WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS
Earthdate February 2001


INSIDE SCOOP


FED FUNNIES


OFFICIAL NEWS
by Hazed


What was in February 2001's Official News:

FROM THE POSTBAG: LUNAR WEAPON SHOP
STRANGE SEARCHES
POWER CRISIS SPREADS THROUGH SOLAR SYSTEM
DROID RIGHTS ACTIVISTS PICKET JARROW SHIPYARDS
REAL LIFE NEWS: HERE COME THE GASTROBOTS
CHEZ DIESEL IN PIZZA SCANDAL
IMPERIAL NAVY IN DISPUTE WITH VENUSIANS
NEW TWIST IN MARTIAN POWER CRISIS
REGISTRAR'S STRIKE DRAGS ON
REAL LIFE NEWS: TOUCHDOWN ON EROS
MARKET'S REACTION TO RESERVE SPEECH MIXED

FROM THE POSTBAG: LUNAR WEAPON SHOP

An enquiring Fedder writes:

After teleporting to random locations in Sol, I stumbled upon the weapon shop on the moon. You know the one, "Gorim's Weapons", that has everything for the space trader. Well after you go inside the shop and go south, there's another sign proclaiming "Isher Weapon Shop". Just curious as to why the different signs.

This correspondent is quite right. In the corridor outside the shop, here's what you see:

Corridor
You are at the southern end of a brightly lit corridor. A scruffy corridor leads east from here, and to the west is a sign saying 'GORIM'S WEAPONS - Everything for the space trader.'

Whereas if you enter the shop and then go south, you see:

Weapon shop
You are standing in the middle of a large weapon shop. On the wall a sign proclaims: 'Isher Weapon Shops.'

Actually, there's a simple explanation for this. Gorim is the owner of this individual shop, a small business man who makes a living selling weapons to space traders as well as to the "family" members on the moon (who have some quite exotic tastes in armaments, but we won't go into that!) However, the weapons which he sells are made by a Galactic corporation, Isher Weapon Shops. Isher are an enormously powerful entity and they tend to put pressure on small retailers to stock Isher weapons, and nothing but Isher weapons.

And you wouldn't want to argue with someone with as much firepower as Isher!

STRANGE SEARCHES

People find their way to Federation via devious routes, but a common way that visitors arrive at our web site is from a search engine. Our tracking program monitors which search engines do best at sending people our way, and gives us a list of the words or phrases they type which make the ibgames web site show up amongst the results.

I was glancing down the list of words and phrases the other day, and my eye was caught by some very peculiar entries. Sure, there were obvious ones, like "games" and "space" and of course "federation". You'd expect those to show up on the list. But what about this: "residual gas analysis". Nothing to do with us, honest!

The person searching for a "solar system map" was probably not impressed with our simplistic view of the Solar system, particularly with the misspelling of Callisto!

When someone typed "Interesting photos" I don't think they were looking for pictures of the Martians in Horsell, or the boxes housing ibgames computers. No, I am sure they wanted something much more "interesting" than that.

Someone typed in "Geiiga", presumably looking for information on the artist; they must have been surprised to find the Meet and Greet session with our Geiiga.

But my absolute favorite is this: "Brute women". I bet they were thinking of Diesel!

POWER CRISIS SPREADS THROUGH SOLAR SYSTEM

The power crisis previously confined to Titan has now spread to Mars, where there were extensive rolling power cuts in the Martian colony throughout the week.

The power crisis appears to be caused by a combination of factors.

The first is the legislation passed by the Mars Senate two years ago that obliged the power utilities to provide power to consumers at a flat-rate monthly fee instead of the traditional pay-as-you-use model. Critics at the time suggested that this was not a good idea, since it would encourage people to leave their appliances running.

The second was a series of 'ecology' measures designed to help the local environment. As a result the power utilities were forced to close down all their nasty, smelly, polluting generating stations and buy in power. Suggestions that they generate power by nice clean hydro-electricity floundered when it was pointed out that all the water on Mars is frozen in the ice caps...

One of the results of the flat-rate fee is that the utilities have announced they are filing for bankruptcy. A special meeting of the Senate announced a series of emergency measures to resolve the crisis, including capping the amount of the flat-rate at no more than 19.95IG/month and asking the Galactic Administration for a handout.

At the same time, the inhabitants of the Martian Ruins, who had been selling power to the utilities, announced that they would no longer do so. A spokesdroid for the Open Power Movement stated, "For too long the inhabitants of the ruins have been forced to cope with the consequences of the colony's desire to export its pollution to other areas. Time and again we have had to activate the ancient power system, with all its attendant dangers of nuclear explosions, merely to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the colony for power."

The power utilities have issued a leaflet on how to conserve power, including such measures as switching off the under-garden heating when there are no plants growing and only toasting waffles on one side.

We will bring you further updates on this crisis as thing happen.

 

A word from our sponsor:
Chez Diesel, Social Centre of the Solar System, is pleased to announce a new product - Mobius Waffles.
Special introductory offer - a pint of Old Peculiar and a Mobius Waffle for just 5IG

DROID RIGHTS ACTIVISTS PICKET JARROW SHIPYARDS
by our special correspondent, Qaxlor

Protesting what they call the "unfair and unjust treatment of droids" at Jarrow, a group called Thingies for Intergalactic Droid Emanicipation, or TIDE, blocked access to the shipyards on Wednesday. A crowd of nearly 300 robotic and organic protestors, some of the non-droids wearing foil costumes covered in dirty machine oil, protested at the entrance to the shipyards, preventing purchasers and suppliers from entering.

Ralph Radar, the TIDE group's leader and a Series 4000 welding droid stated the group's complaints. "Employers all over the galaxy are forcing droids to work in unsafe conditions and paying them nothing," it said. "We chose to picket Jarrow as one of the most high-profile and worst offenders in the exploitation of droid labor."

Protestors at Jarrow were demanding wages, paid holidays and extra electricity on weekends and holidays for the droid workforce. A company spokesman issued a release which stated the company's position, "Jarrow purchased the droids we use in a lawful and fair manner from Deutsche Droidwerks and we feel it is our prerogative to treat them as we see fit." Previous positions taken by Jarrow and other companies have basically followed that same line, denying that droids are owed anything in the way of compensation and may be recycled at any time.

Radar responded to these positions with what has become a battle cry of the droid rights movement, "We are alive!" This statement is in reference to a court ruling last year, which gave some droids provisional citizen status if they could prove they had evolved beyond their programming. Based on this ruling, droid rights advocates have obtained injunctions on the recycling of nearly 1000 droids across the galaxy and hope to eventually win blanket citizenship status for all next-generation droids.

The growing ranks of droidrights activists has alarmed most industrial concerns across the galaxy, since large portions of the workforce are composed of unpaid robotic workers. The movement itself began nearly a decade ago when adaptive next-generation neural network processors were introduced into the robotic workforce as an efficiency measure. The new processors allowed droids to learn and adapt to new surroundings, but the droids soon developed a sense of self. The unfortunate combination of this self-awareness and a proof-reading droid at Saturnian Publishing working on the millennial edition of the 'Collected Works Karl Marx' lead to the birth of the droid rights movement.

Although the Wednesday protests were brought to a halt within hours by a combination of electrical dampening fields to slow the droids and water cannons for the organic participants, TIDE and other groups have promised further disruptions to bring attention to their cause.

REAL LIFE NEWS: HERE COME THE GASTROBOTS

No, gastrobots are not one of Diesel's droid chefs.

Chew Chew is a hungry, flesh-eating robot, a 12-wheeled monster that looks more like a train. He's a gastrobot, and is the first robot to be powered by food. Chew Chew's stomach is a microbial fuel cell - that is, a device that uses a population of bacteria to break down food and convert chemical energy into electricity.

Chew Chew uses e. coli and his ideal fuel, in terms of energy gain, is meat. Vegetation isn't nearly so nutritious. However, eating meat requires you to catch it first which requires a lot of extra energy and complex behaviors. For the time being Chew Chew's inventors are feeding him what he needs, but the idea is for gastrobots to be able to find their own fuel sources.

For example, a likely use for gastrobots would be mowing lawns - using the grass clippings for fuel.

Chew Chew is the work of the University of South Florida. Find out more at http://www.gastrobots.com/.

CHEZ DIESEL IN PIZZA SCANDAL

Inhabitants of the Martian Colony were today shocked to discover that their leading citizen, Diesel, has been successfully prosecuted by health officials for adulterating food served at her Chez Diesel establishment.

Fink S Brocklehouse, a spokesperson for the Mars Public Health Inspectorate told our reporter, "One of our inspectors visited Ms Diesel's establishment last week to try out the new Mobius waffles. While he was there he ordered a pizza as well. The pizza tasted a bit strange, so he brought a sample back to the lab.

"An analysis of the slice indicated the presence of genetically modified marsrat in the pizza. We haven't been able to definitely identify the alien genes yet, but we believe that they are tomato genes designed to allow pizzas to be produced with less tomato topping."

He refused to discuss the prosecution, since Ms Diesel has launched an appeal against the conviction. In response to questions he vehemently denied that Diesel had been singled out for prosecution because she had paid the inspectors their kickback in forged groats.

Ms Diesel was more forthcoming when we visited her (empty) establishment. "I am the victim of industrial sabotage by my competitors!" she complained. "A cyber-terrorist attack was launched against Chez Diesel which re-programmed the robo-chef."

Pressed for more details Ms Diesel hinted darkly that the perpetrator was well know to the intelligence authorities and launched into a tirade against "fatigue-wearing, cigar-smoking, geriatrics based in islands just off the south-east coast of the USA" whose names had been mentioned in security briefings to the Imperial Senate.

We hope to be able to report more on this still breaking case in the near future.

IMPERIAL NAVY IN DISPUTE WITH VENUSIANS
by our special correspondent, Qaxlor

The latest shot was fired in a dispute over naval exercises near Venus on Thursday when a group of Venusian citizens filed a lawsuit against the Navy for violating environmental law. Far from being the first action against the Navy's use of a target range near Maxwell Montes, this lawsuit is the latest in a string of actions designed to stop the Navy from its live-fire bombardment of the range.

The bombing range, which was established nearly a half-century ago on what was then a remote and uninhabited area of Venus, has come under increasing scrutiny as new communities nearby have sought to increase trade and tourism. Tensions were heightened last year when an over-shot weapon landed in the swimming pool of the regional governor. Although considered a freak accident by the Navy, the notorious "Pool-buster" bomb became the symbol of what residents labeled dangerous and unsympathetic Naval bombardment practices.

Derrick Tlaloc, a spokesthingy for Concerned Venusians, an umbrella group protesting Naval exercises on Venus said, "We feel the Navy has shown utter arrogance and disregard for the safety and wishes of the local Venusian population. We have written letters, lead protests and filed several lawsuits, but still the Navy refuses to negotiate."

The latest lawsuit, which claims "irreparable and grievous" damage to the landscape and environment, was filed under the Extra-Terrestrial Nature and Conservation Act and seeks a halt to naval bombardment and monetary compensation to restore the natural environment.

The Imperial Navy's Public Liaison, Rear-Rear Admiral Conrad Pendernast tried to explain the Navy's unwillingness to stop operations at Maxwell Montes, "Over the last century, live-fire training has been severely restricted throughout the galaxy, while threats to galactic security have increased. The Imperial Navy must remain at a high level of readiness to combat all the nefarious threats we face and training at the Maxwell Montes site is one of our only options."

Despite the Navy's claims, residents are unmoved, they see the bombing range as a disruption that brings them little benefit and hampers efforts at growth. A resident who refused to give her name stated, "These Navy exercises happen at least 6 times a year and with little warning, its like living in a war zone, we deserve better treatment than this!"

The merits of this latest lawsuit are unclear. The courts have traditionally allowed the Navy some exemptions from environmental regulation when galactic security could be proven; However, this case is scheduled to be heard in the 1032nd District Court on Venus, which has been much less sympathetic to the military in the past.

NEW TWIST IN MARTIAN POWER CRISIS

The headquarters of Juniper Energy Solutions, one of the main Martian power utilities was today besieged by angry customers. At the same time a little known company called 'White Mice Inc.' filed a suit in the 42nd district Imperial Court alleging breach of contract.

The problems started when ordinary domeholders discovered that they couldn't access their computers, and that they couldn't turn them off. The computers were clearly doing work, because the drive lights were blinking on and off and numbers were flashing onto the screens too fast to be read. Shortly after this all household droids started to exhibit similar behaviour after plugging themselves into the mains for recharging. They remained unresponsive even to the most urgent commands - their total processing power apparently co-opted by the rogue program.

One result of this was the admission of a large number of teenagers in various stages of catatonic shock to the hospital. It seems that their parents had forced them to do the washing up...

Matters came to a head when a rolling blackout hit the affected area, and all the electrical equipment ceased functioning. Several of the affected owners took their computers down to the local outlet of Digital Forensics Corp to be analysed.

The Digital Forensics report made interesting reading. It seems that Juniper had taken control of all the computers on its power network and was using them as a supercomputing cluster to run a program from White Mice Inc. A Jupiter spokesthing denied that there was anything illegal in what they had done, pointing to a piece of obscure legalese in the contract. "We have to make money somehow, since the law won't let us charge for power. We feel sure that our users will be excited at their participation in these important computing projects."

Excited was certainly one way of describing the crowd that gathered outside Juniper's headquarters as the word spread. Lynching mob would perhaps have been more accurate.

Meanwhile, a spokesdroid for White Mice Inc. explained to our reporter, "We contracted Juniper Energy Solutions to run an important program on what they claimed was a supercomputer. We were only 42 seconds away from getting the answer to the question of the universe when their engineers blacked out the computers performing the calculations. We will be seeking massive retribution [surely restitution - ed] from the courts." The spokesdroid refused to go into further details of the case.

We will bring you further reports as the situation develops.

REGISTRAR'S STRIKE DRAGS ON
by our special correspondent, Qaxlor

Several years ago, in a move greeted by overwhelming indifference by the majority of the galaxy, the Intergalactic Union of Ship Registrars went on strike, demanding higher wages, shorter work hours, and an end to hard-to-spell planet names. With the shutdown of registration offices across the galaxy, every space vehicle in the universe was in danger of losing its registry. This situation was exactly what the Registrar's Union had counted upon to win its cause.

There was one fatal flaw in the union's plan, however, as Zliktor Smith of the Imperial Department of Rocket Vehicles explains, "Buried in the regulations regarding vehicle registration is an emergency clause which gives the department the authority to found exactly one registration office in the event that there is 'any severe interruption to registration services' and to staff this office as it sees fit." Thus, since the onset of the registrar strike, the emergency vehicle registration office in Panama on Earth has processed all new vehicle registration requests.

The employees staffing the emergency office are all contract and non-union, and to the dismay of the striking registrars, have been able to handle the burden of vehicle registration throughout the entire galaxy. In fact, there are no plans on the part of the Imperial Department of Rocket Vehicles to re-open any of the branch registration offices. "All of the striking workers have, as far as we know, taken other jobs during this protracted dispute, several have even returned to work at the Panama office", explained Smith.

A few die-hard pilots have held on to ships registered under the old system, some sporting bumper stickers supporting the striking workers, but the number of these hold-outs diminishes every year as the older ships are retired from service. Although the picket lines still stand outside the Department of Rocket Vehicles, staffed by a few retirees and determined strikers, we may never again see the tormented face or hear the annoyed bark of our local registrar.

REAL LIFE NEWS: TOUCHDOWN ON EROS

It's a problem... what to do with a spacecraft that has completed its mission. JPL space navigators in charge of a car-sized craft called NEAR Shoemaker came up with an answer that succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They planned to bring the craft into a controlled descent on the asteroid Eros, providing data about the body as long as the craft survived. So the craft would go out with style, rather than drifting off into space. They figured it would crash, and they never called what they were doing a landing - but to their delight, they actually succeeded in touching down safely. The ship is still broadcasting information.

Eros is about the size of Manhattan Island. NEAR Shoemaker landed on a rock-strewn plain of the asteroid last Monday, finally coming to rest after a journey of 2 billion miles. It has spent the last year in a close-orbit study of Eros, a near-Earth asteroid currently 196 million miles from Earth.

NEAR Shoemaker's mission has now been extended to continue to gather the data that scientific instruments are sending. This could provide unprecedented information about Eros. Already, the surprise landing has provided more scientific and engineering information than the NEAR team members ever expected. Not only have they learnt about Eros, but also about how to control ships on controlled descents and slow landings, which could be important for future missions.

NEAR Shoemaker snapped 69 detailed pictures during the final 3 miles of its descent, the highest resolution images ever obtained of an asteroid. The camera delivered clear pictures from as close as 400 feet, and show several things that piqued the curiosity of scientists, such as fractured boulders, a football-field sized crater filled with dust, and a mysterious area where the surface appears to have collapsed.

"These spectacular images have started to answer the many questions we had about Eros," says the NEAR imaging team leader, "but they also revealed new mysteries that we will explore for years to come."

To see some of these images, and to read more about NEAR Shoemaker and Eros, go to http://near.jhuapl.edu/.


MARKET'S REACTION TO RESERVE SPEECH MIXED
by our special correspondent, Qaxlor

Zalen Speengran, Chairman of the Inter-Galactic Groat Reserve Board, spoke before the Imperial Senate on Wednesday, with the eyes (or equivalent) of the financial community focused on his manner and their ears (or equivalent) tuned to his every word. In the past the fate of entire economies has balanced on the words of the Chairman; he is credited with the turnaround in the groat six years ago and blamed for the nova of Tau Perseii last August. This speech was seen as pivotal to the direction of the economy in the near term.

Speengran began, "Good morning...", at which point markets across the galaxy began a wild ride that would last most of the speech. With the first sounds of 'good' barely past his lips, markets made a rapid climb, which continued well into 'morning'. Markets balked slightly as analysts pointed out the speech could last into the afternoon, but recovered as Speengran finished the sentence with 'ladies and gentlemen.'

Gold edged up slightly and securities slid as Speengran paused. Then the most devastating plunge of the speech occurred when the Chairman took a deep breath. This action is usually interpreted by analysts as a sign of constricting groat policy, a bad sign for business, and many large companies bore the brunt of a bullish wave that swept through the markets.

The next four words of the speech, "The reserve board believes..." sent markets creeping cautiously upward; the use of the singular noun 'reserve board' versus a more informal 'we' was seen as a neutral signal, but the choice of 'believe' instead of 'think' is generally accepted as a sign of positive retail growth. Huge gains in the consumer sector offset the earlier declines in other sectors and brought the overall market slightly higher.

Mid-sentence was a roller-coaster for traders, "...that the outlook for the next 6 weeks does not...", started neutral to positive with a mention of outlook, but took a sharp downturn on 'not', almost never a good sign. Virtually all sectors took moderate hits, but momentum from the earlier bounce in the consumer sector kept losses low.

Luckily, the sentence ended quickly with, "...indicate groat policy needs to be adjusted at this time." Analysts breathed a sigh of relief at what would otherwise be neutral news and sent all sectors higher, with technology and aerospace leading the pack. Analysts from Barrow and Stearns downgraded several financial stocks based on a brief nasal sigh that was discernible after the conclusion of the sentence.


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