Are the posted questions getting worse?

  • Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    Tom

  • L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    But it's calling your name. Can't you hear it? Whispering, whispering deep inside your soul.

    Besides, you already know math. Why can't you indulge your creative side now?

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    Make your story about the general in charge of a brigade of mathematicians who's risen through the ranks.

    --------------------------------------
    When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
    --------------------------------------
    It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
    What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
    You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams

  • Stefan Krzywicki (12/6/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    Make your story about the general in charge of a brigade of mathematicians who's risen through the ranks.

    Wow. If that story could plausibly sound "military" enough, I would definitely be interested.

    Now you've got my brain going, Stefan, and I can't submit for this because I'm the one in charge of it. GAH!

    EDIT: I should mention that anyone (so far as I know) can submit, no matter where you live. 50% royalties are paid. Contracts can be viewed here: http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/p/contractroyalties.html and monies are paid in U.S. dollars (so far as I know).

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Stefan Krzywicki (12/6/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    Make your story about the general in charge of a brigade of mathematicians who's risen through the ranks.

    Wow. If that story could plausibly sound "military" enough, I would definitely be interested.

    Now you've got my brain going, Stefan, and I can't submit for this because I'm the one in charge of it. GAH!

    EDIT: I should mention that anyone (so far as I know) can submit, no matter where you live. 50% royalties are paid. Contracts can be viewed here: http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/p/contractroyalties.html and monies are paid in U.S. dollars (so far as I know).

    Haha! See, THIS is how you do evil! : -)

    --------------------------------------
    When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
    --------------------------------------
    It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
    What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
    You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams

  • Stefan Krzywicki (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Stefan Krzywicki (12/6/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Drat. I wish I hadn't read that. Brandie, you are a menace. I've been struggling for nearly 50 years not to write any fiction, and succeeding (never published fiction execpt in school mags, stopped because I wanted to learn maths more than I wanted to write), and now you've got me tempted again. I couldn't resist following the link. You are a thrugh menace! Now I'll try to forget about it.

    Make your story about the general in charge of a brigade of mathematicians who's risen through the ranks.

    Wow. If that story could plausibly sound "military" enough, I would definitely be interested.

    Now you've got my brain going, Stefan, and I can't submit for this because I'm the one in charge of it. GAH!

    EDIT: I should mention that anyone (so far as I know) can submit, no matter where you live. 50% royalties are paid. Contracts can be viewed here: http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/p/contractroyalties.html and monies are paid in U.S. dollars (so far as I know).

    Haha! See, THIS is how you do evil! : -)

    @ Brandie

    You cannot make it sound "military": generals do not rise through the ranks. You need a military academy to be promoted that high, and it has been like that for centuries.

  • Revenant (12/5/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/5/2012)


    ...

    When the big media companies get involved, they tend to want whatever will be worst for the consumer, so that stuff wears out/fails quickly or is poor quality, so that consumers have to buy more to get the same level of satisfaction. :angry:

    That is well documented.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjLDAlZMVYA

    Actually, I was thinking of a newer phase of planned obsolescence: what I think happened here is that the media producers - who are going to be selling video recordings (some of them will sell players/recorders too, but some not, and anyway the money is in the media) - backed for a standard where the media is fragile and easily damaged instead of one where it's reasonably well protected; so they will end up selling mpore discs (if - and it's a fairly big if for some of them - the films they put on the media are worth keeping in case you want to watch them more than once, and worth buying another copy of if the either kept disc is unplayable or it was too obviously damaged to keep). Of course for one of them it was their media standard - presumably they had designed something that provided built in obsolescence for the media. Microsoft was on the opposite side, of course - the less you pay to the media barons the more you can spend on MS software, so they had commercial grounds as well as moral grounds for backing the better technology.

    edit: fix some of the spelling

    Tom

  • Revenant,

    I'm talking about the brigade of mathmeticians. Right now, they don't sound military, they sound scientific.

    EDIT: Besides, this is science fiction & fantasy. The author can do whatever they want for how generals become generals. Or do you think Star Trek's Klingons actually care about military academies? @=)

    Brandie Tarvin, MCITP Database AdministratorLiveJournal Blog: http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/[/url]On LinkedIn!, Google+, and Twitter.Freelance Writer: ShadowrunLatchkeys: Nevermore, Latchkeys: The Bootleg War, and Latchkeys: Roscoes in the Night are now available on Nook and Kindle.

  • L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Revenant (12/5/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/5/2012)


    ...

    When the big media companies get involved, they tend to want whatever will be worst for the consumer, so that stuff wears out/fails quickly or is poor quality, so that consumers have to buy more to get the same level of satisfaction. :angry:

    That is well documented.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjLDAlZMVYA

    Actually, I was thinking of a newer phase of planned obsolescence: what I think happened here is that the media producers - who are going to be selling video recordings (some of them will sell players/recorders too, but some not, and anyway the money is in the media) - backed for a standard where the media is fragile and easily damaged instead of one where it's reasonably well protected; so they will end up selling mpore discs (if - and it's a fairly big if for some of them - the films they put on the media are worth keeping in case you want to watch them more than once, and worth buying another copy of if the either kept disc is unplayable or it was too obviously damaged to keep). Of course for one of them it was their media standard - presumably they had designed something that provided built in obsolescence for the media. Microsoft was on the opposite side, of course - the less you pay to the media barons the more you can spend on MS software, so they had commercial grounds as well as moral grounds for backing the better technology.

    edit: fix some of the spelling

    Well there are more dimensions to it, for example zones for DVDs and Blu-rays which ought to be illegal.

    Both types of discs are expected to last at least 50 years. Unfortunately, players are not. So you now have a new gen of discs coming, sure the heck: the latest high-end screens, 4k x 2k, are actually 4096 × 2304 and despite their logic circuitry they make even Blu-rays look poor. So we can expect the next gen media that will be about 200 GB per movie, and everything else will be obsolete.

    I am curious how long you will have players that will play vanilla DVD. I am afraid they will go the way of floppy disks.

  • Revenant (12/6/2012)


    You cannot make it sound "military": generals do not rise through the ranks. You need a military academy to be promoted that high, and it has been like that for centuries.

    I think there are some exceptions.

    For example Reinhard Heydrich joined the German navy in 1922 as a non-officer naval cadet; he was shunted into the officer track two years later, and sent to officer training school. He became Leutnant zur see (that would be ensign in the US navy, there is no officer rank that low in the British navy) in 1926 and OberLeutnat zur See (US: Lieutenant Junior Grade; British: Sublieutenant) in 1928, then was fired ("conduct unbecoming") from the Navy in April 1931; joined the SS as a gefreiter (PFC in US Army, Prinate in the British Army) in June and was promoted rather rapidly (Sturmfuhrer - junior lieutenant - after less than 3 weeks, Hauptsturmfuhrer - Captain - before the end of the year, Sturmbannfuhrer - major - early in January 1932, Standartenfurhrer - full Colonel- in the middle of 1932, Brigadefuhrer in 1934). He became Griuppenfuhrer (major General) about when the war started in 1939 and OberGruppenFuhrer (Lieutenant General) in the Autumn of 1941. He would probably have made OberstFuhrer (Full General) had he not been assassinated in 1942 by a British-backed Czechoslovak operation. According to Wikipedia he did make full general, but I don't believe it (if he did, it must have been posthumous - I suppose that's possible, but regard it as unlikely).

    Anyway, there's a fairly extreme case for you: joins the navy at enlisted rank, gets made a senior cadet and sent to officer training, eventually makes JG and then gets cashiered for conduct unbecoming. Joins the SS as a private, and ends up as a Liutenant General at the age of 39 before being assassinated young enough not to reach full general. Of course the man was a bastard, with only a perverted sense of honour - but that limited capacity of honour meant he felt it neccessary to put himself regularly in harms way (for example flying as a fighter pilot using a nominal Luftwaffe commission as something rather junior, even when forbidden by his superiors to put himself at risk); he's definitely a clear demonstration that your statement about no generals rising from the ranks in the last few hundred years is wrong, particularly as you were referring to Brandies remark about the "general" (well, she's American, so that's correct in her army) commanding a brigade - some two ranks below what Heydrich reached by rising through the ranks from enlisted man.

    Of course he's not someone I would seriously think about using as a character model in a story about honor. His concept of that was just too alien for me to comprehend.

    Tom

  • Brandie Tarvin (12/6/2012)


    Hey, all. I don't know if I posted this before or not. If you're interested in writing, I have a special call that opens in February for science fiction / fantasy military fiction. What Honor Requires is the name of the call. The details can be found here: http://uraniaspecfic.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-honor-requires-special-call.html

    Brandie, what's the general submission size you're looking for here? 4 page mag article, chapter, novella?

    Also, I'm interested. Not sure what I want to do, but this seems like an awesome way to spread my wings a bit.


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  • Revenant (12/6/2012)


    Well there are more dimensions to it, for example zones for DVDs and Blu-rays which ought to be illegal.

    There I'm 100% imn agreement with you.

    Both types of discs are expected to last at least 50 years.

    I don't expect either to. The blu-ray is ohysically fragile, an poorly protected from damage by impact. It's abou as likely to last 50 years an an old style vynil 78 (actually I only got rid of mine two years ago, and the charity shop tells me they sold them for a decent price, so some binyl lasts that long; but most doesn't).

    [/quote]Unfortunately, players are not. [/quote]Here in Europe the cheaper DVD players and DVD recorders seem to be carefully engineered to last a bit over two years (because if the consumer electronics you sell lasts on average less than two years you are in regulatory hell).

    So you now have a new gen of discs coming, sure the heck: the latest high-end screens, 4k x 2k, are actually 4096 × 2304 and despite their logic circuitry they make even Blu-rays look poor.

    To make blu-ray look poor they must be deliberately generating video that causes current size reduction algorithms to perform badly, because on a reasonable sized screen 4096X2304 is too fine to be interesting; if that's what is happeniong and someone can prove it in sufficiently simple laymans terms to convince a lawyer, the media providers will be in serious trouble with regulation in Europe. I Guess the reason they went for 4096 instead of 3840 was to screw up size reduction, of course - not that anything much was ever done in 1920 anyway.

    So we can expect the next gen media that will be about 200 GB per movie, and everything else will be obsolete.

    I can't see any point to that resolution, unless you are looking at something much bigger than 100 inch screens.

    I am curious how long you will have players that will play vanilla DVD. I am afraid they will go the way of floppy disks.

    Probably true. It's already almost impossible to buy a simple DVD recorder, instead of one with masses of bells and whistles.

    Tom

  • L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Revenant (12/6/2012)


    You cannot make it sound "military": generals do not rise through the ranks. You need a military academy to be promoted that high, and it has been like that for centuries.

    I think there are some exceptions.

    For example Reinhard Heydrich joined the German navy in 1922 as a non-officer naval cadet; he was shunted into the officer track two years later, and sent to officer training school. He became Leutnant zur see (that would be ensign in the US navy, there is no officer rank that low in the British navy) in 1926 and OberLeutnat zur See (US: Lieutenant Junior Grade; British: Sublieutenant) in 1928, then was fired ("conduct unbecoming") from the Navy in April 1931; joined the SS as a gefreiter (PFC in US Army, Prinate in the British Army) in June and was promoted rather rapidly (Sturmfuhrer - junior lieutenant - after less than 3 weeks, Hauptsturmfuhrer - Captain - before the end of the year, Sturmbannfuhrer - major - early in January 1932, Standartenfurhrer - full Colonel- in the middle of 1932, Brigadefuhrer in 1934). He became Griuppenfuhrer (major General) about when the war started in 1939 and OberGruppenFuhrer (Lieutenant General) in the Autumn of 1941. He would probably have made OberstFuhrer (Full General) had he not been assassinated in 1942 by a British-backed Czechoslovak operation. According to Wikipedia he did make full general, but I don't believe it (if he did, it must have been posthumous - I suppose that's possible, but regard it as unlikely).

    Anyway, there's a fairly extreme case for you: joins the navy at enlisted rank, gets made a senior cadet and sent to officer training, eventually makes JG and then gets cashiered for conduct unbecoming. Joins the SS as a private, and ends up as a Liutenant General at the age of 39 before being assassinated young enough not to reach full general. Of course the man was a bastard, with only a perverted sense of honour - but that limited capacity of honour meant he felt it neccessary to put himself regularly in harms way (for example flying as a fighter pilot using a nominal Luftwaffe commission as something rather junior, even when forbidden by his superiors to put himself at risk); he's definitely a clear demonstration that your statement about no generals rising from the ranks in the last few hundred years is wrong, particularly as you were referring to Brandies remark about the "general" (well, she's American, so that's correct in her army) commanding a brigade - some two ranks below what Heydrich reached by rising through the ranks from enlisted man.

    Of course he's not someone I would seriously think about using as a character model in a story about honor. His concept of that was just too alien for me to comprehend.

    I'm not sure you can really use an exception when it belongs to such an idealist and extremist group as the Nazis. Are there other exceptions in societal groups that are less fanatical? ...like North Korea...heh...j/k

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  • jcrawf02 (12/6/2012)


    L' Eomot Inversé (12/6/2012)


    Revenant (12/6/2012)


    You cannot make it sound "military": generals do not rise through the ranks. You need a military academy to be promoted that high, and it has been like that for centuries.

    I think there are some exceptions.

    For example Reinhard Heydrich joined the German navy in 1922 as a non-officer naval cadet; he was shunted into the officer track two years later, and sent to officer training school. He became Leutnant zur see (that would be ensign in the US navy, there is no officer rank that low in the British navy) in 1926 and OberLeutnat zur See (US: Lieutenant Junior Grade; British: Sublieutenant) in 1928, then was fired ("conduct unbecoming") from the Navy in April 1931; joined the SS as a gefreiter (PFC in US Army, Prinate in the British Army) in June and was promoted rather rapidly (Sturmfuhrer - junior lieutenant - after less than 3 weeks, Hauptsturmfuhrer - Captain - before the end of the year, Sturmbannfuhrer - major - early in January 1932, Standartenfurhrer - full Colonel- in the middle of 1932, Brigadefuhrer in 1934). He became Griuppenfuhrer (major General) about when the war started in 1939 and OberGruppenFuhrer (Lieutenant General) in the Autumn of 1941. He would probably have made OberstFuhrer (Full General) had he not been assassinated in 1942 by a British-backed Czechoslovak operation. According to Wikipedia he did make full general, but I don't believe it (if he did, it must have been posthumous - I suppose that's possible, but regard it as unlikely).

    Anyway, there's a fairly extreme case for you: joins the navy at enlisted rank, gets made a senior cadet and sent to officer training, eventually makes JG and then gets cashiered for conduct unbecoming. Joins the SS as a private, and ends up as a Liutenant General at the age of 39 before being assassinated young enough not to reach full general. Of course the man was a bastard, with only a perverted sense of honour - but that limited capacity of honour meant he felt it neccessary to put himself regularly in harms way (for example flying as a fighter pilot using a nominal Luftwaffe commission as something rather junior, even when forbidden by his superiors to put himself at risk); he's definitely a clear demonstration that your statement about no generals rising from the ranks in the last few hundred years is wrong, particularly as you were referring to Brandies remark about the "general" (well, she's American, so that's correct in her army) commanding a brigade - some two ranks below what Heydrich reached by rising through the ranks from enlisted man.

    Of course he's not someone I would seriously think about using as a character model in a story about honor. His concept of that was just too alien for me to comprehend.

    I'm not sure you can really use an exception when it belongs to such an idealist and extremist group as the Nazis. Are there other exceptions in societal groups that are less fanatical? ...like North Korea...heh...j/k

    @ Tom

    Heydrich joined the navy as a cadet, but that is a different career track than rising through the ranks. You skip all private and non-com ranks.

    Re SS, in 1931 it was a paramilitary organization akin to a private security company, not a regular military. (Waffen SS were established in 1933.)

    Edit: after some thought, I found one of probably few exceptions. Budyonny, Stalin's drinking buddy, raised from an enlisted man to the Marshal of the Soviet Union. He was rather inept, though.

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