WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS
Earthdate March 1999


INSIDE SCOOP


FED FUNNIES


OFFICIAL NEWS
by Hazed


What was in March 1999's Official News:

THE MONTH IN BRIEF
STOP PRESS: COURIERDROID ACCIDENT
FED MEET IN EXOTIC VENUE
FROM THE POSTBAG: DEATH IN SPACE
FROM THE POSTBAG: SHIP AHOY!

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

It was a month punctuated by technical problems. First a glitch, then hardware maintenance took our site out, and then to crown it all, when we switched ISPs it took ages for the new domain address to get correctly registered, resulting in several weeks of erratic connection.

A new form of harassment was discovered: TBing someone who used Net Nanny software with a word that would cause the program to punt them from Fed. Very unpleasant!

Galinfenner finally got help... well, we've been saying for years he needed it! He took on a glamorous assistant, Moria, who said she was an Elven Queen. She started out as his second in command, making sure that events ran smoothly, and then later took over from Galin as the events supremo; and what's more, she became a DataSpace Hostess.

The History of IB and Fed, starting with Alan's plan to write a new game and going right up to the move off AOL onto the web, was published at http://www.ibgames.net/ibinfo/ibhistory.html.

STOP PRESS: COURIERDROID ACCIDENT

Hold the front page. Hold it very carefully, by the edges only, so as not to smudge it.

Disaster strikes the Federation Chronicle office. The CourierDroid which transports the completed news pages from HQ to the printers, where they are published so that you can receive them on your viewscreens, had a terrible accident this morning as it was rushing to meet the usual Sunday morning deadline.

In a collision with a speeding milkfloat, the droid was completely destroyed, reduced to a pile of coils, springs, cogs and electronic components, all covered with a film of oily greasy muck.

The package the CourierDroid was couriering split open, and the masters of the five pages of the news were torn and the pieces flung in every direction. (Sounds like the plot to a game... your mission is to retrieve the five lost pages and return them to the HQ...)

NewsDroids have been working to piece the pages back together and clean off the nasty oily stains; so far they have only succeeded in rescuing this, the Official News page. They will continue to work feverishly on the remaining pages and as soon as they have been reconstructed, we'll beam them to your viewscreens.

Later...

Our tireless workers have worked tirelessly throughout the day and have reconstructed the shattered pages of the news. You can now read them as normal.

FED MEET IN EXOTIC VENUE

Following the stunning success of last year's Pacific Rim Fed UnCon in Okinawa we've decided to stick with the tropics again. Yes, that's right, it's time for the 2nd Annual April 1 Pacific Rim Fed Uncon 1999!!

This year we'll meet in Guam April 1 and then sail on to exotic tropical Kiribati. As you know, we always have a fabulous time on these holidays. We have clever amusing adventures and see exotic and stunning sights. We take lots of photos and create a web page for you to share the experience with us. We write up an article for the Fed News telling everyone what extraordinary adventures we had and hinting at all the sordid and disgusting things we enjoyed doing and you missed because you didn't attend. We then desperately try to sell the negatives of all the sordid and disgusting things we did to the German Tabloids for vast sums of money and end up squabbling about how we'll divide up the proceeds. (See the report and pictures from last year at http://members.aol.com/tardisfile/fed.html)

This year's Pacific Rim UnCon is once more being organized by Barb and Fireimp and is strictly on a pre-registration basis. Please do NOT just buy tickets to Guam and show up at the airport April 1. If you wish to join us on this adventure, we need to receive proof of your immunizations and all necessary current visas - so you must contact us by email beforehand at Barb@ibgames.com if you are seriously interested in attending.

FROM THE POSTBAG: DEATH IN SPACE

Hi :)

I was suddenly struck with the oddest question in the universe today: Why do barons and dukes die when they port into space? Checking my inventory, I see that I have:

Your personal kit includes a comm unit, a lamp, a ship-owner's permit, a planet-owner's permit, a spybeam receiver, a spybeam screen, an ID card, a long service medal, and a vac suit.

Well well well...a vac suit! Shouldn't barons and dukes be given the chance (or have it done automatically) to put their vac suit on before teleporting anywhere? Just curious...

-Anti


Hi there,

Yes, you have a vac suit which of course protects you from suffering the effects of vacuum. However, you have a limited supply of air in the tanks of your vac suit. Teleporters cannot be operated from deep space (don't ask me why, I tried to get a physicist to explain and the techno-babble just made me feel faint) so once you have ported into space, you are stuck there. Your air slowly runs out and you die a lonely, frightening death by suffocation.

This death takes hours, sometimes days, depending on how much oxygen you are carrying, but mercifully the human brain, when revived in the new clone, edits out the intervening hours which you probably spent screaming (and of course, in space no-one can hear you scream).

Regards,

Hazed

FROM THE POSTBAG: SHIP AHOY!

Hi :)

There seems to be a bug regarding examining someone's ship. It seems that I can examine anyone's ship that is on the same planet as I am. Example: Kao, Baroness of Babe is in the Duff Modem Pub on Mars. I am elsewhere on Mars (not the LP). I can still EX Kao's Ship. I thought this command was only supposed to work when you're on the LP?

-Antimatter


Hi there,

The technology that lets you check the status of your ship or see what cargo you have in your hold even when you're not standing next to it, or inside it, also lets you examine the outside of spaceships that are parked next to your own. It's all done with remote cameras and sensors and radio links to a controller/viewer which you carry around with you.

If you don't believe me, then sell your ship and you will find that without a ship of your own you have to actually go the LP to admire the paintwork of the vessels.

Simple!

Regards,

Hazed


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