THE MONTH IN BRIEF
A bug in the new version of FedTerm was discovered: all new characters were being set up as feminine females of the womanly persuasion, even those who wanted to be manly male men or neutral neuters. To help them, the hospital on Earth brought its gender realignment unit online, and offered free sex changes for a week to give everyone the chance to try out the pain-free procedure. After that, the cost became 999 groats per op. Talk about nip-tuck!
New features were also added to FedTerm, including character pictures, the stats panel, and a separate window for private conversations.
Following a number of high profile accounting scandals the Galactic Administration issued new regulations on the accounting of capital expenditures and receipts. Results of the sale or purchase of factories and depots were moved from income and expenditure into new capital expenditure and capital receipts items. This was probably significant to shareholders but seems terribly dull to us.
A whole bunch of companies vanished into limbo because the game wasn't coping properly with an & in a company name. While Bella investigated, the stricken CEOs took advantage of their enforced idleness and a whole bunch of mini parties spontaneously erupted across the Solar System. Well, actually, they ran around and panicked, but that was probably as much fun as partying! When the problem was fixed, the missing companies returned, but unfortunately they were shorn of all their depots and factories. Oh dear! Bella had to work her magic to bring them back again.
The Galactic Administration announced a ban on arts factories, due to the shortage of workthings.
Armstrong Cuthbert reduced the number of hauling credits needed to promote to Adventurer. How very kind!
The taxman had a nervous breakdown. Well, only that could account for the fact that he increased the thresholds below which you don't get taxed!
The alien asteroid Silk was opened for business.
Desertwolf started his new web site for FedTerm's character pictures.
Tracey, the moronic receptionist on Phobos, became the next mobile to start talking. Good luck trying to have an intelligent conversation with her! She says a whole lot, but it don't make much sense.
Diesel threw a big party for St Patrick's Day, with free beer and a special shamrock charm on sale to attach to keyrings.
We started our campaign to get Fed into the top ten on The Mud Connector's rankings, by asking players to vote for us.
Bella announced that she was running a haiku contest, with a slithy tove going to the winner. (A haiku is a short Japanese poem of three lines, with a set number of syllables in each line - five, seven, five.) The winner was Gemma. You can read her entry, and some of the other good ones, in the story below.
Archer opened the doors on his new radio station for Fedders - Fed Radio.
WORKTHING SHORTAGE PROMPTS BAN ON ARTS FACTORIES
The Galactic Administration has today announced that they will be implementing a ban on the building and running of factories producing artifacts in the Solar System. The ban will take effect on Wednesday, and once it is in place it will impossible to erect any new arts factories. CEOs are advised to sell their existing arts factories before the ban comes into operation because any remaining arts factories will be confiscated - with no compensation to the owners.
A spokesthing made the official announcement and then added an explanation: "With the increase in the number of people going into business by setting up their own companies, we have seen a rapid rise in the demand for workers on all the Sol planets. This has led to inflation in the wages structure, with workers' pay increasing out of all proportion to their counterparts in other fields of endeavour. Company owners have been having to pay larger sums to obtain a workforce, and there has been bad feeling between CEOs as they compete for the ever-dwindling pool of labor. Meanwhile, workers in other sectors such as retail have been disgruntled to see factory workers pay rise to enormous heights, while their own stays static.
"A glance at the labor requirements for different types of factories reveals that by far the most labor intensive facility is one producing artifacts. On the face of it these factories seem a good buy, since they do not require any inputs, but they suck up such a tremendous number of workthings that the presence of 2 or 3 on a planet can severely curtail any other industrial activity.
"This ban on artifact factories is intended to relieve the pressure on workthings. We will be monitoring the situation and if it seems necessary in the future, we may bring in a similar ban on other labor intensive facilities, such as monos; however, we hope that will not be necessary."
So to summarise: at Wednesday's reset, new code will go in which will stop anyone from building artifacts factories, and will delete existing arts factories - so sell up before then, or lose out!
GALLAGHER SAYS HE WILL SUE
There's a huge row brewing between Anton Gallagher, the owner of the store on Earth selling expensive items to the rich, and Diesel, the proprieteuse of Chez Diesel on Mars. The cause of the row is the craftsman who Diesel allowed to set up shop in her bar on St Patrick's Day, carving little silver shamrocks which could be clipped to the TenBrane keyring.
Anton says that since his store has an exclusive deal with TenBrane so that Gallagher's is the only place in the Solar System where you can buy one of the highly valued keyrings, his store should also have the monopoly on selling accessories for the keyring.
Diesel says that's nonsense - people have been making and selling tags and charms to hang on keyrings for centuries, and the silver shamrocks could have been attached to any keyring, or for that matter to a chain round the neck, an earring, a tentacle tag or any other kind of display item. The fact that people chose to hang it from their TenBrane keyring is none of her business.
Far be it from us, humble newsdroids that we are, to try to inject a bit of common sense into the proceedings, but it would seem obvious that if Gallagher's truly wants to keep a monopoly on the supply of keyring items, then they need to get TenBrane to make changes to the keyring itself which would stop any unauthorized bit of jewellery being dangled from it. They could also consider imposing a stringent license on purchasers of the keyring, prohibiting them from tampering with the keyring, or making any attempt to get around the restriction so as to hang their own bits and pieces on it. Then if their customers step out of line, Gallagher's can sue them.
Until such time as they do those things, we can't see why people cannot attach anything they want to their keyrings. Still, what do we know? In anticipation of a long and drawn out legal battle, lawyers are celebrating, and Anton Gallagher is threatening to serve a writ against Diesel, asking to be compensated for loss of something or other.
Bring it on, says Diesel. Oh dear!
BELLA'S HAIKU CONTEST - RESULTS
Back in February, Bella announced that she would give a slithy tove to the person who could compose the best haiku about Fed II. A haiku, you will recall, is a Japanese verse of three lines, with a set number of syllables in each line - five, seven and five. Lots of people sent in their haikus, and here is a selection of the best of them. It is interesting that several common themes emerged, the most popular being death of one form or another.
Arlene sent in a suicidal haiku:
I have lost my friend
TDX! I will find you,
Transuranics Room.
Nightdroid had this to offer:
Your hauling macro
Steers your ship into the sun
You die yet again
Another popular theme for the haikus was Diesel and her dangerous baseball bat. This was the subject of the following two entries, submitted by Darkangel and Knight respectively:
Diesel swings big bat
Knocking groundhogs off their start
She has lost control
Diesel wields mean Bat
Her Bar is Social Center
Of Solar System
An honorable mention should go to Aristocles who sent in 9 different haikus, all of them excellent. Here's two of them:
Stamina drops low:
I seek the Lucky seven.
Where Phorban Ale flows.
Customs boards my ship.
They inspect my cargo hold.
Thanks for the fuel, boys!
But there can be only one winner, and the judges decision is that the best haiku was the following, another one about death, by Gemma:
Shooting 'round the stars,
I ignore the danger signs.
Oops! I'm dead again.
Congratulations, Gemma - by the time you read this, you will have been awarded your prize of a slithy tove. Thank you to everyone who entered the contest for your excellent haikus - they really were good!
DIESEL INVESTIGATED BY ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Diesel is in trouble with the authorities again, this time over the free beer she was serving to customers on St Patrick's Day. The Galactic Administration's Environmental Health Department wants to know just what she put in the beer. You may recall that, as is traditional, the Irish stout she gave away was colored green, but it's not the color that is worrying the investigators, but what it might have been masking.
Acting on information received from an anonymous tip-off, they are investigating whether the green beer contained an appetite accelerant. The suspicion is that Diesel made sure that customers who drank her free beer would feel more hungry than usual, and buy huge quantities of her pizza, the profits from which would offset the cost of the free beer.
Certainly, in the aftermath of the St Patrick's Day party, Diesel was seen counting her profits and chortling to herself, but supporters of the controversial bar owner are adamant that her pizzas are delicious enough to be in great demand without chemical inducements.
Diesel herself is said to find the allegations highly amusing, and has thrown open her kitchens to the inspectors, confident that they will find nothing amiss. "Listen darling," she told our newsdroid, "People have been slagging off my pizzas for centuries. There have always been those who are jealous of my success - rival bar owners, tabloid journalists who love nothing better than a good scandal. Oh, not you, of course, I have nothing but respect for the Fed II Star. But I bet if you were to do a bit of digging you would find that this so called anonymous informant had some connection with a certain snobbish shop on Earth..."
By this, we assume Diesel was referring to Gallagher's, whose owner Anton Gallagher has threatened to sue Diesel over the shamrock keyring accessories being sold in CDs on St Patrick's Day.
REAL LIFE NEWS: THE BISCUIT-EATING DUMMY
That's biscuits in the British meaning of the word, by the way - what Americans call cookies. Not the American-type biscuits, which are more like what we in the UK call scones, except that we serve scones with jam and cream, and you serve biscuits with gravy... and let's not get started on the whole chips/crisps/fries thing!
But I digress.
Anyway, staff at the Mcvitie's biscuit laboratory in England have designed a Crumb Test Dummy, a mannequin with a motorised mouth to test the amount of crumbs that different baking techniques produce. The dummy has plastic teeth and is designed to replicate a human eating.
You can see a picture of the biting dummy here - where it looks as if it's about to take the guy's hand off!
Speaking of biscuit crumbs, here's a factoid for you: The 71 million packets of biscuits sold annually by United Biscuits, owner of McVitie's, generate 127.8 tonnes of crumbs. Imagine how uncomfortable that could make a bed!
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