unforum

[Dorkmaster]

AHA! So I'm right! Baklava guy CANNOT BE THE GUY!!! HAHAHA!


just kiddin.

[scibtag]

Actually, I just realized that the whole connection was meaningless to my point. Whether or not the high ranking officer and the guy from key_lime and candidate are the same, it's still evidence that the ship is in earth orbit. After all the two men are sitting in boston, once again resting on the SPEC that this is Boston, Earth, and talking about how the Apocalypso just dropped into orbit.

[princeofthesword]

I would like to say that, according to First Strike, ONI ships (cover yachts or Prowlers) don't always adhere to Cole Protocol, much to Hi-Com's annoyance. When Reach fell, an ONI ship promptly headed to Earth, a fact that was pointed out but mostly ignored, given the severity of the incident at Reach.

Not saying this has any direct impact on our current events, but worth noting for future reference. It sounded like Ackerson, and the rest of Hi-Com, were very aware that many (all?) sections of ONI frequently ignored the Cole Protocol altogether for the sake of speed. This particular incident was also largely ignored and went unpunished, considering.

Even the mighty Cortana refused to deviate from Protocol when Lt. Haverson (ONI, First Strike) suggested a quick jump to Earth from Halo, aboard the Covenant ship. They settled for an intermediate step back to Reach. Interesting that Cortana is so set on following Protocol to the letter, yet ONI units (from which she was created) so easily circumvent it. At great risk, I needlessly add.

Plus, back to the Halo pulse range, while Guilty Spark does mention that Halo has a pulse of roughly 25,000 light years, there's more weirdness in the same level, Two Betrayals, that doesn't make sense to me. The Chief exits the Control Room, kills bad guys, and there's this huge towering pillar above you, and Cortana's mumbling about these phase pulse generators that are Halo's primary weapon (the big tower thing). Something of that nature. However, she then says "The power levels are enormous; I can't even begin to calculate the pulse's range." What?? Our super-calculator chick can't calculate the range, and yet even Guilty Spark said Halo has a range of 25,000 light years? Over-sight, hind-sight, blind-sight? Someone make sense of this for me, if it's possible. Farewell.

[GunsmithCat]

Because even 343 isn't terribly specific:

[scibtag]

[MNPundit]

[princeofthesword]

I'm not much of a mathematician, Scibtag, so I'll take your learned word for it *grins* While I agree with you that the numbers are huge, as is the power levels, I just don't get why she says "range." Why not say "I can't even begin to calculate the power levels required to reach that range"? Sounds like she's referring to being unable to calculate the range, not the power levels. That's what I'm not getting. Might just be a "typo," as I notice there are a few of them between Dietz's "The Flood" and the actual Halo ingame dialogue.

Any clarifications would be appreciated, and remember, I'm mathematically illiterate. Thanks!

MNPundit: I'd LOVE to read your novel, let us know when you're done. Farewell.

[scibtag]

[MNPundit]

[scibtag]

[MNPundit]

It seems to be either way. To you they jumped, to me I think the blue mist bubble pulled them after the Ascendant-Justice. B5's hyperspace... well they use jump gates and larger ships have jump engines. They can create a portal into hyperspace. Battles have been fought in hyperspace, ships can hide there without moving, and there are nav-beacons in it as well.

[princeofthesword]

Forgive me, Scibtag, as I'm not meaning to sound like a fly buzzing annoyingly around your ear. Meaning, I'm not trying to sound like an idiot or start an "argument." So, that said, here I go.

Cortana has spent hours in Halo's control room (months, weeks, for an AI), which leads me to believe that she has a fairly good understanding of Halo's power levels, and general workings of the system altogether. "This ring is not a cudgel, you barbarian, it's something else..." She's not calculating pulse ranges or power levels based on MC's suit sensors, she's using what she's learned from the Halo CR, or so I take it.

Therefore, she knows what she's talking about, and yet she says she doesn't know the pulse's range. To me, not being able to even begin to calculate the pulse's range in AI terms is unthinkable, maximum effective radius of 25,000 LYs or not. Yes, as said before, it could mean that its effective radius doesn't equate its total pulse radius (hence the need for more Halos for maximum efficiency). I still just find this to be odd, and no offense, I don't feel that it's explained well enough yet. The level is Two Betrayals, after all. There's something more going on, I feel. Sorry to pester *grins*

On to Dietz, the guy's a field medic, knows his military stuff, but isn't the best writer in the world. I give him my sympathy vote, as anyone stuck with transcribing a story as indepth as the Halo game would have a hard time anyway. But I do believe that even though the Halo Bible is not a completely static story (meaning, I think the core is there, but tangents can be tweaked as time goes by, etc.), holy hellfire would be rained down upon Dietz in the form of fiery ninjas of death and the like, if he didn't adhere to Bungie Doctrine. So he either didn't have a good editor, or "insert possibility here."

As for Slipspace, First Strike (as most of you know) has the best references about how the tech works, along with how it can get screwed up. Don't know much about it, though. Check out the links in the Haloverse and ILB page for links to useful resources, if some of us haven't already. For those who haven't read the book itself, it's worth a read. Speaking to everyone in general, of course. A friendly farewell.

[scibtag]

There's something more going on in all of Halo pretty much, but this really isn't the place to discuss it. All of this and more has pretty much been said over at the Halo Story Page. As for data she might have recovered from Halo's Control Room, a lot of people, me included, believe that Cortana knows a lot more than she's letting on, even before she enters Halo's computers.

When she leaves the Control Room computer, however, she looses the processing and storage capacity to access the data she retrieved. This is discussed extensively in First Strike. She is either making decisions off the small amount of data about the ring she's been able to index (pun not intended) or off of the data from the MC's suit sensors. This is probably why all she has to go off is the power output, and why she is unable to calculate the range of the pulse, for reasons discussed before.

And don't worry about bugging me. I'm bored for the rest of summer and analyzing and debating the nature of ancient alien artifacts and ai constructs is always fun.

[SuperJerms]

[sam]

Your wish is my command master (twitches nose)...


All of the preceding dicsussion is interesting, but a little removed from the CP issue.

My point waay back at the beginning of the thread (no I didn't start the thread, and if you want to look on this as a hyjacking so be it) was that from what we can ascertain from the dialogue in the Halo game, Cortana says it was a blind jump... which I assume to mean random jump, and out of all the locations in all the galaxy, the POA just happened to end up next to the the Ring (lucky eh).

when in fact... Cortana had previous info about the location and wanted to check it out

this says to me that Cortana lied to Keyes.

this worries me - should an AI be able to do that? If so, do we assume that the AI's in ILB can also lie?

if so, should we be blindly following the requests of a malfunctioning, slightly demented AI... eg: we could end up being the ones that reveal the location of Earth to the Covies (~although I am reminded of the plaques on the Pioneer and Voyager probes... and how far could they travel between launch and if/whenever the Covies find them)

now [slightly META], if we decided that the AI we're dealing with here does not inspire enough confidence to allow us to continue helping her/it, then the game would quickly dissolve... not really the outcome the PM's are after I guess.

um. lost my train of thought.. damn ADD and work... please discuss amongst yourselves while I try to remember what the hell I was talking about.

Sam