HFQ Official Snippet #11

Kufat wrote:To expand on that, checksums to detect copying errors have been in use on Earth for over a millennium. (You don't need to decrypt ciphertext to detect an error and request retransmission.)

If you compare the semaphore with morse code, the semaphore is actually much better. You can flash 1 letter at a time instead of like morse where 1 letter consists of several impulses over time. The semaphore should have much less transmission errors than morse code.

Another thing to consider is that a semaphore uses patterns to transmit information which means that some patterns are valid while others may be invalid which introduces a form of error detection. Also, it may be that some patterns are used for whole words and not just letters which increases the throughput considerably, and on top of that we have a human operator that also acts as an error detector and corrector in some cases.

All in all, in my opinion the semaphore system is probably more efficient than morse when it comes to point2point communication.

Joat42

This is the best description of the semaphore system, which is significantly different from what most people expect.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Safehold/229/1

Thanks RFC - hope your flight back is safe and not too tiring.

i think they go for translation of kohdy journal. Nynyan not going give journal out of hand and i think she want see tranlate process on her own eyes, dont forget big part of jornal is mystery for SSK.
i think nynyan had original jornal or copy to the last world ready as soon merlin take explanation. I think she drop jornal on Merlin as soon as posible and demant translate.

Randomiser wrote:Jeff and Joat you misunderstand me; the unacceptable security risk is not that the airbuses might get spotted, it is revealing the existence of the airbuses to all the people you are transporting. Given the suffering they have allowed in the past to maintain that security it is much more likely that you have just guessed wrong than that there is some mysterious, unguessable reason it's worth while throwing all that security away.

I think it reads much more like ETathome suggests, Merlin has spotted a hole in his transport capabilities and might as well get it sorted just in case he needs to transport multiple members of the inner circle sometime in the future. It's an afterthought. At least that's how I see it.

Could be. And yeah, my wildest guessing doesn't come up with any good plan of which "hey, all of you, get in this flying servant of Shan-wei..." is a crucial part. But converting one from cargo transport to personnel transport just for that possible future need - under circumstances that may not be much saner - seems pretty strained too. If that's it - I'm not saying it's not, just that, as guesses go, it's still wild - then we should expect some more reason to think that there's a point to it than we've seen so far. Being able to bring three or four people to the Cave in a single vehicle more comfortably, or more people in one at all, seems to be a capability unlikely to be so useful as to justify diversion of resources or even attention, unless that air lorry conversion is both trivial and doesn't compromise cargo carriage much or at all.

Why the translation of St. Kohdy's journal would be better in the Cave than anywhere else is hard to fathom too. If it's a matter of having someone able to read Spanish, then Owl "in person" is overkill - he's not very much "in person" even there, and if someone needs to know Spanish for it, Nimue's got high-speed data access to learn it in a jiff, and/or Owl could project a translated text in the field of vision of anyone with the Federation-tech contact lenses.

Agree with you entirely about the translation, Jeff, they can do it anywhere. Aivah writes out a copy of the original, Merlin reads it, so does OWL through his eyes, OWL coms him the translation which Merlin writes down. There you go.

Agree the airbuses seem a bit random. OTOH we have only ever seen one airvan in use at a time and I'm beginning to wonder just how big the transport fleet is.

Bruno Behrends wrote:There might be other reasons that make it important for Nynian to pay a visit to Zion in person.

It might for instance be necessary for her to talk to someone personally. Someone who she knows may trust her and only her and not just any other sister. Nynian has had quite a position in Zion society after all and must personally know an enormous number of important people one of whom may be about to play a decisive role in whatever plan Nynian is pursuing at the moment.

Or there is some other task only the leader of the sisters in person can perform due to special knowledge or possession of some artifact. Like inputting some password to access a computer or disable a booby trap or activating a truth detector or god knows what.

Another possibility is 1) Nynian used to run a brothel, 2) Clyntahn changes mistresses frequently, so 3) when Clyntahn takes up with one of her 'girls', Nynian is going to provide said girl with a slow-acting poison and the antidote. She figures it's only a matter of time before he picks up one of her agents, but when he does so she'll have to act quick to get the goods to the right person.

Randomiser wrote:Jeff and Joat you misunderstand me; the unacceptable security risk is not that the airbuses might get spotted, it is revealing the existence of the airbuses to all the people you are transporting. Given the suffering they have allowed in the past to maintain that security it is much more likely that you have just guessed wrong than that there is some mysterious, unguessable reason it's worth while throwing all that security away.

What about the possibility - Everyone gathers in a building ready for evacuation (already done this once before). Then an anesthetic bomb goes off in the building, putting everyone to sleep. Merlin and Nimue load everyone into the air lorry, fly them off to wherever, unload them into a similar building, and leave. Everyone wakes up to a miracle - they have been "magically" transported to safety. Leaves lots of room for speculation, but not a lot of data.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Jeff and Joat you misunderstand me; the unacceptable security risk is not that the airbuses might get spotted, it is revealing the existence of the airbuses to all the people you are transporting. Given the suffering they have allowed in the past to maintain that security it is much more likely that you have just guessed wrong than that there is some mysterious, unguessable reason it's worth while throwing all that security away.

What about the possibility - Everyone gathers in a building ready for evacuation (already done this once before). Then an anesthetic bomb goes off in the building, putting everyone to sleep. Merlin and Nimue load everyone into the air lorry, fly them off to wherever, unload them into a similar building, and leave. Everyone wakes up to a miracle - they have been "magically" transported to safety. Leaves lots of room for speculation, but not a lot of data.

This last bit looks like a magic beans solution which is not how RFC normally tells his stories.

Don

n7axw wrote:Jeff and Joat you misunderstand me; the unacceptable security risk is not that the airbuses might get spotted, it is revealing the existence of the airbuses to all the people you are transporting. Given the suffering they have allowed in the past to maintain that security it is much more likely that you have just guessed wrong than that there is some mysterious, unguessable reason it's worth while throwing all that security away.

What about the possibility - Everyone gathers in a building ready for evacuation (already done this once before). Then an anesthetic bomb goes off in the building, putting everyone to sleep. Merlin and Nimue load everyone into the air lorry, fly them off to wherever, unload them into a similar building, and leave. Everyone wakes up to a miracle - they have been "magically" transported to safety. Leaves lots of room for speculation, but not a lot of data.

This last bit looks like a magic beans solution which is not how RFC normally tells his stories.

Don

Yeah, I agree. I haven't been able to come up with any other explanations that I liked better that covered the security aspects, as well as the need to move a large number of people. I think this means the RFC has something really sneak up is sleeve, and hopefully we will find out what it is before Nov 1, 2015.