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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] Comment: Comprehensive, Categorical, Cool. Suggestion: Tone down the Warsie antagonism. Like your last link shows, it's not necessary to PROVE that they are an inferior lifeform. Idle musing: Perhaps the nature of holodeck safeties could be further examined. Apparently, a good many holoprograms involve KE and edged weapons, and it seems those can be played on a safe mode. How is this accomplished without sacrificing realism? We know of the three types of holodeck objects: the pseudo-physical and nonpermanent (hologangsters), the physical and permanent (Moriarty's paper) and the aphysical (immune-to-fists EMH). Let's call them "holomatter", "matter" and "opticals" for brevity. We don't know what the default setting for things on the 'deck is. Safest would be if everything was optical illusions unless otherwise required. Then a swordfight would involve matter or holomatter grips for the swords, but the blades would be mere opticals - unless they touched the user's body, in which case they would become a combination of opticals and holomatter that only looks hard and sharp but creates an impact more fitting of a soft and dull object. The same would apply to holobullets. In this case, the command "safeties off" would have to mean a deliberate "please hurt me". Turning the safeties "off" would actually involve MORE work for the computer and its replicators, not less: opticals can't hurt, so the computer would have to use the more demanding holomatter or matter. But what if the default setting is matter? A replicated sword would create the clang, the sparks and the rusty smell more easily than a holo-faked one. On the other hand, the computer would have to actively dematerialize the sword if it was about to hit the user, which would be hard work. "Safeties off" could reduce this workload and thus enhance other aspects of the simulation. It wouldn't need to be a deliberate "please hurt me" in this case. And the tommy-gun in "FC" could have been real and kinetically lethal. OTOH, the heroes always speak of "holo-this" and "holo-that", possibly suggesting that holomatter is the norm. This would represent the middle ground in the safety issue, too: flipping the swords or bullets between safe and unsafe modes would not involve extra work, but maintaining them in either mode would still be more laborious than using mere opticals or matter. One could also look further into this "safety" concept. Clearly, the holodeck doesn't provide "active safety", because people often injure themselves in crazy stunts without ANY mention of the safeties being off. Does this mean you could take a real knife to the holodeck and murder somebody with it, with the safeties on? Well, just watch "A Man Alone". (Of course, those were Ferengi safeties...) And failing that, you could always strangle your victim with bare hands. The computer could dematerialize your knife, but not your hands, not in the safe mode! So you don't need the "safeties off" command for a "please hurt me" mode. You can play SM games or deadly sports in there just fine with the safeties on. Which sort of supports the idea that the 'deck produces inherently unsafe objects, for reasons of economy, and the safeties exist merely to compensate for that, not to provide actual "positive safety". Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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