**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.11.07 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Emmi plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> THIS WEEK'S GUEST... Welcome to Emmi, who is this week's Guest NewsDroid. We'll turn the big black Editrix Hat over to her in a moment, but first here's the official stuff. By the way, we are now looking for a volunteer to compile the news for us in December. Contact Hazed if you are interested in stepping into her stilletoes for a week. **>> TECHIE STUFF A number of people have asked for a 'technical' explanation of the current problems with Fed. If you're not a techie you can skip this bit! We seem to have a problem with a buffer overflowing. A lot of the messages you get from Fed are built up bit by - for instance exchange displays are built out of their component parts. What -*seems*- to be happening is that one of the buffers is too small and is overflowing. The overflow is writing into something else and corrupting it. What makes this problem very difficult to track down is that the game doesn't crash when the buffer overflows - if it did it would be easy to find the problem. It starts to go wrong when what ever was corrupted is used and that could be hours later! The number of statements in the Fed source that build up messages in buffers runs into many thousands, and Bella is in the process of checking each one. She has already found, and corrected, one overflow - caused when player have spaceship names with 15 characters. This turned out to be the cause of the incessant crashing last weekend. This problem has been in the code for two years! It just shows how few players give their spaceships full length names. The continued crashes indicate one of two things - either there is another buffer that is too small, or a corrupted persona/base/company got saved to file previously, and that is what is causing the problems. Bella is continuing to go through the code - a time consuming and boring process, but one that can't be avoided - and is also writing a program to verify that the contents of the persona file are within the permissable ranges. Bella is not a happy Rigellian :( In the mean time thanks to everyone for their patience. **>> THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO FEDERATION It's always the last 10% of any project that takes the most time... work has stalled on the new version of the Idiot's Guide temporarily, because Hazed cannot finish it without two things: she needs the planet Cabbage to get put into the game so we can capture a walkthrough, and that won't happen until the problems have been sorted out; and she needs Bella to put in the new version of the game she has been working on for a while which will alter the look of of some of the displays, and that has to wait till the problems are fixed too! Meanwhile, the old edition has sold out so the ordering option has gone from the Order page. As soon as the new edition is ready, we will encourage you - nag you, even - to purchase it! **>> WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS Next weekend you can finally get to see what Fedders do on their holidays, when the long-awaiting planet celebrating the Official Fed UnConvention gets put in the game. The planet will be in from 6.00 eastern on Friday November 12 to 8.00 eastern on Monday November 15. Your visit to the UnCon planet will start at the Airport. Taking Krell's flat as your base, you'll be able to follow the attendees around as they go to Disneyland, get lost in the Hollywood Hills, experience the delights of the local sex shop, and try to find the entertainment on a trip to Mexico. And now, over to this week's Guest NewsDroid: Emmi! **>> ALIVE!! The people sang together in the darkness, praying for deliverance, down to their last stale crusts of bread... which isn't true, but it sounds better than saying they complained bitterly about the impossibility of sex without the privacy of TBs. We did notice several gentlemen chewing their knuckles raw and hope that they have all healed without infection. We would like to point out that what IS true and admirable is the general concern and willingness to help that FEDers have been displaying towards each other during the crashes. During the great comms crash, Blackadder was one of the individuals relaying messages (this was before someone realized the XT command yet worked). Numerous posts on the bar board from players helped keep communication and game information flowing -- from instructions to people to go to Venus to get insurance instead of non-functioning offices on player planets to what channel to tune in order to hear the chatter of the outside world. **>> HARROWING HALLOWEEN Sean had a scary experience ... he suddenly saw the new personna prompt while heading back to the LP on Titan. He had to spend most of Halloween haunting CDs and Sam's as Seansghost. On Monday he was VERY relieved to have his old body back and was heard to swear that he's NEVER going to take his St. Pegasus pendant off again. **>> FASHIONABLE STATEMENTS After hearing dread mutterings over carrying a child in a Snuggli (tm) as a disgustingly vile trend, newsdroids were dispatched to actually count the number of infants being so abused. The droids found two. However, as Hypatia is still carrying her baby in the interior, rather than in a Snuggli, he/she/it has been removed from the count. Perhaps it is merely that Zilch's frantic social life gives him the appearance of being more than one infant... but certain individuals should remember that he is only ONE little Noething. By far, the more popular fashion is having a pet. Newsdroids counted a wide variety of companionable creatures...parrots seem to be the most popular, with snakes, aardvarks and mice in close demand as well. We were momentarily confused at the appearance of a wolfish creature and at least one cat, but then realized that these were players, not pets (although we were tempted to pet them!). The most Vividly Dressed Award of the week goes to Ciaran: "His bright floral-print shirt is the stuff nightmares are made from" **>> NEWS FROM HELL The newsdroid assigned to the Duchy of Hell endured many a comment from Bochiman that anything reported here about the war, him and Hell in general would be biased against him, his vassals and all would be nothing but lies anyway. The newsdroid was so distressed at this assumption of journalistic bias that it promptly refused to report anything that it could not verify with it's own camera sensors. As a result, the only thing we can relay as news from Hell is that Bochiman has a run in his tights and really ought to get a fresh pair. **>> NEWS FROM OCEAN Several members of Ocean were heard comparing smuggling profits ... by conservative estimation, Hell suffered losses of a half-GIG in one night of embargo! **>> NEWS FROM RELIGION Excommunicated????!!!! Newsdroids have noted that Explorer Emmi no longer wears the exquisite St. Pegasus pendant that seemed a perpetual accessory to her description, and heard some whispers of sins so dark that even the Church of Pegasus has disowned her. In place of her pendant and linen & lace attire, she has been seen clad in a tiny black spandex dress and spiked heels. **>> PEOPLE The newsdroids were pleased to see the reappearance of Merchant Ohm, who has returned after a 9-month absence from FED space. Ohm is the master of LeResistance, and as a trader assisted the first Duke to promote. A droid was dispateched to interview him, asking about his views on FED today and how it's different. Ohm, being an oldtimer, longs for the days when public orgies were everywhere. When asked how he spends his time when not trading, he replied, "Have cybersex, of course!!!" Then, with some cajoling, he admitted the truth... that he's actually only had it once, but thinks about it a lot!!! Lastly, we asked him about his opinion of the current political climate and how it differs from the old days. His reply, "FED has always been a place full of enmity and petty bickering. It's like a crowded elevator stuck in between floors and the people start to get on each other's nerves." Somehow, we always suspected as much. **>> SPYNET REVIEW The Review will be held over till next week, when we will publish a bumper fun-packed edition. **>> CONTACTS The following information will appear at the end of every News Bulletin, so you don't have to read it if you already know it. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed or Bella in the game * a message to Hazed or Bella * send GEnie mail with the Mail about Federation option from the main menu A front-end terminal program is available for Federation, for the PC. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). The Amiga version is in beta-test. A new version of the unexpurgated printed Idiot's Guide to Federation will be available Real Soon Now! Federation has several categories in the new MPGames RT. To get there, type M1045,1 from any menu prompt and SET category 13 (for information, instructions, questions and answers) or 14 (for general chat and discussions). The Federation Leader in the bulletin board is Oxcart (Mail ID: J.LONG29). There are also private categories for Explorers and the Sentate, run by Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS