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News Yearbook

EARTHDATE: December 2005

OFFICIAL NEWS
by Hazed

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In the Official News for December 2005:
THE MONTH IN BRIEF
GALLAGHER'S CHRISTMAS CRACKERS
REAL LIFE NEWS: THE ALASKAN AND THE MAMMOTH DIY PROJECT


THE MONTH IN BRIEF

POs were given a command to let them exile unwanted players from their planets, and then pardon them again if they decided to forgive them. One experimental player decided to find out what would happen if he exiled himself... he ended up unable to fly back into his system, and therefore unable to pardon himself. Whoops!

Bella continued to tweak the way planetary exchanges worked, and zeroed all the planet treasuries. She announced she may have to do this several times before POs become proper Founders.

Financiers who messed up were allowed to declare bankruptcy and revert to Industrialist.

New code was added to allow players to become a Fed II sponsor. By donating some of their excess slithies back to the game, they got their name on a web page and were given access to a private location in the game.

The Fed II Star closed down for the holidays, but Bella went into over-drive and in the last two weeks of the year produced a torrent of new code: the ability to give objects to other players, a way to find out the names of staff members in the game, a more fluent way to talk to mobiles using the 'TELL' command, and a way to find out who owns a company. POs got the power to get rid of unwanted factories and depots, and the commands to open and close a system were changed (making them easier to understand). SpyNet split off information about financial dealings into a separate SpyNet Financial report. Finally, the Galactic Administration lifted its restriction on buying arts factories. Phew!

As if that wasn't enough, Bella came up with a new version of FedTerm that added sound effects.

Mac users also got a Christmas present, in the form of the Mac version of the Workbench, courtesy of Filbert. Cue much jubilation and singing in the streets, as non-Windows players were given the chance to design their own planets.

Catspaws, the newly-appointed Queen of Role-playing, held her first role-playing class. Some new objects designed to aid role-playing were added to the game: a butterfly net, a wishbone, a top hat and some catnip.

The Sol planets Binary, Cube and Jade were removed from the Solar System. Binary and Cube showed up later in their own systems; Jade has yet to make a reappearance.

Santa's Grotto opened up allowing players to get toys from the lucky dip tub, sit on Santa's lap and go for a sleigh ride. Hazed came up with another fiendish scavenger hunt. Diesel offered free food and drink throughout the festive season, and the year ended when she threw yet another of her parties for the new year, and a massive conga line danced its way through the Solar System.

Fed Radio played the Top Ten Favorite Songs of Fedders (or in the case of Bella, her top 30 - as usual, she couldn't make her mind up!).

GALLAGHER'S CHRISTMAS CRACKERS

The new charm for December has gone on sale in Gallagher's, the posh shop on Earth that specializes in selling expensive items to the rich. It is a reverse-entropy Christmas cracker, from TenBrane, the same people who make the keyring on which the charm hangs. TenBrane have drawn on an old British Christmas tradition in producing this month's accessory - if you don't know what a cracker is, you can find out here.

Speaking of Gallagher's... Anton Gallagher, who owns the business, is hopping mad. The target of his ire is Diesel, because once again she allowed her friend the craftsman to sell items in the bar that can be attached to the TenBrane keyring. You may recall that for St Patrick's day earlier this year, the craftsman sold little silver shamrock charms in Chez Diesel, and on that occasion Gallagher threatened to sue her. He claimed his store had an exclusive deal with TenBrane so that Gallagher's was the only place in Sol where you could buy one of the highly valued keyrings, and therefore his store should have the monopoly on selling accessories to dangle from it.

Diesel, of course, insisted that he was talking poppycock, issuing a statement that said, "People have been making and selling tags and charms to hang on keyrings for centuries, and the silver shamrocks could have been attached to any keyring, or for that matter to a chain round the neck, an earring, a tentacle tag or any other kind of display item. The fact that people chose to hang it from their TenBrane keyring is none of my business, and certainly none of that idiot shop-keeper's business."

Anton Gallagher's threatened writ never did appear, so Diesel appeared to have won that round. But now, following the craftsman's miniature turkey charm which he sold in CDs over Thanksgiving, Gallagher is making threatening noises all over again. But since he did not follow through last time (much to the disappointment of the lawyers, who were anticipating a long drawn out case generating fat fees), we think it's unlikely any legal suit will materialize this time.

REAL LIFE NEWS: THE ALASKAN AND THE MAMMOTH DIY PROJECT

Albert Swank Jr is running into problems with his neighbours in Anchorage, Alaska. They are objecting to a little project he wants to undertake in his home. The project: to assemble a 20-ton nuclear particle accelerator. That's some DIY project!

Mr Swank runs an engineering firm from his house, and he built his first domestic cyclotron when he just 17. He now wants to upgrade it to a meatier Scandiatronix MC16, donated by John Hopkins University. The machine is used to brew up radioactive material which is injected into people before they have PET (positron emission tomography) scans to look for cancerous cells.

But the locals are not impressed, and are concerned about potential radiation leaks, not to mention fears that the thing might drain the local electricity supply. Lawmakers have moved swiftly to ban the use of cyclotrons in domestic businesses, and health officials have suspended Swank's permit to operate nuclear particle accelerators. Attorney Alan Tesche said: "We in Alaska embrace technology, and we love it - but we would like to see this in a hospital or industrial area, where it belongs. We don't need cyclotrons operating out of back alleys, or in someone's garage."

Swank says the cyclotron is completely safe, and plans to dismantle the machine at its current home, John Hopkins in Baltimore, at the end of January, then ship it to Alaska by lorry and barge - and he will do it with or without a permit.

This sure beats disputes over excessive Christmas lights or the height of leylandii hedges!


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