, I'd likely not be at liberty to share it. However, it's moot--I simply don't know it! Please extend my apologies to your curiosity!

Jason H.

For patriotic reasons, I am more hoping for ITER. And for storage reasons, I'd rather like to see CH3OH run engines or something. It is impossibkle to contain hydrogen, and I'd hate to have my gas tank emptied after a week by diffusion.

Paparazzi is owned by Posthuman Studios, and Catalyst never finalized a contract with them -- me -- for the game.

I was going to post something along the lines of "Why do so many conversations come around to how pretty Adam is," but then I realized, how could they not?

Jason H.

Despite the fact that someone implied that *I* was trying on lingerie, I actually missed this. I'm not certain if I should be glad or disappointed, knowing what the majority of the Dumpshockers at GC look like.
Bull

Technology is one of the areas that the government has not stuck their fingers in so deeply and it really shows. It has been said that if the free market was allowed to operate freely in the car industry as per the computer industry we would have cars that go 1000 miles on a thimbul of gas and would cost less $6K, I almost consider that to be a fact!

The emergency third eye bleach station is over there.

A house, which =rumor= has it is not finished in a housing market that has seen a dramatic downturn. If you are hinting that it has untapped reserves to be drawn upon.

On top of veering wildly off course, OneTrikPony has to be stopped. I mean now. Ow.

Y'know what's work? Spin.

Y'know what I'd rather do than spin something? Other work.

Some crappy stuff happened, so we'll do what we can do to fix it and continue Eclipse Phase with as little interruption as possible. The important thing isn't what lousy things happened (and at this point, who knows if anyone's "scorecard" is accurate...) but that Eclipse Phase will have a bright future.

And now, to repost something from the BattleTech boards, to demonstrate in part why I feel the future is so bright:

One of the things that Posthuman Studios is going to do is be very upfront about sales figures, expenses, etc. So I'll start with this: we wanted Catalyst to sell EP at $10-15 for the PDF. They argued against it, and basically said "You'll need to sell twice as many copies in order to make the same amount of money." We said "Okay. If we don't sell twice as many copies of the PDF as (CatalystCoreBook) did in PDF in 18 months, you can take the difference in dollars out of our royalties."

Less than six weeks after the PDF was available (and this was after we seeded the PDF to bittorrent ourselves -- anyone could have it for free, legally), we broke that mark. This meant that we had made the same amount of money, *and* we had the PDF in the hands of at least twice as many people!

A few months after that, Catalyst lowered their prices on all core books, and announced that Leviathans would be Creative Commons-licensed as well. And the first print run of Eclipse Phase sold out, also.

So, there will be a quick resleeve, and on with the future!

@Jason: So it would seem. I'm shocked that an LLC member would comment publicly on this sort of thing given the likelihood of litigation down the road, but people do crazy things sometimes.

Paparazzi is owned by Posthuman Studios, and Catalyst never finalized a contract with them -- me -- for the game.

hope to bring science and fun to Shadowrun.

Y'know what's work? Spin.

Y'know what I'd rather do than spin something? Other work.

As XKCD so eloquently pointed out: correlation does not imply causation. Even if it does wiggle its eyebrows suggestively sometimes.

Snohomish County Planning and Development Services list the Residential Permit as having had its final inspection about a year ago. No arguement that the local market's taken a big hit.

One of the things that Posthuman Studios is going to do is be very upfront about sales figures, expenses, etc.

So I'll start with this: we wanted Catalyst to sell EP at $10-15 for the PDF. They argued against it, and basically said "You'll need to sell twice as many copies in order to make the same amount of money." We said "Okay. If we don't sell twice as many copies of the PDF as (CatalystCoreBook) did in PDF in 18 months, you can take the difference in dollars out of our royalties."

Less than six weeks after the PDF was available (and this was after we seeded the PDF to bittorrent ourselves -- anyone could have it for free, legally), we broke that mark. This meant that we had made the same amount of money, *and* we had the PDF in the hands of at least twice as many people!

A few months after that, Catalyst lowered their prices on all core books, and announced that Leviathans would be Creative Commons-licensed as well. And the first print run of Eclipse Phase sold out, also.

the bosses aren't swirling snifters of brandy and sitting on big bags of money that rightfully should be in workers' pockets

I disagree that an employee rightfully deserves more than the agreed upon salary, benefits, a safe and friendly work environment.

I am curious to see how that pans out.

My employer engages in the same practice. Not only does this increase morale amongst the employees as they know the bosses aren't swirling snifters of brandy and sitting on big bags of money that rightfully should be in workers' pockets, the practice puts our customer base at ease as well... because they know what's going on. Being unnecessarily cryptic or holding the books to your chest only breeds suspicion, frustration and rumor mongering. Which then results in the slippery slope of spin.

Treating a game company like an actual and honest business. What a novel approach! Well done, Adam.

So care to name this wildly successful and wonderfully developed business that your so proud of? If you can't even be transparent about your organizations fragging name you really have no place criticizing others business practices based on their performance.

It is entirely possible for thoughts, ideas, concepts, and expressions to be entirely worthy and reasonable completely independent of the origin.

I do not need to know who anyone is to evaluate an argument or statement.

It is not a requirement for people to reveal who and what they do in order to express themselves in this forum.

In fact the effort to force people to reveal themselves in order to speak up is one of the classic tools of oppression.

NerdHot;
Isn't that like HeroinChic with more sweat and fewer std's?

This is not off topic because the Naked Dumpshock Calendar and Shadowrun Porn could generate enough funds to buy the IP rights several times over and pay any outstanding debts to freelancers, (except that most of the freelancers would have to be in the calendar so it would really be more like bootstraping things back into buiseness) ! Bootstraps! Picture this; Full page glossy layouts of all the oldbies around here posing all sexy in their tightiewities and Cowboy boots...and then somebody has a bottle of oil... and there's a kiddie pool...

I'm tellin ya, this is a genious idea! It's almost as good as the idea I had about charging a nickle for every view of the CGL situation threads. That one came a little late.

That is what they are legally entitled to. Whether they deserve more or less depends on what the agreed upon salary actually is and how productive that employee has been. If someone has been a very good employee and upon an annual review they get a raise because of it, are you seriously telling me that they did not deserve that raise until the agreement was actually finalized?

What a contract production worker deserves is some fair fraction of the value of the thing they produce. Be it a sat link or a game book. And if you hide the numbers on what the final products are actually worth, yeah it creates resentments that don't need to be there. I think Shadowrun products could use a higher wage and a more disciplined schedule for the writing staff. But if management is making sane choices that are for the good of the company, there is no reason to hide them from the people who work there.

The creative writers know that they don't have the time to hawk books to distributors. So they don't even really mind making less than the top brass. But one of the big draws of writing is bragging rights. So telling people how many copies of a book actually sold is a form of work compensation. It just doesn't make any sense to keep those cards hidden unless you're trying to defraud investors.

-Frank