Talk:PAW Collab

Sue

Not sure on when this story is supposed to be set but looking at the dates given in the 'little things' I assumed it was at least 2038.

I am aiming with this character to show a bit of technology from the near future to contrast with the anti technological bias in the blind pig storys. Today prosthesis are about roughly 1/6th as strong as normal human limbs but research into stuff like Dielectric elastomers points towards possible fully functional prosthetic limbs in the forseeable future, even DARPA has doled out funding with the mission of developing a prosthetic arm as functionally capable as a human arm by 2009.

--Devin 06:13, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Good idea there, Devin. This story is one of the "indeterminites" - the scene-setting itself should be around 2038, but the vignettes themselves are going to fit in the period from the onset of "blowtorch fever" and TFOR all the way through to the stories "present". I think we might have to specify the time period every time we shift to another vignette. — ShadowWolf 14:09, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Page Purpose?

I can't make head nor tail of this page. I think the story needs to be broken off onto its own page, with links to character backgrounds instead. What I see is that it's somehow embedded into the middle of the page. And that makes me go huh? --Buck 22:18, 5 October 2007 (EDT)

The page isn't really "public", per-se. Sure, we're letting people see the story as it evolves, but at the moment we've got it formatted in the way that worked the best for us when we started the collaboration. But I'll change the page about and move the story so it's the first thing visible. — ShadowWolf 22:30, 5 October 2007 (EDT)

Just my two cents here, but wouldn't it be more beneficial for the setting as a whole if the character descriptions were kept on a seperate page altogether? I'm just asking because Alexei's description is seperate and things might get messy if everyone writing in PaW does the same.

Getting a 'Complete' story out of this

Howdy. This here is just a little thought on how much more writing we need to get this story done and presentable.

Now we have beginnings for all the characters atm, so thats good. Now for a bare bones example lets say we also need a middle and an end. If everyone writes two more snippets of size similar to what they already have this will if you look at the amount already written be a tremendous boon to the word count.

The goal should be that your middle snippet describe something towards the middle of the night. Bits of the game, conversation, getting something from goordy, intellectual monologues(I know how much you guys love these;) ).

And the last snippet describes something towards the end of the night. People leaving, yourself leaving, an oath to stay up all night and drink as much as possible I don't know you figure it out.

But this will at the very least give us a story which is what we are aiming for. We can add snippets of cool ideas on after word or during but we should at least have a story with a beginning a middle and an end. Otherwise if we don't keep this in mind we risk being stuck on what to do with this story a month or two down the road, which i will not let happen.

The advantage of this? Everyone only has to write a couple more segments of whatever size they can manage and this puppy will have enough meat to be considered done!

Order could be a problem but my advice is to just not worry so much about it and write what you can. If you can write something in response to something someone else wrote go for it! If not, just write as though its the middle or the end of the evening and if its the end keep in mind whether or not people are still there is all. Thats it.

At this point, it's clear that the story is not progressing well. Why? I think it's because we don't really have a story yet. We have an overall goal, yes -- "let's introduce readers to the PAW setting" -- but without a story, we might as well be writing a travelogue/documentary.

I have a suggestion for the overall plot: This story is about Mr. Peaches' ferretgirl. Specifically, it's the tale of how she comes to terms with her new body. The other characters are pretty much accustomed to being TFORs, and we can use their backstories to both (a) give readers info on the setting, and (b) help the ferretgirl get used to what she is. Yes? No? Cubist 02:54, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Ideas

I've been thinking of the editing we're going to have to do after we finish writing this and there aren't many solutions to making the story easier to follow. The problem it has, currently, is that the shifts in perspective are rather jarring and the tense and voice change for each part.

There are an innumerable number of ways to do the edit, but there are only two that would solve the above problem:

1. pick a viewpoint character and rewrite all the parts so that character is telling the story
2. use third-person omniscient
3. Select a standard tense and voice, then expand and condense the different parts so they are longer and have the events overlap, told from the different characters

The first option would involve a lot of work by all involved people and selecting who to have as the character narrating the story is always a chore. Changing the viewpoint to third-person omniscient would seem to be the easiest, but it would remove a lot of the unique voice of the different authors involved. And the third choice isn't much different from the first in the amount of work required, but it is a much more commonly seen format and is generally used for round-robin type stories. If anything, the third choice will preserve the unique voices and also provide a platform for the different authors to extend their characterization a lot. — ShadowWolf 19:53, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

Speaking as a guy who once wrote a short story with 11 different first-person viewpoints, I don't see what's so horrible about having multiple different perspective-shifts. As long as you clearly identify the 'breakpoints', like we're doing right now, where's the problem? Cubist 05:15, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

I think I have to agree with Cubist on this. Option 1 would require cutting out massive portions of other peoples snippets(just look at dash's or sue's introduction for instance.) and the other two options would be very labour intensive and may not come across the way they were originally written afterwards.

Although I cant think of to many examples of published stuff I have read with this many different writers working on a single story like this all doing their own different thing I have seen this happen multiple times on the TSA List itself and considering that not a whole lot of the writers on the list are being paid for anything they write it is almost always an easy thing to forgive.

--Devin 15:50, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

Bard is the one who started the whole thing. I kinda agree with it, which is why I like the third option the most – it gives us a way to preserve everything that exists and will also lessen the jarring nature of the currently existing parts. Of course, we could always edit the smaller sections together into single, coherent wholes :) — ShadowWolf 17:18, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

1.21

Good couple pieces by felix and peaches here, I really liked how you handled rosa's sense of dispair peaches! I got an idea for sue for after rosa leaves the washroom just before anyone starts on a follow up to this newest one of rosa's and if not up tonight its because I fell asleep at the computer and it should be up tomorrow night at the latest.

--Devin 04:23, 2 January 2008 (EST)

I'd like to call the one after yours, Devin. I've got some good ideas as well. Arrow Quivershaft 05:23, 2 January 2008 (EST)

Go ahead with it :) I've got a part in the works for Scott that fits between the latest Dash and Rosa parts — ShadowWolf 15:38, 2 January 2008 (EST)

Minor Question

This is just a small question but its been bugging me for a while. The character description says that Scott is two meters tall... but isn't that around 6'7" or something?

Yes. He's a big sumbitch. Cubist 18:43, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Regarding Coati

Coati's description mentions that she doesn't have a shapeshifting ability, but it mentions under "On Flight" that she used to be a raven and in "Repayment" it says she was a coyote (and male), so I'm just wondering how that would work and what animal she was actually mixed with since the setting rules says TFOR can only blend a person with one organism. -- Lloyd

Coati is actually a colony organization of undifferentiated cells (think "The Thing" from the movies). This means that she absorbs genetic information from biological cells she consumes, along with memories. So, if she absorbs enough of a body she reforms herself into that body, be it coyote, raven, or coati. As I recall, my plans for her was that she was initially an animal, not human. Can't say for sure anymore though. Anyway, the crux of all this is that the one animal she "bonded with" is closer to an amoeba than anything else. Everything else is a "natural ability". -- Michael Bard

About The Technology

I can understand the death of Windows, it's not that far away as it is now, but I am having a few issues with the widespread Linux/BSD viruses. Especially in an embedded system like Prosthetic Legs. For a Linux virus to be widespread, it would have to work on every possible architecture. Currently we have x86, x64, SPARC, PowerPC, and a ton of others for embedded systems such as phones, calculators, and gaming systems. In the 30-50 years forward that this takes place, who knows how many architectures there would be, and each and ever one of them would have to have a virus custom compiled for it.

For the sake of the story, lets say they chose a Global Integrated Architecture Standard, call it GIAS for short, and any embedded system would have to support the GIAS instruction set. With a universal instruction set, hackers and such could write viruses for only one architecture. Even then, an embedded system would have it's own flavor of Linux built for it, with it's own unique protocols. The hackers would have to be maliciously targeting only that brand of embedded Linux, ignoring broader and far easier mainstream targets. Thats how Linux and OSX stayed virus free for so long. Windows is so much more widespread than the competition, and hackers want their work known, so they target as large an audience as they can. It's not all that hard to hack a Mac. [1]. If you have a mac yourself, just hold down "Command+S" when you boot it up. It will load right into SuperUser mode, a fancy name for Root. Thats how I put myself on my schools sudoers list. But spammers gain almost nothing from putting botnets on macs, when PC's are so much more widespread.

The other problem is that to be infected with a virus, the system has to have contact with an outside network. I'm not sure why prosthetic legs would need internet access. It's far safer to upgrade the firmware through a computer with a firewall, virus scanner, and virtual Machine. The only way I can think of an embedded system becoming compromised is by having full internet access at all times, or by the firmware file on the manufacturers website being compromised. Either way is possible, but with Beta test prosthetics, the firmware would be closely guarded.

Finally, Linux is open source. While this means that any hacker who wants to can just look under the hood for exploits, it also means that there is a growing community of hobbyists and developers fixing things as they are broken. The collapse may have killed a few of the main developers, or even most of the Kernel team, but with how widespread the developers are, someone would know what they were doing.

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed the first steps of the PAW universe. I hope it can take the place of TBP in my favorites. I stumbled across TBP a while back, and thought it was some of the best science fiction I've read in a long while. It saddened me that so many of the great stories seemed to just fade into dust. So the idea of a restart has me very excited. I really hope it outlasts it's first day jitters. I may write a story in the universe, but my writing has not proven to be good for story telling. At the very least, my feeble attempts would make everyone elses look all the better. --Concerned Reader 21:37, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Great googly moogly! (j/k)

Seriously, though, the issue has come up before. I believe the argument was that it is a hack that uses some semi-fixed, almost always there service as the route of entry, and that it does a self-compile of the code to be handled. Although this never did come up - it's something that would be possible at some point in the future.

On another note, well... You are not wrong that Linux supports a singularly massive number of platforms. What you are missing is that the current PC industry is a massive monoculture. It's different when moving to embedded systems, industrial systems, etc... However, even there it is moving towards a monoculture - ARM/Atom for embedded and small form-factor platforms, PPC/Cell for high-end computational work, Blackfin/OMAP for multi-function media work, etc... You target x86 for the PC system and ARM/Atom for the embedded system and you nail a huge number of systems.

And yes, the legs would be better with a "physical connection for firmware upgrade", but you are also talking about massively complex systems that could benefit from being able to have firmware upgrades slipstreamed in :)

In the end, however, this setting makes some concessions to make it easier to write for. One of those things is that it doesn't enforce a single view of what is possible on the author - unless someone else has stated otherwise, we allow the authors a free hand to play with things like "viruses for linux are common" to help a story along.

And... Thank you for reading. We have gotten a bit sidelined with real life, but the PAW Collaboration authors are working on getting this story off hiatus and rolling towards completion again.

--ShadowWolf 22:28, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Prompt Feedback, rate seller A+++

So it's an extension of current wifi and wideband networks? That could lead to some interesting stories if the network was ever brought down. Possibly a week of darkness story arc.

regarding self compiling code, linux basically does this now with the whole ./autogen.sh && make && sudo make install. Its not hard to believe it would be even more streamlined in the future. The thought of Autocompiling Viruses is scaring me now. The only way around it would be something like an md5 checksum check before every compile, or even scanning the source code with some powerful heuristics to catch malicious code.

Still, the story always takes precedence to explanations. I know this from my experiences as an amateur video editor. It just has to look good, it doesn't have to make perfect sense. Who cares if his watch switched hands?

Now imagine if the Asus EEE line extended to prosthetic legs, with subtypes for different species. "Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play" indeed. Now there's an idea. Another idea stolen from netbooks running linux is the "oh shit" button that restores a backup from a separate, read only partition. Meant as a safety against idiots mucking around with permissions and such, in the case of any embedded tech, this would be very useful. Especially if you could save your settings and calibrations to it. I also still like the idea of an open standard architecture. I almost wanted to call it GAS for Global Architecture Standard.

Every now and then, life steps in front of you, as immovable as a wall. It's our choice if we crash right through it, or try and escape around it. Either choice is valid. I'm an escapist by nature, why else would I be reading science fiction on the internet? By personal experience I have learned that crashing through hurts far less in the end. You may pick up a few bruises, but in the end, you're back on your way much faster. Though the third choice may be even better. when life sticks its foot out in front of you, walk up and introduce yourself. Then ask it out to dinner. We go through life much too fast. Slow it down a bit and enjoy it. Take care of problems, sure, but have some fun as well. I've been waiting since high school, I can wait a bit more.

Also, This may be the future: Stimcell computing. It has Stimcell in the name, so it must be good! (j/k). I am neither expressing nor making fun of views with this post. :)

--Concerned Reader 04:28, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

On Polyton and the Hotel

Quick questions, is Polyton County the name of the city or the region it's located in? Also, is the hotel that the Whistle is attatched to still a hotel or is it now an apartment building? --Lloyd

'Polyton County' is the name of the county - the city has, IIRC, never been named. I don't have my original notes from the discussions that generated the setting anymore (Okay, I have them - somewhere in an archive - it's just a hard thing to do in searching that archive). And the Hotel is not a classic hotel anymore. It is still a 'Hotel' in that it rents rooms - nominally on a week-to-week basis - instead of renting complete apartments (which implies separate kitchen/bath and such). There are certain rooms in the hotel that do have all of that - those suites, however, are generally taken by the Teefers that squatted the building during the collapse and are now the legal owners.

As to the name of the city... I think we decided to go with the whole "un-named city" bit that TBP used, but decided to give it a much more "concrete" location than "somewhere in the rust belt" by putting it in New York State. To give the setting a bit more to work with than what was provided to the TBP writers, "Polyton County" was created as the location of the city.

Anyway... Thanks for the interest in the setting. PAW needs some more people writing stories using it as a setting :)

-- ShadowWolf 19:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Would it be ok if I used Polyton in place of the city name for titles or names (like that of a hospital or police station for example)? --Lloyd