“Golf Seven, set for purchase: two hundered shares of Severin Shipyards. Initiate trade on engagement,” Schaumberg addressed DeSantis, the squadron’s Field Broker. “Golf Flight, target the frigates first.  Secondary targets at your discretion.”  Most of the flight already had their targets set up, anticipating his command based on the put order.

“Trade ready, Golf One.” DeSantis responded, “Projected return is around eight-hundred Kilo based on sum target value minus fees.”

“Let’s make sure those ships are unsalvageable, boys,” added Lt. Garrett, the squadron’s second in command.  “Each one they can repair cuts into our portfolio.”

“We’re in range.  Open fire!” the commander ordered.  DeSantis transmitted the purchase order.  Salvos of anti-ship missiles streaked from under the wings of each fighter as they dodged heavy laser fire.  Working in teams of four, the squadron made quick work of the frigates.  The convoy was in chaos, with escorts moving to protect the most valuable ships and drone fighters peeling off to repel the attackers.  Several other bulk transports and support vessels, sluggish and unable to maneuver out of the fray, proved to be easy prey as usual.

The flight regrouped just beyond the range of the convoy’s guns, their rear-mounted laser turrets cleaning up the few dozen fighters that pursued them.  Sensors told the story: the frigates had all been destroyed.  The enemy would need to replace those ships, and would do so within a couple of months.  Severin Shipyards, like all military contractors in the galaxy, sold to all sides.  They were the sole provider of frigates of that type, so the squadron’s fresh shares in that company would soon increase in value dramatically.

The commander checked his status readout.  His group was intact, with minimal damage to a few fighters.  “Great job, flight.  Golf Seven, do we have confirmation?”

“Affirmative, sir,” DeSantis reported, “the trade was accepted before the first missile hit.”

“What’s the ticker say?” Garrett asked.

“Looks like the market’s heard about the attack,” said DeSantis.  “Speculation on Severin is heating up.”

Schaumberg smiled as he heard the hoots of his squadron over the radio.  Another profitable victory.  “Outstanding, Golf Seven.  Wait, what’s this?”

One of the medium-sized ships of the convoy had piqued the commander’s interest. “Golden Hope…?”  He scrolled through the ship’s details on his main monitor.  “Golf Seven, run the numbers on Keuren Naval Engineering, symbol Kilo November Echo Bravo Romeo.”

“Stanby, Golf One…” the Field Broker punched the stock symbol “KNEBR” into his finance computer and performed some analysis.  “Down one point today, trending down thirteen for the month on low construction orders.”

“Well, they’re about to get a pretty big contract,” Schaumberg replied. “Boys, we’re going for another run.  Target Golden Hope with everything you’ve got left.  Golf Seven, purchase three thousand shares of KNE.  Initiate now so there aren’t a bunch of questions about the timing.”

“Affirmative, Golf One.”  A few seconds passed.  “Trade sent.  Responses are delayed due to heavy activity.  The markets just opened on Hahn and New Gibraltar.”

Shaumberg broke hard left and dove for the transport.  The rest of the flight followed.  As they closed in on the transport, Garret checked his forward camera and saw the large red cross painted on its side.   “Ah, Paul, that’s a medical ship.  Recommend we abort.”

“Negative, Golf Two,” the commander replied,”we’ll say it was caught in the first attack.”

The fighters continued their dive.  Garrett protested, a slight panic in his voice, “Sir, there are twenty-two hundred wounded on that ship.  Recommend we abort this attack!”

“Casualties of war, Matt,” Shaumberg said, irritated.  “Once that trade’s confirmed, light her up, boys.  Makin’ some bank today.”

“Schaumberg, listen to me!  Call off the attack!” Garrett shouted into his mic as Golden Hope came into visual range.

“Golf One,” DeSantis’ voice carried a tinge of doubt and confusion, “the trade is complete.”

“Golf Flight, open fire!” the commander ordered.

Garrett yelled and pounded his console with his fists as a swarm of missiles streaked from the rails beneath their fighters. “God damn it, Schaumberg!”  The missiles slammed into the side of Golden Hope, tearing it nearly in half as they penetrated the hull of the ship and detonated deep within.  A single tear fell down Garrett’s cheek as he watched the bulkheads collapse and countless bodies were flung into space by secondary explosions.

Garrett had mostly regained his composure by the time the flight regrouped. “I tried to stop you, Paul,” Garret’s voice was still shakey as he addressed his commander on a private channel.

“Another day at the office, Matt.  You gotta let it go.”

“Those men…” Garrett’s voice trailed.

Schaumberg was indignant.  “You mean those bastards who were trying to kill our men up until they wound up in comfy hospital beds?  Screw ‘em.”

“No, Paul, you don’t get it,” Garrett was starting to lose it again,”Those men…were all covered by Orion Life, the standard insurance carrier for Qoshisu med transports.  About a quarter of our portfolio’s tied up in Orion subsidiaries.  We may have just lost millions.”

I think we spend way too much time, money and effort making triple-redundant systems and taking this “failure is not an option” shit way too far.  By definition, failure already isn’t an option – it’s not something that is a chosen course of action.  Failure means “shit happens”.  In space exploration (usually in either trying to get to space or return from space) shit happens – shit that you can’t foresee regardless of how many sensors you cram into something.  If we were a little more hearty about the risks – and spent less money and time trying to minimize them – we’d learn a lot more about how space travel can be accomplished and, heaven forbid, we might actually make some money and jobs out there in the ‘verse.

It’s true that everything related to space exploration is expensive:  The vehicles, the training for the astronauts and every single person on the ground who supports them, plus the immense piles of documentation, checklists, and checklists for the checklists…all to try to ensure that the mission is a success.  I submit that we should be a bit more cavalier about space.

How many thousands of people would sign up this instant for a chance to go to space, even if the risks were greatly increased?  How much money and time could we save if maybe we didn’t have system upon system checking each other?  How much weight could we save on our space vehicles if we didn’t have so many redundant systems?  Does this sound like the Soviet approach to space exploration?  I guess it does, but along with the Soviets’ almost reckless attitude toward tossing people into orbit, we pair our western fetish for technology.

The death of a crew of astronauts is a tragic event, but so are the deaths of an equal number of passengers on a bus that plummets down a cliff in Peru.  Personally, I’d rather be on the rocket when I go.  It’s time that our expectations from astronauts was backed down just a little bit, from Godlike Superbeing to Lucky Person With A Pretty Cool Job.  And I don’t mean to say that our current and former astronauts aren’t worthy of exaltation – quite the opposite, in fact.  Take just about anybody who’s been in space and you have the best of the best of human specimens.  They have it all – brains, physical stamina and dexterity, courage, etc.  What I propose is that we lower the standards substantially, making space exploration much more common, and more risky.

The other avatars nodded in agreement with what the new manager had said.  And with that, the meeting was adjourned.  Most of the participants blinked out of the room after some cursory goodbyes, but three remained behind;  Emily, the project manager, and the software developers Dan and Henry.  This had been one of their first team meetings since their manager, Phil, had been killed in a bizarre boating accident a week before.

“That was incredible!  How did you guys program him to do that?” Emily asked.  She was astonished at how the two programmers had managed to create such a lifelike script in such a short amount of time.

“Bob?  Seriously?” Dan absently scoffed as he finished up an email he’d been working on during the meeting.  He then turned his full attention to Emily, a courtesy he only afforded to those who’d won his respect. “The toughest part was getting the stupid thing to maintain eye contact with other avatars.  We just wrote him so neither of us had to lead the meeting.”

“What about speech recognition…comprehension?  You guys created a virtual manager for yourselves and you’re acting like it’s no big deal.”

Henry walked his avatar over to their side of the table.  “He doesn’t ‘comprehend’ speech so much.  He just recognizes when somebody stops talking. You’ll notice he doesn’t usually say anything unless he’s asking a question or being asked a question.”

Dan tapped his temple and narrowed his eyes, “There’s very little actually going on in there.”

Emily still wasn’t convinced it was so simple.  “But he assigns tasks; he schedules work and inquires about progress.  You must have built some kind of AI core in there.”

“When he leads meetings, he’s reading spreadsheets like a checklist,” Dan explained.  “He looks at a task on the spreadsheet and then asks the person assigned to that task how much longer it’s gonna take.  When he gets a response, he updates the spreadsheet and moves on to the next task.”

Henry elaborated, “Of course, the trick is in how he asks that question.  You couldn’t just have him ask ‘How much longer will this take?’ over and over again, or people would realize just how ridiculous and pointless he really is.  The Bob script’s able to change it up a bit.”

“The script parses input only at a rudimentary level,” Dan said as he displayed some flowcharts and diagrams on the conference room’s holoscreen, “He’s capable of recognizing approval or disapproval from those around him, and he can capture frequently-used terms to sprinkle into his own speech and writing.”

“Another trick is that he can immediately re-iterate things that other people say,” Henry said with a touch of pride,”so it sounds like he understands what’s going on.  Dan had the script reference a thesaurus so it just replaces what you say with similar-meaning words and says it right back to you.”

“There are a couple of bugs in his response routines, but we’ve actually come to think of them as features,” Dan interjected.  Emily looked intrigued.

“You’ve noticed how sometimes he seems like he’s confused about what projects are being discussed?” Henry asked with a sly smile.

“I suppose,” Emily said, vaguely remembering a few instances,”but I figure everybody gets confused from time to time.  Those meetings are pretty boring and we have so many of them.”

Henry started chuckling, so Dan explained, “We counted on that when we finished the script.  It’s our human ability to recognize and forgive human fallibility.  It’s part of his charm.”

“You see, the projects have no meaning to him,” Henry said, “He’s just repeating words that he’s encountered in previous meetings and emails.  So when somebody catches him talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, he’s been programmed to brush it off with an ‘Aw, shucks, I’m sorry.’  It even makes him seem a little more human.  In the next version I think we might have him banter about the weather or football.”

Henry and Dan’s avatars glanced at each other quickly, Henry’s face registering shock, while Dan’s brow furrowed with anger.  Dan’s avatar blinked out of the conference room as he stood up from his chair and walked his considerable physical girth the few paces to Emily’s cubicle.  Once behind her chair, he slowly bent over and whispered menacingly in her ear, “Don’t ever, ever, insult our code like that again.”

We’ve all been there:  You smuggle a few thousand guns to rebel fighters in a country where you’d like to topple a dictator.  Next thing you know, the dictator’s gone but now you have all those guns floating around.  Most of them end up in the hands of insurgents (who were your buddies a couple of weeks ago but are now definitely anti-you), and some of them make their way to the black market and end up getting used against your drug enforcement agents and/or the drug cartels that are propping up your government.

Not anymore!  With our exclusive line of DisposArms™ time-limited weaponry, not only do you minimize the risk of your own weapons being used against you but you can also prevent flooding the lucrative secondary arms markets with spare weapons.

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• Critical components of the weapons are built to fail due to corrosion or use after a predetermined time period or a given number of rounds have been fired.  Special composite materials cause the components to fuse together upon failure, rendering the weapon inoperable.  The components fuse in such a way as to make re-manufacturing/cannibalization of the weapon highly impractical.
• Non-critical components, such as grips, stocks and other furniture, are made from biodegradable plastics with a predetermined lifespan.
• The usable lifespan of the weapons can be custom-tailored to your specific revolutionary or counter-revolutionary timetable.
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http://www.100yss.org/faq.html

Why Is DARPA making this investment?
“…The technologies we create can have very direct impacts here on earth, including benefitting the warfighter-DARPA’s principal customer. “

OK, count me (and a lot of actual scientists) out.  I ain’t workin’ on no spaceship ideas if you’re just going to use them to blow shit up.  Get your Heartbreak Ridge out of my Apollo 13.  Why isn’t there a SARPA ?(replace the D in DARPA with an S for Space).  I know we already have NASA, but I think we need a more DARPA-like organization dedicated to the next generation of human space travel.

Is it a starship? Where do I sign up?
“Neither DARPA nor NASA are actually building a 100 Year Starship.”  Why not?  Just gonna sit around and talk, huh?
“Consequently we are not taking starship crew applications at the present time.”  Why not?  They don’t have to be applications for an actual crew, but it might be a revelatory exercise to actually review applications for a hypothetical starship crew.  You’re going to need cooks and janitors, and who knows what else.  What qualities and skills will you actually need in order to send a crew on such a long mission?

———————————–

Norris had given up on his dreams about six years and eight billion AU’s ago.  He’d not found contentment with his life of hauling cheap commodities around the solar system, but being a realist he had come to accept the fact that he’d never be much more than a freighter pilot – another easily replaced cog in a mediocre shipping company.

Correction: actually, what’s happening is this:

“Blank src attribute causes IE to load the default document.”  …and in the case of the particular application that I was working on, going back to the default page caused my cookie to get overwritten.

See the comments on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms535259%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Mini-rant:  First off, understand that this review is strictly about the game in single-player mode. I’m not a big multiplayer FPS fan. I like stories. In my opinion, FPS multiplayer is mostly about knowing how to exploit the map.  When you think about it, so was Pac-Man. – except the ghosts didn’t have aimbots and voice chat.  Anyway, it bores me and I’m no good at it. I do enough crap over and over and over in my life that I don’t care to do it in my spare time.  So there!  Now, on with the review.

The Gameplay
For some reason I had an incorrect preconception of this game. I don’t mean to say that the trailers lied, but I got the impression that Homefront was going to be a fairly expansive, open-air kind of game like Fallout 3. It’s more like Time Crisis.

The game is on rails, so it’s impossible for you to get sidetracked or lost but also you don’t get to explore the devastated post-invasion landscape.  There were several times when it reminded me of Dragon’s Lair.  JUMP HERE!  CLICK THIS!  DESTROY HELICOPTER!  Special weapons were conveniently located near the place I needed them.  If only real life were that simple.

But once I accepted the game for what it is, I enjoyed the HELL out of it and I wish that the single-player campaign were about two or three times longer than it is. If you’re going to plop down $60 for a single-player game, I cannot recommend Homefront. Hopefully they’ll come out with some downloadable content for it.

One thing I didn’t like about the gameplay was getting stuck on things you can’t see unless you look almost directly straight down.  Basketball goals are an example that come to mind.  They have those support arms on the bottom part of ‘em, ya know.  Can’t see ‘em unless you’re looking down, but they’ll stop you dead in your tracks.

Here’s something else that was disappointing: After the introductory shoot-out, you’re brought to the resistance fighters’ camp where you can walk around and chat with various members of the resistance.  I’m thinking “Oh, cool, these are the people who will send me on missions and will upgrade my gear and stuff.”  Nope.  Too much RPG thinkin’ there.  There are around five people in the camp you can interact with, and you can chat with ‘em about three times each.  And they all basically tell you to piss off.  Then they’re completely unresponsive.

Side note: The Helicopters
While I enjoyed the ground combat aspects of the game, I have to say that flying the helicopter was tedious.  Controls are sluggish and you’re limited to a very low flight ceiling.

Like many games, enemy helicopters are treated like flying tanks.  You need a special weapon to knock them out.  They’re used as mini-bosses, naturally.  Pro Tip:  In real life, helicopters really don’t like it when you huck golfballs into their intakes.  I always keep a sack or two of them in my trunk for emergencies.

Side note 2: The Goliath
Something that immediately made the game a little less plausible for me was the Goliath: an unmanned armored combat vehicle that acts as a deus ex machina in several situations.  What breaks it for me is that it seems automated in ways it probably wouldn’t be, but not automated in the ways it should.  For instance, it seems to be capable of driving itself just fine, but it relies on the operator to select targets visually.  Seems odd.

Story, Characters, Dialog
The game is set in 2027, and the United States has been invaded by a unified and increasingly imperialistic Korea.  John Milius, the guy who wrote the screenplays for Red Dawn and Apocalypse frickin’ Now and Conan the frickin’ Barbarian, was involved with the story and writing.

For me, the events leading up to the invasion (as they are depicted in the game’s trailers and intro) are plausible but just this side of uncomfortably plausible.  But then again, I didn’t think anything like the current unrest in the Middle-East would happen, either (especially Syria).

The dialog mostly relates directly to the task at hand, and it’s not as corny as it could have been considering how action-oriented the game is.  You don’t really have enough contact with the characters to judge whether or not they’re fleshed-out.

That being said, the very first few minutes of the story were pretty damned gripping.  The story and dialog never completely devolves into cheesiness, but the story aspects of the game weren’t as compelling after the first few levels.  And it ended very abruptly.

The Style
This is a game that really had potential.  Actually, since updates and sequels are so easy these days, I should say it has potential.

They managed to make the environments appear run-down and as if they’d been through a war without crossing over into HalfLife 2/Fallout 3 levels of devastation.  I wanted to roam across the shattered land and find new adventures.  I really wanted to see what the designers vision of a big city would look like during a modern war.  Also, they did a superb job on the music, ratcheting up the tension as only a game on rails can do.

The bottom line is that I enjoyed playing Homefront.  I just wish there was more of it.

I have to confess that out of about twenty characters and many, many hours of play, I haven’t managed to get a single toon past level 14.  It turns out that my favorite activity in the game is actually just creating characters.  You have so much control, and there are so many options!  I can literally spend hours hitting the “Randomize All” button in the character creation screen, giggling like crazy at the ridiculous costumes that it makes.  So, I’d like to present a few of these randomly-generated toons.  Let’s see how many times we can use the word “justice” in their descriptions.

	Pink Champion Super Power: Fabulousness
	Accessoria On the day before her high school graduation, Accessoria was the sole survivor of a freak explosion in a Claire’s Boutique. Since then, she has used her amazing (but inexpensive) accessories to fight for justice.
	ArticMimenkhamen Exiled to the frozen wastes more than four thousand years ago for mimery, ArticMimenkhamen silently fights for justice in a world that tries to make him talk. I would totally play this toon, and never say anything in chat. I would just use emotes. RP for the win.
	Balance Buzzard Locked in a constant struggle between his yearning for justice and his insatiable hunger for carrion, Balance Buzzard travels the land helping those in need.
	Syberian This is a toon I actually play from time to time. The frost/soviet theme actually came up randomly and I thought it was pretty…cool. I tweaked his costume quite a bit then typed up this backstory: “A product of a super-secret project during the last years of the Cold War, cybernetic and genetic enhancements have given Alexei Chernov the ability to slow subatomic particles to a near dead stop. His first assignment was to help freeze and contain the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. After the collapse of the Soviet Union this devout communist dedicated his life to fighting evil, demonstrating the might and goodwill of his by-gone creators.”
	Syberian’s Black Costume For when he’s emo.
	J.U.M.P., The CyberShark When times are desperate and ratings are at an all-time low, he goes too far…for Justice!
	Kinky Demon You would. You totally would. After a few beers…end of the night…maybe use a fake name and a burlap sack or two.
	Pirate Bootie Here’s another candidate for the Double-Bag Club. I’m sure she’s a very nice person. That bootie is rockin’.
	The Bellhop I kept this guy. The random parts were the color scheme, the jacket, and the ape head. The rest was meticulously crafted by moi. I’d love to see a comic book with this dude in it, perhaps as a villain.
	TigerMoth This one is totally random. I’d play this toon if I were into the neko thing, I guess.
	Flyin’ FrostWolf This is another totally random toon that is actually pretty cool. A little tweaking and this would be a good character.
	The Amalgamn He’s a hero trying to find out who he is. Where do you fit in when you’re just a pile of random crap tossed together and painted yellow? And yes, I put that “n” on the end of his name on purpose. I thought it was rad.
	PoundNote He has a pound symbol on his chest and he looks like he would pound people into the ground. Might make a decent villain or a dark, snarky hero a’la Hellboy.
	The Playmate Um…moving on….
	EightBit Nope, this one wasn’t random. I spent a considerable amount of time on homegirl here. She bad.

I would say that about 80% of my iPhone time is actually at work while parked in the men’s room.  When I first got the device I’d camp out in there for what seemed like hours – browsing apps, downloading them, trying them out, rating them, reviewing them, sharing my excitement with whoever happened to be in the adjoining stall.  I would leave when I felt my legs getting numb.  I tried to go more often, but it felt strange to go to the bathroom and sit down without actually having some business to take care of.  To make my visits more naturally frequent, at lunch I began eating things that I knew would grant me plenty of trips to the john in the afternoon.  (The Chartroose Caboose earned that name fair and square.  I won’t tell you how.)  My iPhone/crapper addiction was starting to affect my job.

But eventually I got used to having an Internet-connected, touch-controlled, micro-computer in my pocket.  (Think about that…it’s pretty damned amazing.)  Up until very recently I’d still use my phone for a quick game or a quick hate-filled glance at the cesspool they call the App Store.  But yesterday I left my phone charging at my computer and took off for the lavatory.  I actually paused for a second, and wondered if I should grab it and take it with me, but it was nearly dead (from an earlier bowel-n-browse session) and I figured I wouldn’t be gone long.

It was while I was phoneless on the can that I had an epiphany:  Having access to a smartphone pretty much negates any chance of having an epiphany while you’re on the can.

I’m a firm yet malleable believer that the quiet time spent alone on the toilet is necessary for good mental health.  It’s like REM stage sleep.  A person can’t get right with themselves if they’re constantly interrupted by communicating, playing games, or mumbling death wishes for those lazy, opportunistic hacks who somehow manage to get their garbage apps approved by Apple.

Take back your sanity by leaving your phone behind when you visit the loo!